Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options Following a serious slump in subscriber numbers, Netflix execs are trying to boost financial growth by converting account sharers into paying users and building up its game division. In its calendar Q1 2022 report [PDF], the streaming giant revealed it lost 200,000 subscribers quarter-on-quarter after it wrongly predicted an …
It's going to be an issue alright, even someone who lives alone is likely to have it on at least one Smart TV or similar, a phone, a tablet and maybe a laptop as well, never mind families. How they choose to differentiate between legitimate use and password sharing is going to be a challenge.
This story has also been on a lot of the TV websites for obvious reasons, and most people are saying it's not cost but content driving them away. Netflix throws too much at the wall, and very little sticks for more than 1-2 series before they cancel it.
> I think I prefer series that only have one or two seasons
It can be nice having properly self-contained and properly wrapped up stories.
The problem these days is that series finales tend to be deliberately written with some unfinished threads/deliberate cliffhangers, so that they've got something to kick start the next series off.
Supernatural being perhaps the prime example/chief culprit.
Unfortunately, I think this model is starting to backfire for Netflix, since they've started doing the Google thing of cancelling shows after one or two seasons.
Anecdotally, several friends have stopped watching new shows on Netflix, because they know that said shows are likely to be cancelled at a "cliffhanger" point.
Which then leads to a catch-22: if people aren't watching the shows unless they've reached a natural conclusion, then Netflix are more likely to cancel said shows, since no-one's watching them...
I was a fan of Altered Carbon.
And it got killed after 2 seasons. We still have netflix at home, so that my other half can watch some stuff. But I am not really following whats on netflix nowadays.
If something my other half is interested in gets cut and she wasn't too happy as well, I imagine netflix will have one lesser subscriber.
I guess on the plus sided, there are more Kovacs stories. On the minus, hopefully Netflix won't be allowed near them. First series was fun and stayed fairly close to the books, 2nd was just a joke with Kovacs stumbling along behind Falconer. And demonstrating none of the feared Envoy conditioning or empathy. Or I guess they read praise for the Hendrix... I mean Poe AI and decided a dystopian SF show really needed an AI love story. Oh, and showing that AIs solving complex problems don't need to suspend visuals.
I think a 3rd series in the same style as the first might keep me subscribing, but if it was from the same team as the 2nd, I'd be cancelling.
The problem was Joel Kinnaman was quite a big part of the attraction of S1. (Perhaps Martha Higareda, too).
From a story-telling point of view, it made sense to shift bodies and bring in new characters. They probably should have done it far more often than once a season. But, from a TV point of view, people are drawn to the characters as portrayed by certain actors, and the chemistry between them. My guess is it would have had S3 if they'd stuck with Kinnaman.
Maybe they could have introduced Mackie alongside Kinnaman. And then looked at the audience reaction before deciding whether to go it alone with him or drop him. Although, I think they needed someone more charismatic - David Ajala maybe...?
I guess my reaction was from being a fan of the books. IMHO, Morgan's writing has had a large chunk of identity politics. So Kovacs questioning his role as an Envoy, or just his own identity. Body swapping is canon given needlecasting people into whatever sleeve is available is part of the world building.
So swapping Kinnaman for Mackie was fine. New planet, new sleeve, same Kovacs. But it didn't really explain why the Envoy Corps became a rebel unit. The first series stayed fairly close to the source, the second only very loosely based on Broken Angels and Woken Furies. So became a bit of a confused mess with the Black Man being marginalised. Kinnaman had a more clearly defined character, Mackie had to make the best of what he was given.
So rather disappointing, especially as rather than empowering roles, it marginalised and stereotyped them. If the producers had wanted a strong female lead, Kovacs could have just 'casted into a female sleeve. Kinda curious when producers knew there'd only be 2 series, and if that's why they mashed 2 books into the final series.
I don't have a problem with short runs if they are what was intended. E,g. True Detective or Fargo is always conceived as an anthology so each season is a standalone story. Netflix though seems to flip-flop between dragging out for far too long (House of Cards) or 1/2 and done with no notice to the creators to wrap it up coherently.
The one exception at the moment seems to be Cobra Kai, which is so much better than a continuation of a cheesy 80s film franchise has any right to be.
Detection can be relatively straightforward. Just check activity by source IP and it should show multiple logins from different origins. Main challenge then is filtering legit mobile users from account sharing.
But agree on content, or lack of. Also been interesting comparing Amazon's strategy. They shift content to ad supported channels like IMDB, and act as a front-end to other content, eg Discovery via Prime. I also think some of Netflix's content gets a bit too woke, eg the way they butchered Altered Carbon.
