The Streaming Wars: Netflix's Price Hikes and the Future of TV

[00:00:12] fellow tech enthusiasts Jay Harrison and Sam Bushman talking tech on your radio and on your favorite podcast client I might add npitechguys.com is the website to get the show to share it with others and more you can also sign up for the network providers inc.com newsletter there and get a lot of the tips we've been talking about as the broadcasts unfold we mentioned last show right at the end Netflix raising prices once again yeah

[00:00:48] they raised they raised is that right they rose prices went up I don't know anyway they raised their prices for all plans even the cheapest plan now the one that's called the standard plan with ads Jay $7.99 a month eight bucks a month now my problem with this Jay is back in the day you could watch TV and be frustrated about the commercials but it was pretty much free then cable and you pay for cable and you

[00:01:18] you'd pay for well you have commercials right and then it was so abusive that everybody got mad and then like hey well here's what we'll do we'll charge you for the service but there won't be any commercials and now they've got us on the internet now they're basically charging you for the system eight bucks a month plus commercials and you got to pay more to get rid of the commercials I don't understand it because everybody wanted to get away from cable they're like I don't want to buy these 200 channels I don't need most of them I just need these few things all a cart we thought all a cart would save

[00:01:48] all we've done is moved from a cart I don't know satellite and cable TV well we moved from the antenna rabbit ears TV to cattle satellite and cable TV now we're moving to internet TV but now it's a hassle it's just as expensive and more of a pain to manage well that's because Netflix is not being a la carte like they're they're getting away from their roots is the problem so it used to be that Netflix was just movies DVDs or series you know television series but things that you could buy on DVD

[00:02:16] and you just have this giant library and that would be great and it was very cheap very inexpensive and if you want to add ads and have a very small tier plan or something or ad supported that's okay too that's pretty cool but Netflix is trying to become this all in one everything sports Mike Tyson fights the NFL you know their own or originator like Hollywood of blockbuster movies and so they had these millions and millions and tens or hundreds of millions of dollar budgets

[00:02:46] and they're passing those costs and they're passing those costs and they're passing those costs on to the consumers and I think Netflix is going to see potentially it's it's a market share and it's customer base go down as they continue to do this because this isn't really what people wanted this isn't what Netflix is for them Netflix is the place to go and have your movie collection you know I don't necessarily want to see live live sports or live fighting or live you know you know

[00:03:10] this kind of this kind of thing and it's cool if they want to make blockbuster movies that's great Netflix have a movie studio but make that movie studio profitable on its own don't tie it into the to the user base and make them supported by monthly fees or it'll never get off the ground well not unless they come out with some really good stuff the problem is in my opinion Netflix's stuff has been trashed there's been very few things that they've spent a lot of money on that have really broken out I mean you might say Stranger Things was one

[00:03:40] the Lost in Space reboot was kind of good but a lot of their stuff the majority of it stuff I can't even name it just isn't any good it's all you know you know it's just not cutting the mustard for them and so if you're a Netflix subscriber which I am not any longer and haven't been for a little while but I was one of the early adopters I mean I was on Netflix when when you know I was like cord cutter before cord cutter was even a word and it canceled direct TV and it was just using Netflix

[00:04:07] Netflix and had been a long time customer for probably I don't know 15 years or something but they've just moved away from where I'm at anyway and you're right the a la carte was the promise and it has kind of evaporated as they want to become the next you know direct TV or something or that sort of a conglomerate

[00:04:24] and I agree that Netflix has changed what made them great and I agree that it's you know these companies fault for example YouTube now you got YouTube TV it has everything under the sun and it's just as expensive if not more expensive than cable now and they're raising their prices too oh yeah it's like $80 a month or something and I don't know anybody that would pay that I mean I'm sure there are people because there's people that don't care and you know if you're you're in the upper upper middle class

[00:04:52] here's what happens people pay for it and team up from you know family members that live in different households and they share the account not anymore that's fine but then they they canceled that down and now that you know so the game is changing and on one hand would like to blame these companies for it I agree it's partly their fault for changing the goalposts

[00:05:10] and all that kind of thing however here's who's really at fault the people yeah because they're putting up with it for putting up with it and tolerating it let me give you some examples to make the point here

