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Netflix to Raise Price from $11 to $13 a Month
- orlybg 8y agoIt is due to less competition. Once it gets a competitor then it will be downing like a sunset.
- BossingAround 8y agoHonestly, if it means more quality content, I'm for paying even $15+. Netflix has a ton of content, but I feel like at least 70% (and I'm being generous here) is very much 'meh'. There are some people who are happy to watch 'meh', and that's awesome, but I find myself re-watching old (but good) TV series, because the good TV show I watched has ended and I haven't found anything good yet. So, Friends it is, I guess...
- crooked-v 8y agoI feel like there's still a ton of stuff on Netflix that I would be interested in, but the interface has made it harder and harder to find any of it, to the extent that there are any number of films I'd actively like to watch that I only discovered were on Netflix from one of the third-party sites that indexes their contents. For example: http://flicksurfer.com/ http://flicksurfer.com/ If I could just get pretty much exactly that interface in the Netflix app, plus toggles for "I've seen this, don't show it again unless I look for it specifically" and "I will literally never want to see this, never show it to me again", Netflix would have much higher value to me.
- tracker1 8y agoCannot second the never show this to me again and I've watched this option... Also, I liked when you at least had a chance at curated categories.. now it's just a blurry mess. I also don't like the bent to the documentaries they have (which flows to the organization as a whole). I find that Amazon at least has a bit of balance. I cancelled after they dropped the Marvel shows. It's really one of the few things I liked/watched on there.
- konschubert 8y agoSince they have tons of mediocre content, I think having more money will just lead to more of that. If they had the ability to create good content but were lacking the finances, they could take it from the mediocre content.
- freehunter 8y agoEveryone's take on "mediocre content" is different. My wife loves a lot of the low-rated Netflix shows. In the same way our dishes might not get washed as quick if I didn't have my favorite podcasts, I don't know if our laundry would get done as quick if she didn't have Fuller House or that mermaid show.
- mipmap04 8y agoNetflix is the cost of renting The Office and Breaking Bad forever.
- perfmode 8y agoI don’t mind. Netflix is a steal of a deal IMHO. Their media is so satisfying to consume. I’ll take it over a nice entree at a restaurant any day.
- idontpost 8y agoWhere do you live that you can get a "nice" entrée for $13? That's what McDonalds costs here...
- hokumguru 8y agoIn Nebraska that'd be about right.
- Kamshak 8y agoProbably outside of the US where entrée means starter instead of main course
- jjeaff 8y agoDo you live in Europe? I don't know of anywhere that McDonald's costs that much in the US. Maybe the Times Square one if you get a full combo. $13 gets you a nice entree in most any US city. Not white table cloth service of course, but you can find good and healthy food. Especially if we are talking just about the entree.
- tracker1 8y agoA lot of California, NYC, and other areas would be that much for a meal plus taxes. Also airports large college towns and some downtown areas for larger cities. I usually don't spend less than $15-20 at fast food. But often it's multiple burgers without a bun, and a couple of side salads.
- jjeaff 8y agook, multiple burgers and multiple side salads is not a normal meal at a fast food restaurant.
- bedhead 8y agoNumber of subscribers who won't renew because of this? Zero. Netflix delivers the most hours-of-entertainment-per-dollar of anything in the world that isn't free, it's not even close.
- daeken 8y agoYeah, this will almost certainly have a negligible effect on their subscriber base. I won't say it's zero, but damn close. $2 monthly increase means $24 a year, or ... less than a single meal for a family of four at Wendy's or KFC.
- beefalo 8y agoWendy's can get you 4 four for four meals at only $16. I say that is a marvel of the modern world
- tracker1 8y agoI'd say it's a marvel of soy and starch filled "chicken" patties and nuggets loaded with extra sugar to boot. I'm just guessing that in one of those meals (not including the soda) you get a over full day's worth of sugar (100g, medical standard max recommended) which is way higher than what people should probably limit sugar intake to (20g).
- Johnny555 8y agoI'll probably drop it for 6 months or so, I've gone through pretty much everything I want to see for now, I'll switch to hulu for a while (with "free" Amazon prime streaming as a backup)
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIt's also one of the best providers of streaming HDR / Dolby Vision media.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoNetflix is going to be $156 per year. This is similar in price to Amazon Prime, Playstation Plus, and Xbox Live combined. I usually by the latter two on sale, which can get the combined price under Netflix. Personally, I get a lot more out of those services than Netflix.
- IloveHN84 8y agoThank God there's Kodi
- 14 8y agoyou will probably get down voted on HN for that comment but I think you bring in a good point. How are they going to compete with the likes of kodi which is something even my parents can manage to use. They keep adding cost while lowering quality in my opinion. Yes they may have added a few things but the user end experience is just bad and I can't see how they can win me back.
