Netflix got rid of the $9.99 basic plan in Canada

wet_lettuce@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 475 points – ​Netflix Canada Just Got Rid Of Its Cheapest Ad-Free Plan Without Even A Heads Up​
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It's like they are trying to irritate people into canceling their accounts.

Imo, this one might actually be worse than the account sharing and cause people to quit. As soon as you have people messing around with their subscription version, it's all too easy to just say "nah, I actually don't want this anymore".

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Piracy my beloved🏴‍☠️

Oh my show is no longer available on my paid subscription? It's still right here on my server.

That's the thing that's always bothered me about the online services. Sure, I can "buy" a movie or series or whatever, but I only have actual access to it so long as I still subscribe, the service has rights, and I have access (like, if I'm on a plane or ship, suddenly I can't watch something).

If I download a copy, it's mine for as long as the physical media lasts. I can keep it theoretically forever, I can put copies on my phone or the cloud, stream to my computer, my cousin's tv, whatever.

I've been mostly content to license streaming media, since it's convenient, and above board. But between everyone raising prices and pulling content so they can cut residuals. I'm really rather burnt out on the model.

As Homer once eloquently said: "Nothing a month. We can afford that!"

When I was a poor kid I pirated, went to paying as a working adult, now I am back to buying random DVDs at thirftshops but if they keep this clown thing up, I will sail. These clowns have hard time understanding who controls the money flows here, shiti video streaming service is not a monopoly/utility...

Time to sail the seven seas again. Yarrggghh 🏴‍☠️

The thing I don't get (I do - it's greed, FYI) is why the fuck they even care? If I'm paying for 2 or 4 screens on my Netflix account, why the fuck does it even matter which address they're playing at? Netflix were about to sting me because my stepkids (who are with us half the time) were using my account while at their dad's.

Believe it or not, Netflix finally drove me to Plex. I'd been holding out, still using Kodi, but decided the money I was saving could go towards a much nicer setup, and it did. A pair of HP DL380 G7s, Proxmox - the works.

Now my stepkids use my Plex server, and have both happily streamed the latest Black Mirror from it (shit season, BTW - another hump in the downhill shitshow that Netflix has become). And the savings from my cancelled Netflix sub will have paid for it over the next 12 months or so.

Thanks Netflix! Ya dumb cunts.

It's simple - you're paying for 2 or 4 screens, but you could be paying for 2 or 4 screens AND multiple accounts! That would give them more of your money, so it's their preferred option.

Love might be sharing a password, but profit is paying multiple times for the same thing, so here we are...

They made record profits during quarantine, when everyone was stuck at home. Now they have two problems:

  1. Some of those people have cancelled because they're now busy.
  2. They're expected by shareholders to continue that kind of profit increase forever.

They don't actually care any more than they ever did, this is just an easy way to get money out of accounts they see as less likely to cancel because many people are using the same account.

how hard was it to do a plex server? did you just use an old pc or what did you use as the host?

After some discussion with the Minister for War and Finance (my wife), we agreed I had a modest budget (~$300AUD) to spend on some old enterprise servers, which I did.

But I've seen plenty of posts where people are getting away with their old gaming rigs, and the like.

I've got a PC that my job was throwing out and I put a CPU, hard drive and RAM combo I got on Craigslist (that's like gumtree) for $20USD in there and I've only ever had problems with 4k and HDR. Plex itself is pretty cheap perf-wise! Transcoding can be a problem but you can set it up to pre-transcode multiple quality options or just stream it original quality if you have the bandwidth.

I may do something similar! Might as well

Seriously, after I did it and set my wife up for it, she asked me why it took me so long to make the move. It's been a real game changer for my family. It just works.

I set up mine shortly after cancelling Netflix after the last price increase about a year ago.

Repurposed an old Raspberry Pi 3 that had been a Kodi setup. Added a spare 2TB PS4 external HD. Been working great the last year. But looking to get an actual NAS setup to replace paying for google photos (my wife), more Plex storage, and a python dev server. That’ll run my about $900 though.

The Pi3 with the PS4 HD was less than $130.

is why the fuck they even care? If I’m paying for 2 or 4 screens on my Netflix account, why the fuck does it even matter which address they’re playing at?

You and your family could be paying for 2-3 accounts instead, and also paying for the 2 or 4 screen plan on all of them if you want 4K.

Maybe you won't, but many will. And they'll offset you unsubscribing your one account.

