Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?

An article by MarketWatch includes comments from Goldman Sachs Analyst Heath Terry, who suggests the possible intent of Netflix behind targeting the HD plan. “We believe a targeted price change like this is designed to reduce excessive password sharing by incentivizing users to switch to the 1-screen plan,” Terry said.

The price of both single screen streaming plans and the two-screen HD plan is the same at $7.99. An important question is whether password sharing outside the home is really a piracy threat to major companies like Netflix.

The answer to this is no, but this does not mean that it is not prevalent, the report says. In a study earlier this year, Parks Associates found that nearly 57% of the U.S. households access an over-the-top video account, which could be Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go, but 11% of Netflix, 10% of Hulu Plus and 5% of Amazon Prime Instant Video subscribers make use of an account for which payments are made by someone else.

From the article "Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?" by Aman Jain.

Previously In The News

Over 70% of TV viewing by young not TV or live-streaming

TV-viewing research from Parks Associates finds that live TV viewing among all video consumption has continued to decline overall among US broadband households – nearly 60 per cent of video viewed on...

User experience key focus for smart TVs and SMPs

A Parks Associates report finds that makers of smart TVs and streaming media players (SMPs) are shifting strategies to focus on the user experience (UX) as device sales start to flatten out. Accord...

Google continues to ignore the Chromecast, the best product it ever made

The numbers also suggest customers, at least in the United States, have begun to pick Roku and Amazon over Google. A study by Parks Associates found that the Chromecast now makes up only 11% of the me...

One in 10 smart home device owners report unresolved technical problems

Smart home devices are supposed to make our lives easier, but if they suddenly stop working without warning, they can end up doing just the opposite. According to new research, more than one in 10 peo...