THB Headlines: October 13, 2022

Played by Netflix, again... and Halloween Ends

Netflix ad-supported plan to launch in Nov at $7 a month

Suckers!

Netflix got us again. All the talk about an ad tier for The Streaming King seemed like they were going to really change the face of streaming. But the devil, as always, is in the details.

“You want ads?! We’ll give you ads!” But they’ll only make the tier of interest to you if you are on their lowest customer tier. Before this, Netflix discouraged subscription at their lowest priced plan, $9.99 a month, by making it a 480p stream, which is not considered Hi-Definition. Also, the “Basic” level allows only one viewer at a time. The next level up. “Standard,” is $15.49 and offers 1080p and 2 streams at once. Lots of people are comfortable with that boundary, not much of the library is in 4k, even if you had it (and TV people will tell you that the streaming 4K isn’t really 4K anyway). The “Premium” tier is 4k and up to 4 streams at any one time… $19.99 a month.

Here comes the “Basic with Ads” tier at $6.99. 1 stream and 780p,…