Over the weekend, I got this email: (abridged)
Dear David,
Over the last five years, we’ve grown the Netflix community to over 2.2 million satisfied members. …
… pleased to inform you that we’re lowering the price of your Netflix 3-at-a-time program from $21.99 per month to 17.99 per month.
… So please sit back, relax and enjoy your movies!
-Your Friends at Netflix
Awesome! I would have gladly gone on paying my $22 for the service. You reallly have to use netflix to really appreciate how awesome it really is. There are other companies offering, basically, the same service – namely Walmart and Blockbuster. They basically do the same thing and cost the same amount of money per month, but they are not created equal.
The netflix website application is most skillfully crafted. Everything is so well designed, most users won’t even notice the incredible features that are in there as they’re so seemless. You have the option of rating movies with one through five stars everywhere the movie shows up. You dont have to go to a special page, you dont even have to suffer a page reload. You just click on the start that you want to rate it with and they will turn yellow, indicating your rating.
The stars aren’t just for your reference though. Netflix will generate guess ratings (shown as red stars) for movies you havent rated. The service will even offer recommendations for movies that you will probably like based on your ratings as compared to the ratings of the other 2.2 million users. These ratings end up being incredibly accurate. I’ve rented, and loved, movies that I wouldn’t ever have watched had it not been for those ratings. Lately, it seems Netflix knows more about what I am going to like than I do.
One thing that really excites me is, they’re constantly looking to make the site better. They recently added an RSS module to the site. I now have my queue synced to my iPod. I can just pull open the notes section on there and see what I can expect in the mail in the next couple days.
Short story long:
Netflix is the best. At $17.99 you have no choice but to give in and subscribe. You will not be dissapointed.