If you are looking to cut the cord and dump your cable company streaming video services are a must. Both Netflix and Hulu Plus offer somewhat different content, making having both almost a necessity if you don't have cable or a dish. Neither Netflix nor Hulu Plus are perfect services however and many feel like they are a little overpriced. A startup service called Splitflix looks to give you a little more bang for your streaming buck by pairing you up with someone and sharing those streaming accounts.
The idea of Splitflix is pretty brilliant. The service promises to pair you up with a random person who is also looking to share their Netflix and/or Hulu Plus accounts via a P2P matching system. Then, the two parties agree to a duration of the partnership and each pay half the cost of the streaming services. From there the two people just share the login information for the accounts and they both have access to the streaming video.
You might be wondering how this is even possible because there should be clauses in the terms of service for Netflix and Hulu Plus that prevent this kind of account sharing. It turns out Hulu Plus has absolutely nothing in the terms of service about sharing account passwords at all. Netflix has a paragraph about it but it places the responsibility on the account owner to manage their account.
"BY SHARING THE NETFLIX SERVICE PASSWORD, THE ACCOUNT OWNER AGREES TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSURING THAT HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS COMPLY WITH THE TERMS OF USE AND SUCH ACCOUNT OWNER SHALL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF THE HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS."
Now that clause indicates that Netflix feels like it's ok to share the account information with other members of your household as opposed to some stranger on the web, but it also doesn't explicitly say that you violate their terms by sharing your password.
Splitflix is clearly not for anyone who obsessively manages their queue or obsesses over what is in their recently watched list. I don't personally think I could share my queue with another human being nor am I particularly comfortable with someone else knowing about my video watching guilty pleasures, like Bloodsport for example. This isn't a bad idea overall though and I applaud Splitflix for giving it a shot.
It will be particularly interesting to see if Netflix and Hulu try to find ways to stop this from happening in the coming weeks. Would you use a service like this? Let us know what you think of sharing your streaming services in the comments.
