Netflix - any good?

[hido]

Well? Anyone here use the service?

[Supertanker]

Given my sparse viewing and long hold times on DVDs, it is the only way to go. I like having videos show up with very little effort. In fact, tonight it is time to watch The Royal Tenenbaums after the new episode of Sex in the City.

My wife and I maintain separate Netflix accounts so that we can have our own queues without fighting. If I see my name on the envelope, I know it is a good movie. If I see hers, I know it isn't. :twisted:

[Bub, Andrew]

I'd say it is a progressively less valuable a service the farther away you live. In Milwaukee, it was taking 4 days to get a movie and 4 days to send it back. That's an 8 day turn around time. I'd imagine it is, what? 2-3 days for Californians?

Hell of a great idea though.

(I also found they were missing a lot of older and odder movies, and that if I wanted a New Release... I'd still just get it from the local shoppe. Then again, due to scheduling problems this week, I just paid $12 in total fees to rent Amelie once...)

[Tim]

I used it for a while but stopped early this year mostly because of the slow turnaround times. I live in Denver. The trip to San Jose, each way, seemed to take 6 or 7 days each way almost every time. We never tried to hold on to movies, but often would wait until the weekend to watch any that arrived that week.

But I think I heard that sometime recently they opened 4 or 5 new distribution centers (one in Denver, IIRC). I'd find out about that, as it could easily double the number of movies you can get in a month.

I don't expect to be trying it again soon. It's just very rare that a movie interests me much at all. When I donate blood (platelets actually), they have VCR and DVD players hooked up since it takes a couple of hours. I bring a book. I watched a few movies I knew my wife wouldn't like, but realized I wasn't so crazy about them either.

When there's a decent movie the kids want, it makes more sense to buy it so they can watch it over and over and over.

[wumpus]

The response time has gotten dramatically better for me since they added the second distribution center in Gaithersberg, MD. I'm sure for anyone on the east coast this was a huge relief, as "returning" a movie 2000+ miles to San Jose was.. not fast.

Still, I prefer the somewhat variable arrival dates of movies in my NetFlix queue to the inevitable "what should we rent" conundrum one faces at the video store.

If you are an immediate gratification kind of person, you probably won't like NetFlix. I prefer it because, frankly, I'm a lazy bastard. If they could deliver everything to my house, I'd never leave.

[wumpus]

Given my sparse viewing and long hold times on DVDs, it is the only way to go. I like having videos show up with very little effort. In fact, tonight it is time to watch The Royal Tenenbaums after the new episode of Sex in the City.

My wife and I maintain separate Netflix accounts so that we can have our own queues without fighting. If I see my name on the envelope, I know it is a good movie. If I see hers, I know it isn't. :twisted:
That's funny. Betsy and I share a queue and haven't had too many problems. In fact, I generally like her picks. We just got finished watching one of them -- Lantana. Of course, if she doesn't like one of my movies, she just sleeps through it. :roll:

[Murph]

My wife and I share a queue, too, and it hasn't been too bad.

We love Netflix, though. It tends to take 2-3 days to get movie shipped each direction, but it doesn't seem too bad.