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nostradiel ,
@nostradiel@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, but they don't mention how many they lost during price uprising, so I'd say it somehow equals.

shirro ,

Growth of a few million subscribers is nothing for a company the size of Netflix and there could be all sorts of creative accounting going on.

Executives patting themselves in the back to justify bonuses is self serving bullshit. Quality and value build long term brand profitability but that is too hard for MBAs. Cost cutting and screwing customers is all they know. In a few years people will be asking what the fuck happened to Netflix.

I was a relatively early adopter of Netflix before it was available in my country and used it via VPN back when Netflix had more to gain by allowing that. They made some interesting shows that justified the very affordable price. Now there is more content and most is crap. I rotated subscriptions for the last year but I am hard out now. And ad supported tiers don't fix it for me because I would rather eat shit than watch them.

ohlaph ,

They want you to eventually pay more and watch ads. It's their long-term goal.

_sideffect ,

I also doubt the numbers and wonder if they're outright lying just to boost stock (which is working apparently)

Siegfried ,

We have 6 streaming services at home. Most of them have one or two accounts, meaning they were never used. We are five and most of us are well versed in traversing the seas and with the exception of my father, we all understand spoken and written English pretty well.
Whenever I bring the "Why don't we drop off A, B and C that are not being used right now" to the table, they all react badly. I dont understand.

V4sh3r ,
@V4sh3r@lemmy.world avatar

I see two approaches that you can take.

  1. instead of focusing on what you are taking away. Focus on what you can do with the money instead. Telling them that they can have a new TV with that money is a lot more motivation to say yes than taking something away.
  2. Do the scream test. Just cancel everything and wait for someone to scream about not having a services and resubscribe. Repeat every 6 months or so.
Mongostein ,

Set up a plex or Jellyfin server that your dad could use

_sideffect ,

Ugh... Hate to see this

notannpc ,

Fucking weak. People are just begging to be screwed.

rolling_resistance ,

This would be strange if Netflix didn't have enough of easily accessible good content.

When after finishing work we want to watch “a movie”, it's much easier to choose a Netflix recommendation than to do a half an hour reasearch online and then wait for the movie to be downloaded.

Now add to this time, energy, and expertise needed for looking up and trying pirating options, figuring out technical aspects, paying for a VPN, doing maintenance… Very few can and are willing to do all that.

SpacetimeMachine ,

The people who don't know how I understand completely. But honestly people who have the know-how are underestimating how easy it has got. I can torrent a movie at a much higher quality than Netflix will even stream to my PC and do it all within 5 minutes.

rolling_resistance ,

Now imagine you have a family that likes to watch TV in the living room and not in your room.

HedonismB0t ,

So you download the movie to your Plex or Jellyfin server and watch it in living room. I do exactly this all the time.

rolling_resistance ,

Right, I use Plex now too. However, it only has things that I already downloaded. So if we don't plan, we end up watching something on Netflix instead of spending extra time on looking+downloading+going back and forth between rooms.

cyberpunk007 ,

Well Plex soon is adding support for buying and renting stuff.

thedirtyknapkin ,

hell, I'm across the country at my parent's place and got them a movie by remoting into my home pc to start a torrent and had it populatred in my Plex server and streaming at full bluray quality 4k hdr in less time that it took for them to get popcorn ready.

they never even knew that i had to do any of that. i just told them "yeah, I'll get that set up while you get snacks"

cyberpunk007 ,

"download this app, create an account, I'll add you as a friend, off you go"

It's literally as easy as Netflix in that scenario.

rolling_resistance ,

I'm curious to hear more about this. What's the app?

Amir ,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

Plex

Hule ,

Jellyfin for the win!

prole ,
@prole@sh.itjust.works avatar

Lol that hasn't been an issue for at least a decade.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Yeah but the problem is, I was watching a lot of really bad movies on Netflix, just because they didn't have anything I wanted to watch. So I was sitting there, feeling bored or annoyed or disgusted by the shit movies... I actually felt depressed by what I watched even!

So I was like... I'm paying for this, and I feel like shit most of the time when watching it.

No more.

rolling_resistance ,

That's fair, if this was your case. No point in paying for something you don't like.

As much as I hate old titles disappearing, I also enjoy the new content Netflix offers. To each their own, I guess.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Yeah everyone has different taste. I actually like British TV a lot more then American too.

uSpetzWon ,

Netflix produced content is either garbage or cancelled after first season. (or both)

The only quality content Netflix has is made by someone else and more than 20 years ago.

cyberpunk007 ,

Eh, you don't need to do all that. But I also have the same problem with the research stuff even if I use Netflix. A lot of the recommendations are not great for me, and low quality stuff. Once in a while something good will pop up though.

Usually I write down recommendations people give me in conversation then I refer back to that list when I'm looking for something to watch. If it's not on Netflix, well...

SeabassDan ,

For me it's usually hear about a few things that could be interesting throughout the day and download them while I shower after work. A 5gb movie comes through in a few minutes so I don't even feel it. It's usually 2 or 3 at a time, and since I'd still be going in blind on Netflix recs, it doesn't seem much worse.

AlphaOmega ,

Weird. I can find and download a movie in a couple of minutes. It's almost as easy as learning how to download and navigate Netflix.

Pirating movies has never been easier, but wait there's more, you can just stream them for free too.

There's even places you can buy a box for a one time fee, and have all channels and services free. Or get a subscription that offers every service and channel on earth.

It's so easy my 80 yr old father can do it.

There's no maintenance, no technical expertise needed, you don't even need a VPN.

