Your reference is whatever crap Netflix currently uses. The algorithm they were using at the time of the prize was actually good to begin with. I think they may also have a smaller catalog of movies now. So that wouldn't help.
Yeah. I finally gave up on it last year not because of the catalogue, but because the turnaround got too slow. Individually renting movies to stream is better all-around.
It's still working out ok for us. We're doing the 2 DVDs at a time, and while I understand netflix always was suspected of "rate-limiting" people who had too much churn, we must not be anywhere near that since turnaround is still just a few of days. We're not impulse watchers so it's fine.
It's still tons cheaper than individual stream rentals, there's more device flexibility, a lot more choice, doesn't require blackbox DRM on the devices (they are probably going to force secure enclaves on linux for their DRM at some point once the kernel patches propagate).
