Netflix Hikes UK Prices for Internet Video Streaming Service
The most popular broadband-based Movie and TV video streaming service, Netflix, has today announced that they are to hike the monthly prices on all three of their plans for new and existing customers, with even the entry-level ‘Basic‘ plan going up in price for the first time in a decade!
In short, ‘Basic‘ will go from £5.99 to £6.99 per month, while ‘Standard‘ jumps from £9.99 to £10.99 and ‘Premium‘ leaps ahead from £13.99 to £15.99. The ‘Basic’ plan only allows you to view 1 stream at low-res Standard Definition (SD) quality, while ‘Standard’ supports 2 streams at High Definition (HD) and ‘Premium’ gives you 4 streams at UltraHD (4K).
Two of the biggest problems facing the market for legal streaming services today are the rising prices of access and increasing levels of content fragmentation (i.e. in order to access all the content you want, you’d have to subscribe to 5-6 different platforms). In the past these legal services have helped to encourage people away from piracy via affordable alternatives, but today’s market is so messy that it risks reversing that.
Existing customers will be given one month’s notice before the price rise is introduced.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It feels like all the progress that Netflix and Prime made over the past decade to make legal streaming easier than piracy has been completely undone by the market becoming fragmented and each provider jacking the prices up.
You buy the original physical medium and import it to your streaming library.
Collecting music is much like collecting art. Just because you either can’t afford nor find it doesn’t mean you can steal it.
This is becoming expensive. The competition are much cheaper especially for 4K content. This is the second rise in less the 12 months if memory serves. I suspect more people will share a subscription between houses now.
I should also add, people moved to streaming services as it was cheaper then Sky, but if you end up with several services to get all your content and it’s the same price as a Sky package, then Sky will ultimately win, due to the monopoly they have on Sports in the U.K. people won’t pay for Sky Sports and then all the other streaming services, they’ll just pay Sky for everything.
Yes it is becoming expensive and fragmented, so the solution is not to subscribe indiscriminately & simultaneously to everything (i.e. multiple services). Have a month of Netflix and catch up with what you want to watch on there and then turn it off again! And then maybe subscribe to something else for a month. Just needs a bit of thought & organisation. I don’t know how many people I’ve ever met who subscribe to loads of services but readily admit they rarely watch some of them. Unless one is made of money, those days are over.
@Anon
“As I said I can’t find it”
Can you provide some examples of what you’ve not been able to find via the legit online sellers?
Its expensive but compare this to the TV Licence. And the difference is, I actually watch Netflix and enjoy its content. And in terms of the Usenet argument. In the old days I used to buy all my movies on DVD/Blu-Ray from America as many films weren’t even released here in the UK. With the new customs duties it means you are paying around £40 for a single film. It seems they are forcing you to resort to piracy as those prices are insane.
£2.93 for 4 screens via turkey, no way I would pay £15.99 for the same thing
Shhh! They’ll know our secret and eventually foreign BIN codes will be banned.
Uploading or downloading of copyright material without the copyright owners consent is a copyright violation.
The cost of prosecution generally outweighs the damages caused by someone downloading it hence why prosecutions generally target uploaders whilst downloaders rarely receive a letter calling their bluff.
Nice to see you have some concern about your comment Anon.
People pay for tv/movies? That’s so 90s…
I guess this is what you were referring to when you admonished me over not having ways to consume bandwidth.
Given I and others are paying for the content you’re getting for free you’re welcome.
The bandwidth would be consumed regardless of whether you paid for it or not.
Thats why I pirate everything on pirate bay and frostwire p2p file sharing paying for media Content is so 2005
The content wouldn’t be made if we didn’t pay for it though.
Bit, well lot, defensive, Anon.
Netflix productions have all gotten wokeyfied. Was really looking forward to seeing Henry Cavill play a great role in the Witcher but he just plays second fiddle so that the independent wamen that need no man can take most of the screen time. Such a waste of potential for an amazing source material
At this point the only good content is the Korean content, Squid Game and All of Us are Dead are some of the best TV shows to have come out in the last few years
Yes indeed. The Netflix woke meme just gets better over time. Just think if they’d have got the lord of the rings show? But it appears Amazon have “wokified” that to the next level without Netflix help.
Netflix increase their prices and this is your take? Why are you trying to leverage ‘wokeness’ into this so hard? There are many other places devoted to discussing such things rather than levering them in here.
If you’re a libertarian who are you to tell Netflix how to run their business and what content to produce anyway? They produce what they please, people pay for it or not, end.
@buggerlugz the woke Lord of the Rings will be an unprecedented disaster with them trying to fit modern day politics into a fantasy medieval Britain fantasy with 9 digits worth of budget.
@carlt Netflix or Amazon should run however they want. I’m just stating that the market ultimately has the final word
Get woke go broke
Nice rhyme but doesn’t really hold true, especially when the ‘woke’ have much of the purchasing power.
The Witcher is great. Really enjoyed both series and can’t even say the ‘wokeness’ registered. Just watching and enjoying it for what it is, not putting ‘wokeness’ radar on.
The LotR series we will see, though it was never going to be profitable given how much they paid for the rights.
Think we disagree on what is ‘woke’ and what is normal. Good.
‘Go woke go broke’
Hilarious. Companies like Apple you mean?
You carry on living in the 70’s, we’ll get on with modern life.
I can never quite get my head around who has the time to watch all this television anyway – there’s so much of it!
Nothing complicated about it. Nobody watches everything that is produced. You probably watch at best 1% of what is available, if you’re an “enthusiast” spending 4 hours per day on average.
Other countries have cheaper netflix pricing its cause its in line with the cost of living, inflation etc..
Prime wins in all aspects they haven’t rised the price snice 2014 recently they rised the price in the US.
Well with the cost of living and inflation here in the UK being in a state of total runaway, I’m surprised Netflix just opted to increase it by only £1 a month. Hell, the way we’re headed petrol will be over £2 a litre by next week and no one will be able to afford to cook food or use electricity in their homes in the coming months.
Prime loses because they barely have any good content. The Boyz is pretty much the only good show
Well Lugz, you were wanted repeatedly that Brexit would have this effect, but you went ahead and voted for it. Perhaps you’ll personally compensate the people negatively affected?
Everyone should cancel their Prime Video, Netflix, NowTV, Sky TV, Disney+, gym membership. Foods Fuel and Energy will cost a bomb next 12-18 months.
Will economise as I need to, which thankfully doesn’t mean cancelling everything.
Been a subscriber for years with Netflix, but its time to stop. Seems they are loving the yearly inflation busting rises too much now, March last year and March this year. When the odd decent program comes up, I will dip my toe in for one month, binge watch and cancel again, saving lots and not over feeding the cash cow any more
I guess that’s the main advantage of streaming services compared with Sky. You can dip and and out on a monthly basis whereas Sky usually tie you in for 18 months.
More and more people I know are cancelling Sky and doing just this, using Freeview/Freesat for their main FTA viewing and switching between the streaming services. An extra quid or two is still a lot cheaper than the £80+ per month I was paying for Sky!