Netflix

Overall, I like the Netflix experience. But I wouldn't be me unless I found a couple of things that irritate me about the service. One of my biggest gripes is their rating system. They have a five star system which I included to the right. So what's the issue? It goes straight from "Didn't like it" to "Liked it". That's a huge difference. Where's the rating for "Meh". There are some movies after I watch that I'm completely indifferent about. Where's the rating for that? Seriously, why couldn't they have just renamed "Didn't like it" to "Whatever" or "Eh". You know, after I've typed this out, I suppose I can see how one could argue that this is in fact covered by "Didn't like it". If you take it at the strictest interpretation as the mathematical "My Opinion" != "Liked It". I suppose I can see how "Didn't Like It" is suppose to fill that niche. But the problem for me is whenever I've read "Didn't Like It" in the past, that brings to my mind the idea that I actively had negative feelings towards the movie. Because of that, I never know what to click when I rate movies that, in my mind at least, just aren't that good.

The other thing that bugs me about Netflix is they're not open on Saturday. This may not seem like a big deal, but at our house we had the 2 unlimited plan divided up between a queue for Ginger and a queue for me. I suppose being able to have separate queues for different individuals on the same account is actually a plus, so kudos to Netflix for allowing that. However, this means absolute best case scenario I can only get 2 movies a week, and that's only if the stars align correctly. This is because it takes one day to get the movie to them, and then one day for them to get the next movie back to me. With that the best I can really hope for is 2 a week provided I immediately watch the movie the day it shows up and then return it immediately the next day.

Take a couple of weeks ago, I finished the last disc of 24 season 2 on Thursday. I plunked it into the mail on Friday morning. The movie probably arrived at the Netflix processing center on Saturday. But since they're not open Saturday, they won't process it and send me the next one till Monday. This means I'm not even going to get the next movie until Tuesday at best. Watch that movie immediately and it the next day, and they don't get it until Thursday at best which means I don't get the next movie until Friday. And that's best case scenario. Things fall apart even worse when it takes the mail longer than 1 day to return or deliver a DVD. Like today, the last disc of 24 Season 3 was suppose to arrive today, but it wasn't in the mail. So now I would have no chance of getting another movie this week. I've also noticed things can go south on a Monday. I suspect (but have no proof) that this can happen if they're overloaded (a lot of people returned DVDs over the weekend) and don't happen to process the movie I returned, then the next one doesn't even ship till Tuesday.

To get around this issue for now, we've bumped ourselves up to the unlimited three movies out at a time and Ginger has allowed me to have the extra one. Even so, I've yet to actually get 4 movies in one week and usually only manage three at best (since it always seems to be the case that one of the three movies will take longer to get back or get to me). For now, it's good though since there's not really anything new on television at the moment (except for Blade, Stargate: Atlantis, Eureka, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Psych), so I can crank through some DVDs. Once fall rolls around and the new TV seasons start we'll probably go back to two at a time for a total of 4 a month plan.

The last issue I have with Netflix is their recommendations. Now admittedly, I've recently watched Seasons 2 & 3 of 24 through them. But apparently because of that I now have 103 recommendations for television DVDs. And there haven't been any other television DVDs that I've rented through them except for the two seasons of 24. That's easily the highest number of recommendations in any category. It's more that 5 times the average number of recommendations of DVDs in other categories. With the exception of the "Animation / Anime" and "Children's / Family" categories (it's only double the Family category and half as much as the animation one). Evidently to them I'm the guy that watches TV shows and likes cartoons on DVD (there's probably some truth to that, but still, I'm in the club to watch the movies I no longer go see in theaters).