Netflix trialling charging extra for sharing accounts with friends and family

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#2890215 22-Mar-2022 16:29

networkn:

tchart:

Its going to be tricky (impossible?) to enforce without p1$$ing off legit customers.

How about watching on 4G?

What if I have a bach? You couldnt (shouldnt?) enforce based on IP address.

What if Im away on business and want to watch on my phone/laptop? You couldnt (shouldnt?) enforce based on IP address.

Legit example, I was in the states for several months with the family. The apartment we rented had a smart TV which we signed into with our account. So different country and different IP.

Inevitably, some people are going to be hit in the crossfire and need to make a change to their viewing habits.

This is the consequence of the selfish people who abuse the system.

With the IP thing, how often legitimately would you have *more* than 2 people using 2 different IP's at the SAME time.

Quite easily actually. I travel a lot so watch stuff in the evening when I am on the road. Wife and daughter at home watch separately on their own profiles also in the evening. So three logged in on different devices with 2 different IP's.

antonknee

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#2890239 22-Mar-2022 16:54

cruxis:

Yeh this, you pay for concurrent streams, why should it matter if they are in auckland, wellington, chch at the same time. Or in different rooms of the same house.

Oh well theres always a shared plex server to fall back to and the high seas if they do this.

Incidentally, I had a look - and actually you really, really don't pay for concurrent streams.

The sign up flow of choosing your plan talks about choosing your plan. They claim unlimited watching, no ads, recommendations and no lock in contract.

They then show you their good, better, best plans. There's a table with monthly price, video quality, video resolution, types of devices it works on.

Then in the fine print it says "Only people who live with you may use your account. Watch Netflix on four different devices at the same time with Premium; watch it on two with Standard and one with Basic."

So they don't even tell you about concurrent streams until the fine print, and it's actually after they tell you it's only for people who live with you.

That said, I do currently share a Netflix account with someone who doesn't live with me (anymore).

Handle9

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#2890241 22-Mar-2022 17:01

jonathan18:
reven:

So if you compare 6 years ago to today. $13 a month for a lot of content. now $23 for netflix $13 for disney+, $8 for prime (ok prime does seem like a good deal), neon $16 a month. so you're paying $60 a month for something that you pretty much got a few years back for $13.

This is just so, so wrong... Netflix has never been able to offer the huge range of context provided by this long list of SVOD services, simply because it's never had the rights for most of it.

It’s not really wrong. Netflix used to carry Starz content until 2012 and Epix until 2015 and Disney until 2016.

It wasn’t “every” film (Warner Bros for example) but it covered a lot of blockbuster films. The offering of Netflix has changed to being much more driven by TV than films, as it was in the beginning.

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#2890243 22-Mar-2022 17:03

antonknee:
cruxis:

Yeh this, you pay for concurrent streams, why should it matter if they are in auckland, wellington, chch at the same time. Or in different rooms of the same house.

Oh well theres always a shared plex server to fall back to and the high seas if they do this.

Incidentally, I had a look - and actually you really, really don't pay for concurrent streams.

The sign up flow of choosing your plan talks about choosing your plan. They claim unlimited watching, no ads, recommendations and no lock in contract.

They then show you their good, better, best plans. There's a table with monthly price, video quality, video resolution, types of devices it works on.

Then in the fine print it says "Only people who live with you may use your account. Watch Netflix on four different devices at the same time with Premium; watch it on two with Standard and one with Basic."

So they don't even tell you about concurrent streams until the fine print, and it's actually after they tell you it's only for people who live with you.

That said, I do currently share a Netflix account with someone who doesn't live with me (anymore).

So you do pay for a number of concurrent streams. Just because it’s not the headline feature doesn’t mean it’s not relevant.

WyleECoyoteNZ

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#2890249 22-Mar-2022 17:28

cshwone:

networkn:

Inevitably, some people are going to be hit in the crossfire and need to make a change to their viewing habits.

This is the consequence of the selfish people who abuse the system.

With the IP thing, how often legitimately would you have *more* than 2 people using 2 different IP's at the SAME time.

Quite easily actually. I travel a lot so watch stuff in the evening when I am on the road. Wife and daughter at home watch separately on their own profiles also in the evening. So three logged in on different devices with 2 different IP's.

How would it work if you had, say:

- Wife at home watching Netflix on the TV

- Husband commuting watching Netflix on a mobile device

- Child commuting (Uni student living at home) watching Netflix on a mobile device

Then through a personal VPN over all that...

And I didn't realise Netflix was so expensive for the 4K HDR content! Ouch! Disney+ it's one fee (I'm not a Netflix customer)

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#2890263 22-Mar-2022 17:59

4K is $24.99, just I’ve seen $23 mentioned in other posts. Expecting it to go up even more in future.

If they have something I really want to see, will wait for whole season and binge in month, will be more loyal to lower priced services.

