Haven't subscribed to Netflix for a few years now (issues with their content). What is this about paying for screens? Don't you just have access to their service once you pay for it?

"Four screens" means you can run four streams concurrently.

Their higher tiers increase both your maximum streaming resolution and the number of simultaneous streams you can do.

Totally agree. There should be a cheaper option of one-screen 4K and without the games. I don't understand why I need to pay for the games that I don't want to play.

Oh yeah, totally forgot about the games. Instead of renewing shows, just dump money into games for you VIDEO STREAMING service. Because of course!

Think of the shareholders!

Think of the people who would be interested and who would be able to play 4k.

Do they have money? Absolutely. To stream 4k you need a good internet connection and good equipment.

With this in mind, it completely makes sense to charge the most for 4k. Someone that cares is more than wealthy enough to pay for it. Having a 4k 1 person plan would be a loss of profits.

You can stream 4K on common network connections (20mbps), and 4K TVs are cheap. While I agree that it’s premium, just because many people don’t notice the quality difference, the real problem is the competition. Disney Plus, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime (and even Peacock!) have 4K HDR on their basic paid plans. Netflix is drastically behind here.

What would you pay for a one screen, 4K plan? $15?

In 2015, I would have been all over that. But with every media company wanting their piece of my wallet, I have a hard time justifying paying for Netflix on its own.

Part of the appeal of sharing your account is that it brings the effective cost closer to $5/mo/person at most.

Or, what most people I know do: one person pays for Netflix, one for Disney+, one for HBO, etc. Even if I can get a single screen 4K plan for say, $10, there’s no way I’m paying $50 for 5 different services for just myself.

Thanks. That’s a bit different than the other user’s reasoning that the single screen plan ought to support 4K, since the single screen 480p plan costs $10/mo, twice what you’re willing to pay for a service.

You valuing access around $5/mo suggests Netflix’s experimental pricing of $3-4/mo per shared login might be dialed in, though.

I would say that, the 1 screen plan should support full HD, and the 2 screen plan should support 4k, as current price. They can save money by not spending in games. C'mon, we are in 2022, no one wants to pay to watch 720p

Yeah, I keep wondering about this business model choice too. Netflix is the only major streamer left at this point charging for HD and 4K as separate tiers. The other major streamers do sometimes tier on simultaneous screens, and often refer to higher tiers as "family plans".

Netflix is at least unintentionally messaging at this point that "only families want or need higher quality streams" and that is a very weird mixed message in the current streaming market, especially now with their slowly increasingly more hostile messaging that they are tired of people sharing passwords (because the shareholders demand account growth in a saturated market with a much-increased field of competitors).

for that matter we should stop calling 1080p HD :(

on a mordern display 1080p content are visibly pixilated

I'd love it if we could just go back to the sane convention that calls a spade a spade. Eg, it's 120 V and 240 V, not "standard-volt" and "super-volt". USB is participial farcical with their ever laughable naming schemes. At least Ethernet is reasonably sane.

(And don't get me started on how 4K is a blatant lie as it's really 3860-px wide. 2160p is also ok. Real 4K is a thing, but not consumer).

4k being 3860px thing doesn’t even matter. It’s still 4x the pixel count vs 1080p and looks excellent.

The real quality problem is bitrate, not raw resolution. A 1080p Blu-ray looks absolutely amazing on a 4K TV. Low-bitrate 4k looks like dogshit. I’d be ok with Netflix’s 1080p if the compression wasn’t so poor on some titles!

They also allow 5 profiles. I don't know why one person would have more than a single profile.

What the actual plans seems to be is to keep multiple profiles and multiple streams but insist that users of a plan are "in the same household" which is totally nuts and the most cable/broadcast TV way of thinking possible.

Presumably they will fingerprint each client and ensure that these clients are "normally" coming from the same location or even IP. Totally mad, will end in tears .

4k on Netflix isn't worth the additional cost. Only Netfix' own productions are 4k, and the additional resolution is consumed by an excessive amount of artificial film grain.