Netflix increases price of Blu-Ray rentals

madzack

#1 – 11:52 AM March 30, 2009

just dropped bluray access from my account. the extra 6 dollars a month is just not worth it for the 1 or 2 bluray discs i get from them.

Anonymous Anonymous

#2 – 12:32 PM March 30, 2009

My email said it was going up to $2 / mo, not $4. I wonder if they're sending out different pricing for different customers?

Anonymous Anonymous

#3 – 12:50 PM March 30, 2009

I agree. There's no upside for a casual viewer. I think this is a huge blow to blueray adoption. Can Joe Sixpack really tell the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD? Maybe. Is it worth $6 a month? Doubtful.

I just removed Blu-Ray from my account and from what I've seen around the blogosphere, many others are doing the same.

RedShirt77

#4 – 1:39 PM March 30, 2009

I think they are doing themselves as much damage as they are blu-ray. BR is probably the last gasp of the physical movie medium. Once that get abandoned, they are just doing on demand on a service other then cable, which does have a few monopolies they will need to contend with.

je55ica

#5 – 1:46 PM March 30, 2009

It's the second price hike for Blu-Ray in less than 6 months. It's a price gouging switch and bait and shouldn't be tolerated.

Did you happen to notice their stock jumped 5% in the few hours after the price hike announcement went out?

I'm sick of these automatic price hikes for loyal customers. I dropped Blu-ray and then took my account down to the bare minimum - one-at-a-time with Instant streaming.

Jeff Kramer

#6 – 2:23 PM March 30, 2009

I cancelled my account after I got 4 bluray discs in a row that were cracked. I wish there was an Austin local alternative like GreenCine. GameFly works so well and Netflix so poorly, I just don't get it.

MayorAwesome

#7 – 2:34 PM March 30, 2009

Yup, I dropped my Blu-Ray and put my service down to the bare minimum too. I was pissed at the first rate hike, but this one is just too much.

yri

#8 – 2:42 PM March 30, 2009

Betamaxed.

jacques45

#9 – 3:17 PM March 30, 2009

As one who doesn't have a BluRay player, I'm glad that NetFlix isn't raising the regular DVD rates to subsidize those who paid extra for a fancy player and should be willing to pay more for a higher quality viewing experience.

Be angry at the studios for charging 2x as much for something that costs them almost the same to produce.

dacker

#10 – 3:42 PM March 30, 2009

I called Netflix Customer Service and voiced my opinion -- that the increase is excessive (I'm OK with a $1 increase, not $3) and that the timing is bad, with the economy and such (I was laid-off 10 days ago -- one of the 11% here in Oregon.

Brother Provisional

#11 – 3:59 PM March 30, 2009

Damn. I had been toying with the upgrade, since I watch almost exclusively on my PS3 these days, but now netflix can kiss my cash (which I won't be spending for the monthly upgrade).

AirPillo

#12 – 4:56 PM March 30, 2009

Fuckers!

General Specific

#13 – 6:03 PM March 30, 2009

Netflix sent me that email like three or four months ago. I cancelled the Blu-Ray option straight away.

Lou3000

#14 – 6:34 PM March 30, 2009

Really feeling stupid for buying a PS3 now. The 360 gets more play, but I saw that Netflix was offering BluRays and on the 50" 1080p set I can tell a different.

Unfortunately now BluRay will be relegated only to movies that I really love.

mgfarrelly

#15 – 6:42 PM March 30, 2009

The wailing and gnashing of teeth is misdirected at Netflix.

Netflix is a rare thing, a responsive company where you can actually speak to humans about your problems. They offer a range of service, I'm at the cheapest that allows streaming since that's all I use, and every issue I've had with them has been resolved with one phone call.

Blu-ray discs are stupidly expensive. Even if you have all the tech set-up to get the full experience only movies made in the past 5-10 years will deliver much of a noticeable difference. Yes, Transformers will look amazing. Greeeeaaaat.

Clay

#16 – 6:44 PM March 30, 2009

If this means the end of "short wait" for BDs, I'll pay it. The moment I see another one of those, though, it's coming straight off the account.

Senna1

#17 – 7:22 PM March 30, 2009

if you've a 50" television and a Blu-Ray player you should easily be able to afford the just over a half of a subway footlong sandwich's value of cash for your extravagance. If you can't, pawn your tv and player and get something reasonable.... like the sandwich I mentioned a few seconds ago.

Me? I'll continue to enjoy my plain ol' dvds on my plain ol' television with the 17 hours of streaming movies.

mr.skeleton

#18 – 8:13 PM March 30, 2009

Hear ye hear ye! I love blu-ray and don't care if I pay a couple more bucks and I'll show you why:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_skeleton/tags/bluray/

Just a few screengrabs I recently took (via AnyDVD HD). Maybe you have to work with video to appreciate a 30gb 1080p stream, but a good blu-ray transfer is practically like having a 35mm print at the ready. Note that these screengrabs aren't even full res!

Felix Mitchell

#19 – 5:05 AM March 31, 2009

Oh to be a copywriter. I love (do not love) the leap from "We've bought more Blu-Ray discs, and these cost more than DVDs" to "So we've quadrupled the price."

The way they've explained it makes no sense. DVDs always cost less, that's not a recent change.

dculberson

#20 – 6:35 AM March 31, 2009

It does make sense to charge more to lend a more expensive product, but it's always a bitter pill to swallow for consumers.

Think about it from Netflix's end: these discs are just as fragile, it not more so, as regular DVDs. They cost 2x - 3x as much as regular DVDs. There are fewer customers willing to borrow them compared to regular DVDs. So their costs are higher and utilization rates lower; of course they need to charge more. They should have done it from the start, though. It's very difficult to raise prices quickly and not piss off your customer.

If the studios would make the right decision and bring their prices down to reality then I bet we would see wider adoption of Blu-Ray.

dhuff

#21 – 7:30 AM March 31, 2009

Meh. Regular DVDs look just dandy on my 52" Samsung when played by the Pioneer DV-400V upconverting DVD player we have.

So no Blu-Ray option for me...

Purly

#22 – 8:19 AM March 31, 2009

I stopped blu-ray delivery as soon as they implemented a separate charge for it. If everyone did, netflix would go back on their decision.

Bevatron Repairman

#23 – 8:32 AM March 31, 2009

I take one-at-a-time, and don't really care that much about the $1 rate increase. Still, I've seen most of the movies I really wanted to see in Blu-Ray and the next twenty or so movies on my list don't demand it. So I'll turn it off until I need it.

bowlerhatdinosaur

#24 – 12:27 PM March 31, 2009

I stopped getting blu-rays from netflix when they were charging $1 extra per month. I'm not made of money!

ChunkyMonkeyBrain

#25 – 2:10 PM March 31, 2009

the more things that contribute to the killing of this useless format, the better. Bravo, Netflix!

exhilaration

#26 – 10:50 AM April 1, 2009

I've gotta agree with BD haters. Regular DVD's look just find on my 27" standard-def TV. I'm pretty sure those of you that elected to spend the big bucks on HDTV's and BD players can afford to lay out a few more bucks a month for those ridiculously overpriced discs. Better you folks pay for that luxury than Netflix tries to spread out the cost over all subscriber.