Netflix regains 600,000 U.S. subscribers

Yeah, this is what I expected to happen. There were so many angry online proclamations of "Netflix has screwed me over--I'm done with them forever and therefore they're doomed since everyone else will feel the same way!"

Many of those people may well have been lost to Netflix forever, but that wouldn't/didn't stop Netflix's growth from continuing. There were some 12 million of us who'd already switched to $8/month streaming only plans who were completely unaffected by the change; many subscribed because there were Netflix streaming players embedded in new equipment that they'd bought and weren't actually interested in disc rentals; many people kept their disc plans and dropped streaming, which they weren't using anyway. There were lots of new customers to gain who'd never had streaming+disc in the first place. And of course, some of that gain (or re-gain) consisted of customers in Canada and South America who were never offered disc rental service (EDIT: the article explicitly says that it was a gain of US customers only). No doubt they'd have grown significantly more had they handled the change differently but they were prepared to take the hit.

Why is it so difficult for the media to accurately report that not all subscriber's rates went up by 60%? It depended entirely on what plan you were on, but the impression that's constantly given is that everybody's payments went up.

Yeah--I groan every time I see a Blockbuster ad proclaiming "Netflix raised their prices by 60%"! (Haven't seen one of those in a while). That was only true for the 1-disc-out plus streaming plan, which they didn't offer at all.

Happy to hear the news! As a streaming only user, I hoped they would stay around, and I wouldn't be forced to go Direct.

I think most of us expected this to happen, other than a couple of the typical naysayers in that other thread.

Not surprising. And I'm glad I invested in Netflix near the end of September. Of course, they are predicting losses in 2012 due to the cost of the international expansion. Might have to offload it before the next quarterly results come in and the market does their kneejerk reaction again.

I'm glad to see they're doing well.

We get lots of DVDs from Netflix.

I dropped streaming after the price increase, mainly because most stuff we want to watch isn't available. If you're desperate to find something, anything at all to watch then yes you can.

I'm thinking of dropping it again, there just isn't much available. When I check for movies I might want to watch, fewer than 10% of them can be streamed.

Netflix makes it somewhat easy to add/drop, just a few clicks of the mouse. Unfortunately you pay for partial months when you drop, so you need to plan ahead. Adding is easy, you pay pro-rated from the day you add until your next billing date.

It's not worth even $8 per month if you only stream one or two times a month. OTOH we probably average two or three DVDs a week from them, which works out to under $1 per DVD. Not a bad deal. And no driving required.

It's more like 48,000 titles, Amazon Prime has about 14,000 titles.
I do agree that there's always something to watch on Netflix streaming.

I think that the 48K number counts individual TV episodes. Both Netflix and Amazon tend to inflate those numbers like that. Of course there are hundreds of hours of a long running series like Grey's Anatomy or Law & Order--should they count the same as a 90 minute movie? They should probably quote total available hours of content.

Amazon counts episodes when they supply a count, whereas Netflix does not supply a number. I did an apples to apples in December and I found over 49,000 tv episodes and movies on Netflix and over 11,600 tv episodes and movies on Amazon. If you go to the Amazon website you will see a separate number since they count a TV series twice when it's in SD and HD.

Most of the time when I read folks saying they couldn't find "anything" on Netflix streaming it's because they expect everything to be available to stream. Hello! It's $8 a month!

There's a ton of content on there to stream that is worth of being watched. For me I like that all of Ken Burns documentaries are on there, and lots of good recent tv shows that I never saw on their first run (Friday Night Lights, Lost, 24, Mad Men, breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc etc)

1) Only 220,000 of the 600,000 were streaming.

2) What % of the 600k is from free subscriptions given during the holidays? I hear free subscriptions surged 62%...after their 1 month trial how many of the 600,000 will stay and pay?

If big commerical studio productions are your idea of entertainment than Netflix streaming won't be for you but there is Amazon, Vudu, CinemaNow and other wannabes coming up to bat too that can supply those. I have over 400 titles in my WI queue and some may not get played any more than 5 minutes before I decide it isn't worth watching but I've found many gems. For years my theater going venue was to the local art houses which except for the "barn" or local Cinearts (in dire need of remodeling but that isn't Cinemark's fault) have gone out of existence. I watch new indie films on Vudu sometimes which compensates for the art house lack.

Boy, finally NETFLIX lives up to its name "Movies on the Internet".
It was crazy to call it NETFLIX when it shipped out DVDs. It should have been called "POSTFLIX" or "USPSFLIX" ...LOL

I love the streaming, but for discs, I left and went to Blockbuster and I think I ended up with the best of both worlds.