- tracker1 8y agoI'm not sure about the ability for your parents to manage to use it... Either you're configuring a media app and a paid service for better streaming options and a vpn on top of that if you're careful. Alternatively you want to go through a handful of torrent options, download to a seedbox, then download to a local file share then watch on TV. I mean, I'm willing to do this for some thing (often because a new release on a streaming service breaks 3 episodes in because of capacity issues), but not everyone is willing to do so. I'd be willing to pay $25/month if they got all the content that is no longer available back and included the disc at a time service back. Right now, you can't even watch most of the entire line of movies they do have (like all the MCU movies, or all the die hards, etc). Most of their original content I don't care for, a lot of the rest isn't great. And the dropped the handful of shows I really fired up the netflix app for.
- dammitcoetzee 8y agoAre they being greedy or is this just inflation? $7.99 was the original DVD rental fee in 1997 → which is $12.51 in 2019 dollars. I wish I had a better mental tool for working with inflation in my "get-mad-o-meter", haha.
- cheeze 8y agoWas anyone actually paying $7.99 though?
- titusjohnson 8y agoWasn't $7.99 for the one-at-a-time plan? I also recall it being more like $10 or $12, but I wasn't paying for it at the time so I'm not an authority. I felt like my family was lucky to get through 7 DVDs a month with one-at-a-time. We had a pretty good 3-4 day turnaround, but no matter how hard you tried to watch every movie the day you received it, we always managed to end up holding onto a disc for a few days. We eventually switched to 2-at-a-time so we could have one in-flight and one at home, that helped smooth out the gaps. But even counting 2 or 3 at a time subscriptions, with unlimited streaming I am able to consume more content in a week and a half then I could in an entire month with DVDs, so in terms of content viewed per dollar I still think I'm getting a good deal. Streaming is especially a boon to anyone binging on a TV show. DVDs would have 3, maybe 4 episodes per DVD, so going through a show could monopolize your subscription for weeks at a time. Today I pop the show I want on and it just goes and goes.
- oflannabhra 8y agoThe big advantage of the DVD plan is selection. That is inherent in the media, and the license structure of it. Another big change is BluRay, which I've found has far and away higher quality than streaming of any type.
- cheeze 8y ago> far and away higher quality than streaming of any type Absolutely. Blu-Ray usually have ~18-25GB of raw video for a standard 2 hour 1080p film. It's usually actually more because of the container format but the actual video itself is usually about that size.
- rdtsc 8y ago> We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix experience.” Is it improving though? It used to be better, had more quality content, easier to navigate, user ratings, reviews etc. I feel it is one of those cases where to get the real meaning behind the corporate PR message you have to invert it. Then it would be something like: "We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in subpar entertainment and worsening the overall Netflix experience." I had canceled it a few years back as I ended up spending more time looking for something to watch than actually watching anything. To be fair their original shows were not too bad. I enjoyed Stranger Things, House of Cards and a few others. But it just wasn't worth the price overall.
- noir_lord 8y agoThere are two films I want to watch releasing this weekend and season 2 of The Punisher, those alone pay for it for the month, they've had some corkers in the last year - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was brilliant. Our house has both Netflix and Prime Video and that about covers me, my partner and the little boy (Trollhunters is fantastic if you have a child in the house also created for Netflix).
- herogreen 8y agoWhen you say "had more quality content", do you mean that some content was removed ? Or that the rate over which great content is produced has decreased ?
- rdtsc 8y ago> do you mean that some content was removed Yes. Content would be removed. Especially top rated IMDB movies. Instead there would be more B-movies. In-house shows made it better, but there weren't enough of them.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> When you say "had more quality content", do you mean that some content was removed ? Yes, once Netflix proved that streaming was commercially viable, they rapidly got competition bidding for exclusive streaming licenses and then content owners pulling content for their own exclusive streaming services. So, yes, a lot of content was lost and more is being lost. OTOH, they've ramped up exclusive acquisitions and content development.
- jrs235 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18911296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18911296
- Faaak 8y agoFrankly, I find so much netflix-shows on netflix, but rarely good movies not produced by them. I wanted to show my GF Star Wars... but it wasn't on it. Same for James Bond, Die hard 4, Oblivion, MI1, etc. It's a shame, really. I would gladly pay 20$/month, but in this case, I want ALL available movies, not just some cherry-picked ones.
- alexandercrohde 8y agoHonestly when it comes to movies instead of shows I find it's likely cheaper to rent 3 movies/month than subscribe to netflix. And I get to watch the movies I care about.
- Faaak 8y agoWhich services do you use ?
- baron816 8y agoNetflix still has its classic DVDs by mail business, which is still a great deal when you think about what it used to be like renting movies. Or you could rent movies via streaming. Netflix isn’t trying to kill Blockbuster anymore. It’s trying to kill cable/network TV, where they have their own content, but also air reruns and a few movies.
- Faaak 8y agoI could rent, on go on other service, but you have to agree that it's way simpler to go on a pirate site and download a movie.
