Buying Netflix? I think Netflix is going to start a steady decline as the content owners continually pull their stuff from Netflix for their own streaming services. The Netflix original stuff, let's be honest, is hit or miss, with most of the movies being a hard miss.
I don't have much of a problem with Netflix content, but it's the price that just doesn't make sense. They charge extra for UHD, and that premium plan costs more than HBO (which is probably still the king of content quality, though with a crappy 1080p stream) and over twice as much as Disney+ and Apple TV+ (which don't charge extra for UHD).
Agree. I think price are just artificially low because of competition. Of course they are cheaper than Netflix, they are trying to steal market share. We shall see in a few years.
The plan that offers UHD also offer multiple screens. It it is a legitimate way for customers to pay to stream multiple things at the same time. So while it costs around the same as the HBO plan, it offers something that some other services do no. Apple TV+ allows family sharing, but I dont know about Disney+.
Netflix’s multiple screens implementation makes it everyone has access to everyone else’s profile. They should’ve let people link individual Netflix accounts together, but I can see how that can cause fewer possible subscribers if people start sharing.
>. They should’ve let people link individual Netflix accounts together
Spotify does that and it's a complete deal breaker.
I want to log in to all my home devices _once_, with a single account. Not continuously log out and log in and try to type complex passwords with a remote control. I mean, I can't even play different songs on different Google Homes or different TVs with Spotify, unless I sign in with different account on each - and then each device is stuck with a specific set of playlists. Horrible.
Netflix's system has worked out brilliantly for us - we have half a dozen TVs, and any member of the family can watch anything they want on any TV with their own preferences and profiles with minimum hassle.
When's the last time you used Spotify? Honest question, because that's the exact opposite of how Spotify works. You can be logged into as many devices as you want with the same profile, you just can't play simultaneously on each device without setting up profiles. I love that implementation, because it means I can seamlessly transition a song i'm playing on my phone over to another device with the app controls.
What you describe: If you are an individual, ability to login same profile on many devices is sufficient (both netflix & spotify do this).
I'm talking about family use-case with multiple devices.
With Netflix, my wife, myself, our kids, anybody, can click a profile button on any of our devices (TV, tablets, phones, etc) and simply continue watching what they were watching, get their recommendations, etc. Crucially, they can watch different stuff at the same time on living room TV and basement TV, with no hassle.
I have opened support cases and there is currently no way I'm aware of to do that with Spotify. I have Google Homes in all the rooms, and I want to seemlessly play different stuff in different places. To do that, I have to create as many accounts as there are devices (that's a LOT!), AND each device is now locked in to their playlist/song/etc.
The underlying difference of paradigm is:
1. Netflix - single account with multiple soft profiles. You can watch as many streams on same account as you paid for, hassle free
2. Spotify - multiple accounts loosely linked solely for purpose of billing. Each account can not stream multiple places. So if you want to stream something on three devices in parallel, you have to a) Create three accounts; b) log in separately with those accounts in each device.
What when I have dozen devices? (4-6 Google Homes, 6+ tablets and phones)? It is now insane to do anything.
Basically we now exist as isolated islands and have given up on listening to music in kitchen and family room at the same time. This is awful.
I understand why Google works that way since the login is tied to gmail and chrome browser history, but I’m not sure about Spotify. They have a popular Facebook integration but I don’t know if you can get any private info out of the Spotify account.
FYI, the "Standard" Netflix plan offers 2 simultaneous streams in HD for $12.99 per month in the US. The "Premium" plan offers 4 simultaneous streams in UHD for $15.99 per month.
But anyway, I only have one screen, so it's still the case that Netflix charges considerably more just to receive UHD content. As price discrimination goes, that's a pretty scummy way to do it. They've shot and produced this content in UHD, yet they give a much lower quality version to their base customers. I know they have every right to do that, and it might make business sense for them (since people with UHD TVs probably have more disposable income), but it has always felt scummy to me.
Storage and production costs for something available in UHD are the same regardless of whether someone streams a downscaled version. Storing multiple resolutions (assuming they do that rather than downscaling live from the stored highest-res or making the client do it) is where additional costs for more versions would show up.
You need to store downscaled versions anyway for low-bandwidth clients. However, with UHD you also have to store the UHD version, in addition to all the small ones. You also need more storage not just in your own DCs but also in those cache boxes you have at every major ISP; then there's the peering costs for transmitting those UHD videos, etc.
In my view, the "native" format that they produced the content in is the format they should be delivering by default (if supported by the viewer's setup). Of course I recognize that people will disagree, after all, UHD Blu-rays also generally cost more than 1080p Blu-rays. But of course, UHD Blu-rays aren't backwards compatible with standard Blu-ray equipment, so it doesn't feel like an artificial limitation simply for the purpose of price discrimination. This also seems to be a no-brainer for Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and Disney+, which (as far as I can tell) don't have any concept of charging based on video/audio quality.
> This also seems to be a no-brainer for Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and Disney+, which (as far as I can tell) don't have any concept of charging based on video/audio quality.
Almost every other video service globally does, and of those you mentioned Prime's pricing is mostly based on shipping, Apple TV+ at this point is effectively a PR campaign and not a proper service, and Disney+ is running at a massive loss leader to build share.
Netflix isn't charging a sustainable amount of money as it is. You should probably think of it less as charging more for UHD as offering a crazy discount for lower content quality.
It’s common practice for the online video rentals (many different providers including Google and Amazon) to charge more for HD. In reality the marginal cost of providing digital content is almost zero, so there is never going to be “cost-plus” pricing. They are always going to charge whatever the market will bear. Price discrimination allows more value-conscious customers to get content at a lower price than they would otherwise.
They're offering better quality for a higher price. I don't understand why that's "scummy". It's the most honest way to price something.
You could just watch it in regular quality - it's not that bad. Either you feel UHD is worth the extra $3/month (honestly a pittance compared to the price of a UHD TV) or you do not.
In my opinion, HBO's content is rapidly going downhill after the AT&T acquisition. Lots of low budget, high shock value content (violence, nudity, drugs).
I feel like all content is trying to one up each other without substance, as if going off a checklist. But it could also be that I’m getting older and I’ve already seen variations of it so now I’m bored of it.
You can't live on hbo alone. I spent a summer and went through everything I could find. I have no desire to go back for 10 years. They have some great shows but are not creating enough to make netflix output.
> I don't have much of a problem with Netflix content, but it's the price that just doesn't make sense.
Netflix's biggest problem is that they've spent a decade educating customers to expect their service at below cost with an unrealistically low price point funded by debt.
They need to hope the sentiment above isn't too common.
Right, we'll have to see how it goes. The point of buying Netflix would be acquiring its content delivery apparatus and other technical assets, not its subscriber base.
It's possible Disney will get the kinks sorted out and start rolling a good-enough CDN on their own, making the benefit in acquiring Netflix minimal. It'd also make it much cheaper to acquire if they could wait a few quarters for the damage to start showing up on Netflix's balance sheet. But the longer they wait, the longer they deprive themselves of Netflix's best-in-class content delivery network, which already has near-universal penetration.
It's ultimately a question of whether Disney sees a bigger risk in the expenditures necessary to buy up Netflix or the chance that technical issues will continue to haunt the Disney+ ramp-up, leading to a loss in consumer confidence and subsequent retreat back to third-party streaming platforms.
One thing is certain: Disney+ is an existential threat to Netflix, and Netflix's only hope is that the implementation will continue to flop hard enough that consumers lose the appetite for it immediately.
One possible route would be for Netflix to become an infrastructure provider for other streaming services. Essentially a white label streaming video library platform.
