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You’re severely discounting the value Netflix and Spotify provide in discovery and ease of access. I vastly prefer those services because I don’t have much int

You’re severely discounting the value Netflix and Spotify provide in discovery and ease of access. I vastly prefer those services because I don’t have much interest in managing my own library.

dylan604 5y ago
>You’re severely discounting the value Netflix ... provide in discovery and ease of access. What the what? Discover on Netflix? If you mean accepting what they think you want to watch based on their curated lists of what they want you to watch shoved into your face in their carousels of boredom, then I'm going to have to disagree with you.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  You don’t have to like Netflix, but as far as the UI goes, where are you finding better content discovery for shows and movies?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    They all suck. Look at each platform's verion of "Trending Now". It's just a rehash of titles in the other categories prominently displayed in "Just Added" or other some such listing of 10 to at most 20 titles. Of course those are trending because discovery of titles suck and people just give up and choose something that's right in front of them. I want to "discover" by browsing not the most current titles available in this current licensing window. I want to be able to browse from the evergreen catalog. I want to see the things that don't have a high dollar marketing campaign guaranteeing prominent placement. Maybe these platforms don't have a large inventory of evergreen content??? There are times I want to find some title that is older. The content that wasn't along the outer walls of Blockbuster.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      I would agree with you that that all suck, and the quality of Netflix has certainly gone downhill. But you pretty much answered your own question. The platforms don’t have giant catalogs of evergreen & niche content, because that is extremely expensive to license. That’s not really a discovery problem, though. The trade off is of course, the old buying/renting model. But that’s oriented much more towards the enthusiast consumer, which I am not and it would seem you are.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        The evergreen titles are usually the back catalog of the various studios. However, since all of the various studios seem to be creating their own streaming service, I can see how Netflix might be short on that content. However, finding these titles on the various studio services is also not as easy to discover. Mainly because these nascent services know they have to get their A-list content out first to attract users. The process of bringing the back catalog stuff onto these new services will take time. In the meantime, we're just stuck being force fed what the studios want us to see.
        wbsss4412 5y ago
        Yeah it’s a content ownership and licensing problem more than anything else.
  - haihaibye 5y ago
    Chromecast is better, even if it didn't integrate multiple streaming services. It would be trivial for Netflix to show imdb/rotten tomato scores, but they don't want you to easily see the masses of mediocrity in their selection.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Netflix "discovery" often feels no better than the ads before the DVD menu. Their own productions featured prominently even if they are absolute garbage, the rest is just a vague list of what's popular.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  I think the parent meant that he favors convenience over tinkering. Download Netflix app on pretty much any device, subscription is affordable, scroll and click to play. New content gets added each week or whatever which is more than one can consume. it's a bit like cooking vs going to a restaurant. how can someone with a sense of real taste and care for health/nutrition understand the millions of people who regularly hit fast food chains. Convenience. It simply has to be 1/ affordable 2/ saving time, and bingo. of course learning how to cook, going shoping to 7 different local suppliers, having a large range of stocked spices and other condiments, spend 1h and half putting things together and appreciate a great healthy meal is a better approach to eating, but not everyone accept the burden, some don't even understand the actual pro/cons of each option.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    I like this metaphor, but it breaks down in one aspect: the notion that it’s akin to eating junk vs healthy. At the end of the day I can hunt around and curate the perfect library of movies and shows, but I can also find plenty of good content on streaming platforms. It’s not like I’m eating empty calories at the end of the day.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I'd go out on a limb and say if you're watching reality TV shows like Housewives, Kardashians, Bachelor/ette, etc, then you are very much eating empty calories. But it's your body, and you can do with it whatever you like. Just be honest about what you are consuming.
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        Huh? How was that the implication? Netflix has reality tv, but that doesn’t mean you’re watching reality tv on Netflix by default.
fxtentacle 5y ago
To people like me, "discovery" is worthless. Most of the day we do things together in the real world as a family. Like building a Lego marble run for the umpteenth time. Kids have a lot of energy. That means us parents are willing to "waste" maybe 1 hour every evening to watch TV together. My wife's friends watch Emily in Paris. My friends watch Expanse and Silent Sea. So I already know the 3 series that I'm watching in the near future so that we can gossip about them with our friends. And if I want a movie, I can ask that one friend who has been giving me great movie recommendations for the past 10 years... When I think about using Netflix discovery and going down the rabbit hole of watching random stuff recommended by a robot, it kind of makes me feel pity for the lonely people who have nothing better to do than watch TV alone. I really can't imagine how that could be beneficial to the human doing it.

