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NetFlix prices way up

Ballylongford said:
Anyone else get this email?
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Got it. Have to agree with the comment about the studios. One it's not our fault they shell out $20m for a performer in a movie, much like shelling out $20m for a pro sports player, I never understood that.

We have a local drive-in, people travel from all over OR and WA, sometimes further, just to experience a drive-in. Up until about a year ago you paid by the car load, really reasonable, fun for the fans who stuffed their vehicles, but then other theaters complained to the studios and the studios in turn went after the drive-in, but not with threats, well not of bodily harm, etc. but making it difficult to get movies, putting higher tabs on the movies, etc. I don't honestly believe our local drive-in is getting rich, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the studios likely knew that as well, but they likely did give into presure from other theater "chains".

It's a system that sucks, to be sure. If everyone in the country stopped going to the theater for a week, and that is doable, that would send quite a message. Not like putting off buying fuel, which ultimately the oil companies know you will have to do eventually. Of course if everyone rode bike for a month, they'd take notice.

Soap box now available....
 
We have to realize, the future is streaming. Netflix is opening new markets but only offering streaming. With the costs associated with handling physical media and shipping it, vs data storage and transmission costs, there is no business reason to continue to build on the physical media marketing plan. Within a generation the movie and music industries have to realize that physical media sales will totally tank with an except being records most likely. The challenge to the end user is to get ISPs to come up with a pricing arrangement economical for the required bandwidth. I also think the day of the television as we know it is numbered. However, it should outlast the other media systems as well as radio.

I am old fashioned and have nointerest in streaming and even maybe only buy 1 dvd a year as television has some decent programming and I can wait a year or so to see a movie. However, I am a realist as to the future.

If I were in charge of Netflix, I'd cut the deals with the movie makers to acquire only soft copies of movies and do away with DVDs as soon as possible. I am not sure of the timing but it would be in my business planning. They may be doing the subscription spinoffs in an effort to divide the company in anticipation of this and looking to shape the market to then go to the movie companies to modify their agreements.

I remember when Netflix was a free service. Since they went pay, I've not visited them.
 
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Brian said:
I am old fashioned and have nointerest in streaming and even maybe only buy 1 dvd a year as television has some decent programming and I can wait a year or so to see a movie.
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Ditto here plus I get some good stuff on Spanish Television.
 
Why Netflix Raised Its Prices

See this article.

This price rise is not due to Hollywood, but rather Netflix wanting to increase profits.

Note this part:

Netflix knew that there would be a nasty backlash, and has already taken the subscriber defection into account in its financial forecasts. It still figures it will come out ahead.
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eteller said:
There was a thread recently on AVSForum.com with an article on how Netflix was changing their emphasis back to the disc based service as they ran into a lot of road blocks (studios, ISP caps, etc.) with the streaming.
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I was wondering if that was what was driving the change. I know Netflix was aggressively pursuing streaming. They may have outrun the current state of the infrastructure.

We're a good case in point. We live in the country and we really shouldn't be even getting DSL. Since we're so far from the slick, our maximum bandwidth is sub 1mb/sec, way to slow for HD streaming. We're waiting for AT&T to run fibre out here, but when they can upgrade an area with 150 potential customers compared to 25 customers I understand why we may be the last in the area to get it.

We'll drop streaming since we can't use it anyway. We watch mostly classics, foreign films and indie films. I've noticed little that I put in the queue is available for streaming. Until they put practically their entire catalog in streaming I wouldn't be interested even if I could get it.

Finally, my younger son who lives in the DC area has fibre and we've watched some HD Netflix streams using his front projector system. It does look really good, but it's a notch down from a blu-ray disk. If there are some pans, it can't keep up with the key frames and it can get jerky.
 
We are dropping the service altogether. We rented about 2 movies a month, and streamed old seasons of tv shows/starz play once in a blue moon.

This is just corporate greed. I'm sorry if your 7 figure paycheck wasn't good enough, but that is no excuse to go sh**ing on all of your customers.
 
tomwil said:
See this article.

This price rise is not due to Hollywood, but rather Netflix wanting to increase profits.

Note this part:

"Netflix knew that there would be a nasty backlash, and has already taken the subscriber defection into account in its financial forecasts. It still figures it will come out ahead."
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Like I posted earlier, with a 60% increase in fees, they could lose over 30% of their subscribers and still have higher revenues.

I paid $5.55 today for a #1 Egg McMuffin breakfast at Mickey D's; I'll bet that NetFlix is banking that many will see the increase as something paltry like that and ante up the $6.00....
 
