6 ms·

Honestly curious, where did those users go? Back to $40 shitcable? Torrenting?

bittermang 15y ago
In my case, I simply went without. Contrary to the way people seem to act, entertainment is neither a right, or a requirement. I get by just fine without movies or television shows.
- megablast 15y ago
  Fair enough, but you could tell us what you do that you didn't used to. I ride more, play board games, and read more.
singer 15y ago
If they are like me, they didn't use Netflix much and it just became an unnecessary expense. For those who use Netflix on a daily basis, I think the new price is still fair.
- baddox 15y ago
  I'm guessing that's most of it: people with disposable income that were paying but not using, simply because they never bothered to cancel. All the news about the price hikes brought the small monthly expense to the attention of these people, and even though most could afford the higher price, it was just the nudge they needed to cancel a service they rarely use.
phallstrom 15y ago
We had the 1 dvd at a time (+ blu ray option). So, for us the price jump was close to double. Our last DVD sat on the shelf for 3 months before we got to it. But we watch streaming a lot. So we canceled the DVD option and figure that $8-9/mo we'll use at the redbox near us if there's something recent we want to watch. That's more movies than we can watch anyway (or that we can get via netflix with the mail delay)... I'm sure a lot of the 800,000 were like us.
paul9290 15y ago
The B-grade content they started to put front and center lost me. I just use hulu.com and other similar sites; Mac Mini connected to my TV.
- JohnTHaller 15y ago
  You kind of have to do that to make Hulu and similar sites actually work in the living room due to the ridiculous licensing restrictions on a lot of their content disallowing phone/Xbox/360/Wii/set top box usage.
  - paul9290 15y ago
    Yes with a Mac Mini connected to a LCD TV you have a ton more choices(hulu, cbsnews.com/video, tv.com & others). It's not the same user experience as a TV, but for me it's better. It allows me to watch/listen to shows/movies in one tab while reading articles, instant messaging friends & other things within other tabs.
- theoj 15y ago
  Agree, it does feel like there is a lot of B-grade stuff on Netflix streaming. Paradoxically, the unlimited movie buffet might be their undoing. There is a limited number of movies that are truly excellent and worth watching. Once you go through those good ones, you're left with the crap. Having unlimited watching quickly moves you from the good stuff to the crap, and then you cancel your subscription. Neflix faces a scarcity disconnect: its unlimited model says there is no scarcity but out in the real world good movies are still scarce.
  - chadgeidel 15y ago
    I personally am amazed that people's queue is not constantly full. Right now I have 178 disks in my "DVD" queue and 87 titles in my "Instant" queue (including series which take one slot). Maybe there's a ton of stuff that I don't "need" to watch, but I can always find something interesting. I really don't consider myself a huge movie lover either.
goodweeds 15y ago
I'm willing to bet that a lot of those users, like myself, said "I've had these same 2 dvds for the past year. The streaming selection pretty much sucks and I end up watching B-movies when I'm bored because nothing I want to watch, and haven't seen before, is in their library. I should send these 2 dvds back and cancel". I've long switched to itunes or Amazon when I want to watch movies because they tend to have the movie I want, when I want it, and I can download the whole movie before watching, thus not having to deal with netflix's lag-burdend craptastic streaming service.
- JohnTHaller 15y ago
  Of course, you don't really 'own' the movies through iTunes or Amazon either. And Netflix's stream servers have plenty of bandwidth to serve up. I use it daily without issue and HD programs, so it's not the servers. More likely, it you're internet connection or their overburdened peer connection to Netflix's peer. Either way, not something really in their control. As most internet service is getting more unreliable (instead of less), this isn't that surprising.
  - Klinky 15y ago
    No where did he mention concerns about owning a movie. I personally can really only stand to watch a movie once, I don't really care to own a movie. As for his internet connection, that probably should be Netflix's concern. Most people aren't going to go through the hassle of changing their ISP for Netflix & it would be rather silly to expect him to continue paying for a service that doesn't work with his ISP or his viewing habits. Netflix needs to be more aggressive with ISPs & content providers. They've seemingly rolled over time & again to ISPs & content producers while irritating their customer base.
