Netflix planning on offering 'streaming only' subscriptions in future

by Griffin McElroy on Feb 25th 2009 3:16PM

If you've found yourself fascinated by the Xbox 360's recently acquired ability to stream movies and TV programs off Netflix, but found yourself hesitant to subscribe to its pesky DVD delivery service in order to access said function, we've got great news. Netflix has apparently recognized your reservations, and is planning on implementing a "streaming only" subscription in the "foreseeable future."

The demand for such a subscription plan is clear. Netflix, which offers over 12,000 titles on its streaming service, saw a great deal of unexpected growth last quarter thanks to the popularity of streaming programming -- we'd wager most of that came from the 360s Netflix app. No word on the release date or pricing of the stand-alone streaming subscription -- without the hassle of postage fees, we'd wager it'll see a nice discount from the standard $8.99 monthly plan.

Source

Tags: Microsoft, netflix, netflixstreaming, streaming, subscription, Xbox-360, xbox-live

Reader Comments (62)

Yay!

Seriously. I bit the bullet and grabbed the $8.99 plan just for the streaming service, so paying any less per month would be sweet.

That being said, the selection of movies available for streaming tend to be, on the whole, pretty second-rate, so I still take advantage of the "one DVD out at a time" aspect of the membership.

And dude, does your avatar ever bring memories back. What a great (and almost totally forgotten) show. NOT THE MAMA.

I'd go a bit further than that and call the streaming selection crap. I watched the BBC Office, and cancelled a week later. A few years from now I'd wager the whole system will go streaming. I'll just wait for that.

Yeah, Dinosaurs was great, but it was a gateway drug to the rest of the TGIF lineup.

Why the hell did I watch Step By Step every week? Why did we find Steve Urkel so damn funny? Why can't I remember the name of that show but can remember Step By Step?

Wow different strokes for different folks.

I couldn't disagree more that the streaming selection is 'crap'.

And I can't possibly agree at all that Dinosaurs was remotely watchable.

Jaleel White fun facts - In college my roommate's best friend went to UCLA, and apparently saw him on campus a few times, talking on his phone and dropping N bombs (not the Perfect Dark kind.) A month ago my buddy in Phoenix said that Jaleel was in the car with Barkley when he got picked up for his DUI.

@MLS, the selection may not be for everyone, but it is hardly crap. Especially if you enjoy documentaries or indie flicks. Also, the horribly awesome BBC miniseries of the Hitchhiker's Guide is on there, been watching it for the last week.

You mean Family Matters with Sgt. Powell, errr. I mean Carl Winslow?

@MLS,

Different strokes for different folks, I have no trouble finding great and entertaining things to watch on the service. Perhaps you should check out some of the selection instead of just passing it all over and dismissing it as crap? You might be pleasantly surprised, there are many great films and documentaries on the service.

I'd be interested in the streaming only, if it weren't for my current infatuation with new releases and TV series like Alias that aren't available via streaming.

Suggestions for folks who who NetFlix on their 360: Bigger, Stronger, Faster (documentary). Really good stuff, specially if you use to be into pro wrestling as a youngan. Watching Weeds is nice, too :) Ooh, and Alien, I'd forgotten how awesome that was.

It's funny, I literally just added Bigger...to my instant queue this morning!

Oh, and I would like to add "I Like Killing Flies" to that list of recommendations.

Cool, just read about it on imdb, sounds odd, but pretty interesting.

Very good documentary. I heard the director/writer on Opie and Anthony awhile back and he's a pretty cool guy. My high school became obsessed with juicing in the late 90's early 00's, so when someone one the doc said, " 'Roids make you a bigger jerk" I totally agreed.

There are current TV series, such as Heroes, that actually do update with new episodes each week. There are a few others that do so as well. Very convenient when unable to watch at the show's regular timeslot and have no TiVo/DVR

Now that they have us hooked on streaming, hopefully they don't put a price tag on the streaming content and add it to the existing DVD+streaming plans...

