Netflix Sucks -- Please Recommend a Better Streaming Service

Sign up for Amazon and you can subscribe to channels you want and get Prime.

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I use Netflix and Prime, which I view on my TV via Roku. I'm constantly joining and quitting Netflix, usually a month or two on, four or six months off. I like the quality of some Amazon shows more, but there are far fewer of them. My favorites:

Bosch

Goliath

The Hour (not free)

Red Oaks

Fearless

Transparent

Mozart in the Jungle

The Newsroom

The Sopranos

Suits

speaking of netflix, someone mentioned watching a gay spy thriller called LONDON SPY on it.

i saw it tonite, all 5 episodes ... AWESOME !!!! SEE IT !

London Spy stars Ben Whishaw and that other lovely man. No dick. Some ass.

man the first 3 episodes had me on the edge of my seat.

charlotte rampling does her usual scarey intellectual thing.

mighty fine film making, true the last 2 episodes dragged a bit

but i like dialogue.

ben whishaw is yummmmz

netflix has great originals. But if you want to see basic tv, get hulu.

There isn't a better service. I've had Amazon Prime and Hulu and neither was as good as Netflix.

[quote] Sign up for Amazon and you can subscribe to channels you want

What channels are you talking about R1?

Netflix and Hulu,

Hulu free with Sprint

i like netflix best, the other stuff can be found on...uh...other euro sites.

Netflix had good original programming but sucks for movies and TV. Amazon prime let's you watch almost anything but you have to buy or rent. The rumor is that Apple is being forced to bring $200 BILLION back into the US, from Irish and Caribbean accounts, and will use it to buy Netflix. It will be the major competitor to Amazon prime. That would be interesting and I suspect we'll see Bill gates and warren buffet get into the ring, just for the contest. These 3 titans own us body and soul.

Kodi.

geez, anyone but bloodthirsty Apple.....

we is doomed.

Please don't let apple be involve with Netflix

Most of the stuff has moved to Hulu. Netflix is only interested in originals now and isn't renewing any deals for 3rd party content.

I miss the old Netflix where you could get just about any title. I'm old, so I'm talking about 15 years ago.

I do not remember Netflix streaming or people streaming it 15 years ago. It never had " just about every title" . Netflix is fine and I also have Amazon because its free with my Prime membership. I also have Hulu and HBO and Showtime. I am covered and if those are not enough then I need to get a life.

There are dozens of free streaming sites, easy to use, latest films and TV series/episodes, both for US and foreign films and TV. And most are subtitled in English.

Netflix now primarily exists for their original content . That is their business plan, becoming like an HBO, they have gotten rid of a lot of their library.

Hulu has wider library of television shows.

They don't get new movies anymore I missed some, "Fences", " 10 Cloverfield Lane", been waiting, both over a year old and nothing. Their search is one of the worst online.

Fences is free with Prime (1/8/18).

Kanopy is free to stream with a library card.

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If you want new movies, HBO Now/Go is the best option

Episodes is now on Netflix.

Go read a book. HOw much TV do you need?

Lots of options out there. You are going to have to figure this out on your own.

Fandor, Mubi, FilmStruck

Before streaming, Netflix was all DVD by mail and yes they pretty much had every movie and tv show available.

Can’t You get free cable on Apple TV?

Is there a way to watch porn on a Roku or other streaming device?

[quote]Before streaming, Netflix was all DVD by mail and yes they pretty much had every movie and tv show available.

And they still do. On DVD.

R32 I still subscribe to the BluRays by mail Netflix because it gets the latest stuff, The streaming is just okay.

Yeah Netflix, better for tv series, docs. Terrible for movies. Amazon Prime has the best movie selection from what I can tell. Though some of their own branded original movies are SO bad. I watched the Path and Handmaids Tale, top chef on Hulu and didn’t find much else.

Pet peeve: looking for a movie and pick one, then realize it’s from 1998. Why do they choose the most random old movies to put on Netflix?

