Dave Zatz tipped me off to a pretty good article in the Wall Street Journal about Netflix customers being paralyzed by the sheer amount of choices that they offer. While on one level, this is a nice problem to have, on another level, it can be frustrating for a consumer to spend $20 per month and not actually watch any movies that month. In the article, Matt Phillips interviews Mike K from Hacking Netflix about the time that he was stuck with Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ and just couldn’t bring himself to watch it even after renting it twice.
Personally, I’ve always been the fat guy at the buffet table when it’s come to Netflix’s all you can eat model. Pretty much every weekend I watch at least 3 movies and my average rental cost is about $1.75 over the life of my membership. I did once get stuck on The Godfather and after keeping the movie for a month sent it back unwatched, but afterwards, I felt like I was cheating myself out of a movie just because it was long and I rented all three movies in one weekend and watched the whole dynasty in one fell swoop.
In thinking about my rental tendancies, I would be willing to bet that on average, Netflix sees a longer hold time for movies that are over 2 hours long then shorter films. I don’t think it’s so much a component of not having more time to watch a film, but rather the psychological barrier to pressing play on the DVD. Earlier on, Netflix noticed that a lot of customers had the tendacy to slow down on the volume of rentals and introduced lower priced plans as a way that someone could stay a Netflix customer, but also not pay through the nose because they weren’t making use of the program. I think that this program has likely saved a lot of customers who may have cancelled anyway and that it’s helped to improve their customer service. By understanding that not everyone wants to be the fat guy at the all you can eat buffet, Netflix has created ways to reach consumers who might not be as quick in returning their rentals.
#1 by Walley Vague on July 21, 2006 - 6:38 pm
Not surprising noone wanted to be quoted in the WSJ saying the best and most common Netflix hack is to rip the DVDs and send them back – it’s illegal, but so is exceeding the posted speed limit.
#2 by jbelki on July 23, 2006 - 11:47 pm
I think there are only a tiny % of people who bother to rip DVD’s – and while they might rip 200 movies, most of the population has no idea – in fact, I’ll bet 95% of the DVD watching population doesn’t quite know how to use a DVD recorder let alone know how to rip a DVD.
With rental pretty cheap (& easy with Netflix) and most DVd’s costing around $12 or a slab of ribs at Costco, most people just do not really care all that much plus how do you get it back on a disc? Or to them, who wants to watch it on a computer?
to them, it’s a hassle when for $5.99 (cheapest netflix), they can have a movie sent to them whenever or for 412 bucks, just buy it.
#3 by davis on July 24, 2006 - 2:19 pm
I’ve got to agree here. I’ve tried to rip DVDs before so that I can get a clip from a film and found it pretty difficult. It’s not impossible, but it took several downloads before I found the right program and then I hate to spend a ton of time playing around with the files to actually do the ripping. In the end it’s just easier for me to rent it from Netflix then to steal movies, Netflix isn’t exactly all that expensive considering the number of movies I get per month.
#4 by Bluto on July 24, 2006 - 4:22 pm
Best thing is to record the DVD to a PVR, then watch & delete it at your leisure.