Netflix [Archive] - Two Plus Two Older Archives

CWsports

11-09-2004, 05:28 PM

I signed up just last week. The first 2 weeks are free. In the beginning you get 3 DVD's. What I do is watch 1 a day (I work at home so I'm here all day) and I send one out each mail day. Since mine only take 1 day to arrive at the center who ships them out and they take 1 day to get here I can pretty much have 1 DVD coming in every mail day. Therefore I pay about $20 after tax each money and I see about 25 DVD's or about 80 cents each. I couldn't be more happy with them.

Blarg

11-09-2004, 05:29 PM

I just joined it last week. I like it, and was surprised how fast you get your videos. I signed up late last Wednesday or something and had them on Friday.

I only wish they had a price between their $17.99/mo for three at a time and their $29.99 for 5 at a time. I can easily go through two movies at a shot, so ideally 4 or 5 or 6 would be nice to keep me always with a movie to watch. But I guess I start to feel like the extra $12 is wasteful or something for just 2 more videos at a time. Now, that 8 at a time package would be great -- I'd never run out of things on hand to watch, but that's 50 bucks a month, which is getting ridiculous.

Anyway, their service is great and very fast, and I'm glad I got it. I just wish the upgrades weren't so pricey. Oh, and I wish they didn't make the second "features" disks that come with movies count as a full selection. That's kind of excessively lame.

ArchAngel71857

11-09-2004, 05:30 PM

It is awesome, but you have to watch DVDs almost every dya to really take advantage of it. If you only watch 6 DVDs a month, then it's about as much as renting it form Blockbuster. My roomates and I have about 150 on our queue. Mostly TV shows and the movies from 100 best movies at least one of us has never seen.

Also, Hollywood video has a deal right now: $10 for unlimited rentals. But Netflix does deliver to your door.

As far as the DVD burner, what program do you use to get around the copyright protection?

-AA

CWsports

11-09-2004, 05:32 PM

Since I joined a week ago I've already seen the following: The Jury (loved it), Road to Perdition (like it), Seabiscuit (I couldn't get into this one but my mom liked it), The Recruit (liked it), and Bourne Identity (liked it). I actually just got an e-mail about 1 minute ago saying I have 3 more movies on the way as I mailed 3 on Monday and they received them today and shipped the next 3 on my list today.

oljumpstart

11-09-2004, 05:33 PM

Everything sounds good except that features disk clause. Nowadays they all have that [censored]. So you could possibly not be able to get 2 movies at the same time if they both have a 2nd disk even though you don't order a 3rd movie?

ArchAngel71857

11-09-2004, 05:38 PM

I never get the special disc. If it's a movie I like enough to care about the special disc, I usually just buy it.

-AA

oljumpstart

11-09-2004, 05:41 PM

Oh, I got the impression that the special disk was automatically included. If it's optional then I don't mind, I'll never get it.

astroglide

11-09-2004, 05:50 PM

this sort of thing reminds me of a palmpilot. when people buy one they go nuts and espouse it to all of their friends, visit every site on the planet to install apps, etc. eventually their batteries run dry or they get sick of manually deleting stuff or whatever and they erase it, and only add a few apps this time. then they stop carrying it around so much. then it happens again and they use it as a contact thing, and then they stop using it altogether.

maryfield48

11-09-2004, 06:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
this sort of thing reminds me of a palmpilot. when people buy one they go nuts and espouse it to all of their friends, visit every site on the planet to install apps, etc. eventually their batteries run dry or they get sick of manually deleting stuff or whatever and they erase it, and only add a few apps this time. then they stop carrying it around so much. then it happens again and they use it as a contact thing, and then they stop using it altogether.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't been without a palm pilot for gotta be eight years, other than short intervals in between models.

Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!

11-09-2004, 06:31 PM

I have netflix. Their library is vast and they deliver fairly fast. Sometimes you get a broken dvd, but thats the only prob ive had thus far.

hutz

11-09-2004, 06:36 PM

It's fantastic if you use it enough. It's purely a matter of calculating your cost per movie and deciding if it's worth it to you. If you live in a large city that has a distribution center (like Houston), you can easily get four or five movies per week because of the two-day turnaround. They have an extensive library of discs (movies and TV shows) and great customer service. I've been a subscriber for three years now and have nothing but good things to say about the service.

daryn

11-09-2004, 06:43 PM

<blockquote>In risposta di:<hr />
It is awesome, but you have to watch DVDs almost every dya to really take advantage of it. If you only watch 6 DVDs a month, then it's about as much as renting it form Blockbuster. My roomates and I have about 150 on our queue. Mostly TV shows and the movies from 100 best movies at least one of us has never seen.