Also perhaps bad timing given I got a message telling me Netflix's subscription price was increasing.
How is Netflix defining sharing? My use case - all the famalam in one house (for now) using Netflix/Prime on multiple devices. The key here is that all devices share the same connection (except on (a) mobile device(s) that might not be WiFi connected). The problem then crops up when I go on my holiday to Scotland and hire a cottage..... ....with a smart TV that I legitimately use to watch my Netflix account on.......... ...or one of the financial burdens is at a mates house watching Netflix on their mobile, connected to mates WiFi....
2FA is probably the easist approach. Network analysis is good to an idea of the scale of the problem but not so good for enforcement. Also, lots of people use VPNs because of geofencing.
Cheaper plans with ads will no doubt bring some new users, but then you are competing directly with whichever ad-funded systems are already out there.
I think the biggest problem that streaming services are facing is that creating lots of good content is hard. A few years ago, Netflix was on its own in showering cash on productions, in a way that HBO did 30 years ago. Now there is much more competition for not much more creative talent.
2FA doesn’t help in the slightest. If my kids are out of the house using Netflix and I, as the account holder, get a 2FA ping for a Netflix login, of course I’ll let them log in.
Not sure what problem you’re trying to solve with 2FA when the account holder is most likely collaborating in the sharing.
They use geolocation. When Netflix detects a new location they send you a polite email telling you -the device type, the possibly incorrect location and the time.
Plus the text:
If this was you or someone in your household:
Enjoy watching! Have you seen this one?*******
If it was someone else:
Please remember that we only allow the people in your household to use your account.
Which you ignore because it was just someone in your "household" on holiday or business travelling. Obviously Netflix have a pretty good idea if this is the case or not, but they can never be certain.
I'm guessing that if it's being used in more than one location more than say 20% of the time, then it's fair to assume that you need looking at.
So if you go on holiday and take your Netflix with you that's fine because it's only a short amount of time throughout the year.
If your kid moves out and carries on using it, that would be obvious.
Surely that is the ideal way to detect and discourage sharing? ISTR it was Borland that said that their licensing was analogous to that of a book. A book can be shared with many people, but not all at the same time. To me that is the fairest policy, and one that is most easily possible to enforce.
Ok, if you want the media to be there in every room in your house whenever you move around it then there needs to be seamless switching between devices, with a few seconds allowed changeover between devices, but then again, how likely is it that the different devices are playing in sync relative to each other?
The problem is Netflix allows you to stream on multiple devices, so in your Borland example, several people can read the book at the same time. Or even different books.
From Netflix's perspective, this is supposed to be all within a household - however people choose to deliberately confuse "household" with "family" and share logins with people living in other households.
I own a city apartment and a country cottage, me or any other member of my household might be in any of those places using Netflix, or one of us might be using it on a mobile device, on mobile net or some shared wi-fi. If Netflix starts cutting my access for no good reason they might lose a customer.
Yes, they do have allowable multiple simultaneous streams depending on subscription tier so multiple people can watch different things at the same time. Just checking that different people in different locations are watching at the same time is insufficient. I could be watching something at home, and another member of my family watching something else while travelling.
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That 100 million is undoubtedly 100 million devices
Not undoubtedly. Smart people go for the Premium plan that allows 4 things to be watched simultaneously and share it between 4 or perhaps more people as it's unlikely that many of the group will ever want to be watching Netflix simultaneously. The downside of having more than 4 is that there are only 4 "slots" to save where you are in a series etc. so "resume" might not take you to the right episode etc.
Whilst it does mean that the cost per person is halved it doesn't man that Netflix would get twice the revenue if they stopped it. I suspect it would lead to canceled subscriptions and a loss of revenue.
I suspect geolocation will be involved. You and several other devices in the same geo. area, logging in at the same time, likely will be fine. You and another device logging in from separate continents, at the same time, likely not the same person... I suspect they're just after low hanging fruit (IE obvious abusers of the system) rather than legit users. Unless they're really stupid.
Oh wait, multinational corporation with declining profits... I guess time will tell.
Edit: Icon added because of who I HOPE they're after
They can block streaming on the same account via more than one IP address at the same time. If the plan really is for a "household", then someone using mobile for streaming can use wifi instead like the other devices in the house.
Another way around it is 2FA. Require accounts that are coming from a different IP to use 2FA to re-authenticate themselves on a regular basis. A family that's dispersed (college etc.) or a couple that don't live together can text each other for that, it introduces a hassle to encourage getting separate accounts for separate households without forcing it. But stuff like sharing with not so close friends or ex girlfriends would be too inconvenient to continue.