[00:05:24] Netflix in the latest quarter Jay adds 19 million subscribers that is not tiny that is gargantuan is that adjusted for the people that desubscribed or is that just do 19 million subscribers because a lot of times they kind of cook the books I think it's 19 million added and I bet you there's probably 10 million that went away right that's my opinion exactly okay but then they say this the company says those results

[00:05:52] were boided by recent programming in recent months that exceeded internal expectations Netflix ended 2024 with 302 million global subscribers Jay and that relates to an annual operating income exceeding 10 billion for the first time in the company's history I don't even know how to deal with those numbers Jay

[00:06:21] that's that's good for them that is good that's good for them they're on target and I'm all I'm the one off target you know I might just be an old fogey and

[00:06:28] they're leaving no that's what I'm saying though that these people that are all aboard for this are the ones that are really causing the problem because if they started losing subscribers they wouldn't be adding increased prices plus adding commercials I think that some of the big subscribers that they have gotten though are the people that are looking for things like live sports and stuff like that because you haven't had that so you see an inrush of you know 10 million people that are into live sports thinking oh hey we can get Netflix now and do this because they didn't care about the movies anymore and you'll

[00:06:58] see that but if that's not counting net subscribers including losses the number doesn't mean a lot to me without seeing the other side of it oh there's no question but see they're not going to pitch that other side because then it doesn't sound as impressive that won't impress investors that's for sure analytics here that aren't helpful so you just need to invest in the company or go away okay now they say this I don't know if you know but there's a series I guess called squid game

[00:07:21] I'm familiar with it I've never I've seen a part of one but I've never seen the whole thing like I'm not even a single whole episode but I'm familiar with the concept and people play the concept in a second but they say it's one of the biggest you know draws they have one of the most watched original seasons ever and anyway they go on and talk about the top 10 most viewed movies they talk about the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight

[00:07:48] um I actually did watch that on there all these things huge audiences um anyway they say revenue jumped 16 percent in the fourth quarter alone it's pretty good um I guess revenue should account for drop-offs too right well overall revenue should but but I don't know that it does necessarily because that's the other side of the equation

[00:08:12] but here's what's interesting to me they say that they've raised prices for most plans and then they say the United States Canada Portugal Argentina um and the standard membership increased to uh 17.99 that's their standard membership now up from 15.49 while the price for the standard with ads um

[00:08:39] I guess two dollars and 37 anyway they go on and on and on with their numbers and I don't understand their plans well enough but basically they're increasing every plan even the plans where you get commercial free stuff are going up Jay that's right and what they would come back and say is hey we're providing all this extra rip and awesome content Sam of course it's going up look at what we're providing to you and my response is I get that

[00:09:02] I just don't want or agree with that I don't want squid games uh squid game I don't want all these you know Tyson fights it used to be pay-per-view and you used to basically pay for a fight if you wanted a fight or you wanted some of these special event things now they're trying to say you get all those you just got to pay a lot for them why don't Netflix make it like that cable now like why don't they just have it where you can if you want to see the Mike Tyson fight then uh you know you pay an extra two bucks or ten

[00:09:31] bucks or whatever it is and then you can see they know suckers will pay for it and do it they'll make way more money this way Jay yeah benefits the user this everything in uh high price benefits them because they know you don't watch but a tenth of it right and again I say that's not Netflix is no longer all the cart they're they're becoming a provider they might as well be caught in YouTube's not all a cart and what are the other what are the other TV offerings nowadays that they have they have YouTube they have Netflix they have well are you talking about only like cord cutting

[00:10:01] ones online are you talking about um like Cox Comcast yeah no only the cord cutting ones okay Cox and Comcast they're starting to go away in fact Cox and Comcast are starting to have their own quote cord cutting options well yeah because they you know they pivoted and have said we're going to be your broadband provider and really they haven't seen a lot of uh downturn in sales now they've seen people shifting away from their cable packages to just data but at least they're still in the game

