I just hope they vary commercials, especially the Carvana on with that annoying woman. I just want to stop watching instantly.
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Netflix Plans to Charge $7 to $9 for Ad-Supported Plan
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And it's not the minutes I can't watch the show, per se. It's the repetitive annoying ads. If I have to hear that annoying woman on the Carvana commercial one more time, I'm jumping off a bridge.I would say ads are rather disruptive
I cancelled way back when they split the DVD and streaming subs. Now the content we liked disappearing definitly stopped us from considering trying again. And the fact that you can't split the cost between how many streams and quality. We only need one stream with 4K. Shouldn't have to pay for streams we don't need, and shouldn't have to have junk quality that shouldn't be a thing anymore if we only want one.
And everyone raises prices constantly. I remember when businesses worried about raising prices every ten years, and now they do it every 10 weeks.
And the DVRs made it worse for the ones who didn't want them or couldn't afford. The ad times shot up because they knew a good chunk were just zapping past them
And you can't resub to AList for six months once you cancel.
Oops you did state that...
I will never do ss (streaming services) with ads again*, but for those who are on a tight budget, it has its uses. For example, a family of 3 to 5, on other ss it'd be prohibitively expensive to do ad-free plans (so $10 to $15 a pop, times the number of ss you're getting simultaneously). I like to rotate them, but I'm single. It's easy for me to do that. With families or roommates, it can get difficult to coordinate "we'll do Hulu for now, then switch to Disney+ for 3 months, then Netflix for 4).
For NF, I'm under the impression that "for a few dollars more", while you do go from from w-ads to ad-free, the streaming quality is downgraded to 480p.
.
* YouTube is the only exception, but that's because I don't use it much. When the ads bog me down, that's "nature's way" of saying I'm spending too much time on there.
TBF, some ppl really do have ****ty connections. It's not like if they combined 480p and HD, that those in the HD tier would now only be paying SD prices.
If nothing else, I don't care about 4K, so I'm glad some ss offer me the option to not have to pay extra from HD.
No it’s not. Most people who use the current cheapest package won’t be people watching on a large TV, it’s people who use their phone where the screen is so small that a 480p stream looks pretty good and certainly you will struggle to tell the difference between a 480p and 720/1080p stream. And as a lot of people are on metered data on their phones its makes sense
People are reading the article wrong. Nowhere does is say the ad supported version would be limited to 480p, it says the current cheapest package is limited to 480p. I suspect with it being so close to the current cheapest package price that unless there is another price increase coming that the ad-supported version will be HD
The problem is all these streaming companies are losing money at the current subscription prices (yes Netflix claim to be profitable but if you are running on negative cash flow that tells you there is some legal creative accounting going on) even the ones that are using ads as a secondary income stream. More content has to be commissioned than under the old linear tv method, on average 'syndication' rates on streaming platforms costs more than traditional linear tv (linear channels may have paid more for the biggest shows like Friends than streaming does but there is a lot of content that streaming services need that there was little demand for in syndication so was worthless that now has much higher value.) and they have killed so many of the secondary revenue streams that production studios used to rely on to make a profit from content they made for linear TV that streamers are paying a much larger percentage of the production budget than linear TV ever did. All while charging much less and having less subscribed people than pay TV had. They are also are doing way more high budget content than linear did, they are spending HBO money on way more content each year than HBO traditionally did. So they all need to charge more even if they have ads (they will also get less in ad revenue, not only do 'online' ads pay less in general. While the main driving force of ad income on traditional tv is active eyes watching the channel at that time, the potential eyes who could see the ad is much higher which adds a premium, most streaming services have fewer subs in a country than paytv used to and much less potential eyes that broadcast) so I don’t feel $7 will end up being deemed expensive for an ad supported service even if many are doing them for cheaper right now. And ad-free are likely to end up much more expensive than it currently is.
Personally I feel we will actually end up back in a payTV like situation where we pay the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google for a bundle of everything with the services getting paid a 'carriage' fee and it will end up being cheaper for us than subbing to everything and generate more income for the services (Getting less per customer but having way more customers will often generate more money. And a bundle setup would reduce the Risk of churn which means they don’t need to compete as much so don’t need to be trying to outdo each other as much and also wouldn’t need to ensure everyone has a new original to keep them subbed that month as they have to do somewhat now)
Maybe but I don't think prices are too bad yet. When Netflix introduced its streaming-only plan (not tied to a DVD plan) in 2010, the price was $7.99/month. Adjusting for inflation, that's close to $11/month today which is higher than the current basic ad-free plan price.
The content streaming industry may still be trying to figure out what pricing/plan setups work best. Some of them may have come in low priced to start in order to build a subscriber base and are adjusting prices up to try to find the profit maximizing sweet spot.
However, even with price increases, streaming services are still a bargain compared to what it could cost for video rentals or premium channels decades ago.
A Canadian cell carrier started offering streaming bundles this year, where you can bundle AppleTV+, Discovery+, and Netflix for $25/month. I can see this becoming the "new" cable.
That seems to be the direction things are going... one stop shopping for cable or satellite TV, internet, phone, cell phone, and streaming services.
100% agree. That's what'll keep me on the higher paid plan. I don't mind ads, but I'll be damned if they take quality away.
Please be aware they were largely introduced due to so many people not paying anything for illegal downloads. They knew too expensive and people would just go back to ripping downloads for free.
Wouldn’t say it’s cheaper, they don’t have a choice to make it too expensive or everyone will switch back to how it was.
I don't think you understand technology is an inherently deflationary force. So one could argue that even at current streaming prices, the cost is still artificially high. It depends on a lot of factors so I'm not going into that debate.
My comment was not so much about whether today’s prices are fair or not, just that access to premium entertainment content is much cheaper today (at least after adjusting for inflation) than it was decades ago for video rentals, premium channels, etc.
Obviously, that can also be said about other things too e.g., the launch MSRP of a 128K Macintosh computer in 1984 was more than $7,000 in today's dollars. You can get not just the same but much much better computers today for much much less.
Exactly.
If you rented a couple VHS/DVD a week in the old days... at $3 a pop... that's $24 a month.
And you only have those eight movies to watch for that month.
But with streaming... you can pay a flat rate... and you have literally THOUSANDS of hours of content at your fingertips to watch at any time. On any device, too.
And let's not forget about the late fees with rentals... and having to drive to and from the video store.
Yeah I don't miss those days.
But going there was fun. It was socializing. Same with arcades. All the new tech has destroyed socializing.Exactly.
If you rented a couple VHS/DVD a week in the old days... at $3 a pop... that's $24 a month.
And you only have those eight movies to watch for that month.
But with streaming... you can pay a flat rate... and you have literally THOUSANDS of hours of content at your fingertips to watch at any time. On any device, too.
And let's not forget about the late fees with rentals... and having to drive to and from the video store.
Yeah I don't miss those days.
I dunno... I still see plenty of people going to amusement parks, swimming in lakes, going to concerts, etc.
And there is plenty of socializing with online gaming.
And some video stores also had membership fees on top of the rental cost.
Music is another entertainment product that has gotten much cheaper thanks to audio streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, etc. Just one music CD in the mid-1980s could run $12 to $15 (around $33 to $41 in today's dollars). Today, you can get ad-free subscriptions with access to tens of millions of songs for under $10/month or ad-supported plans for free.