I have been a Netflix member since March 24th, 2004. Seven years. I know this because Netflix keeps a complete record of all the movies I’ve ever rented. I started out with a three-at-a-time plan. The first three red envelopes that showed up in my mailbox contained A Bronx Tale, Men of Honor, and Mean Streets. For whatever reason, I began my Netflix life with a Denirothon. 215 red envelopes later (yes, I counted), Netflix has ingrained itself as a staple in my daily life, and many more millions of other American’s lives as well. But my consumption is rarely through my mailbox these days; I’ve only received 7 DVDs in this calendar year. Starting on the 18th of July, 2008, the first time I clicked on the little blue “watch instantly” button (to watch Jesus Camp), the vast and growing majority of my media consumption now comes through my modem. And I was content, up to this day, with the balance. I went from three-DVDs-at-a-time down to two, then last year down to one. But I still very much want to keep that one coming, because though it may be uncommonly used, it is still important to me. Why? Selection. Though the situation has been improving in the last year or two, as Netflix signs deals to stream Starz and Universal content, among others, the available streaming content is still significantly inferior to DVD offerings. Last month, the selection got even worse as all Sony streaming content was pulled from Netflix over a contract dispute.

Now my era of Netflix may be slowly withering to a close. Following on the footsteps of Verizon in the legion of companies who have decided to increase profits by charging us more for less, the price of my Netflix plan will shoot up 60% starting in September. As of today I am paying $9.99 per month for unlimited streaming with one dvd out at a time. According to the official Netflix blog, “Now we offer a choice: Unlimited Streaming for $7.99 a month, Unlimited DVDs for $7.99 a month, or both for $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99).”

Basically, I’m offered a bad choice: pay a lot more for the service, or cut down considerably on some aspect of it. I either lose the ability to have titles at my fingertips ready to go at all times, or lose access to the vast library of Netflix DVD titles and wallow in my substandard instant queue. And Netflix puts one hell of a spin on this Sophie’s Choice: “These plans offer our lowest prices ever for unlimited DVDs – only $7.99 a month for our 1 DVD out at-a-time plan and $11.99 a month for our 2 DVDs out at-a-time plan. By offering our lowest prices ever, we hope to provide great value to our current and future DVDs by mail members.” Give me a break. Aside from the poor grammatical form of including the ‘lowest prices ever’ phrase in back to back sentences, this seems like a load of schlock. Maybe we have been getting an absurd discount on this service versus what it costs to provide it to us. Let’s check. The direct cost to Netflix of streaming one movie to your home runs at between a nickel and a dime. By contrast, DVDs by mail run at nearly a dollar per. Ignoring licensing fees, instant streaming is virtually printing money compared to the old way. And America jumped on en masse; Netflix traffic now accounts for nearly a third of all U.S. web traffic.

Now, the licensing fees are the elephant in the room. By some estimates, it will start costing Netflix more than ten times as much to stream some of their most popular content. This new pricing scheme might be an effort to alleviate some of the burden. But last week’s announcement of an expansion into Latin America satisfied me that global domination, rather than the less service/more expense approach would be their path to a rising stock price. And let’s take a quick look at their charts: by any metric, Netflix is an ideal company. The stock goes from the bottom left to the top right in every time frame. Looks like the suffering stock price being the cause the subscription price jump theory holds no water.

Netflix may have pioneered the online streaming industry and given us something we didn’t know we craved, but it doesn’t have to last forever. Just as Facebook is probably regrouping off of the smashing start of Google+, Netflix will have to continue to battle with the likes of Hulu, Apple, and Amazon Prime for the future fate of the digital content world. But my money is on none of these guys. It is likely the company that will supplant them all hasn’t even been conceived of yet. Thus is the march of technology.