alt Hacker NewsYou knew the movie was about to begin because there usually was a copyright slide before the actual movie would start (anyone remember the scary FBI warnings?).
So it was a sign to stop the fast forward and get ready to watch the movie.
Either way it was honestly pretty fun. It was simple, cozy and slow, not in a bad way. When you got together to watch a movie with friends or family, it was the moment when anticipation was building up.
None of that exists with streaming.
Even going to a video store and picking a movie off the shelf to take home and watch was more fun than browsing streaming services. Streaming services have basically gone out of their way to make selecting a movie annoying and frustrating.
Besides prime, which is an ad infested minefield of "Pay us more to watch this on top of what you already pay us every month to watch this", Netflix has to be the worst. They've expressed that they'd rather just pick what you're going to watch and so their last major redesign intentionally hid most of the titles from your view and they relentlessly push what they want to you watch by showing them in ad banners, in full screen ads, and by inserting them over and over again in whatever random categories they decide to let you pick form.
If you defy them and ignore what they choose for you they'll punish you by forcing you scroll past bullshit categories like "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", or "Cool Mustaches" when all you really want is "Continue Watching", "New", and "Leaving Soon" (which they refuse to give you) followed by the usual genres.