Netflix once again screws over its customers

[Ginsu Victim]

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-introduces-new-plans-and.html

My plan will be going up $5.99 unless I switch to streaming-only, which I plan, begrudgingly, on doing. 

[wp34]

Or stop being a sheep by paying for your content. 

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=112848.msg1199216#msg1199216   

Seriously though it wouldn't be a bad deal if they offered the same content streaming as they do on DVD.

It seems inevitable that as these companies get popular and gain market share they figure out new ways to stick it to their customers.  I remember when people were fleeing cable for DirectTV.  Now they seem almost as bad and people I know have been fleeing them for Netflix/Hulu.

[Donkey_Kong]

ba-a-a-ahhh...

[Howard_Casto]

  I remember when people were fleeing cable for DirectTV.  Now they seem almost as bad and people I know have been fleeing them for Netflix/Hulu.

We call those people idiots. 

In terms of image quality and content, wired is ALWAYS superior to wireless.  Thus you should get cable and promptly ignore satellite assuming both are available in your area.  Also you might get a good deal if youa re one of those cheap people that only get the bare minimum channels, but once you put bundles and premium channels into the equation direct tv cost about as much as a similar cable package only due to the wireless signal and lower bandwidth you are getting an inferior image.  That is nothing new, it was that way from day 1. 

Also netfilx and hulu are even worse.  I give hulu a pass because they do have good content and there is a free version... but the quality is around that of a youtube video. 

Netfilx particularly annoys me in the sense that they've tricked people into paying for the service.  To be sure 7.99 isn't very expensive but the quality isn't so great and your options to stream it to your tv add to the cost significantly.  You've got three options essentially.   Your Wii, which forces you into standard def land, your 360, which adds an additional 50 bucks a year to your bill seeing as how you'll need a gold account and your ps3, which is about as secure as a cardboard box with a paper lock on it. 

And all that aside I just have a problem with monthly subscriptions for services in which you manually download/stream data.  What if I don't watch anything one month?  That's 8 bucks down the drain.  What if my subscription runs out?  Well I guess I won't see the other half of that movie and my collection is gone for good. 

[ChadTower]

Of course, if you're going to argue content, DirecTV has a lot of high end exclusive content.  That means something in a content argument.

[CCM]

You've got three options essentially.   Your Wii, which forces you into standard def land, your 360, which adds an additional 50 bucks a year to your bill seeing as how you'll need a gold account and your ps3, which is about as secure as a cardboard box with a paper lock on it. 

 

Hmmm, only 3 options, you say? 

How about Netflix ready TV's, blu ray players, TIVO, mobile devices, home theaters and streaming devices? 

http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?cid=HDTV

[gabe]

Netfilx particularly annoys me in the sense that they've tricked people into paying for the service.  To be sure 7.99 isn't very expensive but the quality isn't so great and your options to stream it to your tv add to the cost significantly.  You've got three options essentially.   Your Wii, which forces you into standard def land, your 360, which adds an additional 50 bucks a year to your bill seeing as how you'll need a gold account and your ps3, which is about as secure as a cardboard box with a paper lock on it.  

Or... A custom built HTPC. That is what I'm using.

I've been on a streaming only plan with Netflix for a few months now, so the change doesn't really bother me. The price/convenience of Netflix streaming is currently unrivaled - even when piracy is considered as a valid option. Until that changes, I will gladly give them a couple bucks a month. When I want physical media, Red Box happily fills the void.

[Malenko]

I called them up because they are charging me sales tax. I live in Delaware, we don't have a sales tax. The guy said he'd take care of it and then I got an email asking me to send them a tax exemption form.

[Ginsu Victim]

You've got three options essentially.   Your Wii, which forces you into standard def land, your 360, which adds an additional 50 bucks a year to your bill seeing as how you'll need a gold account and your ps3, which is about as secure as a cardboard box with a paper lock on it. 

 

Hmmm, only 3 options, you say? 

How about Netflix ready TV's, blu ray players, TIVO, mobile devices, home theaters and streaming devices? 

http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?cid=HDTV

Yeah, we use a Roku box in the bedroom and love it.

