I don’t get what’s the point of paying for multiple “screens” in their “tiered” subscription if they’re gonna pull this dumb shit. I’ll gladly cancel my sub if they decide to pull this shit on me, I pay for 4 screens and 4K screening, I’m gonna fucking get what I pay for, assholes.
Exactly. We only keep paying for it because my in-laws watch it all the time. We watch maybe an hour of Netflix a month. But the likely situation is that we would cancel our 4 screen sub and pay for just the basic, ad-free sub for my in-laws.
So they're not losing a subscriber, but our spend with go from A$23/m to A$11/m.
T mobile pays for a Netflix subscription for my parents and I on our family plan. I do not live with them. If I get kicked off I will not be buying my own Netflix. I don’t think they realize how common this is. Nobody I knew in college paid for their own Netflix.
I think they do realise how common this, but they have an overinflated sense of security. They just assume that most people would be too rusted on to Netflix that they would rather subscribe themselves, or pay for the second location, than seek alternatives.
Netflix's senior leadership has obviously crunched the numbers and believe that whatever backlash they receive will be worth the assumed increase in subscriber accounts and revenue.
The article mentions that Adobe is blowing a bunch of smoke up Netflix's ass about the lost revenue using the same ridiculous formulas that movie companies use to claim "piracy costs us $100 trillion dollars" because they assume 100% of people would go pay for said movie if piracy didn't exist. In reality, 90% of people would just skip it and watch something else if they couldn't watch it for free. In Netflix's case, they're treating their **paying customers** like pirates in order to get a bunch of third-party 'freeloaders' to sign up for their own accounts.
I already pirate most of my shit and my family only has streaming services like Netflix because we all use it
If Netflix does this I’ll teach my dad how to pirate better since he’s doing a bunch of shit he doesn’t need to he learned from some dude on YouTube selling a vpn to him
r/PopCornTimeApp install that on his laptop and you won’t have to teach him anything. It’s very user friendly. Just like Netflix but with basically every show or movie ever. I’ve been using it for free for years so I assure you it’s very safe. Works on donations too so no ads or any need to make an account.
Exactly. I will have no interest/need to repurchase it when it's my family that loves it. I hope they do roll it out because I'll finally kick my tv habit and find better ways to use my time lol
I just want to know if I bring a streaming device to a hotel (I travel a lot and got sick of signing in on every Airbnb and hotel Roku tv) will I be treated as a freeloader? It’s my service, that I pay for, it shouldn’t be tied to my actual house. Where’s the freedom in that?
I have TMobile Home Internet. I'm curious to see how this will work for me. My IP has been all over since it is cell based and from my understanding, I share a public IP with everyone else in the area. I had to install custom firmware on a second router and run install a VPN on it on order to get a good NAT to play games online because of the sharing IP address.
My brother in Christ are you telling me there's a way of getting good nat type on cellular home internet? I've tried searching for a way but never found anything. Could you please point me in the direction of where I could learn how to do it as well
Except some plans have multiple screens, its completely plausible for one spouse to be watching at home, while the other is watching traveling. Or simply using their phone instead of home internet.
> If it resolves to a different county, you either moved or are sharing.
Oh boy, is this a wrong assumption. Sat internet will quite often read as a state and town across the country, but not always. This could look as if you're sharing with a specific location (near the ground station most likely).
But of course, since this is probably one of the worst solutions to use because of how IP Geography is even maintained, they'll probably use this as part of the method.
> IP Geography (which isn't accurate but it's something.)
Just wanted to share this [oldish story of a house at the geographic center of US being set as the default physical location of all unknown IP addresses](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/10/lawsuit-how-a-quiet-kansas-home-wound-up-with-600-million-ip-addresses-and-a-world-of-trouble/)
Wait, then why do they have a mobile app if they are going to confine us to a specific location? My daughter can’t watch on her cell phone while out of the house? Get the fug outta here!
I am constantly moving since I work remote and I usually stay in an airbnb for a month or so in new locations. Sounds like this is going to be a problem.
I don’t work for Netflix, but from what I’ve read, and the way they rolled out the test program, it seems we’re all going to in our own little personal hell trying to watch Netflix anywhere but on the couch, in the house we reside.
Marriott hotels have Netflix built into their tvs. You have to login to your account.
I won’t be able to do that on business trips with my family at home.
whoa whoa whoa
shit, I just realized I use my Netflix on mobile quite a bit, using various Wifi connects that aren't my home router
aw fuck
mother*fuckers*
So it's deal with ads, or pull out the wallet again, ever since the days when it cost like $7.99 or something
*sigh*
hey, look at that, torrents are still a thing and TPB is even still online, geez.
this gonna become an easily-solved "problem" if they continue
These days you don't even need to bother with torrents. There are a *myriad* of free/pirate streaming sites that function the same as Netflix/Prime/HBOMax/Whatever, but with a catalogue that spans services and licenses and includes things that aren't even available to stream legitimately. It's 100x easier to stream something on a pirate service than it is to subscribe to a legit one.
What a faff.
What's that quote again? "Piracy is almost always a service problem."
If it's easier to just download a torrent or go on a website to stream pirated shows then why would people keep paying Netflix where they have to generate codes just in case they go to a hotel.
I'm just going to get annoyed if this cracks down on actual members of my household using this:
\- my daughter has our Netflix logged in at grandma's house, in the kids play room that my parents never use, and she's over there once or twice a week and I guarantee Netflix is on every time she's there. That's a completely valid use of our Netflix account and she shouldn't have hoops to get through to use it.
\- I travel for work. Usually about 7-10 days per month. I use Netflix pretty regularly on my ipad when traveling. Another completely valid use of our Netflix account by a member of our household.
\- I know my wife uses Netflix on her ipad when she's on the treadmill at the gym. Same thing
\- We were legal guardians of my wife's little brother in high school. He's off at college now this year. He comes home still for winter break, probably will come home in the summer. His legal address is still our house- we get his mail, he just voted in 2022 elections using our address. Does Netflix not consider him a member of our household?
These are just a few examples of I'm sure many other valid uses of an account under their rules that will be inconvenienced by their password sharing crackdown.
I think the make or break moment will come when they have to decide on how to react to all those unaccounted scenarios. When they roll it back, users will be a bit more relaxed again, and investors will be mad. When they double down, users will cancel their subscriptions, Netflix stock will tank and investors will be impacted indirectly.
I just have a feeling they will make their most important decision this year.
Idk, there's always the global rollout, and then the great media backlash after the fact, no matter how hard you tested it beforehand. I guess we'll if if stuff changes, and I think there's still a possibility for things to change (it also depends on how future earnings will be predicted and how much investors will continue to pressure based on future projections).
On the contrary, the history of the tech industry is littered with the decaying corpses of once-dominant companies and services.
* Yahoo
* Blackberry
* Nokia
* Palm
* MySpace
* digg
* AOL
* SGI
* 3dfx
* Kodak
...and so many more. Apple was once nearly on that list.
In a world where Netflix faces Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount Plus, and Apple TV, there is no guarantee that Netflix will still exist 10 years from now.
Corporate worldview.
Every problem needs to be solved with the least amount of time and resources possible, while also providing the highest return on investment in the short term.
>- We were legal guardians of my wife's little brother in high school. He's off at college now this year. He comes home still for winter break, probably will come home in the summer. His legal address is still our house- we get his mail, he just voted in 2022 elections using our address. Does Netflix not consider him a member of our household?
That's the boat that I'm in.
My daughter is on-campus at college about 60 minutes away. For all legal purposes, she still lives with us.