Just wait and see how they implement multi streams in future. Can only guess for now.

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antonknee

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#2890399 22-Mar-2022 23:55

Handle9:
So you do pay for a number of concurrent streams. Just because it’s not the headline feature doesn’t mean it’s not relevant.

I think you more than most probably get the distinction being made here and why the entire presentation of the offer is relevant.

They’re pretty clear about what they’re selling you - up to four concurrent streams to be used on different devices by people who live with you. Not up to four concurrent streams for you to do with as you please.

Handle9

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#2890403 23-Mar-2022 00:30

antonknee:
Handle9:
So you do pay for a number of concurrent streams. Just because it’s not the headline feature doesn’t mean it’s not relevant.

I think you more than most probably get the distinction being made here and why the entire presentation of the offer is relevant.

They’re pretty clear about what they’re selling you - up to four concurrent streams to be used on different devices by people who live with you. Not up to four concurrent streams for you to do with as you please.

Sure but it's also disingenuous to say they aren't selling you a number of concurrent streams. They very clearly are.

Netflix can do what they like, it's their service. Equally users are free to decide it doesn't offer good value to them anymore. I've been leaning that way since the recent price hikes.

CruciasNZ

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#2890432 23-Mar-2022 08:58

Currently I pay for the 4 concurrent user plan, and have done so every month for the last 4 or 5 years. I don't actually watch it every month, but someone in my group of friends does so I keep it up for them even if I am not interested in the latest offerings (I have some friends that are very badly off financially, which COVID made even worse).

Other streaming services I turn on and off every month on the lowest non-advert tier available; I don't use any devices where 1080p or greater is of any benefit to me over 720p, so I don't need to pay for premium resolutions or anything like that. Nor do I need offline downloads to watch later, because when I travel I prefer to read Kindle books in the evenings.

So if Netflix change this my friends will lose Netflix, but not be able to afford their own sub. Meanwhile I will drop back to the lowest non-advert plan and only sub when there is a show I want to watch. There will probably be many that will do likewise, so I wonder just how much revenue this would actually bring in. Logically families with lots of kids will still want concurrent users, but they may not be able to afford lots of additional "seats".

EDIT: Incomplete sentence

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cruxis

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#2890486 23-Mar-2022 09:20

Im sure they worked out losses vs gains, Will find out how it went in the next quarterly report. Growth is slowing.

richms

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#2890578 23-Mar-2022 12:30

networkn:

People wanted a cheaper option than Sky, Sky was too expensive, they wanted competition and choice, now they complain that choice costs just as much (They don't want competition or choice they just want everything for next to nothing, or better still for free) ..It's almost like having lots of content to watch costs a bit or something?

There is no competition, This is different products from different vendors.

Competition is getting the same thing from different places. Almost everything on streaming video is exclusive to one service. Unlike music streaming where there is competition with different features, playback quality, device support etc for the same content between multiple services.

If I can only buy the access to batman on one place, and to startrek on another place, that is not competition at all.

If I had choice I could watch something thru TVNZ for free OR netflix that I pay for and have a better experiance. No such choice exists. If something is sold here to TVNZ I have to watch it on their poor quality free service on one of my devices that supports it. Or pirate it in 4k with dolby.

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MikeAqua

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#2890649 23-Mar-2022 13:10

networkn:

With the IP thing, how often legitimately would you have *more* than 2 people using 2 different IP's at the SAME time.

Reasonably easy for us. My daughter at home, my partner travelling for work, and me at the gym (the cardio machines have Netflix, so you can log in and watch something).

Mike

tchart

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#2890656 23-Mar-2022 13:23

mattwnz:

I remember lightbox had a system where it only allowed a certain number of devices, think it was 5, and you could remove one and add one a month. Maybe they could do something like that.

I think it was actually Neon (the pre-lightbox merger one). Now that was PITA as when you hit the limit you had to go and remove a device. Plus you could only do this so many times a month (or week?).

Anyway, nowadays Neon just sign out older devices which I think is fair. Its slightly less annoying but happens less frequently. This is fine on devices like phones/tablets but its a bit of a pain on Google TV as inputting a password takes ages.

networkn

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#2891027 23-Mar-2022 21:35

cshwone:

Quite easily actually. I travel a lot so watch stuff in the evening when I am on the road. Wife and daughter at home watch separately on their own profiles also in the evening. So three logged in on different devices with 2 different IP's.

Which still would stay inside my proposed two IP at a time, limits.

networkn

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#2891035 23-Mar-2022 21:58

Handle9:

Sure but it's also disingenuous to say they aren't selling you a number of concurrent streams. They very clearly are.

No it's not. It's plainly explained as 4 concurrent streams for people who live in the same household. They are conditionally joined not independent benefits.

You can have 4 concurrent streams if you live in the same household.

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