"Netflix plans to convert viewers who share passwords, which it predicts at around 100 million, to paid accounts."

I stopped reading there. That 100 million is undoubtedly 100 million devices. My login is on 7 different devices.

It's going to be an issue alright, even someone who lives alone is likely to have it on at least one Smart TV or similar, a phone, a tablet and maybe a laptop as well, never mind families. How they choose to differentiate between legitimate use and password sharing is going to be a challenge.

This story has also been on a lot of the TV websites for obvious reasons, and most people are saying it's not cost but content driving them away. Netflix throws too much at the wall, and very little sticks for more than 1-2 series before they cancel it.

I think I prefer series that only have one or two seasons. Some long-running series just seem to add seasons for the money instead of genuine story reasons, see Supernatural or How to Get Away With Murder. I can't see anyone wanting to watch 10 seasons of Squid Game.

I liked Lost in Space because it had a clear trajectory and ended at the right time.

Designated Survivor, on the other hand, got progressively worse. By series 3 I got the impression Netflix didn't want to make it either. They should've stopped after series 1.

> I think I prefer series that only have one or two seasons

It can be nice having properly self-contained and properly wrapped up stories.

The problem these days is that series finales tend to be deliberately written with some unfinished threads/deliberate cliffhangers, so that they've got something to kick start the next series off.

Supernatural being perhaps the prime example/chief culprit.

Unfortunately, I think this model is starting to backfire for Netflix, since they've started doing the Google thing of cancelling shows after one or two seasons.

Anecdotally, several friends have stopped watching new shows on Netflix, because they know that said shows are likely to be cancelled at a "cliffhanger" point.

Which then leads to a catch-22: if people aren't watching the shows unless they've reached a natural conclusion, then Netflix are more likely to cancel said shows, since no-one's watching them...

I don't have a problem with short runs if they are what was intended. E,g. True Detective or Fargo is always conceived as an anthology so each season is a standalone story. Netflix though seems to flip-flop between dragging out for far too long (House of Cards) or 1/2 and done with no notice to the creators to wrap it up coherently.

The one exception at the moment seems to be Cobra Kai, which is so much better than a continuation of a cheesy 80s film franchise has any right to be.

Some shows need more than two seasons though, and still get cancelled.

Yes, I'm still angry about The OA.

Detection can be relatively straightforward. Just check activity by source IP and it should show multiple logins from different origins. Main challenge then is filtering legit mobile users from account sharing.

But agree on content, or lack of. Also been interesting comparing Amazon's strategy. They shift content to ad supported channels like IMDB, and act as a front-end to other content, eg Discovery via Prime. I also think some of Netflix's content gets a bit too woke, eg the way they butchered Altered Carbon.

Also perhaps bad timing given I got a message telling me Netflix's subscription price was increasing.

I'm guessing if you're connecting over different ADSL ISP's it'll be obvious.

Normal users don't stream from two different Sky IP's at the same time, for instance.

How is Netflix defining sharing? My use case - all the famalam in one house (for now) using Netflix/Prime on multiple devices. The key here is that all devices share the same connection (except on (a) mobile device(s) that might not be WiFi connected). The problem then crops up when I go on my holiday to Scotland and hire a cottage..... ....with a smart TV that I legitimately use to watch my Netflix account on.......... ...or one of the financial burdens is at a mates house watching Netflix on their mobile, connected to mates WiFi....

2FA is probably the easist approach. Network analysis is good to an idea of the scale of the problem but not so good for enforcement. Also, lots of people use VPNs because of geofencing.

Cheaper plans with ads will no doubt bring some new users, but then you are competing directly with whichever ad-funded systems are already out there.

I think the biggest problem that streaming services are facing is that creating lots of good content is hard. A few years ago, Netflix was on its own in showering cash on productions, in a way that HBO did 30 years ago. Now there is much more competition for not much more creative talent.

2FA doesn’t help in the slightest. If my kids are out of the house using Netflix and I, as the account holder, get a 2FA ping for a Netflix login, of course I’ll let them log in.

Not sure what problem you’re trying to solve with 2FA when the account holder is most likely collaborating in the sharing.

It depends on the type of 2FA you use.

If it's one where a code is sent, or you have to generate the code, then the other person needs to call you to get the code. That's not quite so convenient, especially as they tend to be time sensitive.

Use 2FA to authorise the devices being used and limit/manage these.

HBO does that, it periodically tells me to (re)activate the device by logging on the website (they limit the number of active devices) - but if I had shared the account and password with someone else, they'd be happy to enter the details by themselves

They use geolocation. When Netflix detects a new location they send you a polite email telling you -the device type, the possibly incorrect location and the time.

Plus the text:

If this was you or someone in your household:

Enjoy watching! Have you seen this one?*******

If it was someone else:

Please remember that we only allow the people in your household to use your account.

Which you ignore because it was just someone in your "household" on holiday or business travelling. Obviously Netflix have a pretty good idea if this is the case or not, but they can never be certain.

Surely that is the ideal way to detect and discourage sharing? ISTR it was Borland that said that their licensing was analogous to that of a book. A book can be shared with many people, but not all at the same time. To me that is the fairest policy, and one that is most easily possible to enforce.

