Friday, July 15, 2011

Netflix Rant....Rantflix

I haven't blogged in quite some time, I don't know if I will start up again but I need to rant about something and therefore as of now...I am back. Just not sure if after this...



See what I did there?


Netflix is a great brand and is smart about adapting their business model to not only keep up with technological trends but stay ahead of the curve (hence Netflix being alive while BlockBuster and Hollywood Video are dying a quick, painful death). It was announced a few days ago that Netflix will be changing their price model. Separate DVD and streaming only plans will now be available (but both can be purchased at the same time), and the prices will go up a few dollars. For example, I currently subscribe to receive unlimited DVDs (2 checked out at a time) and unlimited streaming, and it costs me about $15 per month. With the updated plan, it will cost me about $19 a month ($11 for the DVDs and $8 for unlimited streaming).

I'm not going to be ridiculous and say I am happy that the price went up, but I do get it, and I am frustrated with the thousands upon thousands of people that do not seem to get it...at all.

Google (verb form) "netflix prices" and look at the comment section of the many articles that have been written on this topic (this Huff Post article  for example).

You will find thousands upon thousands of comments and tons of them are negative, and a good chunk of those negative comments are obnoxiously negative (yes I did some primary research and ran a sample set of comments past the offical United States "Obnoxious" Judge Panel (USOJP) and they ruled that a good chunk of the comments were in fact...obnoxious). Fortunately, now that this story is a few days old there are more people such as myself coming out to defend Netflix. So you will find more positive comments now compared to a few days ago...but that's besides the point.

There are comments that say things like "How can you raise your prices and not add more content?", "I better be able to stream all of your content now", "cuss words, bla bla, I hate you Netflix" etc.

The thing that really steams my clams, chaps my ass, grinds my gears, stings my stuff, insert other cliches here is that a large populace exists who expects to be able to stream every movie and every TV show in existence, and do so for damn near no money.

Believe it or not, it costs Netflix money to use up all the bandwidth it takes to stream TV/movies. In fact, it costs them a ton of money, and believe it or not (yes I just used that term twice in the same paragraph) bandwidth is not easy to slang around like fatty joints at a Phish concert. Read this post from Mark Cuban for more explanation from a pretty smart dude:

Mark Cuban post about net neutrality and bandwidth and what not.

And bandwidth is not the only factor. Netflix has to pay to gain the right to stream their content over the Internet. And they have to pay separate (more...a lot more) money to own the right to stream content, even if they already have the rights to rent out that same content DVD form.

We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars here. Despite this, Netflix has steadily been adding more streaming content over the past few years. They have made deals with Starz, Showtime, NBC, etc. Just about every month stories come out about Netflix getting the rights to new content, making new deals... basically straight up balling in the proverbial streaming world.

So settle down because they are working on it. To expect them to allow all of their content to be streamed all at once now that they increased their prices is preposterous. It is preposterous from a cost standpoint as well as a bandwidth standpoint (which happen to overlap).

So please, I beg of you...before you poop or pee in your pants over your Netflix bill rising by a few bucks, or before you start your own rant about how pissed off you are at them...take a deep breath and try to understand that those CSI: Eau Claire re-runs you love to stream on your computer do not just appear there magically. There is a lot that goes into it and it costs a lot of money.


This post was ranty...I know. Sorry.



One love, one heart




Eric McPherson





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