What if I don't watch anything one month?  That's 8 bucks down the drain.

I watch Netflix more than I do cable. That's way more money "down the drain".

[Dartful Dodger]

It got me thinking about how much I really use Netflix.

I get one DVD at a time, and I watch about 3 DVDs a month.  The streaming I use about once a week and it's got such a poor selection that it takes me an hour just to find a movie and I usually just settle on something that I really didn’t want to see.

The email I got said my plan will change in September. I'll see if their download content improves and is worth keeping for $8 a month, but as far as the DVDs go, 3 movies a month through RedBox will cost me $3 and I'd get the movie I want as soon as I want it.

[Donkbaca]

I honestly am thinking about ditching it, but I am not a movie guy.  Netflix streaming is only useful if you have kids, so you can stream a disney movie or cartoon to it when you are out shopping or at dinner and the kid gets restless.  That, and to watch TV series, if/when they are available.  As a whole, the selection is attoricous, unless you love old and B movies. 

I watch maybe one DVD a month.  I would rather do just about anything than watch a mediocre movie for 1 1/2- 2 hours and honestly, there aren't that many movies that are released that are really that great, and I am not one to watch a movie for nth time...

[Ginsu Victim]

3 movies a month through RedBox will cost me $3 and I'd get the movie I want as soon as I want it.

Redbox isn't an option for me since I used the DVD side of my Netflix account for older movies, obscure movies, foreign movies, and TV shows that aren't on streaming

[Ginsu Victim]

It's kinda funny you guys ---smurfette--- about how bad NetFlix selection is, but my god, HBO and Showtime are STILL showing Beverly Hills Cop 2 in 2011!!!!
 

I love the Netflix streaming selection. They don't have everything, sure, but they have PLENTY of stuff I want to watch.

[Donkbaca]

yeah, they have lots of stuff to watch, but the obscure - foreign - non mainstream stuff is obscure and not mainstream for a reason - its largely boring with poor production values. 

I get showtime for the original programming and the combat sports.  I don't watch the old movies over and over again.  I'm busy man, I get like 10 hours of free time, MAYBE, per week. If 20% of that time is wasted watching some obscure, horribly produced spanish film where the big twist is some incestual relationship, it just ruins my week. (as an aside, my wife went on some spanish film kick, started watching a bunch of spanish movies, in ALL of them there was some sort of incestual plot device)

[Ginsu Victim]

Most of my foreign films were through the DVD option, not streaming. I knew what I was after, not just some random crap on streaming. Though, the great thing about streaming is you just hit play, then either like it and watch it, or say, "This is crap," and turn it off. Plenty of great documentaries on there.

[Mikezilla]

The selection of the streaming, as everyone has pointed out is flat out garbage. All the good stuff is DVD related, but they upped the price almost double. I dont see how they go from 9.99 for both, to 24.98 for 3 DVDs a month, and streaming. And the streaming content they are adding is a joke as well. So many obscure movies that nobody has ever heard of.

Not to mention they changed a lot of stuff that they did have streaming. I wanted to watch the first few seasons of Dexter over again and they took it away.

PBJ Beverly Hills Cop 2 is my favorite one! I think its ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow---, they pretty much killed all the competetion(redbox sucks, it has limited selection and the DVDs are always scratched to ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---) and now that they know that they have, they want to up the price because, in all honesty, what else are you going to do?! Buy every movie you want to see?  

[AtomSmasher]

Not to mention they changed a lot of stuff that they did have streaming. I wanted to watch the first few seasons of Dexter over again and they took it away.

The problem is they can't afford the rights for a lot of the content anymore, which is why items that were streaming no longer are.  They expect the agreements they set with Sony, Starz, etc. to be at least 10x larger then it was 2-3 years ago (we're talking $180 million increasing to $1.8 billion).  Here's a few articles on the topic:

Netflix's vanished Sony films are an ominous sign
Studios Start Applying Pressure on Netflix
Is Netflix Doomed?