Ok, if you want the media to be there in every room in your house whenever you move around it then there needs to be seamless switching between devices, with a few seconds allowed changeover between devices, but then again, how likely is it that the different devices are playing in sync relative to each other?

The problem is Netflix allows you to stream on multiple devices, so in your Borland example, several people can read the book at the same time. Or even different books.

From Netflix's perspective, this is supposed to be all within a household - however people choose to deliberately confuse "household" with "family" and share logins with people living in other households.

I own a city apartment and a country cottage, me or any other member of my household might be in any of those places using Netflix, or one of us might be using it on a mobile device, on mobile net or some shared wi-fi. If Netflix starts cutting my access for no good reason they might lose a customer.

That 100 million is undoubtedly 100 million devices

Not undoubtedly. Smart people go for the Premium plan that allows 4 things to be watched simultaneously and share it between 4 or perhaps more people as it's unlikely that many of the group will ever want to be watching Netflix simultaneously. The downside of having more than 4 is that there are only 4 "slots" to save where you are in a series etc. so "resume" might not take you to the right episode etc.

Whilst it does mean that the cost per person is halved it doesn't man that Netflix would get twice the revenue if they stopped it. I suspect it would lead to canceled subscriptions and a loss of revenue.

A large technology platform intent on making the user experience worse with every new step? Colour me surprised. I can't be the only one that's noticed the quality of content has fallen, the price has gone up, and with adverts being introduced it'll turn into an even larger data mine than it already is. It's a shame because I've been with Netflix since the start and it's historically been a great, reasonably priced service.

The experience of the social media giants suggests they'll rake it in for a couple of years before completely losing sight of their core function and fading into irrelevance.

The Netflix platform "updates" have made me return to buying DVDs, easy to watch without adverts and Netflix is no longer selling my data, while the cash I pay for the DVD is going to the companies and actors doing the work to create the content, not just a company selling it.

made me return to buying DVDs

I never moved away from doing so, shunned streaming in favour of second-hand DVDs which can be as low as 20p each or £1 for a box-set, BluRay a little more.

The biggest problem is storage space and finding time to watch what I have accumulated.

The biggest problem is storage space

Rip them and give the physical disks back to the charity shop.

I do that with CDs, cheaper to buy them on ebay from Music Magpie or whoever than buy them digitally, plus I generally like looking at the lyric sheets etc at least once or twice. Rip them to MP3 and stored on my NAS for regular use. Boxes and boxes of them in my loft though!

Yes, the content has been going downhill. However, one reason Netflix cannot really do anything about is studios setting up their own streams, and taking their content out of Netflix. So no Disney properties on Netflix, which sadly now includes much more than Mickey Mouse (like the Marvel, Starwars and Pixar franchises).

To see all I would like to stream, i would have to subscribe to HBO, Disney+, Amazon, Apple in addition to Netflix. The monthly bill would start getting serious.

The writing was on the wall when they scrapped the stars system for 'like' - 'we don't have any bad content, just content you might not like as much as other content!'.

And the social-media style endless scrolling panels - 'keep scrolling, there's no end, just more great stuff!'

I won't cancel as they have enough good stuff (esp in 4K/HDR) that it'd be cutting my nose off to spite my face, but I'm not as happy about it as I used to be...

Ads. That always seems to be the solution: more ads. Is the ad budget seen as an endless well of money? At some point advertisers' managements are going to start taking a closer look at what they get for that money.

Not so sure. In the UK right now 70% of the ads are directed at 3% of the population.

We've just ditched Sky because of the deluge of ads and constant attempts to rip us off, and when looking at what else is available we're unimpressed by the numerous and unskippable ads on several digital services; we were considering Netflix as an option but already wavering thanks to the recent price hikes and complaints about the drop in quality. Their decision to introduce ads (which spread like weeds, they won't be restricted to the budget accounts for long) is probably a deal-breaker.

> We've just ditched Sky because of the deluge of ads and constant attempts to rip us off

I'm about to say some very rude things to Virgin, but that's mostly because they've hugely bumped up the monthly price, and I haven't actually switched on their TV box for the last 6 months.

Youtube is the main annoyance for me atm - the deluge of adverts they're forcing on "free" viewing is frankly obnoxious. Especially since they seem to be overly repetitive and woefully poorly targetted, to boot.

I wouldn't mind as much if YT was actually producing the content, or if any measurable amount of the monies from said adverts went to the people actually creating said content. But alas, it all seems to stream straight into Google/Alphabet's pockets.

I may have to see if I can figure out some way of getting a filtering-proxy set up for my Roku TV...

We moved to Freesat from Sky earlier this year as we realised the only channel we watch that's not on Freesat is Sky Atlantic, and £20+ a month for one mediocre channel seemed a bit steep. We will get the cost of the Freesat box back in about 6 months of no Sky subs.

It was easy to switch too: remove Sky box, connect Freesat box. Send Sky box back to Sky with packing that they supply. Simples.

The hateful Sky Q system will darken our doors no more.

Marketing wonks already know that half the money they spend on advertising is utterly wasted. The trouble is, they're not sure which half.

