Watch Instantly Titles Expiring January 1, 2009

A number of readers pointed out that a bunch of Netflix streaming titles will expire in the next month:

Brad writes, "I noticed that there are a huge amount of movies (111 of them in my Queue) that will no longer be available either on December 31 or January 1 of 2009. ...more than 1/4 of my very large Instant Queue is suddenly becoming unavailable?"

Dave reports that "29 of the 93 titles in my instant queue have expiration dates on/before Jan 1, 2009."

Scott writes, "28 of the 99 movies in my Watch Instantly queue have an "Available Until" date. That's 28.3%."

Kameron sent me a copy of his queue, and 75 out of 207 Watch Instantly titles are expiring on or before January 1, 2009.

9 out of 46 titles in my own Instant queue are expring on January 1st.

Some of the expiring titles include Casablanca, Dead Like Me: Season 1, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon,
Ghostbusters, and Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey had this to say about the disappearing titles:

As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content available for all of our partner devices. We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal. Today, titles regularly come in and out of availability and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have available at any given point in time.

He also told HackingNetflix that are still more than 12,000 titles available for Instant Streaming.

It's a good idea to periodically check your Instant Queue to see what movies are expiring.

Thanks to Brad, Dave, Kameron, Scott, and Jason for sending this in.

Comments

[Shane]

Coincidence they are mostly Sony pictures titles?

[snowmaiden]

There was a mass "expire-off" like this once before; the only difference is that we didn't have warning of it ahead of time. A lot of those movies eventually did come back to Watch Instantly, although not all of them did. I suspect this has something to do with a contract with a big provider expiring on January 1st, and it won't surprise me if not all of these titles actually disappear forever (although some of them undoubtedly will.) So my advice is, don't become overly alarmed and take this with a grain of salt. That being said, I'm prioritizing which of these movies I actually need to watch in the next month! (My instant queue has 27 of 79 titles slated to expire.)

[Brandon]

They probably do not want to comment or commit on their business model, but I had a title recently slated for expiration on December 2nd and then December 3rd rolled around and the title was still there without any further expiration date listed. My thought on the matter is that it will pop that up within x days of a movie expiring if the contract has not been renewed. If the contract gets renewed, it stays, if not then it disappears, though I imagine it is still out there on their servers for them to reactivate if the contract gets renegotiated. Does anyone know if the movie would automatically pop back into your queue if it came back?

[Becky]

My main concern is the Watch Instantly titles which are not on DVD.

My Watch Instantly queue has about 30 titles in the Saved section.

[Chris Cressman]

Overall, streaming expiration dates have been very random and confusing. Sometimes the expiration date is displayed well in advance, sometimes right before it expires. Sometimes titles expire and move to your saved section, other times they become immediately available again after expiring. Sometimes titles that are scheduled to expire don't expire at all.

Generally speaking, I now ignore the expiration dates since their behavior is so random that they are essentially meaningless.

[Kirsten]

I have noticed this happening a little every month. I have also very few actually "expire" when the date comes around. I wouldn't rush trying to watch them - they'll probably still be there when the date comes around.

[Del]

I have 42 out of 155 expiring! One of the series I watch(The Outer Limits, the new ones) is going off Dec 31st and I have two more seasons to go.

The Netflix spokesperson did not say squat about the reason so many titles are going away.

12,000 titles and only a couple hundred worth watching!

[MCW]

7% of my 72 disc instant queue will go bankrupt in Dec-Jan. I already have 16 movies that have been added to my saved instant that used to be on Watched Instantly.

It's a real shame that everything has to be a hassle like this.

[DG]

Interesting to know if the ones that expire that go into the 'Saved' section at the bottom of the queue will automatically be put back into the queue when it's back on license. You'd think so.

[jimofoz]

"... titles regularly come in and out of availability and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have available..."

OK, so where do they ebb and flow to? Do the bits evaporate or drift out the door with errant breezes? A data file's a file, isn't it?