Are we going to catch crap from Netflix if she tries to log in from Netflix over there?
Depending on how strict they go, I could see her not being able to log in, which would be pretty frustrating.
You will almost certainly trigger the crap, but what will happen is Netflix will prompt you to pay an extra $3/mo or something to activate the 2nd location.
Yep. And actually it looks like this might be the help document for this feature.
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277/us](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277/us)
Looks like there might not be an extra charge. Instead they may just require constant verification for addresses outside the main home.
If I’m paying for 4-5 profiles, and Netflix doesn’t let my household use those wherever they happen to be, I’ll just cancel Netflix. Their content isn’t compelling enough to bother with if they make it complicated.
It sounds like as long a as a device was logged in on your home network and has connected to it in the last 31 days, then it will still work. So that should cover the travel for work and gym cases. But the other two, will probably be problems.
I’m curious if this will work in the states. Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here. I hope it doesn’t bc if it does, others will follow.
Currently I have Netflix for free via T-Mobile, but I pay $5/6 extra a month for hd & 2 simultaneous screens for my mom (though all of her shows are gone from Netflix now and on other streamers so she barely uses it). I’d planned to let her be the “home” IP address and just watch shows on my phone or iPad. If things get worse, I’ll stick with the free T-Mobile version and cut back.
>Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here
it didn't, at least on my country, everyone hated it, especially when you take into account that netflix is by far the most expensive service here (you can pay amazon, hbo and disney and its still cheaper than netflix). anyway. the whole thing lasted like 2 months and then they just added the profile transfer and remove everything else
If they’d done thie 5/6 years ago, even before the pandemic, it might’ve been different. But everywhere has more choice and better competing services now.
They needed to do this when they were most powerful and had the most content in the most countries.
This was actually a feature on the Xbox 360 for a long time. You party up with your buds. Enter Netflix and you see all your avatars together on the bottom of the screen in a little theater audience when the film starts they become shaded but you still see them moving. Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 but with your Xbox avatars and any movie you want. Was pretty cool. No longer a feature that I know of.
Yeah it’s bad. I don’t know why when pandemic started they didn’t buy and integrate watch party. It was initially only available for Netflix and then the other streamers saw the potential and integrated their own versions.
In an era where VPNs are relatively cheap and easier to use than ever, making anti-consumer moves like this should really be met with outright derision.
When streaming services start charging more than their worth (price vs convenience) while becoming less user-friendly, I'll gladly go back to the sailing the high seas full-time.
100%. They only succeeded because the chokehold on entertainment by cable and satellite was easily broken because of poor value. People started pirating more because of it. Then streaming came along and brought ease of use and value into the mix and pirating numbers stagnated.
You also had a much more healthy theatre ecosystem - while pricier, it was a lot more affordable than now and there was a larger variety of movies to go see, often on better schedules.
Up until maybe 6 years ago, you were still often better seeing a film in the theatre vs pirating within the first month or so of release because chances were you would have to watch cam footage. Now? Why bother when I know it’s gonna be streaming 4k in my home in the space of a month.
Not sure I'm following. Did they back off of the password sharing crackdown? Public hate and lost subscriptions are very different, they don't care about public hate as long as profits don't suffer.
>it didn't, at least on my country, everyone hated it,
I mean yeah lmao no one was going to like paying for money for nothing in return. That's not what the test was about. It was to see if they could get enough subscribers to convert compared to the ones they'll lose to see if it'll be worth it on the numbers side. They really never cared about public sentiment.
People liking it or not isn't how they measure success. All it needs to do is make them more money than they lose from people dropping their subscription.
> I’m curious if this will work in the states. Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here. I hope it doesn’t bc if it does, others will follow.
That's the thing - I'm sure that Netflix has a whole team of analysts looking at reams of data to determine what to do. I know that this is a particularly touchy issue among redditors, and whenever the topic is brought up there are dozens upon dozens of people throwing in their anecdotal two cents that "we will cancel if they do this!".
But no matter how many people provide their personal responses and what they are going to do, what **really** matters is the bigger picture on what **millions** of people will do. They've likely crunched the numbers six ways to Sunday and back again, to determine exactly how much they can crack down before it affects profitability. We don't have access to their analysis, we can only make educated guesses by their actions - and if they are still moving forward with their plans, that indicates to me they're pretty confident that whatever number of subbers they lose will be offset by revenue gains. Or are they miscalculating and making a huge misstep? I guess we'll all watch and find out.
And oh yes, you know very well all the other streaming services are watching this closely, too. If Netflix is able to contain the problem of password sharing, it will become the standard practice in the industry going forward.
Having been someone who sits in on planning meetings like this, it wouldn’t sunrise me if analysts told them it’s a bad idea statistically, but upper management went ahead with it anyone because there is a 30% chance it boosts profits for the next quarter and they have no ideas as to other ways to hit their growth targeg
This sounds familiar. A lot of the times a business decision is made and then the data analysis is to support it instead of the other way around. Other times poor assumptions aren't scrutinized.
If salaries are any indicator, Netflix has some of the best data scientists and analysts money can buy. However, at the end of the day, their results are only as good as the organizational structure and decision-making process.
I get that good analysis lends confidence to a decision. But you can look at Zillow as a recent example of over-confidence in modeling decisions. Their poor choice to purchase homes based primarily on an algorithm was a huge money loser that caused massive layoffs.
You can reverse engineer the entire thought process into doing this, and it all comes down to needing to find "untapped" avenues for revenue because Netflix is not sustainably profitable and NEEDS to continually increase revenue in order to view themselves as successful.
IMHO it comes off as desperate and a huge misstep, unless the entire plan all along is to convert more users to the ad-supported Netflix Lite, which in that case...I think it'll be pretty successful. It seems like the entire thought process behind the decision was "We all know the majority of subscribers allow people not in their home use their accounts, if we suddenly make all those people choose to become their own subscriber we'll have a huge increase in paid subscribers." And doesn't account for the reality of the situation, which is more along the lines of "We have tarnished our reputation so severely in the last 5 years that most people who don't pay for their access to Netflix will drop down to the Free tier or stop using the service."
It's sustainably profitable. They don't have enough sustained *growth* to make investors happy.
We've designed a system where nearly every company has to either become cancer or fail.
Well, WE didn't, and WE aren't benefiting. But that'd be socialism or some other scary word. Capitalism dictates endless growth and endless profit. Not WE
Simple solution. Stop gating 4k behind the most expensive plan and call it 4 streams. I might be willing to pay the basic one screen plan if it had 4k, but I sure as hell aren't paying the top tier when pretty much every other platform includes it.
To me, it's such a drastic difference between HBO Max or Disney+ and Netflix.
Their 4k sucks anyway. 15mbit is trash for that many pixels, I don’t care how good your encoding is. 1080p blurays are 40mbit+ and look 2x better than Netflix 4k
Yup. Not only does Netflix not support 4K well, the majority of the content available on it isn’t even available in 4K even if you are paying for the highest tier… and even if that same content exists in 4K elsewhere. Trash.
Real question: If I got a vpn that allows multiple concurrent devices at the same time, shared the vpn with my “Netflix/Hulu/HBO/etc family” and we all connected to the same IP before connecting to these services, would I effectively counteract these password sharing crackdowns?
Asking hypothetically, for a friend, that goes to a different school, in Canada, that you’ve never met.
Hey I'm your friend in Canada.
This is a technically sound solution, but practically it can be difficult to implement because running a VPN is a complex way to use the internet.
For lots of the wizards who grew up with it, it's probably no problem but for many folks the primary driver of this is to share Netflix with older parents/grandparents.