I don't think they will try a 100% crackdown from day one, it will happen slowly over time, making it more and more of a pain to share accounts outside of the limitations they want to set.
"advertising-tolerant." NOT AT ALL..
I pay top tier ,
recently Netflix up dated their app. and put the price up!!!!
LG updated their operating system.
now I have to log I every time I want to watch netsukes,
repeatedly get an error message that Netflix is having problems playing this try something else./
but every show is the same,
works fine on all the cost centers devices, just my lg big screen.
the dip that pays
there is no way to resolve this, no way to roll back updates. smart my ass.
Netflix is taking a leaf out of microshafts book , but also bitching about loss of subscribers,
try customer service, even before content.
Aussies vote with their feet, there are other options, shit service and fuckedup delivery makes people look at the other options , and a percentage will jump ship, cause the deviel we know is an asshole.
A large technology platform intent on making the user experience worse with every new step? Colour me surprised. I can't be the only one that's noticed the quality of content has fallen, the price has gone up, and with adverts being introduced it'll turn into an even larger data mine than it already is. It's a shame because I've been with Netflix since the start and it's historically been a great, reasonably priced service.
The experience of the social media giants suggests they'll rake it in for a couple of years before completely losing sight of their core function and fading into irrelevance.
The Netflix platform "updates" have made me return to buying DVDs, easy to watch without adverts and Netflix is no longer selling my data, while the cash I pay for the DVD is going to the companies and actors doing the work to create the content, not just a company selling it.
made me return to buying DVDs
I never moved away from doing so, shunned streaming in favour of second-hand DVDs which can be as low as 20p each or £1 for a box-set, BluRay a little more.
The biggest problem is storage space and finding time to watch what I have accumulated.
I think as a sort of proof of ownership the physical discs are still required. I've taken to keeping the discs and liners but chucking the case (except for special editions, box sets etc) and initially kept them in special storage albums but now I just use shoeboxes or anything that can be shoved to the back of the wardrobe or put in the loft.
I do that with CDs, cheaper to buy them on ebay from Music Magpie or whoever than buy them digitally, plus I generally like looking at the lyric sheets etc at least once or twice. Rip them to MP3 and stored on my NAS for regular use. Boxes and boxes of them in my loft though!
Yes, the content has been going downhill. However, one reason Netflix cannot really do anything about is studios setting up their own streams, and taking their content out of Netflix. So no Disney properties on Netflix, which sadly now includes much more than Mickey Mouse (like the Marvel, Starwars and Pixar franchises).
To see all I would like to stream, i would have to subscribe to HBO, Disney+, Amazon, Apple in addition to Netflix. The monthly bill would start getting serious.
Just go to their site occasionally and they'll even tell you what's coming up and when. I got Amazon Prime for a month to watch Picard, and Apple+ for a month to watch Foundation. I just cancelled and will wait for the whole next season to become available again. I think a lot of these services are like gym subscriptions and people forget to watch anything and still pay.
"Graze. Sign up for one for a couple on months. Watch what you want to watch. Then move on to the next. It's the capitalist way: it incentivised them to create good, new content."
Until the first one blinks and stars tying customers into 12 month contracts. If one does it, and gets away with it without too much loss of subscribers, the rest will quickly follow suit. The end result will be a massive loss of consumer choice because it will simply be too expensive to subscribe to all of them.
That would be... interesting. Another reason we ditched Sky was their love of long contract periods: not only is their standard 18 months rather than 12, they'll reset the timer at absolutely any excuse and don't even guarantee their prices for the duration (they have the usual clause where the customer is obliged to stick to the letter of the contract but they can do whatever they want) and when we were right at the point of "should I stay or should I go?" they tried it on again and lied to us about it. Twice. So I'm glad we got shot of them. We won't be going with any other service that tries to lumber us with anything longer than a month, whether directly or having punitively high prices for shorter terms.
The writing was on the wall when they scrapped the stars system for 'like' - 'we don't have any bad content, just content you might not like as much as other content!'.
And the social-media style endless scrolling panels - 'keep scrolling, there's no end, just more great stuff!'
I won't cancel as they have enough good stuff (esp in 4K/HDR) that it'd be cutting my nose off to spite my face, but I'm not as happy about it as I used to be...
I don't know where these numbers came from, but they can still be true. The other 97% would just see ads that are poorly directed because the others were targeted. I certainly have gotten this because advertisers don't know what I want to buy, so they throw random things in my path in hopes of finding out. That said, the numbers could also be anecdotal estimates or made up.