Also, Hollywood video has a deal right now: $10 for unlimited rentals. But Netflix does deliver to your door.

As far as the DVD burner, what program do you use to get around the copyright protection?

-AA

[/ QUOTE ]

i would also like to know how to build my own dvd library.

Wake up CALL

11-09-2004, 07:06 PM

[ QUOTE ]
i would also like to know how to build my own dvd library.

[/ QUOTE ]

Start with an $18,000 car then work your way up to purchasing DVD's with your poker winnings. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

astroglide

11-09-2004, 07:12 PM

and do you sync with outlook and use the calendar?

John Cole

11-09-2004, 07:32 PM

Fine service; I've had it for well over a year and have never received either the wrong dvd or a broken one. Excellent selection--although I don't see many new releases.
And, for me, it's a tax deduction. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Boris

11-09-2004, 08:05 PM

No [censored]. four years ago PDA's were the height of Silicon Valley kitsch. Nowadays they are so Bubble era. thank goodness I never broke down and bought one.

Ulysses

11-09-2004, 08:08 PM

Most people I know who get this it for a couple or few months. Then they run out of movies they really want to see and get tired of watching that many movies and quit.

maryfield48

11-09-2004, 08:20 PM

[ QUOTE ]
and do you sync with outlook and use the calendar?

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't see from this distance whether you're tongue is in your cheek. My office recently switched from Mac to Windows. I used to sync with the Mac Address Book and Entourage, and now, yes, I do sync with Outlook and use the calendar. But the Palm is primary.

BTW Outlook sucks, and Datebk5 for the Palm is awesome.

astroglide

11-09-2004, 08:24 PM

i was just narrowing you down to the exception: business people who use the calendars continue using and carrying them. they still lose the app fetish if they ever got it though.

La Brujita

11-09-2004, 08:26 PM

I have been a member for almost three years and I have to say I really like it. The cost is not that different from renting but I like always having movies around and being able to watch part of a movie one day and just get back to it when I feel like it.

Some people use it less wisely. I visited my sister when her baby was born and she had Out of Sight. First birthday passed, she still had it. 18 months, still has it.

That better be a damn good movie!

theBruiser500

11-09-2004, 08:32 PM

i'm a little disappointed by how long it's taking for the DVD's to get to me. it takes 2 or 3 days to send from me to them, and another 3 days for them to send to me. their website is easy to navigate, and i really like that they mail it right to me and i mail it back.

however i will let you all in on a little secret, you can get any movie you awnt from the library. even if your library doesn't have it, they're all connected in a network (here in MA around boston at least) and I've been able to get every movie ive wanted

astroglide

11-09-2004, 08:38 PM

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/out_of_sight/

i'd never heard of it. i would think clooney+lopez=trash but it looks like it was warmly received.

CWsports

11-09-2004, 08:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/out_of_sight/

i'd never heard of it. i would think clooney+lopez=trash but it looks like it was warmly received.

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw it when it first came out. I'd rate it 3.5 stars out of 5.

Blarg

11-10-2004, 03:02 AM

I just signed up last week on their 3 at a time trial, and now I have gotten five movies already, and another is on the way. And that includes a weekend in the middle. Probably being in Los Angeles helps, because they must have a ton of everything stored up in this city.

daryn

11-10-2004, 10:52 AM

<blockquote>In risposta di:<hr />
<blockquote>In risposta di:<hr />
i would also like to know how to build my own dvd library.

[/ QUOTE ]

Start with an $18,000 car then work your way up to purchasing DVD's with your poker winnings. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

you have me confused with someone else. my car cost $24,000 /images/graemlins/ooo.gif /images/graemlins/ooo.gif /images/graemlins/ooo.gif

tek

11-10-2004, 12:32 PM

I just heard a radio commercial for Blockbuster's new online ordering service. You order online and they mail it to you.

Sounds like they are going head to head with Netflix.

Senor Choppy

11-10-2004, 01:09 PM

I thought it was great until I ran out of movies I could think of off the top of my head that I wanted to see. Now I just go down to blockbuster and stare at the shelves, it's much easier.