  - wx77 15y ago
    I have a bad internet connection (1.5 Mbit) and found that without using the whole connection I wasn't able to stream netflix and was still burdened with artifacts and terrible quality. Now to put this in perspective at a little over half my connection speed (~.8Mbit maybe it is less) amazon streaming works perfectly with decent enough quality and no stops to buffer or recheck my internet speeds. So maybe I'm in the minority or maybe I'm not but I dropped netflix streaming and probably won't be going back unless cable or fiber internet comes to my area.
naner 15y ago
Honestly curious, where did those users go? Back to $40 shitcable? RedBox for Blu-Ray.
fmota 15y ago
YouTube for me. Although I would have continued to stream Netflix if that was an option.
kin 15y ago
They upped their device count to a whopping 50. A lot of those users (myself included) are simply sharing accounts.
sixtofour 15y ago
I went to the library.
zzzeek 15y ago
they can download from itunes, amazon and blockbuster via their tivo, etc. netflix never had a decent selection of titles available for download, somehow AMZN does much better.
tomkarlo 15y ago
You're assuming they were cable-cutters, which is common around here but still uncommon in the wider market. More likely, they had both cable and Netflix (maybe were testing the waters) and when the price change hit, they dropped the Netflix and stuck with cable.
wiredfool 15y ago
I'm one of the 800k. Essentially, I figured out that it was costing me $16/movie I watched, and that was before the price hike. So I cut it out, and given that I was watching on average, a movie every 2 months, I haven't noticed the difference. (and what's more, that's an average, and there was much more activity in a couple of bursts early one.) Their big error for me was reminding me of the relationship between the monthly billing and how much I got out of it. FWIW, this is the second time I've cancelled netflix. They'll probably get a third chance, if I ever feel like watching movies again.
mdasen 15y ago
I have both Redbox and those Blockbuster kiosks on my way to and from work (during the part I walk) and so I can get a $1 DVD when I want rather than managing when something will arrive. I can get a lot from my library. While I don't get to always choose the timing for inter-library loans, I can get a season of television for two weeks at a time. With Netflix, I just get individual DVDs. Some of the things I want to watch are already online for streaming like South Park. There's a lot of content on Hulu as well and network sites can be overlooked as sources of content. I think the price hike made a lot of people think about how they used Netflix. When it was a combined service, people thought "oh, I'm getting this interesting combined service" and ended there. Now people are seeing $16/mo for 3-DVDs at a time and wondering. In order to get to the $1/DVD level, you'd have to get 4 per week. I think a lot of people didn't have that high a velocity of DVDs. You get one shipped to you on monday, it arrives tuesday, I find that there's usually at least 2-3 days of it being at my house between finding the time to watch it and forgetting it in the morning, it gets into the post on thursday or friday, gets to Netflix friday or saturday, and basically you've got a week turn-around time. And if you're getting multiple out at a time, it's hard to watch that much content - and watch it consistently month-to-month. Likewise, I think that people ran through a lot of the streaming content. I also think that the on-demand streaming just doesn't allow me to find things well. It keeps showing me the stuff I've already seen and things it thinks I'm going to rate as 2-3 stars. I understand that Netflix went to this less-search, more-browsing interface because their streaming catalogue isn't complete, but it keeps showing me things I don't want to watch and on rare occasions I've had friends tell me about things I didn't know were on there. So, I think people have been taking stock of Netflix. Netflix raised their prices a mere 9 months prior on them and then again. 