We've just ditched Sky because of the deluge of ads and constant attempts to rip us off, and when looking at what else is available we're unimpressed by the numerous and unskippable ads on several digital services; we were considering Netflix as an option but already wavering thanks to the recent price hikes and complaints about the drop in quality. Their decision to introduce ads (which spread like weeds, they won't be restricted to the budget accounts for long) is probably a deal-breaker.
> We've just ditched Sky because of the deluge of ads and constant attempts to rip us off
I'm about to say some very rude things to Virgin, but that's mostly because they've hugely bumped up the monthly price, and I haven't actually switched on their TV box for the last 6 months.
Youtube is the main annoyance for me atm - the deluge of adverts they're forcing on "free" viewing is frankly obnoxious. Especially since they seem to be overly repetitive and woefully poorly targetted, to boot.
I wouldn't mind as much if YT was actually producing the content, or if any measurable amount of the monies from said adverts went to the people actually creating said content. But alas, it all seems to stream straight into Google/Alphabet's pockets.
I may have to see if I can figure out some way of getting a filtering-proxy set up for my Roku TV...
We moved to Freesat from Sky earlier this year as we realised the only channel we watch that's not on Freesat is Sky Atlantic, and £20+ a month for one mediocre channel seemed a bit steep. We will get the cost of the Freesat box back in about 6 months of no Sky subs.
It was easy to switch too: remove Sky box, connect Freesat box. Send Sky box back to Sky with packing that they supply. Simples.
The hateful Sky Q system will darken our doors no more.
“The hateful Sky Q system will darken our doors no more.”
That's what they were trying to foist on us right at the end. We weren't convinced.
RN we're trying to figure out how best to do Freeview. Both our tellys are pre-Android "smart" TVs so their capabilities are a bit random; the Philips one theoretically records but I haven't managed to persuade it to do more than live pause so far, and even then only when it feels like it.
I've just given our old PCs a new job (both Zotac Z-Boxes so they look the part; I mean rather than looking like a knackered old PC that someone's just discarded in the living room. Cooling fans can get a bit noisy though, those Intel i3 CPUs run quite hot) and installed Kodi on them to stream stuff off my FreeBSD box, which also got some new spinning rust to store all the DVDs we've started buying. One Z-Box also has a WinTV thingy which I've coaxed into doing something using TVHeadend, which is a bit clunky but usable. I'm also quite enjoying it picking up the newfangled digital broadcast on an original 1950s "rabbit-ears" aerial. Very Fallout.
It's still early days for us but we're wondering if we even need a subscription service. So far we're leaning towards "probably not".
"installed Kodi on them to stream stuff off my FreeBSD box,"
A cheap Raspberry Pi will do that job silently and probably quite a bit cheaper in power usage terms. It'll also work with a TV tuner for live broadcasts and recording, although I've not tried that. You can also set Kodi up to use a shared database (stored on your FreeBSD server) so if you use your Kodi profile from a different device, watched and resume status will work.
1. COVID eased back....
2. It's sunny Springtime...
3. People going outside...
4. People going on holidays and breaks...
5. Prcies and cost of living through the roof...
Sorry Netflix but given a choice between paying for crap TV shows OR food and/or going away for first time in years...
AKA: "we've reached market saturation, so we're curtailing features in expectation that existing customer accounts will increase their number of subscriptions"
Anyone who thinks this will work is completely nuts. They're just pushing people towards cancelling their existing subscriptions.
We've had a subscription since it started, 5 of us (all the same family). We are frequently geographically spread out, but do live together. The day we start to get warnings, ads, or any other "incentive" is the day I cancel, permanently.
In Netflix's two biggest markets (the US and UK) it is certainly close to saturation with subscription count being equal to around 20% of overall population. Places like Germany and France hover around 13% so there's room to grow in those places. Unfortunately, Netflix makes over half its revenue from 4 countries even though it has a presence in 190 countries.
Whilst I undederstand it is to do with content licensing, I really wish we/they would have moved beyond the geoblocking and having to fiddle with VPN and DNS.
They might even get better uptake in subs in other countries if content weren't restricted based on country you're connecting from.
You think the drop off is large now?
Once you put ads in there it will be a cliff edge fall off.
I hate YouTube’s ads they are irrelevant to me no I do not wish to holiday in Qatar and having it shoved at me while I am listening to some Cuban cafe music has me reaching to turn off the service.
I will be unsubscribing from Netflix as the cost of living crisis hits bye bye Netflix bye bye Disney Amazon is the hardest to lose because it is tied in to so many other features but hey I could save thousands without its convenience.
These big tech USA companies cannot continue just putting prices up.
A couple observations.
