It would be nice if Netflix made it easier to browse content rather than choosing what categories to display and show to you.
It can get stuck thinking your really like a genre, and the recommendation engine can penalize you too much for too many likes or dislikes.
Now that the website is a bit more focused towards streaming-on-computer it's somewhat harder to browse and prepare a queue.
It feels that some content is cheaper to stream and it wants to present that content first, and also that they don't really want you to be aware of the size of the catalog either.
Tempting to go back to DVD plan for a while, really, which I would do if the US Post Office was remotely reliable. If only there was a way to rent-stream BlueRay/DVD ISOs securely to a Netflix app, and have their whole catalog legally available and not bifurcated into streaming and non-streaming, that would be really cool.
> It would be nice if Netflix made it easier to browse content ...
It would be even better if they fixed recommendations. If you do not use a web browser - ie use Roku, Chromecast, Android etc - then you cannot mark something as "not interested". So it keeps showing you the same thing over and over again, that you do not want to watch. Makes the service seem dumb and hostile. Don't get me started on them showing you stuff you already watched and don't need in the prime positions for recommendations - it is already watched.
Even more bizarre is how they predict how many stars you'll give something, which seems fairly good. And then go ahead and recommend items with few predicted stars.
I'm almost convinced that all their developers only use desktops and browsers, so they don't even realise what they do to those on other platforms.
> Even more bizarre is how they predict how many stars
> you'll give something, which seems fairly good. And then
> go ahead and recommend items with few predicted stars.
A thousand times this. It's nice to read a like mind when so often I rant about awful Netflix recommendations to deaf or Netflix-supporting ears!
My other main gripe is when the stars are wrong (though as you say, not often) which is obviously untrue from your 'Taste Preferences'.
For example, despite spending ages filling out all the details, including specifying 'Never' to watching animated films, I'm still recommended them - and sometimes with 3 or more stars too.
I'm not convinced that the preferences data is considered at all.
Absolutely. I keep getting amazed at how well designed their backend is (going by their OSS contribs and blogs at least), and their client app on the device absolutely sucks.
> Even more bizarre is how they predict how many stars you'll give something, which seems fairly good. And then go ahead and recommend items with few predicted stars
To play the devils' advocate
* It's good for the user because their algorithm is not perfect and you might actually enjoy the 'few predicted stars' movie
* It's good for the algorithm because it allows fine-tuning in the cases of false-negatives and adds more data points
* having only high predicted stars in your list will probably move your Overton window on what's good/bad.
There is no need for a devil's advocate argument - having some diversity in recommendations is good for many reasons. But they they need to start by getting the base recommendations done well, and then mixing in the diversity. Sadly they fail dismally at the former.
It's designed to make you watch something now and does make it harder to explore something, read reviews, and so on, or just add it to your queue than it used to.
Kind of a trend I detect with "let's overhaul what's not broken and try to streamline it and make it shiny" when it makes the overall experience somewhat worse.
Someone really wanted to push the "watch what we already have on the front page from your browser" thing, it seems.
Reliability varies with branch. I've been generally quite content with the USPS, but my current home has:
* mail regularly misdelivered (1-2 piece of mail/month, including small packages that fit in the mailbox). Who knows what mail I've missed that went to someone else's house.
* They won't deliver larger packages to my house (busy street), BUT the office remains ignorant of this despite regular visits and I usually have to get bumped up to a manager before they "find" my package after insisting it is on the truck.
* ...But they do deliver packages on Sunday (When Amazon is paying them to)
* Package slips aren't always given. Followup slips DEFINITELY don't happen.
After being happy with the USPS most of my life, I now have all my amazon packages delivered to a locker because it's easier to always have a small amount of inconvenience than have general convenience (UPS and FedEx to the house direct) mixed with extreme inconvenience (USPS making me wait longer to get the package, at hours that don't work well with a 9-5 work schedule)
There's one main mail carrier who delivers your stuff and he's slacking. He'll continue to get away with this if you don't complain.
UPS and FedEx are no better. I guarantee if you had a problem with one of those services, you'd complain. I've had a FedEx guy park across the street from my house three times, only to not deliver my laptop (I think he was just letting his truck get a GPS fix on him being there) and I only finally got it when I chased the truck and then his eyes were totally bloodshot. Guy didn't even get out of his damn truck.
