Netflix to lose thousands of movies. Gambles on making its own content

[darkswordsman17]

Personally for me, Netflix original stuff sucks. It's not totally horrible but none of it has been great other than maybe the first season of House of Cards. They're still learning, but so far they have not done enough to justify trying to focus on their original content. I don't think they are though. I do like they've been doing comedy specials but none of those have been amazing thus far either.

I recently tried Amazon Prime and holy shit. It's orders of magnitude worse than Netflix in most areas. Selection is just as bad for the most part, their web player is garbage compared to Netflix, and the design and adding to your list and everything is just, makes me glad for Netflix even when they do things like the recent UI that isn't terribly great for PC. Unless you love HBO (which you should be doing direct through HBO now), Prime sucks.

Hulu has been making big plays. I wasn't very pleased since they locked up South Park and stuff (used to be able to watch all of the episodes for free). But if they keep making moves they might be worth subscribing to. I wish they'd improve their player and dump ads entirely for paid tiers though.

I'm not really liking the licensing deals either. They're ridiculous. Amazon paying $250 million for 3 years of non-Top Gear is insane. And the money Netflix paid for Friends and Hulu for Seinfeld is just silly. But the money must be there, and they're probably making it back on those alone (I know a lot of people that signed back up for Netflix because of Friends, which I can't even fathom), so whatever I guess.

Eh, the licensing agreements go in yearly cycles. This crap will be back on in a few years. You constantly see stuff disappearing and "new" releases (of 1-50 year old movies) showing up on the various streaming services.

Currently have the older pricing so going to keep Netflix for now, couple with Amazon Prime it works well enough. It's always an incentive to watch less.

Yeah, the licensing deals are up and down. Without knowing the terms and exact content its difficult to know if its worth it or not for Netflix.

But every year there's one of these "OMG Netflix is removing thousands!!!!!" freakouts, and yet I barely notice much difference. They generally offer a bunch of other stuff so eh.

 

[quikah]

I'm not sure why the article didn't mention that. Does the Disney deal include miramax too?

Hard to say exactly what it includes. Just know that the deal had excluded new releases until 2016. Disney sold Miramax in 2010 or so, so not sure it would include that (might have distribution rights still).

 

[pete6032]

Better watch this one before it gets taken down.

http://www.epixhd.com/movie/addicted/

:sneaky:

 

[Markbnj]

It's one deal, and I don't see a reason to get worked up about that alone. However, when they say they want to focus on original content that bothers me more. I like their originals, but I am not looking to pay $8/month for access to the new NBC, or CBS. It is the large catalog of titles that attracts me.

 

[postmortemIA]

The gamble must be based on internal statistics - percentage of users watching their original content.

But it is a bad gamble. Their top shows are near run end and a few new ones won't keep everybody interested.
Plus they lost bargaining power with Epix - next deal will be worse for Netflix.

 

[balloonshark]

Netflix has dumped a bunch of their content this summer. This site does a decent job of posting what is disappearing and when. http://whatsonnetflixnow.blogspot.com/

I've said this before but the flix part of netflix means movies. I bought netflix to watch movies and they have steadily been adding more and more tv episodes along with their own content. Add in the annoying autoplay wasting my capped bandwidth and I'm not a happy netflix customer.

 

[Eug]

Age of Extinction maybe? That one was free on Amazon Prime.

I already saw one of the other Transformers movies, so I don't know what I was expecting.

I should get a partial refund on my Prime membership because I know that some perfectly money is being spent just to have that wasting space on their servers.

I could have spent that time watching the movie that they could have made: Nothing but 2 hours of Mark Wahlberg frolicking around a large room filled with Michael Bay's rancid pubes.

Instead, I forced myself to suffer through something even worse.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon actually.

 

[jlee]

Netflix has dumped a bunch of their content this summer. This site does a decent job of posting what is disappearing and when. http://whatsonnetflixnow.blogspot.com/

I've said this before but the flix part of netflix means movies. I bought netflix to watch movies and they have steadily been adding more and more tv episodes along with their own content. Add in the annoying autoplay wasting my capped bandwidth and I'm not a happy netflix customer.

You can't close the browser when you're done watching?

 

[Crusty]

You can't close the browser when you're done watching?

I guess you can't fall asleep while watching Netflix then...

 

[Jeff7]

I guess you can't fall asleep while watching Netflix then...

Start -> Run

shutdown -s -f -t xxxx
xxxx = time in seconds until the computer shuts down

 

[balloonshark]

You can't close the browser when you're done watching?

I normally want to take my headphones off, take my time rating the movie before I go take a pee after a long movie. Autoplaying some random movie when I just finished watching a movie is a waste to me. Disabling that "feature" should be an option.

Plus now when I click on a movie to read its description and stars the movie just starts playing automagically and then the description disappears a few seconds later. This just started the past week or two on the xbox one.

 

[Crusty]

I normally want to take my headphones off, take my time rating the movie before I go take a pee after a long movie. Autoplaying some random movie when I just finished watching a movie is a waste to me. Disabling that "feature" should be an option.

Plus now when I click on a movie to read its description and stars the movie just starts playing automagically and then the description disappears a few seconds later. This just started the past week or two on the xbox one.

