The end of Lovefilm - anyone care?

[Virgo76]

It's a shame. I used to rely on Lovefiim and before that Screen Select for DVDs for around a decade or so on and off. Netflix is okay but I'm not sure the standard of my film home viewing has improved since I switched. I suspect the opposite in fact.
Still, at least we're another step closer towards nobody having to move physically at all to do anything which can surely only be a good thing.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I help out with a film club that is supplied by them. I don't know/particularly care what this means for the future of the club.

[Neomod]

There was a hugely better choice than on Netflix but I jumped ship when amazon took over.

Oh and Claude, we'll make our own pastries in future. We won't need your services from here on in if that's your attitude.

[Pranet]

I do. I still have a subscription, for various reasons. The short version is that, despite renting DVDs more at less at random by post being a ridiculous thing to do in this day and age, the streaming services whenever I look into them seem so bad that renting DVDs more or less at random still seems like a better idea.

I'll start a Cinema Paradiso subscription when Lovefilm ends.

[Rolf Lundgren]

I met this news with a shrug of the shoulders too but then I live in a town with good internet speeds and think nothing of streaming. For people who live in villages and generally places with crap internet that they feature on The One Show this would be a real blow. A sense of the life moving forward and being left behind.

[Pranet]

It isn't so much the streaming speeds for me, it is more the content. Wider choice than the streaming services.

[Phil_A]

Does this mean I shouldn't bother returning the one disc I ever had from them and which has been sitting on my desk since December?

[Kelvin]

I met this news with a shrug of the shoulders too but then I live in a town with good internet speeds and think nothing of streaming. For people who live in villages and generally places with crap internet that they feature on The One Show this would be a real blow. A sense of the life moving forward and being left behind.

Remember this as the point where Brexit 2 started.

[Custard]

I was really into it about ten years ago, but then one too many scratched discs came and I gave up on it. Was a lovely little service for a while, though. Really easy to use and very handy. Was exciting when a new DVD or game would plop through the door

Netflix, Amazon, etc has no where near the same amount of choice. We really should be at a point where most films and TV series are available to stream, but we're not

That said, I own thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays, so I have enough to be getting on with

Sad news, but was expected really

[Wet Blanket]

I chucked it when Amazon bought them out and announced that from then on they'd be charging more to allow you fewer discs.

But for a while it was the best film club going. I used it mainly to catch up on classics and obscurities; I had one of those 1001 films to see before you die books and David Thompson's Have You Seen and would base my list out of random choices from both. Only very rarely would they not have what you were looking for. I even noticed that if you added films to the list that weren't in the official library because they'd gone out of print, they'd still sometimes turn up.

By comparison, both Prime and Netflix seem to have a motley selection of blockbusters and garage-forecourt shit. But to be honest I also gorged so heavily on LoveFilm that I'D started to grow sick of movies altogether.

[Shit Good Nose]

I was really into it about ten years ago, but then one too many scratched discs came and I gave up on it. Was a lovely little service for a while, though. Really easy to use and very handy. Was exciting when a new DVD or game would plop through the door

Netflix, Amazon, etc has no where near the same amount of choice. We really should be at a point where most films and TV series are available to stream, but we're not

That said, I own thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays, so I have enough to be getting on with

Sad news, but was expected really

Pretty much what I was going to post.

Mind you, both Netflix and Amazon typically add more stuff than they remove, and as storage space increases one assumes that the respective catalogues will increase.  Streaming also has a completely different minefield of rights issues compared with physical media as well, so that's going to have an influence on things.

But everything's going to be digitised and available to stream at some point - we are still in the relatively early stages of it taking over from physical media.

[thecuriousorange]

It's annoying how, with audio, Spotify has close to all popular music ever, but just a handful of films are spread separately over different movie services. Which one has the biggest library of worthwhile things? Roll on the inevitable "one big service". I'm all for physical formats being done away with, but they can't expect the public to pay for more than one film thingy.

[JoeyBananaduck]

It's annoying how, with audio, Spotify has close to all popular music ever, but just a handful of films are spread separately over different movie services. Which one has the biggest library of worthwhile things? Roll on the inevitable "one big service". I'm all for physical formats being done away with, but they can't expect the public to pay for more than one film thingy.

It is a ballache. Netflix is great if you like stuff from the last 20 years or so but shite if you love your '40s-'70s movies, which I do. Still their original content and shows sort of makes up for it. I don't get why Warners, 20th Century, Universal and MGM couldn't get together and say "hey, this streaming thing seems to be a bit popular" and do it themselves all together, a huge library but I suppose I'm dreaming. Hollywoodonline.com or something. Never happen.

