First all the "major" studios will split and start charing $10/month. Then adds will start creeping back in. Before you know it everyone will be paying for an ad-hoc cable subscription.

I think a better option would be to do what Amazon is doing for HBO - offer a small portion of the studio (in this case Disney) included with the platform (Netflix) with the option to pay additional fees for the entire catalog.

The biggest deterrent, for me at least, is not the price but the need to switch platforms. I'm already annoyed when I have to go from Netflix to Amazon to find a movie/show I want to see but can't remember where it is. No chance I'll add a third, forth, or fifth platform to the mix.

It's a bit depressing how similar that sounds to how cable networks work. Or platform specific app stores.

If you actually had something like that, it could know that you watched Cosmos on Netflix and then suggest physics lecture videos from Open Courseware. It could suggest YouTube videos alongside Hollywood movies.

Which is exactly what the studios don't want, because they want you watching only their content. That is the real reason they're so obsessed with DRM -- they want creating that to be prohibited by law, because it would allow a free market for content curation instead of allowing the major studios to control it.

It's the same reason they don't like Netflix. Netflix is producing their own content and is happy to accept content from small players. It's not a fully open market but it's still too much like real competition.

But fragmentation isn't going to save them. People aren't going to subscribe to a dozen separate streaming services each with their own incompatible interface.

Hopefully they'll realize that sooner rather than later and decide that it's better to have open interfaces and protocols than let someone else (i.e. Netflix) have market power.

That said, I think that the curation aspect is something that studios aren't overly concerned about - they just hate that a direct competitor is stealing their profit and making their own content. If Netflix wasn't being as aggressive (or wasn't being so damn profitable; or wasn't negotiating prices with the studios), I don't think that the content creators would be trying to run away so quickly.

I hope that open protocols win out, that's the best solution here for everyone (and would be the ideal "major marketplace" in my parent comment). That said, it may just wind up being an organisation owned by a consortium/cartel of studios (or even some other third party) that's contractually obligated to "fairness".

https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...

"largest streaming search engine in the world [...] with around 12 million unique visits per month" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14842083

--

http://www.canistream.it/ by former HN user SeyelentEco

Just now I did a search for "all the presidents men." Top hit was "All The King's Men" but the right movie did show up second. It says "Not available for streaming, rental, or purchase. Click below to set reminders."

So I hopped around and did a few quick searches:

streaming on Netflix (i think) https://www.netflix.com/watch/243547

streaming on amazon (with Cinemax) http://a.co/605SHmD

for rent or sale on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/all-the-presidents-men/id5...

for rent or sale on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAGNFnI7mZ4

The page also says it's not for sale on DVD or Blu-Ray (showing an Amazon logo): http://a.co/aoa6bG8

Click "Watch the Movie" and it will show you several ways you can watch it (including all you've listed above and more).

Roku and AppleTV seem to do a decent job of aggregating this information, but that UI isn't always handy and I'm usually more flexible about my viewing options than just those devices.

https://www.cinesift.com/ by reddit user yombato (not sure of their hn alias)

px1999 1 hour ago [-]

Long term, we'll probably wind up with a couple of major marketplaces that provide a UI that ties together content bundles that you've purchased from different distributors (who will actually serve up their catalogs).

FXX themselves do not seem interested in my money and require that I have cable so I continue not consuming their content.

In reality, they are likely to trigger a backlash that increases piracy instead.

Steam is a rampant success. You'd think people would catch on. Have the content, make it easy to access, make it easy to pay, and people will give you money hand over fist.

Nobody will purchase, for instance, all the seasons of M.A.S.H. if they know that there is a risk that the rights owners will pull their content off of the platform in a few years and the person loses the ability to watch what they paid for.

The platform should also have the ability to "import" previously purchased rights. If someone buys a TV show on iTunes, they should be able to import that purchase into the platform so they can consolidate all of their purchases into a single platform.

Lastly, the other thing that made Steam a huge success is the sales. Daily sales of some content, quarterly sales of large swaths of content, etc. That would have to occur for a media platform to have the same kind of success.

I'm an unabashed pirate because it's easy... but if I could use a platform like this that didn't have a recurring monthly cost I would use it.

