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Netflix, moods and Macs

Via Hacking Netflix, I found a Film.com piece on common causes of Netflix burnout. The article lists four such problems; of those, only the first one applies to me:

1). Out of Sync With My Life
Perhaps the chief problem with services like Netflix is that DVD rental is inherently a spur of the moment decision. Let’s say I’m sitting at home early on a Friday night after being stood up by whatever evil girl from the coffee shop and I want to wallow in I’m-a-survivor self-pity. I’ll pull myself up from the couch, hop in the Accord and go rent myself some sort of hard-boiled revenge flick, say, Get Carter or Point Blank. With Netflix, you’ve got to predict your mood three to four days in advance. That’s the paradox: if I knew I was going to be stood up, I wouldn’t have gone out in the first place and hence, no need for wallowing.

And so, the DVDs just sit there while I wait to fall back into that just-right state of mind.

Absolutely. Several have been the occasions when I actually dreaded seeing the red envelope in my mailbox because I knew it contained a film I had absolutely no interest - any longer - in watching. Out-of-sync DVD’s don’t “just sit there” in my house, however. Who has time to wait for the return of a given fancy? I tear the cover off the envelopes, reseal them, and put them back in the mail faster than you can say “visit your queue.” The problem, of course, is that I’ve still lost time and have no movie to watch at that moment.

This segues quite nicely into another annoyance with the Netflix schema, one that is not on the Film.com list but is tops (or bottoms, or bottomses, or whatever) on mine. This business of Mac users having to wait until media companies get around to providing a service while Windows users get the goods is nothing new, but it hardly engenders brand loyalty. I’m speaking of the Netflix “Watch Instantly” feature, which might as well be science fiction so far as the lowly Mac demographic is concerned.* Sure, Netflix said it hopes (!) to make the service available to Mac users sometime in 2008 (we’re already in 2008, by the way), or so we’re told. The excuse is that the Microsoft digital rights management used by Netflix only works, naturally, on Windows boxes.

I guess Netflix isn’t so profitable that it could afford to hire an extra programmer (lawyer, actually) or two to come up with a Mac DRM.

If Apple wasn’t so slow on the uptake, it would have announced a movie-rental plan in conjunction with Apple TV that provided actual competition for Netflix’s download plan. But that didn’t happen, and so I’m stuck renting physical discs by mail like a sucker.**

Great. After this rant, I’m no longer in the mood to watch the Poitier version of A Raisin in the Sun. Damn.

* Yes, if I purchase, install, and configure Parallel Desktops and Microsoft Windows, I too be a first-class digital citizen in the eyes of Netflix without having to wait! Wonder if Netflix would discount my subscription as a reward for my investment in software just so I could download their movies?

** This rant doesn’t take into account such aspects of download viewing as picture resolution, sound quality, or bonus features. I’d learn more about it, but obviously there’s to reason for me to rush to learn those things.

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