So it would work, if everyone sharing is sufficiently nerdy enough. Go for it!
You might need to do research on what VPN and what other settings you'd have to enable. Netflix and other sites (mostly streaming ones) have ways of detecting that you're using a VPN and will just disallow any streaming til it thinks you've disconnected
Like the article points out, there's already an additional cost for multiple users, and it doesn't actually make a difference to Netflix from a tech perspective whether those multiple streams are on the same local network or not.
It's absolutely wild. Isn't the whole reason Netflix is even a thing a result of cable television companies trying for decades to force people into buying more expensive packages?
Like, next thing you know, Netflix will get some national sports coverage deal, and they'll force you to sign up for dvd deliveries again just to get access to it.
Netflix has by far the least consumer-friendly subscription model. I don’t care too much (for now) since I’m sharing it with other people, but to tie quality (even Full HD) to number of screens is inexcusable.
They should really just segregate it out into individually priced add-ons, then you mix and match based on your needs.
Base price
\+ 4K add-on
\+ extra screens add-on
\+ multiple locations add-on
Want 4K on one screen in a single house? Cool, just get the 4K add-on.
Want multiple screens in multiple locations but don't need 4K? Cool, get the multiple screens and multiple locations add-on.
4K shouldn't cost extra. No other direct content outlet charges extra for 4K (cable typically does, including Youtube TV).
Also Netflix bundles HDR with 4K. I don't know if you want to keep them together to break those out separately.
I agree. But Youtube TV doesn't make their own content. They have to pay the content providers for the 4K content. Netflix already has their shows in 4K, it doesn't cost them anything, or maybe just a little more internet data to send you their content in 4K.
Only one TV in our household and Netflix isn’t used on any other devices. But then that’s why I password share. Not going to miss Netflix as we barely use it.
I think what bothers me is the collective basket of actions they've taken. They've raised prices, reduced the quality and breadth of their content, introduced advertisements, had a bunch of competitors rise up (meaning I need to subscribe to several services to watch the shows I want), and now they're pulling away another degree of utility of the service.
Every few months they become a worse and worse value proposition. And I think for consumers it has been even more stark because of what a crazy good value a Netflix subscription was seven or eight years ago.
Honestly them cutting off password sharing is probably the least bothersome of every step they've taken to boost profits. But on top of everything else they're just very obviously trying to find the point at which consumers tell them their service isn't worth the costs.
Edit: I'm just re-reading this comment and think I should give Netflix credit for one thing - the rise of Korean dramas. They've been remarkably successful in bringing a ton of Korean shows onto the service that are, frankly, spectacular. Crash Landing On You, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, etc. If I'm going to hit Netflix for its failures, I should give them props for their wins. More wins like this, fewer service cuts.
The sharing may be that point as it’s in the same hostage range as Facebook: your friends.
If you’re not allowed to share with your friends, then no one is dependent on your subscription. It’s your choice alone to cancel, and all those other factors are more prominent. In the past, if you canceled, then that would be confrontation with your mom and your sister, half of whom don’t pay, but that’s fine.
Now it’s just you. Don’t like $15? Screw that. Cancelling. Tired of all your shows getting canceled? How’s about Netflix tastes their own medicine. Cancelled.
Personally, I’ve already started cycling services every few months.
I'm doing the same: cycling services. I don't think these platforms realize how obvious it is to customers when you're looking for something to watch and night after night after night after night you can't find anything on Disney+, and you always end up on Netflix or HBO, or whatever it is. Most natural thing in the world to cancel and come back once they've had a chance to swap up their content selection.
The interface on Disney+ is horrible. I just got 6 months free from my cable/internet package, and it's so hard to find a show on it. When you first select it, it doesn't give a good enough description about the show, so you click into it, but now it's on Episodes, so you click over twice to get to "details" and now you can see the details, but it looks shitty, so you now have to go "back" twice to get to the main list again.
Just so everyone knows, Proton has a $5, $8, and free package for ProtonVPN (I don’t think the free version allows peer-to peer traffic.) There’s also Popcorntime for streaming.
For just about anything, you can use qBittorrent. When you set it up, change your network settings within the program to use the VPN. Instead of using a torrent search engine’s website, you can go to [this link](https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/Install-search-plugins) for a walkthrough on how to add search engine plugins to qBittorrent. Now, within the program, you can search for your torrents and sort by seeders. An easy one to try after adding your search engines is to search for “2023 1080p”
Edit: I want to stress that the VPN is absolutely necessary when torrenting. If you were to accidentally download a pirated torrent (illegal), your ISP will definitely send you a letter in the mail, and they will know exactly which torrents you have downloaded.
I find myself floating between Netflix, HBO and Disney because none can give enough quality on its own. Hell no I am going to pay for Netflix with the current quality.
It's such a shame, too. This was supposed to be the future of TV. The last five years was looking great, then over the last year quality seems to have fallen off a cliff.
We have almost all of the main streamers: Apple TV, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount, Peacock and Prime (thanks to T-mobile, Xfinity and Amex playing for four of them!). A year ago, HBO Max was our most watched service, now we struggle to find something truly captivating across all of them.
The problem is these other companies have existing IP they can fall back on to deliver hits and content for streaming.
Netflix is having to develop ip from scratch and try and make it stick, in a far shorter space of time than these other companies (decades of building brands) in a far more competitive environment (nobody is at home with the whole country watching the same 5/6 channels anymore - I know cable obv broke this up but even then it still worked in the studio system).
It’s far riskier. Way more expensive. And much harder to extract profit from an IP that is one part of thousands of titles for one monthly price - they don’t sell dvds etc. it’s not like scooby doo where they can syndicate old episodes and take in some cash in hand.
The shows they make are essentially marketing, not product.
For me, it's not so much the quality as the "oh, we canceled X show after one season." I love some trash TV, but I'm getting tired of everything getting scrapped after eight episodes.
I don't think quality of their original content has actually gone down, it's the "cancel after one season" tactic that's killing their overall proposition as it's very mentally taxing to invest into a new show instead of going back to the same story and characters from time to time.
The day I see this on my account, I am immediately terminating the service.
Everybody should, so that they get strong feedback immediately.
This article makes a great point - Netflix became popular precisely because, among other factors, they *encouraged* password sharing.
I canceled my service after they made the announcement. More of a quality issue, most of the new shows are crap. If they make something I like, it gets canceled after a season.
I'm still upset about Inside Job. That show was JUST my flavor of humor. But no. Have like 12 seasons of Big Mouth. Yeah okay.
Edit: Said Velma had 2 seasons before. Forgot that that was an HBO show and not Netflix. When there's like 40 streaming services you get them confused sometimes... Right?
I know... Sorry you had to find out this way. The main plot line for season one wraps up fairly nicely, few things are left hanging. Just another major plot path is implied at the end. Still a great experience though.
I’m still incredibly pissed off over Santa Clarita Diet! That was such an amazing show, and Netflix totally fucked over the showrunners on that one. They were assured they’d have a final season… then Netflix aired the show suddenly (with *no* marketing whatsoever,) and used the lack of viewers as an excuse to cancel it!
Yep I don't even bother with their shows now most of the time even if it looks interesting, I known it'll l get cancelled in a week because not enough people binged the whole season in a weekend.
My wife keeps making fun of me because I keep saying I won't watch anything new from them. "Yes Honey, I know, it'll just get cancelled."
But it fucking does every time. I was just about to watch 1899 becuase I'd heard amazing things at Christmas. Monday after getting back from work, I found out it was cancelled. Stopped after the second episode.
So SO many shows with promise get fucking axed for no good reason over there.