[JLo]

Ugh, over half of my watch instantly queue expires before the end of December or on Jan 1 of 2009. Well, what happens to them when they expire? Do they dissapear or do they go to the Saved queue?

[Nowhere Man]

Expired titles DO drop down into the saved area and will automatically be moved back into your queue if the title ever becomes available again. I had this happen with Beetlejuice a while back.

[Dr. Quasius]

My personal favorite is sometimes when a title has an expiration date, the expiration will be removed and then it will expire anyway.

[Jax Maxton]

What's bothering me is not that so many movies are expiring, but the fact that there seems to be very few quality titles replacing the lost content. The Starz play deal is nice, but I've had a bunch of movies expire or are set to expire, and very few replacements for the lost movies.

I think we understand the whole "ebb and flow" thing, but it seems to be mostly ebb with very little flow.

[Gir]

What I found irritating were the 5 titles in my queue that expired on December 3, with almost no warning. A week or so ago I had no expiration dates in my queue, then on Tuesday (Dec 2) I notice a whole slew now have expiration dates, and 5 of them expire at midnight.

Way to give advance notice. I think maybe NetFlix needs to add a new e-mail warning you when movies are about to expire in your IW queue - starting about 2 weeks in advance.

[James]

Yup, ditto over here.

63/240 are expiring between now and New Year's Day. I've been waiting for xbox functionality, and now that i've got it, a quarter of my movies are expiring soon. I guess I better get to watching....

There is 10 movies in my Queue that already expired without warning:
Zoom: Academy for Super Heroes
Perfect Stranger
Reign Over Me
Surf's Up
Angel-A
I Know Who Killed Me
Paprika
Daddy Day Camp
We Own the Night
First Sunday

I think those are all Starz Play, that wouldn't play on my Xbox 360. Also all of the ones that are expiring on Jan 01, are the ones that I couldn't play on my Xbox 360 for about a week.

Guess Sony is mad about Netflix on Xbox 360. What a bunch of cry babies.

[Jeff]

I have 79 out of 233 movies expiring. A third of my Instant queue. Not really a problem if they are adding new titles. I'm not seeing a bunch of new titles though.

[dAVe]

My perspective on WI is that it is a secondary feature to the main purpose of my NF account once the Roku NFPlayer came on the scene and made that a viable, reliable experience. As far as the consistent, persistent video content availability goes, NF isn't much different than other IP- streamed websites. What needs to happen is the licensed content holders stop being so fidgety and settle down soon.

[lynn]

does anyone know if there is a list released of new watch it now movie releases? i know when the regular new release section was removed from my page i was able to bookmark and external link. it would be nice to see only the releasing this week watch it nows also!

[Throttled by Netflix]

"Saved" is the place where Netflix movies go to die.

[J.D.]

Isn't it also strange that the Watch Instantly titles are dissapearing right around the same time that the entire tech department has been dissolved (i.e. forced to quit or take a pay cut)?

[wowwee123]

There's currently over 400 titles expiring between Now & January 1, 2009. Of which over 250 of these titles are expiring on January 1, 2009. The list can be accessed here: Expiring Watch Instant Titles. The list is constantly updated with a team of over 30 people contributing the titles found in their Queues.

Anyone can submit their titles by posting to the discussion thread.

Group link

[Rik Eberhardt]

A number of BBC shows were marked as expiring this past week - but now they've all been renewed. Just b/c these Jan 1 expiration dates are showing up, doesn't mean they'll all go away.

I am sad that Superbad expired - but it'll be back. The selection is still better than the free OnDemand movies on Comcast.

[wowwee123]

I have listed over 350 titles expiring on January 1st, among a total of 492 currently listed between now & Jan. 6th, 2009.

The complete list can be accessed over here:

http://community.netflix.com/group/iwtreasure/forum/topics/expiring-watch-instant-titles