It's been a long, exhausting day, and I can hardly wait to go home, change into my pajamas, and snuggle up with my laptop for a relaxing binge-watching session thanks to my favorite streaming service: Netflix.
I only recently signed up for Netflix. Previously, I didn't watch much TV, or many movies, and if I did, it was either at a friend's house, or from some seedy website that always left me with a guilty feeling inside. For some reason, the cost didn't seem worth it to me, and Hulu and the other competitors weren't particularly appealing, either.
One thing that I really appreciate about Netflix is the constant innovation of the service. When I had first heard of Netflix, it was a service to rent DVDs online. Now, you can rent DVDs or stream movies and TV from practically any device (I don't know why I would need Netflix on my Nintendo 3DS, but it's good to know that option is available), and you can share your account with your friends, family, significant others, neighbors... While watching television shows, it automatically skips past introduction sequences, saving you from hearing the same intro theme time and time again, especially convenient while it plays one episode after the other, without the viewer having to lift a finger (the addition of the prompt "Are you still watching?" makes me laugh each time it pops up. Of course I am, Netflix. You know I am.). I can't help but think back to a course on American television that I took while studying abroad in Austria. We discussed Raymond Williams' idea that American television in particular is an endless, confusing flow, a theory that I found laughable at the time. Now, I understand a bit more what he meant.
Besides the refreshing new features that the website develops, I enjoy the selection of German-language films that are available. Borrowing or buying German-language DVDs is risky; the DVDs are formatted in the European style, which my Mac can read, but my Mac forces the user to choose a format a certain number of times before permanently switching to that DVD-reading-style. This is, of course, assuming that I find the movie I'm looking for, at a cost that won't set me back too much. So far, Netflix hasn't let me down.
The lack of commercials is perhaps my favorite part about Netflix. The holidays bring my favorite movies to cable networks: Harry Potter marathons, A Christmas Story, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are my favorite things to watch, just not through cable. Commercial breaks seem far more frequent than I remember, and they're longer than ever before. One year, as they cut to commercial during a very non-suspenseful scene in the third Harry Potter movie (perhaps my favorite in the series), I was so frustrated that I broke out the DVDs and continued the marathon on my own. Watching a movie on a cable network has become a chore, one that I need no longer do with my Netflix subscription.
Thinking about all of this, I wonder what the future of cable and other traditional television sources is. How can they compete? Will they, do they need to? The same could be said for movies, as Netflix continues to produce original shows and films. I know I'm not the only consumer who would rather pay less money to watch something new, and in the comfort of their own home to boot. How is Netflix shaping consumer choices? Can Netflix hurt the future of TV and/or film?
Submitted by Wendy Timmons
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