Kanopy sounds like a sweet deal. Too bad my library doesn't participate.

[quote] Netflix search is one of the worst online.

R20 I agree. It’s like a terrible lateral thinking puzzle, trying to figure out what key terms to enter to bring up the title you want. Because Gods forbid we search by exact title or any other specific criteria to go straight to what we want to watch, no, no. We must have annoying rigamarole.

I loved London Spy.

I wanted to love London Spy, it started off great, but went off the rails by the end.

I just watched all 24 episodes of travelers which I thought was really good except for one boring episode. People from the future come to change things so the planet isn't completely destroyed in the future. I thought it was well done.

London Spy is really good !

I just got a mailer from my library that hoopla and Kanopy are now available.

Anyone know if there is anything decent on these two?

(I have Netflix and Amazon already. I have HBO Go, but can't get it to stream properly on the TV. My source seems to be too far away.)

What R26 said. And people wonder why the world is going to shit.

Puh-leeze with this crap..

I have a Netflix/Hulu/HBO account, and I finished around 20-25 books last year.

The two aren't mutually exclusive, you can like books and TV, crazy I know.

Hoopla has these ... these _books_ of which you speak. They're digital, but still books.

R43, sounds like an oldster with the book thing, right?

If you're into art films and classics, Filmstruck is well worth the $9 a month fee. It's a partnership between Criterion and Turner Classic Movies. offering titles you won't find on Amazon or Netflix. Lots of Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini etc. as well as cult horror films like Mario Bava's 'Black Sunday."

Agree about Filmstruck! If you love classic movies, this is amazing.

I also recommend Shudder (Curated horror movie site), although I probably spend more time on AEBN and Helix that anything else.

If you take away all the Disney stuff and TV series, 80% of the stuff on Netflix would be stuff that would have gone straight to DVD years ago. Those two things are what's keeping Netflix afloat which is why they decided to focus more on their original programming.

Illegally downloading movies is the way to go.

Free streaming online sites such as Potluckers, 123Netflix, etc. Make sure you have good virus protection though.

^^^ Potlockers I meant

[quote]I just got a mailer from my library that hoopla and Kanopy are now available.

Let us know when GAY Hoopla is available.

You mustn't think of Netflix for basic movies and TV shows anymore, unless you want to wait for DVD.

The major studios and networks have withdrawn their libraries from Netflix because it's easier and more profitable to stream the shows themselves.

Netflix is putting all of their heft into ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING now. Shows like Stranger Things and Chelsea Handler are well worth it to me for subscribing.

But I'm a showbiz superfan -- I subscribe to the premium cable package through Comcast including HBO, Starz, Showtime, AMC, IFC and Fox Sports.

I also subscribe to MoviePass -- which is a Netflix-style subscription service, but for new, theatrical movies.

If you see at least two movies per month in the theater, MoviePass will save you money on the ticket price now that their premium is only $9.95 (where I am).

You pay $9.95 per month and watch as many movies in theaters as you want for free.

I refuse to pay for another streaming service - media companies can go fuck themselves. I've got Amazon Prime and Netflix and I might add Hulu for some TV, but that is as far as I go. Fuck the media companies who are being stingy about their back catalogs so they can grift another dime out of people.

R45, I'd rather be an intelligent "oldster" who doesn't depend on the scripted, so-called creativity of others to fill my days than a mentally-bankrupt dipshit like yourself and R44.

And R43, of course they aren't mutually exclusive. Since you're slow, let me clarify that too many people rely too heavily on shallow tv programming to fill their minds and do their thinking for them, instead of taking inspiration from higher teaching and philosophy to explore their own creativity and direct their energies away from consuming mindlessly. Promoting tv is promoting the lowest common denominator. Your facile response is evidence of how low we've come, but you'd know that if you actually read books as you claim. You appear to be intellectually dishonest (as if that were any surprise).

is there a free streaming service for lots of foreign films? specially stuff on BBC tv......yes London Spy was awesome..

checked out Filmstruck and joined. thank you. love foreign films and docs. only $10 a month

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu...they all suck.I jumped on the " cord cutting " bandwagon and ended up regretting it.

