Netflix Price Increase Marks a Good Time to Plan Your Exit

Exit Netflix Sign

Perhaps growing comfortable with their market share, Netflix has decided to dramatically increase prices. The new pricing structure will divide Netflix customers into two basic classes: those who stream video and those who receive DVDs in the mail. If you want to stream video and not receive DVDs in the mail, you will pay $7.99 per month. If you want to receive DVDs in the mail and not stream video, you will pay $7.99 per month. If you want to stream video and have one DVD out at-a-time, you will need to pay $15.98 per month for the privilege.

For some subscribers, this will amount to a 60% price increase. An increase of around $6.00 per month may sound manageable, but when considering that amounts to $72.00 per year, the cost becomes a significant issue. Also, consider that Netflix is a luxury expense. In how many areas of your life are you willing to accept a price increase of 60% on a luxury expense with no appreciable increase in service? For example, if you frequented a restaurant and it suddenly raised its prices 60% without improving the food or increasing the portions, how often would you return to that restaurant?

It appears Netflix is aggressively trying to discourage subscribers from renting physical DVDs. Netflix must really hate paying the costs of a DVD-by-mail business. Even though Netflix subscribers have become largely accustomed to being abused by Netflix, a price increase of 60% with no substantial increase in subscriber benefits seems a bit extreme and could be seen as almost a deliberate hostility toward DVD renters.

Assuming you've suffered some sort of dreadful head injury and you now wish to begin a new Netflix membership, you have no choice but to accept the price increases right away. If you are an existing Netflix subscriber, you have until around September to change your viewing habits or get hammered by the big increase.

You may have noticed that you can't spell "Netflix" without E, X, I, and T.  You may have also recognized it may be time to start looking for the way out.  Fortunately, subscribers have a few weeks to plan their exits from Netflix. If you are Netflix subscriber, and you wish to exit Netflix, you are advised to plan ahead. The biggest pitfalls to avoid when canceling your Netflix subscription are getting charged for extra months and getting charged for DVDs Netflix may claim were never returned or returned after the due date.  To minimize these possibilities, consult the cancellation procedure outlined at "Canceling Your Netflix Subscription."

If you put your Exit Netflix plan into place and properly end your Netflix subscription during the next several weeks, you can avoid the price hike and apply the money in your entertainment budget toward better values.

If you would like to help your fellow Netflix Underground readers by recommending some alternatives to Netflix and providing some other Exit Netflix tips, please click on comments below and post your suggestions.

Watching the Watchers: Silverlight 4 Can Access Your Web Cam and Microphone

Silverlight has attracted little attention on Netflix Underground. Basically, some Netflix subscribers hate Silverlight, have loads of problems with it, wish they had never installed it, and are now stuck with it. There just was not much else to mention.

Now, however, a Netflix Undergrounder is claiming that Silverlight accessed his/her personal webcam and microphone without his/her knowledge. The subscriber claims Silverlight had a live image from his/her webcam, and he/she could view it simply by right-clicking and then selecting on a WebCam/Mic tab.

It is true Silverlight 4 has webcam and microphone support. That may be a nice feature, but it would be creepy to find out that Silverlight actively captures images and sounds from personal web cams and microphones by default.

Hopefully, some solid precautions have been taken to keep the private audio/visuals inaccessible to others, but a resourceful hacker might love to peek in on a person's private web cam just to snoop around and see who watches Netflix movies in their underwear. Nothing online is 100% hacker-proof, so this issue could raise some privacy concerns.

Certainly, this sort of functionality is addressed somewhere in Silverlight's terms of use or user agreement; however, given the massive potential for privacy violations, users should have to manually activate their web cams and microphones. Some people (the smart ones) do not want live audio/visual feeds being streamed from their homes over the Web.

Before anyone freaks out, please keep in mind this is just an accusation from one Netflix subscriber/Silverlight user, and this may just stem from a simple misunderstanding, oversight, or mistake; however, if it turns out to be true that Silverlight is automatically capturing webcam video and microphone audio, there is a concern that a serious breach of privacy has been made.

It must be noted that instructions at SilverlightShow indicate Silverlight 4 does have the capability to automatically detect webcams and microphones, but the same instructions also indicate users must grant Silverlight permission to access theses devices. As long as users are actually aware Silverlight is accessing their web cams and microphones and have a fair chance to allow or disallow access, everything is fine, and there is no cause for alarm.

Please check to see if Silverlight is accessing your webcam and microphone. If Silverlight is accessing your webcam and microphone without your consent, deactivate the access immediately and report the problem to Netflix and Microsoft. Please come back and share your findings here. Hopefully, this open web cam occurrence is just an isolated incident.