

Show HN: A better way to find films to watch on Netflix - geelen
http://goodfil.ms/films/on_netflix

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decklin
I'm not looking at this very deeply (on phone), but I think this does not make
a good landing page. My impression of the copy is "sync _what_ queues?" I have
a Netflix queue; I don't want to have another one that needs to be synced with
it. It sounds like it's creating a problem I don't have. There's nothing that
explains the benefits of GoodFilms to people who aren't already users (like
the front page does). Netflix already shows me "new" and "popular" films,
which is not very useful anyway.

I suggest that if a user is not logged in, show something that focuses on what
makes GoodFilms useful and that you can use your NetFlix queue on it instead
of having to make another one. You can just say that you can browse on-Netflix
films specifically; taking up a bunch or screen real estate with what amounts
to an example of that does not explain it any better.

~~~
thinkzig
I agree. The landing page leaves much to be desired.

I've read over it a few times and I still have no idea what your service does
or why I would want to use it.

Please consider revising your copy to focus on the benefits you're providing
to me. What problems are you solving for me? Why is using GoodFilms going to
make my life easier or better?

Good luck to you. Congrats on launching and I hope you do well with this.

Cheers.

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incision
Can't sign in without Facebook/Twitter.

Pass.

I wonder what the overlap between Facebook / Twitter / Netflix is and how much
of the potential audience for a service like this is being neglected?

~~~
bambax
Ditto. I don't have a Facebook account. I kind of have a Twitter account but

1- I use it so little that I would have to look up my credentials and that's a
pain

2- I will never sign into a new / unknown website with Twitter for fear that
the website would start tweeting nonsense on my behalf.

~~~
masterzora
With regards to #2, doesn't Twitter auth include permissions so most non-
spamming sites shouldn't even have permission to tweet nonsense on your
behalf? Or am I misremembering? (As it turns out, the only time I ever used
the Twitter auth was about a year and a half ago or so, I think.)

With regards to #1, hilariously that's one of the problems that this sort of
single-sign-on is supposed to solve.

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engtech
One thing I would _love_ to have is the ability to "hide" movies.

Often when I'm looking for movies to watch, I'll go through the process of
looking it up on RT, if what I see there makes the decision that it's some
direct to DVD crap, then I want to hide it forever.

In Netflix I've had to resort to giving movies 1 star ratings, but I'd love it
if a site would just allow me to HIDE things, because sometimes I also just
want to hide a good movie that I don't want to rewatch.

~~~
eli
Err, are you using Netflix through the website? I see a big "not interested"
button right next to the star rating widget...

~~~
engtech
I use iPad / Boxee and I haven't seen the button.

I'll install Silverlight and try out the web site to see if it's there.

It might be yet another feature that Netflix Canada is missing (like instant
queue).

~~~
cgislason
Netflix Canada definitely has a Not Interested button.

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imalolz
Very nice, though a couple of things immediately jump out:

First, no https. I think it's something you owe your less technical users.

Second - no non-social way to sign up. Personally, I find it annoying when I
can't use simple email/username+password login. I don't really want to give up
my entire social graph+data just to try something out. I realize this might be
necessary for your business model, but you can offer me the option to add my
social data later on, and I will if I like your service.

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crisnoble
I love this site, I use it all the time. My feature request would be for the
site to recommend films for me to watch next. Sure you can see what friends
are rating, but I don't have any (friend me? <http://goodfil.ms/user/4221> ).
And sure you can use the "find films" feature <http://goodfil.ms/explore>
However, both of these lack a "based on your ratings we think your going to
love Memento" or a "sure lots of people loved the Avengers, but your not going
to like it"

Nevertheless, I will continue to use this site as a way to catalog all of the
films I see and how much I liked them, and IMO there is no better service out
there for this purpose.

~~~
geelen
Thanks for the suggestions. And you should have a new follower as of me, now
:)

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citricsquid
A question, what does the "watch again" rating matter for? I can't watch films
multiple times, if I've seen it once I will never enjoy watching it again, but
I'm concerned if I mark 0 on "rewatchability" that will affect the display of
similar films?

Also, I've signed in and synced my Netflix account and it's still listing
American Netflix films under "Recent Releases on Netflix". Might be worth
excluding films that aren't available in my area (UK)

~~~
slig
Protip: set up <http://tunlr.net/> and use the American Netflix without a VPN.

~~~
engtech
Thank you! I've been a Canadian Netflix subscriber for a long time now, and
I've been thinking of dropping it because the Canadian Netflix is a wasteland.

------
username3
<http://instantwatcher.com> doesn't need to connect your account.

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engtech
FYI, if you have the IMDB ID for a movie, then you can link to Rotten Tomatoes
using that IMDB ID.

Using the IMDB ID number, "0079501", you may access the Rotten Tomatoes Mad
Max page using the following URL: Mad Max:
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/alias?type=imdbid&s=007950...](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/alias?type=imdbid&s=0079501)

I know you probably can't display the rotten tomatoes score, but it would be
interesting to have that data internally.

I challenge anyone to find a movie with an RT score below 40% or IMDB score
below 4/10 that was worth watching.

~~~
executive
easy: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367085/>

~~~
engtech
It was a comment to the goodfil.ms guy, because they link to imdb not rotten
tomatoes, and it's trivial to also support rotten tomatoes.

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khet
One thing that bothers me about most movie recommendation apps is that there
is no way to filter movies by their rating. As far as I know, even IMDB
doesn't have this feature.

I like watching movies with my family and its hard to find good pg or pg-13
movies to watch. The family section on most sites is filled with animated
movies so if you are looking for a non-animated family movie you're out of
luck.

I really hope someone out there is working on an app that gets you the best
movies to watch that are safe to watch with young kids and family.

~~~
geelen
My uncle pointed me to the BBFC site, apparently their database is the bomb.
We've considered integrating with it for Goodfilms.

They've got an iphone app too, if that helps.

edit: oops, the link: <http://www.bbfc.co.uk/>

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rabidsnail
I always find it difficult to come up with star ratings because I don't
remember what ratings I've given to other things. I'd rather have a "rank in
order of preference", or pairwise rank ("Did you like this more or less
than..."). You can convert ranks into scores by looking at their position
along a (probably Gaussian) probability distribution. Instead of having 1 to 4
stars you have -2 to 2 sigma.

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wtvanhest
I don't currently subscribe to Netflix but it seemed pretty user friendly
before.

Amazon on the other hand is a totally different animal. I find Amazon's search
for Prime (free) movies incredibly challenging. This kind of tool would add
far more value to their system and is probably the only way I would browse if
it were available.

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rnernento
Awesome design / interface. I saw this initially a few weeks ago and I'm
really starting to come around to how useful it is.

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train_robber
Loved it overall.

Would be great if there's an IMDb link to the movie in the details view page.

~~~
engtech
I saw the IMDB link.

Add the end of any description: Read more on External IMDB External Wikipedia

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HyprMusic
I use this site quite a lot, it's very useful. Would be great if it had Love
Film integration.

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albertoavila
I'm not surprised, but yet, i'm somewhat disapointed that it doesn't take into
account your country to filter netflix releases, it looks like a cool site but
it's not as useful to people on other countries.

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tomasien
This is really great, but I think people would benefit from linking their
Netflix accounts earlier in the process. I didn't realize what I needed to do
for a while.

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ewams
Why do I have to log in with a Facebook or twitter account when this is for
Netflix? is there no way to just have a goodfilms account and then sync my
Netflix?

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jparishy
The Find Films tab is awesome. Well done, guys; will be spreading this around
to my friends :)

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toonse
Agree with the others. No FB or Twitter, so can't try it out :(

