New Data Shows Netflix's Number of Movies Has Gone Down By Thousands of Titles Since 2010 (businessinsider.com) 117
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: If you thought Netflix's movie selection had been lacking lately, you're right. The streaming service's amount of movies has dipped by over 2,000 titles since 2010, while its number of TV shows has nearly tripled. Third-party Netflix search engine Flixable compiled data that shows a dramatic shift in Netflix's priorities in recent years. In 2010, Netflix had 530 TV shows compared to 6,755 movies. Now, in 2018, the amount of TV shows has nearly tripled to 1,569, and the amount of movies offered has decreased to 4,010. It's no secret that Netflix has focused more on TV shows and less on movies in recent years, but now we have a visual representation of just how significant that focus has become.
This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
The major movie studios and content owners did not want to see Netflix become another Apple iTunes, which would allow them to set the prices of movies and have control over content distribution, so raised the licensing fees to astronomical levels. And of course, players like Disney saw how controlling the content distribution in this way could be very profitable, and they have no intention of making those sorts of deals again. the genie is out of the bottle and it is not going back in.
But that's fine. The original offerings from Netflix are often amazing, so it's no big loss.
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It's Netflix's intent. Lower costs, higher discoverability, more hours of content for people to binge.
Meanwhile, good video stores are topping 50,000 titles
Re: This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind that, serialized (TV) shows have massively improved in content quality. Even if they had the money and the technology, they wouldn't have done shows like they're doing now, rather the studios would have just saved that talent for feature length content.
Meanwhile, most high budget movies have been big disappointments over the last 5 years.
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Meanwhile, most high budget movies have been big disappointments over the last 5 years.
This. Although it's true audiences have gravitated toward the binge afforded to Netflix users, there has been a considerable dearth of quality movies of late, with Hollywood productions long on sequel, and short on innovative, thought-provoking releases.
Ya...Kinda is.. (Score:2)
Did you see their latest "new" movie?
"Black Panther Guy"
Not to be confused with the block buster, Black Panther from Marvel....
So just more of their Grade B knock offs.
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"Nevermind that, serialized (TV) shows have massively improved in content quality. "
Exactly! Also, lately movies just suck.
My wife and I begin watching a movie and after 10 minutes we give up, because either the script sucks or the actors.
Netflix sees that people abandon watching movies.
Give me a good series any time over a movie.
Re: This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix is changing the "interest dynamic" (plot speed).
About 50% of Walking Dead episodes are filler, pushing commercials, not plot. I won't comment on show timing or season length (Netflix understands this perfectly).
HBO seems to do this as well with Game of Thrones. I'm not sure why.
But Netflix shows like Stranger Things and Luke Cage, move the plot along a lot every single episode. It's simply better entertainment.
And yeah, studios are waking up but Netflix is spending more than any of them on original content.
But they still have recent stuff by other production companies (for now), Rouge One, Moana (kids), Planet Earth 2 (this is recommended to me because I watched Stranger Things...), American Horror Story, etc.
Disney's service will be successful, because... kids. But Netflix will win, they show the Human Centipede and Phineas and Ferb (for kids). The whole gamut.
And offline download is freaking awesome! I don't pirate anymore.
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Shows like the Walking Dead have to fit into a very specific box due to legacy broadcasting paradigms. The network orders a specific number of shows and expects them to fit neatly into a 30 or 60 minute time slot. You might only have enough story for 12 episodes, but you have to make 20. And too bad that you don't have time to show that epic fight scene, or long character speech. You can't go over 44 minutes divided into 4 acts for commercial breaks.
The Netflix model allows the show producer to write th
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The network orders a specific number of shows and expects them to fit neatly into a 30 or 60 minute time slot. You might only have enough story for 12 episodes, but you have to make 20
Lost got a lot better when they pushed back against the network requirements for 23 shows/year and trimmed down to 16-episodes or so. Granted, the plot eventually got torpedoed anyway, but the first three seasons have a TON of filler and slow-moving plot.
I had hoped that Game of Thrones would get better by cutting back from 10 to 7 episodes in the season, but it was not served well by the change. The overall writing took a dip in quality, but the rushed nature of the storytelling also hid how much time pass
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I think the Game of Thrones TV series is suffering the same problem as the books. There is a lot of material, and a lot of characters. It is very difficult to tell such a complex story, allowing the reader/watcher to connect the dots. I applaud the epic nature of the story, but think they need to drop a bunch of the subplots.
