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Honestly I’m one free weekend from canceling it. Gonna go back to a pc under the tv. Just need the afternoon to find the best machine for plex. The selection o

Honestly I’m one free weekend from canceling it. Gonna go back to a pc under the tv. Just need the afternoon to find the best machine for plex. The selection of older content on Netflix is really weak on the whole and their original content is getting worse and worse. There is only so many times I can watch a mid-level 80 minute movie script be dragged out across 10 hours in series it really is awful tv and watching the writers struggle to spin tires to drag it to 10 hours is exhausting. Not to mention the executive meddling is extremely apparent in many of their scripts where you can tell whole sections were added at exec request because the story goes off at a tangent and then when it returns the stakes are exactly the same as before the tangent.

fullshark 5y ago
Your third paragraph is hardly unique to Netflix, all scripted serialized dramas seem to suffer this problem these days.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  Most? Maybe. Certainly not all.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  I've become a little tired of series with continuous plots at this point. It's really hard to create content for so many episodes that isn't repetitive, irrelevant to the main story, or hard to believe because of the piling up of coincidences. Then you often have implausible character changes and other typical series-but-not-movies problems piling up. It's an art form that seems very difficult to get right, and so it usually goes wrong.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    BBC gets this right, only as many episodes as necessary.
    - pixxel 5y ago
      British TV in general gets it right and always has. 6 episodes per season, 2-4 seasons. Ricky Gervais’ The Office UK is a prime example, 14 episodes. The US version has 188.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      Less is more. No filler content. GoT could have stopped 2-3 seasons before it did and I'd been fine. Star Wars not needed episode 1 and onward. The old ones were neat as they were (personally apart from that I only liked the recent movie which took place between 3 and 4, and the first season (!!) of Mando). Its like meeting your heroes: don't! Same with books. I read the The Thrawn Trilogy. It was great. I don't want a comic about it or a movie about it; I leave the memory as is. There's a remake of the brilliant series Utopia (orig. by Ch 4) and I am not looking forward to it either for the same reason. Then again, perhaps all these reboots are not aimed for me but for people who did not see the orig.
      - imbnwa 5y ago
        Oh, Amazon remade Utopia stateside and it was just rubbish next to the BBC series
hemreldop 5y ago
- jbrins1 5y ago
  What is “feminist agenda trash” exactly?
  - ceeplusplus 5y ago
    Pretty much every new Netflix show will have some combination of the following: - female characters are always independent, strong-willed, etc. Even if the story calls for someone that's the opposite. - male characters are either generic muscle or have some stereotypically negative quality like aggression - at least one main character is always black (and only black - don't even think about Asian or Middle Eastern or anyone that might look white), even if the story doesn't make sense - at least one main character is gay, queer, or trans, even if the story doesn't make sense. I live in an ultra blue city and the population here is not as LGBT as Netflix plots are. I don't really care that there are LGBT characters but when you shove it into every story plot it gets old. - every story line is about some part of the liberal political agenda, either gun control, universal healthcare, or immigration. Coincidentally every story features some Republican "coming to their senses" and "compromising" in order for whatever agenda item they're pushing to pass Congress. Especially the last one is super prominent. I'll give you an example: the show Madam Secretary started off as a show about the life of a former CIA analyst turned into Secretary of State, but by the last season it morphed into a political soapbox about women's rights, immigration, and healthcare spending. A second example: Designated Survivor started off as a show about what might happen if the US Congress was all killed in a terror bombing, but then morphed into a political soapbox about gun control.
    - treis 5y ago
      Ozark was the first Netflix series that sprung to mind and it has at best 1/5 of those.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      Neither Madam Secretary nor Designated Survivor originated on Netflix.
dakial1 5y ago
I have a friend who has a NAS server with plex running 8TB of movies/series/etc... and shares it with multiple other friends (he doesn't tell me how many, but my bet is that it must be at least 50). He has his own OTT, he doesn't charge anything, in case you are wondering...
- camel_Snake 5y ago
  I'm this friend for my group, except no local hardware - it's a shared server in Canada (a seedbox, for those who want a term to google). I maintain the understanding with friends that it's a rotating library - you request something and it will get added. But it also gets removed when you're done, or when it's been sitting there for a few months unwatched.
- FooHentai 5y ago
  I threw down the money for Plex lifetime pass after repeatedly keying in movies and shows on Netflix search, and not finding them. New stuff, classic stuff, it didn't matter. Always just some offbrand substitute junk coming up. Their catalog is very poor now, even compared to just a few years ago. I'm not playing the game of subscribing to different services just to get particular content, because I don't watch things often enough to justify the effort or cost. Plus this way all my physical media comes into the same library as rips, and PlexAmp is a pretty good music player, too.
skeletonjelly 5y ago
Give (Plex alternative) Jellyfin a go as well!
hirundo 5y ago
> There is only so many times I can watch a mid-level 80 minute movie script be dragged out across 10 hours Jack Reacher. 80 minutes would have been just right.
fetus8 5y ago
PC under the TV is the answer, at least I think so. I built an ITX HomeTheater/Gaming PC last year (without a GPU initially) and have started to slowly unsubscribe from all the streaming services. Being able to just grab whatever movies I have in my list of things to watch, and play them, locally, without having to scroll through the apps has been quite the relief. Occasionally I use HBO Max still because it has some decent older movies, but I'm pretty much only using my HTPC now, and with Plex, I can watch my library across the network at home via Apple TVs in the bedroom.
- randomopining 5y ago
  How do you acquire the movies?
  - supercanuck 5y ago
    This.
  - koshergweilo 5y ago
    The secret ingredient is crime
    - e40 5y ago
      R-A-R-B-G + V-P-N
    - Yhippa 5y ago
      Oh, Super Hans.
  - Ninn 5y ago
    Many use a few different apps such as radarr, sonarr and all their siblings to grab media into torrent downloaders which is then served via plex i.e.
  - b3nji 5y ago
    I'll leave this here, a previous HN post. https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy
mountainriver 5y ago
Agree the new content has been steadily going downhill as I imagine they are prioritizing profits over art.
edgan 5y ago
Get an Nvidia Shield for the Plex client. It can run the server too, but I would use a different computer for that.
b3nji 5y ago
Can't agree more. The nonsense original content Netflix throw out is awful. Having to watch 6 to 10 hours of a show riddled with plot holes, long drawn out rubbish narrative, and social justice content just to cloud it further. It's not great. On top of that they simply switch off all other content if you are using a VPN, even legitimately in your own country, it's rubbish. PC under the telly is roaring back into fashion. Who wants to pay umteen subscriptions for bad content anyway?
- ugjka 5y ago
  I have password shared Netflix. In the last 6 months i have opened the app only once to check whether the new Jackass is on it. It wasn't there, but i rewatched Jackass 3D. Now that they are planning on cracking down on password sharing, good riddance