3 DVDs plus streaming went from $17 to $20 at the start of 2011 and then from $20 to $24 at the end of summer 2011. For me, there's a genuine feeling that these price increases might continue. I mean, if Netflix goes up another 40% over the next year, that's getting pretty close to "$40 shitcable". Likewise, I surveyed my other options and found them better. I can get a whole season of TV at a time from my library for two weeks. No worrying about how quickly I get disks back into the mail or being annoyed by not having the next disk. New releases I can get from kiosks the night I want them and drop them off on my way to work the next morning and only pay $1. A decent amount of programming is streamable online. Maybe that isn't for you. It's working nicely for me. I have no hard feelings for Netflix, but I find this works better for me while being cheaper. Their streaming collection held my interest for a while and then began seeming like the re-runs of shows in the 6-8pm time slot - sure, they could be good shows, but they weren't necessarily what you were looking for. For me, Netflix solved the problem of rental stores charging me $5 for a DVD. For basically that price, I could get 3-DVDs at a time. Now I'm finding that I can get a $1 DVD from a kiosk (and can often get coupons for those machines) and grab it when I want on my way home. My library can provide me with deeper selection and it costs me nothing (I have to pay the taxes whether I use it or not) and I don't feel as on-the-clock as I do with Netflix. If I return one I didn't watch, well, I can get it again some other time and haven't lost anything - which isn't the feeling I get from Netflix. I'm not saying they're a bad service or it shouldn't work for you. I just think there's increase competition from cheap, kiosk-based rentals and that people have been taking stock of how they use their Netflix and finding it a bit lacking. I mean, if you've kept the same DVDs home for a month and haven't watched them, that isn't Netflix's fault, but it does mean that you aren't enjoying a lot of value there. A price increase simply brings that to your attention and makes you think about eliminating it from your expenses.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
I guess 1channel.ch. I watch on average one movie per day and I can tell you those Putlocker links work just as well as DVDs.
uptown 15y ago
We rent movies on-demand via either Amazon (streamed through my TiVo) or via AppleTV. It gives us access to stream new movies with a pay-as-you-go pricing structure which is more in-line with how many movies we watch (probably one a month, if that). For us, Netflix was never a replacement for cable because there's still enough live content on cable we wouldn't get via Netflix, or without having to jump through hoops to easily get onto a television. Netflix made the catastrophic mistake of reminding their customers how much they were paying for their service at the exact time new content was back on television ... then did it again a couple weeks later. They couldn't have executed any worse IMO.
kellishaver 15y ago
I've done a few things after cancelling Netflix. In my case, it was so rare that I got DVDs that it wasn't worth the cost of continuing that. I've just dropped rented DVDs from my viewing all together (though there's also a Redbox that I go by every single day so that's an option). As for streaming, most of what I want to watch I can also get for free via Amazon Instant with my Amazon Prime account, which I would be paying for anyway and the occasional movie or show that isn't included free evens out to no more than I was paying for Netflix. I also realized that I would watch a lot of TV shows on Netflix and then buy them on DVD/blu-ray at a later date, so I just buy the DVDs/blu-rays, which requires a little more patience (box sets are expensive so I don't buy them everyday) but it turns out that waiting a month or two has no significant impact on my life. ;) Shows that are currently airing, some documentaries, kids movies, etc. we watch on Hulu for free. They only offer the last 5 episodes of the season on the free account, but if you don't get behind, that's all you need.
- suivix 15y ago
  I don't understand why you'd buy DVDs and Blu-rays knowing they will soon be obsolete?
  - kellishaver 15y ago
    I think "soon" is a bit overly optimistic. DVDs are on the way out, yes (though a lot of TV shows are still only available on DVD), but I really don't see blu-ray going anywhere for a while. Besides, I like having the physical media, even though it's not the most efficient, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I think it probably appeals to a lot of consumers. Anyway, it doesn't really matter if they become obsolete in a year. The ones I've purchased aren't going to suddenly stop working because the technology has moved on and the players will be around for a long while for this reason. Heck, you can still buy a VCR for about $40 and VHS tapes have a much shorter life than a CD. When the players start getting hard to find or too expensive, it will be a simple matter to transfer the contents of said disks to a hard drive.
skeeterbug 15y ago
I went back to Directv. I was already missing sports, so this move pushed me back in that direction.

