I’m basically a news junkie, but I rarely make public comments on what I read on the news wires or hear on NPR. But I find this story on how Netflix saw its profits surge in the 4th Quarter of 2008 fascinating because it really jives with my own experience.

My husband and I had cable TV for awhile, but when we moved to Monmouth in 2000, the only cable provider in town sucked big time, so we gave it up and mounted an antenna on the highest peak of the roof of our 2-story house. With the help of a signal booster and a rotating antenna, we can pull in over the air stations from both Portland and Eugene, and this has been sufficient for us, since we aren’t interested in most of the programming on the cable networks anyway. For years, we have also purchased favorite movies for our home video library, first on VHS and now on DVD. We’ve been collecting for about 15 years now and we own around 250 titles.

In the past five years, things have really improved for us. We’ve had HDTV for 2-3 years, ever since we purchased an HD-ready TV and an HD receiver (cost us about $850 total). We’d watch PBS a lot, since they had better quality programming, including a lot more in HD than many other stations. On the recommendation of friends, we joined Netflix in July 2003. After a few months with Netflix, I really started to wonder why anyone would bother with cable or satellite TV when they could get Netflix service for less than $20 per month. While it’s true that there is some info-tainment programming you can’t get on Netflix (e.g. sports, news, latest episodes of series), watching movies and TV series via Netflix is *way* superior to watching on cable, as far as I’m concerned. Biggest plusses: no commercials, and you control the timing.

Then, about 2 years ago, minet came online, and we added super speedy broadband Internet access for $30 per month.  Our broadband combined with the increasing amount of streaming video content that is becoming available online is very powerful. With broadband and video streaming, I am now able to get much better access to sports coverage for the sports I watch (Figure skating and NASCAR) through reasonably-priced, targeted subscription services than I was ever able to get on cable or broadcast TV.  I also love watching broadcast network TV shows on-demand through the network websites. And Netflix has really done a good job taking advantage of broadband as a delivery mechanism. We use the “watch instantly” feature fairly regularly, especially for the few cable TV series we like (e.g. Weeds), and we’ve found it to be incredibly reliable, even though we stream via our wireless router to a laptop connected to our new, 32-inch flat screen HDTV using a dual monitor configuration and a DV-I to HDMI cable.  For sound, we use a simple stereo wire to connect to our surround sound receiver via the headphone jack on the laptop.

Though the AP article didn’t provide any data on this, I’d be willing to bet that more people in America are discovering what we discovered a long time ago; Netflix provides a whole lot more entertainment value for the money than cable or satellite TV, and in this recession, people are now are dropping their cable and/or satellite subscriptions in favor of Netflix. I think this is a great development, though I don’t know how much longer all of the info-tainment delivery options we currently enjoy will remain so affordable once the suits figure out the business model(s). But I sure am enjoying it while it lasts.  I’m also kicking myself for not having purchased Netflix stock back in 2003 …