You updated since I posted.

I'm trying to find the price online, but I believe it is $2.99 for a non new-release.

And I'd love to go to the movies for a buck but it ain't gonna happen.

If a company could aquire streaming rights to more than half of new movies in existence, and offer unlimited viewing for $16, i'm sure they'd have a ton of customers....

HBO GO. It's HBO. Anywhere.

And beyond that, I may have been exaggerating my point. But, point being, they're just continually increasing the cost, without increasing the service.

Everyone has their breaking point, and I think Netflix is getting dangerously close to that for too many people.

I'm looking at Blockbuster Mail for instance. I can get it fro a similar price to Netflix and be able to do games to, at no additional cost. That's appealing to me. Maybe I just use Netflix for the 3 summer months and call it a day.

We are going to look back in 10 years and wonder why people ever did DVDs by mail. My guess is it's already a dying business.

Netflix is ahead of the curve here by shrugging off their DVD users and just focusing on streaming content. Completely agree with Wade that they need to aggressively improve their content if they are to continue to be successful. Buying Hulu would be a start.

And again, they are pushing me away from DVDs. They are basically saying, "hey, here, use this service with crap selection and get rid of the good selection - k, thx."

And, not surprisingly, I think Subby sums up what I'm trying to say way better than I am.

I think Streaming is the way of the future. However, I don't think Netflix (or whomever) is going to succeed at streaming becoming mainstream until the selection improves.

I can't find numbers or anything, but I believe that it is still a small minority of Netflix customers that use Netflix streaming - and I'd argue mostly for this reason.

:p
They don't have netflix's library and I don't even know where the closest one is to me...I don't think there's one still standing in boise....

I'm watching twin peaks streaming on Netflix now. If it wasn't streaming, I'd be going through the dvds. I just thought randomly one day, "i'm going to watch twin peaks.' Netflix is still the best game in town for that type of viewing habit.

They say that about streaming, but my dvds still show up, faster then they ever did. If the close all the distribution centers and it takes a week to get anything, i'll revisit it.

LOL

"Thank you for calling Netflix. We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume, please try your call again later"

( I was hoping to specifically clarify the "multiple devices still tied to number of DVD's out?" question)

What is this multiple devices thing you're referring to? I saw you reference it earlier, but didn't really realize what you were talking about.

Is it that you can only stream on one device at a time?

Red Box is great if you watch newer movies, but since I see many of them (the ones I want to see at least) at the theater, I find very little value in that service. I watch lots of older movies and TV shows. For that, Netflix can't be beat since many of the classics are on streaming and the DVD's allow me to plow through a TV show fairly quickly when I need to catch up.

That makes sense larry.

But for someone like me, who I think is closer to the mainstream, it's not particularly useful.

I think I'm close to the mainstream - I watch a few movies a year in theater, then I like to "rent" some movies now and then. When I do rent movies it is generally something made within the last 2 years, sometimes it stretches to the last 5 years. When I want to go back and watch TV, it's generally something that is currently in production or recently finished.

I think that is what most of "America" wants to do. Netflix DVDs is fantastic for this. Netflix streaming is mediocre at best. They have 2nd tier recent shows and old shows. They have 5th tier new movies and old movies, with the occasional good recent movie thrown in that is only available for a few months.

Yeah, pretty much.

The most common scenarios in my house are:
Kid watching on XBox & wife watching on laptop

With the 1 DVD/time plan, only one of those things can happen at a time, so
over the weekend I upgraded to the 2 DVD/time plan so that they didn't have to coordinate/negotiate who was going to watch Netflix. It was doable during the free 1 month trial period but it was kind of hampering the enjoyment for both of them, seemed worth $5 more to eliminate the issue.

I'm just wanting to clarify that the simultaneous connections are still tied to the DVD count, if not then I could drop back to the 1 DVD plan immediately.

Gotcha. Didn't know about that.

This is why I just buy the movies or tv shows I want to watch. No one can take it away from me, no one can raise the price on me, no one can cancel me. I own it and can watch whenever I want to, no need for an internet connection.

No offense to you, but buying movies and tv shows in this day and age makes zero sense to me.

The same goes for me. Streaming movies and tv shows makes no sense to me.

I mean.. I guess you have money to just throw around, but otherwise, especially with TV shows, streaming/renting movies/tv is dramatically cheaper and more accessible.

Not to mention storage issues.

That really depends on how many times he watches them and at what price he purchased them at. Not to mention there is no guarantee that movie or show he is watching via streaming today will be available for streaming tomorrow.

Unless someone breaks into your house beats you and takes your DVDs...

