My 13-year old son and I love to watch movies. He's now getting old enough to be introduced to many of the classics, such as The Godfather, Dr. Strangelove and others.
We recently hooked up XBox Live to our big screen. Knowing that I was a movie lover, a friend suggested that I look into streaming NetFlix films directly our TV through the XBox. How cool was that? I'm thinking that my days of spending $4 a movie at Blockbuster where over. I went on to Netflix and, as it happens, they were having a FREE trial offer. I chose the $8.99 plan which is perfect for the Xbox deal because it gives me unlimited access to as many movies as I can watch each month. AND no worrying about mailing them back in. I had arrived in movie-lover's heaven! Or, so I thought.
After giving up my credit card information I was invited to browse the Netflix library to add movies to my queue. It was only after building my queue with about 40 classics that I realized I had been had. Only a handful of the movies in my queue were available for Instant viewing through the Xbox connection. Upon digging a little deeper I came across the "instant" library which was comprised of the movies that fall under the Xbox deal. It is an absolutely pathetic collection of mostly straight-to-video films with a smattering of "better" movies thrown in. Of the Netflix top 100, only 8 are Xbox eligible. You can imagine how excited I will be to see the laugh-riot "Victor Victoria" one more time.
My son asked me if Netflix "lied." No, they didn't lie. But they painted a very misleading picture of what is included in this offer. What their PR machine was touting as a groundbreaking partnership with Microsoft is, in my opinion, a bait & switch scheme.
I was really excited about what I believed would be a truly great way to introduce my son to some of the greatest movies of all time. As it now stands, it's time to head back to Blockbuster.
Thanks Netflix.
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