Flixable, a new, slim Netflix title search and browsing site
January 27, 2018 8:49 AM   Subscribe

Flixable is a new, streamlined Netflix search site, built by redditor CrazedEll, which makes it easy to see what's new and what's leaving, separated by movies and TV, and is currently able to search titles available in Canada, Finland, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Alternative Netflix search sites: New On Netflix (for UK, USA, Canada, and NZ/AUS), Justwatch (also searches other services, but no country filters)

Flixable was created by Ville Salminen, who told Polygon “I wanted to create a site that could be beneficial for Netflix subscribers when deciding what to watch on a movie night, but I was mostly thinking of my parents, who had been complaining about decision difficulties.”
posted by filthy light thief (50 comments total) 88 users marked this as a favorite
 
The site also features IMDb ratings, but that may go away as apparently IMDb wants $50,000 per year for Flixable to query IMDb.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 AM on January 27, 2018


Reliable old Instantwatcher seems to have a more complete list of titles and features (trailers, etc.)
posted by Clustercuss at 9:08 AM on January 27, 2018 [6 favorites]


But it is US-centric with a Canadian sub-site.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:17 AM on January 27, 2018


JustWatch supports country selection at the very start, just not farther down the browsing/search process?
posted by JauntyFedora at 9:27 AM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


The useful thing about JustWatch, for me, is being able to do a search for a film or TV show I'd like to see, and being able to see on what streaming services (if any) it's available on.
posted by Merus at 9:42 AM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


ahah! i have always been amazed at how hard it is to search netflix. this is quite nice.
and many options! thanks all.
posted by danjo at 9:47 AM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Playing with the date slider really shows up the recentness problem with streaming media. :-(
posted by Artw at 9:48 AM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


W1A Season 3 is already on Neflix US? WTF?
posted by davebush at 9:49 AM on January 27, 2018


Awesome! Totally bookmarked.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:03 AM on January 27, 2018


Netflix has become an internet; it requires multiple search engines to find what you actually want.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:05 AM on January 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


Very nicely done.

There's also Can I Stream It? which doesn't always work 100% of the time but tries to cover all the major streaming services.
posted by gwint at 10:08 AM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Are streaming services a bit like gyms? In that they want you to pay regularly but not actually use the facilities that much?

Because it is a massive pain in the arse to a) see what's new on most streaming services b) review a list of stuff you've added to your watchlist in the order you added it.

Maybe annoying, opaque interfaces are how they make money.
posted by Happy Dave at 10:18 AM on January 27, 2018 [22 favorites]


Hulu's interface on my ipad is the current class leader in terrible interfaces. I find it entirely unusable unless I already know the name of a show to search for. In comparison Netflix's is really good, though I'll certainly try this alternative approach to see if it works better.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:25 AM on January 27, 2018


This doesn't appear make me want to leave Instantwatcher, which also allows me to do the same serching with Amazon Prime.
posted by humboldt32 at 11:05 AM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


instant confirmation of one of my hypotheses, which is that Netflix's catalog of classic movies is absolute pants. Ran the slider back to 1970 and there are 35 titles in movies, 5 in TV shows.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


instant confirmation of one of my hypotheses, which is that Netflix's catalog of classic movies is absolute pants. Ran the slider back to 1970 and there are 35 titles in movies, 5 in TV shows.

Yet many Classics are available on Netflix's DVD rental. Ugh.
posted by Beholder at 12:27 PM on January 27, 2018


Maybe annoying, opaque interfaces are how they make money.

Here's one feature that we'll never see, the ability to click ignore on a selection and never see it available in any queue again, ever.
posted by Beholder at 12:28 PM on January 27, 2018 [18 favorites]


Yeah I love this tool for the slider alone, but it's definitely highlighting how bad the older selection is. In Canada, we've got 19 titles from the 1960s and 36 from the 1970s.

Bookmarked, thanks for posting!
posted by mannequito at 12:35 PM on January 27, 2018


Yet many Classics are available on Netflix's DVD rental. Ugh.

There is totally different licensing between their DVD and streaming businesses. The DVD part only requires them to buy the DVD somewhere and put it in their catalog. Streaming, not so much.
posted by rhizome at 1:21 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


I like this UI much better than Instantwatcher, and my first documentary search turned up things that I haven't been seeing on the other site. Thanks for sharing!
posted by mudpuppie at 1:24 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


instant confirmation of one of my hypotheses, which is that Netflix's catalog of classic movies is absolute pants. Ran the slider back to 1970 and there are 35 titles in movies, 5 in TV shows.

