Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Ginkasa Reviews Netflix

Netflix seems to be in the news fairly often recently and not under very good light.  There's been a lot of harsh criticism thrown its way, so I feel its only appropriate that I make Netflix my next review subject.


I initially joined Netflix in November 2006 when I became frustrated by the limited selection at my local Blockbuster.  I was wanting a better selection of more obscure classic films and television shows.  Netflix had what I wanted, and the price was pretty fantastic.  Unfortunately, I found myself falling into the trap of having the DVDs on hand, but not actually watching them.  Now that I had access to almost any movie I could imagine I found I didn't have the time to watch them.  I cancelled the subscription at that point.

About a year later, however, I signed back up and used the service more often.  At this point, I considered Netflix to be the greatest thing in home video.  It was cheap.  It was easy.  I had a vast collection to browse.  I also rarely had to wait for a DVD to become available, although that might be more because I was choosing older movies rather than new releases.  Either way, I was as about as satisfied as a customer could be.  If I were reviewing Netflix at this point I would have recommended it without hesitation.  In fact, I was pretty vocal about how pleased I was with the service.

Things got even better when Netflix announced the streaming service.  I remember the notice exactly, but my impression at the time was that the Watch Instantly feature was considered "in testing" when they first released, thus it was added at no additional cost.  That never happens where a merchant out of the blue gives you more services without requiring extra cost.  It was fabulous!

Of course, I didn't use the streaming service all that often at the time.  The selection wasn't great, the quality could be weird (some movies were only in pan and scan, I seem to remember), and you could only watch things on the PC at the time, but that was okay because I wasn't paying for it.  It was along, however, until Netflix announced that streaming would possible through my XBox360.  We started using the service more often immediately when that became available.  While waiting for the next DVD to come in the mail my girlfriend (now wife) and I would watch various TV shows through the streaming service.

This was the prime of Netflix.  It was even better than before.  I really had no complaints at all about the service.  Okay, a DVD would be unplayable or skip every once in a while, but Netflix sent me a new one no questions asked.  Sure, I had to wait, which was annoying, but I felt it was inevitable with the service they were offering that issues like would happen.  They handled it well, so I didn't complain.  Additionally, the streaming servers would have issues apparently and Netflix credited me for the lost time, even if I otherwise wouldn't have noticed the service was down.

Earlier this year, Netflix announced a price increase.  Essentially, the streaming was no longer free.  You could keep your DVD-only service for the same price you were paying, lose the DVDs and keep the streaming on its own with its own price, or keep both but have to pay for both.  At the time I had the 2 DVDs with the unlimited streaming and BluRay, so my rate was going from, I believe, $17.00 (ish) to about $22.00.

Know what?  I didn't mind.  Sure, I would have preferred to keep the prices the same.  Its not like I wanted to pay more money for the same service I was receiving.  However, I remembered when Netflix announced streaming and said it was "in testing."  I also remember being told that when the streaming came out of testing it would no longer be free.  I could be misremembering, I don't have the e-mail anymore.  That was my impression, however, so I didn't mind the increase.  The issue, in my mind, was a PR issue.  Netflix took too long to charge for the streaming and/or kept it around as a standard feature instead of limiting it to people who had signed up prior to a certain date.  It gained them lots of cred, but they lost all that and more when newer subscribers (or older subscribers who forgot the original announcement) felt cheated and used.

Again, I didn't mind.  I was fine.  I understood and I felt Netflix had been good enough to me over the years that I could allow them this.  Brand loyalty had me.  Then the bombshell dropped.

I'm sure you remember, just a month ago Netflix announced they were splitting their services completely into two separate brands: the streaming service would stay as Netflix, but the DVD service would be re-branded as Qwikster.  Price would technically stay the same, but if you wanted both services you needed to have two accounts and would see two charges to your credit card.

Interestingly, although there was no change in price the backlash from this announcement seemed to worse than the price increase from earlier.  Although I didn't fly into an internet rage, I was included in the naysayers.  The change in name was horrible.  It completely undermined brand loyalty gained over the years.

Its maybe a little silly, but was I raving fan* of Netflix; primarily I was a fan of their DVD service.  With this announcement they basically said I wasn't worthy of the Netflix brand, that Netflix didn't want me, and that I was being relegated to "Qwikster."  Silly, like I said, but that's how I felt.

I still recognized that the Qwikster service would technically be the same DVD service I had been using for years, so I didn't cancel outright.  However, my use of the streaming service was mostly convenience.  If there was something in my DVD queue I didn't want to wait for or I wanted to pass the time while waiting on a DVD, I would pick something from streaming.  With "Netflix" streaming not being connected at all to "Qwikster" that convenience went out the window.  So, I went ahead and preemptively canceled the streaming portion of my subscription.  Additionally, I had been slowing down on my DVD watching watching as well.  So, for good measure, I also lowered my plan from the 2 at a time to the 1 at a time plans.

Of course, Netflix tricked me and announced The Wonder Years was added to the streaming library, so I added streaming back.  I was resolved, however, to cancel it once again once I was finished watching my favorite television show (but that's a review for a different time!).

And then, just earlier today, Netflix announced it would no longer be splitting itself into two entities.

So, with all this history, what are my thoughts on Netflix now?  Personally, I still think it provides a great service.  The DVD service is still aces in my book.  Yeah, streaming seems to be the big deal now and that'll probably be the standard fairly soon.  No streaming service matches the Netflix DVD selection, in my opinion.  There is some hullabaloo about new releases taking a while to get on there, but that doesn't effect me.  I use the service exclusively for older releases, so I don't notice the delay.

The streaming is alright.  I really haven't compared Netflix streaming too much to other services like Amazon Prime or Hulu.  Its not my primary interest, so I don't give it too much thought.  For me to switch to streaming exclusively they'll need to make some improvements to both the selection and the presentation of the movies themselves.

Ultimately, though, Netflix is still aces in my book despite the recent mistakes.  Hopefully they'll learn from the past few months and communicate better and make some better decisions.






*BTW, I'm not trying to sell this book to you.  I tried to link to the wiki page, but there wasn't one so Amazon had to do.  It is kind of interesting, though, if you feel compelled to buy it.  That's a review for another time, however.

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