But people got unrealistic expectations of total price from the first few years of Netflix and Hulu prices + library. That stuff was always gonna get more expensive as the market moved to streaming.

I will admit that the request for a la carte assumed channel theming along the lines of cable, which isn't materializing in streaming. If I want just high quality sci-fi, which streaming service do I subscribe to? If I want feel good family movies? Etc.

But it was always going to be a dozen streaming services. Anybody who thought otherwise was either delusional or didn't understand how money worked.

We once had to sign contracts, and have people come into your house and install things, and then pay rental for their cable boxes or whatnot and had to watch shows based on the schedule they were broadcast.

Now, we can click a few buttons and stream exactly what we want, when we want, and unless you are watching too much media, it is surely cheaper than cable/satellite in years past. And you can purchase a subscription and cancel a subscription within seconds, as opposed to calling the cable company and waiting on hold and dealing with retention departments.

I started just pirating the content I was subscribed to because it was easier. Then they made it harder with all the fragmentation so I stopped paying for it full stop.

Movie industry has to do the leg work to get my attention and that is very fragile. They choose not to so no cash from me.

I honestly don't see why anyone needs more than maybe two streaming services. Do you really need to see everything? Even during the pandemic, two seems to be plenty for most families.

Imagine arguing that movies are too expensive now because you have to see a movie every day. The obvious solution is to prioritize what you view and watch fewer movies.

For most people the current approach is better: spending $20 or $30 a month instead of $80 -- and with much better choices available, and often without any ads.

Well, more like "Dear subscriber, for your convenience and security, you can now activate your subscription in 3-month packages. Don't thanks us, at EvilCast, we're always thinking of you".

It's not about seeing everything, it's about seeing what's good, and how that's scattered across a dozen or more services where it's buried under mostly mediocre/bad content.

Sure, sometimes there's an option to just rent/buy digitally, but often that ends up being way more expensive than just buying a physical blu-ray version.

Case in point: If I wanted to stream Battlestar Galactica (2004) in Germany then the first option for that would be Amazon Prime Video. Even tho I pay for a prime membership, buying all 4 seasons digitally in HD quality, would cost me 92€, there is no option to just rent them.

While ordering the blu-ray set for the whole show, on Amazon with delivery tomorrow, would cost me 48€, nearly half as much and I get a physical version I can use as often and wherever I want, even if the unthinkable happens and Amazon goes out of business.

Why does the clearly inferior version of a product cost that much more?

> Look, I don't want to pay $120 for 900 channels I never watch. Just let me pay for them a la carte.

This reminds me of those plots where the devil grants wishes in sneaky terrible ways that are not at all what the asker intended.

Personally, I'd prefer to see every service have access to (pretty much) all content and then compete on quality/price/etc... kind of like how music tends to work nowadays.