Netflix Places Limits on How Many Times You Can Download Certain Content

Netflix subscribers should be wary of how frequently they are downloading their favorite movies and shows: it turns out that you are only allowed four or five downloads a year for certain content. This is reportedly out of Netflix’s hands, as the limits are determined by content owners, but interestingly enough, originals such as House of Cards are also seemingly affected. Hopefully, a future update will make these limitations clearer.

...Netflix's downloading functionality comes with a nasty catch that many people have just recently started running into: some content can only be downloaded a certain number of times. The worst part is Netflix doesn't tell you about that until you're almost out of downloads. Currently, all content downloaded from Netflix has an expiration date. After a certain amount of time, you have to "refresh" the download. Caching a video always counts as a download whether you're downloading on a new device or just refreshing an existing download. After a few downloads, some episodes and movies will pop up a warning that explains you can only download them one more time before a particular date (probably a year from the first download).

Not a huge deal for me. I've only used this feature when going on flights (which I only take 2-3 times a year for work).

Odd about the house of cards thing, though. Netflix better not try to play the victim card if their own produced content has similar restrictions.

So it depends on how quickly after you download does the video expire. But i suppose they don't want this to be a collection sort of function but more of a temporary download as netflix's core function is to stream content, which has a limited license on it to begin with on netflix.

I wouldn't know I stopped month's subscribing to netflix regularly because they don't offer enough anymore, I just do 1-2 months out of the year on netflix, 1-3 months on hulu and stop because don't have too much of a reason to watch the same stuff again and again.

Surprised people with kids haven't already found this out.

TwiceOver said:

Surprised people with kids haven't already found this out.

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I was more let down with how soon they expire.

SeymourGore said:

Not a huge deal for me. I've only used this feature when going on flights (which I only take 2-3 times a year for work).

Odd about the house of cards thing, though. Netflix better not try to play the victim card if their own produced content has similar restrictions.

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I use it for every title that offers it. ALL streamers should operate on the principle that if you have connection now, grab as much of the file as possible and store it. I HATE streaming, everything should be cached as much as possible. I might not have internet connection in an hour, make sure i can see the end of the movie.

Hulu

Semantics said:

So it depends on how quickly after you download does the video expire. But i suppose they don't want this to be a collection sort of function but more of a temporary download as netflix's core function is to stream content, which has a limited license on it to begin with on netflix.

I wouldn't know I stopped month's subscribing to netflix regularly because they don't offer enough anymore, I just do 1-2 months out of the year on netflix, 1-3 months on hulu and stop because don't have too much of a reason to watch the same stuff again and again.

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You get 30 days on a download, as I recall. The only reason I dislike this, is that on long trips, I download a bunch of content knowing full well I won't watch it all. I wish they'd only count it if you actually watched it during that period. I'll add that if you're offline, and you start watching a show, you have 48 hours to finish watching (assuming you don't connect to the net again). That's only a problem if someone watches it before you do. For example, on a recent trip, someone borrowed my ipad for part of the flight and they happened to watch something I wanted to watch, so I had to watch it before it expired or I'd have to wait till I could connect to netflix to cancel that expiration.

Yay, way to encourage people to find a way to crack your DRM, or alternatively find a non gimped illegal copy of the movie..

It's like movie execs go to a shooting range and the first question they ask is "how do I shoot myself in the foot with this, and how often can I do that?"