fullshark 5y ago

Your third paragraph is hardly unique to Netflix, all scripted serialized dramas seem to suffer this problem these days.

ghostly_s 5y ago
Most? Maybe. Certainly not all.
ahartmetz 5y ago
I've become a little tired of series with continuous plots at this point. It's really hard to create content for so many episodes that isn't repetitive, irrelevant to the main story, or hard to believe because of the piling up of coincidences. Then you often have implausible character changes and other typical series-but-not-movies problems piling up. It's an art form that seems very difficult to get right, and so it usually goes wrong.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  BBC gets this right, only as many episodes as necessary.
  - pixxel 5y ago
    British TV in general gets it right and always has. 6 episodes per season, 2-4 seasons. Ricky Gervais’ The Office UK is a prime example, 14 episodes. The US version has 188.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    Less is more. No filler content. GoT could have stopped 2-3 seasons before it did and I'd been fine. Star Wars not needed episode 1 and onward. The old ones were neat as they were (personally apart from that I only liked the recent movie which took place between 3 and 4, and the first season (!!) of Mando). Its like meeting your heroes: don't! Same with books. I read the The Thrawn Trilogy. It was great. I don't want a comic about it or a movie about it; I leave the memory as is. There's a remake of the brilliant series Utopia (orig. by Ch 4) and I am not looking forward to it either for the same reason. Then again, perhaps all these reboots are not aimed for me but for people who did not see the orig.
    - imbnwa 5y ago
      Oh, Amazon remade Utopia stateside and it was just rubbish next to the BBC series

