Fscking Netflix queues -- how do they work?

Has anyone ever had items from their Netflix queue skipped for no apparent reason? I just had the #6 or #7 item in my queue shipped. Only one of the items ahead of it is showing any availability notes. This is the second time that I've noticed this happening, before it was the #3 item in the queue. What gives? I really wish there was a way to tell them that "really, I want this one first, even if I have to wait a couple of days" but, in the absence of that, it'd sure be nice if they at least respected my queue priority in some intelligible way when all of the items are (in theory) available.

Anyone else had this experience?

Sorry, I really haven't. Then again, I have a return rate of about 1 disc every month or two, so I don't have much of a sample size for you. Perhaps your local distribution center isn't being run very well?

Try calling them, too. They're pretty easy to get ahold of on the phone.

Clearly, they need to kick the studios in the ass and get some more deals in place for first-run films. None of this would be a problem...

Yeah, our return rate has been horrible, but it's gotten better as we've started getting more TV episodes and fewer movies. It's easier to get through a disc by watching a few half hour episodes than it is to get through a 2.5 hour movie in one sitting.

In this case, I was really looking forward to getting the first disc of Breaking Bad season 2, but instead I got a movie that will probably sit on the coffee table for two weeks until we're both in a movie watching mood and have two hours to kill. I definitely wanted to see the movie, but there's a reason I had the TV episodes set at a higher priority.

That does stink. At least it's not a subsequent disc of a season you're already watching. That would really bug me. It's still very annoying, though.

Friends of mine are plowing their way through Psych at the moment, which is fortunately on streaming. They watched all of season 4 a couple days ago

I remember several years ago, when Netflix first started to grow in popularity, someone reverse-engineered how they handled the queue system. He published it in an expose' on the web and it caused a bit of a stir, because it basically penalized the best customers for being so good.

My household has always gotten whatever is at the top of the queue, but that's because we only ever seem to order discs that no one else cares about. For the rest of the world, first-run movies are common queue toppers, and when demand exceeds supply, they have to have rules that govern who gets the scarce discs next. It's this complex set of rules that the dude figured out just by having a couple of Netflix accounts and doing a bunch of observations.

I'll go look for the article.

It wasn't this article, but it was along these lines:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2008/06/netflix-queue-hows-it-work

Yeah, let me know if you do find that. In the mean time, I'd be perfectly happy with a "wait my turn for my #1 choice instead of sending me my #7 choice" option.

Aha, found it. This is the one I was thinking of. Way out of date, but an interesting read:
http://dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/

Its the same for pretty much all the DVD rental companies so the discoveries aren't particularly surprising now.

Another trick which DVD rental companies use but I've no idea if Netflix specifically use is that if you're a very heavy user then they'll start to penalise you in the speed of processing your returns and shipping. You'll find an extra day squeezed in every so often where they only processed your return past the time they ship DVDs so it'll artificially limit the number you can rent a month.

But you should have something to watch while waiting for #1 choice, no?

We almost never watch the DVDs from Netflix anymore instead just settling for something available on instant view.

My daughter in a few years: "Ok, so let me get this straight dad... They used to sell movies on coasters?"

Sadly, I think it might be more than a few years. I really hope you're right, and of course, all the technology is there, but the industry is determined to get dragged into this new age kicking and screaming.

Sadly? I say gladly. We don't do Netflix, or Blockbuster, or the RedBox, or anything else like that. We get our movies from the library, for free (okay, tax-sponsored). Yeah, it takes a while for reservations on the latest releases to make their way to us, but we don't care. For that model to work, movies have to be sold on re-usable physical media that the library can loan out to a single person/family at a time. I suppose if technology progresses, that can move beyond coasters to other formats, but a "streaming only" model is bad news.

I'm sorry, but that's not a great argument. You have issues like that whenever there's a format change. After all, the library loans ebooks now.

Besides, I think it'll be a long, long time before it's streaming only. I should have said that what I want is streaming parity with DVD and Bluray. After all, DVD is still around, and will be for a long while.

Ah, but that is not so.

They could use the same technology they use for audio books. I download audio books from the library and they come with DRM that cause them to cease working after 7 (or optionally 14) days. During that 7 0r 14 day period, the audio book is not available for download to anybody else.

I imagine with movies the lending period would be less. But it should be a workable process, provided that the library could make available the bandwidth required to for the downloads.

tanstaafl.

Oh, hey... that's cool. Not just ebooks, either. The library offers streaming movies, too.

Oh. Yay.

My library uses OverDrive, which encodes Microsoft DRM WMA and WMV files. So as a Mac/Linux user, I'm hosed. I guess it's time to register a complaint with the library, and google DRM stripping tools.

Yeah, that's a problem. I don't know why all the libraries seem to stick to Windows Media formats. My dad used to check out audio books online from the library and then couldn't listen to them on his iPod. I guess they picked a format and didn't want to bother with two different ones.

I don't think it is a case of not being bothered. If they wanted to have expiring drm content for the iPod they would have had to some how rent the titles out via iTunes. Which isn't really workable.