Well, after Netflix dominated the scene between 2007 - 2015 by themselves, the bigger entertainment conglomerates were keen on taking a little piece of the pie they made. After that, the cat was out of the bag, out came competitors and now everyone is eating everyone's lunch at the same time.

I hate where things are as well, I do miss Netflix's pseudo-monopoly on the premium streaming market, it was genuinely a huge value plus for the consumer then. Netflix was just too good at cornering the market and everyone wised up just in time for what we have now.

I pirate more these days than ever before and it's solely for the convenience so I don't have 30 different devices to stream x y and z shows and films. I remember looking at the titles offered on some service I used to have a while ago to realize that the show I wanted was not even offered on their platform...

What a sick joke.

Netflix did not corner anything. Cornering would involve owning such a large portion of a market that you can dictate your terms as a buyer or seller.

Netflix was the subject of cornering. Disney told Netflix to take a hike because Disney owns the most popular content. Netflix had to pay $500M+ for 5 years of Seinfeld to counteract the news that Comcast was removing The Office from Netflix.

Selling media is a low barrier to entry business. Selling media that has cultural cachet spanning decades is a high barrier to entry business, with the barrier being decades of time.

> You need an Apple device to watch Apple TV+

Watched it on a Sony TV running Android through Apple's official app.

> You need an Apple device to watch Apple TV+

I watched severance on a Roku so I know that isn't true.

No, you don't. You need an Apple account.

> You need an Apple device to watch Apple TV+

I watch on my Chromecast with Google TV fine.

There's lots of other non-Apple devices it works on too: https://www.apple.com/au/apple-tv-app/devices/

> Amazon paid to lock down Lord of the Rings and very nearly to James Bond. Apple did the same to Foundation. Next is football.

Well HBO etc have been doing this forever. Not sure what the distinction is.

Amazon could buy up physical cinemas and the just book to their own shops. The platforms are actually pretty good value. It would be better if you could have a more video store approach and then watch whatever from any platform. But the current system isn't that bad. And it's getting films made that otherwise wouldn't.