Netflix Price Raise

When I first found out that Netflix was raising their price I thought “Okay. Understandable.”  Then I heard that the price was going to be raised to $16.00 a month.  “Okay… what?” 

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To be fair, you don’t have to pay $16.00 a month necessarily.  However, to get the same access to Netflix that you recieve now (mailing DVDs and instant streaming) you will need to cough it up.  If this seems a little high you can opt to pay $8.00 a month for strictly mailing DVDs or strictly streaming DVDs.  One or the other.  A tough choice, right?

Apparently Netflix is doing this to steer people away from the idea of mailed-in DVDs.  Of course, one day the trend of physical DVDs will obviously die out like all technology is destined to do at some point, but I don’t believe that day is today.  People still like the concept of holding a DVD in their hands and popping it into their player and enjoying a good movie, then sending it back.  Streaming to your computer may be faster, but unless you have a chord to connect your computer to your TV or can stream through a Wii console, the quality and experience is not quite like watching on your TV.

If Netflix truly wants to abolish the concept of mailing out DVDs, they need to seriously re-vamp their streaming collection.  I love to watch weird old documentaries and campy horror movies, but not everyone shares my love of “B” movies and isn’t satisfied with the collection available for streaming.  You’d be hard pressed to find a poplar new movie available for streaming, so it seems more likely that this price spike will actually drive more people towards mailed DVDs, seeing as you can obtain every DVD that way, not just some as is with the streaming.

Aside from the talk of doing away with physical DVDs, I think it’s safe to say that Netflix won’t mind the extra flow of cash, either.

And so the dilemma rages on… To mail? To stream? Both?  I guess we all have the month of August to heavily weigh the options.