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Netflix for iOS Updated with New iPad Interface

If the Netflix app is free, how does this fit with Apples business model? How does Apple make any money from this app? Hasn't Apple cancelled apps in the past that charge monthly fees outside of the App and from their own website?
 
Yvan256 said:
Still no Cheers, Seinfeld, Family Guy, American Dad or even the Simpsons which is now in their 23rd year. That '70s Show is also absent. But they do have the first season of Walking Dead, which is only one year old.
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I could be wrong, but I think Netflix benefits newer TV series more than older ones as they may be less heard of. I've discovered a lot of TV series through Netflix that I hadn't heard of previously. On the other hand, older TV series may be popular enough to not "need" Netflix. Of course, I'm sure there are many other issues and circumstances involved, such as licensing agreements.

Yvan256 said:
Terminator? Only the second movie. Spaceballs? Nope. Columbo? Not a single title. Mad Max? Only one movie...

Yes, their selection is getting better. But there's still huge holes in the list of titles available. And I'm not talking about just-released titles here, I'm talking about things that are decades old.
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I'm sure Netflix wants all these movies, but my best guess is licensing agreements are keeping them out. For the longest time, Netflix had Sniper 3, but did not have Sniper or Sniper 2. In the last few months, they added Sniper, but I am still waiting on Sniper 2 before I watch 3. I do agree that it's a little annoying.

Yvan256 said:
And I won't even talk about the low monthly cap of 35GB imposed by the only high-speed ISP in my area which complicates things even further for services like Netflix, cloud services, etc.
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Bandwidth caps are very annoying and unfortunate. Luckily for us Canadian customers, Netflix announced in March that they'd offer the option to stream lesser video quality that can save 2/3 of your bandwidth. Not sure if you know this or not, but it's changeable under Your Account & Help -> Manage video quality.

Hawkeye411 said:
If the Netflix app is free, how does this fit with Apples business model? How does Apple make any money from this app? Hasn't Apple cancelled apps in the past that charge monthly fees outside of the App and from their own website?
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Lots of free apps don't make money, aside from the cost of being a registered developer. This MacRumors article from June explains Apple's change in stance regarding apps that charge subscriptions outside of the App Store.
 
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As far as I can tell, Netflix only lost a lot of big hollywood movies, which, lets be honest, are nearly identical, following the standard formula at this point.

Since they dumped the trash, I've found i've been watching a lot of documentaries on a lot of interesting things. As for the endless stream of movies featuring Will Farrell acting like an idiot, I can't say i've missed em. In fact I'm fairly happy to have not wasted all those hours of my life.

I'll be glad if they fixed the screwy portrait-in-landsape mode problem...
 
Shrink said:
Thank, Yvan256 and Moynk24 for your responses - makes good sense.

As for cost of my service - I get home phone, TV, and Internet for $175/month. I should point out it can be much cheaper - but I have every Premium HD movie channel in the known universe. (The guy who installed the service looked at his work order and said he had NEVER seen anyone with so many premium HD channels.)

As for internet speed - if used with ethernet connection one gets 35 up and 35 down. Used wirelessly (as I do) I get between 19 -21 down and 18-20.5 up. No cap.

Not having chidden, I was oblivious to the obvious uses and advantages to those services for children. Sorry, I live in my own little world.😛

Again - thanks folks.😀
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My friend, you are falling for cable / fios strategy, of selling you stuff you don't need. I was there once but I actually cut the cord cold turkey.

Believe it or not, I now watch more meaningful television, with only an HD antenna to pick channels + Roku box. Netflix for $8, and whenever I feel like it I can rent a movie from Amazon for $4. DVDs and Blurays also make occasional appearances.

Forget about saving money, I am actually spending less time infront of the TV, but getting more of it. When I had 100+ channels I spent my time flipping through endless array of channels, not really watching anything
 
Tiger8 said:
My friend, you are falling for cable / fios strategy, of selling you stuff you don't need. I was there once but I actually cut the cord cold turkey.

Believe it or not, I now watch more meaningful television, with only an HD antenna to pick channels + Roku box. Netflix for $8, and whenever I feel like it I can rent a movie from Amazon for $4. DVDs and Blurays also make occasional appearances.

Forget about saving money, I am actually spending less time infront of the TV, but getting more of it. When I had 100+ channels I spent my time flipping through endless array of channels, not really watching anything
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Point taken...🙂

I am somewhat selective in what I watch, as opposed to flipping through the channels. But you comments are well taken - TV does, at time, just become background noise.😀
 
Tiger8 said:
My friend, you are falling for cable / fios strategy, of selling you stuff you don't need. I was there once but I actually cut the cord cold turkey.

Believe it or not, I now watch more meaningful television, with only an HD antenna to pick channels + Roku box. Netflix for $8, and whenever I feel like it I can rent a movie from Amazon for $4. DVDs and Blurays also make occasional appearances.

Forget about saving money, I am actually spending less time infront of the TV, but getting more of it. When I had 100+ channels I spent my time flipping through endless array of channels, not really watching anything
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I'd love to do the same, but I still can't get my head around it. I understand using an antenna for HD OTA locals (we did before DTV offered locals for our location), plus Netflix, rent via iTunes or Amazon.