They need to do a special Hoarders episode on people who compulsively buy DVDs. I bet there are some ridiculous libraries out there.

No need to worry about storage issues if you have the DVD. Unless you mean shelf space. Of the 100% of the current tv shows out there, there's only 3 that I can think of that I would buy the season DVDs. But, I just watch them on my DVR. As far as movies go, if the movie strikes enough interest in me to want to watch it, I just buy it. I like having something tangible in my hands when it comes to watching something. You can't hack my DVD. Netflix streaming goes down, I can still watch my DVD. My internet goes down, I can still watch my DVD. My computer breaks, I can still watch my DVD. To me, DVDs are like books and that's why I'll never own something like a Kindle or ever use Netflix (unless they somehow manage to get live sports).

Depending on the tv show, I have no problems paying 30 - 40 dollars for that show when they are released on DVD. If that season has been out for more than a year or so, I'm not willing to pay much more than 20 - 25 dollars for it. Amazon is great for discounts.

Movies...Depending on how much I like the movie, I'm flexible on the price. I refuse to pay more for Blu Ray discs than what it would cost for a DVD. I got Blazing Saddles for 9.99 at Best Buy, on Blu Ray. Good price in my opinion.

So really, I see no need for a service like Netflix or rental boxes, when I have Amazon, Best Buy & my DirecTV with DVR. The only time when I'm not home that I ever have want or need to watch a movie is when I'm at the airport and on a plane. Nothing I can't rip off of a disc and put on my iphone.

I don't begrudge anyone that uses something like Netflix, I just don't think that it's the best way to watch things and serves my viewing needs, absolutely no purpose. Even with the price hike, I think that is super cheap if it's all-you-can-watch, but, I have no need for it.

Ok, Dan has a good point. Someone (and I won't mention any names) could possibly break into my house and steal all my DVDs.

Going to Home Depot now to buy a secured DVD humidor.

My friend who's house our Strat-o-Matic league is played at must have well over 2-3000 DVDs. I mean if I really want to watch a movie I can just borrow from him.

Holy crap! I have maybe 100. I feel very inadequate right now. :(

I'm questioning this as well. I've got the one DVD plan, and I can watch a movie on the Apple TV while the kids watch one on their TV in the "wii room". Both streaming, both simultaneously.

We did that this weekend. I thought they had a five device limit, and that was the only restriction.

I think I have about 100-150, most of them bought before I met my wife, we have only bought about 2-3 in the last year, and one of them was the Blu-Ray version of Walking Dead.

Not according to both the fine print somewhat hidden in their help files and their phone answer to that specific question when I signed up initially ... but maybe it's a policy that doesn't actually work or something (i.e. you aren't really limited, they just claim you are).

Here's the actual wording

I'm torn over the price hike, as I've only been subscribing since November or so. I started about two days before the first price hike of $1 for streaming and dvd delivery.

I use the streaming service all of the time. That accounts for most of what I watch on TV now. I under use the DVD service, but we do use it. I've got "The Sweet Smell of Success" at home right now, and I've had it for a month or so.

I felt the service was undervalued at the $8-$9 price point. However, I'm now questioning if I want to pay double the price for something that we rarely use. I guess we probably will.

Actually, I just realized that there won't even be a price increase for me. I have roommates and they have the same 3 DVD plan as me. Since our plans allow us to have two devices going at the same time for instant watching, only one of us will have to carry it. We can split the cost of one instant account in half and that means I'll be paying exactly the same.

Interesting. I haven't found that to be the case in practice, however I've now done a google search, and seen people running into errors specifying the two device limit.

I think I'll have to perform a test on this.

There's going to be a lot more changes and all this stuff is going to get more expensive. I just read this tidbit:

Overall, Pachter predicts Netflix's streaming content licensing costs will rise from $180 million in 2010 to a whopping $1.98 billion in 2012.

Netflix renews contract for NBCUniversal movies and TV shows - Jul. 13, 2011

I think it's a bit much to expect them to just "stream everything" for the same cost or a slight price increase. (I think that also might shut down the internet). The studios have just gotten a ton more aggressive with this stuff. I would assume we'll see redbox increase prices a bit soon as well (they're already testing $1.15, $1.50, up to $2.00 in some markets).

I just don't even know how to react to this. I feel like I'm listening to like.. someone's grandpa or something.

If netflix being down for an hour or two for an outage is a reason to go out and overpay for the same thing in another fashion, have at it. When Netflix is down you could listen to your cassette tape collection to pass the time.