The only thing that autoplays for me are TV shows...

 

[quikah]

I normally want to take my headphones off, take my time rating the movie before I go take a pee after a long movie. Autoplaying some random movie when I just finished watching a movie is a waste to me. Disabling that "feature" should be an option.

https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle

Uncheck the box.

 

[balloonshark]

https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle

Uncheck the box.

Thanks. Is that option just for tv shows or will it stop another movie from playing after I finish a movie?

 

[HendrixFan]

Netflix knows how many customers watch those movies and they are culling the movies that do not offer a high rate of return.

Why pay billions for something that is not bringing in new customers or holding them to the service. Better they use that budget fore more original content.

This.

Netflix got slammed hard when they announced they were charging for streaming and lost tons of subscribers and the stock took a dive. These days people's idea of a date is having you come over and "watch Netflix". In the end they were right.

I've been with Netflix since 2002, and when streaming was a separated I stuck with discs. I still do discs and not streaming. They have always been excellent at customer service and they are most likely right not to pay too much for content. I can't imagine their data collection prevents them from seeing what is a viable amount for certain studios.

At the end of the day, most people I know use Netflix to watch TV shows more than movies. The studios have been dicks about first rate films on Netflix for a few years now (hence why I still have discs plus the bluray option). People just don't seem to be in it for the movies and it is some sort of chicken and egg thing where interest in films wanes and Netflix won't pay exorbitant prices for studio rights.

 

[Aharami]

This.

Netflix got slammed hard when they announced they were charging for streaming and lost tons of subscribers and the stock took a dive. These days people's idea of a date is having you come over and "watch Netflix". In the end they were right.

I've been with Netflix since 2002, and when streaming was a separated I stuck with discs. I still do discs and not streaming. They have always been excellent at customer service and they are most likely right not to pay too much for content. I can't imagine their data collection prevents them from seeing what is a viable amount for certain studios.

At the end of the day, most people I know use Netflix to watch TV shows more than movies. The studios have been dicks about first rate films on Netflix for a few years now (hence why I still have discs plus the bluray option). People just don't seem to be in it for the movies and it is some sort of chicken and egg thing where interest in films wanes and Netflix won't pay exorbitant prices for studio rights.

i heard a rumor that they are looking to cancel their mail business as they lose money on it. not sure if true or not though

 

[irishScott]

I guess you can't fall asleep while watching Netflix then...

You shouldn't be doing that anyway, the light from the screen degrades sleep quality.

 

[irishScott]

Honestly, I think most Netflix subscribers avoid about 90% of its streaming content. I'll take quality over quantity any day, and it looks like that's the overall direction they're heading.

 

[DaveSimmons]

i heard a rumor that they are looking to cancel their mail business as they lose money on it. not sure if true or not though

No, the disc business still turns a nice profit. It's the streaming that loses them money.

Netflix probably made the right move -- at some point, a streaming service has to say "no thanks" to content when the cost is too high. Otherwise the prices keep spiraling up and up without limit. Better to spend the $1 bn on other content that's less overpriced. The entire Troma library would probably only cost them 50 bucks

I use Netflix discs to get blockbusters that I want to see in real HD with HD audio. I use their streaming for indies, TV shows, a little anime, and impulse watching of mostly older movies.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

In the world where EVERYONE and their dogs have a streaming service, and Netflix decides to serve up LESS contents while don't have enough original contents.

Smart move, Netflix, smart move.

Is it time to short NFLX yet?

It was time to short netflix when they finished transitioning their servers to the Amazon Cloud.

 

[TheVrolok]

I'm really surprised many people are thinking this is the end for Netflix. I really doubt it'll be much of a bump with their pretty high quality original stuff, deal with Disney starting soon, and other contracts. Netflix will be just fine, I'm sure they've looked at their own customers viewing statistics.

 

[CPA]

Netflix knows how many customers watch those movies and they are culling the movies that do not offer a high rate of return.

Why pay billions for something that is not bringing in new customers or holding them to the service. Better they use that budget fore more original content.

Exactly this. If Netflix was getting a good ROI, do you really think they would shutter this partnership, people? Of course not, it seems obvious they can get higher margins elsewhere.

 

[Demo24]

Meh, doesn't look like they are losing all that much really. Netflix constantly adds and removes stuff every month so I'm not very concerned. However, I've been finding their streaming service is a lot better for TV than movies. Thus I keep the bluray service as well to catch up on newer stuff. Wouldn't mind going streaming only if I could get all that same content, but I know the price would go up significantly.

 

[Thump553]

I was always stunned at how few movies Netflix has. If it was an old time video rental store it would be a very tiny one, with a whole bunch of the movies grade z.

I don't think this signals the end for Netflix though-it just shows the fracturing of the streaming market. If you want decent access to a catalog of movies you are going to have to subscribe to three or more services.

 

[ultimatebob]

Netflix's movie streaming selection has always sucked in my opinion. That's why I kept the BluRay delivery option on my account, since roughly 95% of the newer movies that I actually want to watch aren't available on streaming.

Thankfully for them, most of their new shows are pretty good. Otherwise, I would have canceled streaming a long time ago.

That said, Amazon Prime's movie selections do not seem much better.