hemreldop 5y ago

jbrins1 5y ago
What is “feminist agenda trash” exactly?
- ceeplusplus 5y ago
  Pretty much every new Netflix show will have some combination of the following: - female characters are always independent, strong-willed, etc. Even if the story calls for someone that's the opposite. - male characters are either generic muscle or have some stereotypically negative quality like aggression - at least one main character is always black (and only black - don't even think about Asian or Middle Eastern or anyone that might look white), even if the story doesn't make sense - at least one main character is gay, queer, or trans, even if the story doesn't make sense. I live in an ultra blue city and the population here is not as LGBT as Netflix plots are. I don't really care that there are LGBT characters but when you shove it into every story plot it gets old. - every story line is about some part of the liberal political agenda, either gun control, universal healthcare, or immigration. Coincidentally every story features some Republican "coming to their senses" and "compromising" in order for whatever agenda item they're pushing to pass Congress. Especially the last one is super prominent. I'll give you an example: the show Madam Secretary started off as a show about the life of a former CIA analyst turned into Secretary of State, but by the last season it morphed into a political soapbox about women's rights, immigration, and healthcare spending. A second example: Designated Survivor started off as a show about what might happen if the US Congress was all killed in a terror bombing, but then morphed into a political soapbox about gun control.
  - treis 5y ago
    Ozark was the first Netflix series that sprung to mind and it has at best 1/5 of those.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Neither Madam Secretary nor Designated Survivor originated on Netflix.

dakial1 5y ago

I have a friend who has a NAS server with plex running 8TB of movies/series/etc... and shares it with multiple other friends (he doesn't tell me how many, but my bet is that it must be at least 50). He has his own OTT, he doesn't charge anything, in case you are wondering...

camel_Snake 5y ago
I'm this friend for my group, except no local hardware - it's a shared server in Canada (a seedbox, for those who want a term to google). I maintain the understanding with friends that it's a rotating library - you request something and it will get added. But it also gets removed when you're done, or when it's been sitting there for a few months unwatched.
FooHentai 5y ago
I threw down the money for Plex lifetime pass after repeatedly keying in movies and shows on Netflix search, and not finding them. New stuff, classic stuff, it didn't matter. Always just some offbrand substitute junk coming up. Their catalog is very poor now, even compared to just a few years ago. I'm not playing the game of subscribing to different services just to get particular content, because I don't watch things often enough to justify the effort or cost. Plus this way all my physical media comes into the same library as rips, and PlexAmp is a pretty good music player, too.

skeletonjelly 5y ago

Give (Plex alternative) Jellyfin a go as well!

hirundo 5y ago

> There is only so many times I can watch a mid-level 80 minute movie script be dragged out across 10 hours Jack Reacher. 80 minutes would have been just right.

fetus8 5y ago

PC under the TV is the answer, at least I think so. I built an ITX HomeTheater/Gaming PC last year (without a GPU initially) and have started to slowly unsubscribe from all the streaming services. Being able to just grab whatever movies I have in my list of things to watch, and play them, locally, without having to scroll through the apps has been quite the relief. Occasionally I use HBO Max still because it has some decent older movies, but I'm pretty much only using my HTPC now, and with Plex, I can watch my library across the network at home via Apple TVs in the bedroom.

randomopining 5y ago
How do you acquire the movies?
- supercanuck 5y ago
  This.
- koshergweilo 5y ago
  The secret ingredient is crime
  - e40 5y ago
    R-A-R-B-G + V-P-N
  - Yhippa 5y ago
    Oh, Super Hans.
- Ninn 5y ago
  Many use a few different apps such as radarr, sonarr and all their siblings to grab media into torrent downloaders which is then served via plex i.e.
- b3nji 5y ago
  I'll leave this here, a previous HN post. https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy

mountainriver 5y ago

Agree the new content has been steadily going downhill as I imagine they are prioritizing profits over art.

edgan 5y ago

Get an Nvidia Shield for the Plex client. It can run the server too, but I would use a different computer for that.

b3nji 5y ago

Can't agree more. The nonsense original content Netflix throw out is awful. Having to watch 6 to 10 hours of a show riddled with plot holes, long drawn out rubbish narrative, and social justice content just to cloud it further. It's not great. On top of that they simply switch off all other content if you are using a VPN, even legitimately in your own country, it's rubbish. PC under the telly is roaring back into fashion. Who wants to pay umteen subscriptions for bad content anyway?

ugjka 5y ago
I have password shared Netflix. In the last 6 months i have opened the app only once to check whether the new Jackass is on it. It wasn't there, but i rewatched Jackass 3D. Now that they are planning on cracking down on password sharing, good riddance