In my case, I simply went without. Contrary to the way people seem to act, entertainment is neither a right, or a requirement. I get by just fine without movies or television shows.

megablast 15y ago
Fair enough, but you could tell us what you do that you didn't used to. I ride more, play board games, and read more.

singer 15y ago

If they are like me, they didn't use Netflix much and it just became an unnecessary expense. For those who use Netflix on a daily basis, I think the new price is still fair.

baddox 15y ago
I'm guessing that's most of it: people with disposable income that were paying but not using, simply because they never bothered to cancel. All the news about the price hikes brought the small monthly expense to the attention of these people, and even though most could afford the higher price, it was just the nudge they needed to cancel a service they rarely use.

phallstrom 15y ago

We had the 1 dvd at a time (+ blu ray option). So, for us the price jump was close to double. Our last DVD sat on the shelf for 3 months before we got to it. But we watch streaming a lot. So we canceled the DVD option and figure that $8-9/mo we'll use at the redbox near us if there's something recent we want to watch. That's more movies than we can watch anyway (or that we can get via netflix with the mail delay)... I'm sure a lot of the 800,000 were like us.

paul9290 15y ago

The B-grade content they started to put front and center lost me. I just use hulu.com and other similar sites; Mac Mini connected to my TV.

JohnTHaller 15y ago
You kind of have to do that to make Hulu and similar sites actually work in the living room due to the ridiculous licensing restrictions on a lot of their content disallowing phone/Xbox/360/Wii/set top box usage.
- paul9290 15y ago
  Yes with a Mac Mini connected to a LCD TV you have a ton more choices(hulu, cbsnews.com/video, tv.com & others). It's not the same user experience as a TV, but for me it's better. It allows me to watch/listen to shows/movies in one tab while reading articles, instant messaging friends & other things within other tabs.
theoj 15y ago
Agree, it does feel like there is a lot of B-grade stuff on Netflix streaming. Paradoxically, the unlimited movie buffet might be their undoing. There is a limited number of movies that are truly excellent and worth watching. Once you go through those good ones, you're left with the crap. Having unlimited watching quickly moves you from the good stuff to the crap, and then you cancel your subscription. Neflix faces a scarcity disconnect: its unlimited model says there is no scarcity but out in the real world good movies are still scarce.
- chadgeidel 15y ago
  I personally am amazed that people's queue is not constantly full. Right now I have 178 disks in my "DVD" queue and 87 titles in my "Instant" queue (including series which take one slot). Maybe there's a ton of stuff that I don't "need" to watch, but I can always find something interesting. I really don't consider myself a huge movie lover either.

goodweeds 15y ago

I'm willing to bet that a lot of those users, like myself, said "I've had these same 2 dvds for the past year. The streaming selection pretty much sucks and I end up watching B-movies when I'm bored because nothing I want to watch, and haven't seen before, is in their library. I should send these 2 dvds back and cancel". I've long switched to itunes or Amazon when I want to watch movies because they tend to have the movie I want, when I want it, and I can download the whole movie before watching, thus not having to deal with netflix's lag-burdend craptastic streaming service.

JohnTHaller 15y ago
Of course, you don't really 'own' the movies through iTunes or Amazon either. And Netflix's stream servers have plenty of bandwidth to serve up. I use it daily without issue and HD programs, so it's not the servers. More likely, it you're internet connection or their overburdened peer connection to Netflix's peer. Either way, not something really in their control. As most internet service is getting more unreliable (instead of less), this isn't that surprising.
- Klinky 15y ago
  No where did he mention concerns about owning a movie. I personally can really only stand to watch a movie once, I don't really care to own a movie. As for his internet connection, that probably should be Netflix's concern. Most people aren't going to go through the hassle of changing their ISP for Netflix & it would be rather silly to expect him to continue paying for a service that doesn't work with his ISP or his viewing habits. Netflix needs to be more aggressive with ISPs & content providers. They've seemingly rolled over time & again to ISPs & content producers while irritating their customer base.
- wx77 15y ago
  I have a bad internet connection (1.5 Mbit) and found that without using the whole connection I wasn't able to stream netflix and was still burdened with artifacts and terrible quality. Now to put this in perspective at a little over half my connection speed (~.8Mbit maybe it is less) amazon streaming works perfectly with decent enough quality and no stops to buffer or recheck my internet speeds. So maybe I'm in the minority or maybe I'm not but I dropped netflix streaming and probably won't be going back unless cable or fiber internet comes to my area.