Plus even if they increase their total subscriptions by only 10% it's still worth it, because they probably lost active users, so there's less actual load on their servers for the same amount of subs.

I dropped my 4 screen plan in October or November when I first heard about the upcoming sharing restrictions because it was actually being used from 3 or 4 locations, but unfortunately I think us cancellers are probably outnumbered by people who just created new accounts because they had to stop using someone else's.

I think us cancellers are probably outnumbered by people who just created new accounts

Oh, 100% right there. Those of us that are both willing to cancel and capable of setting ourselves up with an alternative like Plex are, sadly, in the minority. I'm doing my bit, though. Have invited a couple of friends to my library and showed them how to use the app, and they've happily cancelled their Netflix as well.

Personally I prefer jellyfin but I'll usually stick Foss where Icabn

Yeah, I tried Jellyfin but, at the time, it wasn't as well-featured as Plex. I might go back for a second look but, as I got Plex Pass lifetime sub on special, there's no ongoing cost to offset against the pain of getting my family to adopt yet another new app.

I like how they keep testing this crap on the Canadian market.

I dont know if were the best guinea pigs, I mean look at what we pay for telecoms. We're pretty passive when it comes to being gouged, other countries might not be so potato-like in their response.

If the docile sheep up North don't go for it, then there's no way the slightly less docile sheep South will go for it.

We're pretty passive when it comes to being gouged

God, this is so painfully true.

| We're pretty passive when it comes to being gouged

Only if you include cell phone plans, internet access, air travel, housing, and food. Oh, and pet food.

I already dipped. By the time I cancelled I wasn't using the service enough to justify paying for it monthly, anyways.

Me, too. In my country, I'm paying the equivalent of 13€ for Disney, Amazon, HBO and SkyShowtime combined. And although Netflix has some good shows, it's nowhere near enough to rival all of these together - no way I'm paying 10€/mo. just for it. Guess I'll pirate the few I actually miss.

I just cancelled everything, no more subscriptions for me, except for the yearly re-up on usenet indexers

Yeah, imagine running a company, with customers that simply pay the monthly, because it is cheap enough to cancel. But then you start annoying the users and reduce convenience, then increase the price. What could possibly be the end goal here?

Lol, so we got people to remove family accounts, paying more because they can't share anymore. Then people probably downgraded because it's not worth it more than $10 for one person. And now they're killing that too, so there's no reason to use Netflix?

I really should thank Netflix for finally motivating me to actually get off my ass and build my home server. After cancelling all of my streaming subscriptions, it really does pay for itself.

Which is why I'm switching to jellyfin

We left Netflix after I decided I didn't want to understand their rules.

"Number" of streams was easy to pay for and made sense. We paid for extra screens, so our parents could have easy access.

There are too many streaming options and services worth subscribing to these days, and more than any one person could watch so, well, not a problem.

Do I miss netflix, nope.

My family dropped netflix in Canada as soon as the password sharing change went into effect. I got a radarr + sonarr + jellyfin server all setup and even my parents can very easily find what they want and have it ready to go, they don't miss netflix at all.

We have a $23 plan with Netflix with 5 user profiles on it each from different locations and when the whole password sharing thing started and came into effect we thought “we’ll it was a nice run, Netflix”. Then the day came where we had to set the “main ip address” for the account and it’s been so weird. We all still have access to Netflix, each user literally uses a different ip address and 80% I’m on a vpn.🤷🏻‍♂️ 100% not complaining lol!!

They were talking about for continued use the other people on your account would have to connect to your local network once a month to keep that device active. Easy with family member bringing over a laptop, difficult with a TV; unless you setup a vpn tunnel to your home router.

Oh that’s odd. We haven’t done that at all and everything is working same as before the whole issue happened.

It may take a lot of time for their system to run through everyones devices and determine if they are past due or something

How easy was it to setup the server? I'm slightly tech savvy but server stuff has always kinda of alluded me.

There are a ton of guides on how to setup an arr stack and Plex if your willing to spend some time figuring it out.

Do you have people from outside your network accessing it? If yes, how are you habdling that?

Fuck Netflix. I bought a firestick and threw Stremio and a vpn on there. Watching Black Mirror without giving those cunts a penny.

I upgraded to the 4k max firesticks. I have my own Plex server, so I basically have my own personal Netflix.

Pirate bros!