If Pixar put their upcoming movie available for pre-purchase (like Steam Greenlight) at 40% off, I would likely pre-purchase it. If Disney wanted to drum up interest in their new Duck Tales reboot by putting the original series up for sale for $20, I would be all over that. A TV series in its 4th season with struggling ratings could put up a flash sale of previous seasons in order to get new viewers to binge watch before the new season starts. A TV series could also sell a season pass BEFORE the new season starts for an infusion of cash and release the episodes on the regular schedule.

A steam-like platform could work wonders for media consumption, but it'll be hard to get companies to do it.

Steam took off because it was required for an awesome video game that Valve released. Eventually Steam was more valuable than the game.

That's the only way something like this happen for media. A small studio with a hot property could build the platform for their own offerings but invite other media owners to participate. Adult Swim or SyFy or FX could probably pull it off.

Even Valve doesn't believe in Gabe's statement, and never did. Dozens of media companies have much larger market caps than Valve's estimated value.

The statement conforms to the prejudices of a lot of Hacker News, but there is significant evidence that it's not empirically true.

As for third party indexing tools, I read that to mean scraping the site for various reasons. Which I can understand they might not want due to the extra load it generates.

Steam was successful because it combined advantages for producers and consumers with minimal changes to the business model. The old business model is people buy games that come on a CD or DVD in a small cardboard box for $30-50; the new business model is people buy games that finish downloading in a few hours for $30-50. Not really much of a change in revenue stream.

Cable TV, however, relies on splitting up the channels people want into different packages, that each come with lots of channels they don't want. They also need to overcharge you so they can afford to cut the prices for the "package deal" (TV/Phone/Internet bundles). What people want instead is more à la carte options, with a discount from package deals because they're asking for fewer channels.

So moving to a service that would cut piracy would still hurt financially. Another advantage of piracy is that they can blame their financial troubles on "filthy criminals" and use that to extract some benefits from compliant government allies. Offering a less profitable service that reduces piracy robs them of that as well.

Maybe that's not true anymore. But I'm sure contributed to steam's success.

Back in the day where GMail was heralded as being amazing, and offering 1GB of storage for your mails, Steam came out and said "don't worry about how to install Half-Life/CS, or which patch to apply, I'm automating all of it."

"You don't need to worry about your CDs any more. I'll give you the content, for free, anytime you change PCs."

"Just log in with your Steam account on the cybercafé computer. All the games you own are already installed."

Steam was made mandatory to install the new version of CS (was it the 1.6 release?). That was Valve's best move ever (even though I hated it back in the day).

My steam library is full of games I'll never play, never would have bothered to pirate. Why? because steam sales.

I'm sure the same could be achieved for Hollywood. Not only could they make sure people are paying for the content they watch, they could have saps like me paying for content they never watch.

I'll look to see if something I want to watch is on Netflix. If I find something looks interesting, great! I'll sign up for one month of the service and then cancel it immediately.

I also do this for football season. I signed up for Sling TV + Red Zone and paid for a few months. When football season was over, I canceled it.

As a result, for these services to be successful, we'll probably see some renewed fighting against piracy and some work toward increasing regulation on the internet. Unfortunately, the political climate is probably pretty good in the US right now for Disney and other big content creators to start pushing for these.

Overall, it's not so different from cable channels, except that it's on-demand.

That's not really a marketplace, which would have individual vendors selling their own subscription bundles.

You pay $12 to Netflix and you can watch it officially on 4 devices, which means it's $3 for any of your 4 friends, but you can "oversell" it actually more if you've some friends in different timezones. Many services work this way just fine. Streamwarez(tm) is here for a long time already.

That's my biggest pain point as well. I already have to switch between Netflix / Hulu / Amazon to figure out who has the content I want. I've always been a huge Stargate fan; Netflix and Amazon used to have it, now only Hulu has it. Amazon is the only one that has the latest episodes for shows that I like, (although I have to pay extra, I'm willing to bite the bullet for my favorite show).

People who want to watch Japanese cartoons get to pay for yet another streaming service, and for years there was a split where we had to pay for both Crunchyroll and Funimation. We finally saw light at the end of the tunnel with the advent of a partnership to share content. Only it turned out to be an Amazon freight train in the form of Anime Strike, which not only requires a $99/yr Prime account, but an additional $5/mo surcharge.