naner 15y ago

Honestly curious, where did those users go? Back to $40 shitcable? RedBox for Blu-Ray.

fmota 15y ago

YouTube for me. Although I would have continued to stream Netflix if that was an option.

kin 15y ago

They upped their device count to a whopping 50. A lot of those users (myself included) are simply sharing accounts.

sixtofour 15y ago

I went to the library.

zzzeek 15y ago

they can download from itunes, amazon and blockbuster via their tivo, etc. netflix never had a decent selection of titles available for download, somehow AMZN does much better.

tomkarlo 15y ago

You're assuming they were cable-cutters, which is common around here but still uncommon in the wider market. More likely, they had both cable and Netflix (maybe were testing the waters) and when the price change hit, they dropped the Netflix and stuck with cable.

wiredfool 15y ago

I'm one of the 800k. Essentially, I figured out that it was costing me $16/movie I watched, and that was before the price hike. So I cut it out, and given that I was watching on average, a movie every 2 months, I haven't noticed the difference. (and what's more, that's an average, and there was much more activity in a couple of bursts early one.) Their big error for me was reminding me of the relationship between the monthly billing and how much I got out of it. FWIW, this is the second time I've cancelled netflix. They'll probably get a third chance, if I ever feel like watching movies again.

mdasen 15y ago

I have both Redbox and those Blockbuster kiosks on my way to and from work (during the part I walk) and so I can get a $1 DVD when I want rather than managing when something will arrive. I can get a lot from my library. While I don't get to always choose the timing for inter-library loans, I can get a season of television for two weeks at a time. With Netflix, I just get individual DVDs. Some of the things I want to watch are already online for streaming like South Park. There's a lot of content on Hulu as well and network sites can be overlooked as sources of content. I think the price hike made a lot of people think about how they used Netflix. When it was a combined service, people thought "oh, I'm getting this interesting combined service" and ended there. Now people are seeing $16/mo for 3-DVDs at a time and wondering. In order to get to the $1/DVD level, you'd have to get 4 per week. I think a lot of people didn't have that high a velocity of DVDs. You get one shipped to you on monday, it arrives tuesday, I find that there's usually at least 2-3 days of it being at my house between finding the time to watch it and forgetting it in the morning, it gets into the post on thursday or friday, gets to Netflix friday or saturday, and basically you've got a week turn-around time. And if you're getting multiple out at a time, it's hard to watch that much content - and watch it consistently month-to-month. Likewise, I think that people ran through a lot of the streaming content. I also think that the on-demand streaming just doesn't allow me to find things well. It keeps showing me the stuff I've already seen and things it thinks I'm going to rate as 2-3 stars. I understand that Netflix went to this less-search, more-browsing interface because their streaming catalogue isn't complete, but it keeps showing me things I don't want to watch and on rare occasions I've had friends tell me about things I didn't know were on there. So, I think people have been taking stock of Netflix. Netflix raised their prices a mere 9 months prior on them and then again. 3 DVDs plus streaming went from $17 to $20 at the start of 2011 and then from $20 to $24 at the end of summer 2011. For me, there's a genuine feeling that these price increases might continue. I mean, if Netflix goes up another 40% over the next year, that's getting pretty close to "$40 shitcable". Likewise, I surveyed my other options and found them better. I can get a whole season of TV at a time from my library for two weeks. No worrying about how quickly I get disks back into the mail or being annoyed by not having the next disk. New releases I can get from kiosks the night I want them and drop them off on my way to work the next morning and only pay $1. A decent amount of programming is streamable online. Maybe that isn't for you. It's working nicely for me. I have no hard feelings for Netflix, but I find this works better for me while being cheaper. Their streaming collection held my interest for a while and then began seeming like the re-runs of shows in the 6-8pm time slot - sure, they could be good shows, but they weren't necessarily what you were looking for. For me, Netflix solved the problem of rental stores charging me $5 for a DVD. For basically that price, I could get 3-DVDs at a time. Now I'm finding that I can get a $1 DVD from a kiosk (and can often get coupons for those machines) and grab it when I want on my way home. My library can provide me with deeper selection and it costs me nothing (I have to pay the taxes whether I use it or not) and I don't feel as on-the-clock as I do with Netflix. If I return one I didn't watch, well, I can get it again some other time and haven't lost anything - which isn't the feeling I get from Netflix. I'm not saying they're a bad service or it shouldn't work for you. I just think there's increase competition from cheap, kiosk-based rentals and that people have been taking stock of how they use their Netflix and finding it a bit lacking. I mean, if you've kept the same DVDs home for a month and haven't watched them, that isn't Netflix's fault, but it does mean that you aren't enjoying a lot of value there. A price increase simply brings that to your attention and makes you think about eliminating it from your expenses.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

