

Show HN: IMDb Top 250 available on Netflix Instant - ptarjan
http://paulisageek.com/imdb-250-netflix/

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jdvolz
You might want to double check "Gladiator" because I'm pretty sure the one on
IMDB isn't the one available on Netflix instant. :)

I told my wife this was one of the most important web pages I'd looked at in a
long time.

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mortenjorck
Same thing for Heat. I was expecting Al Pacino and ended up with Joe
Dallesandro.

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jdvolz
Which is strange because I'm pretty sure I watched the Al Pacino version of
Heat on Netflix instant in the least 6 months.

Edit: I just checked and it's not on instant, but I'm pretty sure I watched it
on instant recently.

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wahnfrieden
Netflix routinely adds films to Instant Watch that it will only keep for N
months, presumably to keep an interesting stream of new titles available while
saving costs on licensing.

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Terretta
It's not to save costs on licensing. It's because those titles are going in
and out of licensing 'windows' and Netflix isn't allowed to offer them.

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wahnfrieden
Isn't the length of those windows determined by what Netflix is willing to
pay? Or do the content owners restrict it?

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X-Istence
Content owners restrict it, for example if a movie is about to be shown on
television it will disappear from NetFlix's instant streaming service a week
or two beforehand and re-appear a month or so afterwards.

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jdq
Title should be:

IMDB Top 250 THAT are available on Netflix Instant.

It's not a list of 250 movies as it seems many believe.

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ptarjan
Sorry :( I can't edit the title now. I thought IMDb 250 was a known enough
list.

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esrauch
I'm well aware of the list and I originally read the title as "All of the top
250 are now available on netflix instant".

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hugh3
I thought so too. And I thought "Awesome!"

Then I got disappointed. Oh well, at least now I know to watch _Rashomon_
before the 20th of June.

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ptarjan
Wow, this submission totally blew up while I was out for dinner. Thanks so
much!

You're invigorated me to put some more effort into it. I'm working on the
feature requests. :) Check back soon.

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wicknicks
Cool :) I spend a lot of time finding good TV shows. Wish I could do a join
between the IMDB database and the Netflix one: Show me all the TV shows which
score more than 8.5 on IMDB and are on instant watch on Netflix.

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ptarjan
Thats a really good idea. That'll be next.

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madh
Cool. I'm surprised that this list isn't on <http://instantwatcher.com>. For
those who don't know, Instant Watcher is a phenomenal resource for Netflix
fans.

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kleiba
This is cool! Perhaps in 20 years time or so, Germany will have a service
similar to Netflix... (and then, 10 years later, even something like Netflix
instant).

Good for you, sad smiley for us :-(

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vdm
s/Germany/Europe/ . :( from Ireland.

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biot
Toy Story 3 is in there twice, with ratings 34 and 143.

On another note, it's amazing seeing all the movies in here which aren't
available in Canada.

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agilo
There are services that get you a US IP allowing you to have access to all
those unavailable titles. Haven't tried any myself though.

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biot
I have an under-utilized Linode instance that could presumably do the same via
ssh tunneling, and at about 1GB/movie (incoming and outgoing) it should still
be under the transfer limits. Though I was under the impression that Netflix
also required a credit card with a US billing address. Not an insurmountable
challenge, but I'd have to look at the hassle:benefit ratio if that is the
case.

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gommm
I'm using a French credit card on Netflix and my vps in the US with ssh
tunneling for the ip. Haven't had any problem.

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wahnfrieden
Slight off-topic, but does anyone know of a good way to export ratings out of
Netflix? I've only been able to find broken tools for this in the past. It
shouldn't be too hard to scrape this myself, but I'd rather avoid redundant
programming :) Ever since they removed the "Friends" feature, I've wanted to
get my ratings into something else that I can share with others.

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CrazedGeek
Could you do one for the Bottom 100 as well? That would be almost as awesome.

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wahnfrieden
If there's a way, it would also be very nice to also have a version of the top
250 filtered to remove films from the past decade or two. Recent movies get a
lot more attention from voters on IMDB so it's a bit biased (most especially
for titles from the last couple years).

