Netflix is Raising the Price of Its Most Popular Plan To $14 Today, Premium Tier Increasing To $18 (theverge.com) 94
Netflix is introducing price hikes for its US subscribers today, increasing its standard plan to $14 a month and its premium tier to $18 a month. From a report: The new pricing for the standard plan is a $1 price increase (from $13 a month), while the new premium tier cost is a $2 increase (from $16 a month). New subscribers will have to pay the updated monthly fees, while current subscribers will see the new prices over the next few weeks as they roll out with customer's billing cycles. Industry insiders have long anticipated another round of price hikes at Netflix, which last increased subscription fees in the United States in January 2019. Recently, Netflix increased the cost of some plans in Canada. Netflix rolls out price changes on a country-by-country basis and the change "in the US does not influence or indicate a global price change," a Netflix spokesperson told The Verge.
Streaming has the same cable crap of prices going (Score:3, Interesting)
Streaming has the same cable crap of prices going up all the time.
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Cable: Increase price, decrease quality programming.
Netflix is just following in the footsteps of that which came before. The amount of absolute garbage on Netflix at this point makes it hard to justify at any price.
Re: Streaming has the same cable crap of prices go (Score:2)
The net result is that anyone on the previous $16 plan will likely downgrade. Wont it be funny when they suddenly make less money.
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I won't downgrade. I might only subscribe a few months per year, but they still only offer 4K and/or HDR streaming on the highest tier.
Netflix is the TJ Max of streaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Cable: Increase price, decrease quality programming.
Netflix is just following in the footsteps of that which came before. The amount of absolute garbage on Netflix at this point makes it hard to justify at any price.
Hmmm. I don't remember Netflix being ever that great. They had some great shows, but the tend to cancel them extremely quickly. I love Stranger Things and am confident they'll keep making that, but have little confidence in anything else. They've always had this experimental model where, as South Park joked, they greenlight anything and then cancel it after a season or two.
I view them as the TJ Max of video. They seem to be only interested in buying rejects or high gamble, low-budget series. You're so amazed you get so much for free, it takes awhile to notice it's mostly crap. With the exception of maybe a dozen shows, I've found them to be really overrated. There's no consistency to the brand.
I will give them credit. They're amazing at generating hype. Remember Bird Box? Like half the country saw it when it came out and now I imagine no one has thought about it in ages. It's a really stupid movie when you think about it, but we were all going nuts watching it. I remember the news reports warning about the dangers of bird box challenges. Netflix has a dozen or so of those high hype movies and shows everyone goes nuts for and forgets. They also have story after story about how smart their algorithms are and how well they know their audience, but again...I think it's overhyped like Bird Box.
All this whining, yet I still haven't canceled yet and have been a subscriber for 20 years now. Since they've largely stopped doing stand up comedy, which was the main thing I watched, I keep consider it, but am too lazy....perhaps they're thriving off the "gym membership" model?...people like me who rarely use it, but never get around to canceling.
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I remember Bird Box as being a movie with a premise too stupid for me to watch. Maybe it was actually good but I've wasted too much time watching movies like that.
They seem to have a lot of shows and movies that are sort of okay, but not that great. And sometimes I just want to watch a movie, but they put out so many series, it's ridiculous.
And I'm not happy that they cancelled Patriot Act. Obviously Netflix cancelled Hasan Minahj's show because he was too right wing. It's funny that Republicans have r
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Bird Box was hot garbage served on a paper plate. My wife bought into the hype so we watched it. It wasn't just a stupid premise, it was a terrible plot, shitty characters, and utterly un-interesting attempts to hook you in all brought together with some of the worst acting ever.
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Netflix used to have a lot of older movies. As they dropped contracts with rights holders, we've lost access to most of the classics and old horror and comedy movies worth watching.
There's still a few things on worth a watch, but contracting and content swapping mean you may be in the middle of a show and they'll drop it. We went back through Cheers a while back and had to hit three different streaming services by the time we were done with it as it kept hopping around. Maybe the streaming services are w
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It's probably just following the typical inflation associated with computers and networking. That 3c501 ethernet card that you used to be able to get for only about $250 back in the late 1980s, would be over ten thousand dollars these days. And the Osbourne 1 computer was a steal at $1,795 back in the day, but you would expect to pay close to a million dollars for such incredibly portable computing power now. Things just can't stay cheap forever!
