I am old enough to remember when the wife would call me at work on a Friday and say hey, stop by the video store and get a movie for tonight and I'll stop and get wine and take out. What was special was the "Dave" at the video rental place (it wasn't blockbuster but whatever). I don't recall the guy's name, but he always remembered me and what we liked and had great suggestions and sometimes if you said, nah but how about something completely different, he would always find us something great. Or usually (one time he recommended Eraser head, we still laugh about that one, so even though it was a dud, great memory).
I get it, today's AI is pretty good, meh, not really, but it would be hard to beat my old "Dave". Maybe someday.
I feel like the difference isn't so much that you have AI recommendations or that of a human, but rather the entire environment is fundamentally different.
With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue coupled with ease of access to get ratings/critiques/etc. There is so many things to choose from and it's so easy to just say "no" to a suggestion, and likely that thing you said "no" to will still be there tomorrow. Why not just keep browsing?
With the video store of old it's so much more purposeful. You pick up a movie, and you feel incentivized to watch it because you literally just paid for it. You paid for that one Movie, not access to the entire store (which you also need to physically go to, and then come all the way back home with a tape or dvd). Also the ubiquity of movie/tv reviews was not as present so you don't necessarily feel like you're making a bad choice.
> With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue…
I got curious, so let's look it up.
Googling, it looks like maybe Netflix has 17,000 titles total in in it's collection internationally in april 2022, but only a portion of those are available in a given market. One page from 2021 said the US catalog was ~5K titles, but I bet it's bigger in 2022 as the overall catalog has grown as much as 30% maybe. So I dunno, let's say somewhere between 5K and 8K titles available in USA market netflix?
How many titles did a typical Blockbuster carry? From 1988: "Blockbuster, for instance, operates superstores that stock roughly 10,000 tapes (about 6,500 different titles), compared to the 1,500 to 2,500 a typical independent offers." —https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/01/business/a-tight-squeeze-...
(Blockbuster didn't have much/any TV, while that's potentially a big part of Netflix though?)
So it's the same ballpark anyway. Netflix doesn't actually have a whole lot more titles than a Blockbuster did.
Blockbuster carried the latest movies from all the studios. Everything newest and most desirable. They had a smattering of classics and art house and older genre films, but mostly it was about everything latest and greatest.
Netflix streaming seemed like that at first, but better! Now, they have a tiny slice of content. And as a content-producer, they seem willing to throw money at anything B-list.
Meanwhile, the studios became more risk averse as people started preferring to watch at home. Then theaters shut down and studios became more risk averse. And Netflix and Amazon arose and started playing studio games and studios became even more risk averse.
That trajectory of fear is mirrored in the content. The 1970s were known for directorial freedom and risk-taking. The 70s gave us Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Star Wars, Animal House, Annie Hall, Rocky, Halloween, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, MASH, and more - not all high art but all complete gems. Every decade since, we've seen a gradual progression toward samey-ness.
Exactly. Blockbuster had all the movies the average person would be able to know about. Any movie that was advertised and known by the general public could be picked up at blockbuster and watched. It's not like that now. Now I have to Google which streaming service can I stream this or that on and then go to that service. It's as if there was a paramount movie store on one side of town, a Disney one on the other, MGM on the other. It's like car dealerships now, it used to be like grocery stores.
I’ve been to a lot of Blockbusters and no way did any of them carry 6500 movies. Maybe 1000 tops. The majority of shelves were 20 boxes of the same tape/dvd for the most popular titles + 1-3 for other titles
It's just your usual nostalgia. I lived in the age before internet and it was shit.
Then Kazaa happened and I could finally download Naruto and Gundam.
For me (my 2 cents), I think it's more than nostalgia. It's about community. It's about face to face interaction. I recently listened to a piece on NPR about lunches and working in France and why it's important. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103566695/lunching-work-when...
The part I took away was how everyone sat together for lunch and you might find yourself at a table with a stranger who is not in your field but you just talk and you create community.
And face to face is different than online. I do both and for me the face to face interaction is what makes life enjoyable.
That, in a nutshell, is what is valuable about going into a Blockbuster (or any store, restaurant, etc ) meeting people and building relationships.
Take this comment for instance; if I were to have this conversation face to face, it would be a completely different experience. The other party could hear the tone of my voice, see the expression on my face. We could shake hands, slap each other on the shoulder, and share a drink together.
I can’t overstate the value of the lunch hour in France, it’s by far the best part of my day and has made my PhD bearable, enjoyable even despite the difficult pandemic environment.
It’s allowed me to learn from colleagues, make friends and create a sense of belonging, my lab isn’t just an abstract organization but a group of interesting people.
I agree with you, I miss it. And some of this is pandemic-inspired too, really missed human contact then, and in the USA I worry some of it is never coming back.
