So, Netflix have launched in Ireland. I was pretty excited because most of my friends in North America use it all the time. I signed up for the free month trial period on my lunch break and rushed home to install the channel on my Nintendo Wii.

It’s great. We watched the first couple episodes of Breaking Bad and the quality was great, even on our pokey broadband connection.

So after that, I decided to show my wife all the films they have on offer. Sure, it’s limited, but I’d had a browse on my PC earlier in the day and I was excited to show her the Gay & Lesbian category.

Except it wasn’t there.

The Nintendo Wii interface isn’t exactly straightforward, so I tried several times to find it. I tweeted, and had some helpful advice. I checked to see if “Parental Controls” were active on my Wii (even though we don’t have children). I checked my settings on my Netflix account.

There was nothing amiss. The category Gay & Lesbian was still visible on my PC, but not on my Nintendo Wii.

And that just makes me sad. Because it seems like a good service. It even recommended my somewhat obscure favourite film to me after doing my “taste profile”, so yeah, well done. But I’m not giving my money to a company that feels it’s more comfortable to get rid of my words.

PinkNews reported yesterday that the iPad and PS3 versions of Netflix also exclude the category. Wii and iPad exclude the HD category as well because the devices don’t support true HD playback. They also apparently don’t support queer film categories. Weird hardware flaw, probably.

So either Netflix have removed this category themselves or Sony, Nintendo and Apple all decided to do it independently of each other. You guys have any guesses?

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