Now, we'll be paying $17.99.
That is a very significant increase and very unfortunate.
I don't begrudge what they're doing: Weaning you off your DVD habit and onto their streaming service.
But I just think they are jumping the gun. Get some more first-run content available first.
As it is, I'm going to take it on the chin and pay the extra $6, but with a lot less love for Netflix, for at least a little while until I forget about this.
Neither would I, if they weren't REDUCING the streaming service from my perspective. Dozens of movies on my streaming queue have disappeared before I could get to them - something I didn't mind so much so long as I could at least get the disc version.
General consensus seems: if pretty much everything were available streaming, fine - but it's not, and it's that "not" part which is small enough to make the DVD plan too expensive yet the content is personally important enough that we'll pay anyway.
A lot of the decent newer movies on their service come from their contract with Starz to stream any of the movies currently playing on that network.
Well, Starz only gets movies for a certain period (same as any other TV network). So when the run is over on Starz, it's removed from netflix as well.
This isn't the entire story, but I've found 9/10 of the movies that are removed from my instant queue are because of this.
They just increased my bill by ~60% (9.99 -> 15.98), I use streaming for the most part and order DVDs when they don't have the movie for streaming.
At this price point I might as well go with Vudu or some other streaming service
I really didn't realize how good I had it when I lived a block from Scarecrow Video in Seattle.
I actually think keeping the DVD by mail with netflix and using another streaming service will probably work best for me, most likely I will just cancel netflix before the change and pay for a month whenever I want a DVD I can't stream.
You may have to wait a day or two for ILL or movies to get to your local branch if they don't have what you're looking for right there. There's also going to be an online listing of movie that are available in the catalog, unlike most of the now defunct movie rental places.
---
Second, we are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into separate plans to better reflect the costs of each and to give our members a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan or the option to subscribe to both. With this change, we will no longer offer a plan that includes both unlimited streaming and DVDs by mail.
So for instance, our current $9.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:
Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 1 out at-a-time (no streaming), for $7.99 a month.
The price for getting both of these plans will be $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99). For new members, these changes are effective immediately; for existing members, the new pricing will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.