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.