NetFlix

[w6pea]

A couple of months ago , almost a year ago now while I still had ATT-Uverse rip-off I went to SixBucks Coffee Shop aka Starbucks, the little shop next to it was a mom & pop movie rental store going out of business. Anyway I bought a DVR/Bluray player for $19.95 (I should have bought all they had @ that price and put them on E-bay) Any way it got put in a closet and forgot about. I was looking for something earlier today and low and behold what did I find but but this player. It's a Toshiba WiFi ready Blu-Ray Disc Player. My direct Tv is hooked to my desk top computer. I was looking at the box and itsays that I can get Netflix thru the internet. any one do this or do the just rent the dvd's. [h=1][/h]

 

[TNGTony]

Are you serious? Netflix is a great option for streaming video movies and TV shows. I personally used a Roku box while I had Netflix. It was pretty good but since I have Dish Network and they now include a similar service at no additional charge, and Netfix raised the price for streaming and DVD rental combo over 60% I dropped them. But many still find them a great deal.

I know several people that have similar blu-ray players and have never once rented a blu-ray and only use it for Netflix.

 

[TheForce]

TNGTony- Netflix only raised rates on DVD Mail business they DID NOT RAISE the rates of STREAMING accounts one cent! My daughter and several of her friends have the streaming only accounts with Netflix and they paid $7.99 before the DVD mail rate increase and still pay $7.99 today. Math is difficult for some to handle but trust me- That is NOT a 60% INCREASE! This is the kind of false negative advertising that continues to hammer the company.

Furthermore- Dish Network's new Blockbuster Movie Pass on my Dish account increased my monthly bill from $114.58 to 128.29 which includes the satellite taxes. That is a monthly charge to me of $13.71 for adding the Blockbuster Movie Pass. It is not free or added at no additional charge, but it is lower than the cost of Netflix account with DVD mail service and streaming which I pay 19.74 per month with the taxes. HOWEVER- the service from Netflix is streaming to all my devices, and has far more movie selections with better quality. The only advantage I have with BB MP is that also is now sending out 3D titles, but the turn around time from BB is still about double that of Netflix. Using the in store exchange helps but still Netflix has them beat with number per month. I'm not claiming other get the same results but this is just how the math stacks up at my house!

 

[berck]

TNGTony- Netflix only raised rates on DVD Mail business they DID NOT RAISE the rates of STREAMING accounts one cent! My daughter and several of her friends have the streaming only accounts with Netflix and they paid $7.99 before the DVD mail rate increase and still pay $7.99 today. Math is difficult for some to handle but trust me- That is NOT a 60% INCREASE! This is the kind of false negative advertising that continues to hammer the company.

Well, if you re-read TNGTony's post, you'll find that he was talking about both streaming and DVD rental, and they were raised 60%. Streaming only wasn't affected, so no rate increase there. Combination rates were all increased. Since $7.99 and $7.99 is $5.98 higher than $9.99, 60% is correct (if you round to the next percentage point, otherwise 59.86%).

We have been on the streaming only rate, so like you, we saw no increase.

 

[TNGTony]

Don,

Part one of your post was answered by Berck above.

As to part 2, I already had the HD Platinum package under whatever name it was called from the date it was created. The HD Platinum package change names to the Blockbuster Movie pack and the price remained exactly the same. The renamed HD Platinum (now Blockbuster Movie Pack) started to include DVDs at home for no extra charge. So I can say Dish now include a similar service at no additional charge with impunity since ANYONE who had HD Platinum got free DVD delivery. I guess I could have stated that some one who did NOT have the HD Platinum package that includes many HD channels, wanted to add the Blockbuster Movie Pack now, it would cost more. But since I was talking about my situation I did not think about it. Also I did not say the services were the same. I said they were similar. Most if not all of the new titles are available on both services. Older titles and TV series are more limited on BBMP. But them we start to split hairs.

Read my entire comment above again. I made good statements about Netflix and encouraged the OP to get it. I just mentioned the alternative as just that, an alternative.

See ya
Tony

See ya
Tony

 

[TheForce]

Ok Tony- It's just that you didn't mention that there was NO rate increase for streaming only. I agree that when you had the combo the near doubling of the mail DVD service made the combo cost go up by 60%. IIRC if you only had the DVD mail service the rate doubled or up by 100%. Bottom line- Netflix cost of $7.99 for streaming is still the lowest in the industry. If you use streaming, switching to any of the other services was not a good move. As we move forward, the future will change everything. We always need to be diligent and follow our costs vs. quality of service.

Again, my comments were only that you did not tell the whole story and felt more info was appropriate. I live by "The Devil is in the details"

 

[Zookster]

Ok Tony- It's just that you didn't mention that there was NO rate increase for streaming only. I agree that when you had the combo the near doubling of the mail DVD service made the combo cost go up by 60%. IIRC if you only had the DVD mail service the rate doubled or up by 100%. Bottom line- Netflix cost of $7.99 for streaming is still the lowest in the industry. If you use streaming, switching to any of the other services was not a good move. As we move forward, the future will change everything. We always need to be diligent and follow our costs vs. quality of service.

Again, my comments were only that you did not tell the whole story and felt more info was appropriate. I live by "The Devil is in the details"

I realize I'm necroing this old discussion, but in the interest of "the devil is in the details," as someone who had DVD-by-mail and streaming since both services started, when the price increases hit in Sept 2011 for most people, my DVD-by-mail price dropped by two dollars (for one disc at a time with blu-ray) when I cancelled the streaming portion of my service, which was to increase my bill by $7.99, minus the two dollar drop in the DVD/BD by mail portion of my service for a total of a $5.99 increase on my bill. So to say "the near doubling of the mail DVD service made the combo cost go up by 60%" is inaccurate. Again, the DVD-by-mail service price dropped, the amount depending how many discs you received at a time.

So it's a matter of perspective: If you had both services (disc and streaming), Netflix started charging for streaming. If you just had steaming, no price change. DVD-by-mail prices dropped for everyone.

With that said, I came here to report that if you dropped your streaming service at this time last year because of the price increases, apparently Netflix's policy is to offer a free month trial of streaming service once per year. I discovered that this week when I tried to sign up for the free trial advertised on my Netflix PS3 app and it came up that I wasn't eligible. I called Netflix and was told I was eleven days shy of the one year anniversary of the date I had dropped streaming, but the CSR hooked me up anyway.

I have to say I'm really impressed with the current offerings from the streaming service. All the TV shows I was hoping to find were available and seven films near the top of my disc queue were also available. What's more, if you have a PS3, the 5.1 audio is now Dolby Digital Plus--a marked improvement from the standard 5.1 DD. So in short, if you haven't tried streaming in while, see if you can get a free month trial and see what you might be missing with all the new content added in the past year.