Netflix BD disc rental discussion thread - Page 103

That's exactly what I did. I went from 4 out to 3 out, but kept BluRay access. I wanted to send the message that, while i want BluRay, there's only so much I'm willing to pay. Now I just return movies faster.


Not from me. I'm turning over just as many discs on my 3 out plan as I did on my 4 out plan - especially now that they deliver on Saturday. Plus, the BD access fee is $1 less on the 3 out plan. I'm paying less now on a 3 out plan with BD access than I was on the 4 out plan when the access fee was only $1.

Same here, except for one disc I had to clean because it stuttered a couple times. I normally check them before playing them, but wouldn't you know it, the time I don't...

I seldom get seriously thottled, but certain titles do show up as long wait. Thankfully, I'm never in a hurry for any particular movie. I only put movies in my Queue I want to watch, so if they skip one a few times, I'm not worried. I'd rather they skip a popular title on me than delay shipment completely if I'm going to be throttled at all.

I've only had two titles so far that seem to have had long, long, long waits on them: Changling and the new Witch Mountain movie (which I'm not in any rush to see - I just wanted to see what they did with the new one since I liked the originals). Changling took 7 weeks to get to me sitting at the top of my queue and Witch Mountain has been there since it released. Ironically, Gran Torino shows available now. I wonder if it would show "Long Wait" if I moved it to the top of my queue...

Hm got my first defective Blu-ray today. Casino Royale. No visible markings on the disc would just skip a chapter in the middle. Hope it's not an issue with my PS3. D:

My absolute first Netflix BD that won't play. I've watched over 100 without issues.
The title "Interview With A Vampire" get on screen message "Cannot play this Disc", on player "Can't Play". cleaned disc 3 times no luck, so back it goes. Could be a faulty BD.
Anybody get this BD to play?

I have been a NF customer sine January 2006.
I am currently on the 3 out plan and have been since I became a member.
I currently have 285 movies in my queue.

Well, I was not happy when NF raised their prices some time ago, but since they have done this, I have seen my service steadily improve. So I must now say at least for now, that I am a happy NF customer.
I have very few waits in my queue. Since the increase, I have only had two instances where a title was at the top of my queue, but didn't ship because it was a long wait.
I've even had instances where they have had to ship my queued catalog titles to me from out of state and due to the extra time for shipping, they sent me a fourth title for the inconvenience.
I was very critical of NF when they raised their prices. I felt, and still believe it was pretty bold of them to raise prices while they were offering up such terrible service.

I finally decided to dump Blockbuster today and sign up with Netflix. Over the past 6 weeks BB's service got worse and worse and today they pulled something that made me decide that I could not put up with them any more. I returned 2 discs last Thursday morning and another the next morning. No discs shipped until, finally, today BB shipped Disc Two of the Heroes Season 3 set of BDs but failed to ship Tell No One and Disc One of the Heroes set, which were numbers 1 and 2 in my queue.

I now have a two week free trial going with Netflix and have setup streaming to my TiVo Series3. My initial impression is that SD streaming is unacceptable for reasons too complex to get into here but but that movies streamed in 720p HD look very good. So far, though, I am frustrated because I can't find a list of the movies available for 720p HD streaming. The problem is made more difficult by the fact that some movies available on Blu-ray are nevertheless streamed in 480i SD. Is there a list somewhere that would allow me to identify in advance whether a movie available for streaming is sent using 720p HD? If so, how do I find it? Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

I just go to watch instantly, filter on the genre of HD, and I get this:

http://www.netflix.com/WiHD?lnkctr=hdgenre

Is that what you are looking for?

Thanks, I called NF's customer service and a very sharp guy explained to me what I needed to do in unaccented English . It was refreshing.

Although I subscribed this morning, my NF queue does not indicate that any movies have shipped yet. Do shipped and soon to ship movies show up at the top of the queue as they did in my BB queue?

There's a one day delay from when you sign up till the first discs ship.

I had a very pleasant surprise yesterday. I got an email from Netflix telling me that the next movie in my queue was shipping from another location and would take a few extra days so they went ahead and shipped the next BD as well. Sure enough, today I got three BDs in the mail with a fourth somewhere in transit. I have the three-at-a-time plan so I have an extra movie.

They have been doing this since December. Further, the implementation seems very generous to me, in that they continue to send +1 discs for a while even after a disc is returned. If I were running it, customers would get only one bonus disc per occurrance, but I'm stingy.

-Bill

Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't very worried anyway because I have been enjoying the ability to stream Netflix HD movies to my TiVo Series3 in 720p. It has really worked well, primarily, I think, because I have Cox OKC's premium extra high speed Internet service, which Cox furnished to me on a 2 year free trial a few months ago. I gather from reading about Netflix streaming in various posts that you will likely have problems if your Internet connection is too slow or your home network doesn't work well

cool! they did it for me about 3 weeks ago.

Anybody been able to to get "Race to Witch Mountain" on BD? It's been showing "Long Wait" in my queue since it released. It's been skipped at least 10 times for me. I can't possibly believe that movie is that popular.

Besides, "Watchmen" and "Coraline" are the only other two BDs in my entire queue that show Long Wait (and I expected those to be, so they're down at the bottom). I have close to 100 BDs in my queue, and all others show Available Now.

Is there something else here going on? Everything else is shipping with no delays, so there isn't any throttling going on. It just seems to be that one is causing a problem.

I believe Race to Witch Mountain is probably a popular movie for the young'uns.

It only did about 8 million less than Coraline (75M vs 65M at the box office).

So I would just guess it's a popular rental, just like most family movies seem to be.