[Donkbaca]

Yeah, they change the streaming content, there is only so much available at a time.  Like I said, its great for kids to stream on your iphone.  

I am sure there are great documentaries and whatnot on Netflix, but I don't want to pay for umlimited streaming documentaries.  Its just not my cup of tea. If you dig that stuff, and its worth it to you, great.  Maybe you love the Goonies, I like that movie, and you love to stream it every day.  More power to you.  Me, i would just rather do other things.  Like I said, my bias is against movies, half the time I watch a movie I feel like I should have read, or played a video game or gone outside and played with my dogs instead.  We all have different ways we like to enjoy our free time.

I hear all of you on the obscure/foreign stuff, that is how netflix got popular to being with.  I just, personally don't like that stuff, and neither does most of America.  Funny thing is, if you look at the history of movie rental, at first it was small, local mom and pop shops that catered to whatever their immediate neighborhood liked, so if you were in a ethnic community, you would have lots of foreign films, if you were in an artsy neighborhood, you would have lots of indy films, etc.  Then along comes blockbuster and hollywood video and these mega chains and they negotiate directly with the studios so that they get the big movie releases first.  Since the small video stores couldn't compete on the big hollywood movies, and since that market is the bulk of what people watch, they went out of business.  Netflix got their start buy buying up all the old stock of these out of business video stores, as a result they had a lot of older movies, foreign movies and artsy movies that the typical blockbuster didn't carry in their stores.  It was these niche offerings that attracted people to Netflix in the first place, and now, the business built on the ashes of the old video stores has conquered the mighty beast that killed off the original mom and pop stores.  Kind of poetic justice in a way...

[Vigo]

I left Netflix last time they took a dump on DVD users. Netflix sucks more and more for anyone who uses it for DVD's, and still sucks for streaming selection. I'll still be picking up their streaming again only because the price is cheap enough for me to have it for filler TV. I'm done dumping my savings into television.

I used to have cable, they of course jacked the prices up after a year, and there were no deals unless you bundled it with phone and internet. Of course I don't need a land phone and my internet would take a nosedive whenever I used too much bandwidth. It was their nasty little way of discouraging heavy bandwidth usage, I believe.

Then I dumped the cable and went with a Direct TV/Qwest internet combo. The TV was actually much better than cable and offered better picture and selection that the cable equivalent I used to have. Cheaper too, at least when we had the combo contract. The Qwest internet was awesome as well, as soon as we got 7mbps service in our area. As soon as my combo deal expired, the Direct TV practically doubled in price, so I cut it. Qwest has a price guarantee for life, so that was unaffected.

Now I am very happy with my new PS3 using the media server. The system cost me 3 months of Direct TV, but I won't need to pay any monthly fees. I calculated it out, and a PS3 with both Netflix and Hulu Plus subscriptions will cost me $500 this year. I would have to pay more that $1000 annually for Direct TV. If I went back to cable, it would be close to that as well. Oh, and I don't have to worry about security issues because I don't have my credit card on the PSN and I used a my work address. 

[ChadTower]

I left Netflix last time they took a dump on DVD users.

I left Netflix after I got 3 straight broken DVDs in the mail and then they started billing my card $20/pop for movies I had put in the mail but they claimed did not arrive.  That was the early days.  I've never been tempted to try them again.

[Donkbaca]

I could never do that, the main thing I watch on TV is sports, and there is no good/easy way to get live sports without cable/satellite.

We just switch providers every time our promotional rate runs out, - dish - cable-direct tv - cable -dish and now cable again.  A bit of a pain, since someone has to come out and hook up the new system, but its worth it.  Sometimes if you call the cable company and threaten to switch, they will re-up you at the promotional rate.

The problem netflix has in going to streaming is going to be Sony.  Sony bet the farm on blu ray and streaming is a competitor to it.  Furthermore, if Sony wanted to offer a streaming service, it has a network and a network device already developed in the PS3.  So Sony could offer a streaming service exclusive to the PS3 that would be the only place you could get streaming content, then it cuts out netflix all together.  The main thing Netflix had going for it in terms of its streaming service is that 1) It has all the studios under one umbrella - so instead of having to get a service for paramount, and another for universal and another for sony, its all in one place; and 2) the streaming was always a piggyback to the dvd service.  Its what really set it apart from the blockbuster service.  

