expiration dates disappear?

My expiration dates seem to have disappeared on my computer queue but not on my Xbox queue. This occurred about 2 weeks ago. I would have stated this sooner but I figured that they would be coming back, but they have not. I was waiting for someone else to ask, but again, that turned out futile. Is this happening to anyone else? I know The Sand Pebbles and Brubaker are both expiring within the next month but unless I want to go through nearly 400 movies one by one on my Xbox I can't tell when others expire.

Is anyone else having this issue?

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Permalink Reply by alpha309 on November 5, 2009 at 12:00am: yeah thanks for the answer.

My only complaint with that is that I work 6 days a week and currently have currently have approximately 52.5 hours of material that will be expiring within the next month. A big chunk of that is with Star Trek at 29 hours. If I get the warning a week in advance I will have no chance at all of squeezing that in. Since was able to go through my queue on my Xbox and see the titles that had expiration dates I will actually be able to watch Star Trek, Ghandi, Sand Pebbles, Brubaker, and the others that are expiring.

I guess my suggestion would be to give a little bit longer time for TV shows that are expiring. I guess 2 weeks would be a good idea for that; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on November 5, 2009 at 5:56am: If I get the warning a week in advance I will have no chance at all of squeezing that in

Except as RC said, most of the content gets renewed anyway. In other words, don't pay much attention to the expiration dates.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by spiderpig on November 5, 2009 at 7:12am: I like that your complaint is that you don't have enough free time to watch more than 50 hours of TV shows and movies in a month. What the hell, Netflix? Why do you hate people with jobs?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by alpha309 on November 5, 2009 at 6:56pm: actually, the complaint should read more like I don't have 50 hours to watch in a week. Between my job working with kids, where I watch several movies a week with them, and my internship, which requires me to be up to date in TV and Film I watch about 10-15 hours of TV/Film for work a week. And with free time I easily watch more than 50 hours a month.

I think a week is enough time for movies, but not long enough for TV series is my point. If you read a bit closer my complaint focused on the only a week part. And apologies in advance if that last couple of sentences read poorly

As for them getting renewed, I don't know what the chances for each title getting renewed are so I would rather watch all than risk missing one and waiting for a disc.

Again thank you much for the answer. I appreciate it. My next question would be are the IW compatible devices going to reflect this change as well, or will they continue to show 1 month out?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by ColdOne on November 6, 2009 at 8:20am: I think a week is enough time for movies, but not long enough for TV series is my point.

I definitely agree about one week being adequate for movies. Even if you couldn't squeeze in Brubaker, Sand Pebbles, and Gandhi in one week you'd just catch them when they became available again.

The problem with multi-episode titles is that I wouldn't even want to cram them all in over two weeks. Probabilistically two weeks is better than one, but it's still a somewhat arbitrary cutoff. I'm content knowing that if it ceases to be available through IW that I can (almost) always finish the series with physical DVDs.

I don't know if Netflix can dictate the display of expiration dates for other devices. They certainly could suggest this change strongly and they could withhold or manipulate the data on their end. I would hope device manufacturers would follow suit - if the confusion and angst really is more trouble than it's worth for the main website then it probably would be for all consumer devices.

But I hope the real data (even if it's flawed) would still be available through the API so that other websites and apps could give more data to the users who really cared. Those apps could be much more sophisticated in how the data is used - e.g. they could sort by expiration, estimate whether the date is really accurate or whether it will be renewed, or notify you when one of your titles reaches an arbitrary cutoff that you choose.; ▶ Reply to This