In my particular case, the postmaster is part of the problem, and doesn't really care too much about anything but the policy, even when it means mail is being refused delivery. The oversight office complains that this branch doesn't pick up the phones - and places where they are asked to contact you about a problem, they do not. So yeah, depends totally on the branch, but they seem to know they have immunity.
I have very good luck with UPS. And again, I think that depends on the driver/route/branch/etc.
I used to use DVD service a lot at my old address and it was great, I wouldn't attempt it right now.
Indeed--we use the dvd service routinely (most of their movies aren't available for streaming), and it is almost always two-day turnaround on disks. (One day in each direction)
Personally, my regular mail carrier is fine, but there's a different system for parcels (this is in Brooklyn, NY) where it's always someone different. The majority of the time, they don't even get off the truck and try to deliver the item, they either just leave a 'notice left' sheet, or none at all, and mark the item as 'unable to deliver, notice left' or 'undeliverable as addressed.' Or they mark it delivered, and don't deliver it.
Then, when you schedule a redelivery, they just don't redeliver it. If you call the post office, which I have to do at a secondary line I discovered (apparently for carriers), since their main line seems to be left off the hook or turned off, they will report that they have it there, and you can pick it up if you want.
Usually true, but where I currently live my neighbor has to bring me my mail about once a week - the post office apparently just decides to put several people's mail in his box, rather than walk around the building to the separate apartment mailboxes.
I also end up with my weekly Science subscription usually arriving in pairs every two weeks. I'm not sure who is to blame for that one.
You are saying your branch is reliable, and I'd agree, most are. There are some bad ones out there where they prefer to hide behind the system and dodge complaints, no matter how nicely brought. Basically Newman from Seinfeld is an accurate descriptor.
It'd be nice if these categories weren't hidden, but at this point, the Netflix UI has gotten so useless that if the service was a little more expensive, it wouldn't be worth the price. Basic UI features that I'd expect from even an alpha quality service like filtering by star rating simply don't exist. Up until today and this post, proper categories did not exist. The whole Netflix UI experience has consisted of scrolling through endless lists of garbage to occasionally find one or two interesting movies/shows. And when I say garbage, I really mean garbage: movies with one or two stars, deservingly so.
I understand that if Netflix allowed filtering by star rating they might only list a few hundred 4 and 5 star movies across the whole service, but it'd be best to let the consumer decide how to deal with that fact rather than hiding everything in a giant pile of shit. I find their star ratings to be very close to accurate and this is the strength of the service. Unfortunately, their discovery UI is so horrific, it negates any strength Netflix has otherwise. If I know what I want to watch, Netflix is great, otherwise I prepare for half an hour of scrolling the same bullshit list of crap looking for anything decent and ultimately giving up.
Not sure if I'm crazy here, but I thought that the star ratings they show on the UI are their prediction of how much you will like the movie (i.e., they think you will give this movie 2 stars).
The best shows are those that don't fit a particular category, or that grow to move between categories. Lots of great british TV bounces between comedy and drama (sherlock, cuffs). Some American shows cannot be pinned to a specific age range (simpsons). I still laugh when I see TopGear listed as "informational/other" by my cable company.
Also ... (i just noticed)
Australian Movies 5230
Belgian Movies 262
Korean Movies 5685
Latin American Movies 1613
Middle Eastern Movies 5875
New Zealand Movies
No Canada? No Canada comedy, no Canada movies, nothing? Belgian but not Canadian? Look to the end of your favorite shows. Look for the "Canadian film tax credit" statement before saying there aren't any canadian shows.
They do call it a "Netflix Original", which I guess means it's "original" in the sense that Arrested Development was an "original" (i.e. first run episodes)
Well, thank you for that. Growing up in Michigan, we had a bit of Canadian cross-over stuff [1], and I saw quite a bit of that show back in the era before on-demand. We never really had cable. Definitely some good hacker-esque skits in there, though I never felt the shows as a whole quite gelled in their overarching plots.
[1]: Double the Olympics coverage being the best. Curling is overmocked. It is mockable, yes, but it is overmocked.
In the... 2010, it was, Olympic games, NBC, the official broadcaster in the U.S., had so "sliced and diced" its presentation that I found its main coverage unwatchable. However, on one of its lesser affiliates, it was carrying... "second or third tier", per its judgement, sports coverage largely intact.