1. Maybe Netflix need to accept that endless growth in subscriber numbers is impossible.
2. To paraphrase Princess Leia - "The more you tighten your grip, Netflix, the more subscribers will slip through your fingers."
3. Netflix should never consider me "advertising tolerant."
4. I already have too many streaming subscriptions.
I'm no expert on this, as you'll note, but it seemed quite apparent a few years ago - when the likes of the BBC and, in particular, Disney announced they'd be launching competitive products - that Netflix was done.
It's up against studios and infrastructure that have a long heritage, and a large back catalogue, of products. Unless you have the uniquely deep pockets of Amazon, which just acquired it's own back catalog and infrastcuture with MGM, this seems like a formidable competitive set.
Yup.
There's been an influx of Bbc content on Netflix. Vaguely curious how much of that is also available via iPlayer. So I can now watch Ready Steady Cook on Netflix. Yey. Alternatively, Prime just dropped all the Bonds so I can watch Roger Moore play an Epstein impersonator. Kinda interesting seeing what was socially acceptable then compared to now.
> ...so I can watch Roger Moore play an Epstein impersonator. Kinda interesting seeing what was socially acceptable then compared to now.
I don't think being given permission to arbitrarily kill people was all *that* acceptable back then. I guess it was seen as a necessary evil. :shrug:
As for Epstein impersonator, I don't remember Bond engaging in trafficking and sexually abusing underage girls. Which film was that?
Governments are about the only group who can arbitrarily kill people, so it's fine.
But there was a fair bit of trafficking, if only so Bond has a damsel in distress to rescue. Rest is the well documented womanising and grabbing & groping that was the lot of the Bond babes.
The BBC renegotiated its Terms of Trade with independent producers that it commissions programmes from. Previously it had a one month IPlayer window now it has one year window with outside commissions which it can then extend non-exclusively in return for dropping its UK commercial exploitation cut from 25% to 20% and its international exploitation cut from 12.5% to 10%.
For what value of "over"?
Last year (most recent figures I can find) they made a profit margin of 7.88% on $7.7Bn.
The media and market panic that we're seeing now is only based on the fact that Netflix subs have stopped growing for the first time ever. As with many listed companies, the stock market investors seem to think that growth is infinite and if you're not growing madly then you're a failure. Like many companies, Netflix remains (very) profitable and is a viable business.
Yes they were stupid in their predictions. However a drop of 25% in the share price is just silly.
There have been interesting reports in the UK press lately about subscription services, as people start to make choices about what to spend money on. It looks like Netflix and Prime are going to be the ones to stay, with Disney, Britbox etc likely to be dropped. Obviously, mileage will vary in other markets.
"Netflix remains (very) profitable"
Netflix has only been reasonably profitable for 3 out of the last 12 years. It has accumulated over $15 billion in debt which it services by being a cashflow business. It's incredibly dependent on the US, UK, Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Germany. The US and UK are incredibly overcrowded markets which have only shown revenue growth because of price increases and consumers not being overly price sensitive. That's all changing because inflation is running riot. There's good reason to worry about Netflix because if it loses too many subscribers it can't afford content which means it loses more subscribers. Available content is dwindling because content owners want their own streaming services and unlike them Netflix doesn't have other significant revenue streams.
Thank you Cornetman - yes exactly.
I know well how markets work, but I'm a subscriber to the Warren Buffett style of looking at the underlying value of a business, rather than the school of buying shares in the hope they will rise because of others' stupidity/cupidity - otherwise known as the Greater Fool Theory.
It's the latter who have been bailing out at the first sign their bubble may be bursting.
"The older established players will have to be very nimble (or have something very compelling which will attract alot of others, like Disney) to actually match or even beat Netflix."
No they won't, they'll just have to stop licensing their content to Netflix. This is the fundamental problem Netflix has. People signed up because they were able to see pretty much anything from any content producer without having to ever think about who made it. Now large amounts of that content is being removed and is instead available on some other service. It doesn't matter how poor that service might be, even if people don't sign up for it they're still going to leave Netflix because the content they want is no longer there.
"advertising on low-end plans"
And with that here ends the golden age of streaming services as they go the same way as satellite and cable:
1) Offer an ad-free experience for a fee to tempt users from regular ad-funded TV
2) Introduce limited ads on low end plans
3) Ramp up ads on low end plans
4) Introduce limited ads on all plans
5) Standardise plans by having the same ads on all of them
Before you know it customers are paying a fee for exactly the same ad-filled experience they used to get for free from broadcast TV.
You forgot to mention: if your favorite sports team is "local" (aka within 250 to 500 miles of your location, depending on the sport), then your sports stream has the right to block transmission if the stadium/arena is not at capacity. Which means you are paying for nothing most of the time.
