Anyone who knows me, who has read even a smattering of this blog, knows that I adore movies. In fact one of my earliest memories of life is from a movie that I was playing, I think, upon a drive-in screen. (No, I don’t know the title and that frustrates me.) So when I learned that Warner Brothers Studios had started a new streaming service based around their deep catalog I was excited. Luckily the service came with a free two week trial.
I started two weeks, minus a day, ago and I have watched several films by way of their streaming service. Today I canceled the service and even if I were fully employed I still would have canceled.
First Fault – the number of available titles is quite thin. Warner Brothers is one of the classic Hollywood studios, with an extensive catalog of great film stretching back all the way into the silent era. However the instant archive has pitifully few films to watch. For each category I explored I came across only a single screen of titles, and these titles were displayed with larger thumbnails taking up plenty of screen acreage. I could not see myself watching enjoyably for even 1 month. The service runs $10 per month, more than Netflix or HULU plus for their streaming services, with not even a fraction of their libraries. Had I been using the service when I was laid up from my operation it would have been highly frustrating, unlike the Netflix and HULU Plus services that made that time bearable and informative.
Second Fault – Warner Brothers rolled out this service way too soon. It works with Roku boxes, but not with Xbox 360 or the PS3. To watch these movies on my 42” LCD TV I had to run it off my laptop. That meant I had no pause or any other remote control, but to start stop for any reason I had to cross the room to the TV like it was the 50s.
Third Fault – The Website was not up to professional standards for these sort of services. When you log in there is a check-box to remember your log-in just like many other services have so you do not have to log-in every single time. Sadly while the check-box is there it doesn’t flipping work. If I stopped the film and closed the laptop, when I would go to resume I’d have to go through the entire log in process again, reselect my film, and then hit play. (Frankly, given this, it surprised me that it remembered where I had stopped viewing.)
Fourth Fault – No form of queue or favorite lists. I could browse the catalog but there isn’t a function to place films I might want to watch later on any sort of list. Had they possessed a larger number of titles this would have been higher on my list of faults, but with only a single pages of titles for what I cared about, it hardly mattered, but it is still a fault.
It is sad that Warner Brothers has put forth such a pitiful performance in the streaming business. I greatly prefer streaming services to cable television, but I can not throw my money away on a service as poorly designed as this one.

FILMS WATCHED:

1. Action In the North Atlantic
2. Across the Pacific
3. World Without End
4. Zero Hour!
5. The Black Scorpion
6. Isle of the Dead
7. Armored Car Robbery