I am hoping that now that streaming is being singled out that the library will be beefed up – it simply isn’t worth $8/mo to me now. Not only due to missing content but also pieces of missing content. So annoying to be watching episodes of an old show only to find out that two or three a season are “DVD only”.
On the other hand I find we don’t watch that many physical blu-rays (I’m assuming the stupid $2 up-charge will still apply).
I may just toggle my account between a couple of months of streaming, letting the physical discs I want pile up, then to physical discs. And, hey, I end up saving $2 - $4/mo.
If you’re curious about how Netflix plans to tighten the screws next, you can check out their Investor Q&A from April. Basically limit your stream to one (no simultaneous streaming to multiple devices). Unless of course, you’re paying for a tiered multiple stream plan. ie, don’t flip on Netflix during your commute, at work or on your office PC if you don’t want your wife/kids to get the boot.
If you don’t care about the streaming, drop it and you’re not paying more now than you were before they started offering streaming. Think of it as them having temporarily offered free streaming.
That’s how it was originally was anyway. Netflix added streaming and everyone was like “Wow this is a nice free thing” and now people totally feel entitled to it. Still the best damn deal in movies.
It was $7.99 when I started less than a year ago. That’s an absurd increase, not to mention I have a Blu-Ray and I don’t want to pay another $2 for Blu-Ray disks. This seems even more idiotic given that we have to wait 30 days for most new DVD releases. So they’ve doubled the price and reduced services in about 8 months…the very principle of the thing makes me want to cancel. I don’t feel taken advantage of or anything like that, but if I signed up for a cable modem and then reduced my bandwidth while doubling my price in just a few months, I’d cancel just because I think it sucks…this isn’t any different.
It’s most definitely not worth it for the streaming because their selection is pretty damn mediocre. Streaming on my IPhone was pretty neat when I was stuck somewhere, but other than that it’s just not all that useful.
It might be worth it for the mail DVDs, but with Redbox so pervasive around here, it makes sense to look at renting from them for a buck or (Blu-Ray) a buck and a half. I hate having to return movies, but that might be the end result.
For that price, I can also rent a bunch of movies from Dish and/or get HBO or Showtime. Though I probably won’t.
Thanks for the link. That sucks if they go that way, but it is inevitable I imagine. So then rather than streaming ($8) and blu-ray ($10) they’ll be getting streaming x 2 ($16) and blu-ray ($10) from my family (based on current usage). Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be staying with them for long if they go that route.
This isn’t strictly a cost increase, although I don’t doubt prices will go up for most customers. I think it’s really more of a re-balancing to take the costs of streaming compared to DVD rentals into account particularly for the low-end plans. I’m on the 6 DVD plan and my monthly subscription fee is actually dropping slightly.
I really should lower my DVD numbers. I boosted it up when I started watching a lot of TV shows on DVD, but at this point, there’s tons of good TV shows available on streaming – particularly now that they’ve got Star Trek on there :-) I do way more streaming now than DVD rentals.
We signed back up again less than two months ago, initially just streaming, then added a single disc plan for a total of $10/mo. We only get around to watching maybe two discs a month so we thought the extra $2 was worth it. An extra $8, not so much. Not sure if we will go back to streaming only or quit to check out something else like Hulu Plus instead.
Amusingly a similar thing happened last time we signed up for Netflix - about two months after we did they started charging more for Blu-Rays. We quit then, too.
Stay with Netflix. Hulu has enough content to be worth it for me, but Netflix has vastly more.
And yeah, to me it feels like Netflix is just closing a loophole. I’ve paid something like $20 to Netflix for the entire time I’ve been with them – they’ve raised and lowered the price anywhere from $18 to $23 over that time for a 3-disc plan. Two months ago, I realized that I could use the streaming to basically replace most of the discs, and dropped down to the 1-disc plan for $12, so now that they’re raising my price back to $20, it just feels like a return to the norm.
I guess if I’d joined when it was $10 for disc ‘n’ streaming, I’d be more appalled, but yeah, I don’t think long-term subscribers are going to be that up in arms.
Still and all… $8 for streaming (which is 90% of what I watch now), and $10 for a single disc (they still have that $2 Blu-ray charge)? Yeah, I’m pretty convinced that I’m dropping down to streaming only. I can use the library to fill any holes in the streaming selection.
The Blu-ray charge isn’t gone but because the DVD plan is now $2 cheaper, the Blu-ray addition makes it the same as today’s prices (without streaming).
This news made us realize that nobody in the family was using Netflix, so we canceled it tonight. I can claim solidarity against The Man, I suppose, but we’ll probably just redirect the money to bump our cable package back up a notch.
I should say that I care about both. If you’re like me and use one disc (+ blu-ray) and streaming regularly, the price has gone up about 3-4 times in as many years. I’ve had it. What I’m going to do now is just share it with the family. I’ll have my mother cancel her discs, us cancel streaming and we’ll share her streaming account. Net loss for Netflix. Though of course I still say streaming is bound to go up next year most likely.
I really don’t understand the wails of “I MUST CANCEL” when you’ll be paying under $20 for streaming/1 disc out. Compared to the $125 upthread for HD DVR and HBO, it’s still a great value for the sheer hours of entertainment per month, isn’t it?
Especially if you use it instead of cable, like I did for years. Now I have free cable + HBO at my apartment (included in rent, so not really free, etc) and I haven’t used it except for Game of Thrones this spring.
I changed our Netflix to streaming only last night. So now, once I cancel our DirecTV we should cut our monthly “TV Stuff” bill from $150 to around $17 or so (Roku - so paying for Netflix streaming and Hulu). Not bad!