The only thing Netflix really offers is convenience and legality.

firadin ,

But does Netflix even have good movies? Like I think it'd be easier to do exactly that but on HBO Max or Disney Plus, or a TV show on Hulu.

cmrn ,

And yet this is 2 posts down from an article about their price hikes and increase in ads coming up.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I guess people love that shit... \o/

cyberpunk007 ,

Am I on glue? I could have sworn the quarterly earnings call results were abysmal. Like quarter over quarter their revenue has tanked.

chiliedogg ,

No. They've lost subscribers several times, but always in reaction to price hikes.

When you increase your prices 20% and lose 5% of your subscribers what you've done is reduce bandwidth costs while massively increasing profits.

And the crackdown on account sharing has been massively successful for them. If zero people had paid for new accounts their profits still would have gone up from their savings in bandwidth and processing. But then tons of people bit the bullet and started paying.

cyberpunk007 ,

I understand that but the data I saw showed their revenue decreased substantially. I can't find it for the life of me though. It was some google popup on my phone and I have no idea how to get back to it lol.

Anywho, seems like I don't know what I'm talking about cause the stock is surging.

selokichtli ,

Maybe this is the people telling the other competitors to fuck off with their own streaming services. Maybe they think staying loyal to just one of them, things can go back to resemble how it was +5 years ago.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I don't think any company that becomes shit ever goes back to being not shit again...

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Arguably MS has become less shit over the last decade. But yes.

misanthropy ,

You must not work in IT

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Do you remember the "open source is cancer" MS?

misanthropy ,

Sorry, I can't hear you over how much they have businesses over the barrel with their absurd subscription licensing costs

How has MS become more friendly to FOSS? (Genuine question)

selokichtli ,

Oh, well. In general, I agree, but there must be examples that don't fit with your statement. In the end, companies pursue profit, ideally, offering a better service gives you exactly that. I know this rarely is the case, but it can happen.

Thief ,
@Thief@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

One way I have reduced my subscriptions is by using control d. I know vpns are popular on lemmy but I found it an annoying to have to have a vpn for each device I wanted to bypass a country lock. Moreover it was annoyyng for some devices like apple tv that does not support a vpn. Establishing a vpn on the firewall broke other services that I needed to work locally in my country.

Control d on the other hand is a dns proxy tunnel so you just alter the dns on the devices you want to use it, and in their control panel you can have different countries per service - so if you browse youtube that can go via a country that does not allow ads. Bbc iplayer can be told to go via uk and so on. This is a lot more convenient and allows you to retain your country for all services except the ones you want to tunnel.

captsneeze ,

Thanks for this tip. I hadn’t heard about this before, and it sounds like an interesting thing to add to my tool chest.

so if you browse youtube that can go via a country that does not allow ads.

Can you tell me more about this? I’ve never heard about that this is a thing, and it sounds like a good thing to known

Thief ,
@Thief@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

Set your country to Albania, Moldova, or Myanmar and you wont get ads on youtube.

cyberpunk007 ,

For the annoyance, you could just use some open source firewall like opnsense to create a site to site to your VPN provider and route anything destined for your shady services through it.

Thief ,
@Thief@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

Yes I do use opnsense and it was more annoying than control d. I tried both options.

cyberpunk007 ,

I see. IMO the opnsense method is good because it's set and forget, works across all devices without needing to touch them

Thief ,
@Thief@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

I mean so is control d a set and forget. Even more so because they manage any changes and workarounds the companies come up with. Its basically designed for this. Having tried both options its my preferred option.

cyberpunk007 ,

I have no idea what control d is

Thief ,
@Thief@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

https://controld.com/

AgentGrimstone ,

I get it for free through my phone carrier. I hope they're not counting me in that 13 million.

AProfessional ,

Why not, you just pay them indirectly.

gac11 ,

I'm in the same boat. I got some super sweet deal through my phone company. It was right when they started cracking down on sharing accounts. This way they can claim they have more viewers. No way I'd pay real money to them, but free enough to not quit

FlavoredButtHair ,
@FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world avatar

WWE is coming to Netflix in January 2025, they're still not getting my money.

Ibex ,
@Ibex@lemmy.world avatar

And just like that we were guaranteed another price increase.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

We? I’m not giving them anything

Vendul ,

Shame on those customers.

Dariusmiles2123 ,

Well Netflix is still the best streaming service when you think about the price and the content.

I was just a price hike away from resigning but it never happened.

In Switzerland there are also a lot of streaming services which haven’t arrived yet.

And we’re still sharing our account with my mom who lives 15 kilometers away from us.

thisfro ,

In Switzerland pirating is also legal, so I know what I do :)

jvrava9 ,
@jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

🏴‍☠️

Dariusmiles2123 ,

It’s legal but I also want to support the movies or shows I enjoy. So buying or subscribing is the only way for me.

thisfro ,

Not a lot of the money goes to the people making the films/series from netflix. Buy a digital or physical copy of the film directly at the production company if you want to support them.

SonnyVabitch ,

I've been cycling through them a few months at a time. When it gets harder and harder to find something interesting on, say, Netflix, I cancel and sign up for, say, HBO, then a few months later Disney+, rinse and repeat.

I refuse to pay for more than one at a time because I'm not watching more than one at a time. And when I go back to any of them after many months away, there will be new programmes in their catalogue.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I used to do that but it's also frustrating, because when something new comes out, it's just random luck if I'm on the right streaming service to watch it. Otherwise I have to wait...

Wasn't this supposed to be as good or better than the video rental store, where they had everything in one place?

jeffw ,

Blockbuster had new releases and a handful of classics. One store probably had .01% of the volume of titles on Netflix. If they even had that many.

1984 OP ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Yeah I guess.

dandi8 ,

But now no one has all the new major releases, so in that regard it's a worse experience.

SmokumJoe ,

I also remember they had the shit knockoff movies next to the real ones to fool Grandma into getting you that "Deformers movie you like".

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