That's pretty cool, but I'm sure we can all agree that the service could use a lot more gems and a lot less meh.

Yeah, there's a lot of great movies/shows on there, but I watched most of them in the late 90s already.

It's costing us $17.99 a month for 3 DVDs and streaming. It's a good deal no matter what plan you get, honestly. The streaming is great, but I can't imagine paying for it alone.

If they added a game plan I'd be in heaven. I get stuff from them quickly (2 days most), whereas Gamefly always took me over a week.

Lol, I am just the reverse, I've never been very good at remembering to drop discs in the mail when i am done with them, so I canceled my netflix account about 6 years ago. The streaming service brought me back, and i've got an $8.99/1 disc plan to take advantage. I've purposely not been adding anything to the dvd queue; but one snuck in. To my horror, I got a disc in the mail a few weeks ago, I have yet to remember to drop it back in the mail. >_

Then go pack it up and put in the mail NOW! :P

Dood. I totally agree. I have that plan and it's AWESOME!!! Pretty much every nigh of the week we have something to watch, and once you get into the habit dropping them off in the mail is no big problem. We stopped paying for cable and now we're saving over $100/month! That's a good chunk of change.

What's the deal? I didn't have to have anything sent to my house when I had 360's Netflix, I just 'streamed only' anyways.

the subscription required to get streaming service means you had to pay a bit extra because it's technically grouped with the mailed dvd service. which means you can stream movies as well as queue dvds to be sent.

a stream only service essentially splits it apart from the mailed dvd service which means potentially cheaper.

i don't see any problems with the 8.99 deal. seems good even if it was just stream only. gives me the convenience of getting recent movies as well as just streaming random stuff.

i hope there aren't any repercussions to this. i can imagine that they'd split mail vs. stream completely (i.e. 8.99 for mail but +5.99 for stream) as opposed to neatly splitting them so they'd add up to the same subscription price previously when they were together. if i remember correctly, when they first introduced streaming, there wasn't any additional cost to my subscription (at first it used to be x hours per month where x = subscription price you pay per month already).

That's because you don't have any movies in your que on netflix.com

I'd rather stick with the 8.99 plan. The DVD library is just too large to go streaming only. I love watching movies on my instant que, but every once in a while I need them to send me a DVD.

Agreed. Streaming is nice, but sometimes you want the new releases on a good ol disc.

Also, I hope they get into games.

Agreed. I've got the unlimited one disc at a time plan + blu-ray. Not a bad deal for $10 a month. Be sure to check out www.FeedFlix.com. You can track your Netflix usage. Right now I'm at $.42 cents a movie.

nice for all those people that like documentaries and B movies. sure there are a few good movies on there but shit, you'd be better off renting DVD movies too. I would still keep my 4-at-a-time plan for the Blu-ray movies tho.

You hear this? It's UK screaming for some!

Netflix operates in the UK?

No and that is the problem.

Hey Netflix:
Put a $4.99 price on "stream only" service and make a three million easy dollars a month.

I just wish the streaming would let you know what is and what isn't in HD before you Select/Watch it.

I canceled a little while ago because my internet connection was too shoddy to get a consistent HD signal, even though when i run speed test the average download was at about 14 mb's so i don't know what was going on... just couldn't deal with watching what looks like blown up youtube video's on a 42"... lol

You can. If you go to watch instantly, HD is selectable as a genre, so you can peruse the HD offerings that way. As to your other comment, I've only had the picture quality degrade down to 'unwatchable' once, when I was trying to finish off Vantage Point, which I thought was a fairly decent flick.

Your ISP is bottlenecking your streams. Some cable internet providers will do this when they detect that it's a long, continuous stream of data that could probably be a streaming HD video. Why? Because they want you to get your TV and movies from them, and they want Netflix (their competitor) to have a hard time.

