Netflix will soon be launching a cheaper subscription option. The whole thing should only cost around five euros a month, but consumers have to live with advertising and some cutbacks.
The advertising-financed Netflix subscription will be available in a total of twelve countries from the beginning of November. As announced by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters, the new variant will also be available in Germany from November 3rd.
Netflix will then offer a total of four subscription options. While the new “Basic subscription with advertising” will cost EUR 4.99 per month, the “Basic” package is EUR 7.99 per month, the “Standard” subscription is EUR 12.99 and the “Premium” Variant at 17.99 euros.
While “Standard” users stream in Full HD resolution on up to two devices at the same time and “Premium” users stream in 4K on up to four devices, the content of the two “Basic” variants is only displayed in 720p – and only on one device at a time. This is an upgrade for the “basic” package without ads, because previously the content was only available in SD quality.
According to Netflix, the new subscription will show an average of four to five minutes of advertising per hour, but the other models will remain ad-free. The advertising is therefore only shown before and during films and series and, according to the Netflix help center, can neither be skipped nor fast-forwarded. At least no advertising is placed on children’s profiles.
In addition, there will be no download function for the “basic subscription with advertising”. Consumers also have to do without certain content. For licensing reasons, “a limited number” of films and series will not be available to users of the new package. The streaming service is said to be working on that. It is currently unknown how much or which content exactly will be missing in the new variant. So it remains to be seen whether the new “basic” subscription will be worthwhile.