Ray Zee

11-10-2004, 03:24 PM

get one of those books that rate all the movies and give reviews. you get to find ones you never heard of and are great.
how long do you stare at the shelves?

theBruiser500

11-10-2004, 03:29 PM

my plan is to go through roger ebert (and other critics) top ten movie lists for the last 30 years (there are a lot of movies on her eyou haven't even heard of let alone seen). so far it's given me some great movies.

elwoodblues

11-10-2004, 03:44 PM

I just saw this on cnn, pretty timely:

Never Coming to a Theatre Near You (http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/books/11/09/kenneth.turan/index.html)

astroglide

11-10-2004, 03:48 PM

spirited away is fantastic

Blarg

11-10-2004, 03:50 PM

I love Ebert's reviews.

On finding stuff at Netflix to want to watch, they have categories, and there's the search function too. You can look up favorite directors and such. It's very cool to really get into a director and see how his style and career developed sometimes. I've seen most of Hitchcock's movies several times, and got a big kick out of doing that with him. Truffaut and Renoir were two Frenchies I did that with, to lesser and greater extents. Wim Wenders and Herzog were cool to explore on the German side.

I've always loved Howard Hawks, but have seen very little of his stuff. I'd like to check some more of it out. Back in the old days, they made movies that had stories and often had people you gave a damn about. Hawks often made every little character in his movies interesting, not just foils for the stars to bounce lines off of. I remember Tarantino saying he didn't think Hawks ever made a bad movie.

I'd like to see more Fritz Lang, too, but his movies are hard to find. And more film noir. And for sure way more Japanese films by Ozu and Kurosawa and others. I haven't seen a single film by Ozu and he seems to be held in awe by critics and directors alike. And some of the Chinese cinema of the past 20 years. Not the martial arts stuff, though I'm a nut for that too. And there are still a bunch of Jackie Chan films I haven't seen. And I have a few anime in my queue, like Cowboy Bebop and Princess Monokoke, and Perfect Blue, and some others. I really don't know much about anime, but have always really loved animation.

Anyway, it would take me a pretty long time to get through all that, and I just got started there.

Blarg

11-10-2004, 03:59 PM

Yeah, I loved that one so much I had to buy it. That was one heck of a special film.

I also liked that director's Castle in the Sky a lot, and Kiki's Delivery Service was okay.

Astro, if you haven't seen Grave of the Fireflies, that's a stunner. It's an animated film based on an autobiographical story of a Japanese boy who had to take care of his little sister after his mother's death during the firebombings in Japan in World War II. It's a really moving story that just blew me away. The extras on the disk are very worth watching too, including a decent section with Roger Ebert talking about Japanese animation in general, and going into great detail about some of the things he found really good in the movie. There were also interviews with the author of the autobiographical novel and the people who put the film together, as well as historians discussing the firebombings and their effect on people during the war.

It's really worth seeing, and even the extras disk is excellent. I've watched it a couple of times and I'm sure I'll watch it many more.

astroglide

11-10-2004, 04:07 PM

yeah i've been meaning to check that out. i hate anime as a rule and i thought spirited was a fantastic movie, i meant to check out fireflies but i forgot about it.

ArchAngel71857

11-10-2004, 05:44 PM

Anime is an acquired taste. It gets better the more you watch it, but you cna't just jump in and watch everything. Plus I have to be in the right mood. Watched Princess Monoke the other day. great movie.

Anywho, a great way to maximize Netflix is to go to this site (http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/movies.aspx) and add every film you haven't seen into your queue. And don't skip ones you think you will hate. I dind't want to get Dr. Zhivago, but I did. And it was a lot better than I expected. However, I still had to move Singin in the Rain to the end of the list. Not a huge musicals fan. Check out their other lists, too. heros/villains/songs. This should get you a strong list going and if you like to watch movies while you play Internet poker (like me), it's great to have a stream of DVDs coming in that you can watch in a few sessions, then send back. Another way to maximize it to queue up TV shows you never had time to see. I was a season late on 24 and two late on CSI, but now have seen all of them. I am trudging through Stargate SG-1 right now, because my roommates and I love the premise. Every other element of the show, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Next up is Alias.

Once you finish with that you can look at all the films nominated for the top 100 lists (around 400 in each one). For these you can pick and choose, but should have no problem filling your queue. I got it last March and have probably watched 70-100 movies. And I still have 150 on my queue.

finally, It's a great way to get a lot of seasonal movies. For Halloween, my girlfriend and I queued up halloween movies we like. Dracula, Monster Squad, Blade 2, Canterville Ghost (that one was her choice), etc. They came a week before Halloween and we got to watch a Halloween movie every night for about a week. I have some holiday movies in my queue and as it gets closer to xmas, they will be coming so we can watch those.