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The 3c501 was never very well supported in Linux. You want to go to the 3c503. 10Base2 rocks.
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Not at all. Not even in the same league. To get a cable package that includes a premium movie channel such as HBO, you need to pay +100 dollars a month. That's because before you get to order a premium movie channel, they make you subscribe to about 200 other channels such as cable news, sports, semi-premium channels like AMC and FX, etc. Netflix costs, what something like 20 bucks a month. Hell, you could subscribe to Neftix, Prime, and HBO for less than half the price of your cable bill with premium movie
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It almost seems worth it - after all, I'm paying nearly $100 a month just to have internet service and for sites like Slashdot, I could probably get by with dialup.
More revenue for what? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I could tell before I canceled last month, I'm not sure what they are spending all this money to accomplish. The quality of the shows has dropped so much that I end up laughing at how bad the dialog or plots are and stop watching. I spent a good week trying to find stuff to watch before canceling and found a few comedy specials and that was about it. Most of the rest is just garbage that Lifetime passed on.
Re:More revenue for what? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I find it annoying that the price is going up while the amount of new quality content is going down. I'm thinking that it will be time to cancel this service soon.
Looks fine to me (Score:2)
I'm not sure what they are spending all this money to accomplish.
The Witcher was really good.
Locke and Key was pretty good.
The Umbrella Academy was really good.
Dark Crystal may have been good, and it certainly took a lot of money....
And of course the next season of Stranger Things is under way.
Yes Netflix is also putting some money into cheap throwaway shows, but they are also still getting in good external series and have some good ones going that obviously have a lot of money put into them.
You can cancel
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Dark Crystal looked dumb, I started Locke and Key and lost interest. Witcher didn't appeal to me. The last season of Stranger Things was phoned in. It was really unoriginal and unexciting and left me wanting for something more. Hopefully the next season will be better, but we may have a year to wait on that. The Umbrella Academy looked possibly interesting, but not enough to keep me subscribing.
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My own judgment is that Amazon has done a better job of producing (in my view) interesting content and originals, including the Boys, Homecoming, Goliath, Hunters, Jack Ryan, The Expanse, The Man in the High Castle, Good Omens, etc.
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I agree. I switched to Amazon a little over a year ago and the only interest I have in Netflix would be The Witcher. Netflix content also seems to be more politically influenced compared to Amazon. That only pushes disinterest from anyone on a different political spectrum.
A price increase makes it even less desirable to me, but people who enjoy the content will live with it. The ones who barely watch any content will have a reason to re-evaluate their subscription.
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I did like the Boys and the Expanse and Good Omens, but I still feel like Netflix has been more consistent with quality - I didn't really care for the Ray Bradbury show, tales from the loop. I didn't even really like the High Castle that much...
Oh and I really loved the Tick, so they did a good job there, credit for that.
I'll try some of the others you've mentioned. One of the things I think Amazon is even more terrible at that Netflix is show discovery, so even when they have a new good show you may neve
Re: More revenue for what? (Score:1)
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They don't have pay per view (Score:2)
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Welcome to the latest generation of MBA's. How do we make more money? Raise prices! Customers quit? Ok, raise prices some more to compensate for the revenue loss. Cable companies have been doing this for years. How long before Netflix starts offering promotional retention pricing for 6 or 12 months to anyone attempting to cancel?
Re:More revenue for what? (Score:5, Informative)
They do offer promotional pricing if you cancel. In fact, you don't even have to cancel. They offered me a lower rate on the cancelation page. Now they are offering $8.99, but the term is unspecified.
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In previous years I would've agreed with you that the magnitude of the price increase was unwarranted (it's far out-stripped inflation - $8 in 2010 is only $9.50 today after adjusting for inflation). But they probably saw a big COVID-related spike in usage in 2020, and need additional revenue to pay for the increased bandwidth contracts and licen
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Same old..same old.. (Score:1)
Re: Same old..same old.. (Score:2)
I had hoped that the quality was entirely due to covid, but raising prices is just dumb. I had the one that offered more streams, but honestly we never exceeded 2 anyway. If I keep it at all it will be to downgrade. Im almost caught up on all the shows that madeup the marvel defenders. I have the last season of daredevil to finish and thats about it. Was getting tired of all the SJW bullshit they throw into their original shows lately anyway. They did some scifi show where its like 15 people on a spaceship
Re: Same old..same old.. (Score:1)
Tried them for a month (Score:2)
But then I am atypical, I am about to drop hulu also. Kinda hard to see what your paying for with the commercials interrupting any continuity.