- mindcrime 8y agoI wanted to show my GF Star Wars... but it wasn't on it. Same for James Bond, Die hard 4, Oblivion, MI1, etc. It's a shame, really. I would gladly pay 20$/month, but in this case, I want ALL available movies, not just some cherry-picked ones. FWIW, for watching arbitrary "not on Netflix" movies, Youtube is actually a surprisingly good option. Their "pay to rent movie" service has a pretty deep catalog, and an awful lot of their choices seem to be in the $2.99 - $7.99 or so range. It's quite often I want to watch something that's not on Netflix and find it on YT for, say, $4.99. I don't mind paying that a couple of times a month, on top of what I pay Netflix.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AlexB138 8y agoWhat are you all actually using Netflix for anymore? I keep a subscription for my kids, and will watch a documentary maybe once a month, but their in-house content seems to be the primary offering now and my impression has been that it's mostly terrible. $13 isn't a deal breaker, but it's definitely creeping toward breaking point for me. I think I would probably drop it somewhere between $15 and $20.
- endorphone 8y agoI do not get the bizarre cynicism that appears in every discussion regarding Netflix. The service has loads of fantastic content covering every gamut.
- mindcrime 8y agoI do not get the bizarre cynicism that appears in every discussion regarding Netflix. Same here. I mean, yeah, Netflix doesn't have everything I want to watch. But it does have a shit-ton of stuff I do want to watch. I only allocate a few hours a week to entertainment, so at this rate, I could watch Netflix at my max rate for the next 10 years and probably not even get through the list of stuff they have right now, that interests me (that's assuming nothing got dropped during that 10 years). That said, yeah, their movie selection in particular is pretty weak. But at any given time, I can always find at least a few dozen that I can say "I'd probably enjoy watching this" if not "this is something I've very specifically been waiting to watch". I don't know how much higher they could go on price before they'd lose me, but for now, I'm getting my money's worth.
- AlexB138 8y agoThat's what I was trying to get at with the question about what people are using the service for. I guess better phrase would be "what are people watching". Once or twice a month I'll open Netflix, browse around, try to watch something and turn it off. It seems like most of what it suggests is their in-house content, which I've had very little luck with. I don't remember the last time I found something I enjoyed by browsing Netflix, as opposed to knowing exactly what I was looking for ahead of time. Are they just really bad at suggesting content? How do you go about discovering the fantastic content?
- oflannabhra 8y agoFrom a previous thread: I've been wondering if the last Great Unbundling will be followed by another Great Rebundling. I'm no expert in any of this, but it seems unlikely that the new "channels" of Netflix et al. will prevent their programming and delivery methods from be bundled until it becomes disadvantageous to their growth (ie monthly subscriptions can't generate enough revenue). It seems to me there is an explosion of content that will be able to be monetized far beyond just subscription lock-in. I wonder what the method of monetization will be after the gold-rush of building subscriber bases? Netflix's original proposition and value was one of convenience (and price), but I wonder how long that will last. Will households juggle 4+ subscriptions of $15/mo? I'm not sure that is why cord-cutters originally cancelled their cable subscriptions. My off-the-top-of-my-head list of current and coming soon subscription services (that also produce content) is: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO, YouTube, CBS, Disney/Fox, NBC, Apple. Technologically, it seems like there are some serious hurdles to "bundling" these together. I wonder if the future "bundle" will actually be a service that manages subscriptions for you, with things like highlighting newly available shows since the last time you subscribed.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoNetflix is a bundle. For stuff that's not on Netflix, I can often buy individual seasons or episodes on Amazon. This is often cheaper than maintaining a subscription all year.
- tracker1 8y agoI'm still irked that CBS, Warner, CW and the DC subscriptions aren't a single service. Talk about milking it. I did a year of DC and didn't look at it before the preview was up... I mean, Titans was meh, and I'm happy Young Justice is back, but totally not worth the price of admission for how many DC things are missing...
- bluetidepro 8y agoOff topic, but I really wish Netflix had an open API again. Or heck, even one I could pay for, for a small fee. There is so many cool things I'd love to do with my user data on there, but it's all so closed off. Unless that changed of course, and there is something available again?
- turdnagel 8y agoI bet the price elasticity on Netflix is pretty high. They should try changing it to $19.99 and see what happens.
- the_70x 8y agoand still not have an option to hide things that I don't want to see
- emilfihlman 8y agoIf only it didn't suck outside of Murica.
- shoulderfake 8y agoThe main problem with it is that its hard to navigate. Why isn't the show I watched last right there visible for me to click when I revisit the page ? Instead its buried two page lengths down.
- tracker1 8y agoAfter the Marvel implosion, I already cancelled. Not the only reason but enough for me to finally walk out.
- stunt 8y agoI hope they improve the content. Most of it is useless. Ah, I was expecting they reduce the price for HD content!