This is why I subscribe to Filmstruck, the TCM/Criterion partnership site. Their site and app are total garbage but they've got an amazing catalog of classic and foreign films.
posted by octothorpe at 1:34 PM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


I suspect the crappy interfaces are deliberate too, probably backed up by the same kind of socially coercive reasoning as algorithmically selected social media feeds.

We’re getting to the point where a simple SELECT * FROM FOO ORDER BY DATE statement is subversive.
posted by Artw at 1:38 PM on January 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


they've got an amazing catalog of classic and foreign films.

AND they're not available in Canada and when you ask them if they ever will be they completely ignore you!

[Puts fist through drywall]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:16 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Netflix streaming doesn’t allow you to wishlist titles that aren’t available on the service, I can’t for the life of me understand why.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:15 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


This might keep me paying for Netflix for an extra month or two, which otherwise, eh.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 3:52 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Separate from availability issues, i highly recommend the University of Minnesota’s free and non-commercial MovieLens rating and recommendation service.

It’s where i keep my list of movies i want to see and then rating them after watching to improve the personalized recommendations for myself and other users of the system.
posted by D.C. at 5:03 PM on January 27, 2018 [8 favorites]


I do like the ability to search by country of origin. I just discovered that Intelligence, a great Canadian show about cops and drug dealers (think The Wire) is streaming on Netflix, so I'm rewatching it.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:59 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


I completely understand why Netflix doesn't make this sort of simple, easy, search available on its website.

The first query I ran was 'movies that are rated 9 or above', and it returned 11 results, 3 of which I had heard of (Shawshank Redemption and 2 Godfather movies). Those three movies were added in January, so presumably if I had ran that query a month ago, none of the titles would be ones I was familiar with. The other results were 6 documentaries, a children's movie and a comedy.
posted by el io at 6:36 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


I find this much better than Netflix search, have been using it for 2 weeks, not knowing another Metafiltrian made it. It's quick! (make portugal before she kills me!)
posted by atomicmedia at 7:07 PM on January 27, 2018


Yet many Classics are available on Netflix's DVD rental. Ugh.

In taking stock of my 2017 I realized that my movie-watching had fallen off a cliff--I still go to the theater (probably more than I did 10 years ago) but I was rarely ever watching movies at home anymore, because it seemed like 9 times out of 10, the movie I wanted to watch was not available on the five pay streaming services I have access to, and I got really gunshy about paying upwards of $6.99 (!) to rent a movie on the Apple TV and then wait for it to start for like 45 minutes--and I have FIOS.

So I (re)signed up for a Netflix discs plan the first week of January, and I've already watched 7 movies. It's amazing. It's more expensive than it used to be (a lot more)--I pay $14.99 for the 2 Blu-ray out at a time, unlimited plan, but I find that expenditure so much more worth it than my $10.99/month Netflix streaming plan.

Fuck the internet.
posted by Automocar at 7:41 PM on January 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Most of my viewing of recent films is done via a friend's Plex server. He has a Netflix DVD account, gets two disks a week and then rips them to a RAID server that he then shares to his friends. For what it's worth, it streams better than Hulu and I only have to pay him in beer.
posted by octothorpe at 7:54 PM on January 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


I like the filters on InstantWatcher. I will never, ever want to watch a Korean TV show (no offence to KTV, it's just not my jjampong) and I appreciate being able to remove that as an option.

I just bought a blu-ray player and I was debating getting the real disc plan again, but the mail service up here is so absolutely dire that I wouldn't ever get my money's worth. So I'll be content with streaming and playing the four blu-ray disc sets I own (both Twin Peaks, Pushing Daisies, and The Good Life). Also my blu-ray player will play MKV files and AVIs off of discs and flash drives. It's a shame that I don't know where to get files like that anymore. Feh. Being old on the internet stinks.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:45 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


(Somewhere I have a hard drive with 90 gigs of every episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on it. I should dig that out and watch it from the beginning...not only would it provide background noise for a week or such, but also RIP Sean Hughes.)
posted by elsietheeel at 11:48 PM on January 27, 2018


I'm still one of the committed fewer-and-fewer on DVD.com (yes, it's actually a separate company, though shares headquarters and such with the streaming side). A recent article What it's like to work at Netflix's dying DVD business is illustrative. (As is Netflix hasn’t forgotten about its 4.3 million DVD subscribers.) I have nearly every slot in my 500-movie queue filled, though it's possible (especially with a recent regional hookup) that I can get maybe half or more through my local library eventually. Many titles, however, are simply available to me no other way (though obviously some percentage are single-rental priced on Amazon). It's pretty frustrating since I have really mined out most of my "best of X" lists and would now like to, e.g., track down everything by that one French New Wave director.