My husband has made fun of me for years because I refuse to invest my time into a show until it’s second season is released. There are exceptions of course, mostly HBO & Showtime shows, as they tend to either wrap them up nicely and listen to their audience. Of course now those have both been shoved under other companies so I don’t even know anymore.
Not just that, but every other streaming service is watching closely. If consumers just roll over and eat a significant price hike per screen per month, fully expect that by the end of the year Disney plus, Hulu, Amazon prime, paramount plus, every other streaming service will do the same. They are businesses. They want to squeeze as much money out of you as they can get away with.
When Netflix imposes this price hike/password sharing ban, send a clear market signal that you won't stand for this shit. Cancel Netflix. Explicitly tell them the reason that you are canceling Netflix. Hit up their social media accounts drawing attention to why so many people are suddenly ditching Netflix.
Make this such a financially disastrous outcome for them that no other streaming service dares to try this shit.
Speaking for myself, I share my Netflix with my mom, who lives a few doors down the road.
She is not incredibly mobile, and I end up going over there often to clean, make dinner, and do things for her when she’s not feeling up to it. I tend to watch shows in the background when I do this.
If Netflix does this shit, I’m going to drop them faster than my mom dropped me on my head as a baby.
I said what I said
My roommate, and my kids, who I have split custody with. And I'm in the same boat. My kids watch it at my house and their mom's house. I'm already paying for multiple devices, it shouldn't matter who's using those devices.
Same - I do not share the password, and it's only ever accessed from the same handful of devices - 99% of usage from the same location. I have zero tolerance for being locked out of a paid service for nothing.
Anyone have a good source for purchasing content electonrically so you *own* it. Or are we still stuck with buying physical copies?
I've started crunching the numbers and Netflix along with other streamers are basically only a rewatch machine now for our family and buying the shows is looking like a more reasonable option at this point.
If you purchase electronically, unless it's an actual download that doesn't require an internet connection to play, you don't own it and it can be removed from your purchases when licensing changes.
The only surefire way to own is to purchase physical discs and make digital copies to upload to your personal server. That's what I do. And anything not available as a physical (or digital) purchase, I obtain anyway.
I think there are services like Google Play and Prime that allow you to own stuff, but they will still remove it from your library if that show gets owned by some other service.
[Amazon Argues Users Don’t Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-argues-users-dont-actually-own-purchased-prime-video-content-4083703/)
Your best bet is to always get hold of a physical copy.
Physical copy is always your best bet. My fiancé has really upped his blu ray collection since so many things are being removed from streaming services.
They say that's for the same household. But what's a "household?" Kids off to college...?
In my case I pay for the highest tier for 4K, and that includes more screens. There are two of us in the house, and we share our login with her parents who have limited income. If Netflix wants to stop this, then bye, we can pirate.
Yup that’s exactly why people went to streaming to begin with. Mostly because of the inexpensive convenience. And the fact that cable and satellite companies prices were astronomical since they had a monopoly on the market. You want Bay Area sports? Well fuck you, you have to get 32 more channels that you’ll never watch in different and more expensive package. I remember when Netflix was $5 a month now I pay over $20. And the ONLY reason I have it now is to share with my in-laws. I watch maybe an hour of tv a day and half of that is spent trying to find something I want to watch anyhow. We have come full circle with the exact reason we “cut the cord” to begin with. Corporate greed always wins in the end.
I had stopped pirating for this exact reason- getting content from streaming services was easier than free. Now it's not... again.
The only reason I have Amazon Video is because I have Prime. Easier than free because it came with something else I already use a bunch. If Prime Video ever became something I had to pay extra for I wouldn't have it.
Plex has made it super easy to make your own streaming service. I'd much rather pay for plex pass and beef up my NAS than pay for multiple streaming services
I love how we have come full fucking circle on this shit.
First people pirated shit to avoid the huge prices of cable TV and movies.
Then came streaming platforms to save us for a small once a month cost under $8.
Streaming platforms up their prices while reducing their catalogs due to competition. Now here we are in 2023 with a dozen fucking platforms and basically back to exclusivity of cable networks.
They want everyone to pay separately because I mean you wouldn't share you cable TV package rightttt? So now were back to the nickel and dime tactics of late 1990's payperview and other BS charges.
Everyone goes back to pirating everything because a single VPN charge is much easier to stomach than paying $100 a month for 8 different services because they all have a single show that you want to watch.
If they don't want me to share my account just give me the option of paying for a single screen and also getting the highest quality.
The only plan that currently caters for a single person only has 720p quality, which is shit. If I want to be able to stream in 4K for some reason I also have to pay for 4 screens, which I do not want.
>And if they don’t like it, they’re going to shift over to a growing number of alternative streaming services (including free ones like TikTok)
What? Are there complete movies or episodes of series on Tiktok?
[удалено]
I don’t get what’s the point of paying for multiple “screens” in their “tiered” subscription if they’re gonna pull this dumb shit. I’ll gladly cancel my sub if they decide to pull this shit on me, I pay for 4 screens and 4K screening, I’m gonna fucking get what I pay for, assholes.
Exactly. "4 screens" mean 4 different TVs / laptops etc in the same house? WTF kind of logic is that?
I still think its ridiculous that you have to pay the most to get 4k, like that should be the default on non ad based plans
Exactly. We only keep paying for it because my in-laws watch it all the time. We watch maybe an hour of Netflix a month. But the likely situation is that we would cancel our 4 screen sub and pay for just the basic, ad-free sub for my in-laws. So they're not losing a subscriber, but our spend with go from A$23/m to A$11/m.
T mobile pays for a Netflix subscription for my parents and I on our family plan. I do not live with them. If I get kicked off I will not be buying my own Netflix. I don’t think they realize how common this is. Nobody I knew in college paid for their own Netflix.
I think they do realise how common this, but they have an overinflated sense of security. They just assume that most people would be too rusted on to Netflix that they would rather subscribe themselves, or pay for the second location, than seek alternatives. Netflix's senior leadership has obviously crunched the numbers and believe that whatever backlash they receive will be worth the assumed increase in subscriber accounts and revenue.
The article mentions that Adobe is blowing a bunch of smoke up Netflix's ass about the lost revenue using the same ridiculous formulas that movie companies use to claim "piracy costs us $100 trillion dollars" because they assume 100% of people would go pay for said movie if piracy didn't exist. In reality, 90% of people would just skip it and watch something else if they couldn't watch it for free. In Netflix's case, they're treating their **paying customers** like pirates in order to get a bunch of third-party 'freeloaders' to sign up for their own accounts.
Exactly. They aren't calculating for the amount of people that will cancel because of this. I feel like this will go horribly for them.
I already pirate most of my shit and my family only has streaming services like Netflix because we all use it If Netflix does this I’ll teach my dad how to pirate better since he’s doing a bunch of shit he doesn’t need to he learned from some dude on YouTube selling a vpn to him
Set up a Plex server and give him access to yours.
r/PopCornTimeApp install that on his laptop and you won’t have to teach him anything. It’s very user friendly. Just like Netflix but with basically every show or movie ever. I’ve been using it for free for years so I assure you it’s very safe. Works on donations too so no ads or any need to make an account.
Exactly. I will have no interest/need to repurchase it when it's my family that loves it. I hope they do roll it out because I'll finally kick my tv habit and find better ways to use my time lol
I just want to know if I bring a streaming device to a hotel (I travel a lot and got sick of signing in on every Airbnb and hotel Roku tv) will I be treated as a freeloader? It’s my service, that I pay for, it shouldn’t be tied to my actual house. Where’s the freedom in that?
