zlacker

This is such a weird article. It reads like a 3000 word lament for the death of video stores, down to a coda about how Reed Hastings fabricated the story about the Apollo 13 late fee that triggered him to start Netflix in the first place. Why would I care if that story was false? Video stores were bad. Multi-month theatrical release windows are bad. The studio system was bad. Things are better now.

In all these kinds of stories that revolve around how much crap there is on Netflix, there are two things you have to keep in mind:

* Netflix didn't invent shlock and probably didn't even accelerate it; if anything, Netflix probably reversed the trend away from scripted and towards "reality".

* What distinguishes Netflix more than anything else is its efficiency getting content to viewers, which means that there's more of everything on Netflix, and in its catalog of originals. There's more schlock, which is very noticeable, and, compared to pre-Netflix-streaming outputs of places like HBO, also more solid original films. But 99% of everything is crap, so if the only way you have to engage with the Netflix catalog is browsing their interface, that's most of what you're going to see.

>>tptace+(OP)
I think you just wandered into today's HN "Good Old Days" article. It's just nostalgia vibes, not really a space meant for critical thinking.

>>tptace+(OP)
I remember very fondly 2 video stores from my youth, mostly because of the knowledge (and frankly very nerdy) employees.

My breadth of viewing and thus my subsequent taste was extremely impacted by them. And I e yet to find an algorithmic equivalent (nor music or books).

But this is just a bias. Most of the video stores I ever used were garbage.

I presume soda fountains were the same but that didn’t stop my grandfather from bemoaning the loss of the soda jerk.

>>tptace+(OP)
I didn't read it that way at all. It felt to me like the author thought video stores were terrible too, just in a different way, and the main point of the article was the different incentive structures for the pre-streaming movie companies (high ticket sales and people watching the entire movie without distractions) vs Netflix (recurring monthly revenue from people who are just satisifed enough not to cancel their subscription). They're both focused on numbers, but the meanings of those numbers are very different. (I'm not sure I entirely agree with that - I think the pre-streaming movie companies were hyper-focused on the bottom line too - but I think that's what the article was trying to say).

>>kasey_+Bp
See I'm not even saying all video stores are without value, just that there is virtually nobody who would prefer to have to schlep to a retail outlet every time they want to see a different movie, which was literally how things worked until streaming happened.