Went back to cable and couldn't be happier

I use a VPN and just download what I want to watch. I have Netflix but I'm thinking of getting rid of it. There really isn't that much unless you don't have anything to watch.

I like the Gorilla Channel

You sound fat. There are tons of things to do than watch crass television - MOST of it is mediocre anyway, look at the state of films. Gross.

R55, Acorn has UK programming for $4.99 a month.

I use my Starz app more than Netflix nowadays. Starz is finally adding more movies to it.

KANOPY - it's a free streaming service with a library card. It's mostly old films (Criterion included) and some new-ish stuff.

^^^ sorry, I see Kanopy was mentioned upthread.

My library doesn’t have Kanopy. Sad!

OP, they have this thing called a library. It's full of books, and even records and DVDs and all sorts of things for free.

Ditch the TV.

Y'all need to learn how to use torrents!

I haven't paid for cable or for a movie in over a decade, and yet I've been able to download and watch pretty much anything I'd ever want, from old British tv shows to Hollywood blockbusters the day after they open in theaters.

r66 y'all of us know how to use torrents. But if you use them with a VPN, like you're supposed to so you don't get nastygrams from your ISP when your IP address is reported by the services that monitor torrents for piracy, then they are too slow or don't work very well. It's only people who don't care about getting threat letters from legal offices or sued or their ISP cancelling them that use them with complete abandon.

Netflix has gone downhill since they started losing access to their catalogs. There's shows they used to have that I watched that are long gone.

I'm also overseas at the moment, and the catalog here is even worse, if that's possible, due to geographic restrictions.

Apparently there are some common criminals here.

R59, please ... everyone knows DJT likes the Orangutan channel.

Piratebay is your friend.

They have an excellent selection of Bollywood films, OP.

I have Amazon Prime, Netflix and SlingTV. I can watch live tv on Sling. Out of all the streaming services, I watch Netflix the most.

Netflix has its original programming but also gets outside tv series; watching SyFy's The Magicians Season 1 &2.

"Hark! R69 approacheth!" I doth hear her footfalls, the swirling of the cape!"

My complaint against NETFLIX is that it freezes up on me and it is time consuming and tedious to try to watch it, not for every single tithing but a lot. I get other streaming services and it never happens with them so it's not me.

No matter which streaming service you choose now, everything is going to change when the Disney Goliath enters the market.

Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu for me, at least for now. I think the days of having everything available in just one or two streaming services is gone for good. The various content providers didn't get nearly enough money out of Netflix early on, before it became known just how big streaming would be, so when the contracts expired, they didn't renew, or they asked for crazy massive compensation.

Amazon Video, right now, has over 150 "channels" you can subscribe to, covering a full range of content, from Broadway to Westerns to LGBT to anime, to Best of British Television to Hallmark to Kids and everything else you can think of, each with its own monthly subscription fee. Disney will be providing its own streaming service, the BBC has its own service, and you're going to see even more in the year ahead. I think where we're headed, if we're not already there, is streaming a la carte.

I've got both Netflix DVD and Netflix streaming subscriptions and what I've been doing is ripping the DVDs and downloading the streaming content and placing both on my own media server. As content has disappeared from Netflix, I've still got access to it. 20 TB of data should keep me busy for a few days.

Why torrent when you can stream?!

I stream things I want to watch that I don't have easy legal access to.

[quote]Apparently there are some common criminals here.

You betcha I support piracy, allows people access to content they wouldn't otherwise have.

Just wait until the reversal of Net Neutrality kicks in. we are going to pay for every little fart on the internets.

For great European programming, try MHz Choice.