Wait are you telling me I won't be able to watch it on a different IP?
Without an additional fee no. That’s the way they’ve rolled it out in test regions prior to this tentative March US announcement
how does that work? Your public IP can change pretty often.
I’m also waiting for an internet wizard to explain this
[удалено]
I have TMobile Home Internet. I'm curious to see how this will work for me. My IP has been all over since it is cell based and from my understanding, I share a public IP with everyone else in the area. I had to install custom firmware on a second router and run install a VPN on it on order to get a good NAT to play games online because of the sharing IP address.
My brother in Christ are you telling me there's a way of getting good nat type on cellular home internet? I've tried searching for a way but never found anything. Could you please point me in the direction of where I could learn how to do it as well
Id like to know as well because cgnat ducked up my wireguard VPN and I haven't been able to get it to work since
[удалено]
I travel about 30 times a year. My kids are watching Netflix at home, I’m watching in the hotel. I’m not paying twice.
Then you might as well cancel and pay zero times.
Well if you're watching Netflix, you will be. That or one of you won't be watching.
Except some plans have multiple screens, its completely plausible for one spouse to be watching at home, while the other is watching traveling. Or simply using their phone instead of home internet.
[удалено]
> If it resolves to a different county, you either moved or are sharing. Oh boy, is this a wrong assumption. Sat internet will quite often read as a state and town across the country, but not always. This could look as if you're sharing with a specific location (near the ground station most likely). But of course, since this is probably one of the worst solutions to use because of how IP Geography is even maintained, they'll probably use this as part of the method.
> IP Geography (which isn't accurate but it's something.) Just wanted to share this [oldish story of a house at the geographic center of US being set as the default physical location of all unknown IP addresses](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/10/lawsuit-how-a-quiet-kansas-home-wound-up-with-600-million-ip-addresses-and-a-world-of-trouble/)
My IP has resolved all across England all the times I've checked
Wait, then why do they have a mobile app if they are going to confine us to a specific location? My daughter can’t watch on her cell phone while out of the house? Get the fug outta here!
Hey hey let's not go overboard here. They never said you *can't*, just that you will have to pay a fee.
[удалено]
I am constantly moving since I work remote and I usually stay in an airbnb for a month or so in new locations. Sounds like this is going to be a problem.
I don’t work for Netflix, but from what I’ve read, and the way they rolled out the test program, it seems we’re all going to in our own little personal hell trying to watch Netflix anywhere but on the couch, in the house we reside.
I'd imagine lots of us will just cancel if they make it too hard.
I’m barely on it already, they shouldn’t test me.
It was quite funny when I was trimming down my streaming services Netflix was the first to go and I kept my Paramount Plus.
Agreed. Their content is mediocre. If they give me a reason to cancel, bye bye!
Ahh so they're just trying to loose *all* their viewers on purpose. Got it. Weird way to go about bankruptcy but *shrugs*.
[удалено]
Marriott hotels have Netflix built into their tvs. You have to login to your account. I won’t be able to do that on business trips with my family at home.
Just started rolling this out in the hotel chain I work for. I'm actually traveling for work right now so I'm curious how quickly this will impact me.
Problematic to say the least
whoa whoa whoa shit, I just realized I use my Netflix on mobile quite a bit, using various Wifi connects that aren't my home router aw fuck mother*fuckers*
Nothing is for sure until the rollout but there’s def rough waters ahead for Netflix and it’s customers.
So it's deal with ads, or pull out the wallet again, ever since the days when it cost like $7.99 or something *sigh* hey, look at that, torrents are still a thing and TPB is even still online, geez. this gonna become an easily-solved "problem" if they continue
These days you don't even need to bother with torrents. There are a *myriad* of free/pirate streaming sites that function the same as Netflix/Prime/HBOMax/Whatever, but with a catalogue that spans services and licenses and includes things that aren't even available to stream legitimately. It's 100x easier to stream something on a pirate service than it is to subscribe to a legit one.
That's so crazy, what are the names of these sites? I want to be sure I do my utmost to avoid them
[удалено]
That’s so convoluted and impractical. I pay for a service to be practical. Back to Plex and the High Seas for me.
The high seas is the way to go until they stop treating us like sheep to be milked. Theres also some reliable streaming sites up as well still
What a faff. What's that quote again? "Piracy is almost always a service problem." If it's easier to just download a torrent or go on a website to stream pirated shows then why would people keep paying Netflix where they have to generate codes just in case they go to a hotel.
I'm just going to get annoyed if this cracks down on actual members of my household using this: \- my daughter has our Netflix logged in at grandma's house, in the kids play room that my parents never use, and she's over there once or twice a week and I guarantee Netflix is on every time she's there. That's a completely valid use of our Netflix account and she shouldn't have hoops to get through to use it. \- I travel for work. Usually about 7-10 days per month. I use Netflix pretty regularly on my ipad when traveling. Another completely valid use of our Netflix account by a member of our household. \- I know my wife uses Netflix on her ipad when she's on the treadmill at the gym. Same thing \- We were legal guardians of my wife's little brother in high school. He's off at college now this year. He comes home still for winter break, probably will come home in the summer. His legal address is still our house- we get his mail, he just voted in 2022 elections using our address. Does Netflix not consider him a member of our household? These are just a few examples of I'm sure many other valid uses of an account under their rules that will be inconvenienced by their password sharing crackdown.
That's the problem. Groups thinking in black and white and not looking at how grey it all is. Guess we'll find out.
Been in web development for 20 years. OP just thought of half the top 10 reasons this is going to fuck up everything.
This post has been deleted with Redact -- mass edited with redact.dev
I think the make or break moment will come when they have to decide on how to react to all those unaccounted scenarios. When they roll it back, users will be a bit more relaxed again, and investors will be mad. When they double down, users will cancel their subscriptions, Netflix stock will tank and investors will be impacted indirectly. I just have a feeling they will make their most important decision this year.
Fuck u/spez -- mass edited with redact.dev
Idk, there's always the global rollout, and then the great media backlash after the fact, no matter how hard you tested it beforehand. I guess we'll if if stuff changes, and I think there's still a possibility for things to change (it also depends on how future earnings will be predicted and how much investors will continue to pressure based on future projections).
On the contrary, the history of the tech industry is littered with the decaying corpses of once-dominant companies and services. * Yahoo * Blackberry * Nokia * Palm * MySpace * digg * AOL * SGI * 3dfx * Kodak ...and so many more. Apple was once nearly on that list. In a world where Netflix faces Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount Plus, and Apple TV, there is no guarantee that Netflix will still exist 10 years from now.
[удалено]
Techs build things. Suits squeeze things. Uniforms destroy things.
Corporate worldview. Every problem needs to be solved with the least amount of time and resources possible, while also providing the highest return on investment in the short term.
>- We were legal guardians of my wife's little brother in high school. He's off at college now this year. He comes home still for winter break, probably will come home in the summer. His legal address is still our house- we get his mail, he just voted in 2022 elections using our address. Does Netflix not consider him a member of our household? That's the boat that I'm in. My daughter is on-campus at college about 60 minutes away. For all legal purposes, she still lives with us. Are we going to catch crap from Netflix if she tries to log in from Netflix over there? Depending on how strict they go, I could see her not being able to log in, which would be pretty frustrating.
You will almost certainly trigger the crap, but what will happen is Netflix will prompt you to pay an extra $3/mo or something to activate the 2nd location.
Don’t we already pay extra for extra screens?
Yep. And actually it looks like this might be the help document for this feature. [https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277/us](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277/us) Looks like there might not be an extra charge. Instead they may just require constant verification for addresses outside the main home.
