>most customers with an unmetered connection would take it because it's effectively free money

not really, because have to pay for the electricity costs of leaving your computer on 24/7. assuming a modest 50W power consumption for a PC, that works out to 36KWh per month, or $3.6 at 10 cents /Kwh. That alone wipes away your $1/month you're saving. also, that's a third of the monthly plan cost, how much of a discount can netflix really offer here?

as for hard disk space, I'll grant it's "free" space (as in the consumer wasn't going to use it anyways), but running consumer drives 24/7 with frequent seeks can't be good for them.