Netflix Hikes Blu-ray Rental Price by 20 Percent

From DailyTech: For many years, renting a movie meant driving to your local video store looking for the film you want to watch. Today we have several alternatives to driving to the movie store including streaming rentals and mail order rentals via Netflix and similar companies.

Netflix was the first mail order video rental service and put such a pinch in the backside of Blockbuster that it ended up offering a similar competing service. Netflix rents both DVD and Blu-ray movies, and before the demise of HD DVD it rented the ill-fated HD DVD format as well.

This week, Netflix announced that it will be modifying the price of its Blu-ray rental option for customers currently on the service and new customer signups. Netflix will be raising the price of the Blu-ray add-on by different amounts depending on how many movies the plan allows each month.

Customers on the one DVD out at a time, two DVD per month plan will pay an additional $1 per month for Blu-ray access making the monthly plan cost $5.99. That doesn’t seem that bad at first glance. However, each tier up in the amount of DVDs you can have out at a time, the new Blu-ray fee grows by $1. That means as you get to the high-end eight DVDs at a time plan for $47.99, the new Blu-ray additional monthly charge is $9 for a new total of $56.99.

Netflix doesn't seem too bothered by the significant price increase on some of the plans and simply tells customers who don’t like the new fees to cancel the Blu-ray add-on. Netflix VP of Marketing Jessie Becker justifies the price increase by saying that Blu-ray discs cost more to purchase, often as much as 30% more.

View: Article @ Source Site