Look, some people
are perfectly content to swap a DVD with Netflix once a millenia and watch Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer in
Ladyhawke on their Xbox 360 -- other people demand something a bit more "hip" on their Instant Watch queue. Netflix is apparently investigating the possibility of an additional $10 monthly fee to watch HBO shows and movies on the streaming service, or at least has a poll to that effect. For people that keep cable around just for things like HBO and Showtime, it's an attractive proposition, and perhaps a bit of an inevitability, but at $10 a month we'd expect Netflix to toss in a bit more premium content than just what one channel has to offer. What's clear is that either way, people are going to find a way to watch this stuff online, and the first provider to figure out the right way to monetize and distribute it wins. This seems like a tentative step in the right direction, if it comes to pass.
posted Feb 1st 2009 6:50PM
I love my ROKU box, but, I am getting tired of all the B movies and independent films and foreign language stuff that makes up the current Instant Viewing offerings. It would be great if the ROKU box itself offered HULU and FANCAST. I would not pay $10 additional a month for just one channel, though. I have nearly given up on sending the DVDs back and forth since the Roku way of doing Netflix is so easy.
completely agree with you. i just don't understand why they can't make all DVD content available for streaming... They don't need to print the physical media, they don't need to pay the postage costs, and they don't need to spend all those resources to receive and distribute the physical media.
I can understand that maybe their agreements w/ Sony etc... might prohibit a true "all you can eat" setup, when it comes to new releases... BUT AT LEAST set it up so that I'm entitled to 10, 20, 30 new releases per month. Don't JUST release B movies, documentaries, indy films, and Family Ties, Season One. That's fucking bullshit. Seriously.
Also... NXE shoudl add hulu, and boxee.
Maybe tha'ts just me dreaming, idk.
I guess netflix doesn't realize we're in a bad economy? It seems like a bad precedence to begin charging EXTRA for content that should already be there. Watch Now offerings are still pretty slim they need to add more features or studios and that would bring in new subscribers. With more ubiquitous offerings at redbox or what's already on premium tv providers and hiking their prices, i don't HAVE to have netflix anymore to get content cheaply.
Is it that it's cheap or is it that it's convenient? I feel both... my only gripe is that I'm using netflix from a cable modem... my cable company wanted to charge me as much without the movie channels as with it... I say those movie channels are crap they show the same stuff everyday... streaming with netflix is the bomb. Getting more variety is good... paying more for content that I want is a possibility.
I'm skeptical that my cable company is clamping my stream to netflix because when netflix tries to reduce quality all the time I will do a speed test and I'm getting fast speeds (3 to 4 mps)... Conspiricy?
Netflix does not make movies! What is up with everyone saying that Netflix needs to have more new releases available to stream, etc? They don't own the movies, they can't just make them available to stream as they please. It is up to the studio whether or not they will allow streaming, and at the moment, they are not allowing much to be streamed. It's not just Netflix refusing to do more streaming.
I'm sure Netflix would love to have streaming for every title in their catalog, but the studios won't allow it. I'd pay $10-$15 a month, just for unlimited streaming if they had every title available, without any physical media.
$10 additional is far too much. And besides, for $10/mo I can get HBO and get at least half as many movies available to me each month as Netflix entire streaming service has!
Besides, after the fee for "premium" BluRay service, I'm disinclined to give them any more money for "premium" services.
Only one of my top 10 BluRays in my queue is available with less than a "long wait", despite over half of them having been in there 3 months or more.
The people who keep saying that, for $10, you can get HBO, blah, blah, blah, are completely missing the point. First, you CANNOT get HBO for $10/month. You may be able to get HBO for $10 EXTRA per month - on top of whatever you're already paying - but not a flat $10/month.
And that's the market that Netflix is exploring. There are quite a lot of people who don't have cable, don't have satellite, don't even have broadcast television. These people currently spend $0 per month. Like you, these people cannot get HBO for $10 per month. If, however, they already have Netflix, they - like you - can spend an extra $10 per month for additional programming.
All that being said, $10/month is too much.
And, as Steve likes to say, "one more thing": The restriction on what Netflix offers via streaming has nothing to do with Netflix. They offer what the studios allow them to offer and nothing more. The studios are still stuck in the past and, even though we're in a tough economy, likely won't lose their grip on their past behavior until they file for bankruptcy.
and if they do this they will have just destroyed everything good they achieved with their streaming service.
I can get more channels of HBO in better quality HD with 5.1 surround from my cable provider for the equivalent or less money.
If I wanted all of these additional fees, I would just get cable again. Please Netflix, don't ruin such a beautiful thing.