If you get tired of watching movies, or just like to rent an occasional one every now and then, Netflix probably isn't for you.
Hope this helped.

-AA

Ulysses

11-10-2004, 06:26 PM

Kids these days don't know what books are, Zee. Rottentomatoes.com is pretty damn good for the same purpose, though.

sfer

11-10-2004, 09:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
this sort of thing reminds me of a palmpilot. when people buy one they go nuts and espouse it to all of their friends, visit every site on the planet to install apps, etc. eventually their batteries run dry or they get sick of manually deleting stuff or whatever and they erase it, and only add a few apps this time. then they stop carrying it around so much. then it happens again and they use it as a contact thing, and then they stop using it altogether.

[/ QUOTE ]

Add in lingering bad feelings for 3 weeks afterward and this sounds like the life cycle for the typical girlfriend/boyfriend.

MarkL444

11-11-2004, 01:33 AM

netflix is awesome. ive been using it for about 3 months and burning everything i get (just for myself). ive mostly been doing tv show complete seasons on dvd. i hate watching tv but for some reason i can sit there and watch a complete season of some show straight through. the program i use is called "DVD X Copy Platinum." I got it from a friend so I dont know very much about it but it works great. blank dvds are only 4.7g and most of the real dvds are almost twice that big. this program lets you select certain parts of the dvd that you want to copy. i just copy the actual movie and skip all that behind the scenes garbage. however, even if i did want to copy the entire dvd the program would compress it so that it fits on the blanks and you can barely tell the difference. i have an 8x burner and it takes anywhere from 25-45 minutes to burn a dvd.

KingMarc

11-11-2004, 02:17 AM

[ QUOTE ]

As far as the DVD burner, what program do you use to get around the copyright protection?

[/ QUOTE ]

What I do...

Programs Used: DVDDecrypter, DVDShrink

1) Insert DVD into computer. Open DVDDecrypter, go to file mode. Copy files to hard drive. Takes about 30 minutes.

2) Open DVDShrink. Open the file folder containing the DVD files. Click backup. This shrinks the file size so it can fit on a DVDR. This creates a burnable image, and is about 20 mins.

3) Open DVDDecrypter again. Open the new burnable image, and burn it. Depending on speed of burner, it'll take 20-40 minutes.

Note: Don't backup discs you don't own. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Blarg

11-11-2004, 02:32 AM

Both you and the poster above you talk about compressing DVD's, and both seem satisfied with the resulting images.

I'm curious, though -- what are your standards like? Is just having the movie enough, and you don't really care about how it looks? I could be the same way with some dramas maybe, but some films really gain and lose a lot if their image sucks. I don't know if I need the best image in the world, but if there are annoying ghosts or bad coloration or such, it really takes me out of the continuous dream of a nice flick and sort of pulls me right out of it all.

Do you get anything particularly sucky or jarring when you compress the images?

Senor Choppy

11-11-2004, 04:57 AM

It's not difficult to find worthwhile movies on Netflix, it just sucks to want to unfind with some crappy big-budget movie like The Day After Tomorrow or whatever, and realize the only DVDs you have out are french with subtitles. You really have to be in the right mood to invest 2 hours in a movie, and it's hard to predict that mood a week in advance.

oljumpstart

11-11-2004, 10:29 AM

Thanks to all for the input. Astrogilde, I tend to be the same way when it comes to losing interest in these types of things. Of course, I think I'll still try it, I should be good for a few months at least.
Thanks Again

astroglide

11-11-2004, 01:23 PM

yeah it's definitely worth giving a twirl, just pay attention to when it's time to cut it off if you're not really exacting value from it. it should be FUN, not "okay...what movie now..."

MarkL444

11-11-2004, 01:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Both you and the poster above you talk about compressing DVD's, and both seem satisfied with the resulting images.

I'm curious, though -- what are your standards like? Is just having the movie enough, and you don't really care about how it looks? I could be the same way with some dramas maybe, but some films really gain and lose a lot if their image sucks. I don't know if I need the best image in the world, but if there are annoying ghosts or bad coloration or such, it really takes me out of the continuous dream of a nice flick and sort of pulls me right out of it all.

Do you get anything particularly sucky or jarring when you compress the images?

[/ QUOTE ]

if you read my post again, youll see that i dont copy anything but the movie. most of the time i am AT MOST 80% compression (maybe i am putting a little over 5 gig of movie on the 4.7 gig disc). i cant notice the difference. at all.