One particular item on it, that I ran across just by chance channel-surfing, was coverage of the women's curling. Complete games, quietly but informatively commentated. This introduced me to curling (beyond a passing "stones on ice" familiarity), and I ended up really enjoying it. To boot, it came down to Canada versus Sweden in a rather exciting set of rounds of elimination.
Some of it can be fairly parochial and/or simple, but the CBC et al. also put out some pretty good stuff. Including items that don't try to be more than they are, but do an excellent job at that.
Hopefully, under Trudeau et al., they will be released from the manufactured chokehold that has been squeezing the life out of them. And, any force that cuts down crap such as the ueber-commercialization of the Olympics, I welcome.
Well, I'm not too familiar with the CBC. And I hear more of the radio side than I see the TV side. Where, I seem to recall similar budget restrictions, personnel jiggering, et al. lately as has been attempted with PBS, NPR, etc. in the U.S.
But, maybe my off-the-cuff impression is wrong.
Regardless, cheers!
P.S. Perhaps I should further qualify that "not too familiar." Maybe I'm nonetheless more familiar with it than many in the U.S.
Anyway, I have really enjoyed some of what they put out. Older, but perhaps one of the best examples I can think of, right now: The 1980's adaptations of Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" and "Anne of Avonlea".
Every summer, I'm close enough to the border to get one of their channels for a week. And I enjoy having a look in on the news and Canadian culture, from their perspective.
I support that notion, that countries have a national broadcasting service. Particularly with the dominance of U.S. and "generic" commercial media, a place on the airwaves or wire that provides for a more prominent presentation of domestic culture, among other things.
Oh, and I'll add, some of the First Nations programming I've happened to catch has been pretty interesting, too.
There are a bunch of categories in the OP list I don't see either. Canadian happens to be on my mine, for whatever reason. Pretty annoying. (Almost as much as continuously recommending movies that I've already watched and rated.)
The Canadian category (nor any "Canada/ian" category) is not present in the version of the "cheat list" I ran across.
It does work for me, though, in the U.S.
From my experience with the list I have, I am guessing that if your region, at the time you look, does not have any matches for the category, you get the "unavailable" response instead of an empty list.
I will note that the Canadian region has a number of items that do not show up in the above category in the U.S. region. Including several enjoyable comedies.
Also, there are some Canadian items I'm aware of that are available in the U.S. but are not showing up in that category. I guess some of those are TV shows rather than "Canadian Movies". I wonder whether there is a category ID for Canadian TV shows -- probably. Anyone have it?
Overall, from the recent list leak, it appears that Netflix has not, or not always, had a single, authoritative categorization. Probably multiple people/groups defining, including at different times, their own categories that often overlap. Also, I wonder whether internally they have tagging, with these category ID's defining/exposing specific combinations of that tagging.
One in particular IIRC is The Transporter series. I don't know how much more there is, but there's definitely more. I think Flashpoint is also on there, which IIRC is produced by a Canadian studio.
They do have plenty of canadian content. I was just surprised not to see any acknowledgement in their list of categories.
If you want to cover everything filmed in canada, that is a very very long list. X-Files, X-men, twilight, the latest godzilla ... it will take a while. But if you expand to to all "canadian content" then be ready for a shock. The first season of the new Doctor Who was a partial CBC production.
I don't understand Netflix's aversion to letting me find shows I'm interested in. It's so hard to just browse the full catalog, even by really general categories like "Action" or "Comedy". When I pull up the Netflix app on my console all I get are 20-25 movies in each category, plus my Queue and a few recommendations.
I dunno...I find the selection to easily surpass what I'd find available on basic cable on any given day. If it cost $30-50/mo (or whatever they charge for a pretty basic cable package these days) I'd reconsider but for under $10/mo I find it to fill that gap of "something to flick through and find something I wouldn't mind watching" quite nicely.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a subscriber and will likely continue to be. I agree that Netflix is a better deal for the consumer than most cable packages, but they're constantly competing for content with Hulu, Amazon, HBO, YouTube, etc.
YouTube and Twitch have grown to become about 90% of my video consumption. The increasingly cheap pro-sumer quality A/V equipment and software have made the production values go up significantly in recent years, making the regular production of high-quality shows much more viable.
Oh it's really all about personal preference. I mostly subscribe to tech news & reviews and "let's play" type gaming content, along with some cooking/woodworking/metalworking stuff. Off the top of my head I mostly watch MKBHD, Tested, Cinemassacre, CynicalBrit, Lazy Game Reviews, Frank Howarth, and enough smaller channels to fill in the gaps.
