There is only one week left until the launch of the long-awaited Netflix advertising plan in Spain, which will become the cheapest option to access the content of the platform. Well, a lot of the content actually, but not all of it, because due to rights issues, Netflix has to renegotiate with the owners of some of the content in its catalog (obviously not its own productions) to be explicitly allowed to broadcast it with advertising inserts.

As for the cost of the plan, the truth is that there are opinions for every taste, some people think that the €5.49 per month fee justifies both the advertising and its restrictions. But there are also many people who think that its price should be much lower to make it worthwhile. So we will have to wait for its deployment to be completed before we can start judging the income it has.

As we have long expected, it was known that advertising would not be the only “against” this plan, whose main advantage, if not the only one, is its lower price. So let’s recall that its features are the same as the basic plan, i.e. 7.99 euros per month, but with the following additional restrictions:

• Some content (not Netflix’s own) will not be available due to licensing restrictions, although Netflix says it is working on a solution.
• It will not be possible to download content for offline viewing.
• The maximum picture quality will be shared between the ad-supported Netflix plan and the basic HD (720p) plan.

However, with its arrival in the first regions where it is already available, users encountered an unexpected and in some cases unpleasant surprise, namely the ad-supported Netflix plan is not compatible with all devices. And of course, when I say all devices, I mean the ones that can view their content with the rest of the platform plans.

In response to the uproar caused by this restriction, Netflix posted a support page titled «Netflix will display the message: “Basic plan with ads is not supported.«, displays a list of device types that breaks down how we should act in each of them in the face of said incident.

Mostly, recommendations are limited to restarting the device and if it doesn’t work update your operating system. However, we are surprised to see the limitations that affect a large number of them. They are the following:

• Android device: The plan is only compatible with devices with Android 7 or later.
• Apple devices: The plan is only compatible with iPad, iPhone and iPod touch iOS 15 or later.
• Windows application: plan is not compatible.
• chrome casting: The plan is only compatible with models Chromecast with Google TVNot on previous models.
• Apple TV: plan is not compatible with AppleTV.
• PlayStation: The plan is compatible with PlayStation 4 and 5, but not with playstation 3.

I don’t know about you, I’m still done with assimilation. I understand that getting updated apps into old operating systems can be between very complicated and impossible, so I understand the limitations in the case of Android and PlayStation 3. However, the rest seems much more difficult to understand and justify. Especially, even if some are quite bloody, it is They didn’t even bother to arrive on time with their own Windows app!

It is not difficult to imagine that one of the potential clients of the Netflix plan with advertising, i.e. the cheapest option on the platform, are users with a more modest economic profile, i.e. those for whom the purchase of a new device is more complicated. Isn’t that a bit absurd? Hopefully, Netflix will be able to expand the reach of its ad-supported plan in the coming weeks, but it certainly stumbled as a debut. But anyway, let’s be nice and think that it’s better than a much more polished debut, but sometime between the end of next year and the year after, as the company planned just a few months ago.