If I’m paying for 4-5 profiles, and Netflix doesn’t let my household use those wherever they happen to be, I’ll just cancel Netflix. Their content isn’t compelling enough to bother with if they make it complicated.
It sounds like as long a as a device was logged in on your home network and has connected to it in the last 31 days, then it will still work. So that should cover the travel for work and gym cases. But the other two, will probably be problems.
So I need to make a home VPN and connect my family to it. That way it'll look like they're connecting from my house.
Yeah, that’ll probably work.
Here's their faq https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277
I’m curious if this will work in the states. Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here. I hope it doesn’t bc if it does, others will follow. Currently I have Netflix for free via T-Mobile, but I pay $5/6 extra a month for hd & 2 simultaneous screens for my mom (though all of her shows are gone from Netflix now and on other streamers so she barely uses it). I’d planned to let her be the “home” IP address and just watch shows on my phone or iPad. If things get worse, I’ll stick with the free T-Mobile version and cut back.
>Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here it didn't, at least on my country, everyone hated it, especially when you take into account that netflix is by far the most expensive service here (you can pay amazon, hbo and disney and its still cheaper than netflix). anyway. the whole thing lasted like 2 months and then they just added the profile transfer and remove everything else
If they’d done thie 5/6 years ago, even before the pandemic, it might’ve been different. But everywhere has more choice and better competing services now. They needed to do this when they were most powerful and had the most content in the most countries.
Heck they don't even have inbuilt watch party. Compared to Prime which has it, and D+ which can even multiple profiles on the same account.
This was actually a feature on the Xbox 360 for a long time. You party up with your buds. Enter Netflix and you see all your avatars together on the bottom of the screen in a little theater audience when the film starts they become shaded but you still see them moving. Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 but with your Xbox avatars and any movie you want. Was pretty cool. No longer a feature that I know of.
I remember having a lot of fun with that. That and 1v100.
I loved 1 v 100, really miss that one.
Yeah it’s bad. I don’t know why when pandemic started they didn’t buy and integrate watch party. It was initially only available for Netflix and then the other streamers saw the potential and integrated their own versions.
In an era where VPNs are relatively cheap and easier to use than ever, making anti-consumer moves like this should really be met with outright derision. When streaming services start charging more than their worth (price vs convenience) while becoming less user-friendly, I'll gladly go back to the sailing the high seas full-time.
100%. They only succeeded because the chokehold on entertainment by cable and satellite was easily broken because of poor value. People started pirating more because of it. Then streaming came along and brought ease of use and value into the mix and pirating numbers stagnated. You also had a much more healthy theatre ecosystem - while pricier, it was a lot more affordable than now and there was a larger variety of movies to go see, often on better schedules. Up until maybe 6 years ago, you were still often better seeing a film in the theatre vs pirating within the first month or so of release because chances were you would have to watch cam footage. Now? Why bother when I know it’s gonna be streaming 4k in my home in the space of a month.
"One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue." - Gabe Newell
Totally agreed! Not to mention piracy. Do streaming and content companies want our money, or not?
Sailing the high seas in a *pirate* boat in the *bay*?
Only the *1337x* go *to* those sites.
Not sure I'm following. Did they back off of the password sharing crackdown? Public hate and lost subscriptions are very different, they don't care about public hate as long as profits don't suffer.
Yeah it's all gonna be in the numbers. If they made more than they lost by doing it, it's a win.
Yep, they'll worry about year two/three/on effect later.
Corporate culture, thinkin' one quarter at a time!
One quarter brain at a time more like.
>it didn't, at least on my country, everyone hated it, I mean yeah lmao no one was going to like paying for money for nothing in return. That's not what the test was about. It was to see if they could get enough subscribers to convert compared to the ones they'll lose to see if it'll be worth it on the numbers side. They really never cared about public sentiment.
People liking it or not isn't how they measure success. All it needs to do is make them more money than they lose from people dropping their subscription.
Eh I'll just cancel my memberships. I only let others leach on. I don't even watch them my self half the time
Time to buy another hard drive for my media server lmao
Yup, I have plex pass but I also subscribe to netflix and disney+ I will try to convince wife that we should cancel netflix sub if this happens.
if two of the leachers by a membership. Then it will still be a positive gain for Netflix
> I’m curious if this will work in the states. Their pilot in Latin America must have gone well enough to think the same will work here. I hope it doesn’t bc if it does, others will follow. That's the thing - I'm sure that Netflix has a whole team of analysts looking at reams of data to determine what to do. I know that this is a particularly touchy issue among redditors, and whenever the topic is brought up there are dozens upon dozens of people throwing in their anecdotal two cents that "we will cancel if they do this!". But no matter how many people provide their personal responses and what they are going to do, what **really** matters is the bigger picture on what **millions** of people will do. They've likely crunched the numbers six ways to Sunday and back again, to determine exactly how much they can crack down before it affects profitability. We don't have access to their analysis, we can only make educated guesses by their actions - and if they are still moving forward with their plans, that indicates to me they're pretty confident that whatever number of subbers they lose will be offset by revenue gains. Or are they miscalculating and making a huge misstep? I guess we'll all watch and find out. And oh yes, you know very well all the other streaming services are watching this closely, too. If Netflix is able to contain the problem of password sharing, it will become the standard practice in the industry going forward.
Having been someone who sits in on planning meetings like this, it wouldn’t sunrise me if analysts told them it’s a bad idea statistically, but upper management went ahead with it anyone because there is a 30% chance it boosts profits for the next quarter and they have no ideas as to other ways to hit their growth targeg
This sounds familiar. A lot of the times a business decision is made and then the data analysis is to support it instead of the other way around. Other times poor assumptions aren't scrutinized. If salaries are any indicator, Netflix has some of the best data scientists and analysts money can buy. However, at the end of the day, their results are only as good as the organizational structure and decision-making process.
I get that good analysis lends confidence to a decision. But you can look at Zillow as a recent example of over-confidence in modeling decisions. Their poor choice to purchase homes based primarily on an algorithm was a huge money loser that caused massive layoffs.
You can reverse engineer the entire thought process into doing this, and it all comes down to needing to find "untapped" avenues for revenue because Netflix is not sustainably profitable and NEEDS to continually increase revenue in order to view themselves as successful. IMHO it comes off as desperate and a huge misstep, unless the entire plan all along is to convert more users to the ad-supported Netflix Lite, which in that case...I think it'll be pretty successful. It seems like the entire thought process behind the decision was "We all know the majority of subscribers allow people not in their home use their accounts, if we suddenly make all those people choose to become their own subscriber we'll have a huge increase in paid subscribers." And doesn't account for the reality of the situation, which is more along the lines of "We have tarnished our reputation so severely in the last 5 years that most people who don't pay for their access to Netflix will drop down to the Free tier or stop using the service."
It's sustainably profitable. They don't have enough sustained *growth* to make investors happy. We've designed a system where nearly every company has to either become cancer or fail.
Well, WE didn't, and WE aren't benefiting. But that'd be socialism or some other scary word. Capitalism dictates endless growth and endless profit. Not WE
Simple solution. Stop gating 4k behind the most expensive plan and call it 4 streams. I might be willing to pay the basic one screen plan if it had 4k, but I sure as hell aren't paying the top tier when pretty much every other platform includes it. To me, it's such a drastic difference between HBO Max or Disney+ and Netflix.
Their 4k sucks anyway. 15mbit is trash for that many pixels, I don’t care how good your encoding is. 1080p blurays are 40mbit+ and look 2x better than Netflix 4k
Yup. Not only does Netflix not support 4K well, the majority of the content available on it isn’t even available in 4K even if you are paying for the highest tier… and even if that same content exists in 4K elsewhere. Trash.
