You might have opened your RSS feed today and discovered people ranting about the “Netflix Crackdown.” Don’t worry, squads of men in red Kevlar armor aren’t going to kick down your door and forcibly take back that disc you’ve been sitting on for months, which you should really send back as somebody might really want to watch that copy of “The American Astronaut” that you’ve just left around your house like it’s a coaster — they’re just whining about Netflix’s rules on streams.
It’s been a standing rule for a while: One stream at a time, from one device. But it’s been fairly easy to flaunt because you can register multiple devices (I’ve got, like, five) and run a stream on each of them. Well, party’s over: Netflix has been cracking down on multiple streams like anti-Ghostbusters, and this somehow merits news coverage.
So, yeah, if you have just the streaming plan you get two streams, and if you have a multiple DVD plan, you can have as many streams as DVDs, plus one. Although considering how many people whine about Netflix’s streaming selection, you’ve got to wonder why people need more than two anyway.