Hacking NetFlix

What Movies Are You Waiting For?

Matthew on HiDefology is has been waiting since December 17th for Bladerunner on Blu-ray.

Okay Netflix, on December 17th, 2007 I added Blade Runner: Final Cut [Blu-ray] to the top of my queue and it has yet to show up. That’s with sending four or five movies a week back to you and receiving another four or five movies.

That means that you have sent me over 100 movies, with Blade Runner in the top spot of my queue. Over 100! Ever time I return movies, I wait in anticipation of this possibly being the day that you decide to send me the movie.

Are you waiting for any movies from Netflix?

DRM Frustrates Yet Another Paying Customer

Blogger and photographer Thomas Hawk writes about his frustration getting Netflix's Watch Instantly to work:

In fact I can't even get Netflix "Watch Now" to work on my Vista Media Center PC at all. The reason why I can't Netflix's "Watch Now" to work on my Vista Media Center PC?

Yep, you guessed it. DRM. Digital Rights Management. Screwed over by DRM yet again.

Here I am, a law abiding good consumer, paying Netflix for my content, and once again I'm treated like a criminal and not allowed to play legally purchased content on my PC.

Here's his exchange with Netflix customer support:

He told me that my problem likely had to do with something called COPP (certified output protection protocol) or HDCP (he wasn't sure that this was but looked it up and told me that it was High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Sounds like fancy names for plain old DRM if you ask me.

He said that the error code that I'd been getting was showing up in other cases as well for some "odd reason," adding "we're not actually sure why these videocards are doing this."

He said I could try a few new things. He recommended that I check with my video card maker to see if there was a more updated driver. He also recommended that I reset the resolution on my monitor to below 1200x800 (presently it's set at 1920x1200 which he said could be a problem). He also said that instead of using the DVI cable that I'm using that I might want to try a VGA cable. And finally he added that I might need to hook up a second monitor to my PC and run it in dual monitor mode.

You can read his tale of frustration with DRM on his blog.

Reports of Counterfeit DVDs from Netflix?

Update: Netflix spokesperson responded to the reports of counterfeit DVDs:

Netflix rents only studio or filmmaker authorized DVDs – no copies. Netflix has more than 100,000 titles on DVD available for rental, so labeling takes many forms. DVDs marked “for sale only” were purchased legally and legitimately by Netflix for rental to Netflix members. And yes, each DVD is individually inspected before it’s shipped.

Netflix ships 1.9 million DVDs on a typical day out of more than 50 distribution centers across the U.S. (including Alaska and Hawaii). Occasionally an error occurs and a Netflix member receives the wrong title or a scratched disc. But the probability of a Netflix member receiving a copied disc is very slight. Four copied discs, even less.

Netflix is the #1 rated ecommerce site for customer satisfaction by Nielsen Online and ForeSee Results because of the outstanding convenience, selection and value available to 8.2 million Netflix members. Concerns such as those raised by The Consumerist are extremely rare. But something we’re looking into nonetheless.

Consumerist has a report and photos from a reader about possible counterfeit DVDs received from Netflix.

There are few companies that we love more than Netflix. Usually their service and support are top-notch among DVD renters. However, Consumerist Forums reader "muffinman" has a concern. He has been receiving what he believes are counterfeit DVDs and has some compelling photo evidence. Please help us crack the case and tell us what you think. His letter and pictures inside...

Netflix has been shipping gray DVDs, provided by the studios, for years, but the reported DVDs have paper labels. If they are in fact counterfeit, I highly doubt Netflix is duplicating DVDs, and suspect the movies were replaced by a subscriber that lost a movie and sent a copy back to Netflix to avoid the $20 DVD replacement fee.

Has anyone else received strange DVDs from Netflix?

Thanks to David and Art for sending this in.

How Do You Feel About The Netflix Blu-ray Rental Increase?

I'm getting e-mails and comments from Netflix customers that are upset about the news that there will be "modest" price increase for Blu-ray rentals later this year. Here are a few:

Charging a monthly premium for Blu-ray isn't a fair solution, especially for those that only rent one once in a while. How about this instead: Blu-ray throttling. - Another Skeptic
I am sick to my stomach after hearing this Blu-ray premium crap. Pay a premium for movies they cannot send me? - Mcwhammer
There are wide price differences in regular DVD's so why single out Blu-ray for an increase. If they want to save money I would humbly suggest dumping or charging more for downloads which I think are at present are of unacceptable quality and a waste of time, money and bandwidth. - Greg
I do not like this one bit! - Ali
Do you have a customer service email address for Netflix so I can complain? - Joel

How do you feel about the a "modest" price increase for Blu-ray rentals?