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hugh3
It's not _too_ bad in that regard, with a couple of bizarre exceptions (
_Inception_ is the ninth best film ever made? _Really?_ ) But overall it's a
better and more historically diverse list than I would have expected.

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snprbob86
Awesome! Anyway you could link into my Netflix account to show/short-by my
ratings? I'd also like to filter to only see unrated ones.

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ptarjan
Great idea. That'll be a bit longer project, but we'll see.

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adelevie
If the best camera is the one you have with you, a corollary could be the best
movies are available on Netflix Instant Streaming.

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rudiger
A corollary is a statement that follows readily from a previous statement; I'd
say this is more of analogue.

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joejohnson
When sorting by rank, there seem to be a lot missing. Why does it start with
"8 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? Are all 250 really available?

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biot
The title is somewhat misleading. Think of it like "Venn diagram intersection
of Netflix Instant and IMDB top 250".

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cma
His logo should be a venn diagram

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cma
Add amazon affiliate links for missing ones =)

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alanthonyc
"Toy Story 3" is at number 34 and number 143.

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esrauch
I just checked the actual list and Toy Story 3 is rank 34 and the original Toy
Story is at 143. He probably stripped something like a [a-zA-Z] regex to
improve misses that are actually hits because of slightly different
punctuation or spacing.

Toy Story 2 isn't on the top 250 at all, nor any of the Die Hard sequels, and
Terminator 2 is named "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" on IMDB so there the above
explanation seems like the most plausible to me. Based on my cursory
examination none of the other movies would have missed in that way if hes just
ignoring digits.

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ptarjan
Thanks for the bug reports. I'm now extracting the Year from the IMDB page and
making sure the Netflix matches correctly on the year or else I throw out the
row.

The main problem, is the first search result for "Toy Story" on netflix search
was "Toy Story 3".

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alanthonyc
Thanks for this page. I was putting off watching "Fargo" again until I saw
that it was expiring tomorrow.

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rickdale
This is an awesome list. One of my big faults with netflix is that one account
can be accessed by an entire family, but the genres don't mix and match and
instead of rating a movie, they tell you what you might think of it. A list
like this really helps.

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wahnfrieden
You can split a NF account into several, and even optionally give each account
their own separate DVD queues (so you can partition "3 DVDs a month" into 1
per 3 person household, if you want to). This also sections off ratings from
each other's accounts.

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state_machine
Unfortunately, you can't section off separate streaming queues though.

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icefox
Even worse the other queues can't easily find out if movies in their queue are
streamable which is really irritating when I get a dvd that I could have
streamed.

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twakefield
This is great, thanks. I've been lamenting about how bad Netflix instant
selection is. This list brings some evidence to the contrary. Netflix should
have done something like this...it takes me too long to find a decent movie
using their UI.

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jerf
If you think Netflix selection is bad, try the Hulu movie selection. If you
want movies from the 1930s-1950s, they've got you covered. I have not yet
found even _one_ movie they have that is of the calibre of Toy Story 3, which
Netflix has right now through Starz. I believe Hulu is pursuing a strategy
whereby they can say with a straight face that they've got "thousands of
movies", but they really hardly have any.

We've been trying Hulu Plus with a free month trial and we will not be signing
up. It's pathetic next to Netflix _and_ it plays commercials. If you aren't an
18-24 year old preferably-male, Hulu is barren, and frankly you've got poor
coverage even then.

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RayVR
Maybe you should rewrite to check the year of the film, not just the name.

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ptarjan
Great idea. Done.

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RayVR
The Pianist in the imdb top 250 is not the one listed on this page. lol.

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ptarjan
All fixed :) Now I make sure the year matches as well as the title.

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makeee
I've love to be able to see / sort by rotten tomatoes score as well.

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mmaunder
Awesome!!! Thanks Paul!

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webwright
Would be nice to have genre and year. Great job, tho!

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ptarjan
Great idea. Coming right up.

Year was easier than Genre. I'll but that one on the back-burner.

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ciopte7
toy story 3 is listed twice at 34 and 143.

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mvzink
Wait, how is Oldboy in the top 250?

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wslh
Are they on Torrent? :-)

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nikcub
perhaps he could fill in the gaps with tube site links

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dylanrw
Major Win.