I can totally understand the very frustrating user-unfriendly ways they have continued to clip off functionality for the streaming service, though. I'm pretty sure that they know full well nobody is watching those 1960s movies. (Ha! I just watched Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Desk Set earlier this month! Both expiring this month too. But I doubt I'm having that much effect on overall viewership.) And I'm also pretty sure that their infamously detailed stream tracking shows them much more emphatically what they should buy rights to than any user-inputted wish list. It's ruthless and cynical as hell, but apparently effective as hell too. As is the suggestion engine, no matter how us control-freak geeks hate its opaqueness.

Anyway, I have been looking at Filmstruck hungrily, and when we get another rental income going in a few months I might add that to my options. Which, to be clear, are already Netflix streaming, DVD.com, Amazon Prime, AND my local/regional library catalog. It's tough to be this deep into the long tail. The multiple queueing is a real bear to keep up with. This is not the amount of work I expected from my 21st Century internet.
posted by dhartung at 12:57 AM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hey now! I watched Desk Set by stream within the past year and on disc from Netflix about 10 years ago before streaming.
posted by elsietheeel at 2:01 AM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ugh, the paralysis of choice. A 10-second browse through these titles and ultimately I end up re-watching three episodes of "The Office and calling it a night.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 4:44 AM on January 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


It's a shame that I don't know where to get files like that anymore.

The magic word these days is nzb
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:57 AM on January 28, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah I love this tool for the slider alone, but it's definitely highlighting how bad the older selection is. In Canada, we've got 19 titles from the 1960s and 36 from the 1970s.

Just looking at my Letterboxd diary for last year and 45 of the 102 films I watched in 2017 were released before 1970 so I'm definitely not in the Netflix demographic.
posted by octothorpe at 6:05 AM on January 28, 2018


Sadly, Netflix isn't set up for cinephiles. I can't search by director or country.
posted by JJ86 at 6:32 AM on January 28, 2018 [5 favorites]


I read somewhere that the old star ratings on Netflix were never what other people rated it, but how much they thought you'd like it. The percentage match they use now is exactly the same thing. It pisses me off because they suggest shitty movies that have the same theme as stuff I've watched, and I can't sort by any proxy for quality.
posted by AFABulous at 11:01 AM on January 28, 2018 [5 favorites]


All recommendation engines are crap anyway. What they are trying to do is way more complicated than they want (or can afford) to dedicate resources to, so they have these half-assed yes/no ratings and some opaque percentage result. OKCupid has done the same thing in their quiz questions thing.

To Netflixes credit here, the percentage ratings are much less visually prominent than the starred ones were.
posted by rhizome at 11:07 AM on January 28, 2018


Sadly, Netflix isn't set up for cinephiles. I can't search by director or country.

You can search by Director, at least in the desktop client. Just use the regular search box and it'll come up with "See Titles Related To: "name of director you just put in" and then you click on the name and it shows you their movies. If they don't have any movies from that director it will give you other suggestions, which may or may not be stupid.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:42 PM on January 28, 2018


It's fascinating that it's in Netflix's best interests to obfuscate what they offer. This site makes it quick and easy to see how Netflix has nothing you really want to watch, unlike Netflix's actual interface.

Honestly I would've cancelled Netflix ages ago if it wasn't for my kids, who are perfect for Netflix as they couldn't possibly care less about specific shows and are happy to watch the latest weird cartoon from Latin America.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:13 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


I too would like a country filter. It’s soet of there in their weird category system, but munged with other stuff, and of course what categories they show in their main UI are semi random.
posted by Artw at 9:25 PM on January 28, 2018


It's fascinating that it's in Netflix's best interests to obfuscate what they offer.

Rather, it's in Netflix's best interest to obscure what they don't offer, which is actually a rather common business proposition.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:40 AM on January 29, 2018


They don't want you to search or browse, they want you to watch the Netflix original advertised on the front page.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:43 AM on January 29, 2018


It’s more like endless end-aisle displays.
posted by Artw at 10:46 AM on January 29, 2018


What are good streaming services for people who are "cinephiles"?
posted by gucci mane at 8:57 PM on January 29, 2018


Fandor and Filmstruck brand themselves as such; your mileage may vary. It looks like TCM has some kind of streaming? There’s plenty of old noirs up on YouTube, if that’s your bag. But honestly, if you want to stream a classic movie you might be best just renting it directly.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:16 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


Filmstruck is TCM's site but weirdly not branded that way except for a copyright notice* at the bottom of the page. As I said, both the website and the app are terribly written and the service has a habit of not working but their catalog of films is unmatched.

* As an example of how sloppy their web development is, here's the copyright notice on the page you see after you log in: "All Rights Reserved. TM & © 2016 Turner Classic Movies, Inc. A Time Warner Company."
posted by octothorpe at 5:36 AM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


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