What about cable content from, for example, FX and AMC? We follow a few shows: Breaking Bad, Justified, The Walking Dead ... and so far, I haven't found a service (and device) that will let you get them very close to original air time (without having to go through sketchy sources ...)

I've done HTPCs, various providers, and whatnot. I can buy, build, wire, whatever, if in the end, it's a simple, seamless solution for our content.
 
I don't know if Netflix 2.0 is the cause, but I was enjoying the new version when suddenly my iPad just rebooted and is now trying and continuously failing to activate.
 
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Keeps on crashing and still lags scrolling like the previous version and what is these new look everyone is talking about? Looks the same on my iPod Touch?
 
filmbuff said:
I can't either. It's not the app, it's Netflix. The site has been buggy too.
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Now it lets me sign in but its the same app as always. I dont have the new interface. I did do the update. I even tried deleting it off my iPad, and downloading again. Still have the same old Netflix app.

What is going on here?
 
Tiger8 said:
There's an App for that! In fact, probably a dozen disk queue management apps from 3rd party developers, for free.
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I have tried the free iPad apps. There are three of them. Only Cenetap let's me see by queue, and it does not seem to let me change the queue. Another helps to search by actor. A third by specific categories - today only comedy appears - and this app is useless.

None of these apps come close to what I can do for queue organization that the website can.
 
milo said:
This is probably more of a general question but it applies in this situation.

With iOS devices is there a way to keep an earlier version of an app and restore it if an update breaks things? I know you can backup an entire device but is there a way to handle versions of individual apps?
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I believe what I've done in the past is backup my device, then update the app. If I don't like the update, I delete it from the device and when I re-connect to iTunes, it has deselected the app from those that are to be transferred to the device. Re-check the box and sync, and then I'm back to what I had before. I know that at least once, I ended up pulling the old app up from a Time Machine backup as well.
 
harley3k said:
Their selection just wasn't worth $8/month to me.
I can rent 2 current movies from iTunes for almost the same price.
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fine if you only rent two movies a month. I've always rented old movies at the video store. Not only new releases. Used to cost me 6$ a week on oldies.

I watch 12 to 18 movies a month on Netflix for 8$ seems pretty cheap to me.
If they dont have what I want, I can then usually get it on iTunes. Love my apple TV. Never rent anything from my cable provider anymore. There interface used to take about 30 minutes just to find a movie.
 
i think netflix has a good assortment of movies, tv shows and whatnot. i agree that the kids section is probably the best but i have watched movies i never would have rented before. a lot of foreign action movies and documentaries. tv shows that i want the next day i use hulu. hulu also has movies. if its not on there then its on iTunes. we haven't paid for cable for over a year and have saved a lot just from getting hulu and netflix.
but i wish it would go back to the old way where i could look through 250 titles of action instead of 75 and trying to search for something if its not there
 
Tiger8 said:
I have a love/hate relation with Netflix, sometimes I am so into them, sometimes I actually freeze my membership for months at a time.

That said, for just $8 you get a very good selection. Yes it is very thin on the blockbuster / popular movie front, but the kids selection is great, documentaries are very recent, and foreign / indy movies are fantastic. Thanks to Netflix I discovered and watched incredible movies that I didn't know existed.
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Absolutely agree. It is excellent for documentaries, foreign and indy.
 
Used to be a big fan

I USED to be a big fan of Netflix; I have sold many subscriptions for them, with no sales commission. I felt -- but no longer -- that it was the best deal in town, hands down. I BEGAN my subscription the day they made Unlimited streaming available on the Unlimited 1 at a time DVD plan.

Now? Getting hard to defend. Still not seeing the newer movies they promised on streaming. Really missing the DVDs (BD for me) but will NOT pay 60% more for them. Ever, ever, ever!!!!!!!

And one show -- Torchwood series 4 was available for streaming barely a month before they stopped carrying it. I don't give a crap about their woes with StarZ--that is frackin' ridiculous!! I waited months for this show, after Netflix agreed to a 3 month-freakin' delay (another epic FAIL). It was my main reason for going streaming instead of DVD only --- but when I got back from Thanksgiving vacation, it was already gone -- right after my monthly renewal. I called and complained---did no good of course.

Aside...
(Series 4 of Torchwood btw has been pretty terrible...but I got to within the last 4 episodes and it just **started** to improve, and just began to feel a little like the BBC original when they suddenly yanked it! Now I will never know how it ends up.)
 
Best deal in town

milo said:
So what do feel is the best deal in town now?
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There is NO 'best deal' anymore comparable to what was lost. I think they all blow. It isn't as if when your best friend dies, your next most favorite acquaintance suddenly becomes your BFF. You are left with a hole. That is where we are now---a lot of mediocrity to choose from, and absolutely nothing I'd try to sell to a friend or acquaintance out of love for the product.

For me personally, the best deal is the public library: for DVDs and -- oh yes -- books. Thanks to Reed Hastings's horrid bungling of a once great company, I have read all 3 volumes of Mistborn and started GRRM's A Dance with Dragons; and they didn't cost me a red cent.
 
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