I ask fellow FReepers - what are alternatives to Netflix? I am going to cancel in protest.
I’ll probably drop the streaming. The selection is terrible (and probably won’t get all that much better) and the quality is even worse. Compressed 720p with lousy sound.
With a Blu-ray you get 6-10x better sound/picture and extras as well.
The only thing streaming is good for it older/low quality movies, but that is what the majority of their selection of there is anyway. I won’t miss it that much.
I think Nefflix is screwing the pooch on this one.
Don't protest Netflix. They've been squeezed big time by the movie studios. They had no choice but to raise their rates. It was either that or go out of business. The studios have not only forced much higher prices on Netflix, but they've forced Netflix to wait longer before releasing movies. Do a Google search on this--it makes for interesting reading. The movie studios are stuck in the past. They know Netflix is the wave of the future, and they don't like it.
The price of mail keeps going up, the price of DVDs keeps going up, and the price of employing people keeps going up. Exactly what is a company that employs people to mail DVDs supposed to do?
Talk to your spouse and children.
Go fishing.
Serve in your community.
Get to know your neighbors (and see if they will invite you over to watch their rented movies).
Hope this helps.
I just cancelled the DVDs. They charge more, I pay less. That is a good illustration of elasticity of demand.
Some numbers:
The cost of streaming and 1 DVD at a time is $10.
The cost of streaming and 2 DVD at a time is $16.
So we can assume that only $4 of the fee is for streaming, the part of the business they want to grow. If they remained on the old price structure, they would never have enough money to grow the streaming business. If they raised the $10 combo price to $14 they would lose too many of the streaming only customers (the people they want to keep).
By splitting it out, it gives them the added $4 a month they need to increase the size of their streaming catalog and keep their streaming customers.
They will probably lose some of their DVD customers, but they were planning on losing them anyway when they eventually discontinue physical DVDs anyway.
Physical DVDs are a low margin item for Netflix, and with the studios jacking up their fees to Netflix because they worry about DVD rentals hurting DVD sales they were probably looking at losing money on physical DVDs unless they changed their plans.
Compared to the cost of cable, netflix is still dirt cheap. Less than $200 a year for both the streaming and DVD rental vs cables cost of what: $500-$1,000 a year?
Competition will take care of this.
“I ask fellow FReepers - what are alternatives to Netflix? I am going to cancel in protest. “
As a long-term Netflix customer, I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve been on the one disc at a time plan for years. Last year, Netflix raised the price of this plan one dollar and added unlimited streaming views to it. If There’s something I want to watch and my wife doesn’t, I stream it on my computer; if we both want to watch it, I order the disc. We order discs for items we like that are not streamable, which is most of Netflix’s content.
Now they are ending the experiment with unlimited streaming. I now have the option of saving $2/month by going to streaming only, saving the same by disc only.
My decision: because only a fraction of Netflix content is available on streaming but all of it on disc, I’m opting for disc only.
There are no cheaper or practical alternatives to Netflix.
Streaming:
* Cable - tons more expensive.
* Pay per stream (like Amazon) - more expensive $2-4 per move, you’ll easily go over the cost of Netflix in a couple of movies.
* Legit Free Sites (like Crackle and Hulu) - actually good, but very limited content.
* Non-legit Free Sites (like project free TV) - also serve as virus/malware/adware distribution sites. The is the PC version of unprotected sex, eventually you’ll catch something and the cost of cleaning it up will dwarf you “savings.”
DVDs
Redbox - the one everyone points at, but when you do an apples to apples comparion, Redbox is actually more expensive than Netflix (even the new plan).
Redbox: $1 per day you keep a DVD, so unless you watch it the night you rent it and immediatly return it, the practical cost is $2-$3 per rental (not including gas and time to make a special trip to get and return the DVD). Watch 3-4 DVDs a month and the practical cost is $9-$12 per month (still not including gas & hassle costs).
Netflix: flat $8 per month for DVD rentals. If I watch a DVD the night I get it and mail it the next morning I can get 8-9 DVDs per month. That works out to be a max of $1 per DVD. If I keep them a few days longer it works out to be 4 per month and $2 per DVD.
Let’s say you watch 1 DVD a week (Tuesday is family movie night). Redbox pick up the movie on the way home, watch it that night, return it on the way to work in the morning. Cost = $4 per month. Forget to return it immediatly the next day, have to put off movie night a couple of days, or split up watching the DVD (the movie one night and the extras the next, or you got a TV show with 4 episodes on the disk) and the cost = $6-$8-$10 per month.
Netflix: As long as you mail in the movie by Saturday, you will get the next one by Tuesday to watch. So you have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurday, & Friday to watch the movie. Flat rate of $8.
If you only watch 1-2 DVDs a month or ALWAYS (every single time, no exceptions) return the DVD the day after you rent it, then Redbox is cheaper, but not by much.