Good to see they figured out how to make up for the loss of the Starz Play content because that seemed to be what a lot of the higher rated content was.

Yeah but a year ago they had less total subscribers.

So the 6.3% of free subscribers in 2011 is pretty much the same amount of people as the 8.0% in 2010.

2010 Subscribers: 20.1M @ 8.0% = 1,608,000 free subscribers
2011 Subscribers: 24.4M @ 6.3% = 1,537,200 free subscribers

70,800 less free subscribers than in 2010, but still 1,537,200 free subscribers overall.

Those are the facts.

I agree, $8 isn't much.

However, the way I (try to) use it, I'm often disappointed. I certainly don't expect recent movies, that's what we use DVDs by mail for.

Here's a recent experience of mine. I read or saw something about the documentary movie Woodstock, so I wanted to see if I could view it. Nope. It was filmed in 1969 but it's still not available for streaming.

That's what I mean. When I go looking for something specific I usually can't find it. That's probably a "style" difference between people. Many people like to scan available titles until they find something that might appeal to them. OTOH I don't like to browse, I go to Netflix to check for specific titles.

I think the problem is the "all you can eat for $8" business model. It forces Netflix to be very selective about what they will license for streaming, and forces studios to be very selective about what they will license to Netflix for streaming.

I would be willing to rent a-la-carte for a movie such as Woodstock, perhaps $1 or $2. But I don't have that choice.

For comparison I just went to iTunes, and I see I can rent recent movies for $4 (or $5 in HD). Vudu also rents movies for that price. Or I can rent virtually any movie I want to for about $1 by mail from Netflix (about 8 movies for $8 a month).

But what about something in between for streaming? I want to rent a 43 y/o movie for $1 or $2. But I can't. Interestingly enough, Woodstock is available from iTunes for rental for $4, but only to an iPad or Apple TV. Too expensive, and not available in HD to my iMac.

That's pretty much it. Netflix streaming is more for people in a serendipitous mood, not looking for something specific. It's not trying to compete with Vudu or the other a la cartes, but carve out its own niche. Even its interface seems more geared to that type of clientele.

I also don't see any online streamers providing movies for $1 or $2 anytime soon, save for some specials here and there, like Vudu does occasionally. They're not opening their entire catalog to that price, though.

IMO, though, rental prices for anything nowadays is dirt cheap. Whether it be $1 Redbox titles, $8 a month for whatever is on Netflix, or $5 per movie through Vudu delivered to your home in HD, it sure beats Blockbuster's $6 per movie that you had to go to their stores to get. Yeah, sure you had it for five days, but I never kept one of their movies for five days.

FWIW, Vudu has the Woodstock director's cut also ($2.99 SD / $3.99 HD / $4.99 HDX).

Amazon Instant also has it for $4.

So in other words, everyone who has it is charging around $4 for it....you aren't going to find it for $1 or $2 unless you luck out and Netflix also carries it (which is not the case this time, obviously).

And agreed on your other comments: If you're looking for a specific title, you're going to have a harder time than if you just browse or use the "gems and finds" thread to add titles. Heck, I just added 5 titles last night from just browsing around the PS3 interface. But that doesn't mean I can't occasionally scroll through my instant queue and not really see anything I'm in the mood for.

The VOD/PPV models like Amazon/Vudu/PSN/iTunes are more in line with what you want, but of course, you're going to pay more than $8/month....assuming you rent 2 or more movies each month.

That's why I use a combination of services, because there's really no "all-in-one" service where I can get everything I want at the price I want.

I'd wager more people find more value in a month of Netflix than a month of either HBO or Showtime, even though there are good shows on all three.

As of March 2011 HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States. Showtime has 18.2 million subscribers.

FWIW, I do not subscribe to any of them anymore (use to have all three, Netflix, HBO & Showtime). I do have Amazon Prime but rarely use it.

Well, that's the subscriber base, but I wonder what the usage data on each of those is. Plus, aren't the premiums at $15 per month?

None of that matters, a large number of people place a lot of value in HBO and/or Showtime otherwise they would not scribe and pay a premium for it. If I could get HBO, Showtime and Starz/Encore (in HD) Ã* la carte via DirecTV or Dish Network I would subscribe. Alas, you can not and I refuse to pay for a program package that I will never use.

It's the latter as you can find many very amateur done movies on NF WI. A few are good and some were like "Jake and I took his video camera and made movie one afternoon." I think their strategy is to do so much streaming that eventually studio holdouts will go with streaming and they can forget about the discs.