And now once again, we have a service cannibalizing half the important shows each season. And I'm just ... out. Amazon is not getting more money from me. I'm not supporting this balkanization of media content. And I will likely drop Crunchyroll because it doesn't have half of what I want to watch anymore.

These companies are never going to learn. I am happy to pay for content, but I'm not going to sign up for one streaming service per show I want to watch. Like most people, I simply can't afford that.

They're not trying to learn, they already know. If you continue to think they are optimizing for your happiness you're the one who'll never learn.

An ad-hoc cable subscription. Few people really wanted all the channels they were getting and would gladly have paid less to get only what they wanted.

Another thing we might see here though has happened to me a lot with music because of Spotify.

If you music isn't on Spotify or Soundclound... I'm just going to listen to it less. Its too much trouble to go download/buy from so many different sources.

I can't be bothered to spend the time anymore.

If more of your favorite artists were not available on streaming services you'd probably be ok with spending the time.

This problem was solved for me by Roku search on my roku device. It still is something I'd rather not need to do, but the search interface is just as good as the dedicated ones for amazon or netflix and shows you the results across all services.

Still better than a cable subscription. That's my biggest beef. I want 2 channels and I can't get them for less than $150 a month. So they get nothing and neither do I.

Do I really have to go over econ 101 with you? The past distro channels look to "not work" while there's a better alternative; once the latter have a monopoly - oh fuck it, just sit back and pay attention.

Just a heads up - HBO is pulling their shows from Amazon in mid-2018[1]. They essentially view it as competition with HBO Now.

[1]http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/hbo-amazon-shows-leaving-str...

Now what will be interesting is seeing which studios cannot float their own streaming service and combine either with another studio or group of them under an all inclusive banner. I figure we will go nearly full circle and end up with an aggregator like cable was but this time without too much junk.

my beef with some of these "premium" sites is they think that ever after they get $15 from me that I have to watch THEIR ads. Really? I paid for the shows, not 30 to 60 seconds of your ads.

Does uBlock Origin block YouTube ads?

I'm asking because it's been years since I saw/was forced to watch a video ad on YouTube. Sure, there are occasionally the banner ads at specific times in the videos, but no video ads.

So either the channels I watch have somehow opte out of video ads, or uBlock is taking care of them?

Or maybe this is a geographic thing and YouTube in Germany doesn't show video ads?

Anyway, if you have Android and want to watch on mobile, I highly recommend NewPipe (F-Droid). Lets you: watch, listen, download, repeat YouTube videos and I've never seen an ad in it. Really awesome app!

I guess greed?

(derp.)

$150/month on top of your cable bill. And let's bundle it.

Actually, I'd love to be able to pay BBC even $20/month for iplayer access in the USA.

Agree, especially when most doesn't work nearly as well as Netflix. I prefer to use the TV app and the horrible user experience I had with HBO (for instance) made me quickly stop using it.

For a streaming company user engagement should be taken very seriously, but it seems that most studio-turn-streaming-company miss this. They think content is everything because that's what a studio is about. But content doesn't matter if I can't stream it easily and many studios are so over-protective of their content that they forget about usability.

Disney Channel used to be a premium, ad-free channel.

Maybe on demand Disney movies are valuable enough to enough parents to justify this?

When this happens, I will drop that service, full stop. I don't pay to be advertised to.

Also Disney is currently in a strong position for this right now. They released ~10 movies in 2016 and had the 4 highest grossing films of 2016. This, of course, assumes that Marvel and Lucasfilm properties are put on the Disney streaming service (I would expect that Touchstone label will not be included in this, as it's always been distinctly branded).

Either way, $10 per month is a bit steep up until the point that they stop selling discs; right now it's not much more than $10 per month to buy every single new release on bluray, and it's less than $10 per month to buy them on dvd, if you shop around.

The thing that scares me is that this puts them in a position where they could stop selling media altogether, and it's no longer possible to pay a flat fee to watch a movie any time you want. At that point the only competition with the streaming service would be piracy.

And as you say, there's always piracy to fill the gaps in any streaming catalogue.

I'd have to sign up for 6 different services in order to add up to my previous budget. So far... its' not come to that point, but if it does I'll be happy to cut out some services.