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Game of Thrones has killed off enough characters that there aren't that many left! The books have more of a problem, since the show never adapted some of the characters and plotlines that were introduced later.
For instance, I don't have much of a problem with Jon and Dany falling in love, but simply due to the episode count, it's difficult to realize that Jon's been sitting at Dragonstone interacting with Dany for months and months. Since less real world time has passed, it feels "rushed. Think of how it m
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Streaming on demand a drama for 100 minutes onto a TV.
Streaming on demand a drama for 40 x 6 minutes onto a TV.
What difference is there, other than the length and that one is called a "movie" and the other a "box-set" ?
The distinction between a TV show and a film is vanishing. They use the same technology. The same actors. The same costs.
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Meanwhile, most high budget movies have been big disappointments over the last 5 years.
I agree with the TV shows bit, but that has always been the norm for the film industry. Sturgeons law is very conservative in that context (80% of everything is crap), I'd say 95%+ of everything the film industry produces is dross and it's paid for by the less than 5% of stuff that isn't. The difference is that hollywood cant control the internet as it used to control movie reviews, so average people are able to find out a film is crap before seeing it. India, Nigeria and China which are now bigger industr
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I haven't seen a video rental store in some time, though. Just Redbox with their few dozen titles at most of the grocery stores around here. I'm sure there still are video rental stores somewhere, but most of the small ones were bought out by the big chains, and then the big chains closed most of their stores when Netflix and Amazon prime became popular. The "long tail" is gone in many areas. It's almost impossible to find DVD's to rent that are more than a year old. Amazon offers some older titles, bu
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Try your local library. Ours has tons of DVDs available to rent for free. Well, you pay for it in your taxes, but you'd pay that anyway and I don't mind paying to support my local library. My library can even get titles from other libraries if they don't have the specific DVD I'm looking for.
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There is a weird supply of streaming movies, it's hit or miss about what's available or not. My Roku lets me search by title and it will show what supported streaming service has it. So, no streaming service apparently has Age of Ultron except for a very high "rental" price, whereas you can get the relatively new Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on Netflix. Other movies I want to see are a premium service on Amazon (ie, first buy the expensive subscription, then add an extra few dollars for the movie).
So movies
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Except it's not really working out that way. I watch significantly less Netflix these days because I can't find anything good to watch. I'll watch one program or another over a short period of time, not because I want to, but because I couldn't find anything else to watch.
The interface is terrible, the suggestions bite and there's no way of just scrolling through long lists of movies on my Roku or PS3, which means that I'm completely at the mercy of either luck or 3rd party sites that catalog the netflix ca
Re:This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Netflix's intent. Lower costs, higher discoverability, more hours of content for people to binge.
Meanwhile, good video stores are topping 50,000 titles
How are you defining discoverability? Netflix's app seems ruthlessly dedicated to limiting the number of titles anyone sees.
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It's Netflix's intent. Lower costs, higher discoverability, more hours of content for people to binge.
Meanwhile, good video stores are topping 50,000 titles
How are you defining discoverability? Netflix's app seems ruthlessly dedicated to limiting the number of titles anyone sees.
Limiting titles overall adds to that. Less to index, fewer possibilities to show in any one category, etc.
True, but I wish we'd stop letting Disney (Score:3, Insightful)
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As the brits used to say "Lay back and think of England"
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Re: This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile in the bargain bin you can find $4 Blu-ray copies of the very same Disney movies.
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Whether it's their fault or not, it cost them my subscription a few years ago and I'm seeing nothing that justifies signing back up.
I don't want 'original content', I want access to all content, at a reasonable price.
Re: This isn't Netflix's fault (Score:1)
Welcome to the "pirating" world then. Only in torrent sites you will have access to all content. The price is zero... couldn't be more reasonable.
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I want access to all content, at a reasonable price.
Sadly that is unlikely to ever happen. With everyone wanting to start their own streaming system, like Disney intends, and regional deals, it is going to be worse than cable.
While I don't like the idea of any one company being in control of everything, I don't want subscriptions to a half dozen (or more) services.