Just kinda seems to be bad timing to me.. If it was my company, I'd have to think long and hard before I could pretty much double prices...

Things don't seem to be getting much better.. I just saw Cisco was about to lay off 6500 people.. Gas is up... Money for movies probably isn't, and it seems they may lose more people than they think.. but I gotta agree, you lose 30% of your customers, you're still gonna be money ahead.

But, it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, and it could be worse down the road. Especially if the studio's don't come through with better movies for them.
 
He's my take. Since there is no membership fee to start or end your account, I dropped their service and have asked everyone I know to do the same. If enough people follow my lead, perhaps Netflix will roll out a "Please come back we're sorry" campaign and offer a better rate in the near future. Give it a month or two, and if not, restart your account and carry on. It is Summer, most of us are outside enjoying it, so our accounts get less use anyway.

Take care,

Rob
 
Robinhawaii said:
He's my take. Since there is no membership fee to start or end your account, I dropped their service and have asked everyone I know to do the same. If enough people follow my lead, perhaps Netflix will roll out a "Please come back we're sorry" campaign and offer a better rate in the near future. Give it a month or two, and if not, restart your account and carry on. It is Summer, most of us are outside enjoying it, so our accounts get less use anyway.

Take care,

Rob
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The wife and I spoke about this a bit and agreed to drop home delivery. However, we have also begun to taper off our movie watching and maybe we might just take time off away from Netflix.

Simple economics. This is a huge opportunity for Blockbuster or even a startup to jump into the fray. Years ago there was a site you could watch tons of video's and the like, similar to Youtube, but went under (I believe) due to lack of funds, mismanagement, poor planning, I don't know which now. Then along came Youtube. With the economy what it is, it's a huge gamble. Maybe their betting that the cost of going to the movies will keep the following strong. Then again, people will cut out what they don't absolutely need.

If the economy were better, people likely would sign up for the two products and not bat an eye. Other companies have tried similar tactics and are no longer with us. Ballsy, but will it pay off?
 
I've always thought of the streaming portion as free. I simply pay for DVD's. I agree that this is a rate increase, but to me it's not a big deal. If I think about the hundreds, if not thousands of streaming shows and movies we've watched, this is a bargain. I've not really paid for it before, but now I do. It's OK by me.

Of course this is because I dumped cable three years ago. That has paid for; my HD TV, rooftop antennas, vortexbox, network tuners, and more.

As long as they add the content as promised, I'll stick by them.
 
I too am accustomed to thinking of it as a fee for the discs and free streaming. I probably haven't used the streaming ten times since it started. I keep thinking I will and then I never do. We're canceling streaming and we'll be about where we were before.
 
I find Netflix a good deal and a very useful service regardless of rate increases. And I never have a problem finding material to watch on streaming, indeed my list of pictures to watch stands at over 80. Most recently I watched the BBC production of Golding's "To the Ends of the Earth" trilogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Ends_of_the_Earth


Next I think I'll watch a DeMille silent picture, "Why Change Your Wife". While today DeMille is most famous for his spectacles like "The Ten Commandments", "Samson and Delilah" and "The Crusades" in the silent days he was noted for his sexy drawing-room comedies, none of which I've ever seen. Now thanks to Netflix streaming I can watch one, and with Gloria Swanson no less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Change_Your_Wife?


Several Griffith pictures are on streaming as well including "Birth of a Nation", "Intolerence", "Broken Blossoms", "Abraham Lincoln" and "Orphans of the Storm" (which I watched the other night).
 
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It is the best deal out there. We will be keeping the streaming service and dropping the DVD option.

There is always a redbox or BB kiosk nearby...
 
So what, they lose maybe a third of their customers and make up the revenue with the higher fees. For streaming customer loss, it reduces bandwidth giving them more time to improve it.

The company can easily join the bucketful of other .com companies who had a great idea but went on the skids as it did not have a marketing plan that actually fit their market.
 
Brian said:
The company can easily join the bucketful of other .com companies who had a great idea but went on the skids as it did not have a marketing plan that actually fit their market.
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I would not put Netflix in the same vucket wih all of those .bomb companies. Most of those had no plan, once the investor money was used up. Netlflix on the other hand has a viable product that is in demand. They are just wanting more money. Whether this is to pay for increased licensing fees to the studios, pay for more bandwidth, or the CEO needs a new McMansion, I don't think they are going anywhere...
 
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