You’re severely discounting the value Netflix and Spotify provide in discovery and ease of access. I vastly prefer those services because I don’t have much interest in managing my own library.

dylan604 5y ago

>You’re severely discounting the value Netflix ... provide in discovery and ease of access. What the what? Discover on Netflix? If you mean accepting what they think you want to watch based on their curated lists of what they want you to watch shoved into your face in their carousels of boredom, then I'm going to have to disagree with you.

wbsss4412 5y ago
You don’t have to like Netflix, but as far as the UI goes, where are you finding better content discovery for shows and movies?
- dylan604 5y ago
  They all suck. Look at each platform's verion of "Trending Now". It's just a rehash of titles in the other categories prominently displayed in "Just Added" or other some such listing of 10 to at most 20 titles. Of course those are trending because discovery of titles suck and people just give up and choose something that's right in front of them. I want to "discover" by browsing not the most current titles available in this current licensing window. I want to be able to browse from the evergreen catalog. I want to see the things that don't have a high dollar marketing campaign guaranteeing prominent placement. Maybe these platforms don't have a large inventory of evergreen content??? There are times I want to find some title that is older. The content that wasn't along the outer walls of Blockbuster.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    I would agree with you that that all suck, and the quality of Netflix has certainly gone downhill. But you pretty much answered your own question. The platforms don’t have giant catalogs of evergreen & niche content, because that is extremely expensive to license. That’s not really a discovery problem, though. The trade off is of course, the old buying/renting model. But that’s oriented much more towards the enthusiast consumer, which I am not and it would seem you are.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      The evergreen titles are usually the back catalog of the various studios. However, since all of the various studios seem to be creating their own streaming service, I can see how Netflix might be short on that content. However, finding these titles on the various studio services is also not as easy to discover. Mainly because these nascent services know they have to get their A-list content out first to attract users. The process of bringing the back catalog stuff onto these new services will take time. In the meantime, we're just stuck being force fed what the studios want us to see.
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        Yeah it’s a content ownership and licensing problem more than anything else.
- haihaibye 5y ago
  Chromecast is better, even if it didn't integrate multiple streaming services. It would be trivial for Netflix to show imdb/rotten tomato scores, but they don't want you to easily see the masses of mediocrity in their selection.
wongarsu 5y ago
Netflix "discovery" often feels no better than the ads before the DVD menu. Their own productions featured prominently even if they are absolute garbage, the rest is just a vague list of what's popular.
hirako2000 5y ago
I think the parent meant that he favors convenience over tinkering. Download Netflix app on pretty much any device, subscription is affordable, scroll and click to play. New content gets added each week or whatever which is more than one can consume. it's a bit like cooking vs going to a restaurant. how can someone with a sense of real taste and care for health/nutrition understand the millions of people who regularly hit fast food chains. Convenience. It simply has to be 1/ affordable 2/ saving time, and bingo. of course learning how to cook, going shoping to 7 different local suppliers, having a large range of stocked spices and other condiments, spend 1h and half putting things together and appreciate a great healthy meal is a better approach to eating, but not everyone accept the burden, some don't even understand the actual pro/cons of each option.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  I like this metaphor, but it breaks down in one aspect: the notion that it’s akin to eating junk vs healthy. At the end of the day I can hunt around and curate the perfect library of movies and shows, but I can also find plenty of good content on streaming platforms. It’s not like I’m eating empty calories at the end of the day.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I'd go out on a limb and say if you're watching reality TV shows like Housewives, Kardashians, Bachelor/ette, etc, then you are very much eating empty calories. But it's your body, and you can do with it whatever you like. Just be honest about what you are consuming.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      Huh? How was that the implication? Netflix has reality tv, but that doesn’t mean you’re watching reality tv on Netflix by default.

fxtentacle 5y ago

To people like me, "discovery" is worthless. Most of the day we do things together in the real world as a family. Like building a Lego marble run for the umpteenth time. Kids have a lot of energy. That means us parents are willing to "waste" maybe 1 hour every evening to watch TV together. My wife's friends watch Emily in Paris. My friends watch Expanse and Silent Sea. So I already know the 3 series that I'm watching in the near future so that we can gossip about them with our friends. And if I want a movie, I can ask that one friend who has been giving me great movie recommendations for the past 10 years... When I think about using Netflix discovery and going down the rabbit hole of watching random stuff recommended by a robot, it kind of makes me feel pity for the lonely people who have nothing better to do than watch TV alone. I really can't imagine how that could be beneficial to the human doing it.