I'd be willing to bet that illegal downloading has been reduced by offerings like Netflix. I'd also bet as things become fractured, and the cost goes up due to the increased number of subscriptions
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I would like to see the movies though. I will never pay Disney directly though. And it's not just a Netflix problem, other streaming services feel the pinch. They do have DVD/bluray movie content though, just like any rental store.
Most was crap that won't be missed by many (Score:1)
My interest in their content peaked (massively!) early on with their DVD service, hit a big soft patch for a few years, and now their own-branded content is at least worth the few bucks it costs for a streaming account.
And they don't try to fuck me over a barrel like Comcast tries to every single day with junk mail - 4 kinds. Netflix will get my money until they can fuck Comcast over that same barrel.
Re:Most was crap that won't be missed by many (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that it's the crap that's staying. While Pacific Rim disappears, Atlantic Rim stays. Just look in any of the genre categories: mountains of garbage and few, if any, remaining gems. The main reason I even have a subscription anymore is that my wife watches a few programs on it.
Old News (Score:3, Interesting)
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Just like last year, slashdot doesn't get why Netflix does this. Its because according to their analytics data, people are binge watching shows instead of watching movies.
People are switching to the shows because either they've already seen the movies, or because every time you look for a specific movie it's not there. Netflix's streaming selection has always sucked hard, because the movie studios are actively hostile to Netflix's pricing model.
You need to actually have a quality movie catalog for someone to use it.
You kniow (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd trade every Disney movie for more Daredevil and Jessica Jones.
The best thing Netflix did was oicking up Longmire.
I wish they'd do it for other shows that were abruptly cancelled that ended on cliffhangers and needed a lot more episodes to finish their story arcs...
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Except Daredevil and Jessica Jones are Marvel, and so are owned by Disney. Disney can't just remove it to their own streaming platform when it debuts, presumably, but they probably won't license any new shows with characters they own unless it will appear exclusively on Disney.
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Is it that hard to make up new super heroes?
I mean, I am not a comic book person so they are all unknown characters to me already.
Just start a new comic book line and make up some characters. Build it up over time.
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Just start a new comic book line and make up some characters. Build it up over time.
Not really the way it is working. These aren't just characters, but rather characters with decades of storytelling behind them with fan feedback. The TV series aren't just starting at the beginning and going through the comics in sequence, but rather each of these series is a particular fan favorite story that has already survived the test of time. Even the movies are largely a product of Mavell's Ultimate experiment of updating all their classic superhero stories and then combining what worked with both.
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How much of that is crap...? (Score:2)
How much of that decrease is Netflix dropping a bunch of junk that nobody watches? Netflix tracks this, which is why a really popular movie is streamed from a local point of presence, while a title that nobody watches is streamed from some POP far away.
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If it's junk that nobody watches then it has no commercial value, resulting in Netflix having bugger all costs to provide it.
Sure, NPV on one junk movie might only be a few dollars but NPV on 50,000 junk movies adds up - and that's before you take into account the additional user base that broader catalogue will attract.
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I'm sure 100% of those 2,000+ movies they dropped were shit. I know that's true because, back then and to this day, 99.9% of all streaming movies on Netflix are shit. That's really the problem.
You sure about that?
Disney is going away soon. Netflix already lost The Criterion Collection, MGM, Universal, and Warner Bros. 4-5 years ago.
Yes, the concept is dead. Back to local rentals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix initially gave us the dream that we could pay $10, even $20 a month and have access to most (or even just a significant number) of the movies that we would be interested in watching. That has effectively come true for most music, but not for movies. It was unfortunately not to be once the movie content owners decided to hike their licensing prices or outright deny Netflix in favor of starting their own streaming services.
It's kind of understandable, once everyone realized that Netflix was a threat to the content owners (too much power over them, similar to what iTunes had over music companies back in the day - the movie companies learned their lesson from the music companies). Netflix also realized this and that the content owners were also a threat to them and started investing massively in producing their own exclusive content as a defense.
The result, at least for us, was our rejoining our local DVD/Bluray rental store. We were very lucky that they were still around and had a great selection of the movies we wanted to watch. The selection of movies is night and day - Netflix has 10% of the movies we want to watch and the local store has maybe 80% or more.
