Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Completing Netflix

So, I started using Netflix in 2006. No more trips to the video store. No more late fees. DVDs delivered straight to your door. It seemed a great idea, and it was. I could get almost any movie I desired simply by putting it in my queue and waiting for delivery. With so many options available, my queue started to grow to large numbers almost from the word go.

Early in my membership, I found out that there was a cap on the number of titles you could place in your queue. 500. It was a heady number and way more than any rational person should think that he could view in any reasonable amount of time. I was fortunate. When I first signed up, I had time to watch more than one movie a day, or burn through a season of a show I had missed in first run. But as new movies I missed in the theater became available, I had to cut some favorites that I had placed in the queue on a whim in the hopes that I might move it to the top to rewatch and reminisce about how much I enjoyed them. My queue became unwieldy and hard to manage. Deleting and adding. Moving some to #1 on the queue and letting others languish with the vague idea that "I'll get to that." Not to mention, I was trying to catch up on Oscar nominees or join in on the popular upswell of an unheralded hit. Add to that a new job, and the opportunities to finish my queue became fewer and further between.

Then Netflix offered unlimited streaming off its available titles. I started watching more TV series episode by episode before bed or watching a movie over a series of nights. I had DVDs that sat in my living room for over a year. With the new pricing for DVD delivery and streaming service, I had to take a look at my media watching habits. Do I even need to get DVDs delivered? I can watch a tremendous amount of media on the streaming option. Redbox or OnDemand allow me to get recent releases on a movie by movie basis depending on desire to watch. So, I have decided to discontinue my DVD delivery from Netflix.

Nevertheless, my queue is just sitting out there. I haven't updated it as frequently as I should, and some of the choices I added were not all that well thought when I made them. Being a person who hates to leave things unfinished, I have decided to no longer edit my queue, but I feel like I need to complete my queue as it currently stands. At this point, my queue lists 473 titles. Some good. Some awful. My plan is watch all of the movies on my list in the order they currently sit until the list is complete.

As I watch them, I'll post reviews and reflections on the movies themselves and what possessed me to add them in the first place. Stay tuned. Thank you for the indulgence.