Quit whining about Netflix

Originally a comment, but it’s worth saying here:

I really, really don’t get it the angst over Netflix price increases.
Well, I get that people don’t like paying more for things. But this is
ridiculous. Netflix is still an insanely good deal compared to
anything else out there (hello, remember spending ~$4 for every single
rental???). Not only that, because all of their streaming deals with
studios are expiring, Netflix is about to go from having licensing
costs in the hundreds of millions to having to spend $1-2
billion/year on licensing to the
studios
.
That money doesn’t come out of thin air. I’m actually surprised they
are able to keep the price increases as low as they are.

How soon do we forgot that Netflix slew the crappy video rental
chains, and then broke open the market for streaming video of major
studio content? Hell, even now their only real competition in that
department is Hulu, a service that charges you a monthly fee for full
service but still forces paying members to watch ads every few
minutes
.

Cut Netflix some slack. $8/mo for unlimited, legal, ad-free viewing of
their entire streaming video catalog is still fucking amazing, and
$16/mo for that plus video rentals is completely reasonable and still
a zillion times better than the $4 2-day rentals we used to get from
blockbuster.

Honestly, people.

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3 Comments

  1. Charles Feduke July 13, 2011 at 17:16

    Completely agree. Look at things that provide less entertainment value that people pay more for: a trip to ONE matinee movie for 2 at most theaters costs as much; add popcorn and two sodas and you’re easily double that. HBO usually costs around $10 a month through most providers, but you typically have to buy some sort of package with another channel or have a premium subscription so the actual cost is more than Netflix/mo.There’s always Internet outrage when a business increases the cost to consumers. I think it has more to do with a failure of a basic understanding of economics than anything else. I don’t think its a crime for a business to be profitable, but I’m a bit biased since my wife owns and operates a small brick and mortar business. (We hear this often enough from the occasional customer – “why can’t you sell me this product at the price you get it for?” Good job public school system!)

  2. For me, it’s actually going to SAVE me money. Now I have the perfect excuse to dump the DVD plan altogether. So my outlay to Netflix will DECREASE by $2 a month. As long as I don’t watch more than 8 DVDs a month (and there are rarely that many good movies OUT in a month), I will just go rent the occasional DVD at Redbox. Not $4 a movie. $1 a movie. That’s it. The outdoor kiosks are open 24/7. And you can reserve it online so you don’t have to drive all over looking for the one movie you’re interested in. AND you can return discs to any kiosk. Netflix may have put Blockbuster and Hollywood Video out of business, but Redbox is going to LOVE this.

  3. Charles Feduke July 13, 2011 at 20:09

    Same thing regarding dropping the DVD plan (which I did prior to the fee increase). Though I’m no fan of RedBox. Physical media, gas to get there and back, and all of this while I’m paying for Internet service each month? Since tiling my living room last month and replacing my receiver I haven’t bothered to hook up any physical video device to my receiver. Physical media at this point is a relic and cannot go away too fast for me.

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