Throttle vs. Availability

I've been a Netflix subscriber since February 2001. I love it and I don't think I'll get rid of it anytime soon. That said, I'm not real happy about the word from Netflix, that they do, in fact, throttle users that burn through discs faster than most. The thing is, I'm less pissed that they artificially slow down the heavy users. I'm more pissed that I purposely stay away from their new releases to ease some of the crush, yet I don't get any preferential treatment.

I'm pretty much caught up on newer releases. The only new releases I need to see are the ones that are coming out week by week. Most of our queue is full of independent films, lesser known documentaries, sports films, and even a few dozen movies from the 80s and early 90s. As near as I can figure, I'm requesting the discs that are sitting around gathering dust. I'm doing Netflix a favor! I stick the available discs at the top and wait for the Short Wait, Long Wait, and Very Long Wait discs to fade in to the mass before putting them at the top.

So what do I want? I don't want to be throttled up. I wish they would ship me discs faster, but what I really want is a +1 modifier for my queue availability. In other words, Short Wait becomes Now. This modifier would stick as long as the majority of my discs (75%?) came from the Now population. This would allow me to see a new release every now and then without keeping discs longer, just to make me rise in the "to receive" pool.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you can't get new releases from Netflix, but you may have to wait a week or two for the popular ones, and maybe a month for discs like Doom. I guess the geeks are all over that one :) It's 104 in my queue. Left at that spot, I'll probably see it in 2007.