> A major part of the rise of online streaming is... Lack of ads.

Sorry but ads are the new normal when subscribing to most streaming services.

Netflix CEO in 2019: "Netflix will never have ads." Three years later, Netflix is "excited" to launch an ad-supported tier. This came shortly after a price jump on all of its plans, of course.

We pay for Amazon Prime ($140/yr) more for the streaming than the "free" shipping or other perks. But increasingly, more and more content in the Prime library can only be "rented" or "bought", or watched "free with ads." The quality of the content that is available to watch "with Prime" (i.e. without paying even more) is going steadily downhill. The bargain DVD bin at my local grocery store has a better selection.

We also have occasional access to Hulu, Disney, Peacock and whatever else through friends and family and it seems like the shows on all of these have ads on them. (Or at least most of them do?)

I was quite happy to pay a monthly fee to watch stuff ad-free. Now since that is quickly not becoming an option, I may have to pull my wooden leg and eye patch out of storage.

> I was quite happy to pay a monthly fee to watch stuff ad-free. Now since that is quickly not becoming an option, I may have to pull my wooden leg and eye patch out of storage.

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't deal with ads on Amazon, Netflix, Disney+, or YouTube.

The thing is, there is significantly more content that I want to watch than I have time to watch. So, if something requires ads, or another subscription, I just watch something else.

I totally understand going back to piracy.

> A major part of the rise of online streaming is... Lack of ads.

I think you might have missed the latest trend of offering streaming at a discounted rate by including ads.

> The whole article looks like one of those "pie in the sky" tech utopia visions that never pans out.

I can tell you this isn't something going away, and the tech to do this is here. Look into FAST, AVOD, and other OTT types of offerings. I know, because I work on the periphery of this stuff. If you are watching any kind of streaming video with an account number, your viewing habits are being consumed. It's been this way ever since the switch to digital cable. Forcing an account for OTA is the holy grail.

> If you are watching any kind of streaming video with an account number, your viewing habits are being consumed.

This is the precise reason why I don't use streaming services.

The sentence you quoted was the set up for the next sentence. The implication there was meant more for the less obvious cable subscribers. Most subscribers are unaware that they've been tracked ever since they day they switched to a digital stream. I've heard comments like yours while explaining why they keep their cable. Of course streaming services track your viewing habits. That's how they can do "Recommended for you" sections.

Ah, I see. In my mind, cable is a form of streaming service -- so I didn't differentiate between the two.

Interesting that you think of cable that way. What makes it a streaming service to you? Because it's IP based? Cable started as a way to deliver OTA broadcasts to people that could not receive the broadcast (typically due to terrain issues). That then grew into channels that did not actually have an OTA broadcast. Maybe it's a generational thing?

Not sure if its a generational thing or not. I'm a graybeard, if that matters, and I remember when cable TV was a brand new technology.

I think of it as streaming just because that's what it looks like. I never put any real thought into it. I didn't even realize that I thought of it that way until these comments.

My conception of this might be related to the notion of "streaming" also being a pretty old one to me. I was working on such software years before streaming services were a thing, around 1990.

I see your 1990 working on streaming and mention that cable started in the late 1940s.

Just a shot in the dark, were you working on MPEG delivery formats?

No, I wasn't. This work predated MPEG-1 by a couple of years, too.

The tech to do this may be here, but the customers are not. Ad free streaming early adopters where techies. Those people are going to willingly eat this shit sandwich and evangelize it to others.

I think you might be seeing the transition of smart TVs and streaming services from the early mainstream to the late mainstream. (I'm currently reading the book Crossing the Chasm.)

Certainly there is a market for someone who will buy a cheap smart TV, enter their Wi-Fi password, and just watch whatever random free ad-supported streaming services are on it. (Edit: Such a consumer won't even bother creating accounts on these services.)

But it's a huge mistake to assume that ads are coming back for everyone. One of the major draws of subscription streaming TV is the lack of ads. It's clear that this is a major difference between the early mainstream consumers of smart TVs with streaming services, and the later consumers who may be a bit more price conscious.

I think it's also a big mistake to assume that cheaper, ad-supported subscriptions, are a long-term trend. It ignores one of the reasons why streaming services became popular to begin with.

I think the industry is trying to answer the problem of "I don't want another subscription," but they are ignoring the other problem of: "There's more content than I can watch." Clearly, trying to convince someone to watch advertisements does not solve that problem.

(Edit: Why? If there is too much for me to watch, you won't convince me to subscribe to your service if it requires me to watch things that I don't want to watch in order to get a lower price.)

Edit2: I personally think the way to solve "I don't want another subscription" isn't cheaper, ad-supported subscriptions. I think it's copyright reform. Why should Disney's entire back catalogue only be available on Disney+? I certainly can understand limited exclusivity for new content; but after a year or two, there should be a statutory licensing fee structure that allows any streaming service to carry any content. We (in the US) have a similar structure for broadcast radio.

An idea that just popped into my head is that maybe phones will start including ATSC 3.0 tuners at some point, so the Internet connection is right there, ubiquitous, and everything can be integrated with an app. NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. could offer an app that "streams" in a local TV channel using ATSC instead of cell or wifi.

You'll want to get a Yagi antenna case for the best results though.

When phones bring back the headphone jack, you’ll know the reason why. “External antenna”

For a while phones had FM tuners. I even owned one for a period of time.

They never really caught on.

In Japan they just finally started dropping TV tuners (local ISDB standard) from their Android phones in the past 2-3 years, before that it was pretty common.

I would be excited about this if I could watch local TV without an OTA antenna. One of my biggest frustrations is that I either have to get a) cable or b) a flaky OTA connection to watch things like local sports. If I could stream local TV and more specifically sports like I would a normal broadcast, that would be amazing.

I agree. Broadcast TV that depends on broadband is awkward hybrid. That's combining the flexibility of broadcast TV with the increased system requirements of having a broadband connection and training the masses how to type their Wi-Fi password into their TV. A lot of TV viewers can barely program their VCR or change inputs.