[00:10:27] because they've been able to provide data to people right anyway it's very interesting because then the question becomes if you provide me TV and uh movies and uh internet connection and uh a phone line and uh I mean pretty soon hey half my home devices are connected to that too for whatever reason we'll put it all in a bundle for you Sam and make it really hard to get out of any of them no a la carte anything and you just got to pay your services bill of 500 bucks a month you know what

[00:10:55] you Sam you're just going to pay us whatever we tell you to that's all it is you just hook us up to your bank account and we'll just take a look and we'll just pull whatever we want this month yeah I mean it's insane ladies and gentlemen I I think it's a disgrace but there you have it we thought would bring that to your attention uh the only way to stop it is for us to push back and a bunch of us to just jettison the service and go you guys need to come back to your senses get a plan for the me that makes sense give me a free plan with commercials or give me an inexpensive plan and hey you don't have to have all the services in it it's fine if you give me a

[00:11:24] stripped down whatever version of something but then give me the ability to add a few things that I need people just can't afford the expense anymore who can spend 80 bucks a month for example on just entertainment not counting going anywhere I don't know I think the upper class they just say hook it up to all my tvs everything and if I ever want it I'll check it out anyway there it's just crazy all right the best mini pcs on the market jay do you want to break this down this is going to be

[00:11:53] interesting yeah so there was a classic computer basically right yeah well no not really this has been around for a long time but they're actually starting to make a little bit of traction now yeah but not to the masses they used to be corporate kind of things or whatever but most people didn't even have one or know about them yeah they were kind of niche you know but there so everybody knows about the apple uh mac mini the m2 processor one that's kind of the the most recent one and uh in forms actually voted that pc as the best overall mini pc the apple mac mini

[00:12:23] with the m2 in it um but there's a lot of different ones out there dell makes these um mff micro form factor pcs they've been making them for years actually you got the nook yep you got the nook you've got the um the the nook is one of the was actually voted best for um mini pc gaming um you've got the stick ones which are like uh the the m-e-l-e um which is made it has intel inside of it it's called

[00:12:51] the pcg or the pc go 2 and uh i like the concept i mean i think it's a it's a neat idea the problem is so you have this stick think of like a roku stick or something that you stick into your um hdmi port on the back of a tv and that that's the promises hey you stick this thing in and boom you got a computer the problem is if you don't have enough power on that hdmi port then you got to hook it up to power then you got to hook up a keyboard then you might have to hook up a land cable and you might have to

[00:13:21] hook up you know your headphones or whatever and all of a sudden you got this one stick that's that's hanging on to your mouse jay yeah you got a mouse you know you're gonna either have to a wireless thing or you're gonna have cables for a keyboard and a mouse and you know then you got this one like stick like thing it just doesn't work well i don't think of hanging off of your hdmi jack with all of these cables and cords the weight on it sticks are taking this mini pc to even a new level

[00:13:46] that may have very limited purposes but these general mini pcs that we're talking about are tiny a lot of them have hardware to where you can mount it on the back of your monitor so it's out of sight yep it's great for small businesses and stuff like that but they're becoming so inexpensive and they're so powerful now they're almost replacing the desktop for many situations jay they are they are desktops i mean um they definitely are 100 desktops um the best budget mini mini pc is the b link mini

[00:14:12] that's b e e like the like the buzzy b link mini it's about 200 with some interesting specs um ace magic is making some good ones sam and i have actually been testing some of those um you know it's there you can find them on amazon for about 600 but right now they have 150 coupon so for 450 you can get a

[00:14:32] an i9 processor like 12th gen with a pretty basic but at least existing actual gpu on there and a one terabyte drive you know for 450 dollars it's a pretty good deal i mean it's something if you don't if you know it to where the average person used to have to pay close to a thousand dollars for a decent pc or whatever oh yeah the game to where it's now 500 or less you for three to 500 bucks you can get a good average pc for the average joe doing word processing and email and like school work

[00:15:03] adult you know if they don't do things like sam and tay do you can get a lot of people pretty good competing power they can browse the internet they can watch videos they can play music they can do for three 500 bucks oh i think you can get that done even for 200 if you want to game and do some things like that you can get it in the 450 500 yeah absolutely um it's something and it's amazing and we're talking about something you know the size of like a smaller salad bowl like you know not a

