My Huge, Self-Effacing, Public Apology To Netflix...

...If Only They Would Navigate to My Blog and Read It

Over the past several months I've been having a terrible time with Blu-Ray discs on loan from Netflix. Many of them have had a tendency to glitch during the main movie — never in the previews or during the credits, for some reason — and ruining my mood for watching. Several weeks ago I called their customer service number and complained mightily to the person who answered the phone. She was polite enough, and she immediately offered to send me two extra selections from my DVD queue — I have the maximum program, at three discs out at one time — which would put five discs in my possession. I told her that extra discs wasn't going to solve my problem; I'm spending nearly 30 dollars a month for movies I have to send back because they don't play properly, and if I don't get some answers, I'm going to cancel my Netflix subscription! She suggested that, perhaps, my Blu-Ray player was in need of a firmware update. I told her that, according to the Samsung website, my firmware was up to date.

Granted, what I told her was actually information about a year old. The last time I had checked prior to the phone call, I did see that the most recent Samsung firmware update was dated 2011, which was when I last updated my player. But, in my defense, the only firmware-related issues I had ever seen with my player was when a certain Blu-Ray disc wouldn't load due to out of date firmware. Playing one-third of the way into a film and then breaking down into hiccups and glitches seemed more of a crappy quality-control issue — the discs were leaving the Netflix distribution centers with scratches and schmutz on them, and it was affecting my viewing pleasure.

So, the pleasant woman on the phone assured me that she would pass my complaint along to the Department of Those Who Could Do Something About It, and wished me well in whatever I decided about cancelling my subscription or not.

It didn't help Netflix's case when the two bonus discs they shipped arrived to me broken, and I called back with my hair on fire (I know. It's only a manner of speech. (Yes. I know I'm writing)). They assured me they would have a discussion with the US Postal Service about the handling of their property, and that two replacement discs were already on their way.

A week or two later, after the replacement discs had come (one of them gave me fits anyway, and it just so happened that the film was available for download on the Netflix "Instant Queue" feature) and gone, I decided to look once again at the Samsung website to see if maybe there was a more recent firmware update for my Blu-Ray player, circa 2009. After a sufficient amount of clicking and hunting, I determined that the latest update was the last one I had loaded in 2011. It would appear that my five-year-old Blu-Ray player had been rendered obsolete by its manufacturer sometime within the past three years.

I still refused to believe that simple, seemingly random glitches in playback could have anything to do with the machine's playback software, but rather that there must be some kind of flaw in the playback surface of the discs I was receiving. After all, they pass through hundreds of hands each month, right? I mean, some of the discs I've received appeared to have had someone's lunch served on them! But doubt crept in.

Then, last week I suffered from the frustration of two consecutive discs failing for me, first with Abduction, and then with Cowboys & Aliens, the second of which caused a minor meltdown during which I signed up for AmazonPrime, their premium online streaming service. Netflix was DONE.

But I like Netflix. Their DVD-by-mail service is top-notch, and they have obscure films no one else offers. Their streaming selection SUCKS, though.

SO, I elected to conduct a potentially expensive experiment. I decided last Friday to make a weekend run to Best Buy to pick up a new Samsung Blu-Ray player to see if it could get through Cowboys & Aliens, the defective disc of which I had not yet sent back. Expecting to deepen the debt wound by a couple hundred dollars Saturday, I was very pleased to discover that Blu-Ray players are frightfully close to "dime-a-dozen" territory! (Five years driving a taxi, being poor, and not buying shit does that to you.) I returned home that evening, went through some wiring contortions, got the new, TINY by comparison player talking to the other Samsung components, and loaded Cowboys & Aliens. It rolled right up to the point in the program where it had glitched in my older player ...and ...nothing.

It played flawlessly right through the section in question.

So... imsorrynetflixiwaswrong.

There. Done.



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