Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Sorting and Organizing the Netflix Queue

I am baffled by the fact that Netflix can’t get their sh*t together and make it easier to organize your queue.  Currently, every single freaking movie you drop into your instant watch simply goes on a numbered list, and there is NO WAY to organize them other than by numbers on the list.  It SUCKS having to scroll through 300+ movies to find the one you want to watch.

I understand why I have to deal with this on my Panasonic BluRay player (Panasonic needs to pull their heads from their collective asses and make the VieraCast Netflix interface more user-friendly –scrolling across one horizontal line of titles is a massive joke), but the fact that Netflix, the company in charge of everything, can’t get it right… well that’s just unacceptable.

Seriously?!  You figured out how to license and stream video/film media to the entire U.S. via the internet, but you can’t figure out how to let your users organize a g*dd*mn list?!

Here are some VERY EASY solutions that I can think of right off the top of my head.

  • FOLDERS!
  • Sort by genre, actor, director, etc.
  • At LEAST give us sort by star rating
  • Display the covers in a grid instead of a list (like when you are suggesting things to me… you’re already DOING THIS ELSEWHERE! Why not do it on my queue page so I can see more titles at once?)

Right now the best bet for sorting your queue is creating multiple profiles, but if you’re using a device this requires logging in to a different profile (read: pain in the a**) when you want to look at a different list.  You also can’t transfer selections across profiles, so you would need to log into the appropriate profile to add a movie to that profile.

Some people are using a GreaseMonkey script to be able to sort by title, genre, length, star rating, etc.  It’s so easy (for someone who knows code, not necessarily the average Netflix user), so why wouldn’t Netflix implement something like this?!

It also seems crazy that there are other websites organizing titles better than Netflix itself.  Try InstantWatcher.com for an example of what I’m talking about (no organizing your queue, but a great way to find things you’re looking for as well as suggestions and various groupings for instant watch titles).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Consider using a greasemonkey script like this:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/35183