Netflix is taking a lot of heat for the big increases in plan pricing. My account page says:
The price of your Unlimited Streaming + 2 DVDs out at-a-time (Unlimited) plan will change to $22.98 (including $3.00 for Blu-ray) (plus any applicable tax) a month starting with your next billing period on or after Sep 01, 2011.
To stay at the same $18/month I now pay for streaming video and two discs at home, with the Blu-ray option, I have to drop to one disc with Blu-ray. So that’s what I’m probably going to do. Right now there are only two Blu-ray titles in my disc queue, so I’m even considering dumping the option, because that would be $7/month less than the $23/month the 2-disc plan will cost in September, and that’s $7×12 months=$84, which would cover the $79/year that Amazon Prime costs. It’s a classic Economics problem in determining marginal utility.
Yeah, we have to pay $6 a month more for the same thing. But viewed as an overall TV budget, if we drop basic cable, we come out ahead. We get our internet through Verizon, so no changes to that account. All we have from Comcast is the basic cable. Which, once we ditch it, we can never get back. It’s a grandfathered plan.
Of course, Katie’s latest “Love Boat” addiction is free, streaming over the internet…though the ads are current, not vintage. This follows her “Knight Rider” kick. Thankfully, she draws the line at “A-Team.”
To keep a disc and streaming you’re stuck having to spend $6/month more. At least I can choose to cut back to stay at the same price. Most people get broadband internet access from their cable TV provider, so there’s an inherent conflict of interest.
We are on the minimal $9.99 a month for one regular DVD and unlimited streaming, so we’d go up to around $16/month to keep the same thing. We are actually considering dropping the basic cable (now up to about $19 a month) to cover it, because we get more PBS channels on the HDTV antenna than we do on basic cable, and we have a Roku on two TVs now.