Getting the most out of your Netflix membership? (Turns out I'm not.)

I've always thought of my $28ish-a-month Netflix subscription as a pretty good bargain—hey, it must be cheaper than going to the corner video store or downloading a rental on iTunes, right? So imagine my surprise when I learned that over the past few months, my average cost per DVD is $5.44. Ouch.

So says FeedFliks, a fascinating, mostly-free site (about a year old, but new to me) that hooks into your Netflix account and compiles a slew of statistics based on your past Netflix activity.

Here's how it works: Using the Netflix API, you connect your Netflix account with the FeedFliks service, which in turn analyzes your usage based on your membership level, the number of titles you've rented, how long you keep your rental discs, and how many "Watch Instantly" videos you've streamed.

After punching in my information (FeedFliks offers a series of privacy options, but if you don't trust a third party with your Netflix history, don't bother signing up), my report came up, along with a pie chart and some graphs ... and the news, my friends, was not good.

Turns out that in the past three months (FeedFliks can also analyze your entire rental history, if you wish), I've been averaging just 5.3 discs a month, with an average return time of 13 days. Factor in my subscription rate, and that comes out to ... a whopping $5.44 a disc, way more than my local video store charges.

Of course, if you consider my "Watch Instantly" activity, my average cost per movie drops like a stone, down to just $1.40. But since I know that most of my streaming video activity consists of mere five-minute bursts, I figure that doesn't really count.

Guess I'd better throttle down to a cheaper subscription plan, or at least start returning my Netflix movies faster—and conveniently enough, FeedFliks boasts an alert system that'll warn you if you've had a movie at home for longer than a set number of days. That's a nice touch, but the alerts are only available through a $9/year "premium" FeedFliks membership, which also lets you add multiple Netflix profiles and refresh your statistics on-demand. (I went ahead and ponied up for the premium plan just out of curiosity.)

So, you Netflix subscribers out there: How much are you paying per DVD?