After all do I really need Netflix? I don't watch if for months at a time, and only keep it out of laziness. I'll happily cut it and swap in Disney for that time period of budget constraints become an issue.

I put my elderly mother on my netflix account with her own profile and she couldn't be happier. I saved her a bunch of money that she'd otherwise be spending on cable and as a bonus she's not watching 24hr news that's making her afraid all day. For something that I occasionally will use but she always uses, $10/mo is _cheap_.

Now if I could only nudge her towards some of the Korean soap operas that they have now...

In all honesty though, it keeps her from calling me constantly every day. Netflix is great for my sanity.

that's a good point. but for comparison, in 2004 my cable budget was zero because i was in high school and living with my parents. In college we shared hard drives full of movies around the dorms, and ever since i've lived on my own my tv/movie budget has been some combination of netflix and piracy that added up to less than $10/month. The ship may have sailed on people being willing to spend $60-100 per month on TV.

I'm currently paying 2€/month for Amazon Prime for Students, and I'm not willing to pay more than 10€/month overall for access to streaming platforms (as long as I'm a student, after that maybe 20-30€ overall). That simple. In my family we have Amazon Prime and Netflix, if stuff isn't on there it gets pirated, no discussion.

Really hard to fathom the thinking behind that. At first I thought it must be a pirate site that depended on ad revenue, but nope it's $8 / month.

my favourite movie piracy website claims to have 32 times as many movies as US netflix does.

Piracy is the only thing that will lead to a consumer friendly streaming option. If it weren't for music piracy, a service like Spotify might not exist. For video, Bit Torrent was popular for years.

Now people are flocking to things like Kodi, which can be installed on a Firestick [3] and, with add-ons, can stream anything for free [1]. In order to fight piracy, the studios will need to make it more convenient for consumers to pay [2].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/liz-bales/online-piracy-netf...

[3] https://kodifiretvstick.com/best-kodi-addons/

I think think that happened when they parted ways with Starz.

If the Disney move represents a trend, it's going to be particularly frustrating for end users, as there will be no legal solution for watching what we want to watch when we want to watch it, unless we subscribe to all services. Guess how many users will do that, and how many will just click the magnet link.

Exactly! It is obvious that Netflix and Amazon are pivoting to be more like HBO and Showtime. Apparently, as they reach out to a global audience they need to rely on original content to avoid costly licensing disputes [1].

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/12/amazon-netflix-look-shows-key-...

netflix added 600 hours of content in 2016 and will surely dwarf that in 2017 and beyond

disney is in a for a rude awakening if they think they can go it alone in this marketplace

"Star Wars is worth more than harry potter and james bond combined."[1]

Just the first 6 episodes of Star Wars is 17 hours of footage. This does not include special features, cartoons and other offshoots in this franchise.

Access to this on a whim, along with immediate access to exclusive preview-type content every year prior to the theatrical release is seriously valuable on its own.

I'd venture many people are HBO Go subscribers simply for Game of Thrones right now. And that more than enough do not bother to unsubscribe in the off season.

I think people on HN underestimate how people value content. They don't realize people pay huge sums for complete garbage cable content plans already. A commercial free experience of Disney content, particularly Star Wars / Marvel powered with exclusives priced the same as HBO or Netflix would probably do great.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/12/24/star-wars-value-worth/

1: By 2019 there should be about a dozen feature-length star wars movies, counting the 3 2-hour television specials, so you're right that just star wars movies is not that great.

When you can drip out production updates and use electronic marketing channels to hype them or include fan AMA type stuff, there is big potential here to keep people around.

But to your point, if you take Star Wars out of the picture, you still get the entire Disney film collection. Just about every middle class family in America in the 90s had some portion of the Disney VHS collection on their shelves.

I don't see this desire for easy access to familiar, high quality, family-friendly content going away. I see it increasing.

Agents of Shield I believe a ABC owned production, and would be governed under what ever terms Netflix and ABC have, Same with Inhumans I would image but it is a newer property so it might have to stings attached it to

Movies, yes those will likely be pulled. I can see the Non-Netflix Originals being pulled.. maybe.

That would apply to Agents of Shield as well, which is also part of the Disney family.

