Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable
Netflix will be probably be the cable &quot;channel&quot; I think of canceling last, for the simple reason that their usage ergonomics are stupidly simple.<p>When I go to the Netflix app, I have a simple value proposition – pay money for viewing, <i>in any country across the world if it&#x27;s a Netflix original</i>, and without any add-on crap. The only thing they did wrong was autoplaying previews, and I hope whoever was responsible for that has been fired, or at least demoted.<p>Competitor streaming services refuse to implement this basic, simple model of content consumption for some reason. They seem determined to be Yahoo! in comparison to Netflix&#x27;s Google-like simplicity. Here are some examples of my usage, with a bit of light ranting about pain points thrown in.<p>[Amazon Video]: Makes me think about whether to rent or buy from them, or whether buy a Showtime &quot;add-on&quot; (yay, more subscriptions within this subscription!). Also, a lot of the content is moving to some sort of ad-supported &quot;IMDb TV&quot;. Good luck with that, I&#x27;m out. Lots of content restrictions when outside the US (admittedly a niche use case). Oh, and they have autoplay on some content that I can&#x27;t figure out how to turn off.<p>[HBO Max]: Makes (or used to make) me log in through my cable provider. Huh, why is this streaming service asking me about my internet provider? I cut my cable package a year ago, and haven&#x27;t gotten around to re-subscribing to HBO Max; I don&#x27;t really miss any of the shows enough.<p>[Hulu]: Close to the Netflix experience, except it makes me think about ad-supported v&#x2F;s ad-free versions. I don&#x27;t want to feel bad about losing money for not watching ads. Also, doesn&#x27;t work outside the US (admittedly a niche use case).<p>[Disney+]: Not much of a pull if you don&#x27;t have kids, but if you do, I imagine that this is closest to the early-2000s Netflix experience, but for kids.<p>[Peacock]: More ad-supported nonsense, plus my cable provider is trying to push a &quot;free&quot; subscription to it in exchange for installing one of their weird devices on my network. No thank you, and please be more mindful of the environment before contributing to e-waste in landfills with your horrible devices. I would do it if I wanted to re-watch The Office, but I managed to finish it before it was leaving, guess what, Netflix.<p>[Apple TV]: I...don&#x27;t understand why people give <i>Netflix</i> a hard time about surviving on original content when the only good things about this streaming service are Ted Lasso and <i>maybe</i> Foundation. Watched those on a free subscription, hard pass for everything else. Is this the best that the most valuable company on Earth can manage about media?