It's like they are trying to irritate people into canceling their accounts.
Imo, this one might actually be worse than the account sharing and cause people to quit. As soon as you have people messing around with their subscription version, it's all too easy to just say "nah, I actually don't want this anymore".
The thing I don’t get (I do - it’s greed, FYI) is why the fuck they even care? If I’m paying for 2 or 4 screens on my Netflix account, why the fuck does it even matter which address they’re playing at? Netflix were about to sting me because my stepkids (who are with us half the time) were using my account while at their dad’s.
Believe it or not, Netflix finally drove me to Plex. I’d been holding out, still using Kodi, but decided the money I was saving could go towards a much nicer setup, and it did. A pair of HP DL380 G7s, Proxmox - the works.
Now my stepkids use my Plex server, and have both happily streamed the latest Black Mirror from it (shit season, BTW - another hump in the downhill shitshow that Netflix has become). And the savings from my cancelled Netflix sub will have paid for it over the next 12 months or so.
It’s simple - you’re paying for 2 or 4 screens, but you could be paying for 2 or 4 screens AND multiple accounts! That would give them more of your money, so it’s their preferred option.
Love might be sharing a password, but profit is paying multiple times for the same thing, so here we are…
After some discussion with the Minister for War and Finance (my wife), we agreed I had a modest budget (~$300AUD) to spend on some old enterprise servers, which I did.
But I’ve seen plenty of posts where people are getting away with their old gaming rigs, and the like.
I've got a PC that my job was throwing out and I put a CPU, hard drive and RAM combo I got on Craigslist (that's like gumtree) for $20USD in there and I've only ever had problems with 4k and HDR. Plex itself is pretty cheap perf-wise! Transcoding can be a problem but you can set it up to pre-transcode multiple quality options or just stream it original quality if you have the bandwidth.
They made record profits during quarantine, when everyone was stuck at home. Now they have two problems:
Some of those people have cancelled because they're now busy.
They're expected by shareholders to continue that kind of profit increase forever.
They don't actually care any more than they ever did, this is just an easy way to get money out of accounts they see as less likely to cancel because many people are using the same account.
is why the fuck they even care? If I’m paying for 2 or 4 screens on my Netflix account, why the fuck does it even matter which address they’re playing at?
You and your family could be paying for 2-3 accounts instead, and also paying for the 2 or 4 screen plan on all of them if you want 4K.
Maybe you won't, but many will. And they'll offset you unsubscribing your one account.
Plus even if they increase their total subscriptions by only 10% it's still worth it, because they probably lost active users, so there's less actual load on their servers for the same amount of subs.
I dropped my 4 screen plan in October or November when I first heard about the upcoming sharing restrictions because it was actually being used from 3 or 4 locations, but unfortunately I think us cancellers are probably outnumbered by people who just created new accounts because they had to stop using someone else's.
I think us cancellers are probably outnumbered by people who just created new accounts
Oh, 100% right there. Those of us that are both willing to cancel and capable of setting ourselves up with an alternative like Plex are, sadly, in the minority. I’m doing my bit, though. Have invited a couple of friends to my library and showed them how to use the app, and they’ve happily cancelled their Netflix as well.
Yeah, I tried Jellyfin but, at the time, it wasn’t as well-featured as Plex. I might go back for a second look but, as I got Plex Pass lifetime sub on special, there’s no ongoing cost to offset against the pain of getting my family to adopt yet another new app.
I get that they’re being greedy, but provided you’re not set on watching one specific show, why pay for Netflix? Lots of cable TV providers are setting up their own services and taking their shows there instead of Netflix. Most of the Netflix originals either don’t last, aren’t even close to being good, or both; I feel like there hasn’t been more than two or three major hits from them a year in awhile (could be wrong though). In the past they had no big competitors so they could charge whatever, now it just seems like way too much.
(I guess that doesn’t mean the ad-supported tier going away, but who wants to pay and still have to watch ads?)
If you’re learning a language, netflix has good tie-ins with language reactor… but if the $9.99 option goes away, I’ll just switch to the beta video + subtitle file upload for that
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