Digitivity » movies

NetFlix Messes Up Again: More Expensive and Harder to Use

Digitivity — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:51:58 +0000

As if it wasn’t enough to raise their rates and then insult customers by referring to the price increase as less than the cost of a latte, Netflix has now split its DVD service into a separate company, Qwikster.

Time highlights how it’ll be harder to use if you want to use both DVD delivery and streaming:

When Hastings says the businesses will be separate, he really means it. They’ll have separate websites, and if you subscribe to both services, you’ll need to manage your queues separately. If you rate or review a movie at Netflix, it won’t show up at Qwikster, and vice-versa. On your credit card statement, you’ll be billed separately by Qwikster and/or Netflix.

HotAir quotes Bill Gurley surmising that the studios forced Netflix to change its pricing model because they wanted a fee for everyone who could access streaming regardless of whether they used it or not. Of course, that’s the one thing that Netfickle’s CEO didn’t mention as the reason for all the changes (which in marketspeak amount to “all this to serve you better.”)

So will you be staying with Netflix or moving to something like Redbox?

Digital Subscriptions Cost $1000 per Month?

Digitivity — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:36:52 +0000

The Gizmodo blog did some arithmetic, and it figures that all the digital subscriptions you need to keep all of the devices some people view as necessary these days can cost near a thousand dollars.

Here’s the list of subscriptions:

Smartphone plan
Netbook plan
Slate plan
Home internet
Cable TV
Landline phone
Mobile Internet
Wi-Fi hotspots
Netflix
TiVo
Xbox Live Gold membership
Hulu
Flickr Pro
Navigation (GPS)

The total dollar cost ranges from $208 to $738.

Granted, some of these may be double counted. And there are ways you could cut costs. For example, you could choose to have either a landline phone, or a mobile phone. Yet, some people don’t have the option to choose, because the phone company wants you to have a landline in order to get DSL. And the cable company wants you to have cable TV to have cable Internet.

But even if you skimp on some subscriptions, others will multiply simply because you have multiple members of the same household, and they need their own separate plans for each of their phones. If you can live with having Internet access on your phone only at home, the office, and major urban centers, you could make do with only Wi-Fi Internet on your cell phone.

Still, no matter what, all these digital subscriptions do add up to a lot, and can be expensive when you add them all up.

Via Hard|OCP

How to Download Movies with BitTorrent Using Miro

Digitivity — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:48:52 +0000

I covered installing Miro on Windows the other day.

Miro is a free and open source podcast downloader and viewer. You can also download and view torrents in Miro.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer media sharing network.

I wrote a guest post for the What’s Good Blog about BitTorrent and Miro.

Read about how to download movies with BitTorrent using Miro on the What’s Good Blog.