Too many times, movie night becomes a lengthy quest to find a watchable movie. Not a great movie (or even a good one), just a movie that adequately entertains for 90 minutes. Streaming apps have endless menus organized by various genres. Some movies look OK. Others less so. Searching is a time-consuming part of trying to watch a movie online and it reveals the vast amount of content I have no interest in… but still have to pay for.
Nearly all streaming entertainment, from games and music to movies, suffers from a discovery problem. Finding something worth watching is a chore. It seems like streaming apps have a lot of content, but finding a good movie isn’t as easy as it seems. We’ve been trained to believe that having lots of choices is good and we should be happy to have this abundance. Unfortunately, the search process seems light years behind the technology, causing search to be a fruitless foray into the abyss.
Recently as I scrolled through a streaming app’s home screen, the same three or four movie titles appeared in many of the predetermined categories. Some were movies I’d already watched. One category was “Capricorns Activate Boss Mode” as if that’s supposed to be a helpful curation – maybe I’m getting too old. Perhaps they’re using modern lingo, but I was neither impressed nor amused.
All the time lost on searching through mediocrity makes me wonder why we put up with this. Every time I go to the library (today’s Blockbuster Video), I’m able to find a few good movies on DVD in a matter of minutes. The key difference is that libraries offer good titles whereas the streaming apps are mired with staggering quantities of junk. And the library is free!
Streaming movies at home was purported to be a convenience but falls short when it comes to letting customers easily discover appropriate movies. This is an issue across most online entertainment. For movies, websites like Just Watch may enable you to search a bit faster, but the results are similar – there’s a lot of nothing worth watching.
Your local library offers music, movies, books, video games and more. Very often they have passes to local attractions. Library offerings are surprisingly diverse, yet so few people know what a terrific resource they can be. Next time you can’t find a good movie online, grab your library card and hop in the car. I find the library far less frustrating 🙂
By CapeCod.com Staff
