I’m still going to subscribe to netflix, but their rates are going up while they remove quality movies and replace them with in house films. I’m not sure if that is a sustainable business model, charging people more and more for locally made content that isn’t as good as the content they had several years ago.
However if any competitor for netflix really enters the market and provides a good list of streaming options, I think netflix will go down. Right now Hulu can’t compete (at least on movies, Hulu TV selection is better though) but who knows what’ll happen in the future.
They could cut their library and original content in half, only keeping the things no one watches, but as long as people say “I’m still going to subscribe”, they’ll keep making money.
If the price is up and the quality is down you’re not happy about it, cancel.
Personally, I haven’t noticed a decline in quality since the initial move from discs to streaming when we all found out their streaming catalog is nothing compared to the physical discs. Beyond that, I think it’s been about the same, if not better since they started creating a lot of their own stuff.
As for Hulu. I think it can compete just fine. If you want TV shows, be it old ones or currently running ones, Hulu is better than Netflix.
I disagree. I think Netflix is superior in terms of content and certainly in format. I have to use Hulu sometimes when it has something Netflix doesn’t, but I find their system incredibly frustrating in terms of ease of use. Given the choice, I would use Netflix.
As I also mentioned, I think another streaming service could replace netflix pretty fast if one made a lot of good business deals.
I’m subscribed to netflix, hulu and amazon prime. Neither amazon prime or hulu offer the film options of netflix. But if netflix keeps raising rates and putting out self made content, then the market will be primed for another company to replace netflix.
Hulu, yeah kidna, but Netflix’s website is utterly unusable. Everything autoplays, everything makes noise. You have to find workarounds to deal with that (add-ons, hovering just for a second etc), but then you see something that looks interesting but you can’t find anything out about since clicking on it makes it start playing…and even when you start to get used to it, they change it all up.
Wait, you think their original content is hurting them? They put out a lot of really good stuff. Plenty of which would be perfectly at home on HBO or AMC or a network station.
I could list examples, but here’s the wiki page for it.
I was kind of proud to say that I’d never binge-watched a show before, but now I can’t say that any more. I’ve gotten hooked on a couple of Netflix-produced shows.
I’m so cheap, that I’ve cut cable long ago, dropped Hulu, and I’d love to have an excuse to cancel Netflix. But I’m happier than ever with the movies, TV shows and original shows.
I think the impossibility of making good business deals in this context is the reason a.) Netflix is in decline and b.) why nobody is likely to easily replace Netflix. IMHO it looks like streaming services are going to continue to fragment as every studio and TV network now sees it as a potential revenue source. Why sell the rights to air your films to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or anyone else when you can start your own service and charge $5 a month for it?
I believe we’re moving towards a more a la carte business model in streaming services. And contrary to some predictions from those clamoring for greater choice( “down with cable packages!” ), I strongly suspect it is going to end up biting the average consumer in the ass.
I’m hoping it bites the streaming services in the ass.
I’d watch Star Trek Discovery, but I won’t pay another monthly fee just for that one show.
I’d watch Teen Titans and Doom Patrol, but again it would be yet another monthly fee.
Soon, Disney+ will have Marvel content I would have otherwise watched. They are promising movie tie-ins. I’ll stop watching the movies before I pay another exclusive content subscription.
My family shares passwords, so we all get lots of content. But no one is adding a new network for one or two shows and a single studio library.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I use Netflix all the time. All you need to do is mute the sound once and you won’t get noise. If you click on something you get a preview pane but I don’t find that difficult to ignore while I check out the info on it.
As far as I can tell, Netflix just keeps getting better and better, especially if you love genre stuff. I’m very happy with the, quite frankly, fucking pocket change even the new price increase would amount to.
If we were having an increase here, which we’re not
You’re in the minority. I, like many others, don’t want it to play at all. Just present me with a list of still images and if I click on one, take me to a page about that show/movie, don’t start playing it. There’s countless articles on the internet about their current website design (and how awful it is), their reddit page tends to be full of people complaining about their website, there’s a facebook page out there somewhere that IIRC is called ‘stop netflix auto preview’, there’s a change . org petition to get them to knock it off, a twitter page called Stop AutoPreview and netflix’s facebook page was, at one point, more people complaining about their website than the typical banter between netflix and it’s users that they’d likely prefer.
Given that it would be, or so I assume, absolutely trivial to turn off auto preview or at least at a button for the user to do it on their own AND everytime you adjust your ADP/UBlock settings to stop auto preview those settings don’t work after a few months AND people really really hate it but they continue to do it, they must be making a lot of money from those previews. I assume they’re getting paid everytime one runs just like a website gets paid for every view/click of an ad.
Also, if you click on the picture, which most people would assume is what you do to read more about it doesn’t take you to the page to read more about it, it fires up the player and starts streaming that title. You have to hover over the picture, which starts the auto-preview that no one wants, then you click the down arrow, which doesn’t make sense. That takes you to the it’s page, which also has an auto preview that no one wants. If you then click the X on the auto preview window, it takes you back to the home page, which doesn’t make sense. You can click mute (or have your computer muted) but you still have to see it auto playing which at worst, burns up data and at best is a huge distraction. Personally, I have a very difficult time reading a website when something (usually an ad) is playing a video, blinking or even those sites that have some type of dongle on the left side that moves down with you.
If it doesn’t bother you, that’s fine, but all this bothers a lot of other people.
I almost never use their website and instead just pull up the app on my TV and hope to find something interesting before I’m sick of scrolling around on a TV.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if their website design drove away more subscribers than their content.
I agree that their website sucks; luckily, as mentioned, there are Chrome extensions to shut it up. Those extensions don’t work on AppleTV, though.
I recently switch my T-Mobile service to a plan that gives me Netflix for free. The transition was flawless, and now I pay less for T-Mobile (veteran prices!), and get “unlimited” data rather than a known cap. Pretty sweet. The only downside is, T-Mobile coverage still tends to suck, but good enough is good enough by definition.
When Netflix started to make their own content, I thought, “Oh now they think they can make TV shows and movies. I’ll pass.”
Now if I see something was made by Netflix, I make sure to at least check out a synopsis because I’ve enjoyed most of their original stuff that I’ve watched. Far better on average than what is broadcast on TV networks.
I really really doubt that. At least on the app, these autoplay previews are a pretty recent change, they probably just wanted to make the site more exciting/dynamic. Just took a look and the autoplay on the app atm is the Netflix original about Beyonce. Doubt they’re paying themselves to promo that.
I think a bigger threat is when Disney opens their streaming service and all the Star Wars, Marvel and other Disney stuff disappears from Netflix. They’ve already cancelled their Marvel shows and most of them were actually pretty good.
I’m actually kind of annoyed with the way the whole streaming industry is going. Instead of just one cable bill, now you have this fragmented ecosystem of various streaming media channels, all with their own programming and library of movies. Plus I STILL need cable if I want to watch Game of Thrones. And for the most part, none of this has become a digital version of the old Blockbuster video store. Where you could walk in one afternoon and rent some old film you hadn’t seen in 10 years, or even the latest releases.
