DVD and Streaming History No Longer Available through Netflix’s API

Effective 15th September 2012, Netflix will no longer provide a user’s DVD or Streaming history via their API.

What this means is that FeedFliks will no longer be able to tell you how long you’ve held onto DVDs or send you email alerts when you’ve held on to them for too long. This also means that going forward we won’t be able to calculate an average cost/movie for you. Your Streaming History page will also no longer be updated.

Note that this is not a Premium vs Free issue – no third party apps will have access to your DVD or Streaming histories. Unfortunately this is a decision Netflix made and is not going to change.

Other features will continue to be available: both Queues will continue to be refreshed, you can still sign up for Alerts (and have them added to your Instant Queue when the title becomes available). You’ll also get alerts when titles are about to expire from your Instant Queue.

 

Expiring Dates for Streaming Titles No Longer Available through Netflix’s API

Netflix has recently made a change to their API specifically around the expiry dates for their streaming catalog. Until now, the API provided the exact expiry dates but Netflix has now made the decision to *not* provide the exact expiry dates unless a title is expiring in the next two weeks. For all other titles, Netflix will show a far-out, made-up date irrespective of whether it expires 3 weeks out or 6 months out. On FeedFliks, we are representing this far-out date with 1st Jan 2025 which explains why 95% of your Instant Queue titles seem to expire on that exact date.

We hear all of you writing in and expressing frustration at this loss of information that was previously available. We’ve checked with the API folks and they have communicated that this is a done decision for now. We’re as disappointed as you all but this is now beyond our availability to influence. We’ve tried.

To get in touch with Netflix’s Customer Service, please call 866-716-0414.

 

Get Streaming Alerts For Any Netflix Title

Streaming Alerts have long been one of the most-used and loved features on FeedFliks. For those new to FeedFliks, Streaming Alerts allow you to sign up for an email from us on the day your favorite title becomes available on Streaming (we’ll also add it to your Instant Queue if you wanted to).

One limitation was that Streaming Alerts were restricted to only those titles for which we knew were streaming soon. But lots of users are now on Streaming only plans and want to get notified as soon as their favorite titles are available to stream – even if no date has been announced yet!

Starting today, you can get a Streaming Alert for any title at all in the Netflix Catalog. The day it becomes available to stream, we’ll email you. If you want us to add it to your Instant Queue, just say so! To get a streaming alert, just click on the calendar icon  next to the title box art. The screenshot illustrates what it looks like, for example, on the New DVD Release page but this calendar icon will appear next to all titles.

Streaming Alerts are a Premium feature – sign up and you won’t be disappointed!

 

The 2012 Academy Awards

The Oscars are this Sunday on ABC (Feb 26th).

To help you quickly keep track of all the nominations (and eventually, the winners), FeedFliks has a one-pager for all the major 2012 Academy Awards. Here’s a snippet:

Are you ready with your predictions?

 

FeedFliks Introduces Streaming Central for Canada

Canada is Netflix’s biggest market after the US and Netflix boasts over a million Canadian Netflixers already. To help Canadian Netflixers sort through what currently available, coming soon and expiring soon from Netflix Streaming, FeedFliks is now happy to announce the availability of Streaming Central for Canada!

Streaming Central for Canada, by default, shows the best titles currently available to stream in Canada (which interestingly enough include many Oscar winning movies that are *not* available today in the US like The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Taken, Milk, Crazy Heart and Black Swan etc.!)

This page can be sorted by Genre, Release Year and the ever useful Expiring Soon and Coming Soon options.

Feedback is always welcome either in the comments or at feedback@feedfliks.com.

 

Netflix DVD Releases for 14th Feb, 2012

Netflix will start shipping these titles starting this week, Feb 14th: The Rum Diary, Take Shelter, Tiny Furniture*, The Interrupters, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within* and The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence

Tiny Furniture is actually available to stream right now and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within will start streaming that same day: Feb 14th.

New titles available on DVD starting next week, Feb 21st: The Whistleblower, London Boulevard, The Way and The Son of No One.

As always here are all Upcoming Netflix DVD Releases on FeedFliks.

 

New and Improved FeedFliks Search

FeedFliks Search is back! And now, search has some long-requested major improvements:

1) Search by Cast – e.g. enter “Tom Hanks”

2) Search by Director – e.g enter “Spielberg” and see

3) Search by Award – select “Oscar” and see just the titles that have gotten Oscar nods

4) When searching for Streaming-only titles, you can additionally specify HD-only, Closed-captioned-only and also limit to titles that have only recently become available on Netflix Streaming

5) Search by Movies only/TV only/Both – tons of you have written in asking for a way to eliminate TV shows from results. Well, now you can!

6) Keyword search: just enter a keyword and FeedFliks will search multiple fields for that query: entering ‘George’ for example will find movies where the director’s name contains George or someone in the cast is called George or if the movie title has the word ‘george’ in it etc.

It’s live now – give it a whirl!

 

Netflix DVD Releases for 7th Feb, 2012

Netflix will start shipping these titles starting this week, Feb 7th: Killer Elite, What’s Your Number, Project Nim, Anonymous and There Be Dragons.

An additional title, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1 will be released Feb 11th.

New titles available on DVD starting next week, Feb 14th: The Rum Diary, Take Shelter, Tiny Furniture*, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within* and The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence.

Tiny Furniture is actually available to stream right now and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within will start streaming that same day: Feb 14th.

As always here are all Upcoming Netflix DVD Releases on FeedFliks.

 

FeedFliks: now with new and improved Actor and Director Pages

On FeedFliks, you can now sort an actor or director’s work by a variety of ways: top rated, most recent, by genre – and yes, by what’s streamable!

  For example George Clooney who has an Oscar nomination for The Descendants this year: here’s the list of streamable movies of George Clooney.

  Here’s Meryl Streep and her list of streamable movies.

  Tom Cruise : Best Movies (as per Rotten Tomatoes critics ratings) and Streamable Movies.

This works the same way for Directors too:

  Quentin Tarantino has 4 streamable titles including Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown

  Joel and Ethan Coen have 3 titles you can watch instantly right now.

 

Netflix DVD Releases for 31st Jan, 2012

Netflix will start shipping these titles starting this week, Jan 31st:  Contagion, Drive, Shark Night, Outrage, The Double*, Texas Killing Fields and Janie Jones

* The Double with Richard Gere is is also scheduled to start streaming on 31st Jan

New titles available on DVD starting next week, Feb 7th: Killer Elite, What’s Your Number, Project Nim, Anonymous and There Be Dragons

As always here are all Upcoming Netflix DVD Releases on FeedFliks.