Netflix is awesome. My whole family enjoys it. It's easy to use and it works almost all the time. The other day when updating my account I noticed that there was something new. It was an option to set up profiles –an option to create a separate DVD queue for each member of your family. This is an awesome idea, but kind of irrelevant. It is suppose to make it easy for my wife to order the movies she wants without interrupting the deliveries of the movies in my queue all under one account.
Great thought –Right? The only problem is that at my house my wife and I almost always watch movies together. Imagine that, a husband and wife that spend time together enjoying the same thing (every once and a while I have to send her to her sisters… there are just some things I will not tolerate in myhome.)
The thing that could be very useful for my family is a profile option for streaming video. You see, my wife enjoys her TV shows and I enjoy my own, and the kids have, well, kid shows. But I don't want Netflix telling me I would love to watch another episode of Dora the Explorer or recommending I watch Barney and Friends based on my recent enjoyment of Elmo's World. And vice versa I don't want my kids to stumble on a recently watched episode of The Walking Dead when I am too busy, doing… all of the important things I do, to go and turn the TV on for them.
With multiple profiles I could set the TV in the play room to the "kids" profile and would know that the only thing available for them to watch were age appropriate and parent approved material, and in the family room we could have the family profile which would allow access to everything else we would want to see. I know they have parental controls, but having to turn them on and off will kind of defeat the purpose of simplicity of use. Won't it?
So, Netflix, you're doing a great job. My family loves your services and we think you are on the right track. Keep up the good work. And maybe if you find the time, can you create profiles for online streaming… And while you're at it, make a kick butt iOS app to manage my DVD queue. These third party ones really suck.
