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Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, more people getting into pirating their content.

Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. I recently started watching a series, and I figured I'd check if it's on any streaming services I have access to. I found it on Prime Video, but when I clicked into it, it needed some other separate subscription to a service I'd never heard of to watch it. And even then, it had like, seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 of the 9 total seasons. If ther…

> Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things.

No it's not. It's just the cheapest. Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#22
This is a no brainer for Netflix and any other streaming service. I have NO IDEA what I pay for all my streaming, whether it comes thru a credit card/cell phone benefit or not, nor even who pays for it (e.g. me, or my partner, or someone in my extended family).

They are profiting off of my ignorance.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#23

I remember signing up to Netflix to watch house of cards back in the early 2010s and being absolutely blown away. I don’t think there’s been a single show on Netflix I’ve genuinely looked forward to in the past couple of years. It’s like they completely gave up on quality content and just shovel out the most mediocre slop. I’m amazed people still pay these ever increasing prices.

Severance (Apple TV) and Fallout (Amazon Prime) are pretty amazing TV shows that came out somewhat recently. Nothing on top of my mind came out of Netflix for which I really felt the need of resubscribing.

I miss the quality of TV shows we reached with Mr. Robot, Silicon Valley, Utopia (UK), and Westworld :(

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been out of that scene for a long time, hasn't Netflix implemented a bunch of anti-piracy methods, or are people just recording HDMI/DisplayPort output and saving it?

Reading around a bit, yes to Netflix adding anti-piracy measures, maybe to folks recording HDMI/DisplayPort. Apparently, Netflix is using steganography/content watermarks in their 4k content itself to trace users who are pirating. This is from a totally unsourced Reddit thread[0] but they do reference a real company which claims to do this watermarking[1]. The claim is that in addition to Netflix requiring 4k content…

Not that I would ever pirate a movie because I'm a good boy, but I remember the Cinavia DRM that affected Blu-ray players thirteen years ago.

I'm not 100% sure how it worked, but I guess it could do a similar kind of steganography-style thing to the audio track, where they would embed keys silently and the blu-ray player would check against that.

I'm not sure if anyone actually ever managed to defeat it, I think they just stopped implementing it in streaming boxes.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#26
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. I recently started watching a series, and I figured I'd check if it's on any streaming services I have access to. I found it on Prime Video, but when I clicked into it, it needed some other separate subscription to a service I'd never heard of to watch it. And even then, it had like, seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 of the 9 total seasons. If ther…

> Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. No it's not. It's just the cheapest. Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.

Only if you don't know about it, but otherwise it's literally two clicks, not even sign-in required

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#27
post #19

What would be great is if the EU makes some kind of regulation (it worked for usb-c?) about some kind of interoperable streaming platform pricing that forces a kind of standardization across platforms and allows at least a little bit of customization. Let me opt into or out of ads, and let me "switch channels" across multiple different streaming services on a standardized interface with predictable pricing. Is that s…

Why do we need to regulate how companies make their products if people are not forced to use them or are not a basic necessity? Don’t like Netflix? Too expensive? Don’t buy it. Vote with your wallet.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#28
Good for them, I cancelled my subscription simply because Linux support is so awful. It's impossible to watch in 4k, and even with 1080p you frequently get automatically downgraded to lower res bitrate whenever the window isn't focused. Absolutely daunting.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#29
post #25

are existing subscribers grandfathered in or no?

Nope.

I've been subbed since 2008 (before streaming with DVDs).

My bill has increased for each increase they introduced. The last bill for the standard 1080p no ads plan was $19.56 (before this new price update). It was about half that when I first signed up.

To be honest I'm going to cancel, not because I can't afford it but because they keep raising their prices very frequently and it has hit the point now where I'm not interested in paying more so they have lost a lifetime customer.

I find it funny how they also only show you the last 1 year of billing history. It's a nice dark pattern to not let you easily see how much prices have gone up over the years. You have to go through the account cancellation menu just to see when you first joined.

Re: Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

#30
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to torrent stuff than to get 4K in Netflix on Linux.

Even the 4K you get can hardly be considered 4K, awful bitrate. Too bad most people are okay with this so it's never gonna change.

If people were not okay with it, it still wouldn’t change anything unless there was competition. There’s no incentive.
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