If Netflix starts to push streaming content as a standalone service, then they could potentially have a lot of competition because Netflix is just a service, they don't have their own network, their own content or their own devices.  Someone like MS could roll out their own service because they already have their own device and network.  Sony could do the same, but better because they own content in addition to a network and a delivery device.  Cable and internet comapanies are already offering more on demand services.  It'll be interesting to see what develops.  

[ChadTower]

I could never do that, the main thing I watch on TV is sports, and there is no good/easy way to get live sports without cable/satellite.

I know several people who get all their sports OTA because the OTA network broadcast is better than the compressed image they get over cable or DirecTV.

[Donkbaca]

How is it better? Its all digital?  And you can't get a lot of sports OTA, just the crappy network ones.  No ESPN, Fox sports, etc....

[Mikezilla]

Not to mention they changed a lot of stuff that they did have streaming. I wanted to watch the first few seasons of Dexter over again and they took it away.

The problem is they can't afford the rights for a lot of the content anymore, which is why items that were streaming no longer are.  They expect the agreements they set with Sony, Starz, etc. to be at least 10x larger then it was 2-3 years ago (we're talking $180 million increasing to $1.8 billion).  Here's a few articles on the topic:

Netflix's vanished Sony films are an ominous sign
Studios Start Applying Pressure on Netflix
Is Netflix Doomed?

Thank you for linking that. I didnt really have any idea what was going on  . Thats such a ridiculous amount of money. Jesus god. 

[Vigo]

Things are up in the air for Netflix, aren't they? I expect streaming will be around in the future, and the selection will be good. I also expect we will be paying cable/dish prices for it.

Sports is the thing I absolutely need to have live as well, at least football. I will be picking up an antenna as soon as my direct tv expires. Since most of that is on the local channels, and I live in a big city, I think I should have no problem picking up most the games. I guess if I am wrong, I will be hanging out at the sports bars and rethinking my strategy.

[ChadTower]

Oh yes, the look on my dad's face when he came over to watch the Cowboys on my coat hanger antenna.... priceless.

Pliers to change the channel or it only half counts.

[Donkbaca]

Yeah, NBA and NHL playoffs are mostly on Cable.  We get the MLB package for baseball, a lot of college football is on cable, Monday night football is on cable...

[ChadTower]

Yeah, to watch out of town sports, you pretty much need DirecTV.  I have had DirecTV for years stricty becasue of the NFL Sunday Ticket.  Without that I might not have cable or DirecTV.

[Dartful Dodger]

I have a few obscure movies in my Netflix list that I sort of want to see(like Bed Time for Bonzo), but they keep getting pushed down the list by new release movies I really want to see.

This is how bad their streaming content selection is for me, the last movie I saw streaming was:
No Time for Sergeants with Andy Griffith. I have never seen Andy Griffith in anything bad (until now) and I was looking for a good ole WW2 movie. Instead I got a bad ole POS movie.

For me RedBox can replace the DVD portion, but what is an alternative to Netflix for streaming video?

[ChadTower]

Not sure any movie starring Ronald Reagan can really be called obscure.   

[RayB]

Oh yes, the look on my dad's face when he came over to watch the Cowboys on my coat hanger antenna.... priceless.

Ah yes. I'm building one of those this weekend. I can get 2 OTA HD channels at the moment using just a pair of rabbit ears and the clarity of the image is an absolute improvement over the compressed image I had with my cable provider. Sure, I'll only get about 20 channels once I put up a UHF antenna, but it will be enough to satisfy me. Beats paying $60/mo when I watch just 3 or 4 shows.

[Samstag]

How is it better? Its all digital?

Higher bit rate.  1080i broadcasts aren't worth a damn if low bandwidth causes pixellation when there's any action on the screen.  I use U-verse and get decent bit rate most of the time but if I'm going to watch something live that I can get over the air, I'll switch to my antenna ever time.

