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Comment by clistctrl | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually surprised... I thought the number would be far larger than 7%

115.9m households have TVs[1], so 23.6m accounts is just over 20% of households with TVs subscribing. That seems more reasonable. The 7% figure assumes 1 account per person.

[1] - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/numb...

The US Census Bureau projects that last year's census will count 114.8 households in America.[1] That tracks pretty closely to what Nielsen has measured. So you don't really need the "with TV's" qualifier. It appears nearly every American house has one.

What is interesting is that I know a lot of people who share Netflix accounts across households. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of Americans who use Netflix is closer to 25%.

[1]: http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf

You're assuming that people without televisions don't have netflix. I use netflix on my laptop.

I haven't owned a tv for several years now. If it's not streaming, I just don't see it. I do fine.

Lots of families and couples have netflix collectively. I'd bet there are on average at least 2 or 3 people using each paid account.

Netflix used actually allow multiple users per account back in the day, each with their own queue. They removed that feature though, and now our household appears as one person.

It's still there for physical disks, although a bit harder to find - https://www.netflix.com/ViewProfiles?lnkctr=yas_profiles

They went back on that decision after the predictable outrage exceeded their threshold.

It's very sad, because the feature actually makes a TON more sense with the Instant Queue. Especially with a youngster in the house.

Quite true. Our "recommendations" are frequently a weird hodgepodge with things like Thomas the Tank Engine and Californication right next to each other.

OTOH, this was only vaguely better when we had cable. (You could have user-specific channel lists, but it was annoying to access them. And even still, there was no way to outright remove channels from the main list - is it really necessarily for me (or my kids) to see what's currently playing on the adult channels I don't subscribe to?)

How does that work for streaming? Is it limited to one stream at a time?

From https://www.netflix.com/Help?faqtrkid=4&p_search_text=si...:

Q. Can I watch movies instantly on more than one PC or Netflix-ready device?

A. ... If you are on the Watch Instantly Unlimited plan or the 1-disc-out-at-a-time plan, you may watch only one device at a time. If you are on the 2-discs-out-at-a-time plan, you may watch on up to two devices at a time. Members on the 3-disc plan can watch on up to three devices. The maximum is four devices -- available for members on the 4-or-greater-discs-out-at-a-time plan.

Your account can have up to six unique authorized devices activated (and associated with it) at any given time, including personal computers and Netflix-ready devices. For example, if you're on the 1-disc plan, you can have up to six devices associated with your account, but you can only watch one of them at a time. If you're on the 2-disc plan, you can have up to six devices activated but can only watch two of them at the same time.

We have the 1-disc plan but routinely watch on the Wii and my desktop at the same time (but not for very long, because our bandwidth can't really keep up well; it's kind of a bone of contention here).

Wow, that's great. I couldn't find any info about it on their site for some reason, but another site[0] says it's $20/month for the 4 discs out at-a-time plan, meaning by sharing with friends and family you can defray the cost to $5/month.

0: http://www.timefordvd.com/netflix/NetflixPricePlans.shtml

You're limited to 5 devices total... I'm not sure if you can stream on two at once.

You can. I share an account with other family members, we all stream and we all live at different addresses.

My wife and I have been able to stream to a laptop and the Wii at the same time.

But, I don't know if there are no restrictions, or if there are "only 1 device type at a time."

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