Posted by PapaBear on 12/25/07 00:24

I've been using the Netflix "Releasing This Week" list for almost a year,
but couldn't access it on their website today. So I called Netflix customer
service on the telephone, and sure enough, it has been officially dropped
from their website. There has been no better or quicker way to scan and
evaluate new weekly movie rental releases, so naturally I registered my
strong objections with them, FWIW.

The Blockbuster website has almost the same list as Netflix, but doesn't
have automatic popups to give the important movie info. Also the Blockbuster
movie info is generally inferior in design and content to the Netflix info,
IMHO. The main thing I want to see quickly are the date when it become
available to rent, rating, year the movie was released, main actor names,
length in minutes or hours, color or black & white, genre(s), aspect ratio,
and a very brief description. Blockbuster's info is too lengthy, while being
incomplete and imprecise.

With the Netflix "Releasing This Week" list, I could usually scan and
evaluate everything (perhaps 50-100 moves) in only 5-10 minutes. Now it will
take me at least an hour, perhaps two, to do the same thing by other means.

I'll probably end up copying the Blockbuster release list to a notepad, then
enter each of those movie titles into the Netflix search box. That will work
reasonably OK, just take a lot longer. But of course it will miss some new
Netflix releases, because they sometimes have more new titles than
Blockbuster.

So what's their rationale? Are they deliberately trying to discourage rental
of new movie releases? Or are they shooting themselves in the foot out of
pure stupidity??

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