Lovefilm was a godsend back when I didn't have a stable internet connection. An interim thing that was bound to die off but good while it lasted.

[notjosh]

Look, here's a picture from my peak DVD rental days, when I was subscribed to 4 different services. Great times.



There is a reasonable amount of choice available online if you look across various different services - including stuff like Vudu and Flicker Alley - but disc rental is still your best bet for anything pre-1975. Your other options are to spend a lot of money buying discs outright, or just breaking the law every time you want to watch a quality movie. I do the latter and it's great.

[biggytitbo]

I still rent videos from the local petrol station. They have all of the Porkies films.

[Gulftastic]

Glad the cunts have gone under. It took three fucking months to cancel my subscription, and many, many phone calls to get those three months refunded.

[newbridge]

It's annoying how, with audio, Spotify has close to all popular music ever, but just a handful of films are spread separately over different movie services. Which one has the biggest library of worthwhile things? Roll on the inevitable "one big service". I'm all for physical formats being done away with, but they can't expect the public to pay for more than one film thingy.

Is Filmstruck available in the UK? It's quite good for having more interesting/quality films than I have time to watch. Then again it's not as ideal for finding specific films you have in mind in advance.

[Rolf Lundgren]

Glad the cunts have gone under. It took three fucking months to cancel my subscription, and many, many phone calls to get those three months refunded.

They were sneaky bastards with that. Amazon Prime are the leaders in it nowadays. I accidentally signed up for a free month and they kindly let me know that if I didn't cancel it in the month then they'd charged me for a full year. No wonder they've got so much money.

[wooders1978]

Loved it when you could also rent PS3 games - saved me a fortune
Also had buggars time cancelling though

[Neomod]

I don't think they have gone under as they are owned by Amazon (bought in 2011). Amazon just seem to have decided that their poor streaming service is a good replacement.

[drdad]

This is terrible!  With LoveFilm you could get hold of more or less everything with one subscription.  Now you would have to sign up to 5 or 6 streaming services and still not have as much choice. Going to try Cinema Paradiso. Long live physical media!

[Smeraldina Rima]

Is Filmstruck available in the UK? It's quite good for having more interesting/quality films than I have time to watch. Then again it's not as ideal for finding specific films you have in mind in advance.

It's not available in the UK unless you try to use it with a VPN. The choice of films looks excellent if I've understood their layout correctly, especially with the Criterion films added. How annoying. Could anyone recommend the next best thing for UK residents? There's a much smaller selection on MUBI and the BFI Plus player.

[Shit Good Nose]

Your other options are to spend a lot of money buying discs outright

Not necessarily - used from Amazon and eBay are your friend, particularly with older films, you can pick up a shit-load of stuff for less than £2.  The main problem with buying discs outright is the space that they then take up, but you could always sell them on again or take them to a charity shop after you've watched them.

It's not available in the UK unless you try to use it with a VPN. The choice of films looks excellent if I've understood their layout correctly, especially with the Criterion films added. How annoying. Could anyone recommend the next best thing for UK residents? There's a much smaller selection on MUBI and the BFI Plus player.

Both Turner and Criterion have long had a nightmare with rights issues in the UK - TCM UK is a very different channel than its US big brother, and it's only very very recently (like within the last couple of years) that Criterion have set up a stall in the UK and managed to clear a small number of films for release on blu ray, so don't expect Filmstruck to feature anywhere over here any time soon, at least not in the same guise as it is in the States.  It's all down to different distributors and partner studios for different countries.

MUBI and BFI are about the only similar things we have (at the moment), but BFI will always be fairly limited because (I think I'm right in saying) they can only show the films that they own the rights to.  Longer term, MUBI is probably the most likely to rival Filmstruck and similar US services, but I suspect that both Amazon and Netflix will increase their respective back catalogues before too long - when I joined Netflix last year I don't think they had any films made before the mid 50s, but looking now their catalogue goes back to the early 20s (albeit in small number).

For the time being, Amazon is probably the best place for older films, although a lot of them won't be included with Prime and will have a rental charge.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Cheers.

[steveh]

BFI will always be fairly limited because (I think I'm right in saying) they can only show the films that they own the rights to.

There are films on BFI Player+ (aka BFI The Subscription Service on Amazon) that they have licensed the rights to just for the service rather than through owning them or having rights through having funded a film or distributed it. I like the service a lot and usually find at least one thing to watch each week, though the amount of new material added each month is small so I can see it getting to a point where I've watched everything I want.