[1]:http://deadline.com/2013/11/disney-netflix-marvel-series-629... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Jones_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Cage_(TV_series) [3]: You would need a lawyer to examine contract language to be 100% sure, but Disney has armies of really good lawyers and understands the importance of IP better than anyone else on the planet, so it is extremely plausible.

and ABC is owned by Disney.

Both Netflix and Disney already produce a lot of content, so they don't have to bootstrap a pipeline anymore.

It already is a bit like that if you leave the cushy confines of the USA, where the rights to even stream some of their own Originals (e.g. Orange is the New Black, Arrested Development, Lilyhammer) have not been secured and thus us poor souls must resort to pirating or waiting, potentially for years.

To quote Netflix[0]:

> Depending on the region, Netflix may not get the licensing rights for an original series for many years.

[0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/4976#why-are-some-netflix-o...

Now that we have that, are we living the dream? No, we want it for a tenth of the cost.

I don't think that's what others are complaining about though. Price was definitely the issue of the top commenter as they mention 10$/month and 30$/year. But it makes no sense because back in the cable days, people paid 50-100$ if not more for packages. Now, even with all 4 big services, you're still only at 40$, and imo, having an ondemand service where you can stream anything you want at any time (not only that, but with most of them, with multiple people watching in parallel) is a far superior service.

I think people are just getting more entitled for content that has had billions of dollars poured into it. 10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee. If you watch one episode per week and don't even share your account, you're already getting value out of it.

This is, has been, and always will be a ridiculous argument. $10/mo is nothing, it's the price of two coffees. But I need four services, so it's $40/mo, which is eight coffees. So now to afford the same content that was 1/4 of the price last month, I need to give up drinking coffee on Monday and Tuesday, every week.

"It's the price of a cup of coffee" is a terrible argument because I don't want to give up drinking coffee just to watch Disney movies. I want to drink my coffee and watch my movies like I did last month before Disney decided they needed to make more money.

What I want is to pay for access to the things that I want, which happen to be spread across more and more bundles the way things are going.

What they want is for me to only consume things from their bundle, to ensure that I'm a permanent customer.

Then it's the labor and time you're paying for because a pour-over takes 4 minutes per cup if you do it right, and each employee can only do so many of those at one station. 4 minutes of an employee's time at minimum wage in San Francisco is almost a dollar, about 93.33¢ give or take, and that's assuming the employee is being paid minimum wage and not more.

Edit: Missed the pour over part, yes if you want to pay and wait for that. I'm not convinced that there's any discernable difference from a regular drip coffee that would stand up to a blind taste test (cf wine tasting).

you pay $80 a month for let's say 100 channels. most people think they are paying $0.80 per channel. the cable providers know you don't want around 90 of those channels, but they're giving them to you anyway. what consumers are actually paying is $70 for their most watched channel, $5 for their 2nd most watched channel, $3 for the 3rd, $2 for their 4th, and every other channel is given to them free by the cable provider.

if cable companies were to allow consumers to pick and choose, they'd more transparently charge it like this. you could pick just 5 channels you reduce all the crap that they're giving you, and you'd probably still pay the same amount.

Media by contrast is very steep. Either you're at the top of your genre or you're not worth it for those looking for the former. If you want an epic fantasy story GoT still beats out other shows cropping up around the same theme (even if you think the latter have better story or so on, that's not what drives dollars). If you want space operas you're not going to settle for less than Star Wars.

These "staples" and their exclusivity create a high value proposition greedy execs can't ignore, and one that they don't worry as much will give their competition an opening.

Your $80/mo cable bundle is split something like: $12 taxes, $43 ESPN, $9 Viacom and the rest split by everyone else. $10 buys a lot.

If the producers get more money out of the deal, I have no problem with that. I'd rather they be the ones getting the money.

As it is now, I buy my stuff ala carte. I do subscribe to netflix, but I've pretty much seen what I want there. Every once in a while they get someting new I want to see, but not often enough for it to be my go-to for entertainment.

So I pay per show rather than channel. My wife and I consistently pay less than cable and just get the shows we want to see.

I wasn't sure it would work out that way, but a month or so ago I asked my wife how the cost was working out (she does the finances), and it's less than cable. I can't remember how much at the moment, but less than half I think.

Personally, the part I don't like about paying multiple providers isn't the paying multiple part. It's not having a single interface to get to them.

