[citation][nom]restatement3dofted[/nom]Kevin, it's sort of pretentious of you to assume that this is just a ploy by Netflix to "fill its pockets with even more revenue" - it seems as if you, just like the rest of the people freaking out over this, haven't actually done any research.Their press release clearly stated that the reason for un-bundling and increasing the price was to ensure that their rates reflected the underlying costs associated with providing the services. If you look to other sources, you'll see that some analysts are projecting that their annual costs for licensing on the streaming side could increase from about $180M in 2010 to as much as almost $2 billion in 2012, once their current contracts expire (see this article). Given that their current pricing scheme isn't necessarily an accurate reflection of their costs, and that said costs are likely to skyrocket in the next year or so, they have to do something to ensure they can continue to provide those services at a reasonable rate - if one approach is unbundling and charging two separate rates, so be it.For you to just blindly assume that their motivation is profit, however, seems like irresponsible journalism to me.[/citation]
These news articles just aren't held to the same standards as high profile reviews on Tom's. They're often highly opinionated, sarcastic, and at times riddled with inaccuracies and poor fact checking. And there are very rarely any corrections or retractions made despite user comments (at times) plainly pointing out errors. In fact, I remember a few times when articles the were especially 'blatantly inaccurate' simply disappeared after a number of hours, without any explaination... very bad in my opinion.