It's partly due to naff content, partly that I've seen pretty much everything I want to watch from them over the last two years, and partly that although I have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky Movies and Disney Plus, there are still things that I can't get.
I'm not going to get any more subscriptions, especially when things disappear from them and someone else gets to decide what I can and can't watch. Everyone has suddenly decided that they need their own streaming service, and you can only view their content on that. I've had enough of them all, I want one service with access to all of them, so I can pick and choose the few shows/films I want to see, and not pay for all the rest of the dross that I will never watch.
Also, while I'm on a rant, how do Sky get away with charging you for access to channels, and then forcing you to watch adverts. If I'm paying for a service, I expect to get it without adverts. And if you insist on having adverts, then why am I paying for it?
That's what we still do. I can't abide watching irrelevant ads, so we have a Humax box to record and watch freeview TV skipping all the ads. Suits us adequately. I'm not prepared to shell out to watch Netflix or any other streaming service. As for movies, they all end up on freeview sooner or later. I'm in no rush to pay to see them early. I've got a backlog of nearly 100 movies recorded now to watch sometime.
@Andy Non
Similar here, FreeView has lots of channels and thus, always easy to find a few things worth recording (main obstacle is finding the stuff you are interested in purely because there are so many channels to search through - lacking the user friendly nicely categorized / if you watched this you may like this / easily searchable front end of a streaming service).
There's lots of stuff I don't even bother recording as life is busy and plenty of things I like doing that don't involve watching "TV" (ranging from active outdoors stuff through to inactive sitting on your arse stuff that is not "TV" related e.g. reading or chatting to family / friends).
No streaming service for me*
*caveat, household includes a disabled, housebound family member, we do her food shopping in addition to helping her out in other ways, however she buys some stuff online and so has Amazon Prime for faster delivery, which covers the household & includes the streaming so I did try it out and watch a couple of things out of interest when she first had Prime but I have hardly looked at Prime streaming since (though she makes good use of it)
I want one service with access to all of them, so I can pick and choose the few shows/films I want to see, and not pay for all the rest of the dross that I will never watch.
If it weren't illegal, I'd point you to a couple of good terrent sites.
And people wonder why my collection of movies is around 5TB
The fragmentation of platforms is definitely a problem. I suspect the next stable situation is one where most people just get a single month whenever something they want to see comes out. We'll see how the platforms survive that.
Well, except for Amazon Prime, which is another problem entirely. I'm not sure why Amazon has not been investigated for abusing a dominant position in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another. Bundling your media streaming with your deliveries sounds a lot like bundling your browser with your OS to me...
It's a rigged game in the US (like most things, TBH). If you ditch your expensive cable TV package, you're stuck with a more-expensive internet package to make up for the lost revenue from the TV sub, set-top box rental fees, DVR fees, etc.
Now add the phalanx of individual streaming subs, none of which has more than a handful of programs of interest due to exclusives and rights-holder restrictions, and you're right back at the cost of the omnibus cable package -- if not more.
Yes, on each of the streaming services there are currently one or two programmes I'd watch. The idea that I'd subscribe a full annual fee to each of 4 or 5 such services to watch four or five series that will end or run out of steam before my subscription expires strikes me as lunacy.
-> Netflix attributed the losses to inflation, the war in Ukraine, and competition from rival services.
It could not possibly be that Netflix itself is doing something wrong. It's always something else or someone else. I don't have Netflix and have no axe to grind.
As Plest wrote a few minutes ago, the weather is better. London on Saturday was very busy. It's almost like pre-Covid.
Exactly.
I never quite understood all those punters that signed up to Sky which comes with adverts. Imagine *paying* to get adverts.
And TV adverts aren't like the print ads they copied. At least you can flick past a page advert in no time. Waiting <however> while that dreadful advert has to play is guaranteed to annoy me.
That's where PVRs and fast forward come in.
My best friend has a Netflix sub, I have Hulu. My Hulu is also logged in at his place because I spend a couple of days a week there, watching it. His Netflix account is also logged in at my place because sometimes I watch it at home. If they introduce ads and limit sharing I'll simply quit watching Netflix at my place. No big deal. If Hulu limits sharing I don't know what I'll do because I really like it, but I won't pay for two subs.
They are going to lose more when they put their prices up yet again. I'm on the top tier because I want what every other streaming service gives without a premium. 4K (yes I can see the difference on my living room TV before you lot start). I don't need 4 simultaneously streaming devices, hell I only need one 99.9% of the time. I suspect others have already either dropped tier or just stopped altogether already.
