Because it does and it has. They have very few newer titles and the older ones come and go regularly meaning that you can't count on a title being there later. On top of that you'll find TV series where they have only a portion of the series available for streaming.

I regularly find that the only option is through the mail. Well, I did until I dumped them for Blockbuster.

The streaming service is really the red headed step child of Netflix, it's beyond me why they think it's worth as much as the DVD service is.

EDIT: Also realize that it's about to get a lot smaller when all the Starz content gets yanked in a few months.

Actually, Blockbuster Canada did not go bankrupt. Its parent company did, and in order to pay creditors, BB Canada was essentially shut down, liquidated and closed.

The streaming in canada is only a few thousand titles if I remember right. But there's plenty of good stuff on there and still worth it, assuming you don't have bandwidth caps (make sure you enable the lower quality version - it's still very watchable). I had a two month subscription earlier when I was bedridden and easily got my money's worth - with plenty I still wanted to watch after seeing like 200 movies & tvshows.

For stuff they don't have, try your library :)

As far as making a US account - they do some geo ip stuff. So I'm not sure you would be able to.

It's not too bad if you only have it for a couple months, but it becomes pretty obvious how thin the pickings are after a while.I would assume that happens more quickly with a Canadian account.

What new Star Trek movie? All I saw was a series of lens flares and the worst black hole physics evah!

Erhermah... yes, that is the long and short of it. Thanks.

It was actually pretty easy. I signed up for the free trial with the Unblock-Us.com service and (surprisingly) I can access the US selection of videos with my Canadian account because Netflix thinks I'm traveling in the US. It only applies to my home network and there may be other, better options. I'll look into it further later tonight.

I would like to use a service like Unblock-Us, but is it even legal?

Oh yeah well I say no it doesn't suck and no it hasn't! There has been plenty of high quality stuff on there that has lasted me for the years that I have had the service. Get out of here with your " it's not too bad if you only have it for a couple of months". Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Coupling, Arrested Development, Doctor Who, Weeds, Battlestar Galactica and 30 Rock combined will last you like 2 months alone, and that's just a small sample . Also saying the tv shows have "just a portion" makes it sound like most of the episodes are missing, which really isn't true. The newer shows that are still on the air don't have the latest season episodes obviously, but they usually have up till the season before. If the show is older and off the air, most of the time they have all of them.


as to why somebody would think it's worth as much as the dvd service, I don't know what's so hard to figure out. You have over a thousand movies of choice available anytime, compared to having having to wait in the mail for a a couple of dvds per week. With the streaming you can go without turning on a tv channel ( besides for some obvious shows like news, sports etc) for months... hell maybe even years if you had to. There are advantages and disadvantages of both.. Of couse the overall streaming selection isn't as big and as modern as the dvd section or cable tv , but who would expect that anyway for the price of $9.99 a month? ( I know the price has changed, but I'm going by the past price because you said the service has always sucked. I'm also not going to talk about how you think it might suck in the future, because that doesn't have anything to with saying it has always sucked in the past either)

as for shows/movies coming and going, just check the notes on your instant queue that indicate when the shows are going to be removed, and make sure you watch them by then. yeah they did get rid of a bunch of them at once a few months ago, but still my queue is steadily filled with over 200 movies/shows that i consider worth watching. If something gets removed and I really want to watch it or rewatch it, well then I can order it through the mail. I know the price went up $6 a month for both services but I still think it's worth it.

Their streaming selection is good so long you aren't expecting new releases. Especially if you don't keep up to date on TV all the time. I've been watching Breaking Bad and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia this month.

I switch between streaming and dvd subs every couple months now since I can't get them together for 10 anymore.

It is legal but Netflix may or may not consider it a violation of their terms: You have to try it though, you don't know what you're missing. Also, United Statesers have this thing called Hulu.com that is worth checking out.

I think the Netflix streaming service is going to see an ever-increasing number of titles added to it...I don't think it will ever include the entire DVD catalog, but Streaming is the direction Netflix is trying to move in and push everyone towards. They simply make a bigger profit off Streaming than they do having to pay for the discs to be mailed back and forth.

We had to make a decision as to which we were going to go with when they changed the pricing...for now we decided to stay with the DVDs, since the catalog is bigger. I have noticed that older discs are coming in worse condiditon (they have never done a great job verifying the quality of discs but it seems to have gotten even worse) and it looks as though some older titles simply aren't being replaced at all.

There's no question that Netflix has made some of the stupidest decisions I've ever seen a business make in this past year...I think they believed they were the 800 lb gorrilla that could do just about anything they wanted and customers would just take it, and then were completely surprised when so many customers said "We don't actually NEED your service to live" and just dropped them. They keep making decisions the way they have this year and they will quickly find themselves joining AOL in the footnotes of the history of the internet.

I live in the U.S. BTW...so I'm not too sure how the disc quality and service is in Canada.

There is no disc exchange service; only streaming.

Does anyone know if there are plans to expand the service? Maybe even specifically to Germany?

The Unblock-Us.com service apparently works worldwide and it is free to try.

I stand by my previous statement. The selection stinks out loud. Much of the time they'll be missing seasons from episodes. I rarely if ever find anything that's worth watching on the instant queue and the vast majority of it is TV shows. I don't personally watch any of those series so that's not going to do anything for me and even when I do watch a series they have they'll be missing seasons that are only available on DVD. Eureka comes instantly to mind.

You're being somewhat obtuse if you haven't noticed how positively anemic the streaming selection is, they pay very little overhead to stream those titles to the home, and they provide a much smaller selection, soon to get even smaller, and yet they expect to be paid as much for that as for the much larger DVD catalog.

I'm not sure how on earth that could be anything other than a rip off.

Yes the instant queue notes that, but in the period of time where I was following it, the options coming in really weren't any better. And with a few changes since then the selection is definitely getting worse. I personally have better things to do with my money than pay for a service which in any given month may or may not have anything worth watching.

That actually kind of sucks!

As I said however, I do think they are trying to increase the size of the Streaming Library. In fact, I vaugely remember reading an article earlier this year (before the price restructuring) that Streaming only is the way they want to eventually go. With the bad customer response to the price increses though, who knows what their plans are...or even if they have a plan...often seems like monkeys are making the decisions at Netflix.

I will agree with others who have stated that the library of Television shows is pretty good and it's a great way to catch up on things you may have missed. So many of the most popular shows now are things you need to watch from the very 1st episode to really be able to follow.