No More Netflix
February 10th, 2009, 7:38pm by Mike
After about a year and a half of trying, we’ve decided that Netflix has not made us into the “movie people” we’d hoped it would, and we’ve cancelled our subscription.
While it’s definitely a great service (as many of our friends have told us over the years), we’re the ones bankrolling the frequent movie watchers, since our movie watching rate has probably averaged over 2 months to watch our two-movies-at-a-time. At the current rate of $13.99, we were close to being able to just buy the movies we rented.
And it’s not like we’re without options for getting movies:
- Our AppleTV allows us to rent movies from the iTunes store, at $3 to $5 each. The rules say that you have 30 days to start the movie, then 24 hours to watch it once you start. Not that bad.
- Thanks to having Boxee running on our AppleTV, we can watch movies from Hulu. They have a decent selection, but of course, no new releases or anything like that. But if we’re really bored, we can probably find something to watch.
- Then there’s always the other sources of movies on the internet. I’ve never downloaded a movie that way, and with our movie-watching habits, I think we probably won’t ever need to.
The other potential downside is the continuing growth of the “Watch Instantly” streaming movies from Netflix, which lets you stream some (not all, currently about 12,000) of their movies directly to your TV or computer. Boxee handles this on the Mac, but not on the AppleTV (yet). That might be something to bring us back — but we figure we can sign up again if we really want it.
Bottom line: Netflix was part of our strategy when our Tivo broke, and we’ve figured out that our media needs are even more paltry than we thought.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I agree… we also do not watch enough DVDs to make it worthwhile to subscribe to Netflix (nor do we watch enough on their streaming service). And even though we have the option to rent on demand from XBox or Amazon (like you do with AppleTV), we don’t do it that often. I really think the lack of new releases on those services really hurts. I’m aware when the blockbusters come out on DVD (mostly because I’ll see the displays at BEstBuy or something), but if I don’t watch them then, I won’t ever get around to them. And that’s why Redbox or DVDPlay gets my movie dollar more than any other service.