Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers

You're paying negative $5 for cable, but how many other people are doing that. I don't know the going rate for Comcast cable, so I'll use the $25 basic service fee from Eastlink in Canada (my service) as the exemplar.

Assume there are only two possible monthly payments for Comcast. You can get the basic service for $25 or you can get the "they quit the service but we're keeping them on the books" service for $-5. Given these prices, you would need to have 3.4 subscribers at the latter price for every one subscriber at the former price before Comcast and Netflix would be making equal money off subscriptions alone. I seriously doubt 77% of Comcast subscribers are ghosts like you, so I stand by my argument that Netflix is massively financially outgunned by Comcast.

There's a British movie on Netflix, at least in Canada, called Cashback. It was a really decent movie, but it was really poorly marketed. The cover art is a woman frozen in a state of undress (with the title obscuring her bare breasts), and the description of the plot talked of a bored employee at a grocery store with the ability to freeze time who used the frozen time to undress customers and sketch them nude.

I was curious, as many men would be, but I didn't want to watch it because I didn't really want that to be the first thing on screen in the "recently watched" list when my girlfriend turned on Netflix.

In fact, I only ever watched it because Netflix later recommended it to me as "mind bending", which seemed like an odd description of the boob-filled teenage sex romp it seemed to be. I looked it up on Amazon and discovered the real plot, and decided to watch it anyway.

The frozen time nude artistry was mostly contained to a single throwaway scene (the time freezing was also initially presented as a time-passing fantasy rather than a real ability, though the film does play fast and loose with that line as the movie progresses), but it still made me hesitate because of the "recently watched" list.

I have no idea how I'll get away with watching Barbarella.

If they tried to suggest it, I'd think they're off their collective rockers.

Now, I understand that Netflix would prefer that everyone have their own separate Netflix account, and that adding this feature might be looked down on as promoting the use of a single account for multiple people, but that doesn't make it a bad feature.

They need to understand that most people don't see the need for having multiple accounts. How often do you really find that two people want to watch two movies at once? When that does occur, how often is it such a high priority that nether party is willing to wait until the other is done to watch their movie?

Adding accounts results in significantly diminished returns right away. The second account is only of use when two people want to watch something at once, which I've never found to be a serious problem. Adding a third or fourth account is absolutely ridiculous[1].

[1] It's ridiculous now, but if Netflix ever becomes a serious provider of new TV, supplanting the current cable TV structure with an a la carte, on demand model, then I'd gladly maintain multiple accounts. When that day comes, they could allow roaming profiles, allowing a new account to start using the viewing history/recommendations of a named profile on another account.

Not that I have children, but this seems like there's got to be some sort of statistical indicator about this if they know how to look at it.

I'd pay for double accounts, but Netflix apparently won't take my money.

I never actually done this, but I see it all the time.