R96, yeah, I wasn't worried about Disney because I don't really care for their animated movies. Then I remembered all the huge franchises they own, and well, shit. They're gonna fuck us over, again.

Nelix has a good supply of 4k offerings. Speaking of which, if you purchase movies from Apple, they have been upgrading your movies to 4K with HDR and Dolby vision free of charge.

r81 they're buying Hulu, which means they'll probably rebrand it and then double the price. And then get the copyright laws extended another 25 years so they don't have to give up Mickey.

[quote]I have Amazon Prime, Netflix and SlingTV. I can watch live tv on Sling. Out of all the streaming services, I watch Netflix the most.

And with the death of net neutrality, your bill will $200 soon.

I wonder if we will be charged more to watch content we own. That would be messed up.

R77 It sounds a lot like what we already had before with Cable on Demand, but with much more content. The only real difference Netflix made, which is not insignificant, is show that there was a big enough market for exclusive streaming content.

R84 I wonder how the new tiered plans will affect sites like Amazon where you can only stream your purchased content. Making people pay for watching stuff they already paid money for would be awful for business.

r87 technically you're paying a little for it anyway because you have your internet connection bill on top of the subscription service.

Pluto has a 24 hour cat channel.

R82 good to know. Loving th 4 k tv.

If anything, I like Netflix for giving me the opportunity to watch many excellent non-English language TV series and miniseries which would otherwise be almost impossible to find elsewhere (through legitimate channels.)

I hate that you can't filter stuff in Netflix by whether or not it's dubbed. I get excited seeing the image of whatever and then disappointed when I see all the actors' names are Danish or Portuguese.

I hate that Netflix defaults to dubbed shit. Dubbing is silly and distracting, give me the original language with subtitles please.

For diehard cinephiles, MUBI and Fandor are too good places to stream films. MUBI has a much smaller selection than Fandor but it is well chosen. Fandor is available as an add on to Amazon Prime for 3.99,4.99 by itself. MUBI is available for 5.99 a month.Getting Filmstruck MUBI and Fandor is like a true film fans antidote to Prime,Hulu and Netflix.

r80 I started a free trial and I'm far from impressed. They don't really offer anything worth paying, imo.

My library has both Kanopy and Hoopla for members.

Kanopy has interesting classic films, arthouse stuff, documentaries. Hoopla is the basic bitch of services, but I like 90s thrillers, etc., so it's fine once in a while. It also has a lot of live-action Disney from the 1960s and 1970s.

There's also a niche service called Exploitation.TV that has some real curios from the drive-in era. About half the titles are "Deuce"-era porn, and there are some gay titles in there too, from the era when "all-male theaters" were just starting. But I saw everything that looked interesting on E.TV within a month or two.

For the person who asked above, yes, you can get porn on ROKU. Just google ROKU Adult and you'll be taken to sites where you can add the channels by getting the number code. You can't find them on ROKU through the regular means because "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!" but you can get them.

TEST

[quote]I hate that you can't filter stuff in Netflix by whether or not it's dubbed.

You can change from dubbing to original language w/subtitles, which I prefer. It was easy.

Netfix's original programming sucks for the most part.

I mostly utilize Pirate Bay.

Netflix + Hulu is all I need.

What's so bad about Netflix search? If they have the exact program title you type in, it tops the list. If they don't, they give you a list of similar titles.

Is there a streaming service out there that specializes in documentaries? I also have Netflix and the pickings have been pretty slim over the last year or so, and I’m thinking of canceling my membership (the rate hike did not help).

Specifically, I am looking for good science, cultural, nature, and historical Documentaries similar to what A&E, TLC, and Animal Planet used to show before they started focusing on conspiracy theories, reality television, and woo.

R103, there are several doc only channels on Roku. I only have the free ones so don't know if there are even more extensive paid ones.

So you have to have a library card to join Kanopy?

On Netflix, I am going to watch a movie with Taylor Frey, called Summertime (Italian: L'estate Addosso). It is a gay one.