And yet, my city DOES have an independent/artsy local video rental store, that I'm sure has all sorts of things I'd like watching. I don't go to it. I don't even have a DVD player or VCR. I stream.
Don't get me wrong. I stream too. I think technology is great. I'm only a Luddite when my code won't compile. I do a lot of things on line. At least 8 hours of my day is developing software from my home, so my only interaction with my coworkers is through software. And I enjoy forums like Hacker News. And it's really convenient to instantly get a video.
But I also love going to the book store with my kids and thumbing through the books and videos and music. Picking them up, smelling them (helpless romantic I guess), talking about them.
The other day, a random person came up to me and shared a memory of her child because of something she overheard me say to my child and it was a great interaction. I felt connected in a way I maybe didn't realize I missed. And it wouldn't have happened (not the same way at least) online.
I'm just reporting the number of titles they had and the number netflix does.
Definitely you can now get access to almost everything that exists from your own home, including things that were hard to find before, for sure. especially if you know how to and are willing to pirate. (You actually can't currently get Naruto or Gundam on netflix us streaming, can you?)
I fully agree but I also think that those “Daves” had something that current recommendation engines do not: an understanding of the many subtle things that make a movie right for you at that moment.
It’s still going to be a while before a recommendation engine takes in to account the kind of day you’ve had, whether anyone else is going to join you, how you and your spouse are doing today, how you want to start the night, how you want to end the night, and so-on. A good staff member can answer all those questions just by looking you in the eyes.
I think it also costs Netflix more to offer high quality films to stream so there is a disincentive to quality and you have to really search sometimes. Blockbuster was more random than efficient/algorithmic like you would find a classic next to a complete dud which was kind of fun.
Going to the video store was organic and analog. Like going to your barista that still insists on using the hand pump espresso machine. Perhaps the human touch still is the best?
It's pretty good at suggesting exactly the same type of movies you've watched before, but not so good at those "but how about something completely different, but something that I'll still like" suggestions, that's where a real human movie buff can help.
I've long pondered building exactly this, an anti-recommendation engine. You'd go through and mark some favorite films or genres, and it'd come back with something great but totally unlike your usual picks.
Foreign flicks not your thing? Try Parasite.
You don't remember what it's like to be an awkward pre-teen? Eighth Grade will remind you.
Not a big action movie person? Maybe you need to watch Die Hard.
Kids movies are just for kids? Spirited Away!
You can't connect with female protagonists? You've got to see The Invisible Man.
Don't find food interesting? Try Tampopo.
Sick of movies which try to make a statement and fall flat? Promising Young Woman.
Most dramas feel too contrived? Marriage Story.
Musicals and plays aren't really your thing? Hamilton.
Just noticed this again today. Spotify vs Hype Machine (browse, then "recommendations" by checking out people who also liked $song). Spotify is somehow stuck on dark, aggressive electronic music for me. It's not the only thing that I like, not even my favorite really.
Music recommendations are even worse than movies, in that they need to take into account what you've just listened to (if I'm listening to a specific genre, I'm unlikely to want something in a very different tempo and style), time of day (at bed time I'll often put on some soft classical music; that doesn't mean I want that every other time because I play it a lot), mood (if I suddenly play 1980's pop, it's probably nostalgia, and suddenly playing new music is not what I want), and at the same time I have preferences, but those are mediated by what I'm currently listening to.
Whenever I try to get a service or other to recommend music they are remarkably bad at this.
Yeah, they're the closest I've been to being happy about recommendations by far, though they too did get into very weird "pockets" of recommendations for me at times (not bad, just very obsessively giving me music from a very small niche of my music interests).
This isn't completely true. What you're talking about are called "echo chambers" or "filter bubbles", and there are ways to make sure they don't negatively impact users.
Additionally, studies have found that (when A/B testing recommender system vs no recommender system) users create their own, more localized "echo chambers" in absence of a recommender. This is measured by the "diversity" of content consumed, which decreases if a user is their own recommender.
Some of you will remember the "Pepsi Challenge" [0] when Pepsi would make commercials about random people tasting unlabeled soft drinks. People usually chose Pepsi in taste tests because it was sweeter than Coke. What the commercials didn't show was that most people actually bought Coke because Pepsi is too sweet for many people when they drink a whole bottle.
Movie and music recommendation engines seem to work like this. Human tastes are much more complex and multi-dimensional than "This person prefers genre X" but AI systems don't even come close to grasping the subtlety.
I haven't thought about it but most of the movies I've really enjoyed were recommended to me by my dad, girlfriend, or my brother in law. I can't think of anything I really enjoyed from a recommendation algorithm. The last movie I tried I certainly didn't enjoy.
The reality is likely that the algorithms are trying to increase viewership, not quality of views. So they are likely to feed you things that get you to watch another thing, rather than things that are worth watching, leave you satisfied, and off doing something else.
