Either one alone? Incomplete service.
Both? Not enough value at the 2X price.
We kept our subscription open until the day the price hike would hit us (How does Netflix get away with "the moment you cancel, your subscription ends, no refunds for partial months"?!?), then canceled completely.
I tried to send them feedback explaining our decision, but I could not locate a "contact us" via internet vs phone, and I didn't care enough to call them.
I was on a $4.99 1-DVD at a time plan. Then I was on an $8.99/month unlimited streaming plus 1 DVD (yeah, unlimited streaming is worth the extra $4).
Nov 2010 it up $1/month. Then this year it underwent mitosis , becoming two $8/month plans.
Yes, $16 is less than 2 * $9, but the process feels like a 2X increase in under a year.
So far as no partial refunds, I know their agreement says that, but I saw a partial refund to my credit card within a week of canceling.
After the most recent bad disc, I did what the OP mentioned, and honestly looked at what value I was getting out of the service, and I ended up cancelling. I understand that discs get scratched in transit or handling, and I understand that I'm living in the past as far as digital vs. physical media goes, I just think what it boiled down to for me is that when you separate the DVD and streaming services out, neither of them really stand up on their own as worth their cost. I'd probably re-subscribe to the streaming if they improved their selection or lowered the cost failing that, but I don't think I'd bother with discs again.
Then the split came. Quadrupling the price of "someday..." wasn't worth it. Copied the lists to a text file, and cancelled. Insofar as Netflix streaming doesn't have everything, iTunes (yay AppleTV!) has most everything else available on a whim for a mere $2-5/rental. With kids streaming their shows on demand (no scratches! no fingerprints! no oatmeal in the DVD player!) from a vast instant library, and me not watching much at all (but when I do, a few bucks for "this, now" works fine), one slick box fusing a few streaming video services (yay AppleTV!) works well.
I'm not sure how Netflix intends to attract back the million or so who cancelled. We've adapted; why return?
Since 90% of what I actually want to watch is only available via dvd, streaming was more of a convenient addon than the core product. That I was going to lose the integration between streaming & dvd made streaming pointless.
The combo of streaming and dvds is still less than we were spending (in $ and hassle) on dvd rentals from the local big-selection store most months. (And comparing any of this to the entertainment option of cable is a big win, obviously.) Redbox seldom to never has anything to interest me, and the lack of depth to the Netflix streaming catalog precludes me wanting streaming alone. I'm somewhat bad about holding a disc for a while (b/c I often get documentaries and educational stuff, so I have to be in the right mood), but my wife watches what she gets very quick, so that common complaint doesn't bite us much.
She regularly gets dvds that are rare enough that they have to ship the disc from across the country, and I really like that Netflix will send us the next disc from the queue to "make up for the delay" which has never been much of a delay at all. So, many times we have had one more disc on hand than the plan we pay for. Good customer service like that is still something Netflix does. The two-websites and queues plan made me worry they had lost their senses, but this reversal and having had three discs this week when I pay for two has me still in the loyal customer column.
DVD service is still valuable because there's literally no other way of watching movies that aren't available for streaming anywhere, Netflix or otherwise (which add up to a depressingly large amount). However, I am looking into Redbox as an alternative (which I wouldn't have done had Netflix not segregated their service...)
Streaming, despite the recent poor selection, pays for itself easily in the few TV series that we watch and are available. Spending $20 to buy a series on DVD or Amazon streaming vs a Netflix streaming subscription is a no-brainer.
If it ever happened that none of the series we wanted to watch were available on Netflix, we'd probably cancel (and renew if we found one we did want to watch.)
We were not either, so I would usually rip the DVDs when I got them and then watch it when we had time (also my only dvd player is a 360 and it's so loud...much better to stream over the ATV). After watching I would delete them...honest, I rarely watch a movie twice. Recently that became harder though because of increased copy protections.
How did other HNers respond to the price hike?
Canceled the DVD service the day the price hike was announced.
I thought about getting a ps3 for the BRD functionality and games, but at this point I don't want to deal with any physical media. Even if the 1080p is better, I've never looked at the movies streaming through the ATV2 to my 46" LCD and thought the 720p picture took away from the movie. Then again, I'm old enough to remember being the human remote control for my dad and I still have an old tube TV in the bedroom :)
You're probably right about 720 vs 1080. You've go to be pretty close to see the difference on a 46" screen. I believe I read that someone with 20/20 vision has to be closer than 8 feet to see the difference on a 50" screen.
If I was building a home theater setup with a huge projector (or giant LCD), dolby digital (7.1 now?), etc... then of course I want the best quality in everything I can get. A friend of mine has one of these setups and it is amazing.
The above is quite different than the family room TV though. I've seen BRD quality on my 46" TV and yes I can see the difference, but I have to look for it. It's been my opinion for awhile that picture quality and sound at 720p or 1080p streamed is mostly 'good enough' and people now want convenience.
As for streaming, from what I understand, 720p is actually better than 1080p when streaming, because 1080p streams end up getting compressed to the point that they actually look worse than the 720p equivalent. Fuzziness from stretching the 720p signal is less visible than blockiness from 1080p compression. Blu-Ray obviously doesn't suffer from streaming limitations, though.
However, the split made me livid, especially with the implicit message that Netflix doesn't want its original customers anymore. While that motivation probably hasn't changed, I'm placated for now that they're at least keeping the service under one roof.
I don't see how Netflix streaming is a good deal unless there is a significant increase in the quality of available content and that doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.
If you have them, it's worth it. If not, it's harder to justify.
The selection for kids was just a bunch of the same cartoons the networks re-run all day long every day on cable that we don't like them watching, so it didn't seem to make sense to pay extra so they could re-watch more of the same junk more often.
We cut the cable cord over a year ago, relying on Netflix Streaming for older content and iTunes for newer stuff. Even paying for the iTunes stuff, we're WAY, WAY, WAY ahead. I should do that math someday...
For things that aren't on Netflix, we sometimes use Redbox or Amazon's On Demand rentals, but mostly it doesn't exist for us.
I was probably buying a different service than Netflix thought they were selling: All the streaming movies I can stand for about $10/month, with DVDs as backup if they aren't streamed.
As others have noted, neither service on its own is worth the price to me. Streaming quality is OK. DVDs are usually playable but not always. Once I start the DVD and settle in with my popcorn, a refund or the next movie can't make up for the disappointment and wasted time of a half watched movie.
I'm price sensitive these days, as are a lot of people. I'm going with the library, and the occasional PPV on Amazon or Youtube. I don't have to watch every new movie, and most of my viewing was classics, indie and foreign anyway.
We were more annoyed by the Netflix change than enraged by it, and it was a convenient reason to examine the value vs. expense ratio of what we were buying every month. So while we used both the streaming and DVD services, we didn't use them enough to justify the expense. Same with cable. Now we just watch less TV and play the same amount of video games. Library card and internet usage have increased.
The biggest streaming issue was that I often watch movies with subtitles because a friend is hard of hearing. Subtitles were a grossly unreliable feature; they would appear at odd times, often in a big rush, making them useless.
(This when watching a movie via the Wii.)