Netflix introduces password sharing household controls

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265 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3030882 2-Feb-2023 12:25

If NF "come up with a different way to monetize the estimated 100 million people worldwide who regularly use the Netflix service without paying for it", I'm sure they will reduce the subscription cost for us all 😲

hsvhel

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#3030888 2-Feb-2023 12:37

Have just got an email about being able to use 6 devices on the go now......

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nitro

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Ultimate Geek

#3030901 2-Feb-2023 13:24

Handsomedan:

I'm still amazed at how many people are upset at the simple prospect of having to pay for their own Netflix.

Irrespective of the flawed methodology (It's going to be a right royal pain in the a$$ having to log in all the time), the fact that there are people all over the world saying that they have the right to freeload is frankly laughable.

but are they freeloading when the premium subscription allows for 4 simultaneous streams? do the endpoints of those simultaneous streams really matter?

in my case, i'm a premium subscriber in a household of 3. we've never had all 3 streams going at once (youtube premium, yes... netflix, never ever). when we stayed over at my in-laws, i logged into my nf account on their tv for me to watch while over there (i can only consume so much alcohol, and needed something else to do). i left the device logged in. so now, we can potentially have 3 simultaneous streams going... i feel like i'm entitled to another - wherever the heck that endpoint might be.

needless to say, i think the youtube premium family plan is a better implementation.

JimmyH

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Uber Geek

#3030909 2-Feb-2023 13:44

I'm not terribly worried about them closing down the freeloaders, but it looks like the way they plan to do it will be a bit of a pain. It is becomes too much of a hassle for me to use our account while I'm round at someone else's house (work trips, I sometimes stay at mums when she's unwell etc) then I will probably just cancel. We don't watch enough of it that we would miss it terribly, and it isn't the only game in town. My threshold will probably be that if it fails to work as expected for me twice, then I cancel. Life's too short to put up with that sort of irritation when I don't have to.

However there is a point here - they explicitly sold it as a "family plan" and not as a "dwelling plan", and charge extra for multiple streams. I would have thought it was perfectly legitimate for a family member (say a child away at university) to use one of those additional streams as part of the family plan.

There is also a piracy risk here. Streaming services (Spotify, Netflix etc) largely killed piracy among the people I know - they were affordable, had a good depth of content, and were easy to use. With this sort of change, along with rising prices and the fragmentation of "exclusive" content across a multitude of different services, I wouldn't be surprised is there is a wide-scale return to pirating. Piracy is easy, and platforms like Plex make it easy to consume media in an out of home, and streaming services need to realise they compete with this channel as well as with each other. (Note, before anyone piles into me on this, this isn't a statement of intent, endorsement or advocacy of piracy. It's just an observation on likely human behaviour).

Behodar

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#3030962 2-Feb-2023 14:04

JimmyH:

and streaming services need to realise they compete with this channel as well as with each other.

Indeed. I've even engaged in what I'm going to call "legitimate piracy": I subscribed to service A (paid a year in advance), and they got bought out by service B and honoured existing subscriptions. The problem was that service B was useless. It frequently froze, dropped to standard definition, played in the wrong language... I found posts from users on Twitter/Reddit who were astounded that service B had bought provider A's far-superior infrastructure and then refused to use it.

Ultimately it was so annoying that whenever a new episode of my favourites was released I'd wait until the following day then grab a torrent of it. Not technically legal, but I had no moral problem with this since I'd already paid for the content via my prepaid subscription. Granted in this case the sudden switch from provider A to B was jarring rather than being the thin end of the wedge, but with each frustration that these providers introduce, more and more people are going to give up and seek alternatives.

(Like JimmyH, I'm not encouraging anyone to actually do such a thing!)

Scott3

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#3030968 2-Feb-2023 14:26

It is going to be interesting to see how this pan's out.

Key issues for netlfix:

Potential chore for legitimate single household subscribers. I.e. person who travels for over a month, or goes to a friends house, and signs in on their TV to watch a show together needs to clear the 2fa barrier.
Turning a blind eye to password sharing functioned as an effective discount price for those who were willing to put up with the hassle of sharing an account. Effective price discrimination, may be a good number of people who were happy to spit a premium account 6 way, but not willing to pay regular pricing. Netflix will lose these accounts completly.
Requiring the Premium (4 stream) tier to access UHD, in itself encouraged account sharing. Single occupant households may resent paying for a whole family worth of access, just to get UHD. Netflix may need to enable UHD across the board (I think this would be a good idea regardless - you want your service to look as good as possible).
Coming at the same time, as the streaming / TV market is getting increasingly fragmented. Yes netflix pricing delivers great value for entertainment, but increasing numbers of households will be picking and choosing service's, as there are simply to many to have them all. Our household has Sky, Youtube Premium & a single user spotify, but none of the others (Netflix, Disney +, Amazon prime video, Apple TV+, Neon, Curiositystream etc.).