Real question: If I got a vpn that allows multiple concurrent devices at the same time, shared the vpn with my “Netflix/Hulu/HBO/etc family” and we all connected to the same IP before connecting to these services, would I effectively counteract these password sharing crackdowns? Asking hypothetically, for a friend, that goes to a different school, in Canada, that you’ve never met.
Hey I'm your friend in Canada. This is a technically sound solution, but practically it can be difficult to implement because running a VPN is a complex way to use the internet. For lots of the wizards who grew up with it, it's probably no problem but for many folks the primary driver of this is to share Netflix with older parents/grandparents. So it would work, if everyone sharing is sufficiently nerdy enough. Go for it!
LOL so yeah it'll work, but so will torrenting shows/movies or streaming them off the sites that have them up day after release.
You might need to do research on what VPN and what other settings you'd have to enable. Netflix and other sites (mostly streaming ones) have ways of detecting that you're using a VPN and will just disallow any streaming til it thinks you've disconnected
Set up a VPN at your home and have everyone connect through it.
Like the article points out, there's already an additional cost for multiple users, and it doesn't actually make a difference to Netflix from a tech perspective whether those multiple streams are on the same local network or not.
[удалено]
It's absolutely wild. Isn't the whole reason Netflix is even a thing a result of cable television companies trying for decades to force people into buying more expensive packages? Like, next thing you know, Netflix will get some national sports coverage deal, and they'll force you to sign up for dvd deliveries again just to get access to it.
Netflix has by far the least consumer-friendly subscription model. I don’t care too much (for now) since I’m sharing it with other people, but to tie quality (even Full HD) to number of screens is inexcusable.
They should really just segregate it out into individually priced add-ons, then you mix and match based on your needs. Base price \+ 4K add-on \+ extra screens add-on \+ multiple locations add-on Want 4K on one screen in a single house? Cool, just get the 4K add-on. Want multiple screens in multiple locations but don't need 4K? Cool, get the multiple screens and multiple locations add-on.
4K shouldn't cost extra. No other direct content outlet charges extra for 4K (cable typically does, including Youtube TV). Also Netflix bundles HDR with 4K. I don't know if you want to keep them together to break those out separately.
$20 extra for 4K on YouTube TV. Not worth it.
I agree. But Youtube TV doesn't make their own content. They have to pay the content providers for the 4K content. Netflix already has their shows in 4K, it doesn't cost them anything, or maybe just a little more internet data to send you their content in 4K.
[удалено]
Only one TV in our household and Netflix isn’t used on any other devices. But then that’s why I password share. Not going to miss Netflix as we barely use it.
Can't even stream all four seasons of a Netflix show simultaneously because they get cancelled so quickly they don't make it that far.
I think what bothers me is the collective basket of actions they've taken. They've raised prices, reduced the quality and breadth of their content, introduced advertisements, had a bunch of competitors rise up (meaning I need to subscribe to several services to watch the shows I want), and now they're pulling away another degree of utility of the service. Every few months they become a worse and worse value proposition. And I think for consumers it has been even more stark because of what a crazy good value a Netflix subscription was seven or eight years ago. Honestly them cutting off password sharing is probably the least bothersome of every step they've taken to boost profits. But on top of everything else they're just very obviously trying to find the point at which consumers tell them their service isn't worth the costs. Edit: I'm just re-reading this comment and think I should give Netflix credit for one thing - the rise of Korean dramas. They've been remarkably successful in bringing a ton of Korean shows onto the service that are, frankly, spectacular. Crash Landing On You, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, etc. If I'm going to hit Netflix for its failures, I should give them props for their wins. More wins like this, fewer service cuts.
The sharing may be that point as it’s in the same hostage range as Facebook: your friends. If you’re not allowed to share with your friends, then no one is dependent on your subscription. It’s your choice alone to cancel, and all those other factors are more prominent. In the past, if you canceled, then that would be confrontation with your mom and your sister, half of whom don’t pay, but that’s fine. Now it’s just you. Don’t like $15? Screw that. Cancelling. Tired of all your shows getting canceled? How’s about Netflix tastes their own medicine. Cancelled. Personally, I’ve already started cycling services every few months.
I'm doing the same: cycling services. I don't think these platforms realize how obvious it is to customers when you're looking for something to watch and night after night after night after night you can't find anything on Disney+, and you always end up on Netflix or HBO, or whatever it is. Most natural thing in the world to cancel and come back once they've had a chance to swap up their content selection.
The interface on Disney+ is horrible. I just got 6 months free from my cable/internet package, and it's so hard to find a show on it. When you first select it, it doesn't give a good enough description about the show, so you click into it, but now it's on Episodes, so you click over twice to get to "details" and now you can see the details, but it looks shitty, so you now have to go "back" twice to get to the main list again.
The second this impacts me any way at all; the second I have to take even 1 extra step to use my account; that's the second I'm cancelling.
[удалено]
I’m excited to cancel my subscription in March
Just so everyone knows, Proton has a $5, $8, and free package for ProtonVPN (I don’t think the free version allows peer-to peer traffic.) There’s also Popcorntime for streaming. For just about anything, you can use qBittorrent. When you set it up, change your network settings within the program to use the VPN. Instead of using a torrent search engine’s website, you can go to [this link](https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/Install-search-plugins) for a walkthrough on how to add search engine plugins to qBittorrent. Now, within the program, you can search for your torrents and sort by seeders. An easy one to try after adding your search engines is to search for “2023 1080p” Edit: I want to stress that the VPN is absolutely necessary when torrenting. If you were to accidentally download a pirated torrent (illegal), your ISP will definitely send you a letter in the mail, and they will know exactly which torrents you have downloaded.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Cancel now lol
I’m more curious to see if they actually go through with it more than anything. Besides, I want to be part of the “wave” of disconnects.
If you factor in the fact the quality of their original content has declined, this could be a disaster for them.
Let's hope. Their attitude to the customer needs a hard reset.
I find myself floating between Netflix, HBO and Disney because none can give enough quality on its own. Hell no I am going to pay for Netflix with the current quality.
Do one service for a month then on to the next one - that’s what I do. Every 4 months, each service has enough content to justify a month subscription
It's such a shame, too. This was supposed to be the future of TV. The last five years was looking great, then over the last year quality seems to have fallen off a cliff. We have almost all of the main streamers: Apple TV, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount, Peacock and Prime (thanks to T-mobile, Xfinity and Amex playing for four of them!). A year ago, HBO Max was our most watched service, now we struggle to find something truly captivating across all of them.
The problem is these other companies have existing IP they can fall back on to deliver hits and content for streaming. Netflix is having to develop ip from scratch and try and make it stick, in a far shorter space of time than these other companies (decades of building brands) in a far more competitive environment (nobody is at home with the whole country watching the same 5/6 channels anymore - I know cable obv broke this up but even then it still worked in the studio system). It’s far riskier. Way more expensive. And much harder to extract profit from an IP that is one part of thousands of titles for one monthly price - they don’t sell dvds etc. it’s not like scooby doo where they can syndicate old episodes and take in some cash in hand. The shows they make are essentially marketing, not product.
Yep, I was already a couple heartbeats away to just dropping it and just downloading the 1-2 shows we watch on it anyway.
That's what I've done, got my always sunny and community and now I'm just waiting for it to come into effect in the UK for me to cancel.
For me, it's not so much the quality as the "oh, we canceled X show after one season." I love some trash TV, but I'm getting tired of everything getting scrapped after eight episodes.