Do Netflix et al inject "noise" into their recommendation engines? Like 1/10 titles are random rather than based on your preferences in order to break out of "local minimums".
What's funny about all this Blockbuster nostalgia is that back in the day they were actually the bad guys. They were the big homogenous corporate chain that drove all the independent stores out of business. One of their key differentiators was to overstock Hollywood blockbusters at the expense of indie films, art films, cult classics etc. and to make sure that the indie stores wouldn't be able to get their hands on the big titles when they first came out.
Blockbuster always had the least interesting inventory of the rental places in our neighborhood and their employees tended to be less knowledgeable, but because they were the only place that was guaranteed to have the latest box office hits, they drove the other stores out of business. Their homogenization and crapification of the video rental industry is what created the opportunity for Netflix's rise -- NFLX's original DVD-by-mail catalog was vast and movie buffs could finally get their hands on the obscure classics they were no longer able to find locally.
the dim back room of the local video store with the curtain over it is what kept some of our local ones in business as long as they did. yes, that porn selection was quite profitable.
When Netflix had the star system, I would get amazing recommendations. I would get a good feeling every time I opened Netflix because I was almost guaranteed a quality movie I would like. After Netflix moved onto thumbs up/down it was never the same and when Netflix started promoting their own shows, it got worse. I'm at the point where I hardly even watch it though I can't say the same for my kids.
Another trip down memory lane. Remember when you could comment on other people's amazon comments? Those comments were the best. I would often scroll through comments until I came to one with a long chain of replies. Then I would really have a good insight on what I may purchase.
Compounded by moving away from massive dvd back catalog to limited streaming options. Not only are the recommendations worse but there is significantly less for them to recommend.
I think what a lot of us are missing is human interaction, especially with strangers. No one is going to reminisce about that time the Netflix algorithm recommended a movie to them. Interactions with others, the stories and sense of community that can come out of it, not to mention building social skills, is being lost.
We're making a better world for consumers, but sometimes I wonder if it's a better world for people.
Eraserhead wasn’t exactly a dud for me but it was deeply discomfiting and disturbing (clearly as intended.) Glad I’ve seen it, but very little interest in seeing it again.
So many times visiting the video store as a kid, we'd get up to the counter and before the info was scanned or logged to the computer, the guy would say to my mum about her choice:
"You borrowed this a couple of months ago."
"Oh yeah. Whoops. I remember now."
Meanwhile a priority row on streaming sites is WATCH IT AGAIN. And I do because the selection is so poor that I'd rather re-watch bits of favourite films over and over.
I think there’s something to be said for the interaction involved in getting a recommendation from a human. An AI might recommend movies just as well as Dave did, but you presumably like Dave and enjoy talking to him about the movies you’ve seen. You don’t get that part of the experience with an AI recommendation.
My friend managed a Video rental shop in the sunset of the the era. I remember him mentioning some trade publication, or magazine from the franchise that told employees ' if you like this movie, you'll probably like this too' kind of information.. Maybe the algorithms were already around back then, just the front end was a bit meatier.
What's the website equivalent of Dave? Surely it has to exist somewhere? Maybe it's not personalized for you but it's close enough for a lot of people?
I've visited a TON of taste-making sites and some used to be OK at suggesting what to watch, but it's been tough to find good ones lately, and I'd pay good money for somebody to sort through all of the cruft for me.
You've got your "decider" and other sites, but something more personal, or at least human curated in terms of "here is the canon of this genre" or "if you liked this you'll 1000% like this other thing"
IMO website equivalent of this is cinephile forums/trackers. You will get tons of high quality recommendations and find interesting non-mainstream content.
Now I'm thinking of the massive amount of content locked up in VHS tapes that future generations will probably never see due to copyright + lack of resources. I bet there's some absolute gems there.
I was very surprised when I walked by a video rental store the other night. Most of them are gone now, of course, but apparently a few of them still survive.
That's kind of both the upside and the downside to capitalism, I guess.
If you wanted to pay old Blockbuster prices (adjusted for inflation) for x5 good, and personalised, Netflix recommendations a month, I'm sure what you have left after the subscription itself would find a bunch of movie buffs online happy to earn $20-50/month (I'm too lazy to figure out what a typical old monthly cost was, or would be after inflation) by learning what you've liked in the past and thinking of recommendations based on whichever platform you're subscribed to.
And equally, some shops still exist selling films physically, though relatively few because most people don't want to pay more.
Hey, maybe there's a startup idea there - connecting subscribers with paid individual recommenders. But I'll stick to not paying extra for members of staff I never asked recommendations of, personally.
I get it, today's AI is pretty good, meh, not really, but it would be hard to beat my old "Dave". Maybe someday.