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Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

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Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#271

Post by BlueTemplar »

Loughla wrote: post #235
cs702 wrote: post #191

Nowadays, whenever I browse Netflix, I feel like that Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)."[a] Sure, there are lots of choices, but they all kinda suck . I find myself wondering, why? The OP weaves an insightful, opinionated narrative that explains how we got here. Much of it rings true. This passage, in particular struck a chord with me: > Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told m…

There is still good cinema and television, it's just shockingly difficult to find. The first person who figures out how to sort the wheat from the chaff and does so with no interior motive could be a millionaire immediately.

You mean like the $ million given for the Netflix Prize ?

https://m.slashdot.org/story/122585

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#273

Post by ghaff »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #206
ghaff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also probably depends on having a generally undistracted audience which you probably don't have a lot of the time especially outside of a movie theater.

I watch a lot of films and series (mainly SciFi) at home and I find that when I start to get bored is when I'll pick up my phone and half-watch the TV. It's one sign of a great show that I'll be paying it 100% attention and not mucking around with a phone.

I admit I find the long complicated series (yes, often SF or fantasy) a bit exhausting, have a definite limit, and I try to avoid interleaving too much.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#274

Post by habitue »

genezeta wrote: post #96

I was just wondering a bit about this. I read some of your comments here and, as I sometimes do, writing and discarding before submitting my response. But it just occurred to me... Maybe Netflix should do half-movies next. The movie is designed to be appealing on the menu, to have a good but not too engrossing first 30 minutes, and then start ramping down the budget drastically for the remaining of the film, which -i…

This was actually pioneered by Bruce Willis. He would get paid a lot to show up in a couple of introductory scenes for really low budget films. They'd put his face on the movie poster, they'd pay him like half the budget of the film, then he'd move on to the next one.

(Unfortunately, it turns out he was struggling with dementia and it seems he was trying to cash out before he couldn't act at all)

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#275

Post by dagw »

salgernon wrote: post #269
Loughla wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a good apocalyptic movie? I'm really struggling to come up with one. Twister, sort of, and that's neither good nor apocalyptic really. Edit: Twelve Monkeys. I think that counts.

Mad Max, obviously, Night of the Comet, The Quiet Earth, A boy and his dog. I think the early 80s was a good time for the genre. Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and that other Charleton Heston movie with zombies that I can’t remember (not a huge fan of zombies) The Road is a fairly recent movie that fits. British TV had Space 1999, lots of early Doctor Who and an attempt at the Tripods series by John Christopher.…

British TV had Space 1999

Not be confused with Spaced (1999) :)

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#276

Post by BlueTemplar »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #236
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is also somewhat dependent on how much bandwidth you have free while doing laundry, some people can handle watching the complicated stuff while doing their daily tasks and I guess those people also hate these half-assed shows.

I think it depends on which kind of bandwidth we're talking about. I can follow a talk-show no problem while doing laundry / the dishes / vacuum / iron. Keyword being "talk". But I can't look at the screen too often. So, watching a sitcom or similar where the characters' body language or facial expressions are important is an exercise in frustration.

Yeah, so that's what radio is for (including in recorded form, aka podcasts).

Making video (more complicated than "talking heads") so nobody watches it is such a waste... (so is non peer to peer mass streaming, come to think of it).

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#277

Post by occz »

warner25 wrote: post #253
nottorp wrote: post #17

Wait. They’re turning movies into audio books. That’s a good first step. Next to save bandwidth they’ll drop video and just display text on screen.

I often wonder about how much electricity is wasted (recording, encoding, transmitting, decoding) on videos where the video itself seems to add no actual value, and it would be just as effective as audio-only (or text-only) content instead. A study of YouTube videos in 2022 found that more than 15% of "videos" (i.e. billions of videos) contained only still images[1]. My wife watches a ton of short-form video (and in…

Any video streaming application worth its salt will stop downloading the video track if the user backgrounds the application, turns off the screen or otherwise makes the video surface not visible, so there's no bandwidth wasted in that particular scenario. This is of course somewhat diminished by people not actually turning the video off in many scenarios - and I'm not even sure Netflix supports backgrounded playback, for that matter.

Additionally, videos of still images compress remarkably well, to the point where the image itself is largely the same size as the video track.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#278

Post by sundarurfriend »

wavemode wrote: post #211
ryanackley wrote: post #24

This is likely being blown way out of proportion. I'm not defending this behavior but the article listed exactly one example: Irish Wish. I'm sure it appeals to a certain audience but it's not what I, personally, would call peak cinema. My guess is that this guidance was given to a specific writer or person in charge of a specific genre.

The article listed lots of examples... It's an exceptionally long article so you'd be forgiven for missing them, but there are definitely many examples given. In fact that's actually what my main complaint is about this article - the point it's making is a good one but the article is probably 5x longer than it needs to be.

The original link was https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2024/12/27/netflix-tells-wr... which is probably what your parent is commenting on. Some people complained that that's basically a blogspam article that recycles n+1's article, others disagreed and argued there's value in a focused short article - it seems like mods agree with the complainers and changed the link silently to the current one.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#279

Post by warner25 »

occz wrote: post #277
warner25 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder about how much electricity is wasted (recording, encoding, transmitting, decoding) on videos where the video itself seems to add no actual value, and it would be just as effective as audio-only (or text-only) content instead. A study of YouTube videos in 2022 found that more than 15% of "videos" (i.e. billions of videos) contained only still images[1]. My wife watches a ton of short-form video (and in…

Any video streaming application worth its salt will stop downloading the video track if the user backgrounds the application, turns off the screen or otherwise makes the video surface not visible, so there's no bandwidth wasted in that particular scenario. This is of course somewhat diminished by people not actually turning the video off in many scenarios - and I'm not even sure Netflix supports backgrounded playback…

These are good points. You've made me feel a bit better about how much is really being wasted.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#280

Post by GuB-42 »

ghaff wrote: post #178
GuB-42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maximum time spent on platform Not even that, they optimize for acquiring and keeping subscribers. They gain nothing from you watching movies, it is just costing them bandwidth, at least on their ad-free plan, which was the only option until recently. It is completely different from YouTube and TikTok, or even oldschool TV, which get most of their revenue from ads. They need a few good ones to attract new subscribe…

>If you want to encourage quality production, just subscribe for the month they are doing something good, ad-free of course, then unsubscribe. Most people are probably lazier and less organized than you give them credit for. If subscribe/unsubscribe cycles were really that prevalent I think you'd see a lot more incentives to sign up for, say, annual subscriptions. A lot of people basically use TV as background and, e…

In the beginning they were not, but it is changing. With Netflix price hikes (about +40% in 10 years, inflation adjusted), competing streaming platforms, each with their own exclusives, and crackdowns on shared accounts, "pausing" is becoming more and more common.

People don't need more than one streaming platform for "background noise", and switching to the one with the most popular shows of the month makes a lot of economic sense. At the end of the year, it can easily save you hundreds of dollars, and the bigger the amount, the more people are going to do the maths.

Maybe an annual Netflix subscription is planned.

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