You do realize it would be completely optional, right?
Yes completely optional unless you want your Netflix service to suck. If they start nickel and dimeing the service, that affects every one.
Bottom line is Netflix will be completely digital downloads one day. The question is whether they will continue to offer up good service at a good price, or will they get greedy?
On the other hand, I'm paying less now than I did when I began as a NF customer. I could see the rates go up a bit for more service, but $10 seems steep.
"Yes completely optional unless you want your Netflix service to suck"
It doesn't suck now and I'm not currently paying $10 extra for HBO content, so I fail to see how it will suddenly suck if you decide to not pay the extra $10 if additional service becomes and retain the same service I currently have.
Or maybe they should do a "streaming only tier" that includes that.
I think that's still $2 less than I pay for hbo right now.
I'm not really sure why people are against an OPTIONAL service. HBO isn't going to give netflix the rights to stream their shows for free and I doubt netflix can afford to give them a % of their profit.
While some of you may hate the idea or think its too much, I personally like the idea of it. Yeah cheaper would be better but $10 is sure far better then what I would be paying the cable company.
Yeah, but for that money, you get all of HBO, including a lot of movies per month. This would only be adding the HBO self-generated content, like Entourage.
Netflix could afford it when you consider the additional subscribers they would get by including streaming HBO, the need to buy fewer HBO shows on DVD (I'm in the middle of doing Deadwood right now, and waiting for discs sucks), and the fact that they would have an awesome thing to cross-advertise.
@ "why not the LS2LS7"
According to the Engadget post, you would be getting both HBO TV shows and MOVIES, so it sounds like it would be just like the Starz Deal where you would also have access to any movies HBO has the licenses for.
You'll only get HBO content. They do not have the rights to assign distribution rights to anything they don't make themselves.
By HBO shows and movies, they mean HBO shows and HBO-made/distributed movies, like Hacking Democracy for example.
But why then is Starz allowed to distribute the movies they have the rights to, but HBO wouldn't be allowed?
It's good to have options but i think HBO/Starz/Cinemax are all way over price. The only way i can see myself getting them is if i live in a developing country where you get all of them for about $10 US along with like 120 more channels from local cable companies
$10 is just TOOOOO much $3 to $5 max
Wow nice pic!
the gods of folk rock rap duos
Flight of the Conchords is great! Love that show. If you haven't checked it out, do so!
Bret: [while being mugged] But Jemaine loves that camera-phone.
Jemaine: You can keep it.
Jemaine: I think you might have ruined my phone when you made me that camera-phone... and my camera.
[hands over old instamatic camera super glued to the back of a cellphone]
LS, thats only true if I already subscribed to cable. Considering how I don't and im sure plenty of other people that use Netflix don't, this would be a nice service worth paying for. It would also depend on what the delay would be before new episodes are available (for $10 hopefully no delay) and if they open up their entire back catalog of shows as well.
GD, Netflix! Just do it! Start charging us! We have a little more money! Just give us more movies on Instant Queue!
Oh, and I'm certainly not paying $10/mo for HBO alone... unless we get access to every movie ever shown on HBO.
My only thought against moving away from physical media is that all these internet providers (yeah Comcast, I'm looking at you) are starting to cap internet use. For now though my cap is 250GB a month but what's to stop them from bringing that bar down? I know a few other ISP are starting to look into capping at a much lower capacity.
If you're wanting to watch a HD movie you're looking at around 1.5-2GB per movie being streamed.
1.5GB?
Maybe if the movie is only 80 minutes, 720p and still overcompressed.
I know H.264 is a good encoder, but you're going to lose a lot of quality compressing a normal movie into 2GB of data. It's still not great at 4GB!
To me, one of the big impediments to HD adoption is people are seeing poor quality sources and (rightfully) saying "what's the big deal"?
Do yourself a favor, watch a BluRay (or HD-DVD if you want, they look the same) or two. Let's get REAL HD started off on the right foot.
That seems a bit much for HBO-only content. I mean how much original content does HBO has every month that would justify such premium for a broad spectrum of viewers? And besides, since they can't even stream with closed captions properly, that doesn't sound like a good proposal. They would have to include much more content than just HBO for that price, or go with a pay-per-rental plan, or a rollover hours-per-month approach.
On a related topic, I'd rather see Roku bringing Hulu with ads than Netflix having HBO for a fee.
At the top of my wish list for Netflix:
1. closed captions,
2. more recent releases,
3. more content (the entire PBS catalog for instance.)
it's optional, but what happens when all the good movies are on that tier?
