March 31, 2009, 8:13 AM — Yesterday Netflix sent out a notification that it was raising the cost of "Blu-ray enabling" all Netflix accounts. As a Netflix customer with a Blu-ray player, that made me stop to think about whether it was worth it to keep paying the extra, which led to wondering if I was on the right plan and what kind of value I'm getting out of the service. Netflix feels like a good value to me, but is it really?
In order to be sure, I turned to FeedFlix.com, a site that measures your Netflix activity and crunches the numbers for you. At the bottom of this page you can see part of the results it turned up for me: I'm actually paying $5/rental due to my habit of leaving disks laying around for weeks before actually watching them. Hmm. Which isn't a slight on Netflix; as you can see, 71% of Netflix customers get more value than I do.
There're some downsides to using FeedFlix. First, you have to enter your Netflix username and password through the NetFlix API, which is obviously a security risk. The API login notes: "Your password will always remain private, but FeedFlix will have ongoing access to your account." I've had no trouble since first using the service a month or so ago, but that choice is up to you, and we claim no responsibility if something goes wrong as a result of you entering your data. Caveat emptor and all that. Second, FeedFlix can be a little wonky in making its initial connection to the Netflix API. I had to try several times before it would connect and 'link' the two accounts. Once it did it seems to aggregate data without any problems, but that first connection can be a bit frustrating.
If it seems a little strange to reccommend a site with two large downsides, I'm doing it because I haven't found any other site that offers similar functionality. I'd love to hear about others, if they exist. Please leave a comment with names and URLs!
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