Netflix helped change the entire home video paradigm, effectively killing corporate-owned video rental stores by offering a reasonable, albeit not always amazing library of movies available for digital streaming for an affordable flat rate. They’re even offering movies in 4K resolution now, if you can believe it. But Netflix is about to get a little less convenient: they’re raising their prices by the end of this quarter.
New subscribers can expect to be charged one or two dollars more than the current streaming subscription rate ($7.99 in the U.S.), depending on the country they live in, according to Netflix’s latest letter to its shareholders (via Huffington Post). The letter explains that “these changes will enable us to acquire more content and deliver an even better streaming experience.” (Maybe they could also use that extra money to get their dumbass recommendation robot “Max” to suggest a movie we actually want to see for a change.)
Existing Netflix subscribers will be unaffected… for a while. The shareholder letter explains that their rates will remain unchanged “for a generous time period.“ What Netflix considers to be “generous” is completely unknown.
So if you haven’t already subsribed to Netflix, and were seriously considering it (it’s not like you HAVE to, obviously), now would be the time. Netflix did not give a specific date on the changes other than to say they were coming “later this quarter,“ which would mean their new pricing will go into effect sometime before June 30, 2014.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