That's true too - They should offer a tier where you can get the 4K quality with only one or two devices. At the moment, you can only get 4K with 4 devices, so people have "spares", and feel like they're paying for the channels already, so why not share them?
Dear Netflix,
Constant growth is impossible, especially when other services are finally catching on to what you're doing and making their own offerings.
You do realise, I trust, that the price of electricity, fuel, and damn near everything has gone to hell and is likely only going to get worse. Inflation is a problem now. So when people cut back, it's going to be the unessential things that get the cut.
I pay for watching videos, not wasting time with adverts for things I'm not going to buy. I gave up Sky twenty odd years ago because I was sick of three premium prices and incessant advertising. If you bring adverts to regular subscriptions (or bump the price to cover the difference), and believe me you will as the lure will be too hard to resist, I'll walk. You are an interesting diversion that I accept the price of. You are not an essential. Don't break what works.
And finally, I am still a subscriber as you can provide plenty of ways to waste a rainy afternoon (plus I'm slowly working my way through the oddity that is Lucifer), but for the love of God stop coming up with good ideas and then cancelling them.
Surely it would have been far better to look at the viability of a second season of "I'm Not Okay With This" (supposedly cancelled "because Covid") rather than mindless crap like "Is It Cake?". Which, granted, can probably be made on a budget of three beers and a packet of prawn cocktail, but still...
I gave this some thought. I may be wrong. How do they do this?
Device ID? That's limited to number of devices on the account anyway.
IP Address? There are a few things wrong with this, mobile networks, taking your device to work or any wifi network, vpn's and smart-dns.
What options do they have left? The only one I can think of is getting everyone to reset their password to shift all the people using account where not authorised to do so but then that's not going to make them any money, if they didn't pay for it before they aren't gong to now. Also it's going to annoy your subscribers no end having log back into it on all devices.
So how do they do it? 2-factor authorisation? Which again is going to annoy subscribers who just want to watch some crap whatever way you do it.
I think they just need to understand exponential growth is impossible to sustain and just be happy with the profits they are making. An ad version will dive bomb the service.
I saw the price increase coming and evaluated if it was worth it... it was getting a bit pricey. I realized I watch it far less than I used to because the new content is trash. They've shifted focus towards cheaper to make shows and have a habit of canceling shows even though they get great reviews. I think part of that is due to their horrible or skewed recommendation system--this is the company who just added a double thumbs-up button. Get real. Double plus good! Streaming service costs really add up and other services are putting a lot more money into fewer but higher quality content. I don't have time to watch mediocre content. I have other things to do. I was a looong time subscriber. I started with by-mail DVDs. I think they are going to hit some heavy competition. If I want mediocre to poor television for cheap with ads, I'll use traditional cable.
Guys 'n' gals, we have a problem with declining subscriptions. What can we do? What's that? Adverts? Yeah that's bound to work, people are never going to end their subscriptions because we slap a few adverts into the programming. Easier than providing programmes people want to watch. Such an outdated concept!
Business studies 101, price elasticity.
A product needs to be the right price, too cheap and your loosing money, too much and your loosing money.
Netflix let greed get the better of them and now are seeing the cost of upping prices.
Sadly they will likely double down and go for what they’ve suggested, somehow thinking they can be like sky @nd charge us for the privilege of watching ads on their platform.
Problem is if every other streaming provider goes that way then ads will be the new norm on platforms we pay for.
I watched a Star Trek documentary on Amazon prime the other day that had ads, really annoying but not as annoying as the thing I watched on plex that had 3 minutes of ads every 10 minutes of viewing and all the ads where for Ocado, unicef, Ocado in that order.
If I record / download something on sky I can skip any ads, no such luck when it’s streamed, they make you endure them.
That Star Trek documentary was probably part of Amazon's IMDBtv service, or whatever they renamed it recently. It's ad supported. Of course Amazon's Prime Video UI is such a pig's breakfast, it's often very difficult to tell the difference. Only Amazon could somehow make Netflix's complete disaster of a UI even worse.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Netflix essentially created the idea of a binge service for shows/movies, but then its executives don't seem to like shows with lots of episodes and then they kill off a lot of shows that had potential. Cowboy Bebop comes to mind. Seems like they had decided to cancel it even before it premiered. Almost reminds me of the show Firefly on Fox here in the states. Not only did they postpone the first episode for a baseball game multiple times, with no advance warning, they decided that the pilot episode didn't have enough action so they skipped it. Thus throwing viewers into an episode that assumed people had already been introduced to the characters. They did something similar to Family Guy, to the point where the show runners once said even they didn't know when it would be aired.