I’ll take a look R103. Thank you.

I wish I had bought a Roku instead of an Apple TV. The friends who bought Rokus seem to be faring better than I am. I also found CuriosityStream and Indiflix. The cost of subscribing to both of those is less than Netflix.

[quote]So you have to have a library card to join Kanopy?

It started as a service for college students and has now spread to many public libraries. You can stream 12 movies a month for free. For r103 — Kanopy has a ton of documentaries, and good ones.

Costco is (was?) offering a deal on MoviePass that includes a year of Fandor -- both for $89.99.

Here where I'm at mediacom is the provider, yuck. Anyways they get you by charging more for just internet service, something like $89.95/mo for their lowest speed and bandwidth. If you want faster speed or more bandwidth for streaming their upper end stand alone internet is expensive. This is what cable companies are going to do, just charge more for internet only customers.

Quite honestly by the time you add up what hulu or Netflix cost with streaming for hbo, or cinemas or Showtime or whatever along with anything else you need to see what you like how much are you really saving over cable? My guess is really not all that much. And if you like watching sports (I'm a huge cubs and baseball fan) then those streaming services can get into the $20-30/mo. range. So can you get sports like mlb or NFL games free somehow? Interested to see if you can.

Also agree about FilmStruck. Not expensive and no wading thru all the Netflix trash.

I do not recommend Apple TV. There's not enough channels and the remote control they have is so tiny and not user friendly. The remote is trying to look avant-garde but it hurt my fingers.

[quote] is there a free streaming service for lots of foreign films? specially stuff on BBC tv......yes London Spy was awesome

Primewire and Streamtv have a lot of foreign shows and films. And like an above poster said, you need to keep your antivirus up to date

OP Shut Up, Monique!

Just recently talked to someone who is going to try You Tube TV. They have a subscription. Said it was $35 a month. Anyone else try it? Apparently it's like Sling TV and a few other streaming services, offering a package of channels. I had no idea You Tube did that. I know they offer older movies to rent for $2.99 but I didn't know they were like Sling. Anyone else ever try them?

Netflix has all 20 seasons of MIDSOMER MURDERS.

Who could ask for more from a streaming service?

How do you rent movies on YouTube? I see no rent links.

Sometimes when I'm looking for old movie scenes on YT there' a little red box you can click on and rent it for $2.99

I have Sling TV but I hate that you cannot rewind the On Demand shows. Sometimes the reception is bad. I may look into Hulu tv or even YouTube.

Viacom (Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV) is launching its own streaming service this fall.

[quote]Like every traditional programmer doing battle with streaming services and mobile and social players of all stripes, Viacom is planning to roll out a direct-to-consumer OTT service. Execs said on the call that it is on track to launch by this fall in the U.S. and will include “tens of thousands of hours” of content, CFO Wade Davis said during the call.

Interested?

Now every channel and company will have its own streaming service, ugh. Why can't someone get the best of both worlds. The corporations are sensing a profit and the consumers will have to go elsewhere.

Well, Filmstruck is now dead.

Any others?

Netflix + Hulu satisfies most of my needs.

All these other streaming services starting up are pissing me off. I'm not signing up for any more. I'm not going to pay MORE for streaming services than I do for cable. So Disney, CBS All Access, BritBox, and all the rest can just go fuck themselves. Two is enough for me.

I use Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. That gets everything I want to watch.

I discovered the hard way that you can rent a movie on YouTube and then find out after you paid for it that it's not available to watch on your TV, only on your phone or computer. I got so pissed off when I was able to buy and pay on my smart TV, but then not actually watch the movie, that I don't watch anything on YT that I have to pay for, just on principle.

Netflix, Netflix DVD, Hulu and FilmStruck are my go-tos, but FilmStruck was broken half the time and they were of no help. Amazon Prime charges on top of the already expensive Prime membership for most movies.