It's odd, because I usually only see long waits on movies that are in the "local favorites" list for my area. That one isn't on there - which makes me want to see it all the more. Based on the types of movies I usually see on the list, I'm pretty certain people from Connecticut have no taste...

Granted, Gran Torino is on that list (at like number 12), but even a broken clock is right twice a day. However, that one has been listed as "available now" for me since it came out.

I am confused. People from CT don't have Race To Witch Mountain on the "local favorites" list so they have no taste?

But you are waiting for it, right?

Uhm....

I kid, I kid.

Don't know about taste around here, but I just finally got Gran Torino - only took nearly 3 months woohoo!

That sounds about like my wait for "Changling". As far as Gran Torino, since so many here have remarked about the wait, I'm tempted to throw it up to the top of my queue to see if it changes from "Now" to "Long Wait".


No, I mean I always see really horrible movies on that list. I think "Nacho Libre" was in the Top 5 for for like two months when that came out. So, I figure "Witch Mountain" can't be all bad if it isn't on that list...

Honestly, I really only want to see it since I liked the originals and wanted to see how they did with the new one - good or bad.

The first NF disc I received in the mail was disappointing, although I can't blame my disappointment on NF. Yesterday, I received Purple Noon (1960), the French film based on Patricia Highsmith's classic, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Unfortunately, the DVD was so old that it was non anamorphic and thus did not fill my 16:9 screen.

On a happier note, my experience with watching streamed HD movies and TV shows from NF could not be going any better. The PQ has been uniformly excellent. Everything I have watched on my TiVo has loaded quickly and played without any stuttering or delays. In short, I have been getting my money's worth.

over the 4+ yrs i've been with netflix, in their movie descrition paragraphs they frequently list the wrong aspect ratios. ie:
i get a lot of older sd dvds listed as 1.33:1 (4:3) and sometimes they're actually anamorphic 1.78:1 and the like.
some listed as 'widescreen' may or not be anamorphic.
usually if it's listed as anamorphic it usually is. but not always.

i'd guess their 'copy' writers may not be up on a/r varieties.

I doubt that Ripley's Game has ever released in anything other than it's letterbox version. If you have an Oppo or similar player with a dedicated zoom mode for this, the results are pretty good.

My Pioneer Kuro has a zoom feature that works pretty well, too. Nevertheless, I found the whole exercise to be not worth the hassle and sent the disc back.

I may have spoken too soon about the NF streaming application to my TiVo. It quit working earlier today and kept saying "An error occurred communicating with Netflix. Please try again." I have tried again, and again, and again many times, and even after rebooting my cable modem and router its still squirrely. Nothing is ever easy, alas.

In some cases, I've seen the AR listed either wrong or rather ambiguously on the box label, so I'll cut Netflix a little slack since the distributers can't always get it right.

What bugs me, is some of the descriptions are pretty far from reflecting the actual movie. For example, I watched "Central Station" recently. The description makes it seem like a light-hearted romp with a main character who is altruistic and good. Far from it. She's mean spirited, bitter and a scam artist (even attempting to sell the boy to an organ farm at one point) and the movie is pretty bleak for the first 2/3 of the running time. However, I really enjoyed it a lot. It worked well the way it was, had a great story and the actors worked very well together. I just was expecting something completely different based on the description.

On the other hand, DVD artwork and descriptions on the box often give false impressions, too. Based on those, you'd think "Wide Awake" was a Rosie O'Donnell vehicle, yet she's in maybe 5-10 minutes of the movie.

How is one suppose to get a new upcoming release for Tuesday? I figured Netflix would not have processed on Monday because of the holiday so I sent in my rentals yesterday and today they were marked returned and are shipping no new releases to me. There isn't any mail deliver on Monday to begin with so the earliest I will get anything is Tuesday to begin with!

They really don't structure their system so folks can tweak their way to new releases. While certain timing does improve your chances, it isn't a guarantee.

Well, you could start by making sure you don't mail out the stuff on Saturday until right before the last mail pickup at your nearest street corner box or post office...

I wanted to rent Big Trouble in Little China so I stuck that in my Queue. It worked it's way from VLW, to LW, to SW to Available over about a month. The day it became available, I got another broken disk in the mail and as always, said yea I want to get the same movie again. The next day, BTiLC went back to VLW for me. I assumed all the disks had been broken (as I've heard has happened before) and they were now waiting for a new batch.

Well, it was still on VLW on Thursday and Friday when I checked my mail, it was on the way. Arrived yesterday as predicted. Hooraah! Anyhow, I just looked at Coraline and it's also on long wait for me also, so I pulled it up on Blockbuster and there it's available. It's due to ship tomorrow if nothing changes.

I only have about 30 or so BR films on my NF queue, and nearly all are available now. Coraline was one that wasn't. I'm in PA.

If I mail my disks in and they arrive at Netflix on Monday, I will get my new release mailed to me and it will be in my hand on Tuesday. They WILL ship new releases on Monday, provided you are lined up to get them.

I've had pretty good luck at getting the new releases which I queued very early upon announcement of production. Those which I waited till the last minute to queue up, well, them I wait on. Like forever sometimes. It pays not to fall asleep at the wheel if you're interested in being first to get new releases.

I understand how to get a new release when Monday isn't a holiday. I doubt netflix precesses on Mondays when it is a holiday and there is no mailing delivery till Tuesday besides. Me sending them back this past Friday and they receive them on Saturday and did their processing, new releases should have been mailed to me on Saturday cause I ain't going to get them till Tuesday, which is the release day anyway!