Before you say that we could also do the Netflix disc rental service, we used to have that but ended up paying through the nose for each individual rental because of how long we kept them. Also, I don't think even Netflix disc rental selection compares to the local store anymore. Besides, it feels better (and it's in our best interest) to support a local small business rather than a multinational corporation.
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Not just streaming (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't just streaming. I use disc service also and now have over a dozen moves waiting in my queue with "Unknown" as the availability. Some for over a YEAR NOW. Most aren't even obscure, like Matrix Revolutions and Gladiator. Really? Some dork broke/lost/stole a disc and now Netflix won't even replace it with at least one copy???
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I had the same thing. So I compared my unwatched DVD list to the local library online catalog and 98% were there! So I rented the missing 2% and cancelled DVD rental. The city library catalog is just ok but the Santa Clara County Libraries are terrific. AND they take requests for new purchases,. Up to 20 DVDs at a time, crazy
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My library does DVD rentals also. Hollywood can't stop them because once they buy the disc, they are free to do with it as they please. They can rent it out for free to thousands of people without giving Hollywood a single extra cent.
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>"Weird. You must mean Gladiator from 1992, because the Russel Crowe one is available."
Yes, the original mega-hit.
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What's weird about Faster Pussycat... ? Thelma and Louise probably wouldn't have happened if not for that flick.
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Re:Not just streaming (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't just streaming. I use disc service also and now have over a dozen moves waiting in my queue with "Unknown" as the availability.
I currently have about 80 movies in the "Unknown" availability section, and you're right, plenty of them are not in any way small or obscure. Several of them have literally been "Unknown" for over five years. I even have one that was released in 2005 and it's still unknown availability.
However, it's even worse than that. Since the beginning of 2018 (almost on the dot, Jan 1st), even the movies that ARE in the supposedly-available part of the disc queue, they all list as "Short wait" on my queue, rather than actually available to ship immediately.
I don't know what Netflix's definition of a "short" wait is, but I haven't received any of those since the start of the year. It reached the point that, if I wanted to actually GET any disc service I'm fucking paying for (yeah, even if they don't ship you anything, you still pay), I had to review my streaming queue and add all those movies to my disc queue too. Wouldn't you know, streamable movies are all available for immediate-ship as discs too. No "short wait" on any of those.
The timing of this right at the start of the year makes me feel like this was something deliberate, their latest attempt to sabotage the disc service to justify ending it. I mean I can see a lot of people having that thought, "Why pay for disc service when all I'm receiving are movies I could just stream anyway?" I don't know if it's different for anyone else, but I sure can't get any non-streamable movies in the last two months.
Re:Not just streaming (Score:4, Insightful)
I would guess that Netflix has closed a lot of distribution centers for discs and has drastically changed their disc acquisition and replacement rates, which results in a smaller number of discs available to remaining disc customers.
IMHO, the dream was the entire movie universe was available -- you were no longer limited by the local stores limited inventory. Now I guess that's over.
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I think it's just frustrating nobody can seem to make decent money *and* provide a comprehensive video library (on disc OR streaming).
I had high hopes for Netflix's big push into content creation, but so far it's been lower quality than I had hoped. There are a few gems, but there's a lot of minor cable network level stuff, too.
I just don't understand how or why the collective back catalog of motion pictures is so darn hard to view at any price. I realize there are the usually greed-based licensing issues
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I would guess that Netflix did in fact do this, in part due to the USPS consolidation of sorting operations a number of years ago.
In Ohio during Netflix's disc peak my mail carrier looked like a Netflix delivery agent, with an armload of red envelopes every day.
Netflix opened new centers to reduce turn-around time (it worked, too). The one nearest me was in Toledo.
Now all of Ohio's mail is sorted in Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincinatti. There's no reason to maintain any Ohio facilities outside of these loca
Buy them... (Score:2)
Seriously. My daughter started watching Men in Black on Netflix.... she went to resume it the next day, and it was gone. Poof. Not on Netflix anymore.
I looked online and found the trilogy brand new on DVD for $8 shipped. Done deal!
You can also go to used bookstores/craigslist/garage sales, etc. Lots of people dumping DVDs for cheap. Don't forget your public library!
