Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The day they implement this is the day I cancel my Netflix account. I barely tolerate the expense now even with a family member picking up part of the cost of the subscription.
 
We share our Netflix account with my mother and father in law and have done for years now. I’ve heard stories about Netflix trying to stop this but they’ve never been able to. Not really sure how they could stop it when you’re allowed multiple devices? A lot of my friends have apps now where you can get most satellite channels and even Netflix for a fraction of the cost, although not the official way. People will always find ways to save money I think, especially now.
 
This has probably already been posted by someone else but it bears repeating. If Netflix is going to crack down on "password sharing" then they need revamp their pricing structure. I don't "password share," I COST SHARE because if you want 4K on even one device, Netflix forces you to buy a plan for $20+, for FOUR SIMULTANEOUSLY ACTIVE SCREENS. So i'm just utilizing those four screens and divvying up the cost between four people who all pay their share (my SO, a friend, his wife.)

If Netflix would like to go back to the days when a fully featured subscription was priced reasonably enough that everyone would just pay for their own I'd be fine with that. If they'd like to try and force a higher subscription fee while cutting down on "password sharing," I think they'll find a lot of people... rediscovering just how easy it is to get their content on Bit Torrent or Usenet...

Netflix showed the TV industry what Steve Jobs showed the music industry. People don't want to be pirates. But if you price your content absurdly or act in consumer unfriendly ways , expect to end up crying about people steeling your content.
 
  • Like
Reactions: contacos
Simultaneous streaming on Netflix was never intended for multiple households. It says in their terms that it's intended for people within the same household.
I am the "owner" and I have it at my house, my vacation home and my mother with dementia's house when I sit with her over there at least 3 times a week. I pay for multiple streams, so why shouldn't I be entitled to use it all those places??
 
  • Like
Reactions: 5105973
Good. Bring on the downvotes but like people who stole Adobe Photoshop back in the day leading to photoshop costing $700 for a license or whatever it was before Creative Suite subscriptions came along, we paid for people who were freeloading. If Netflix can get every household to pay their fare share, maybe these price hikes will stop being a yearly festivity.

...and if you don't like it, literally every show on Netflix is available on BitTorrent.

That would be me and pretty much every other student at the time lol. We needed Photoshop in uni but couldn’t afford the true cost, so everybody installed hacked copies lol. I used to also use a CAD software that was £10k a year to run. Our lecturers couldn’t understand how everybody was getting the work done but the computers in uni were barely used lol.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: aesc80
This is going to be one of those things that backfires unless they very careful about who they target. I think they should stick 4K on the basic and standard plans for people like me and my partner who don’t live together all the time and share a 4K subscription just to get 4K, we’re only using 2 frigging streams at any time whilst paying for 4 as is so I don’t want to pay for 8. My parents and sister share a HD one too as my parents don’t watch it that often so I suspect they’d just stop watching it which doesn’t benefit Netflix either.
Now, if they target situations where tons of people use the same account that is fair game or where there is clear rampant abuse, but do it carefully whilst caring for those who actually do pay.
 
That would be me and pretty much every other student at the time lol. We needed Photoshop in uni but couldn’t afford the true cost, so everybody installed hacked copies lol. I used to also use a CAD software that was £10k a year to run. Our lecturers couldn’t understand how everybody was getting the work done but the computers in uni were barely used lol.
I see we had similar experiences in college! 🤣 Copies of AutoCad R14 was flying around campus like cheap beer and weed in a dorm. For $20, you had AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, then I changed majors and got copies of JBuilder, VS.Net, and any OS you can think off. Of course now, I pay full price cause I wouldn't want someone jacking my stuff that can afford it. Hehe (nervous laugh)

Getting to the point though - Netflix, I bet, flies through every college dorm and hardly any student pays for it cause, durrr ... they're students. That's really the negative drawback here. I'm willing to bet Netflix will also be cracking down on Chromecasting, like it did on Airplay with Apple. "No way you're getting a full screen remotely off a cellphone."
 
I do not share my Netflix password with family as such. But I do enter it into the apps when I am at their houses. If I forget to sign out and they watch I do not care. Netflix is not going to gain any customers if they do this if anything they may lose. I pay for it I should be able to do whatever I like with it. If that is not the case I will just cancel it then you may then have more people downloading. Might I add 4K is good but audio could be way better. I hate how loud I have to turn things up to get decent audio.
 
