[danso]

Sadly, the Recommendation Engine is only of limited use...and I hate to be one of those naysayers as I understand the economics and contractual issues here...the movies that Netflix thinks I would really enjoy and are available for streaming and I haven't seen (I watch a lot of movies but am by no means prolific) goes downhill after a couple dozen.

It used to be that on the iPad, at least two bottom rows were dedicated to "New Releases" and "Recently Added"...sometimes neither of those rows seem to show up, and so I find myself logging into the web client just to see those listings, and -- I assume this is why they aren't as spotlighted in the iPad app anymore -- there's generally not much new to see. While I like House of Cards, I think Netflix would appeal to me much better if it spent that money on 200 - 300 good recent releases, or holding steady on to some of the great classics (there used to be more Akira Kurosawa and Woody Allen movies on Instant).

[brucehart]

I don't find the recommendations very useful either. Maybe the secret value of the recommendation engine for Netflix is evaluating movies outside of their catalog. When considering how much to pay for the streaming rights to a movie, they can use the recommendation engine to determine how well received it would be by their membership and bid accordingly.