Advertisers have always know that their money is being wasted. It was John Wanamaker who once said, Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.

"focused on our members creating that great experience and then again, getting monetized in a first-class way"

I wonder....

1. COVID eased back....

2. It's sunny Springtime...

3. People going outside...

4. People going on holidays and breaks...

5. Prcies and cost of living through the roof...

Sorry Netflix but given a choice between paying for crap TV shows OR food and/or going away for first time in years...

AKA: "we've reached market saturation, so we're curtailing features in expectation that existing customer accounts will increase their number of subscriptions"

Anyone who thinks this will work is completely nuts. They're just pushing people towards cancelling their existing subscriptions.

We've had a subscription since it started, 5 of us (all the same family). We are frequently geographically spread out, but do live together. The day we start to get warnings, ads, or any other "incentive" is the day I cancel, permanently.

In Netflix's two biggest markets (the US and UK) it is certainly close to saturation with subscription count being equal to around 20% of overall population. Places like Germany and France hover around 13% so there's room to grow in those places. Unfortunately, Netflix makes over half its revenue from 4 countries even though it has a presence in 190 countries.

You think the drop off is large now?

Once you put ads in there it will be a cliff edge fall off.

I hate YouTube’s ads they are irrelevant to me no I do not wish to holiday in Qatar and having it shoved at me while I am listening to some Cuban cafe music has me reaching to turn off the service.

I will be unsubscribing from Netflix as the cost of living crisis hits bye bye Netflix bye bye Disney Amazon is the hardest to lose because it is tied in to so many other features but hey I could save thousands without its convenience.

These big tech USA companies cannot continue just putting prices up.

If they add ads to a low price tier then fine.

But if they add a single advert to the top offering, I'm cancelling immediately.

Once you discover Vinegar on iOS, delete facebook and youtube, and use web only, Youtube especially becomes a much more enjoyable experience... No ads, airplay from phone to appleTV...

A couple observations.

1. Maybe Netflix need to accept that endless growth in subscriber numbers is impossible.

2. To paraphrase Princess Leia - "The more you tighten your grip, Netflix, the more subscribers will slip through your fingers."

3. Netflix should never consider me "advertising tolerant."

4. I already have too many streaming subscriptions.

Maybe Netflix need to accept that endless growth in subscriber numbers is impossible.

It's the market analysts and investors who demand never-ending YOY growth.

I'm no expert on this, as you'll note, but it seemed quite apparent a few years ago - when the likes of the BBC and, in particular, Disney announced they'd be launching competitive products - that Netflix was done.

It's up against studios and infrastructure that have a long heritage, and a large back catalogue, of products. Unless you have the uniquely deep pockets of Amazon, which just acquired it's own back catalog and infrastcuture with MGM, this seems like a formidable competitive set.

Yup.

There's been an influx of Bbc content on Netflix. Vaguely curious how much of that is also available via iPlayer. So I can now watch Ready Steady Cook on Netflix. Yey. Alternatively, Prime just dropped all the Bonds so I can watch Roger Moore play an Epstein impersonator. Kinda interesting seeing what was socially acceptable then compared to now.

For what value of "over"?

Last year (most recent figures I can find) they made a profit margin of 7.88% on $7.7Bn.

The media and market panic that we're seeing now is only based on the fact that Netflix subs have stopped growing for the first time ever. As with many listed companies, the stock market investors seem to think that growth is infinite and if you're not growing madly then you're a failure. Like many companies, Netflix remains (very) profitable and is a viable business.

Yes they were stupid in their predictions. However a drop of 25% in the share price is just silly.

There have been interesting reports in the UK press lately about subscription services, as people start to make choices about what to spend money on. It looks like Netflix and Prime are going to be the ones to stay, with Disney, Britbox etc likely to be dropped. Obviously, mileage will vary in other markets.

"advertising on low-end plans"

And with that here ends the golden age of streaming services as they go the same way as satellite and cable:

1) Offer an ad-free experience for a fee to tempt users from regular ad-funded TV

2) Introduce limited ads on low end plans

3) Ramp up ads on low end plans

4) Introduce limited ads on all plans

5) Standardise plans by having the same ads on all of them

Before you know it customers are paying a fee for exactly the same ad-filled experience they used to get for free from broadcast TV.

6) Pay Billions for sports rights and bump up the cost of all plans (regardless if you like football etc) to pay for it.

6) See piracy rise like a phoenix, while subscriptions plummet.

It's partly due to naff content, partly that I've seen pretty much everything I want to watch from them over the last two years, and partly that although I have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky Movies and Disney Plus, there are still things that I can't get.

I'm not going to get any more subscriptions, especially when things disappear from them and someone else gets to decide what I can and can't watch. Everyone has suddenly decided that they need their own streaming service, and you can only view their content on that. I've had enough of them all, I want one service with access to all of them, so I can pick and choose the few shows/films I want to see, and not pay for all the rest of the dross that I will never watch.

Also, while I'm on a rant, how do Sky get away with charging you for access to channels, and then forcing you to watch adverts. If I'm paying for a service, I expect to get it without adverts. And if you insist on having adverts, then why am I paying for it?