> Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an easy, cheap way to watch almost every movie without leaving the couch / listen to almost every song from almost any device.

That may be almost true for music, but is not remotely true for movies. Sure, recent releases are usually available on _some_ streaming service, but back catalog movies are often only available on DVD/Blue ray. The big streaming services are not great for movie catalogs (Netflix is much worse than it used to be). We have regressed from the Blockbuster days in that regard.

> but back catalog movies are often only available on DVD/Blue ray.

Do you have examples?

Disney for instance are destroying the Disney Vault.

Don't we benefit from moving the goalposts its how literally every issue works. Only people who don't want to win settle for "reasonable goals" because in actuality the other side will happily shift the goal posts the other way until they have a decidedly one sided situation.

The content industry would prefer the all content is charged per view based on who is in the same room as the screen with differentiated costs based on market and even consumer. To enforce them they would prefer all computers be so locked down they are effectively paid for and maintained by you but owned by them with the right to reach over the wire and destroy your hardware if they find you are using it in a way they don't approve of. [1]

They also want veto right over roll out of any new tech that might change the amount of money they are apt to make. Example the VCR, netflix etc.

In return consumers want everything to be completely free with no ads with a great interface and Hatch to be launched into space with no space suit.

We can probably settle in between on something like compulsory licensing like radio play so that any service can offer any video and the creators always get paid. Let copyright holders set the rate but offer the same to all parties

[1] In case you didn't catch it, during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing this week on copyright abuse, the chairman -- that'd be Sen. Hatch -- endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

https://money.cnn.com/2003/06/19/commentary/wastler/wastler/

This week? That story's from 2003!

I could have been clearer but the url DOES include the date therein. I just wanted to illustrate the absurdity of the content industries positions which are regularly full of complete nonsense. I think Hatch's positions might just be peak crazy though.

It was a clip from the linked article. It could’ve been clearer though.

"almost" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, as is the word "cheap".

Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max and still not coming close to "almost every" movie isn't cheap.

And, yes, we want it from a single origin. It's not our fault that the movie/tv industry is a dumpster fire.

Amen. I pay for at least a dozen services and still have dozens of shows and movies from the past decade that I can't get. >10x going further back. Many are only available on the grey secondhand market. For example: Combat!

I'll start considering rights holders arguments when they're not capriciously gating or scalping on content, and are not limiting their content to their service du jour. The music industry has solved about 60-80% of this problem depending on what you like. The movie and series side has regressed to become worse and more expensive than blockbuster was. Shame!

> but now it's not good enough unless it's literally every piece of content from a single origin

subscribing to 3 different streaming services has no benefit for the customer. there's no reason to pay for essentially the same thing 3 times just because some studios decided to have fun with movie rights

That's totally fair, and the other replies mentioning how movies are actually not all that available right now make a valid point.

This year I've been signing up for whatever has the movie I want to watch at the moment and then terminating right away so I'm never really subscribed to anything and have a time constraint to max out the other content on the service over the next 30 days.

I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, but it's frustrating paying for a subscription to a streaming service when there's no guarantee the content - unless it's original content created by that service - will always be there.

We're seeing more and more content getting split up and requiring more and more separate subscriptions as time goes on.

You're kind of wanting it both ways, to some extent.

I mean, I'm annoyed that Netflix had a bunch of Marvel movies, but not all of them. I'm annoyed that I used to watch them on Netflix all the time and now they're gone.

On the other hand, it's because Disney+ exists, and there's no reason for Disney+ to ever remove them (preasumably), since they own the rights to them so there's no licensing deals to work with. That means that they should be there "forever".

Likewise, I don't want to also have to pay for CBS All Access to watch the latest Trek, but, if I do, it does mean that I don't have to worry about Star Trek: Discovery disappearing down the road.

The only way for things to be there "forever" is to be streaming from the company that owns the copyright, and more and more such companies are setting up their streaming services and can then guarantee that "foreverness", but that comes at costs for them, and thus costs for us. It's unfortunate, but it feels as though it's either one or the other.

Right, that's my point, and the fundamental quandry at play the entire time streaming has been an option. For a brief moment, most content was consolidated on just a few select services and most people found it more affordable than cable services.

Now, in order to guarantee that we always have access to content, we're ultimately being asked to pay for more services at a total cost that looks more like the cable fees we didn't enjoy paying to begin with. We cut cords because of cost, and now that savings is almost gone and we're back to square one.

I don't have an answer and it's not an easy question to solve, I'm just saying that that's the point of frustration for a lot of people.

Edit: In some sense, what we have now - and seem to continue expanding upon - is worse than before. We used to be able to find it all on one cable provider with one UI, now we have to pay the same amount that many people found to be "too much" and have to deal with countless different UIs.

> almost every movie

Your kidding yourself. We could limit to movies released in U.S. theaters in the past 20 years and you'd still be completely wrong.

A quick check on reelgood:

Arctic Air - Arctic Air Season 1 is not streaming nor available to rent or purchase.

jPod - jPod Season 1 is not streaming nor available to rent or purchase.

Being Erica - List several streaming services that have it, including Pluto TV, which is free/ad supported.

So three Canadian tv shows off the top of my head and there's only a 33% hit rate. That's not very good.

Billable Hours - Not available anywhere! I managed to find a torrent, although the quality is low. I think it is a good show that was before its time.