Senecio

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#3030975 2-Feb-2023 14:56

In our house the only consistent subscriptions are Spotify and YouTube Premium. All others are rotated depending on what content we want to watch at that time. We never have more than 3 entertainment subscriptions on the go at any one time.

On Netflix specifically, we haven't subscribed for almost two years. We've been cycling between other providers based on the content we are looking for. For me to return to Netflix they would need to offer UHD on a lower tier subscription as I don't need 4 simultaneous screens and it is the norm across other providers to offer UHD at no extra charge.

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rugrat

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#3031035 2-Feb-2023 18:19

I haven’t had Netflix for over 12 months.

I resent having to pay $25 for UHD when probably over half the content watched is in HD only.

As for value for money, I find Prime Video way better around $9.

4K included, and they cycle content so there new content of interest each month, but if third party there is a time limit to watch. This approach seems to keep service fresh and probably works out cheaper cost wise then producing mainly own content and keeping it there forever.

With Netflix I would rather have UHD and one stream only and pay for that. They come out with a lot of new content but percentage wise most of it doesn’t interest me.

I’m also considering only subscribing to Disney around 4 months a year, as it’s all their own content new movies out etc each month seems rather low to justify 12 months a year.

I do have one TV where it could go two months or more without using Netflix when had, guess that TV could end up being locked out if I was using under proposed new rules.

JimmyH

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Uber Geek

#3031048 2-Feb-2023 19:25

I was just thinking about this. If the requirement is that a device has to sign in to home Wi-Fi at least once every 31 days to work remotely, then I don't see how they will make this work with CGNAT where a home WiFi can frequently change its IP address.

Aside from this, lets say I (hypothetically) have a relative that I'm happy to have sign into my households plan from their house, and Netflix has somehow managed to cleverly overcome the CGNAT issue so that their system works.

Wouldn't it be the case that all my relative needs to do is sign the device they use into my home network once a month, job done. If they are local they could just drive round with their device and log in every X days. Or if they don't live locally or its not convenient for them to wouldn't it be as simple as running a VPN server on my PC, or using a dedicated VPN solution such as PiVPN on a raspberry Pi at my end. Once every X days I fire it up, they connect their device to my network through the VPN, and Netflix sees it sign in on my internet connection. Cost zero. Job done. Or have I missed something?

networkn

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#3031051 2-Feb-2023 19:48

That seems a lot of time and effort to save $4 or $5 considering petrol would cost most of that.

everettpsycho

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#3031052 2-Feb-2023 19:59

networkn: That seems a lot of time and effort to save $4 or $5 considering petrol would cost most of that.

I guess if it's someone you visit regularly your phone would likely check in anyway so this won't be an issue as a "travelling" style set up, not sure how theud work if you chose to cast to a chrome cast from a phone though.

I did think about the vpn route and I'm guessing smart IT folks like the ones here who are discussing cgnat issues will likely find a work around, but it raises that bar of tmwhi can do it. Of the millions sharing accounts how many actually know how to set up a home vpn server and their friend understand how to log in to that server.

I also wondered in an age when email is so disposable if they force 2FA it really would be as easy as just setting up a new email and also sharing that password, all the users can see that account of it demand authentication and it's not a security issue if that's the omsole purpose of the email address.

networkn

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#3031063 2-Feb-2023 20:59

I believe in reality there will be some who will go to those lengths to save $5 but in a few weeks/months, people will have got used to the way it is now, time is precious and just pay the $5. There seems to be this outrage every time there is a price hike or change of licensing terms.

MadEngineer

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#3031088 2-Feb-2023 22:08

I’d like to imagine most people here have a vpn connection back home that they frequently use to land their mobile devices back into their home network. I’d be curious to know if this gets around the problem.

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nztim

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#3031092 2-Feb-2023 22:25

People will finally have to pay for netflix boohoo - Legal users wont have a thing to worry about. Each device/browser has a unique token and travelling around / dynamic IP addresses won’t be an issue

But if you have Two TVs or internet browsers with unique IDs logged in from two different IP addresses then this would get triggered.

Only legit users I can see getting caught out by this would be a household with a /29 and different devices we’re using different external IP addresses in that /29.

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Handle9

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#3031107 3-Feb-2023 01:18

michaelmurfy:

@networkn Very good point. I only share to my parents and have the premium account because I want 4K. I also have Disney+ and share that to them also. While I did see this coming, I fear it is the start of "Netflix is doing it so why can't we" for the other streaming services.

This is just really, really annoying...

I have the same situation. Fortunately my Plex server doesn't suffer from this restriction.

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