Despite Netflix’s recent highly publicized and criticized changes, some students and faculty at Kent State are choosing to stay members.

After announcing it was raising its subscription fees by 60 percent and splitting its DVD service from its streaming services, the company faced numerous customer complaints.

As of Oct. 10, the company decided not to rebrand the DVD rental to Qwikster anymore.

But this is only one of Netflix’s current problems.

On Sept. 1 Starz Entertainment, the largest provider of newly released movies to Netflix, ended their contract with the company causing customers like Murali Shanker, professor of management and information systems, to be concerned for the future of Netflix.

Shanker has the $7.99 a month streaming-only plan with Netflix and said the company has to maintain a large selection of movies and TV shows to stay competitive.

“At this point, I don’t know if there’s anything better than Netflix,” Shanker said. “There are other services like Amazon Prime streaming or Hulu Plus, but Netflix still has the upper hand. If they lose licenses from movie and television studios, they could be in trouble.”

Shanker said he sees these developments as a shift away from having one dominant media streaming service like Netflix, and instead, studios will either develop their own streaming platform or go with the highest bidder.

“The problem is, once they see something successful, companies invariably want to make more money out of it,” Shanker said. “We’ll have a very fragmented service. No one option will have everything. You’ll have to get two or three. That’s where it’s heading.”

Shanker said he believes that Netflix’s now-failed plan to split the DVD and streaming services was an attempt to phase out the DVD delivery service altogether.

“My suspicion is they wanted to go completely to streaming because it’s a more efficient model of distribution,” Shanker said. “If they could get everyone to a streaming model they could invest less in building up their infrastructure and keeping it, so you make a larger margin of profit.”

Scott Moore, sophomore computer science major, has been a member of Netflix for two years and had the DVD and streaming subscription plan when he first joined. After hearing about the planned price increase, he cancelled his membership, only to rejoin shortly after.

“I didn’t want to pay the price difference initially,” Moore said. “But then three weeks later I signed up again with streaming only.”

Moore said Netflix’s streaming-only plan is a great deal because it offers instant access to multiple seasons of his favorite TV shows whenever he wants.

“It’s much cheaper than buying the seasons of a show, which normally run anywhere from $40 to $50 each,” Moore said.

Doug Flower, senior computer information systems major, has been a Netflix member for two years and has the streaming-only plan.

Customers like Shanker, Moore and Flower who choose to stay with Netflix amid all of the turmoil, may indicate that even with Netflix experiencing its most challenging time as a company, many customers are staying put because it remains the best option.

“I think the content price is good for a single package like streaming,” Flower said. “They have a good variety of movies and the streaming quality is good.”

Contact Evan Graening at [email protected].