Which is strange because I'm pretty sure I watched the Al Pacino version of Heat on Netflix instant in the least 6 months.

Edit: I just checked and it's not on instant, but I'm pretty sure I watched it on instant recently.

You probably did. The major failing of Netflix is content churn. I can count on at least 20% of my queue disappearing every month, before I get around to watching it.

That was actually partly why I clicked on it first: I remembered watching the Al Pacino film on streaming some time ago because it was about to expire, and I wondered if the app's WI database might be out of date.

Netflix routinely adds films to Instant Watch that it will only keep for N months, presumably to keep an interesting stream of new titles available while saving costs on licensing.

Yup. I cache the API results for 7 days with a random chance of re-poll so I hopefully will notice when new releases happen.

As for the parents, yeah, sorry :( I'm doing a match on the netflix title. I'll try to suck more data out of IMDB and make sure it is the correct movie.

I'll put an expiry date column, good idea.

It's not to save costs on licensing. It's because those titles are going in and out of licensing 'windows' and Netflix isn't allowed to offer them.

Isn't the length of those windows determined by what Netflix is willing to pay? Or do the content owners restrict it?

Content owners restrict it, for example if a movie is about to be shown on television it will disappear from NetFlix's instant streaming service a week or two beforehand and re-appear a month or so afterwards.

If you use Twitter, you can follow @queuenoodle (http://twitter.com/#!/queuenoodle). It'll let you know when titles are expiring about a week in advance.