OK, so I've read up on Netflix and throttling…

H.o.p. woke up sick and has been down for the count all day. Marty’s out being filmed for a BBC documentary (I’ll describe later). Oh, here comes H.o.p. now. And I’ve been reading about Netflix and throttling. Will we end up being disappointed in Netflix as well? Probably. Because I’m a new customer may be why all the films in my queue (excempting one) are showing available now. Except I do read that if your viewing tastes are down the line of foreign films, indies etc., then this is when a service like Netflix is a good deal and you may do well with it. Fact is, nearly every movie we really want to watch for a while we’ve been forced to buy, because it’s almost always a foreign or indie film not available at the local rental place, and there are a lot of movies out there that I’d like to watch that I’d prefer not to purchase. Like Fellini’s “The White Shiek” and “The End of August at the Hotel Ozone” (1967 futuristic Cold War Czech film). Not to mention all those documentaries for H.o.p. which predominate the queue.

I was figuring if we got 12 movies a month out of the service it would be good but I read “smoothing” can occur eventually where they don’t have a quick turn-around time and you end up averaging 7 a month. Even if we do end up at 7 a month, as long as they’re not broken discs, it still may be worthwhile so we don’t have to purchase “The Red Tent”, the 1961 “Hercules in the Haunted World” and Nova’s “Mystery of the Megaflood” (about the scab lands in Washington State). I don’t want to purchase “Chased by Dinosaurs” or “Microcosmos” (bugs) or any one of the hundreds of foreign films and indies I’d like to finally see but would prefer to spend my purchasing money on old Charlie Chaplin (which we recently got).

So, we’ll see how it works. Right now, 2/3rd’s of the queue are what I consider educational supplements for H.o.p. so bythe time I get around to watching Teshigahara’s 1964 “Woman in the Dunes” maybe it will have been released. (Incredible movie by the way.)


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3 responses to “OK, so I've read up on Netflix and throttling…”

  1. nina Avatar
    nina

    Sorry to hear that H.o.p isn’t feeling well. Hope he’ll be on the mend quickly.

    We get Netflix. I think mostly we haven’t had too much trouble getting things we want. I think there have been a couple of sorta obscure things Steve wanted that have stayed in the que for a long time. The only problem we have is really our own problem. No one seems to watch movies often enough so that I think we are probably sometimes only getting one movie a month. Or we get three and then don’t watch them for weeks, return them without seeing them because one of my children will decide she’s ready for something new. But the turn around seems to be very fast. I think we’ve only had one damaged DVD and that problem was easily corrected, a replacement quickly in the mail.

  2. Idyllopus Avatar

    Thanks, H.o.p.’s feeling a lot better already.

    I was reading that if you rent very few movies then you don’t run into the “smooting” problem. And as you say, you rent few and have not had a problem.

  3. David Avatar
    David

    I was an early Netflix user but have been off it since we got the Dish full boat (sucks, but the wife likes it). Anyhow, I was usually able to do 20 DVD/month on the basic 3 disc plan. Kept a full queue and watched ’em every night and got them back in the mail box with religious fervor.
    I do not watch ‘mainstream’ films, so there was never an issue of me competing to get a copy of a real popular film (I did contribute to Memento being such a big renter, having watched it about five times).

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