A good OTA antenna will get you a higher bit rate than most cable or satellite providers.

Edit:  And to keep my reply on topic:

The Netflix plan changes made me realize that I don't watch the streaming more than a few times a month, and often only watch 1 or 2 bluray/DVD rentals per month.  For $13 it was worth keeping for the times I wanted something to watch, but for almost $20 (after tax) I'd rather keep that in my pocket.

[SNAAKE]

your ps3, which is about as secure as a cardboard box with a paper lock on it.  

do you even have a ps3 or you are just....saying things??

you dont need a credit card to make a psn account. all you need is an email. and netflix worked fine even when psn was down.

[DaveMMR]

you dont need a credit card to make a psn account. all you need is an email. and netflix worked fine even when psn was down.

Yeah, I don't know about the Xbox 360 version, but the PS3 is quite a fine machine for handling Netflix.  And the quality is better than fine by me.

But on topic: this whole price change isn't bothering me.  I only subscribe to streaming and never had any desire to add $2 to my bill. I actually like their selection of TV shows and obscure older movies. I scanned what they have, add it to my queue and watch when I have an hour or two to kill.   Meanwhile, we hardly watch DVD's/BluRays in our house anyhow.  Between the streaming, our cable's on-demand and all the channels, we have more than enough to choose from.  And if we really need a new release, we have nearby Redbox kiosks.

And this price-hike doesn't surprise me.  The way I see it, Netflix may want to be downplaying the whole "DVD's-by-mail" model.  It just seems far more profitable to stream everything than shipping out a million individual discs everyday. 

[hypernova]

Thus you should get cable and promptly ignore satellite assuming both are available in your area.  Also you might get a good deal if youa re one of those cheap people that only get the bare minimum channels, but once you put bundles and premium channels into the equation direct tv cost about as much as a similar cable package only due to the wireless signal and lower bandwidth you are getting an inferior image.  That is nothing new, it was that way from day 1. 

Price being equal?  Maybe if you're talking about DirecTV.  Dish has a lot lower base packages.  Cable in our area is high compared to satellite, especially Dish for comparable programming.  Or at least the programming that our family needs, which is basically a few kids channels like Nick, the main sports channels, and Comedy Central and pther big name channels that come in every basic package regardless of provider.

I do have cable internet, though.  The DSL in our house wasn't working correctly.  Gave the phone company numerous chances to figure the problem out and fix it.  Never could, so we had to switch.

[Donkbaca]

Way more profitable to ship movies.  You don't need to build a secure network to house the IP.  You probably have some sort of licensing agreement with the IP holders so that they get some sort of royalty per play, or you get to have it unlimited for a set period of time, which means a lot of overhead just to keep up with it.  The DVDs infrastructure is already in place and a LOT of people only watch a couple movies a month.  Heck I have had the same netflix movie sitting on my console table for the last 2 months.  With streaming its a constant barrage, people will even watch utter garbage just because its available. 

Plus, as I mentioned before its something you can face a LOT of competition in if any of the IP holders decides to launch a competing service.  Look at the HD-DVD/Blu Ray wars.  The fact that HD DVD couldn't secure Sony IP was enough to send the dominos toppling towards BLu Ray.  Sony holds out on streaming content, pairs up with say, NBC/Universal or the ABC/ESPN/Disney folks and decides to do exclusive streaming of their content on the PSN network, and bam, netflix is toast.

[Malenko]

 

[jimfath]

Netflix drives me crazy. They pull movies out of streaming and the streaming selection is sparse. They do have a lot of TV shows but so does hulu and countless other free alternatives.

The price hike will mean I'll be dropping one or the other. I've heard from countless friends that are in a similar position. If that is a typical cross section of their customer base, I wonder if they'll lose revenue.

[Ginsu Victim]

Wow, that's almost exactly what I do.

[Donkbaca]

Everybody says they will drop it, 99% of people won't.  I love how people are "protesting" the increase by liking a page on facebook or some other nonsense.  yeah, facebook pages, I am sure Netflix really cares about facebook pages.