Unhandled Exceptions

So, my first impressions of Netflix are very positive ones. The idea of the service is one I’ve been fascinated with for some time, and the nudge I needed came when I spent almost $13 bucks for three movie rentals one weekend. My wife and I have the 2-at-a-time, unlimited per month plan, which I believe is $14.99 ($16.50 after taxes and stuff). We went through and added about 20 movies and shows to our queue, although about a fourth of our current queue are the Entourage first and second seasons, which are multiple disc sets which are mailed one at a time (Season 1, Disc 1 is one movie, Season 1 Disc 2 is another, and so on). We signed up on a Saturday, and we had our first two movies by Tuesday’s mail.

I can’t really judge disc quality very well right now, as I’ve only watched one movie. It, however, was fine. No glaring jumps or missing parts that would be caused by scratches.

As far as the website goes, the process is pretty simply. Movies you want to see can be added to your Queue just by clicking the add button, which shows up under every movie. If it’s already in your Queue, the button says “In Q,” so you can’t add the same movie more than once. You can also “save” movies that haven’t been released yet (For example, Miami Vice is in my saved list (bite your tongue)).

A nice feature is you can create profiles which allow you to assign a number of DVD’s to a particular queue. In essence, you maintain multiple Queues, and when you return a movie, it picks the next movie from that queue. So, if I have a queue of movies and my wife has a queue of Entourage DVDs, I can return movies without fear of having two different Entourage DVDs in the house at one time.

I have a few minor gripes about the website. One is that I haven’t found an easy way to delete Profiles. I’m sure there is a way, but I haven’t found it yet. Another is that the site works in Firefox, but some of the bells and whistles aren’t all there. For example, you can rate any movie you haven’t rated by clicking one of the red stars below it. In IE, the starts immediately turn yellow and reflect your choice (three stars if you select the middle star). In Firefox, they aren’t yellow until you refresh the page. Little things like that can easily be made to work in Firefox (I would think, anyway). Lastly, there’s no “Movies you’ve received” list. While I can keep track of it now, it might be nice to know a year from now so I don’t start re-renting old movies.

Overall, if you’re a big movie fan, I’d say give it a shot. My queue is currently at about 25 movies, which should keep my wife and I busy for a good 2 or 3 months. But renting 25 movies at 3 bucks a pop is 75 bucks, versus the 30 or 45 bucks I’d spend on a three month subscription. I’m sure I’ll be back complaining about something, but for now, I like it.