On a recent podcast, a guest made a very interesting point. Jon said that Vudu is a better deal for him because some months he doesn’t have time to watch movies. So in other words, the pay as you go plan works best for him. I started to wonder about my own usage, as I’ve been known to go a month without watching a movie. So I decided to take a look at my usage history on the Netflix’s site.
To my surprise I’d watched 76 movies in the past 12 month. Now don’t ask me where I found the time to watch that many movies in 12 months, because I just don’t know. It feels like I watch one a month, but the numbers don’t lie and although I rent the occasional movie for my wife and daughter, not very many. But just to put it into perspective, that is over 6 movies a month or 1.5 movies a week.
Now the reason I say that Netflix is such a great deal for me is because even with the new $1 Blu-ray tax, I’m still only spending $252 a year. If I was using Vudu or Apple TV, I’d be spending almost twice that at $455 a year.
But if I really want to get into rip-offs, then I’ll look at my FiOS TV bill. Sure it offers some great quality and at about 100 HD channels, a great selection of HD, but my bill is about $800 a year. So if I don’t count all the time I spend watching OTA HD programming for free, the amount of time I actually spend watching FiOS TV is way less than the 3 hours a week I spend watching Netflix Movies. So yeah, I’m wasting my money.
The bottom line is as soon as football season is over — gotta have ESPN and the NFL Network for the games after all — I’m dropping FiOS TV, but not to do the trendy downloads thing, I’m going strickly OTA HD and Blu-ray via Netflix.
I ended up with the same conclusion, so I’m doing this plus OTA antenna. Should tide me over for now. Might think about doing an apple tuner to faux DVR it.
All those sources in your post are great, but not the greatest picture quality.
As for the Apple DVR idea, most of the DVR software on the mac isn’t great.
I have DirecTV, Apple TV, Netflix, and OTA HD (via Tivo Series3). We use them all, but I fluctuate the amount based on the time of year.
In the summer, everyone is home, network TV is on repeats and we watch a movie just about every night, and the kids also watch a few movies a week…..so we switch off premium channels on DirecTV, do 5-at-a-time on Netflix, and still rent the occasional Apple TV title because Netflix often has a “long wait” on new titles, especially on Blu-Ray.
In the fall and spring, there is good programming on the networks and HBO/Showtime, so we back off on our Netflix plan (2-at-a-time), and hardly ever rent from AppleTV. We don’t have much time for movies, but the DVRs are full of good, new television programming. Also, DirecTV now has HD On-Demand for shows we want to catch up on that we may have missed in the summer months (Weeds, Dexter, etc.). Once new programming tappers off, we simply switch off premium channels and up the Netflix quota.
This gives us the best value because we get the best of OTA & cable programming, we still get good titles on Blu-Ray from Netflix.
Interestingly enough, we’re getting to a point were there is really nothing but new/up-coming Blu-Ray releases in our NetFlix queue.
Rich,
Interesting, sounds like you have a good plan.
My experience with Netflix is a little different. I usually get even the long wait titles long before they become available on Apple TV of Vudu, but some titles seem to come sooner on ATV than others.
Without only OTA, how will you be able to watch Keith Olberman? 🙂
BTW, take a look at FeedFlix.com which analyzes the RSS feeds from you Netflix account to give you some interesting data.
Ben, as you and I have discussed many times before – in the past I’d also only subscribe to cable during football season. However a woman with a cable news addiction moved in a few years ago… and that’s all she wrote! I could get by just fine solely (doubly?) with OTA and discs of cable shows (that’s how I watched early seasons of Dexter, Deadwood, The Wire, Burn Notice, etc).
Regarding Vudu, if that deal with $200 movie credit is going on it could be a decent deal. Though AppleTV is probably a better value for most. Of course, the simple cable box VOD/PPV is fine for the vast majority of folks that already rent one…
How many of those 76 movies were good? And can you recommend a few. I’m hurting for good content.
Yeah, 24 hours news could be a problem, but luckily my wife mostly watching OTA TV like me.
As for movies, there are plenty of good movies, here are a few. Also forgot to mention every movie I’ve watched in the last two years was on Blu-ray.
Run, Fat Boy, Run
Indiana Jones/Kingdom of the Crystal Sku
Patton
88 Minutes
Iron Man
Leatherheads
Redbelt
Vantage Point
The Professionals
The Bank Job
The Longest Day
A Bridge Too Far
The Counterfeiters
Battle of Britain
Cloverfield
The Bucket List
Be Kind Rewind
Semi-Pro
Next
Commando
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Jumper
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Wall Street
Rambo
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Juno
Gone Baby Gone
No Country for Old Men
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Lives of Others
Sunshine
Reign Over Me
The Simpsons Movie
Superbad
We Are Marshall
Mr. Brooks
Cars
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