<p>So Netflix succeeded in driving every single video store out of business in my suburban area. There were two stores when we moved here 10 years ago, now there are none. And now that we have no alternatives (try to get disc 3 of Season 1 of Doctor Who a Red Box!), they are raising their prices. Don’t want to pay to increase my slow-ish DSL connection to go to streaming (have a sweet deal, and it is fine for everything else I do). But D1 uses the streaming capability at school. Sigh.</p>
<p>I know – I never thought I would miss Blockbuster so much. The quick fix of stopping by after work and grabbing a movie is now gone.</p>
<p>I recently got S a new XBox and signed up for XBox live which includes Netflix, but it’s not perfect either – not all the movies that are available online are available this way. </p>
<p>I even stopped by our local library, but the selection is pretty minimal.</p>
<p>If you figure out a solution, let me know.</p>
<p>Just cancelled this morning - my little protest to their “power.” Our on-demand can get us almost everything we need and will be less $ given the (in)frequency of our movie watching.</p>
<p>I’m surprised they at least did not offer some sort of reduced price if you bought both the DVD and streaming packages. We will probably cancel the streaming as it does not have everything available and the DVDs do. Or, as rarely as we really get movies, we may cancel it altogether. Though it is the only place I can get some British programs (once they are released to DVD) like Torchwood, so I may keepthe DVDs. I am inclined to cancel just on principal.</p>
<p>Good business model - drive competition out of business then hike your rates.</p>
<p>The rate hike is so large that even my kids are cancelling. I will too.</p>
<p>I’m good for the rest of the year (gift subscription for streaming and 1 DVD out at a time). But I have been thinking about what I will do when my time comes up.</p>
<p>I mainly use the streaming and like it because I can watch what I want when I want. On the other hand, not everything I want to watch is covered by the streaming. (I’m on Season 2 of Foyle’s War and there are 6 seasons altogether.) I don’t order many DVDs a month, but I would hate to give it up that option entirely.</p>
<p>I think that Netflix’s overarching game plan is to move everyone to streaming. But I think they are making people choose one or the other too early in the process.</p>
<p>****ed me off. We are going to keep streaming only. If I really want to see something right away that isn’t available on streaming we live in such a Podunk town that we still have blockbuster. Not even express but an actual store.</p>
<p>I"m going to ask a dumb Netflix question - pardon my lack of knowledge…</p>
<p>By streaming, do you mean you stream Netflix via your computer or your tv???</p>
<p>I’m snickering a bit with this Netflix announcement - just recently was thinking about a subscribtion but really know very little about it. But I am not interested in watching via computer.</p>
<p>Either can be done. MY DD and DH stream to their computers,iPhones. I don’t do that but we have a roku (streaming box that costs 99 dollars) on our tv so you can stream to our large FR TV. You don’t need the roku if you have another device like playstation that does streaming.</p>
<p>It’s still basically a bargain vs. the alternatives. I would be happy to go all-streaming if they had more product I cared about available that way.</p>
<p>Redbox.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>You guys do realize that Netflix is only raising their rates because the movie studios are raising theirs???</p>
<p>Netflix was cheap because Hollywood ignored the online game for so long. Now they want to monetize it and you have companies like Amazon and Google that can and will drive up the price to get market share.</p>
<p>So… The price goes up.</p>
<p>Does anybody use the Amazon streaming? My daughter has Netflix and now that Amazon has streaming with the Prime membership, we are considering switching. Amazon Prime with streaming is $39/yr for students, so cheaper than Netflix. Just wondering how it works.</p>
<p>I plan to drop it. I just don’t watch movies enough to make it worth $16.00/month. </p>
<p>I originally liked the idea of Netflix because it seemed so convenient to get the movies in the mail and mail them back when we were finished. We were a family that paid a lot of late fees to Blockbuster! : ) Honestly, we can just live without it and save the money.</p>
<p>We get a lot of dvds through our local library. It is part of a consortium of regional libraries so we are not relying on what is on the shelves locally. Right now we have Torchwood-Season Two and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (with Alec Guinness) and are in line for The Tempest (with Helen Mirren), Freaks and Geeks, and Mesrine-Parts 1 and 2. These are not titles our local small town video store carries.</p>
<p>I was considering ordering Netflix (have a free trial offer sitting on my kitchen table right now). With the one movie deal, how many could you realistically watch in a month?</p>
<p>Yup – we’re canceling at the end of August. I already have Amazon Prime, which covers the streaming, and between the library and an excellent local video store I think we’re covered for anything else, not that we watch much in the way of DVDs anyway. I understand that Hulu may be another viable option for some folks. </p>
<p>I’m a little perplexed at their pricing decision – we had to be a great customer for them in that we hardly use the service except when D is home on breaks, and even then, not all that much. Meanwhile, they got paid every month even if we didn’t use any services. (And when we do get DVDs it is very, very rare that we’re looking for a hot release – much more likely to request an older film or a foreign film.) </p>
<p>I’ll be curious to see how this works out for them – right now it seems like “New Coke” all over again. And we saw how well that worked.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, I got an email today from Blockbuster offering movies by mail without a monthly subscription. I have no idea how much they plan to charge for each rental & not all movies will be available.<br>
We will probably stay with Netflix for now & just get movies by mail. I won’t pay double the amount to be able to stream - it’s not worth it with the equipment we currently have.</p>
<p>Netflix and Hulu have gotten more popular and the movie studios are worried that customers will cut the cable cord which they depend on for revenue. So Netflix and Hulu were okay as long as they didn’t threaten cable but there have been many articles on just going with streaming and an antenna for digital broadcast so these two are no longer under the radar.</p>
<p>My personal change to the dearth of stuff to watch is to buy more books (physical or electronic). I find that I’m enjoying books based on old shows as much as the old shows themselves. There’s very little in the way of television and movies that I care to see these days.</p>
<p>We’ll keep both for now. Not having cable TV is part of it. I’m watching the first season of “Treme” right now at a rate of about one disk a week, cheaper than buying it outright, which in itself is cheaper than subscribing to cable for HBO. Since I exercise at home with something on TV to distract myself, I figure it’s also cheaper than a gym membership. </p>
<p>I do love the convenience of not having to go up and down the aisles of a rental place looking for the “right” movie. The selection really is great. We watch a lot of smaller oddball things, which just don’t show up at Blockbuster or Red Box. There are a couple of niche rental places, but that gets back to the convenience factor. Our library has a fairly good selection where I can usually find something, but they don’t have everything. </p>
<p>Our viewing patterns might change once D1 goes off to college; maybe just having the 3 disks at a time will be enough variety for the family.</p>