You shouldn't have to look for stuff to watch. What you want to do is to rate content first and make up a que of stuff you want to watch. Then go through and sort the movies based upon what they think you will like (or just click the recommendations tab) and add those to the que. Just by doing that I have more than a year of dvd's and a good dozen in my streaming always waiting to be watched.
Netflix allows you to stream on up to 6 devices but only allows recommendations for one user. My moms crappy dramas and my action/adventure movies usually lead to Netflix giving the highest rating to Anime movies, a category no one in my family watches. After down voting some films it becomes obnoxious. I would rather sit on my couch and flip from CNN to FOX news at that point. Netflix is annoying at best.
Having participated in the netflix recommendation contest I can say that the core engine is very good, but the presentation could be so much better.
Some instant ways to make things better:
- Let me know when a movie on my que is available for streaming
- Let me know when a movie is about to be taken off the streaming list.
- Let other profiles see if movies are available for streaming (even if they can't do it on their account)
- Do some UI testing on the wii/ipad/etc apps and make them better.
- Sort "new movies" and all of the other lists shown on my tv by what it thinks I will rate them so I see the better movies first
- Let me connect with friends so I can see what they just watched. I will be socially more ok with watching a "ok" movie if I get to chat about it with someone else the next day.
Some bigger ideas to try:
- When streaming a new TV show add one episode every Friday at 8 (or other time). I will be more interested in watching if there is just a little bit of content to keep up with.
- Provide a "live" channel that continuously just plays through content such as TV shows, kids shows and movies etc. When I "watch" that channel it just ff'ds to where it would be at that point in the movie.