Netflix Watch Instantly Video Problems Under Windows Vista?

If you're trying to view a Watch Instantly movie under Windows Vista and your video looks like this:

You probably need update your video drivers.

Michael sent in the above screen capture, and the following solution: "The tech people at Netflix were very helpful. Even though the problem only happened with a few of the newer movies, it turned out to be the graphics card driver on my laptop (Dell / NVIDIA). I performed a painful update and the issue was resolved."

What Netflix Does When Things Go Wrong

Jon writes about a recent experience with Netflix customer support: "I just wanted to let you know about a kind of weird, but very positive experience I had with Netflix this week. I was expecting four movies to come on Tuesday out of either Hartford or Worcester. I received one correct film, two films that were completely not what I ordered, and the fourth didn't show up. I waited through Wednesday to see if the missing film would show up. It didn't, so Thursday morning, I went to the website to report the problems. I ended up reporting the two mislabels, and then called the 800 number to see what I should do about the two wrong discs. In the meantime, all three of the missing movies were reported as returned and put back at the top of my queue.

As it turns out, the nice girl on the phone told me that they had a sorting machine error in Worcester on Monday, and that many people had gotten mis-shipped. She said she'd make sure my replacements got shipped out Thursday (which they did), and that she'd put me in for 1/2 off my membership fee for the next billing cycle.

I thought I was done.

About an hour and a half later, I went to check my queue, and saw that because I'd reported the two mislabeled discs, they were replacing them. Along with the replacements, they were also shipping the movies they'd put back in my queue. So I was getting two copies of Lovejoy and No Contest. The second copies weren't scheduled to ship until Friday, so back to the phone I went to see if I could get them to cancel the shipment, and spoke with another nice person at Netflix. He said he couldn't stop the double shipment due to the way they process outgoing movies, but that because of the inconvenience and because of my clear membership history (8 years, no losses), he'd squeeze out another movie from my queue for the inconvenience.

And then on top of the calls, I got an e-mail yesterday from Netflix, apologizing for the error and telling me I'd get a 5% credit on my next billing cycle. It'll be interesting to see which I get."

Anyone Having Problems with Netflix's Watch Instantly and Windows Vista?

Christopher writes about his problems with Netflix's Watch Instantly and Windows Vista, where the movie stops and stutters under 100% CPU load.

I have contacted Netflix customer support and they said everything they could see about my system showed that there shouldn't be a problem.
*They recommended I 'Reset' IE and I did, no change.
*They suggested I disable my anti-virus, I did, no change.
*They suggested I uninstall Windows Media Player 11, I can't - it seems that's not an option with Vista.
I asked if they had other customers experiencing this and they said that a tiny amount have reported it, but, it wasn't such a problem that they had figured out why. They said that it was because everyone's system is different.

There is a similar problem posted on Microsoft's forums, so he's not the only one having this problem.

I'm watching a movie on a Vista Home Premium system rated at "3.8" and it's at 100% CPU from time to time, but it hasn't stopped or stuttered.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Watch Instantly Problems with Windows Vista Service Pack 1?

The We Answer.IT reports a problem with Netflix's Watch Instantly after installing Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

The Netflix Instant Watching feature allows Netflix subscribers to watch streaming DVD content in their Internet Explorer browser. I love this feature, and neglect my DVD queue for weeks at a time because I use it so much more. After I updated to Windows Vista SP1, however, this feature no longer worked. I could see the video loading, but it just would not play.
My first thought was, "Stupid Netflix, you need to fix your software to be compatible with Windows Vista SP1." I knew that Netflix uses Microsoft DRM and Windows Media Player to stream content, but I figured Microsoft would not be stupid enough to break their own software.
I called Netflix customer service. The friendly technician (who was actually from the U.S.!) seemed flustered and told me that there were already a ton of support tickets about this particular problem. He told me that the solution Netflix was giving people was to uninstall Vista SP1.

Is anyone else having trouble with Windows Vista Service Pack 1?

Watch Instantly Volume Problems?

Reader Alttab writes, "When you watch Netflix watch it now movies, do you find the audio very low on some titles? I have 3 different PC's: Media Center, laptop, and work PC, and all 3 suffer from what could be described as very low sound on most movies. Others I work with have the same issues."

Is anyone else having volume problems with Watch Instantly?

Netflix Issuing 5% Credit to Subscribers for Downtime

Netflix sent out an e-mail this morning to inform customers of an automatic 5% credit for the 11 hour service outage on Monday.

Here's the e-mail:

Do you think this was the right thing to do? Would you have preferred extra DVD rentals instead?

Thanks to Bucky and Sean for sending this in.