Netflix price change

[cellio]

So Netflix just raised my subscription fee 60% (effective September 1). They did this by splitting streaming and DVDs into two separate plans, each costing $8/month, instead of bundling streaming with DVD plans as they do now. They argue that the price increase is due to the high cost of (and demand for) streaming (see recent news about them and Sony, for instance), but if so their pricing doesn't make sense. They didn't raise the price of the current streaming-only plan, and they are now asserting that DVDs cost $8/month to support (for one out at a time) instead of the $2/month suggested by the current pricing model. My current plan is $10/month for streaming + one DVD at a time. If streaming is $8 of that, then they have just raised DVD-rental fees 400%. (Ok, less half the overhead of having a customer account -- but I'm betting that's pennies a month.)

I, unlike others, am not looking for an alternate streaming service. Netflix has the largest streaming catalogue out there (though it has many deficiencies) and it already works for me. I want easy DVD rental because of those gaps in the streaming catalogue. What alternatives do I have for that?

Comments

[cellio]

Yeah, if Netflix made it easy for me to rent DVDs from them as one-shots, like going to Blockbuster but without the leaving-the-house part, I'd be all over that. Without that, I don't know if I'll keep the DVD service; I might just stream.

Y'know, sometimes my DVD-watching is bursty. Most of what I watch is TV shows, so, for example, when the last season of Burn Notice came out on DVD recently, I watched more DVDs than I usually do in a month. So I wonder, given that I'm going to remain a customer on the streaming side, how much trouble it would be to start and stop DVD service as needed...