Navigation
User login
rs.n links
Who's online
There are currently 0 users and 2 guests online.
Current Conditions As Well
NetFlix Queues
Fascinating
Click in the Boston area for the locals.
- By ConorClockwise at 2010 Jan 10 - 4:11am
- jake schulz
- netflix
- Six Nuns walk into a bar
- what are people in my neighborhood renting this week?
- ConorClockwise's blog
- Login or register to post comments
So people in the city prefer to watch "Milk" rather than "Paul Blart: Mall Cop."
I can't say it's a big surprise.
I LOVE this.
A few comments:
There's some weird spot in between Lexington and Concord that doesn't 'go with the flow' with the communities around it. The most telling instance is that "W" didn't get rented in that area. Interesting.
It's super obvious where the black people live in the Boston area.
Brookline likes Star Trek.
Recently Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler came to my library to do a book talk-- I should have gone because their book "Connected" sounds REALLY interesting. I should pick up a copy.
http://www.connectedthebook.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/books/review/Stossel-t.html?_r=1
Hanscom Air Force base, Wow!
They rent movies like Dorchester and Mattapan.
It's fun to point out that (insert anthropological group here) like to rent movies critics hate.
My neighborhood: left-wingers & college kids. Kind of a hilarious top ten for 02134, yo.
Another Netflix thing that is interesting are the "throttling" algorithms that must be used to determine whether or not you are a "heavy user". In the past I subscribed at 3 discs a month, but being the obsessive media carnivore (OMC) that I am, I could never get quite to the "unlimited" rental utopia that exists in my OMC mind.
For example, the first few months, I get a disc, view it, put it back in the mail in circa 24-48 hours. Upon receipt, netflix sends me another one in ~ 1 business day from the Hartford or Worcester Ma warehouse.
However, I can never get more than, say for the sake of argument, 12 discs in a month - after a month or 2 of super quick turnarounds, all of the sudden discs start coming from warehouses in Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. These aren't less popular Criterion art house discs with less demand either - a lot of times they are mainstream kid titles or "new releases".
In times of less frequent use, though, the discs all seem to come from Hartford or Worcester. The only thing I can think of that would explain this would be some kind of system that evens things out a bit between light and heavy users. Netflix would clearly be making their profits on folks who only take out 1 or 2 movies a month, right?
The other interesting thing is how the broadband technology is obviously already here, yet the "streaming" title library is still in such infancy. Hollywood is totally grasping on to their dvd residuals - there is no incentive for them to release a huge amount of new stuff and stream right away.
Just last week, I was reading how Netflix has agreed to not issue Warner Bros. DVDS until 28 days after their street release - so it is clearly still something where Hollywood is still ironing out how they will get their steady stream of $ for films - until then you are not likely to see a cavernous film library available for viewing on the internet.
Until then, I guess I will just have to settle for watching 'Short Circuit 2' or a Steven Seagal action flick. (OK I am exaggerating - it is not that bad, but still...)
When I started using Netflix in (I think) 2002, I was getting like five or six pre-algorhythm movies a week. Stupid profit maximization.
Although I guess the end result is that it makes me mad, I also find it really interesting to find out about how all that stuff works.
Actually, I think netflix makes its money off people like me--at one point I had had the same 3 discs for over a year, and I've had on the waterfront for at least 2, maybe 3. Granted, I accepted early on that the service I was paying for was as much about the perpetual queue as anything else, but still.
Recently got Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog. Funny stuff, some of the people living in Antarctica are out there. I also received Rescue Dawn by Werner. Not as psyched because Christian Bale seems like an asshole or maybe that is just passion!