First, consider the experience then and the experience now. Before, only a single person could watch pre-scheduled content (unless you have an extra device to record). Now, multiple people can watch any show they want in parallel.

And your way of splitting the money is silly. At the end of the day, you were paying 80$ but were only interested in a very small portion of the content. Now you're getting that same content you cared about, but for a far smaller cost.

Now you're paying $10/mo for each network.

Most are actually paying $20-25. At the cable company that I worked for, the regional incumbent provider for an area that served golf resorts and the surrounding community, I think it was roughly $36.

ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, all free with an antenna I just ordered.

Would I like the same thing I had with Comcast @13$ a month? Sure, but that's not realistic. At least not yet. Cable in the US is a huge ripoff because they cornered the market through lobbying and deals with local municipalities. It's time for them to get their "come-upins." Next is internet service.

And yes, next is internet service. But the unfortunate side-effect of the cable monopolies is that they're currently the best positioned with infrastructure to reach homes with high-bandwidth connections over the same lines which previously served cable TV. I don't want to see these same companies becoming ISPs and continue shoveling the same crap in the future.

Presumably you want finer-grained a la carte, like individual shows and movies. You can get that today via iTunes but it is insanely expensive, and it doesn't really make economic sense because not enough consumers watch little enough TV for that to make sense, therefore the price remains high and companies offering it are not doing well.

Right now the market forces are pushing everyone to try to be either Netflix (streaming service become producer) or HBO (producer becoming streaming service). As the technologies commoditize this trend will continue, and consumers will just have to deal with the abominable UX that this balkanization of services creates. It'd be nice if someone could wrap a nice UX around this, whether it be a la carte or whatever, but I don't see that market forces would allow that, and least not until the balkanization gets a lot worse and rights holders get an incentive to play nice with aggregators.

Cable companies and centralized distributors are the natural conclusion of our copyright mechanisms. Online video has already been coalescing on Netflix and Amazon as the next-gen cable cos instead of Comcast and AT&T.

If we don't want to be stuck with the same thing over and over again, we need to change the way that we've constructed the artificial market for intellectual goods, so that subscription bundles a la cable is no longer the only feasible economic model.

Seeing as that's the problem, affording agents in the space more or better control to try and strengthen the market could be an approach - so I want to understand where/what the current weaknesses are.

The hope always seems to be to operate like a gym, where there are people paying but almost never showing up.

1) Buy individual episodes

2) Buy individual season

3) Buy individual channels (FX, HBO, with ESPN and Disney coming soon and more and more networks offering this option)

4) Buy bundles of content (cable, Netflix, Hulu, etc.)

Availability windows also seem to be designed to match consumers demands, you'll pay more to get copies of episodes right away vs waiting a season or two to buy them.

Again, I think it's fair to find the prices to be greater than what each individual is willing to pay, but I don't think the actual options are lacking in the same way they were 3 years ago.

That's all going to consolidate into the hands of a couple of major producers (Disney, HBO, Amazon, Netflix, maybe Hulu) and that's about it.

NBC/Universal/Comcast Viacom Fox Sony Time Warner BBC

Plus some other deep pockets who are slowly getting in the game (Verizon, AT&T, Apple)

I think there'll be enough competition even among the oligopolies to make it palatable for consumers.

This however creates the incentive for providers to start enforcing long term contracts for the regular price, or a much higher price for a monthly plan, in which case DVDs will be relevant again for me.

I don't want to have an HBO account, and a Disney account, and a Hulu account, and a Netflix account, and an Amazon account, etc etc. I wish they'd play nicely and let one provider bill me, and take care of restricting my access to their HBO portion of their library unless I pay an addition $X/month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

There's a certain standard for Disney movie that makes it easier for you to watch or recommend young kids to watch, comparing to Netflix that you might have to weed out content a bit. Sort of similar to Whole Foods vs Safeway. This doesn't imply which one is better than the other, just that it's easier to set expectations for something with more niche.

For real, btw.

iTunes creators should basically be imprisoned in the UK for contributory copyright infringement.

I strongly suspect this sort of crazy, luddite, anachronistic attitude to magnify when the Tory's get their "sovereignty" back and don't have Europe to check their anti-democratic attitudes.