[00:15:29] not a big pc at all um like the size of an internet router yeah but well that depends internet routers are getting kind of big and crazy with 14 antennas well you're right but i'm just saying it's you know are several decks of cards you know what's funny about internet routers it's a bit of a side but um i almost feel like you look at like an edge router x which is like the size of a deck of cards and it's amazing what it can do and then you see these like net gears and these ones they're almost i

[00:15:55] think putting a lot of plastic into it and a lot to make it bigger and all the antennas and stuff open them up they're really light and there's hardly anything in them yeah there's a little board in them the size that could be in one of these little stick pieces for sure and um you said they're kind of overselling and then they you know they want 200 for the latest router for your in it you're just thinking come on when it when an edge router x which can is actually like five separate routers because you can do all kinds of different things bonding and everything else yeah and it's like 80 bucks and then you have these routers that on the outside they look fancy

[00:16:25] they you know they look impressive but they're they're on the inside they're not nearly as much and they want 200 for them i think they're kind of overselling that but anyway that's an aside well they're getting away with it making a lot of money that's for sure yeah the whole point for us right now in my mind is that we're really making a huge difference with these mini pcs and they're kind of becoming the new desktop they're tiny they're small they're powerful they're inexpensive and it's you know it's something that people need to really consider and explore especially at home it is say it's better than a lot they support multiple monitors out of the box too jay where a lot of

[00:16:54] laptops don't they'll have two and three display ports on them um or you know or hdmi or whatever i just mean ports that you can hook a monitor to um one of them in particular i've seen has two um hdmis and then it has a third um like versatile port and it can be you can even put a vga in there if you had a vga monitor or a display port or a hdmi um you can even put in a second networking jack if you want to run these things like uh like a pf sense firewall and do all kinds of interesting

[00:17:23] things with them they're they're almost they're they're kind of like raspberry pies on steroids you know they can do all kinds of stuff they're full-blown pcs they can run windows um in my opinion in some ways they're better than a laptop especially uh if you wanted to travel back and forth or kind of take your computer with you but you wanted a full setup where you're not constrained to the small keyboard hunched over on a on a laptop kind of setup although some people will take a laptop and just use a docking station and move it back and forth but yeah they are um full-blown pcs the

[00:17:53] only downside is if you're a heavy gamer or you're really into like you want the latest ati radeon or nvidia kind of stuff you're going to need a full case for that although there is a nuk pc it's considered a mini pc that can hold a full-size graphics card but it is basically the size of a full-size graphics card because in order to fit that in there it's kind of interesting yeah but um anyway all i'm telling is they're really cool and i think they're kind of an up-and-coming thing and i think partly been inspired by the pie uh they've been partly inspired by hey you know the desktop

[00:18:22] market's kind of melting down you know who wants a big old case on the floor a big old tower like we used to have nobody wants that you don't need a dvd in it anymore you don't need any external care you know connectivity and things like that and i mean one of the other beautiful things about these is most laptops now they've limited the number of ports that you have big time yep uh whereas um when you look at one of these nook kind of pcs or these mini pcs they have a ton of ports on them too jay like a bunch of usbs and a bunch of pc or hdmis and

[00:18:51] w sbas and c's and yeah lots of on it which is really good um you know but some people they they do like i mean especially gamers who want the big graphics card and stuff you know they're buying these cases they're calling them now fishbowl pcs because the the front of them are all clear and they put all the leds and the rgb in there and stuff and yeah they in the the computer itself is is half decoration uh as opposed to also being kind of a power machine you know so there are

[00:19:19] those like that some of these big cases though that you're talking about and that you know you're talking about a big power supply to feed those suckers too the beauty about these mini pcs too is that their power consumption comparatively even to a desktop oh yeah is minimal yeah there's some of the ones i've seen that will run 15 watts sometimes when they're not you know working really hard they're just sitting around uh 15 watts is pretty good you know that's like a a tiny night light or a couple um yeah you can run that on solar system what are they called those led

[00:19:46] light bulbs that are about 15 watts right yeah well it depends um you know like a 60 watt equivalent is going to be like 60 watt or six watts basically an led it's about 10 percent um yeah but i'm just saying it's it's about like one of those it's a little bit more it's like two or three of them but i'm just saying it's it's in that range though compared to the big 60 to 200 watt stuff it's it's it's minimal big time yeah your average desktop is going to be pulling like you said 60 100 watts