I don't subscribe to the whole "bragging rights" of seeing latest and greatest movies. I don't miss anything by being patient.
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I have had no problems getting the movies I wanted to watch (Except for Vampire's Kiss, which I have a morbid curiosity of).
My problem has been with broken discs, and you don't find out about the breakage until half-way through the movie. In fact, the last FOUR discs I have gotten from Netflix have all had playback errors. I tried on multiple devices too, since if a player suddenly can't play back a lot of discs, then the player is often at fault. Nope, it's just Netflix.
Having TV shows is better than movies (Score:2)
This is probably a good move. I'd rather watch older TV shows than movies any day. Usually, I already have the bluray of a movie or I've seen it in a theater long before Netflix gets it on their network. And if I like a movie, I'll spend the $20 to have a permanent copy of it. I would never trust Netflix or any streaming service to keep it around forever.
Older TV Shows however are almost impossible to find to buy or are horrendously expensive to get all the seasons. Having them on Netflix makes it very e
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I've had a list of about 20 movies in my 'Saved' list that have unknown availability dates. And I've had that same list (more or less) for a few years. Every once in a while, I just go online and buy my own DVD/BluRay.
I have run into a few movies that genuinely have never been released to DVD in the USA. Oddly, they were available from European sources. And with a region code hacked player, that's fine with me.
Poor quality movies (Score:2)
Most of the movies they have left are pretty poor quality movies that you'd find in the bargain bin at Walmart.
I think the movie studios may be shooting themselves in the foot on this -- most of the recent movies i've seen on Netflix suck, which makes me less likely to even venture to a theater to see a first-run movie. Since I watch Netflix instead of TV, I don't see ads for new movies, and I don't see them in the theater so I have little idea what new movies are out.
So I'm kind of living in a Netflix movi
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Trash. (Score:3, Insightful)
Disney would have to offer more than Netflix and cheaper for me to consider them. I like Netflix and I am totally against the way the movie cartels are trying to recreate the very thing I hated and the very thing Netflix disrupted - packaged silos of content requiring multiple channels for huge subscription rates. I've got a mortgage, I need a new car and many other things I need to spend my money on before I go into this frivolous bullshit and make multimillionaires, who pander to social causes without helping, richer. The entertainment industry is a fucking parasite of professional liars and perverts. Fuck them.
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Disney's problem is that they made a handful of good cartoons 50 years ago, and are still coasting on that reputation.
Who would have tought (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me predict the future again. Netflix will raise prices, and offer crappier content. This will happen as long as they win more market share. If they become a dominant player, they will be just as ugly as cable and satellite.
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And as it gets more and more difficult to obtain a movie through legal means, people will pirate more and more as the pirates ONCE AGAIN deliver a superior product.
Or, you know. A product.
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When you have entities that exist purely to make profit, of course that will happen. What a prediction man!
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Lots more choice.
This. Lots more choice at Netflix. Even more at the public library. Netflix's streaming movie catalog sucks.
Building my own Netflix (Score:1)
Problem is finding content for sale I give two shits about. Will gladly pay for DVD or Blu Ray of anything worth watching. I've spent hours ... days of collective time browsing through Netflix/Blu Ray/DVD indexes and the overwhelming majority of it I couldn't give a shit about.
Paying for new content after it's generated is way cheaper for me than a Netflix subscription and I get to keep it forever without availability/streaming/quality bullshit.
As it is I'm finding myself applying algorithms to clean up v
Lack of content???? (Score:2)
That said, yeah - there's fewer movies, but it's hardly noticeable though.
As far as TV-series goes, really wish they'd bring all of Star Hunter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starhunter) back.
Plex to the rescue (Score:2)
But I WANT a one stop shop like itunes or other streaming services.
If they won't take my money I'll make my own using Plex.
size (Score:1)
Stargate SG1, Warehouse 13, Eureka, etc. (Score:1)
None of these are available any longer. If they do have 3x the number of TV shows that they used to, they don't have the ones I want. :-(
I came for the movies... (Score:2)
... if Netflix keeps moving in the direction it's going, I won't be staying for the TV.
Analytics (Score:2)
It's almost like they know what the overwhelming amount of the audience wants.
I like to walk around walmart and bitch about how terrible the customer service is too, so I get it.
Not Just streaming (Score:1)