I doubt HBO has the rights to offer all those movies online, this is ONLY HBO generated content.
But even if we play devils advocate here and yeah they offered all the movies on HBO as well and then started only putting the "good" movies in that price tier, if you don't like it, you walk away from it.
Enough people do that and Netflix would get the idea but you don't take a stand against an optional service from a company thats goal is to make money all because your afraid of what they MIGHT do in the future.
netflix streaming rentals blow hard compared to renting a bluray on a 52" Sony 1080p ,streaming this crap is like taking a step back in audio video technology. VHS like streaming quality ,get with the times!!!!!!!shame on engadget editors for even allowing low end quality audio/video product to make it on a post.this is engadget , we are supposed to promote cutting edge.
Cutting edge is, in part, defined by the platform. Netflix is at the top of the game for what they do with streaming full-length content. So trying to compare the on-demand offerings to the BD getting delivered to your door is apples and oranges. No one is saying they are comparable. No one besides you is even insinuating such a comparison You might as well be arguing that it makes no sense to have a DS or PSP since the PS3, 360, and Wii are out there.
Consider online movies like the .MP3. The quality you'd get from the internet wasn't as good as what you'd get on a CD, but it was convenient, and a good value. Plus, in Apple's case, the movies you buy or rent for download can be taken with you on an iPod Touch or iPhone, and it's better to keep the file size small for that.
I wouldn't pay $10 for HBO because Showtime has the best original programming right now.
$10 is way too much...$3 max for just HBO...
How about $10/month More for every new released movie/tv show/etc to be able to be streamed..... Now I would pay for that!!!
On Friday my wife went into Blockbuster and picked up the second two discs of the first season of the Sopranos. Tomorrow she will return them and Friday she will go back in for the first two discs of season two. If we don't finish watching all the episodes in a weekend she has to return them and take them out again later to avoid a late charge.
We figure this is a better plan than using our Blockbuster online subscription; this way at least we know we'll get them in order.
If Netflix would stream HBO content for $10 extra a month I'd order the Roku box tonight.
F U Netflix and your crappy movies .....
Let's think about the logic, here. My cable company charges me approximately $15 a month for a premium channel, with discounts for each premium thereafter. This is, of course, because the premium channels charge the cable company some fee (clearly less than this) to provide their channel. Sounds like Netflix is getting in on the same deal, paying HBO for direct and instant access to all of their shows, and passing the cost on to the user. This is STILL less than what my cable company charges for the service, and may have been one of the few factors that kept me paying for cable. I'm having less and less reason by the day to keep cable television, and Netflix is now one of the factors that could transfer my interest. $15 a month for live and on-demand access to HBO, or $10 a month for purely on-demand access which may include shows as early as the same day they air or, at worst, the next day.
Now personally, for me, this isn't that intriguing, as I DON'T subscribe to HBO. I subscribe to Showtime. If this was Showtime, and if everything they aired was available on-demand, immediately, I'd switch without blinking. I assume if I valued HBO the same way, I would do the same.
The only flaw in that is what a couple others have said. If HBO can negotiate delivery of content they do not own, then everything's chicken. If not, it would be selling the consumer short at $10. But much like what SiriusXM is proposing, if everyone isn't being saddled with it without option, then let them try. No issues by me as log as they don't try to start shifting content around into a new tier.
I don't want HBO, but I'd definitely pay $10 extra for instant view of new releases
I'm all for it, but they'd better manage to make it look a LOT better than that starz crap. How you make Ratatouille unwatchable, I'll never know, but they did it. Picture and sound get an F-.
I don't like the idea of this.
It would open the doors for more selective content tiers- the best thing about the netflix streaming service is the depth of their catalogue. If they begin fracturing who can see what, I'll be pretty disappointed.
why pay that much when you can pay the same to have the HBO package .
meh.... at this rate, in 5 years Netflix = cable. $10 for this channel's stuff, $10 for that channel's stuff... Netflix will become the a la carte cable service everyone has been clamoring for...
What is great about Netflix Wactch now is that it has provided a cheap enough solution to stop alot of people from downloading material in an illegal manner. At $8.99 a month...the risk and the time to download and wait is not worth it when you charge so little. They need to find that sweet spot where people (meaning millions) are willing to pay for unlimited viewing of content instead of pirating it!
I had a feeling Netflix was going to turn into a service fee kind of company...
I just hope they keep the rates low and don't get too greedy.
hmm it seems like netflix is doing all it can to get me to buy there service.. and i have to say im pretty damn close to trying it out.