Manage updates with the Download App
Get help choosing a movie on Netflix with a Chrome extension
Netflix's five-star ratings tell you only so much. With the Netflix Rate extension, you also get IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings when browsing Netflix.
Would you like to know what lazy looks like? It looks like me and my wife on a Friday night, worn out from a long week, lying on our respective couches in front of the TV after getting the kids in bed and cleaning up the kitchen, too tired to browse Netflix for something to watch. We are terrible at managing our queue, and many nights we don't fire up a movie on Netflix because of the browsing and agreeing process it requires. The following Chrome extension may not help you reach an accord with your significant other during the movie-selection process (there's Foundd for that), but it can help you weed out poorly received titles.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)
With the Netflix Rate Chrome extension, you get two other data points to help guide your search: IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Mouse over a boxshot on Netflix when you are signed into your account or hover over a link in your queue, and you'll get IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings next to the standard Netflix user rating for a movie or TV show. You'll see the standard 10-point IMDB rating and the audience rating from Rotten Tomatoes (the percentage of users who rated the movie 3.5 stars or higher). Clicking on either of these ratings will take you to the movie's page on either site.
In my experience with Netflix Rate, most titles -- both TV shows and movies -- show an IMDB rating, while most movies (but only a few TV shows) show both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings. This has nothing to do with the extension and everything to do with the scope of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)
Contrary to some of the comments on the Netflix Rate page in the Chrome Store, I found the extension to be quite accurate, correctly matching titles and ratings. The only bugs I encountered was an IMDB rating not displaying correctly for a movie in my queue. For "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" it showed a buggy "NaN" instead of the rating, which it shows without a problem when I mouse over the movie when browsing outside of my queue. And clicking on the Rotten Tomatoes rating for the 2012 Woody Harrelson vehicle "Rampart" takes you to a 2005 film of the same name.
In related news, if you subscribe to more than one video streaming/rental service, Can I Stream.it? can help you find out which service has which titles.
(Via LifeHacker)