Re:Tried them for a month (Score:5, Insightful)
That's more a discoverability problem. There's a lot of great stuff on there, but it's near impossible to find anything good to watch. A lot of the good stuff was international (non-US) Netflix productions. And they just keep licensing so much more crap. It buries the good stuff and unless you've fed their recommendations engine massive amounts of data, they can't help you find what you'll like.
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And they are still able to get close on guesses
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This year I've watched far less TV. Between a MythTV + HDHomerun + Antenna, a library of 300 DVDs and Blu-Rays (also accessible via MythTV) and Youtube, I've barely looked to Netflix. Not because I don't have a backlog of 50 shows and movies on my list there, but because I don't need more content.
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...they can't help you find what you'll like.
They could start with NOT moving Recently Watched and My List randomly. I don't need recommendations if I've gone through the effort of adding things to a watch list. I shouldn't need recommendation to find where the bloody list was randomly rendered this time.
On that note, it would be nice if they had a section for unwatched things in watchlist, or an option to automagically remove things from the watchlist that you've watched.
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I dropped my DVD plan long ago once they started dumping their discs for resale at Dollar General and the like. I had a queue of a couple hundred and most were very long wait, unavailable or no longer available on Blu-ray.
I'm raking in the dough. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I'm raking in the dough. (Score:2)
Send a message by dropping them... (Score:1)
I'm still getting it for free. (Score:2)
Thanks, generous friend. Maybe I'll start giving you a few bucks a month.
Nah.
Good business plan (Score:2)
step 1: Lose a lot of the content rights to other services so raise prices.
step 2: People leave in droves due to the combination.
step 3: ??
step 4: profit
Nobody's filming anything (Score:2)
I'm sure they're barely adding any new content right now - there's very few shows that have even resumed filming schedules. Worst time to raise rates.
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I'll cancel the subscription!! (Score:1)
Where the fuck are the space sci fi shows (Score:2)
Gimme some good space scfi if enough of the drug lord vs witches and fantasy crap. Most of hte sci fi shows are teen angst stories that change 20 times in on episode to cater to 15 second attention spans.
The 100 puke
Lost in Space puke
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Star Trek Discovery has been pretty good. Picard wasn't that great honestly.
Re:Where the fuck are the space sci fi shows (Score:4, Insightful)
Traitor! Heretic!
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It's insightful because true Star Trek fans do NOT like Discovery. For example, instead of changing the Klingons beyond recognition, they should have introduced another race completely. Messing up with the canon storyline is also frowned upon, because it simply destroys what the fans like. So yes, this also applies to the new "explosions and lens flares" movies. Either keep the story canon or make up your own Universe to play in.
Imagine a new Star Wars movie where the Wookiees talk normally, where droids sp
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Picard would have been good if it didn't have a old decrepit Picard character. Disopvery is on par with The 100 the story changes 20+ times in one episode.
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Picard would have been good if the bad guys didn't end up being right, the humans weren't dead set on putting all organic life in the galaxy at risk for the sake of a couple dozen militant non-organic life forms, and the Borg weren't introduced and then basically never used except as location backdrops.
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Not a fan at all of Discovery or Picard, but I really enjoyed Lower Decks (the cartoon).
I haven't seen it all, but I really enjoyed what I've seen of The Expanse too.
Re: Where the fuck are the space sci fi shows (Score:2)
In the US, you need to subscribe to CBS Allaccess for the new Star Trek shows. It's basically the only thing on their whole platform that's worth watching, so that service is a hard pass for me.
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It's yet another time travel show. They completely ruined Enterprise with it. But there are parts of it that are enjoyable. Season 3 is starting out to be a re-skinned Andromeda though.
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Space Force was pretty on-point for a comedy, but not meaty enough yet to really justify keeping a subscription for.
"The Expanse" is probably the best current running sci-fi, but it's not on Netflix.
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I wouldn't count Space Force as science-fiction anyway because for the most part it's things that already exists. There's not really any fiction to it apart from the events themselves. It's a comedy with a space theme, nothing more. And if you've seen The Office, well, it's basically more of the same.