I use 6 mbps DSL, and I get HD movies without any problems from Netflix.

@ZeroCorpse I don't know about that... i know plenty of people on Comcast that don't have that problem...

I'm not saying they aren't doing it, because Comcast is notorious for Traffic Shaping. Just that I do know other people in my area who are on Comcast and don't have the same issues as me.

I think the little bit of text that shows up beneath the box art when you're scrolling through movies that says "HD" is probably how they clue you in before watching if content is HD or not. ;)

As for your streaming issue, that sucks dude, sorry to hear it... How is your xbox connected to the internet? Wireless/wired? If Wireless, that could easily be the issue depending on your router (is it 802.11g? or is it an older one/802.11b?) or even the signal strength between xbox/router. It might also be comcast doing traffic shaping, but if other comcast users in your area aren't similarly affected, it's probably more likely something specific to your network config.

when are they planning on offering any sort of streaming subscriptions in Canada?

Netflix I believe only operates their rental service in the US, so it'll never come from Netflix. If there's a Canadian analog to Netflix though, perhaps they'll do a deal with MS.

Check out this site for an up to date list of Streaming movies.

http://instantwatcher.com/

It's pretty sweet you can see what the new ones are or by category.

Canada??.....never heard of it.

Sure you have. It's America's hat!

I can prove it, as I actually own this shirt http://www.bustedtees.com/canadaamericashat

If streaming and one dvd is 8.99, I bet streaming only will be 7.99. Seems like a lame price, but it would maybe keep us from going that way and actually taking advantage of the 8.99 plan. They could then hope we would maybe not use the 1 DVD often. I imagine that is how it will run down. I think there is a 4.99 plan of 1 DVD and 2 hours of streaming per month, then up to 8.99 for 1 DVD and unlimited streaming, so adding streaming is quite the price hike, so I imagine streaming only will not be much cheaper, nothing to jump about. I would not mind being proven wrong though. That might help sway me to come back...

I have always wanted to get into The Office. But i didnt know where to start. Then the NXE with Netflix came along and i have now seen every episode of The Office, in order. Netflix is one of the greatest services ever.

Netflix for europeans thx

I know its all licensing and everything, but they need more media on the streaming service. I love it, and since I had Netflix already, this worked really well. But now after 3 months since its release, I am finding there's not as much now that I would like to watch.

A subscription instant streaming only option would be great, but I would really like to see more media on there first honestly.

I'm pretty happy with their streaming service, but I'm a nerd when it comes to TV and movies. I mean, looking at my instant queue right now, I have titles like Space Battleship Yamato and Das Boot. I do wish they'd have subtitles for all their foreign content, but it seems to be a mixed bag.

If I was going to be away from home for a long trip during a month, it might be convenient to swap to an all-streaming subscription for that month. As much as I enjoy waiting weeks and weeks for my obscure DVDs that they have two copies of, I would like to pay less if I was going to be away for much of a month. Being able to not pay for DVDs, as well as being able to still stream video on my laptop, would be convenient.

its called just changing the shipping address

If this streaming only service were to offer more movies and more shows than what is currently offered(especially if they offer new episodes each week like heroes does) then this would be a must. However, yah, the movies are a little second rate, with a few exceptions. But I have come to appreciate the DVD deliveries as opposed to expensive rentals.

My VUDU Box does the exact same thing, but better. I tried Netflix streaming on my friend's Xbox and was not impressed with the quality or selection. Movie studios make it difficult for even places like Netflix to allow people to rent digital copies of movies, but I think this is slowly changing.

VUDU seems to have more mainstream movies and a wider selection, and most in HD and even HDX which is the closest to a Blu-ray quality movie over broadband.

On top of all of this there is no monthly fee for VUDU, you only pay for what you watch which is nice.

That is just my two cents, but I am happy with my VUDU Box. I'll wait and see how Netflix fairs.

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Netflix planning on offering 'streaming only' subscriptions in future

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