This is all about the movie studios. They hate that people aren't paying to go to the theater and they hate that people aren't paying to buy DVDs anymore. They tried to make peope wait a month before getting videos once they came out so that people would go buy them. Now they're forcing the streaming hand by trying to charge outrageous amounts. At some point they have to realize they're pricing themselves out of business.

Not to mention most of the movies they're making are movies we've seen before. Either they're remakes or just rehash the same crap over and over and over again.

If their costs really get multiplied by ten, then netflix and this streaming model as we know it will die. End of story.

I hope the studios are prepared for what that means. I'm not going back to buying DVDs.

I think the last tv show I bought was a season of Futurama and that was a couple of years ago. I may get the Walking Dead season though now that you mention it.

My car breaks down, I can still walk! But that doesn't mean I'm not buying a car.

To me, the biggest advantage of streaming, the icloud, and technology in general is the need for less stuff--I can't tell you when I pulled a book off of my bookshelf, but I can give you a list of the books I've read and can easily access on my kindle in the last year. Your mileage varies.

(And I think we will probably go with the streaming only option, FWIW.)

I wouldn't place too much stock in that article. Netflix 2010 fiscal year-end total revenues were $2.1B. They're projected to be around $3B this year and there's no way their business model can support licensing fees being 2/3rds of all gross revenue.

That doesn't mean their licensing fees won't go up dramatically, though.

Fox already beat them to that punch, no?

If I'm not mistaken that's tied to a cable subscription. You can't just sign up for HBO Go. You need to be subscribed to HBO through your cable or satellite provider as well, at which point your HBO Go access is included.

It's being subsidized by what you're already paying for HBO in other words.

Nice to know I can come to FOFC and leave feeling like a piece of shit for having a "Fear of a Black Hat" DVD that I bought for $4.99 in my house.

Not hearing much about Fox as a buyer at this point, more likely to be Google or Amazon, with maybe Microsoft as a long-shot candidate.

But it won't be Netflix regardless, reports of them having no interest in buying Hulu started in earnest on Monday IIRC (shortly before the price hike news).

Correct. An HBO subscription is similarly priced to Netflix.

If you're talking about the super-minority that we've discussed before of people who don't use cable. Well, to be honest, I'm not worried about those people. They're such a severe minority that they don't matter in this discussion in my opinion.

I generally buy DVD's or TV shows for collection purposes. Also, it's usually movies that I really like and would like to have access to them constantly. I don't consider it overpaying, because I like to have the convenience of just picking up the DVD I own and playing it instead of waiting 1-2 days if it isn't available on instant.

Get off my lawn sonny! :)

Like I said, it's like books. I like to have something tangible 'in my hands'. I would be willing to pay/subscribe (depends on the price) to something like Netflix if it did live sporting events and I could watch any team that I wanted. I'm not Netflix bashing, it just provides me no benefit at the moment. I do think it's a bit of hyperbole when someone thinks that paying 16 dollars a month for unlimited viewing is too expensive. I'm actually surprised that Netflix isn't charging 25 to 30 a month or have a tiered pricing service for people who are not heavy viewers.

And I don't think paying 10 dollars for a DVD is over paying. It would be if I was buying 4 or 5 a week, but I don't. So nothing to do with getting with times with all the hip kids and their zoot suits. ;)

This is what I was talking about in my comment on the last page.

I've been a Netflix customer since 2003. I dropped down to 1-DVD-at-a-time with the last price increase... not so much because of the expense but because it made me think about how much I was using it and I realized not as much as before.

At this point I'm not sure what to do. Streaming isn't near comprehensive enough to be a full replacement for DVD-by-mail, but my kids use it for their TV watching (no commercials!) so I have to keep it. I don't think I watch enough physical DVDs to justify paying $9/month to keep the 1-DVD-at-a-time plan. I hate the (relative) inconvenience of Redbox even though I probably drive by 10 on my way home from work.

I guess in the end I'll drop to streaming only and supplement with Redbox and iTunes and watch less movies overall.

The difference is, you need a car, you don't 'need' Netflix or DVDs, but, I do understand what you're saying. Again, I have no need for those kinds of services. I don't really think that having streamed based software, books and movies is going to cut down on the stuff. It's going to create different stuff that needs to access them. Dummy terminals, Kindles, iPhones, etc? If the day comes and all that exists is media/software that can only be streamed, so be it and I'll switch over. Until then, I choose tangible items. No biggie.

Decided to drop from the 2 a time DVD plan (with Blu-ray) to the 1 a time, and drastically just increased my instant queue (I have used it but really only for TV shows like "The Tudors" and "Weeds").