people who are freaking out over netflix subscriber drop seem to ignore that they abruptly dropped 700k russian subscribers all at once (for well known and good reasons), which would cause a big dip in a subscriber count chart no matter how good the otherwise incremental global growth is.
The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#802It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…
I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m... Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are ava…
But how do you actually find content that you like?
Sometimes I have to go though 4-5 different shows/movies on various streaming networks before I find something worth watching and even then, the shows usually get really bad by season 2-3. I can't imagine how wasteful it would be to have to buy all these bad shows instead of just streaming them.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost is part of the reasons those never really caught on, not just participation. The number of titles I (and I assume, most people) will watch enough to warrant paying $20 for is vanishingly small. Even $4 a rental is a hard bar to pass at this point with streaming competing. $1-2 to rent though? I'd be all over that. Weirdly, that's the cost to rent a physical disk at Redbox...but an on demand title anywhere is…
I would do a whole lot more digital rentals if the prices weren't so damn high. How is it that it can be significantly cheaper to rent the physical disk than to stream the movie once? How can I watch 20 hours of stuff on HBO in 4k for like $10 or $12 or whatever that runs now for a month, but a single 2-hour movie is $5? It'd also help a lot if I didn't need a different "app" for every store, with its own player UI.…
> How is it that it can be significantly cheaper to rent the physical disk than to stream the movie once?
The cost to build out the infrastructure to stream movies is tremendous.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#804All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…
I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.
I think many single-season Netflix shows would have been movies 15 years ago. But many types of films just don't get made anymore, and many directors and performers would rather work on series.
I’d still watch a show with one season, just like I’d watch a film without a sequel. I don’t tend to watch Netflix shows because they just aren’t that good.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.
> I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously Ah, so I’m not alone in this! Nowadays, I typically only consider shows that have at least a few seasons, I will never ever try one with just one season. The chances of them killing it off are just too high, and that would ruin it completely for me. I like to binge watch, I can’t enjoy that when they keep killing of…
It's an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy of the modern data-driven mindset. Sometimes the very act of collecting and acting on that data materially affects the data itself by creating perverse incentives.
The two parent posters are far from alone in my experience. Lots of people are getting turned off by the variable quality and uncertain future of the home-made productions, which means lots of people are holding off starting to watch a show until it's somewhat established and had some positive reviews. If your management strategy is to measure early engagement with your own shows and viciously kill off anything that doesn't make the cut, and if your viewers know this, then you have defeated yourself no matter how good the show is or how popular it would naturally have become.
A few years ago there was almost a trend for shows that weren't getting the numbers to get wrapped up with some sort of mini-series or TV movie so at least there was a chance for the production team to finish telling their story and give some closure for the fans (who might be fiercely loyal in sentiment even if too few in number to sustain the show). It's a little ironic Netflix would probably have been in a better position than anyone to adopt this kind of strategy and establish a reputation for being trustworthy and loyal to fans. Now it has the opposite reputation and we're openly speculating about whether it will ever recover.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#806All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…
> they raised their prices - significantly
Yeah, and I was right on the edge, not really watching it enough to justify the previous, cheaper, price. When they raised the price it served as a motivation to cancel it. In a 6 months I might join for a bit to watch some newer shows, then probably cancel again.
Raising prices works well perhaps if people are in love with the product or there is just no other alternative. But people have been auto paying and not really thinking much or using it, raising the prices is a decision point to re-evaluate the value of the service.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.
> I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously Ah, so I’m not alone in this! Nowadays, I typically only consider shows that have at least a few seasons, I will never ever try one with just one season. The chances of them killing it off are just too high, and that would ruin it completely for me. I like to binge watch, I can’t enjoy that when they keep killing of…
Tapas 4 life!
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#808It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…
What people don't realize is that part of the pricing model for various physical media is that the media wouldn't last. VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc all age, get lost, break, get scratches, whatever. They're not "forever". Now you can say "I can make a digital backup of my DVD". Depending on your jurisdiction you may have the rights to do that. But your own backup of that is unlikely to be durable. A cloud copy of somet…
I rely on the NSA for my forever backups.
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.
I think many single-season Netflix shows would have been movies 15 years ago. But many types of films just don't get made anymore, and many directors and performers would rather work on series. I’d still watch a show with one season, just like I’d watch a film without a sequel. I don’t tend to watch Netflix shows because they just aren’t that good.
I've watched some great shows that were one-season-and-done. Unfortunately in the Netflix era you might instead instead get half-and-dropped or one-and-unresolved-cliffhanger. A lot of us find those endings very disappointing and so don't engage with new shows at all even if they look like we might enjoy them. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times since the start of COVID binge-watching...
Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think an issue for me that prevents me from collecting DVD’s, to; say - collecting CD’s - is that while a CD from the 1980’s is pretty much the best quality of audio you can still get today, DVD’s unfortunately suffer from an issue where the SD quality has aged very poorly, and the difference in resolution and image quality is insanely noticeable on, especially 4K, TV’s. Of course, since CD’s are uncompressed audio…
Many remasters sound better than the original disc. It is a small improvement however, perhaps 1.2x better at most, not a 4x one like dvd to bluray.
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