I guess 1channel.ch. I watch on average one movie per day and I can tell you those Putlocker links work just as well as DVDs.

uptown 15y ago

We rent movies on-demand via either Amazon (streamed through my TiVo) or via AppleTV. It gives us access to stream new movies with a pay-as-you-go pricing structure which is more in-line with how many movies we watch (probably one a month, if that). For us, Netflix was never a replacement for cable because there's still enough live content on cable we wouldn't get via Netflix, or without having to jump through hoops to easily get onto a television. Netflix made the catastrophic mistake of reminding their customers how much they were paying for their service at the exact time new content was back on television ... then did it again a couple weeks later. They couldn't have executed any worse IMO.

kellishaver 15y ago

I've done a few things after cancelling Netflix. In my case, it was so rare that I got DVDs that it wasn't worth the cost of continuing that. I've just dropped rented DVDs from my viewing all together (though there's also a Redbox that I go by every single day so that's an option). As for streaming, most of what I want to watch I can also get for free via Amazon Instant with my Amazon Prime account, which I would be paying for anyway and the occasional movie or show that isn't included free evens out to no more than I was paying for Netflix. I also realized that I would watch a lot of TV shows on Netflix and then buy them on DVD/blu-ray at a later date, so I just buy the DVDs/blu-rays, which requires a little more patience (box sets are expensive so I don't buy them everyday) but it turns out that waiting a month or two has no significant impact on my life. ;) Shows that are currently airing, some documentaries, kids movies, etc. we watch on Hulu for free. They only offer the last 5 episodes of the season on the free account, but if you don't get behind, that's all you need.

suivix 15y ago
I don't understand why you'd buy DVDs and Blu-rays knowing they will soon be obsolete?
- kellishaver 15y ago
  I think "soon" is a bit overly optimistic. DVDs are on the way out, yes (though a lot of TV shows are still only available on DVD), but I really don't see blu-ray going anywhere for a while. Besides, I like having the physical media, even though it's not the most efficient, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I think it probably appeals to a lot of consumers. Anyway, it doesn't really matter if they become obsolete in a year. The ones I've purchased aren't going to suddenly stop working because the technology has moved on and the players will be around for a long while for this reason. Heck, you can still buy a VCR for about $40 and VHS tapes have a much shorter life than a CD. When the players start getting hard to find or too expensive, it will be a simple matter to transfer the contents of said disks to a hard drive.

skeeterbug 15y ago

I went back to Directv. I was already missing sports, so this move pushed me back in that direction.