In a capitalist system piracy is seen as "illegal", but in a culture with better ways to support and fund their arts it'd be the pinnacle of immutability and access. Instead of wasting all this energy figuring out how to charge through the nose for huge undertakings after they are created to recoup costs and make future efforts seem lucrative and a "worthwhile investment" we could just create and fund what we want to see and have it be accessible to everyone (almost like a public good? Definitely an artifact of a nation's culture and works) and go along with information flow rather than stifle it.

Or maybe capitalism will grind on, and in 200 years Disney will still be kicking their Mickey copyright can down the road and rebranding their 'vault' the Disney Time Machine, making the biggest lens through cultural history toy glasses with mouse ears on them. shudders

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Pictures_f... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_television_seri...

Still interesting enough to kids but let's not pretend like it's not padding; those movies were often very formulaic, "relatable kid with a weird life or circumstances goes on a journey" - not really worth the price tag for a subscription.

Disney movies are a very small portion of their catalog, although to someone in a household without kids I can see how it would appear that marvel and Star Wars were all Disney did.

That sums up a large % of the Netflix viewing in my house.

But does anyone think I'll pay $10 per month per 'network' for entertainment? It would rapidly cost more than cable or satellite.

What I find curious is how difficult it appears to be to sell advertising on streaming channels. If you've streamed one of the 'minor' brands like SyFy or Discovery you can see a 2 minute commercial break with three identical 30 second commercials back to back.

It is hard to imagine that the people who put these things together are so clueless in terms of how their product is perceived.

it'll be interesting to see how this changes when the Game of Thrones ends.

That said, after 4 months, I doubt there will be much to interest me anymore, and even if there were, I could always just watch it next year when the next season of Game of Thrones comes out.

That said, if they offered $60/year, I would probably keep it around for a few years rather than paying between $20-$40 once a year.

I agree. But taking a step back, Disney is probably the one company that can justify this the most by owning so many properties:

the traditional Disney stuff, Star Wars/Lucasfilm, the Marvel movies, Pixar, The Muppets, Touchstone, ESPN, ABC, A&E, Lifetime, History channel. They even have a 30% stake in Hulu.

Well sure, assuming you only want to watch content created by Netflix itself. That's the direction it's going with Netflix.

But that's only if the catalog actually has that content. If they do the digital equivalent of the Disney DVD vault then yes screw that.

Marvel Disney Animation Pixar Touchstone Pictures ABC ESPN LucasArts

If they have a whole streaming platform with all the content from each of these, no way its $30/year, more like $30/month.

Given that online movie rentals are ~$2, that's watching a full length movie every other day. There's a limit to how much TV you can watch.

(And if your goal is to binge watch, it's competing with Netflix at $10/month -- which even with it's limited library is a great value.)

To give you an example of what I mean: Netflix lets me subscribe and unsubscribe at whim. If they looked at my profile, they would also understand that changing that would result im my abandoing them altogether. I watch a low volume for a while, my viewing drops off for a while, then I unsubscribe for a while. Keeping track of the terms that allow me to do this is easy because it is one company. Now imagine that there were multiple companies that I subscribed to. Keeping track of those terms of service would change from an inconvenience to a pain. Seeming as most of them are traditional media companies, I also have far less trust in them. Adding 'activation fees', 'deactivation fees', and 'annual contracts' is in their blood. My apologies for the paranoia, but I have dealt with unilaterally changing agreements before.

My response to them would be: thanks but no thanks. Their services/content are not important enough for me to deal with the headache of entering into an agreement with each studio.

- Want to stream movies (not TV) - Want general movies as opposed to Netflix content

Earlier this year, Netflix' DVD division released their Top 10 most popular movie rentals. Only one of the 10 was available on Netflix streaming.

I do however agree that their streaming movie collection is bad.

The last time I tried searching for a good movie to watch on Netflix streaming, I gave up after 10 minutes. I'd think of one movie after another after another. Nothing was there. All it could suggest was "related titles," as if that's what I would want.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the post-tv-cable world is that people actually thought they could cut their TV bill from $50-$100/mo to $10/mo.

I could see a family buying a plethora of bundles, but I strongly suspect it will continue to be cheaper than the equivalent cable package.

I can't speak at all for sports; i imagine that alone could be hundreds a month to watch a local game.

