Additionally, I am in 6 countries for 9 months of this year. It is inconvenient that YouTube TV tells me the $35 I am paying them buys me absolutely nothing, despite the app saying "some content and local channels" will not be available, Netflix forces me to stop halfway through a series because I crossed a border. That's not convenient.

Piracy just works.

It took me one year to transfer my google account to another country.

I am not doing it again.

They are the only ones allowed to license the work in a region, so providibg a movie or selection requires separate licensing agreements for every country or region it is served in.

Businesses that manage to take fees for nothing due historic reasons need to be eliminated.

My gut prediction is that if a service has a strong correlation to the desired content, E.G. Disney+ for "kids", it MIGHT work out, at least in the short term. HOWEVER, for wider culture, and particularly with different "tv networks" and studios with content libraries split among many services, the friction of not having a single place with everything, of not having a 'streaming store', will drive many to routing around the insanity and accessing the culture they want on terms they're willing to agree to.

Short version:

    * have everything, I mean it.
    * cost less than basic cable (total)
    * completely ad free (probably)
    * offline caching is a must (road trips)
    * capable of playing on anything I want (DRM free)

Interesting way of saying "corporate exclusivity agreements", which is what this ends up being in 99 out of 100 cases.

It's more like: check sites 1-5 looking for the movie, can't find it (or it a PPV download, OR the app/site doesn't support 5.1 DDS, its quality is bad) get frustrated go onto $torrentsite, sort by size, download one with most seeders & a larger file size wait 30-60 min and done.

Netflix used to make it easier as their app UX and quality are high so it was a one stop shop. Now i just find torrenting easier to make sure its high quality with 5.1.. however i may not be the norm.

I understand that many displays have decent interpolation features these days, which hide the issues, but they are still a solution to an unnecessary problem.

A bluray or a good rip of it delivers the film in proper fashion. It's a non-issue with pirated content.

It's a stupid and frustrating experience and every time it happens is a reminder that my interests as a customer rank dead last after all of these companies slice and dice their cultural fiefdoms into separate packages to squeeze a little extra revenue. Calling it a few finger budges is reductive, it's an insulting and tiresome rigmarole of hoops that I have to jump through just because they wanted to squeeze some more money.