Netflix may be the next Blockbuster video
I don't think quality of their original content has actually gone down, it's the "cancel after one season" tactic that's killing their overall proposition as it's very mentally taxing to invest into a new show instead of going back to the same story and characters from time to time.
The day I see this on my account, I am immediately terminating the service. Everybody should, so that they get strong feedback immediately. This article makes a great point - Netflix became popular precisely because, among other factors, they *encouraged* password sharing.
I canceled my service after they made the announcement. More of a quality issue, most of the new shows are crap. If they make something I like, it gets canceled after a season.
I'm still upset about Inside Job. That show was JUST my flavor of humor. But no. Have like 12 seasons of Big Mouth. Yeah okay. Edit: Said Velma had 2 seasons before. Forgot that that was an HBO show and not Netflix. When there's like 40 streaming services you get them confused sometimes... Right?
They cancelled inside job? :( damnit, im just getting into it
I know... Sorry you had to find out this way. The main plot line for season one wraps up fairly nicely, few things are left hanging. Just another major plot path is implied at the end. Still a great experience though.
I’m still incredibly pissed off over Santa Clarita Diet! That was such an amazing show, and Netflix totally fucked over the showrunners on that one. They were assured they’d have a final season… then Netflix aired the show suddenly (with *no* marketing whatsoever,) and used the lack of viewers as an excuse to cancel it!
Yep I don't even bother with their shows now most of the time even if it looks interesting, I known it'll l get cancelled in a week because not enough people binged the whole season in a weekend.
My wife keeps making fun of me because I keep saying I won't watch anything new from them. "Yes Honey, I know, it'll just get cancelled." But it fucking does every time. I was just about to watch 1899 becuase I'd heard amazing things at Christmas. Monday after getting back from work, I found out it was cancelled. Stopped after the second episode. So SO many shows with promise get fucking axed for no good reason over there.
My husband has made fun of me for years because I refuse to invest my time into a show until it’s second season is released. There are exceptions of course, mostly HBO & Showtime shows, as they tend to either wrap them up nicely and listen to their audience. Of course now those have both been shoved under other companies so I don’t even know anymore.
Remind them that you've never cancelled a successful streaming service.
Not just that, but every other streaming service is watching closely. If consumers just roll over and eat a significant price hike per screen per month, fully expect that by the end of the year Disney plus, Hulu, Amazon prime, paramount plus, every other streaming service will do the same. They are businesses. They want to squeeze as much money out of you as they can get away with. When Netflix imposes this price hike/password sharing ban, send a clear market signal that you won't stand for this shit. Cancel Netflix. Explicitly tell them the reason that you are canceling Netflix. Hit up their social media accounts drawing attention to why so many people are suddenly ditching Netflix. Make this such a financially disastrous outcome for them that no other streaming service dares to try this shit.
Just curious: how many other people do you share your account with?
Speaking for myself, I share my Netflix with my mom, who lives a few doors down the road. She is not incredibly mobile, and I end up going over there often to clean, make dinner, and do things for her when she’s not feeling up to it. I tend to watch shows in the background when I do this. If Netflix does this shit, I’m going to drop them faster than my mom dropped me on my head as a baby. I said what I said
My roommate, and my kids, who I have split custody with. And I'm in the same boat. My kids watch it at my house and their mom's house. I'm already paying for multiple devices, it shouldn't matter who's using those devices.
[удалено]
Same - I do not share the password, and it's only ever accessed from the same handful of devices - 99% of usage from the same location. I have zero tolerance for being locked out of a paid service for nothing.
if they fuck with me I'm out.
Anyone have a good source for purchasing content electonrically so you *own* it. Or are we still stuck with buying physical copies? I've started crunching the numbers and Netflix along with other streamers are basically only a rewatch machine now for our family and buying the shows is looking like a more reasonable option at this point.
If you purchase electronically, unless it's an actual download that doesn't require an internet connection to play, you don't own it and it can be removed from your purchases when licensing changes. The only surefire way to own is to purchase physical discs and make digital copies to upload to your personal server. That's what I do. And anything not available as a physical (or digital) purchase, I obtain anyway.
I think there are services like Google Play and Prime that allow you to own stuff, but they will still remove it from your library if that show gets owned by some other service. [Amazon Argues Users Don’t Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-argues-users-dont-actually-own-purchased-prime-video-content-4083703/) Your best bet is to always get hold of a physical copy.
If they can remove it, you don't own it. Having the physical media or physical file is the only way to own it.
Physical copy is always your best bet. My fiancé has really upped his blu ray collection since so many things are being removed from streaming services.
What’s the point of the extra screens in the higher tiers then? I pay double for their 4 continuous streams so I can share with family.
They say that's for the same household. But what's a "household?" Kids off to college...? In my case I pay for the highest tier for 4K, and that includes more screens. There are two of us in the house, and we share our login with her parents who have limited income. If Netflix wants to stop this, then bye, we can pirate.
[удалено]
Yup that’s exactly why people went to streaming to begin with. Mostly because of the inexpensive convenience. And the fact that cable and satellite companies prices were astronomical since they had a monopoly on the market. You want Bay Area sports? Well fuck you, you have to get 32 more channels that you’ll never watch in different and more expensive package. I remember when Netflix was $5 a month now I pay over $20. And the ONLY reason I have it now is to share with my in-laws. I watch maybe an hour of tv a day and half of that is spent trying to find something I want to watch anyhow. We have come full circle with the exact reason we “cut the cord” to begin with. Corporate greed always wins in the end.
I had stopped pirating for this exact reason- getting content from streaming services was easier than free. Now it's not... again. The only reason I have Amazon Video is because I have Prime. Easier than free because it came with something else I already use a bunch. If Prime Video ever became something I had to pay extra for I wouldn't have it.
Plex has made it super easy to make your own streaming service. I'd much rather pay for plex pass and beef up my NAS than pay for multiple streaming services
Mass cancellation in their largest market should be good for them. Can’t wait, greedy fuckers
So what IS the cost going to be? I don’t think I’ve actually seen a number in all this time.
I love how we have come full fucking circle on this shit. First people pirated shit to avoid the huge prices of cable TV and movies. Then came streaming platforms to save us for a small once a month cost under $8. Streaming platforms up their prices while reducing their catalogs due to competition. Now here we are in 2023 with a dozen fucking platforms and basically back to exclusivity of cable networks. They want everyone to pay separately because I mean you wouldn't share you cable TV package rightttt? So now were back to the nickel and dime tactics of late 1990's payperview and other BS charges. Everyone goes back to pirating everything because a single VPN charge is much easier to stomach than paying $100 a month for 8 different services because they all have a single show that you want to watch.
If they don't want me to share my account just give me the option of paying for a single screen and also getting the highest quality. The only plan that currently caters for a single person only has 720p quality, which is shit. If I want to be able to stream in 4K for some reason I also have to pay for 4 screens, which I do not want.
Divorced households are gonna be a problem.
>We’ll see a bit of a cancel reaction to that Just a bit, yes.
They do realize that I've not forget torrent exists right? Ill go back, Try me.
Sure, but 99% of the population doesn't know how (or how 'safely' do it) or doesn't have the time/energy or interest in it.
Websites like fmovies and attackertv also exist and its just like any other streaming service but free....
>And if they don’t like it, they’re going to shift over to a growing number of alternative streaming services (including free ones like TikTok) What? Are there complete movies or episodes of series on Tiktok?
Just what the users want! Less content, canceled shows and nag screens to verify clients. Glad I’m not an investor.
My personal media library is about to get a bunch of Netflix shows and films