Topic: NetFlix Price Changes

I am kinda wondering if this price change is going to hurt Netflix on the 3DS.

Is it true too that there is only the option for 1 DVD out at a time now? My wife was helping someone sign up and that was the only option they were given. And they better be planning on adding a lot more new movies to streaming if they plan on dropping discs altogether.

I won't be using it on my 3DS either way. My 3DS doesn't leave my house and I have 5 other devices in my home, that can all be hooked up to a TV, that can stream Netflix.

I am not sure where you are but starting September 1st Netflix will charge 7.99 for streaming and 7.99 a month for unlimited DVD rentals or $15.98 for both services bundled together. You can have more than one DVD out at a time but that will be an added cost. I think you can have up to 6 DVDs out at a time. I know you can at this time I dont know if that will change come September 1st.

Right now my mom has two movies out at a time and streaming for about $16 a month.

My parents are also using the two movie plan so I thought my wife was mistaken, but she said they only saw the option for 1 DVD out at a time for the new account they were making. It was probably because it was a gift now that I think of it.
Anyway I just hope netflix puts all of their resources into streaming soon so they can afford more new movies, b/c I'm still considering using it instead of directv soon.

this really isn't much of a big deal. even getting both separately the price isn't that much higher. It beats the hell out of cable and paying for movie channels.

@Squiggle55: I know that they have a trial plan for new accounts that is one DVD out at a time so she might have been looking at that. I just looked and even with the new price planning that will start in September they have where if you select DVDs only you can have anywhere from 1 to 4 DVDs out at a time depending what play you select or with the DVD + Streaming Plane you can have up to 2 DVDs out.

true that, actually — even with both, it's cheaper than cable.

i would say that if you want TV content, though, go for Hulu+ — it's got all the major shows that i'm interested in, anyway. with Hulu for the new stuff and Netflix for the old, i don't miss TV much, lol :3

Does Hulu cost anything? I have heard of it but never really checked it out.

Hulu alone doesn't, but then they don't keep all the episodes of a given show up, just the trailing few for most new shows in their current season. they also only put things up a week after it's aired (e.g. you'll be a week behind your friends at work if you like to discuss shows around the water cooler, lol). Hulu+ will have some complete shows up and available for watching if you're interested, though; it's good times. i'm pretty sure they tell you on every show page for Hulu exactly what's available for that show on Hulu+ as opposed to regular Hulu if you want to check it out :3

@TBD: Being a week behind doesnt bother me most of the time when it comes to the shows I like I am lucky if I am only a week behind, I usually DVR them and sometimes it might even be a month till I can get to them lol. I will check it out here and see I just wasnt sure if it costed anything or what.

@WaltzElf: For me that $6 is a big difference I dont have the luxury of special coffees or anything like that so yeah I am going to complain. With todays economy six bucks is alot to people for me thats nearly 2 gallons of gas to get me to school and work.

If you are that hard up for money then perhaps you shouldn't be using Netflix in the first place? There's a lot of things I'd like too, but I don't earn enough month to have everything. That doesn't mean I should be entitled to it anyway.

Better get to stealing petrol and food and stop paying rent too, if you're going to resort to "other means" to obtain your films over a $6/ month price increase.

@WaltzElf: They have 23 million subscribers. The least someone can pay is 7.99 a month. So they are making at least 183,770,000 a month, or 2,205,240,000 a year. Surely they are making plenty of profit off of that. Sounds like greed to me.

Sounds like greed to you? Tell me then, how much it costs to run a business like Netflix?

Edit: I should say sorry if I sound like I'm being harsh, but you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel of things to complain about when you start complaining about a $6/month (not day, not week, month) increase on the cost of a completely optional luxury.

A company needs to survive, and make investments to better improve the service into the future. $6/ month is a small price to pay for a fan of the service to support the company they're a fan of. I will never, ever understand why consumers hate supporting their favourite products.

And no, in my experience, it is very rare for a company to simply up a price out of greed. Even more rare for a major, popular company (since those companies are rarely run by morons).

Most of the stuff they stream is older. I'd assume they aren't spending 2.2 billion dollars on content. I wouldn't think they have too many employees to pay either. But you're the business expert.

Here's their annual report too.
http://apps.shareholder.com/sec/viewerContent.aspx?companyid=...

Edit: I'm not canceling my whole service, just the DVD portion which I barely use. I'm not scraping the bottom of any barrel. It's just my opinion.

They still need to pay royalties every time a film is streamed. That can be expensive. Netflix is the single biggest consumer of web traffic. The infrastructure to keep that service reliable and fast would be obscene.

The company has 600 employees. That's relatively small, but would still account for at least $30 million/ year. Then there's the (much more) cost of marketing, tax, business assets and so on and so forth. Employee wages is a significant cost in running a business, but by no means the only cost.

And then there's R & D. A company like Netflix would spend quite a bit on that. That investment (and indeed any - all - profits brought into the company that are filtered back into the company) directly benefits the consumers.

Flicking through that, I see a company that's in a reasonable position. It's not a company of directors rolling in money and laughing like maniacs as they gouge their customers out of their life savings.

I really want to have access to the full catalog (streaming seems a bit lacking, but I still want it), so I guess I'll just have to pay the $16. Kinda sucks, though.

thanks for the article. I always wondered how they handled contracts with distribution companies for their streaming. I always wondered if it was a lump sum or if they paid companies more depending on how many people actually watched it.
Anyway, after reading that article it makes sense to me that they are raising subscription prices and probably moving away from DVDs in the future because of the combination of postage and movie companies about to strongarm the now lucrative netflix with new contracts for streaming rights.

Rising cost of streaming rights can't be part of this 60% increase. That price hike will come later.
The cost of unlimited streaming is not affected by this pricing change. It was $8 before and it will be $8 after September 1st.
So it has to be the price of the DVDs.

NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. We were just gonna be able to stream movies to the 3DS, and now I don't know if my family is gonna pay for streaming! (I just heard about this and was just gonne make a topic about it in the 3DS section complaining to Netflix. Ha Ha. You beat me to it)

In Canada I'm paying $8 for netflix streaming with 1/10th of the US library and $6 for 2 DVD rentals a month from zip.ca, so honestly it sounds better than what we have.