3 ms·

I don't understand. What's hard about having multiple streaming services? It's not all that different from having different channels on a TV.

by harryh 10y ago

fweespeech 10y ago
1) I don't own a TV because I find the hassle of dealing with a cable company and its business model excessive. 2) Dogpile vs. Google
- harryh 10y ago
  About 85% of American households have cable TV. It sounds like your standards in this area are, ahem, a bit unusual. Perhaps it's not a great idea to extrapolate from your personal experience to the bulk of Americans and what they will or will not do when presented with a bunch of different streaming services.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/household-cable-cord-cutters/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/household-cable-cord-cutters/ > Combining the cord-cutting trend in recent years with the growing number of consumers who have never subscribed to cable television, a total of 24.6 million households, or 20.4% of all U.S. households, were cable-free at the end of 2015. Just fyi. And yeah, I don't really care about changing minds at this point. I've accepted I'm never going to be in the majority on anything.
CaptSpify 10y ago
Not OP but: I don't want to have 10 different accounts to search/look through. It's not undoable, but it's extremely inconvenient. I'm just not going to keep up with who has what on their streaming catalogue if I can get it for free, and usually at a better quality, elsewhere. I just want to be able to turn on my TV, type a word and start playing.
morgante 10y ago
It's definitely a hassle to have to look through the various services to find which one actually has a bit of content, find the login for that service, and make sure that a bunch of separate accounts are maintained. This complexity removes one of the biggest advantages streaming is supposed to have over piracy: ease of use and effortlessness. In contrast, TV comes with a built in meta-discovery system. You can effortlessly switch between channels and even quickly summon up an overall display of which channels have which. It seems like there might be a hole opening in the market for a streaming aggregator which will provide a unified interface for managing your various subscriptions and switching between them (including to paid sources). It's too bad that every company would likely oppose such a service and thereby make it technically and legally impractical to maintain.
- zo1 10y ago
  >"It's definitely a hassle to have to look through the various services to find which one actually has a bit of content, find the login for that service, and make sure that a bunch of separate accounts are maintained. " A nice feature I recently discovered of the Roku. It exposes a "Search" feature that searches across all the various streaming channels and apps. Then, when you click on it, it takes you to the relevant page seamlessly (so long as you have a subscription to that app). Not sure if the other streaming devices have that, but a Roku is all I've tried up until now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

I don't understand. What's hard about having multiple streaming services? It's not all that different from having different channels on a TV.

by harryh 10y ago

I don't understand. What's hard about having multiple streaming services? It's not all that different from having different channels on a TV.

fweespeech 10y ago

1) I don't own a TV because I find the hassle of dealing with a cable company and its business model excessive. 2) Dogpile vs. Google

harryh 10y ago
About 85% of American households have cable TV. It sounds like your standards in this area are, ahem, a bit unusual. Perhaps it's not a great idea to extrapolate from your personal experience to the bulk of Americans and what they will or will not do when presented with a bunch of different streaming services.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/household-cable-cord-cutters/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/household-cable-cord-cutters/ > Combining the cord-cutting trend in recent years with the growing number of consumers who have never subscribed to cable television, a total of 24.6 million households, or 20.4% of all U.S. households, were cable-free at the end of 2015. Just fyi. And yeah, I don't really care about changing minds at this point. I've accepted I'm never going to be in the majority on anything.

CaptSpify 10y ago

Not OP but: I don't want to have 10 different accounts to search/look through. It's not undoable, but it's extremely inconvenient. I'm just not going to keep up with who has what on their streaming catalogue if I can get it for free, and usually at a better quality, elsewhere. I just want to be able to turn on my TV, type a word and start playing.

morgante 10y ago

It's definitely a hassle to have to look through the various services to find which one actually has a bit of content, find the login for that service, and make sure that a bunch of separate accounts are maintained. This complexity removes one of the biggest advantages streaming is supposed to have over piracy: ease of use and effortlessness. In contrast, TV comes with a built in meta-discovery system. You can effortlessly switch between channels and even quickly summon up an overall display of which channels have which. It seems like there might be a hole opening in the market for a streaming aggregator which will provide a unified interface for managing your various subscriptions and switching between them (including to paid sources). It's too bad that every company would likely oppose such a service and thereby make it technically and legally impractical to maintain.

zo1 10y ago
>"It's definitely a hassle to have to look through the various services to find which one actually has a bit of content, find the login for that service, and make sure that a bunch of separate accounts are maintained. " A nice feature I recently discovered of the Roku. It exposes a "Search" feature that searches across all the various streaming channels and apps. Then, when you click on it, it takes you to the relevant page seamlessly (so long as you have a subscription to that app). Not sure if the other streaming devices have that, but a Roku is all I've tried up until now.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]