Last quarter, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, but the company would rather not dwell on the most obvious explanation.

Netflix raised prices for all U.S. subscribers last quarter, pushing the cost up to $10 per month for its cheapest plan, $15.50 per month for HD streaming, and $20 per month for 4K video. At the same time, Netflix's worldwide subscriber base shrunk by 200,000 (the company had expected to gain 2.5 million subscribers instead), and it now expects to lose another 2 million subscribers in Q2.

Never mind the clear cause and effect on display here; Netflix argues that the bigger sources of its current woes are competition and password sharing. It plans to address the former with better content, and the latter with stricter countermeasures (more on that shortly). It also aims to introduce an ad-supported tier in the next year or two.

Still, those plans distract from the harsher reality: Price hikes have consequences in a market with no shortage of other options, and Netflix can't keep relying on them like it used to. Read the full column on TechHive.

More Netflix tidbits: Over at Fast Company, I also wrote about how Netflix's password sharing crackdown raises more questions than it answers. The company says it plans to toughen up its policies in all markets over the next year, but it hasn't yet explained that'll work without annoying actual customers.

How much out-of-home use, for instance, will Netflix permit before it takes action, and what exactly will that enforcement look like? And how will Netflix account for users who move to a new home or take an extended vacation? This is uncharted territory for streaming services, and my guess is that Netflix won't rock the boat as quickly as it lets on.

In less gloomy Netflix news, the service has just launched a new "Categories" menu in the sidebar so you can jump straight into specific genres. I first wrote about this feature in January when Netflix was testing it out; now it's available for everyone.

A common knock against Netflix these days is that its quantity-to-quality ratio is way off, and while I don't entirely disagree, I also feel that its app often fails to connect users with what they're actually in the mood to watch. An simple way to browse by genre might help.

CNN+ is already canceled: Get your best Quibi-adjacent jokes ready, because CNN+ is shutting down on April 30, roughly a month after it launched. According to CNN, anyone who signed up will get a prorated refund.

While the service wasn't helped by lackluster early growth and a lack of any actual CNN cable content, the real killer was its newly-merged parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, whose leadership had little interest in running CNN+ as a standalone offering. The company is more interested in building a frankenservice out of HBO Max, Discovery+, and other media properties, with news as one facet among many.

DirecTV Stream's DVR gotcha: DirecTV Stream has extended its cloud DVR to store recordings for nine months, up from the previous limit of 90 days. This was first announced last month, and is now available to all users.

But as Matthew Keys spotted in the fine print, the upgrade comes with a catch: For any given show, DirecTV Stream will only save up to 30 episodes. That means you can't easily build up a big library of syndicated shows such as Friends or Seinfeld.

This limitation doesn't apply to other live TV streaming services with unlimited DVRs, such as YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Philo. They remain better cord-cutting options overall unless you need DirecTV Stream for regional Bally Sports channels.

With the final season of Better Call Saul underway, the cheapest way to watch without a big TV bundle is with AMC+. Amazon Prime members can currently add AMC+ for $5 per month for up to two months, down from the usual $9 per month. Just make sure to cancel your subscription via Amazon before the promo period ends if you don't want to keep paying full price.

A few other notable deals:

As always, I love hearing directly from readers on your streaming questions, comments, and struggles. Just reply to this email, and I'll do my best to respond!

Until next week,
Jared