You may be right but I just don't think the industry can go from taking in $50-100/mo to $10/mo - they will figure out a way. And people didn't mind paying that amount. What people disliked was the forced bundles and less flexibility compared to what pirating gave you.

>I can't speak at all for sports; i imagine that alone could be hundreds a month to watch a local game.

NBA is about $200/season - which isn't bad given that's for every game. When local telecoms that bought rights for local games wise up it won't even be that much.

You'll end up with people who subscribe to Amazon + Disney, or Amazon + Netflix, and some who do HBO + Disney + Hulu.

Studios want to compete with one another directly for customers, not go through some middleman.

Is it less convenient, sure, but customers (like me) used to go out to video stores and physically purchase DVDs, so its obvious what we're willing to accept a whole lot more inconvenience than what Netflix offers.

Replacing technological limitations with unnecessary, arbitrary financial limitations doesn't seem like progress.

Still, at least they're helping to inch us closer to a popular 'uprising' against Disney's perversion of copyright legislation.

Arguably, right now Comcast Xfinity has the most/best streamable content if you pay for HBO. This will likely change soon; this has been a long time coming. Cord-cutting is increasingly popular [2] and the studios are adapting.

Disney is gambling that they own enough content to make your top 5 list of streaming subscriptions.

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/09/23/average-cable-tv-bill/

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170531/05304937480/rate-...

In the US, Comcast and Verizon are more analogous to the BBC in England -- TV is less expensive (as an individual monthly cost) when it is publicly funded.

Interestingly, the BBC is investing heavily to compete with Netflix [1]. If you live in an area that the BBC serves, you will likely need fewer streaming services to get the content you want.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/04/uk-broadcaster-bbc-invests-4...

I'd like to have a small computer where I can insert a DVD and press one button and walk away (and latter remove the disk), and then the movie is available to stream from my small media computer to my home network. It could look up the right metadata online, or you might pay a very small amount for a service that maintains accurate metadata.

For as much as I watch TV I could probably buy the few shows I'm interested in on DVD for cheaper than what I pay for Netflix. Until I get a media server like I described though, it's just more convenient to pay for Netflix.

I suspect that no such products exist because copying the DVDs would almost certainly get the creators of the device sued into oblivion.

* the common complaint here is DRM, long-term-ownership compared to DVD, but the flip side is much better resolution than DVD and if the competition is streaming services, it puts you in much more control than that.

Right now I'm buying from Amazon because even though they have the worst UI, they're the most vendor-neutral.

DVDs are only 480p, you really need something higher quality on a new TV. I have noticed that HBO streaming looks better to me then cable.

https://geekalabama.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/500x1000px-l...

That is what Media companies like Disney want. People always blamed the Cable companies for it but in reality it was the big Media companies pushing Cable and Cable not caring. :\

> Netflix, however, I'll keep paying for gladly because of the library size. For the streaming price, it is well worth the value.

To a point yes. However, the balkanizing of streaming services is growing at an alarming rate.

Disney has no choice but to stream direct. That is they way all video content is all going.

I imagine at that point the meeting chairman said "fuck the customers, show me the money" whilst chugging a glass of bolli and sucking on a fat cigar.

... But I may be getting a little imaginative there.

already cable companies and fios price internet so that you pay only a little more for a full cable package. even if you drop cable you still have to pay extra to subsidize it.

The idea of getting almost everything we could ever want through one $10 a month subscription with Netflix is almost too good to be true, I would expect in the long term the average person will end up paying about the same as they used to with a cable bill, ideally spread among multiple providers.

https://youtu.be/guVxubbQQKE?t=42m41s

When they inevitably raise rates again I might actually have to reconsider if it's worth the cost any longer

It just all sucks for the consumer.

Don't you like to have many options to choose from? You don't "have to" sign up for all of them, it's your choice.

> It's almost asking to drive people to torrents.

I am a Netflix subscriber but there are a couple of shows that I watch and are on competing streaming services, however I didn't want to subscribe to all of them. So I rented them on Google Play and/or iTunes.

I know it sounds incredible but there are ways to consume content without breaking the law.

Compare that with the amount of binge watching that you can do with a $10 Netflix subscription.

Things are infinitely better online than what I was getting with my cable subscription.

Anyway, can confirm, I won't be signing to Disney as Netflix still has quite a bit more good content than I can watch.