[00:20:12] something like that when it's just idling around maybe 40 if it's really efficient laptop will do a lot better these little mini pcs seem to do pretty well but you know even when you have a gaming pc and you got an 800 watt or a thousand watt power supply it doesn't mean that it's pulling all that um it's going to pull a little more than normal it might be pulling 120 watts or something but it's not going to be pulling those big wattage until and unless and when you need it right but but but i'm just saying when you talk about one of these mini pcs that do 15 watts compared

[00:20:39] to one of those towers that do 120 watts and possibly more if you if you need to pull the power we're not talking the same apples at all yeah when you're playing rainbow six man and you can see your power meter it's singing boy howdy i'll tell you what that's crazy or my there's a quick interesting thing you know we talked about mike tyson fights and all the stuff that people pay for i don't know if you know but there's a showdown for spreadsheet glory jay i don't even understand

[00:21:06] this thing really but there's like a world championship in las vegas and they basically have to race to see who's the best the most capable the anyway it's called the microsoft xl world championship in las vegas i've never heard of such a thing jay i haven't either but i've been some talented geeky guys there and ladies they're more talented and geeky than i am then jay for sure because i do spreadsheets out of necessity i do not spreadsheet for fun

[00:21:38] that's not your kind of fun is it spreadsheets but but it's interesting though they have all kinds of ways that they determine how fast you can do this or that or how creative you could be i mean they have all kinds of kind of categories and all kinds of i don't know what you call it benchmarking is that what you'd call it yep five thousand dollar prize at stake yeah it would cost five grand just to get to vegas buddy wrestling style championship spreadsheet belts come on sam you're missing out

[00:22:05] i just can't really understand this kind of stuff in all seriousness now but the thing is it's not a joke it's real people this is not a joke they really have these competitions and you know what the world's a better place for it jay because these are the people that pioneer uh you know it's kind of like we learn a lot from going to space right we learn a lot from these geeks that trickle things down to us though oh yeah so i i joke about it and i just can't believe that it's real and everything else but at the end of the day there's real value that gets trickled down to us from these things i just

[00:22:32] didn't know that it was a thing i didn't either the microsoft excel world championship in las vegas we're gonna have to plan and go sam if y'all so you know i need you to figure out when it is and i almost would like to go just to see what the thing's like i'm gonna have to make a spreadsheet and figure it out we'll put a spreadsheet in there and see what's the best time to go and when it is or whatever you know it's amazing though and obviously this makes it smart for microsoft to sponsor it with excel but for sure i would say without a doubt i do more spreadsheets in google

[00:23:02] spreadsheets than i do in microsoft excel well then you need to come to the table and say i'm the google spreadsheet i'm going to do a google spreadsheet um no well no because microsoft microsoft excel is going to be more powerful there's a lot more um higher end geeky you know microsoft only kind of functions and things in in those but if you just want a general spreadsheet if you have a gmail account you know you can use google docs and google spreadsheet for sure i just like it that it's

[00:23:29] always saved it's always there it's easy to share with people and add people microsoft's making roads with that with their one drive and their you know their office suites oh but the roads they're making for that are pure they're very windy and convoluted they're more than windy and convoluted they're pure hell jay i know it we won't go there though we like microsoft mostly we do and and we actually sell products and services because in the business world they do have um they do have a a driver's seat

[00:23:56] position for a reason oh absolutely the the details that you talked about about um hey you know google spreadsheets don't don't hold a candle to some of the feature sets and everything else the power user is going to use excel programs and look things up and do things that i mean google spreadsheets have never even thought about yeah you can literally program just about in uh excel if you're good enough at it you can you can accomplish all and you can connect excel to all kinds of databases with odbc connections and do all kind of things that i'm just telling you it's powerful

[00:24:24] as could be but again it's wherever your audience is simplicity is always best we want tech to serve you not own you that's another wrap check out network providers inc.com and npitechguys.com for sam and jay make it a great tech day will you hey thanks