You'd think that a service that has "binge" at its core, you'd want shows with lots of episodes. You'd want shows with 50-100 episodes so people can... you know... binge them.
Paris, because no doubt she's as confused as the rest of us as to just WTF Netflix execs seem to be thinking.
That rules me out then.
There are some very interesting creators on YouTube. The 30-40 minutes I use it per day is bumps right on the border of how much advertising I will tolerate.
If Netflix starts down this, there are plenty of alternatives. I get my news, without adverts, and some other decent stuff from the BBC, Yes, I am OK with paying for a TV licence. If I pay for a service, I do not expect to pay for adverts. That is why I am OK with Google stuff. If I ever find unskippable adverts on a service I pay for, I will note what is being advertised and never buy that item!
I use Ublock Origin on Firefox to block the annoying ads on Youtube while actually watching the videos. But as I agree that there are some great content creators making stuff for Youtube who I want to support. I will periodically turn off the ad blocker and let it play their entire video playlist with the ads turn on. So that way the creator makes some money and its only the advertisers that are loosing out since its playing in a muted tab i am not paying attention to, as I am doing something else.
I'm just here to read the kvetching! I haven't had a television for 25 years, don't do any online streaming, and don't miss it. It's funny when people want to talk about some show and I tell them why I haven't seen it, they find it _amazing_. But not _amazing_ enough for them to remember the next time they want to talk about some other show.
I note that Netflix isn't just in a nirvana of perpetual growth, but the fantasy-land of growing growth: "We have high confidence that we will accelerate revenue, ....". In other words, the usual short-term charade for the earnings report.
If I'd wanted to pay to have ads shoved into my eyeballs, I would have stuck with cable TV or Dish. I already get (highly) annoying ads on Hulu and IMDB, but at least I'm not paying anything for those, so it's understandable. Ads on Netflix would be the end of my account that I've had since back when all Netflix did was mail you DVDs. Life moves on, I guess, and so shall I.
I guess this speaks volumes about the shiny, wonderful "Internet future" we've all marched into, doesn't it? It sure looks like they want to take it back to the Bad Old Days of Broadcast TV, but with IP addresses now.
When Netflix sent out its email saying they were raising the price I deliberated for a few months then cancelled. Instead, I subscribed to Stan, mainly to re-watch an Australian police series called "No Activity" about two undercover police sitting in a car while carrying out surveillance. The first episode was a little bit rude but the actors get better as they ad-lib their way through the series. Surprisingly, there were other watchable shows on Stan - a little bit of icing.
We had foxtel back when the only way to get it was to have them install a satellite dish on your roof and run coax to the box next to your TV. If you wanted more TVs to use it, you had to pay for additional boxes. When Foxtel started it was about the sport and not having to watch ads, but they slowly crept in, initially with program promos but eventually with beer and gambling. When Netflix started, we cancelled Foxtel ( 1. because Murdoch, 2. because it cost 10 times what Netflix did) and never looked back.
Netflix already does the program promos at the end of series and when you pause long enough in the selection screen. Adding ads in during programs is just going to be a pain. However I noticed the other night that there are already "Ad" breaks in some programs e.g. "ShadowHunters" where it goes to a black screen in between scene cuts. I suspect this was in the original programming and not removed by Netflix.
Account sharer here. I would, at this point in time, never subscribe to Neflix myself. They have become unbearably woke, constantly trying to educate me on their Californian world view, instead of entertaining me. Ozark, Better Call Saul, and a few miniseries are the only things I can still bear to watch. As a script writer it must be terrible to see your story being butchered by an overpaid identity politics person with no talent.
Youtube videos imply that Netflix has followed the Go woke, go broke path. Their share price has supposedly tanked from a high of $700 about a year ago to around $220. I did not watch it enough to see these woke programs but an example was shown illustrating an Asian couple where the male was pregnant. This makes it a bit hard to suspend disbelief when watching.
I too am a Netflix account sharer. Or technically am, anyway. You have to log in to actually share an account. They just have zero to hold my interest, and I am certainly not entertained by wokeness. My daughter and her hubby have Netflix and I have Hulu, and they share my Hulu account, and I think they watch Hulu more than Netflix too. Sucks that Universal stopped licensing Star Trek, as that was a huge draw to Hulu for me, but not enough for me to get a Universal account. I'd be far more likely to drop Hulu than add a new sub for Universal.
I don't mind buying one sub from a single aggregator, but I'm not buying a dozen subs to watch a show here and a show there. I'd rather go back to free TV and put up with commercial breaks. Either that, or just not watch at all anymore. Where TV is concerned, Go Woke, BOOOO-RINNNG!
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