jcs2305

dewme said:

AppleZulu said:

lkrupp said:

"Netflix does expect that it will lose subscribers when the new policy comes into effect in the States, but believes that overall it's worth it. “

Losing those subscribers will be a plus for Netflix. Those subscribers who shared their password with all family members are hurting revenue anyway. Just like Napster and the music industry people will always be able to rationalize thievery, claiming Netflix is overpriced and deserved to be taken down. Human nature at its finest.

First, Netflix famously used to encourage account sharing. Changing the rules later doesn't suddenly make customers who took them up on that practice into thieves. It makes Netflix disingenuous as it implements price increases, much like breakfast cereal companies that shrink your "Lucky Charms" box while leaving the sticker price the same. 

Netflix could solve their problem by selling subscriptions on a per-stream basis, with, if they insist, different pricing for picture and audio resolution. Why do they need to spend resources spying on you by policing which IP addresses are accessing which streams? Currently the only way they're "losing" revenue through account sharing is via their $16 and $20 plans, mostly the $20 plan, which is the only one that allows four simultaneous streams. The "standard" $7 and $10 plans only allow a single stream to occur on the account at a given time. If anyone is sharing on those accounts, it's already inconvenient for the customer, and harmless to Netflix, because the required bandwidth doesn't change. The $16 plan allows 2.

If you have a single big-screen TV home theater setup in the den, Netflix does not have a single-stream option for you with a 4K UHD picture. They don't even have a single-stream option for a 1080p picture. For context, Best Buy currently has zero 40" or larger 720p TVs available. Zero. 720p is the black-and-white set of the 21st century. At this point, 1080p is the low-budget standard, yet Netflix even charges extra for that, and double the price of their single-stream ad-free subscription if you want 4K, the standard resolution of most TV's being sold today.

So now, to call back that earlier metaphor, not only are they charging extra for the green clovers and blue diamond marshmallows in your lucky charms, but they're also shrinking the box and employing an angry leprechaun to smack the bowl out of your hands if you dare to try sharing any of those lucky charms you paid for with anyone else. 

So no, this isn't about thievery. This is about Netflix changing the terms of the deal and then calling their own customers thieves. This is on the level of AT&T selling unlimited data plans and then several years later changing the deal by throttling bandwidth to dial-up modem speeds after a customer used a certain amount of data, and then saying with a straight face that those customers still had unlimited data plans.

The disingenuous part about Netflix is spot on. As business owners they obviously came to the realization that promoting sharing was ultimately a bad thing for them and backtracked on that strategy, which they are allowed to do. As far as the nickel & dime up-charges on resolutions, it does suck but they obviously think they can get away with it just like ISPs and cellular services can get away with selling "unlimited" data plans that have throttling. Totally disingenuous and deceptive marketing, but too few subscribers are holding them accountable. 

The shrinkflation argument is pretty much business as usual across the board for many producers lately. The choices of-late are jack up the price, reduce the quantity, or do a bit of both. At least Apple has been doing better in this regard, especially with the new M2 Mac mini. 

Your final metaphor is interesting, but not exactly applicable in my opinion:

"So now, to call back that earlier metaphor, not only are they charging extra for the green clovers and blue diamond marshmallows in your lucky charms, but they're also shrinking the box and employing an angry leprechaun to smack the bowl out of your hands if you dare to try sharing any of those lucky charms you paid for with anyone else."

The non-applicable part is that if you buy a box of magically delicious Lucky Charms and decide to share them with family, friends, or whomever, you are giving up your Lucky Charms and can no longer consume them yourself. When Netflix was not actively enforcing the number of concurrently active streams, i.e., no bowl smacking, you weren't giving up anything when you shared your Lucky Charms. Everyone you shared with was getting their own free box of Lucky Charms because you paid for one box.

Now if Netflix actively enforced the number of concurrently active streams and if the subscription cost was purely based on the number of number of concurrently active streams you paid for the sharing thing would be moot. If you wanted to pay for 10 streams and give 9 of them away, or if 20 people wanted to time-share those 9 extra streams you gave away, that would be your choice and Netflix should not care one bit because they'd enforce the hard limit on the number of active streams. You'd simply be giving away a portion of what you bought, which is a loss to you. This seems like a totally fair approach for everyone involved, regardless of what Netflix did in the past.

How to Know if Too Many People Are Using Your Netflix Account

While you can be signed into Netflix on multiple devices, you can only actively watch a stream on the number of screens included in your plan. This means that if you have the two-screen plan, you can still have three people signed into your account on various devices, as long as they aren't all watching at the same time.

However, if you see a message like Too many people are using your account right now, the maximum number of people watching on your account is already reached.

lkrupp said:

"Netflix does expect that it will lose subscribers when the new policy comes into effect in the States, but believes that overall it's worth it. “

Losing those subscribers will be a plus for Netflix. Those subscribers who shared their password with all family members are hurting revenue anyway. Just like Napster and the music industry people will always be able to rationalize thievery, claiming Netflix is overpriced and deserved to be taken down. Human nature at its finest.

Appleish said:

Twenty bucks for 4K while other streaming services include it in their basic plan. What a ripoff.

prof_intel said:

When I got my iPhone 14 Pro, I visited my nearest o2 store to get an e-sim only to be told that they have “run out” of e-sims. 

How do you run out of a digital service?

If they had supported transferring e-sims from my old phone to my new phone I wouldn’t have been in this situation…

This is going to happen to me every time I get a new iPhone. 

chutzpah said:

JFC_PA said:

Physical switch’s break. 

Eliminating a potential equipment failure is terrific. 

In my experience, if I have a problem with an Apple device it's far more likely to be to do with software than hardware.  I've never had any problems with a ringer switch across 16 years of iPhones.