It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but customers are losing

Re:It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but cu... by ethbr0 on Friday November 19, 2021 @04:38PM (#29282887)

I realized exactly this recently: people don't channel surf anymore, and I kind of miss it.

It was relaxing to me, post- many cable channels (81?), pre- guide/DVR, to just click through.

"Oh, Armageddon is on again. Hercules. (flip, flip, flip)" and then settle on something random, pulled from what's currently playing.

It used to be: survey and then choose from a very limited but rotating subset of all content.

Now it's: choose from all content ever and then find where the content lives and then figure out how much of it you want to watch.

For movies, the new way seems superior. For TV, it feels like a lot has been lost. And overall, I feel like the new system definitely leads to winner-take-all.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but cu... by Aloha on Friday November 19, 2021 @05:24PM (#29283380)

I miss just being able to "watch what's on"

It's why I still subscribe to satellite radio.

(and yes, I've thought about subscribing to video service from Spectrum, but I'm not a huge TV watcher)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but cu... by isignal on Saturday November 20, 2021 @01:55AM (#29286126)

Try Pluto TV, their content isn’t as good as the paid offerings but I love the mindless channel surfing experience.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but cu... by ethbr0 on Saturday November 20, 2021 @09:20AM (#29288276)

Ooh, thanks for the recommendation. Game of Death was on, and 80% of the way to the end. I feel back in the 90s already.

[ Parent | on HN ]