Netflix Basic With Ads: Everything you need to know about this cheaper plan

Netflix started the premium streaming video revolution over a decade ago, and it continues to dominate the industry. However, faced with a much slower growth rate in new subscriptions, combined with lots of account sharing, Netflix has introduced a new and much cheaper plan to boost both its user numbers and its revenue. It’s officially called Netflix Basic With Ads plan, and it is now available in many of its markets.

So what is Netflix Basic With Ads, and should you sign up for this new option? Here’s everything you need to know about this cheaper plan.

What is Netflix Basic With Ads?

This is the fourth subscription plan that the streaming service will provide to customers. It’s being designed to offer almost all of Netflix’s content at a cheaper price, but with the addition of commercials that will run before and during Netflix’s TV shows and movies.

Where will it be available?

At first, the new plan will be available in just 12 markets:

Netflix will expand the availability of the Basic With Ads plan to other parts of the world in the coming months.

When will the new plan become available in my country?

The actual launch date will vary according to different markets. The plan was available first in Canada and Mexico, starting November 1. On November 3, it expanded to the US, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, and the UK. Spain will finally be able to get Netflix Basic With Ads a week later on November 10. Netflix will reveal other markets with the plan at a later date.

What does it cost to sign up for Netflix Basic With Ads?

It is much cheaper to sign up for this new plan compared to the three other options Netflix currently has.  Here are the prices for all of the 12 launch markets.

By comparison, the cheapest price for Netflix in the US is currently $9.99 a month, so people who want to save a ton of money while still watching their favorite shows like Stranger Things, Squid Game, and more might want to look into this plan.

How many ads will we see under this new plan?

Netflix has stated that people who sign up for this plan will see between four to five minutes of ads per hour. That’s far less than the over 15 minutes of ads per hour that are put into movies and TV shows on broadcast TV and basic cable networks. Each ad will be between 15 to 30 seconds long.

Will I be able to watch all of Netflix’s content with this plan?

At launch, there will be a small amount of content that won’t be available for subscribers of the new plan due to Netflix’s licensing agreements with the makers of those shows and movies. Netflix has stated this will only affect about 5% to 10% of its content initially. The company added that it is trying to negotiate new licensing agreements so that those holdouts will be added to the new cheaper plan.

Some of the TV shows that are unable to be watched under the new plan include a few Netflix-exclusive titles. They include Arrested Development, House of Cards, Peaky Blinders, New Girl, The Magicians, The Last Kingdom, The Sinner, Good Girls, The Good Place, and Friday Night Lights. Some of the movies that are currently unable to stream under the plan include Skyfall, 28 Days, The Imitation Game, and The Bad Guys. Again, keep in mind these titles may become available to stream with the Basic with Ads plan sometime in the future.

What other restrictions are in the Netflix Basic with Ads plan?

One of the big restrictions is that subscribers to the cheaper plan will not be able to download and save movies and TV shows to their mobile devices. That means those users will have to have some kind of internet connection to watch Netflix rather than download shows so they could watch them later offline.

Another restriction is that the video resolution is lower than the Netflix Standard and Premium plans. The video resolution for both Basic and Basic with Ads is capped at 720p, compared to 1080p for Standard and 4K for Premium. That being said, Netflix previously capped Basic subscribers down to just 480p for video resolution, so this new higher cap for the cheaper plans is an improvement. The new plan also caps concurrent streams down to just one device at a time. That’s also the same as the current Basic Netflix plan.

Finally, if you are accessing Netflix via your Apple TV set-top box , on older Google Chromecast devices, on the Sony PlayStation 3 console, or via the Netflix app on Windows, you won’t be able to sign up for the new Basic with Ads plan yet. There’s no word on why this has happened, nor when this issue might be fixed.

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