Amazon Prime has a ton of crud on it - anyone can put their films on there and get a small fee when they're watched - but there is good stuff too. They have the streaming rights to Studio Canal in the UK so there's some good recent and older French films and material from the old Thorn EMI library. There's also a lot of Shaw Brothers stuff from Hong Kong and Renown Pictures have been making available some of their library of old UK B-movies. I've found a few quirky, low-budget indie productions I've liked too, of the kind Netflix used to have but have now ditched.

Filmbox Live might be worth looking at and is available as an Amazon Channel too. The Arrow Video, MGM, Universal and Shudder channels on Amazon have reasonable movie selections as well, though at roughly a fiver a time they all add up.

[Paaaaul]

Filmbox Live might be worth looking at and is available as an Amazon Channel too. The Arrow Video, MGM, Universal and Shudder channels on Amazon have reasonable movie selections as well, though at roughly a fiver a time they all add up.

If you're into horror I would definitely recommend Shudder. They have a good catalogue and are constantly adding to it.
Arrow Video is a bit limp though. The catalogue is pretty small, the stuff they stream is the lower-mid level stuff that they have put out on DVD/ Blu, and the turnover has been very slow.

[notjosh]

You need to have a quite specific taste in film, but if you enjoy 1940s RKO comedies then there's always something on iPlayer from the BBC2 Saturday morning slot. And there's sometimes interesting stuff on Talking Pictures, Movies 4 Men and Film4. Essentially we've gone back to the 90s where you have to sit down with the TV guide at the start of the week and decide what to record.

Or you can buy most of this stuff on secondhand DVD for the price it would have cost to rent it.

[Shit Good Nose]

There are films on BFI Player+ (aka BFI The Subscription Service on Amazon) that they have licensed the rights to just for the service rather than through owning them or having rights through having funded a film or distributed it.

Yes, this is what I meant but didn't put as succinctly.  Like the Cassavetes films, for example.

There's also a lot of Shaw Brothers stuff from Hong Kong and Renown Pictures have been making available some of their library of old UK B-movies. I've found a few quirky, low-budget indie productions I've liked too, of the kind Netflix used to have but have now ditched.

Netflix also have a revolving door of Hong Kong stuff, usually in their properly remastered and re-done (read "corrected) subs Fortune/Mega Star releases.  They had the whole of the 36th Chamber series on there until recently.  There's also loads of quirky stuff still on Netflix - just looking through some of my list now, I've got:
The Believers
Cooley High
Hollywood Shuffle
Flashback (late night BBC staple throughout the 90s)
The Molly Maguires
Street Smart
Carandiru
Triumph of the Spirit
The Hot Spot
Creature
Bad Company
The Pope of Greenwich Village
The Mighty Quinn

amongst loads of others.



But, as you say, it all adds up.  If money were no object you'd sign up to everything as there's very little crossover, but if you're limited to just one subscription service (be it because of time or financial issues), then it does really come down, for the time being at least, to one of Netflix or Amazon.  And then it's very much a subjective rather than objective preference between the two.  I plumped for Netflix because everything that's on there is in HD and included in your subscription without any extra charge.  On Amazon it's far too easy to accidentally pick something that isn't included in Prime, and all of a sudden you've paid an extra £3 for something in SD.  I also think Netflix has a better stamp of quality anime and documentaries (if they're your thing).  But after those, they're both on a fairly equal footing.  Although Star Wars and Marvel fans may want to note that Netflix (who currently have the subscription streaming rights for both) may well lose that sweetener if Disney's own subscription service goes live here in the UK.

It's also worth mentioning that there are a SHIT LOAD of films in full for free on YouTube, these days often in very watchable quality (and obviously they don't have the 10 minute maximum video length issue now). 

[newbridge]

It's also worth mentioning that there are a SHIT LOAD of films in full for free on YouTube, these days often in very watchable quality (and obviously they don't have the 10 minute maximum video length issue now).

I'm actually astounded by how many movies, even old and sometimes obscure titles, I can find in relatively high quality either on YouTube or by Googling for a link to a streaming version (just make sure you have AdBlock enabled). I haven't bothered with torrents for years.

Obviously it's much nicer to have a dedicated HD streaming service or an iTunes rental, but a lot of movies just aren't available that way.

[Pranet]

You need to have a quite specific taste in film, but if you enjoy 1940s RKO comedies then there's always something on iPlayer from the BBC2 Saturday morning slot. And there's sometimes interesting stuff on Talking Pictures, Movies 4 Men and Film4. Essentially we've gone back to the 90s where you have to sit down with the TV guide at the start of the week and decide what to record.

Or you can buy most of this stuff on secondhand DVD for the price it would have cost to rent it.

Or, as has been said before, if lovefilm was really useful for you try Cinema Paradiso as it seems to be roughly the same sort of thing.