Movie Availability/Visibility Solved

One of my sons reports that he could find the movie 17 Miracles just fine using his Netflix account.  Well, I wondered, what could he be doing differently than I did?  It didn’t take long to figure out.

I was signed up only for streaming video.  Apparently, 17 Miracles, 300, and Avatar are only available as DVD rentals.  As soon as I changed my account to include DVDs, I could search and find all of these.

But I’m Still Complaining — Just Complaining About Something Else

First: I don’t want to rent DVDs.  Yes, yes, a personal problem.  But still.

Second: it is simply nuts to silently only display search results that coincide with one way to order movies, when two are available!  How is the user supposed to know that the movie is available, just not in the form he or she is signed up for?  It would make sense to display  movies available for streaming along with those available for DVD rental, just indicate to the user that they’re not available for the method of acquisition they’re signed up for.

But no.  Netflix leads the newbie user to believe that a very famous movie isn’t available.  Not cool.