81–90 of 535 posts
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re checking request IP address block: is this what NetFlix does, they don’t work through VPNs, even when I set VPN server to USA location. I always turn off my VPN before trying to watch Netflix.
Netflix seems to work through a VPN for me. I sometimes use it when content is geo-restricted.
> But taking more aggressive measures poses risks. The people using services for free — especially younger consumers — may never agree to sign up for a subscription, no matter how many hassles they endure. That means companies would mostly just be alienating paying customers, who could get frustrated and stop using an app or cancel their service. In other words, there’s plenty of downside and possibly little upside.…
I’m also surprised they haven’t cracked down on the source IP addresses. It’d be trivial to look at the net bandwidth and see that the usage is at a totally different physical address (and not just a mobile phone). If a steaming company has 70 million customers, how many of those customers move house in a given day? How many change ISP's? How many get new devices? How many take trips? Suddenly your call center budget…
The entire scene is frustrating, perhaps it is just me. I now watch a lot less than i use to, it is pretty much just put on "Family Guy" or "Rick and Morty" in the background and do other things (i have all those on DVD's so i just set the plex player to keep playing, although now plex is going to stream to....sighhhh)
> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server…
The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn aroun…
I'm actually a fan of the notion of copyright, trademarks and intellectual property in a sense but not to power it currently holds. Infringement on your sole or licensed right to copy is not as significant an issue as permanently depriving someone of something.
You might argue that someone who copies another's information is depriving them of money that would have been paid for that information. This is flawed though as you would need to be able to prove that the infringer of the copyright would have paid for the information in the first place.
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I thought everyone wanted content to be split up when it was bundled as a cable package.
Netflix showed how much content you could get for a cheap cost relative to cable. Now everyone company wants to charge the same for their meager library.
It's almost the same thing as Uber prices being VC subsidized. And now Disney is following the same playbook, sell Disney+ at or below cost for a while until they can inflate MAU enough that people just accept the subscription as a cost of life.
Theres also a bit of Rose Colored glasses going on here, Netflix catalog was pretty bad in the beginning, and people are misremembering it as better than it was. Netflix only exists at all because they could get their DVD business off the ground without paying per view licensing fees.
>charge the same for their meager library
We are also talking about a generation who is saying "I wont pay $7-$15 four times, thats too expensive" but while growing up, who's parents were paying $150/m to Comcast or DirecTV.
For the love of all that is holy let us split our netflix account out! My user is on my brothers account from when we lived together a long time ago. Every year I check to see if there is a way to split the user out. Every year I remain disappointed and continue on using the same account.
Is there some sort of data you require from your user? I guess there's a preferences algorithm you may have cultivated, but that's really it. Unless you really care about having handcrafted the Netflix algorithm, it kind of feels like that's just an excuse.
I want to split out my accounts too, for both the above reason, and that I don't like sending them a password so they can log in on their devices.
Why can't we have our own accounts and manage them into a family account?
But since accounts are personal, do Netflix expect me to watch 4 streams simultaneously on my 4 different devices, using my 4 eyes with my 4 brain halves?
I recognize that I'm probably not classified under "password cheat", but their still current solution feels really dirty.
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> The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. It's not stealing when you already paid in full . Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing , I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years. My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it, and it's not stealing to let some frien…
Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate. I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things, mean…
But you can lend those people a Blu-Ray, which only deprives you of watching it while they have it.
Tolerating a small group of users on a single account is a soft power to keep subscription hopping in check. Rotating subscriptions is so much easier when you don't have to create consensus amongst loved ones. It's a magic brand loyalty machine.
I couldn't agree more. There is always one friend still using the service while you're already saturated and because of that the subscription is kept instead of cancelled. Once cancelled, a service can have a hard time to win a user back. But it seems the industry does not want to learn: don't make it harder to use your service for the honest users. They're worth it to keep happy!
They also didn't pull what XM/Serious do and make it nearly impossible to cancel. 4x 40m phone calls, then all I wanted to do was drop one of 3 radios when I sold a car. After the third call drop after a 40min hold time I cancelled the entire service. If I ever use them again, it will be a disposable single use cc #.
In the end, 2-3 streaming services is all I'm willing to pay for. More than that and if rather pirate just for the usability aspect, let alone the costs.
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I think comparing it to looting and vandalism is a bit hyperbole. It’s closer to copying a book at the library and taking the copy home. No one is deprived of an object or the content when duplicated, they only miss out on whatever revenue they were attempting to capture.
I dislike the book analogy because it puts on the cloak of “sharing learning.” The kinda of things people are pirating are consumer goods—created solely for the purpose of being sold for entertainment. It’s stealing candy, not stealing bread.
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Netflix showed how much content you could get for a cheap cost relative to cable. Now everyone company wants to charge the same for their meager library.
Netflix pricing was always temporary. Content owners werent ready to destroy their old business models, they temporarily rented licensing rights to Netflix while they figured out how they were going to handle shifts in consumption. It's almost the same thing as Uber prices being VC subsidized. And now Disney is following the same playbook, sell Disney+ at or below cost for a while until they can inflate MAU enough th…
I remember mentioning this to a senior Netflix tech guy at the time and his response was basically that people come for the movies and stay for the TV. (This was a bit before the real explosion in premium TV content.)