Do you use to pay for a subscription?

For Netflix? Yeah I was subbed to the highest tier since 2015.

Most people I know will be subscribed to one streaming service and switch every few months to get the shows they want. I’m expecting most streaming services to become a lot more “user hostile” as they try to squeeze out every penny.

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I had actually thought about signing up for the basic plan because it is just me who likes it, but I was put off by the low quality.

Well - I guess now I’ll be officially sticking to Plex.

I gave up on Netflix so many years ago now with zero regrets. The second they started their rumblings (nearly a decade ago now) about wanting to stop people from accessing other countries media selection I said fuck it, spun up a Plex install and never looked back.

Just canceled mine when they enforced the no non household sharing. Now sailing with the pirates.

I can only assume this but this is most likely a response to the C-11 bill that just passed. Netflix was already losing mass amounts of content due to other streaming services. And now our government is mandating that all online streaming have & pay for a certain amount of Canadian content...

Our government is really the one fucking us over when it comes to the internet. From only ever helping monopolies to passing laws on the internet that can only harm users.

That law is in effect in Europe since a long time ago (in fact is thanks to that law that netflix carries so much non north-american content) and netflix didn't remove any tiers.

Companies always use stuff like this to jack up prices and blame others for their own greed. Just like companies who use 3% inflation to increase their prices 40%. The ignorant just lap it up and blame the government while putting that 40% extra into some CEOs pocket.

Only some European countries like France, UK never had that law.

Sorry, when I said Europe I meant the european union.

Which the UK was in up until three years ago and never had said law. I'm pretty sure places like Germany or Poland don't have it either.

Things in Canada have changed dramatically over the past 15 years and every year it seems to accelerate at a faster rate. We all thought Reddits “enshitification” was bad, living here is worse!!

A coincidence that cory doctrow who coined enshittification, is from toronto?

I get that they’re being greedy, but provided you’re not set on watching one specific show, why pay for Netflix? Lots of cable TV providers are setting up their own services and taking their shows there instead of Netflix. Most of the Netflix originals either don’t last, aren’t even close to being good, or both; I feel like there hasn’t been more than two or three major hits from them a year in awhile (could be wrong though). In the past they had no big competitors so they could charge whatever, now it just seems like way too much.

(I guess that doesn’t mean the ad-supported tier going away, but who wants to pay and still have to watch ads?)

If you're learning a language, netflix has good tie-ins with language reactor... but if the $9.99 option goes away, I'll just switch to the beta video + subtitle file upload for that

Way back a few years ago when Netflix started going down hill, I cut back to the cheapest plan at like $8.99 - it was limited to one screen at a time, and 1080p resolution. That's fine - my big TV is only 1080p resolution anyway so it worked.

Then they quietly raised pricing to $9.99 and I noticed my resolution had decreased to 720p. That was about two years ago. I cancelled my Netflix subscription after over 15 years as a Netflix customer (pre streaming back when it was DVD rentals only). I don't miss it.

Already planning on cancelling other services like HBO Max next - just don't watch enough television to justify it.

HBO Max is going the way of Netflix anyways after Discovery bought them out. Why a failed reality TV network thinks they know how to do TV better than a 30+ year old household name for quality, I'll never know.

It's been a while since I last has Netflix. I found myself looking through their selection with nothing enticing me to watch. I don't know how people keep it for years. Did you always find something you liked?

Lol yeah it wasn't the screen sharing thing that got me. When the news about that came up I realized I hadn't used Netflix for 6+ months. There's just nothing good in their library anymore

I felt the same way, then got a proper vpn and boom. It’s like having Netflix for the first time all over again!!

lol i basically mainly only have netflix cause my roommate accepts it as payment to use his internet. Otherwise i would constantly unsub after watching a show.

Netflix’s catalog seems to just be dying you watch one thing on there and you’ve seen everything.

Sonarr and Emby were pretty much the only things I needed to scrap streaming services entirely.

Is that the 720p plan or the 1080p? Anyways, I already thinking about canceling it. I pay already 12,99€ a month and the program quality has gotten worse over time.

720p is single screen, 1080p dual screen, and 4k for 4 screens

“nah, I actually don’t want this anymore.

This was my reaction quite a while ago. We got rid of our account because we just didn’t use it anymore and the price kept climbing.

This is just Netflix desperately trying to claw back some profit. They think they can siphon most people into higher-priced accounts.