Edit: Oh and LinusTechTips, I can't believe how long it took me to get on board with that channel.
Exactly. Given how expensive content is to license/produce, their goal is not to have tons of stuff you want to watch right now. They want to have just enough stuff that you don't leave (either because of the current catalog, or because a new season of HoC or something else you care about is around the corner).
They structure their site so that you don't realize that they don't want to make you super happy—they just want to keep you barely happy.
Sad, given it was once the prime example of "long-tail" content providers - giving customers the hope that everything would be available eventually, no matter how obscure.
Now I'm resigned to them providing "more than I'd like to watch than I have time for", and expecting to go elsewhere for "I want to watch this, now who has it" content.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but that is what I think it is as well. So, they "show" you only small snippets that they think is relevant to you, in order for you to not have to "need" a full view or search into their catalog. It's like expecting a TV channel to show you a full listing of all the things that they've ever played, or are currently playing. You'd then quickly realize how tiny of a selection it really is, with all the repeats and what not.
Netflix's movie selection is really abysmal. After finally cutting the cord, going full-legal and all that. And then: "Hmm, I'd really like to watch movie X", and then you search for it on Netflix, thinking oh it's some relatively-semi-popular movie from half a decade ago, it should be on Netflix. But nope, they recommend you sign up for a DVD plan instead where you can get that movie. Don't even expect one of the "new blockbuster" movies on Netflix, not going to happen. For that have to fork out a pay-per-view amount of $$ on Amazon Prime/Google Play/Itunes.
First: I love me some Netflix. But that doesn't mean I think they can't improve, so:
Second: I don't see how this is the case ("...prevent users from realizing how light their catalog really is.". Looking at what they show me when I search or browse already makes the selection look anemic. Using a few of these codes helped me find stuff I didn't know was there.
I agree, and it's really a shame. However, wasn't there such a category once? At least in 2009 there was (recall seeing various winners from 2009 in a "Oscar" category)
OMG I forgot Netflix has a queue. Of course that was everything when I rented DVDs from Netflix. Then I vaguely remember adding movies to my "streaming" queue, but I feel like that went away entirely. So apparently there is a way to get back to that?! I think searching for movies online (while cross-referencing Rotten Tomatoes) and building a queue could greatly enhance my Saturday nights!
I'm equally confused by their continued practice of making it harder to see my queue. I mean, these are shows I've said I want to see, why make it hard to find?
Add to that that they haven't created an "add to my queue when new episodes come out" option and how shows have been on/off availability rapidly and Netflix isn't nearly as useful as it used to be.
If you select one of the main genres on Netflix, almost all of them will then have a "sub-genre" picker which, as far as I can tell, includes most if not all of these.
Sure, this site lets you see them all at once without having to choose a parent genre first, but it doesn't seem like that big of deal.
I've always longed for better filtering/sorting options on the home screen. Currently I believe you have to go into one of the category screens to have sorting options.
My other pet peeve with Netflix is the duplication of content across several of the home screen categories. Some are almost identical at times, just in different orders.
As you can see from other comments here, the Netflix UI is quite bad. This is a list of categories that many people feel the UI hides from them, in that they're hard to find. If you use Netflix on your computer you can use this list to access those sub-categories.
I got existed for: "Dark Comedies 869". Man its difficult to find these kinds of movies. Unfortunately there was not 869 of them but just 6. I have seen them all. One of them was amazing; "Sightseers" if anyone wants a movie tip.
Eh, anyone here by chance who knows how to watch the Avengers movies and the Men in Black movies in Germany? They don't appear in the catalog, but searching shows "Based on The Avengers" and the other MCU films, for example.
Check Reddit Netflix subreddit there are a bunch of ways of getting the full catalog there is a neat software which makes it seamless although a regular vpn is just as good
It can get stuck thinking your really like a genre, and the recommendation engine can penalize you too much for too many likes or dislikes.
Now that the website is a bit more focused towards streaming-on-computer it's somewhat harder to browse and prepare a queue.
It feels that some content is cheaper to stream and it wants to present that content first, and also that they don't really want you to be aware of the size of the catalog either.
Tempting to go back to DVD plan for a while, really, which I would do if the US Post Office was remotely reliable. If only there was a way to rent-stream BlueRay/DVD ISOs securely to a Netflix app, and have their whole catalog legally available and not bifurcated into streaming and non-streaming, that would be really cool.