Imagine if the US had consumer protection laws? This idea that you pay for users is obscene.

It's like this. If I have three kids and I buy three ice cream cones how much ice cream does each kid have? None. I have three kids and three ice cream cones, of which I am allowing my kids to eat. If I pay for Netflix and my kids watch it at college, then I am watching Netflix in different places all at the same time.
 
People complaining about the high price apparently don't realize that Netflix might be a lot cheaper if all its users were actually paying customers.

Edit: Not saying prices will go down. I'm saying they might not have gotten so high so quickly.
Ah but they are paying customer. I have the 4K plan with multiple screens which I pay for. It is not different if many different people watch it in my house or theirs it is still being paid for. The alternative is it get torrented. Netflix has over 200 million subscribers perhaps if they instead stopped wasting money on some of the rubbish they create they would have more users and money.
 
I see we had similar experiences in college! Copies of AutoCad R14 was flying around campus like cheap beer and weed in a dorm. For $20, you had AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, then I changed majors and got copies of JBuilder, VS.Net, and any OS you can think off. Of course now, I pay full price cause I wouldn't want someone jacking my stuff that can afford it. Hehe (nervous laugh)

Getting to the point though - Netflix, I bet, flies through every college dorm and hardly any student pays for it cause, durrr ... they're students. That's really the negative drawback here. I'm willing to bet Netflix will also be cracking down on Chromecasting, like it did on Airplay with Apple. "No way you're getting a full screen remotely off a cellphone."
It sounds like I was a couple of years after you as I used AutoCAD 2000i along with a few other softwares like Alias Wavefront, Ideas etc. I can imagine Netflix these days is shared so much amongst students. I’d be doing the same if I were their age :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: aesc80
Streaming supposed to be about simplicity. Nowadays I would have to look through 4-5 services and still have a high chance of not finding what I was looking for. Canceled them over a year ago, and now paying for infuse and plex. Exclusive content is killing video streaming.
 
If Netflix doesn’t want it, then stop selling us the 4-screens plan? Either a cheaper plan with 1080p stereo, and home plan with access to 4K HDR 5.1
 
Good. Bring on the downvotes but like people who stole Adobe Photoshop back in the day leading to photoshop costing $700 for a license or whatever it was before Creative Suite subscriptions came along, we paid for people who were freeloading. If Netflix can get every household to pay their fare share, maybe these price hikes will stop being a yearly festivity.

...and if you don't like it, literally every show on Netflix is available on BitTorrent.
I think even if Netflix can get every household to pay their fair share, there’d still be price increases each year.

I stopped subscribing to Netflix years ago after I realised I hadn’t logged in for about 6 months and had continued paying anyway. I’d even forgotten my password! These days I only pay for Sky TV here in the UK and just record everything I want to watch. I’ve got a backlog of stuff to watch!

I remember when I did use Netflix, I was able to use a browser extension called Hola or something like that so I could log in and watch the US content - I think that loophole has been closed now, right?
 
My suggestion to Netflix trying to crack down on password sharing: allow everyone to have their own password. Do this and nothing else.
 
Cancelled Netflix many months ago. Terrible content and way over priced for what they offer (not interested in watching Kiddie Porn or Anistons lame narcissistic prancing around either). Apple TV and others do the job much better.
 
He never said it was ok. He said it was something Netflix had to learn to deal with. As location technology and systems improve, you better believe they will do everything they can to make users learn to deal with their terms of service.
Let’s see what happens then. I’ll be surprised if netflix revenue increases.

By the way, he kind of said it was ok. He may have reversed his position, though:
 
It’s so weird to me how these streaming services define family plans or screens by physical location. So I currently use Netflix for our *physical* household, but if my sister who uses it now moves out, she would need to pay a separate subscription even if nothing changed in our “household”, still the same screens and people.
 
I used to pay for Netflix but then it got too expensive, so I went back to torrenting 4K UHDs.

I still pay for Spotify but the second it goes above £10 a month, I’ll be using Deemix full-time.
 
I don't understand all the complaints about pricing. It seems very fair to me. If you don't want the top end 4K plan, then the standard price plan is more than reasonable!

The entitlement from people is incredible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: icanhazmac
So what if I want to log into my account at my vacation home while I’m there for a week? Are they going to crack down on that and insist I get a second account?
To be fair if you own a home simply for vacations you can probably afford the extra subscription hehe 😜
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.