Re:Where the fuck are the space sci fi shows (Score:4, Insightful)
A bit of Space Force is sci-fi light, but yeah, it's very "The Office," just centered on space related activity.
An actual sci-fi comedy that manages to tread the line is The Orville, but who knows if Seth will ever get around to making another season of that masterpiece.
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Yes Expanse and Dark Matter were good. Kill Joys season one was good as was Lost In Space first few episodes then it went to shit.
Just watched Origin and was not too bad.
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Re: Where the fuck are the space sci fi shows (Score:2)
"Away" was also complete rubbish. That one isn't getting a second season.
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I thought The 100's fight was over, but there's new episodes.
There must be something better to watch.
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I totally agree. Where are the adventures? And its not just sci-fi. There's no place anywhere for the weekly one hour adventure. Instead you take one story and stretch it over 13 hours.
I guess The Orville tried, but I got bored of it quickly - it was too derivative and really offered nothing beyond tired Star Trek tropes and some extra work-place banter.
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Inflation rate is 1/3 of what it was even just last year. Compared with GDP and the sum of all dollars in use globally, the amount of money printed this year just doesn't have the impact you think it should.
Well one advantage over cable (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that they will be the first to start trying to lock people in for longer terms in the near future. If they do, well, I can live without their programming right now.
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Is there any way to do something similar with Amazon's service? I'd like to see the new Borat movie, and maybe the Grand Tour, but that about covers it all.
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Yes. It's called buying the service for expedited shipping and literally never using the video service. I use that model, generally.
You can subscribe on a monthly basis now for $12.99/mo. or just sign up for a free 30 day trial once every 13 months or so.
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Expedited shipping of what? I don't want them to send me the movie on DVD, and there's nothing else I want from them. If there is a free trial or a one-moth $13 deal, I could easily do that. Same price as going to a theater, or re-instating my seedbox, and quicker.
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Yeah - you could definitely do a one-month trial. I used to do that in late November to cover Christmas shopping shipping. But yeah - on the monthly, you can cancel after one month. So you could pay for a month any time and cancel auto-renewal immediately (it will still expire at the end of the paid term).
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If you often buy products online, then it's worth it just for the free shipping. I make back the monthly cost on the shipping alone. The free movies and shows is just a really good perk. I even ended up subscribing to their music service as well. All this for $20 is more than worth it.
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Free shipping isn't that big of a deal anymore. Barnes & Noble gives you free shipping on orders $35 and up, American Musical Supply ships most things that aren't huge for free. Newegg might not, but when I shop there I'm spending enough that shipping only makes up 1% of my bill.
Those three retailers cover everything I've bought online this year, which was an abnormally high amount, due to corona. In a normal year I might only make 1 or 2 transactions online. Even if it was more, I'd still pay extra to
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Do they not offer free shipping in the US anyway? In the UK you get free shipping from Amazon for any order over £20 so I just make sure every order is over £20. Free shipping is also supposed to be slower (3-5 days) but it often just comes next day anyway.
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You can do that with cable too unless you have a contract.
Oh noes! This is gonna cost me.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Is your dick free today?
As in speech but not as in beer, honey.
Joke's on them! (Score:2)
I'm almost finished watching everything on there.
Downward spiral (Score:1)
Lose customers, for broadcasting kiddie porn ("Cuties).
Raise prices.
Lose more customers, due to increased cost.
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Except for the kiddie porn watchers. They are probably signing up in record numbers.
Crap shows (Score:2)
This is nothing more than speculation, but I would hazard a guess that the crap shows always seem to be the ones they are promoting because they are cheap to license.
Same reason Spotify is pushing podcasts so hard.
If you're watching or listening to something that costs them very little to license, then you are not watching or listening to something that costs them a lot. Hence the crappy (cheap) shows get pushed harder.
It also gives Netflix leverage against the expensive shows. "Look at the stats. Your expe
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I was thinking this, but how much did it cost Netflix to produce Patriot Act? It's literally just some guy doing stand-up commentary for a half an hour with a bunch of images projected on screens behind him and on the stage that he's doing his act from.
I still like streaming over cable (Score:1)
Netflix is crap anyway (Score:2)
As their prices go up, their content gets worse.
Now it's a bunch of PC crap, and sexual degeneracy.
Nothing worth paying for.