Yeah, same. Their plans included a number of active screens/supported devices a at a time. It seems pretty ridiculous to charge for the number of screens but then put restrictions on where those screens are.
Too right. I only got the 4-person NF account for my elderly Dad. If he's out, I'm unsubscribing and going back to the high seas for their content. What a shame - four years ago was truly the golden age.
Yep, paying $20/mo specifically to be able to play on 3 devices. If they stop allowing sharing, there is little to no value in that plan for me anymore.
Yeah, if you like being stuck with TV that looks like what we got in 2004.
Netflix should stop whining about account sharing when they demand I pay for two screens to get minimally acceptable TV, but can only use one per their terms.
Because there's no bullshit like this preventing me from sharing with family who are overseas (gets really fun when we want to watch something together but it's available in their country but not mine). Because I can download the content and store it locally for trips. Because I can now access a wider selection of content than Netflix offers.
It's not cheap, but the fact that I and other commenters here are willing to pay that money and spend the effort of setting up piracy engines is a pretty loud signal that the entertainment market has failed. Again.
There was a golden age when Netflix had a great catalog and didn't engage in dark patterns. It's long gone, and the streaming industry has become worse than the cable tv industry. I'm happy paying multiples of the netflix subscription cost for my piracy setup just to have the convenience and ownership of the content.
Why’s that? FWIW, this isn’t something new, this household sharing rule/explanation has been posted for years, and Netflix has been enforcing it softly, not very strictly except for obvious and egregious offenders for a long time.
Netflix is signaling that they're going to start cracking down on it.
>Later in Q1, we expect to start rolling out paid sharing more broadly. Today’s widespread account sharing (100M+ households) undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve Netflix, as well as build our business. While our terms of use limit use of Netflix to a household, we recognize this is a change for members who share their account more broadly. So we’ve worked hard to build additional new features that improve the Netflix experience, including the ability for members to review which devices are using their account and to transfer a profile to a new account. As we roll out paid sharing, members in many countries will also have the option to pay extra if they want to share Netflix with people they don’t live with. As is the case today, all members will be able to watch while traveling, whether on a TV or mobile device.
>As we work through this transition – and as some borrowers stop watching either because they don’t convert to extra members or full paying accounts – near term engagement, as measured by third parties like Nielsen’s The Gauge, could be negatively impacted. However, we believe the pattern will be similar to what we’ve seen in Latin America, with engagement growing over time as we continue to deliver a great slate of programming and borrowers sign-up for their own accounts.
While that’s true, what I said is also true: this definition of sharing has been posted for a long time. I know because I’ve linked to it before when people complained about Netflix sharing. The shareholder letter isn’t the linked article, and nothing in the linked article signals a change.