8 ms·

> The people that hate commericals are a small but growing minority. I'm going to have to stop you there. With the exception of the 4 hours surrounding the su

> The people that hate commericals are a small but growing minority. I'm going to have to stop you there. With the exception of the 4 hours surrounding the superbowl, you go out into whereever you live and find someone who wants more commercials. Maybe you are correct, that people who hate them is a minority[0] as it is a strong sentiment, but they certainly aren't going to pay hulu? Why the fuck would they, they would just simply be purchasing a worse expereince than the DVR box they currently own? I mean maybe, if they demanded portability, and had an unliited data plan, but this is a strawman, as netflix exists. > I have really good experience with HBO NOW That's cool, and I respect that. One of my buddies worked on HBO Go when they started to think through the idea in 06. So I can't really trust a company that has arrived at mediocrity after a full decade of tackling a problem. [0] This is a thought experiment. You are super obviously wrong. The majority of people, of course, fucking hate commercials.

foobarian 10y ago
It's not about the technology or the ads or so much the price. It's all about the catalog. Hulu, Netflix, HBO and Amazon are just fancy completely interchangeable video players; the only thing that matters is what you can watch on them. I pay for Hulu because the price is low enough, and the extra catalog is worth it. A few extra ads don't bother me enough to outweigh the good points. I pay for Netflix for the House of Cards and a few other things they have available for streaming here and there (like a bunch of children's shows), though their catalog has been getting terrible over time and I will probably cancel it. I pay for HBO for Game of Thrones. I'll probably cancel when I catch up. The bottom line is, the content creators have everyone by the balls and no matter how few ads the streaming sites show or how fancy their video player is there is very little they can do about it.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  you know, this was a pretty good rebuttal. The interesting thing here is that this is the total opposite of the internet. Content creators (and content) is virtually worthless and interchangeable, while the "catalog" is virtually everything. The internet version of the catalog can be a portal like hn/google/reddit ect, but the actual content doesn't matter. Where as you correctly observed, the content is the only thing that matters for video.
bluejekyll 10y ago
> I can't really trust a company that has arrived at mediocrity after a full decade of tackling a problem I disagree that it's mediocre. It's just different from Netflix, and has worked well when I use it. Also, this is a well entrenched company in the cable industry that is working hard to maintain their current revenue stream while opening up a new revenue stream from a completely different distribution channel. I can think of a number of companies that have failed to do this. Oracle and SAP in the cloud are at the top of mind. This is challenging for any company to do.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  You can see my response above, and I haven't used it in a year so I am not sure. My experience is based on using it for about a 1 week period once a year before getting frustrated. I started in ~2012-2013ish. However, hbo go started getting developed in 06'.I am not saying it isn't difficult to do, but if you can't do video at scale in 2016 when your core product is video and you have 8-10 years of developer hours spent on it, I mean, what are you doing? The reason, if I understand correctly, it is pretty decent now is because hey bought/licensed mlb.coms tech.
Godel_unicode 10y ago
I think you're making the wrong comparison; it's not people who hate commercials and people who love them, it's people who accept them because status quo and people who don't. Also, your Netflix answer for mobile is a non-answer. Jaccard similarity between Netflix and Hulu is pretty low.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  If I understand you correctly, and I am not sure that I do, I think we are in agreement. My point above was that no one wants to watch commercials. The parent pointed out people don't hate them, and I flippantly and sarcastically tried to point out that people do. However, regardless, people watch televisiont to see the program, so certainly they would want to watch a 60min program vs a 45min one with 25% advertising propaganda. Some people aren't aware there is an alternative, or aren't comfortable enough with technology to learn a new paradigm (typically >65 years old). So I agree with you here. > Also, your Netflix answer for mobile is a non-answer. Again, not super sure what you meant. However, I was arguing that hulu is pointless vs a dvr. It is all around worse (price, performance, convenience, reliability in programming & behavior) than a dvr box, except portability. So I viewed it like this: 1. Hulu has only 1 single advantage over dvr 2. The advantage is portability of media & devices. 3. Netflix too has all the advantages of a dvr AS WELL AS portability. 4. Hulu has virtually 0 value as 2 substitutes exist in the market that are leagues better than it. So again, i believe we are agreeing ;).

foobarian 10y ago

It's not about the technology or the ads or so much the price. It's all about the catalog. Hulu, Netflix, HBO and Amazon are just fancy completely interchangeable video players; the only thing that matters is what you can watch on them. I pay for Hulu because the price is low enough, and the extra catalog is worth it. A few extra ads don't bother me enough to outweigh the good points. I pay for Netflix for the House of Cards and a few other things they have available for streaming here and there (like a bunch of children's shows), though their catalog has been getting terrible over time and I will probably cancel it. I pay for HBO for Game of Thrones. I'll probably cancel when I catch up. The bottom line is, the content creators have everyone by the balls and no matter how few ads the streaming sites show or how fancy their video player is there is very little they can do about it.

vonklaus 10y ago
you know, this was a pretty good rebuttal. The interesting thing here is that this is the total opposite of the internet. Content creators (and content) is virtually worthless and interchangeable, while the "catalog" is virtually everything. The internet version of the catalog can be a portal like hn/google/reddit ect, but the actual content doesn't matter. Where as you correctly observed, the content is the only thing that matters for video.

bluejekyll 10y ago

> I can't really trust a company that has arrived at mediocrity after a full decade of tackling a problem I disagree that it's mediocre. It's just different from Netflix, and has worked well when I use it. Also, this is a well entrenched company in the cable industry that is working hard to maintain their current revenue stream while opening up a new revenue stream from a completely different distribution channel. I can think of a number of companies that have failed to do this. Oracle and SAP in the cloud are at the top of mind. This is challenging for any company to do.

vonklaus 10y ago
You can see my response above, and I haven't used it in a year so I am not sure. My experience is based on using it for about a 1 week period once a year before getting frustrated. I started in ~2012-2013ish. However, hbo go started getting developed in 06'.I am not saying it isn't difficult to do, but if you can't do video at scale in 2016 when your core product is video and you have 8-10 years of developer hours spent on it, I mean, what are you doing? The reason, if I understand correctly, it is pretty decent now is because hey bought/licensed mlb.coms tech.

Godel_unicode 10y ago

I think you're making the wrong comparison; it's not people who hate commercials and people who love them, it's people who accept them because status quo and people who don't. Also, your Netflix answer for mobile is a non-answer. Jaccard similarity between Netflix and Hulu is pretty low.

vonklaus 10y ago
If I understand you correctly, and I am not sure that I do, I think we are in agreement. My point above was that no one wants to watch commercials. The parent pointed out people don't hate them, and I flippantly and sarcastically tried to point out that people do. However, regardless, people watch televisiont to see the program, so certainly they would want to watch a 60min program vs a 45min one with 25% advertising propaganda. Some people aren't aware there is an alternative, or aren't comfortable enough with technology to learn a new paradigm (typically >65 years old). So I agree with you here. > Also, your Netflix answer for mobile is a non-answer. Again, not super sure what you meant. However, I was arguing that hulu is pointless vs a dvr. It is all around worse (price, performance, convenience, reliability in programming & behavior) than a dvr box, except portability. So I viewed it like this: 1. Hulu has only 1 single advantage over dvr 2. The advantage is portability of media & devices. 3. Netflix too has all the advantages of a dvr AS WELL AS portability. 4. Hulu has virtually 0 value as 2 substitutes exist in the market that are leagues better than it. So again, i believe we are agreeing ;).