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I mean no offense, but I found amusement in this post. It used to be that people hated cable bundles so much that they would say they would rather pay $10/month

I mean no offense, but I found amusement in this post. It used to be that people hated cable bundles so much that they would say they would rather pay $10/month a channel for the few they watch rather than the $80/month for a bundle of hundreds of channels with only a few worth watching. Now that we have that, are we living the dream? No, we want it for a tenth of the cost.

bendauphinee 9y ago
I don't think it's about paying that high a cost, I think it's about having to chase it all over the place. I'd pay double or maybe triple for Netflix, as long as it meant I could get most or all of the streaming content I wanted in one place. This is one reason why Steam is so popular.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  So then your issue isn't the cost, and if someone came with an app that would "merge" all service into a single app where you can stream for all of them from a single place, you'd be happy? I don't think that's what others are complaining about though. Price was definitely the issue of the top commenter as they mention 10$/month and 30$/year. But it makes no sense because back in the cable days, people paid 50-100$ if not more for packages. Now, even with all 4 big services, you're still only at 40$, and imo, having an ondemand service where you can stream anything you want at any time (not only that, but with most of them, with multiple people watching in parallel) is a far superior service. I think people are just getting more entitled for content that has had billions of dollars poured into it. 10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee. If you watch one episode per week and don't even share your account, you're already getting value out of it.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    >10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee. This is, has been, and always will be a ridiculous argument. $10/mo is nothing, it's the price of two coffees. But I need four services, so it's $40/mo, which is eight coffees. So now to afford the same content that was 1/4 of the price last month, I need to give up drinking coffee on Monday and Tuesday, every week. "It's the price of a cup of coffee" is a terrible argument because I don't want to give up drinking coffee just to watch Disney movies. I want to drink my coffee and watch my movies like I did last month before Disney decided they needed to make more money.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    The issue is that it's still a damn bundle. Except now it's several. What I want is to pay for access to the things that I want, which happen to be spread across more and more bundles the way things are going. What they want is for me to only consume things from their bundle, to ensure that I'm a permanent customer.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      You can still for relatively cheap buy shows on Amazon or Google play. Unless you watch a ton of TV it's still cheaper and you actually own it. Works for many shows except Netflix or HBO originals. For these I just only subscribed every few months, watch what I want and then unsubscribe.
    - supercoder 9y ago
      Just use iTunes then to rent TVs and movies ?
  - cfmcdonald 9y ago
    Where do you pay $5 for coffee? I think you are getting ripped off.
    - SllX 9y ago
      Used to work in a café. It's not the coffee people are paying for, it's all the milk and sugar added on top. Unless you go to Philz*. Sometimes you're also paying for quality, but even then that only comes out to about a dollar premium, but a latte is literally just a crapton of steamed milk poured over some coffee, plus whatever syrups and other crap (chocolate and maybe whipped cream if you want a mocha) thrown in. Then it's the labor and time you're paying for because a pour-over takes 4 minutes per cup if you do it right, and each employee can only do so many of those at one station. 4 minutes of an employee's time at minimum wage in San Francisco is almost a dollar, about 93.33¢ give or take, and that's assuming the employee is being paid minimum wage and not more.
      - seanp2k2 9y ago
        Plus the costs of running the cafe! Plenty of HNers know how crazy Bay Area rent is. Business rent is just as much of a rip. It's $6 for a 12oz mocha because they have to pay a ton for space, taxes, labor, supplies, equipment, power, water, etc.
        SllX 9y ago
        Actually I would say $6 for a 12oz mocha is (presently) still a rip-off. It might not just be you that's getting ripped off though, I talked to some guys who opened up a Boba joint and they were getting taken for a ride on their lease for a space they were subleasing from another restaurant, which was the main reason they went out of business. From the amount they quoted, they were probably paying the entire restaurant's lease, which is to say, some small business owners are unable to successfully negotiate a good lease.
      - cfmcdonald 9y ago
        Okay, but then you're not talking about a coffee any more. I typically pay ~$1.50 for a coffee, and it takes only a few seconds of labor (often just giving me a cup so I can fill it myself). Edit: Missed the pour over part, yes if you want to pay and wait for that. I'm not convinced that there's any discernable difference from a regular drip coffee that would stand up to a blind taste test (cf wine tasting).
  - princeb 9y ago
    the economics of bundling is fairly straightforward. you pay $80 a month for let's say 100 channels. most people think they are paying $0.80 per channel. the cable providers know you don't want around 90 of those channels, but they're giving them to you anyway. what consumers are actually paying is $70 for their most watched channel, $5 for their 2nd most watched channel, $3 for the 3rd, $2 for their 4th, and every other channel is given to them free by the cable provider. if cable companies were to allow consumers to pick and choose, they'd more transparently charge it like this. you could pick just 5 channels you reduce all the crap that they're giving you, and you'd probably still pay the same amount.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  As far as pricing goes, steam has the benefit of games being much less excludable than media. If you want a racing game or shooter and can'tafford the biggest titles, there're always other alternatices that're cheaper. This keeps the biggest titles' pricing in check or at least anchor them around value marks people tend to like (40 or etc) Media by contrast is very steep. Either you're at the top of your genre or you're not worth it for those looking for the former. If you want an epic fantasy story GoT still beats out other shows cropping up around the same theme (even if you think the latter have better story or so on, that's not what drives dollars). If you want space operas you're not going to settle for less than Star Wars. These "staples" and their exclusivity create a high value proposition greedy execs can't ignore, and one that they don't worry as much will give their competition an opening.
busterarm 9y ago
Maybe because people have a little bit more pricing data than they used to and know what $10 of programming is worth. Your $80/mo cable bundle is split something like: $12 taxes, $43 ESPN, $9 Viacom and the rest split by everyone else. $10 buys a lot.
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  Very true, but I'd rather spend $40 on the shows I like than $80 on the shows I like plus a crapton of garbage. If the producers get more money out of the deal, I have no problem with that. I'd rather they be the ones getting the money. As it is now, I buy my stuff ala carte. I do subscribe to netflix, but I've pretty much seen what I want there. Every once in a while they get someting new I want to see, but not often enough for it to be my go-to for entertainment. So I pay per show rather than channel. My wife and I consistently pay less than cable and just get the shows we want to see. I wasn't sure it would work out that way, but a month or so ago I asked my wife how the cost was working out (she does the finances), and it's less than cable. I can't remember how much at the moment, but less than half I think. Personally, the part I don't like about paying multiple providers isn't the paying multiple part. It's not having a single interface to get to them.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Is 10$ a lot? First, consider the experience then and the experience now. Before, only a single person could watch pre-scheduled content (unless you have an extra device to record). Now, multiple people can watch any show they want in parallel. And your way of splitting the money is silly. At the end of the day, you were paying 80$ but were only interested in a very small portion of the content. Now you're getting that same content you cared about, but for a far smaller cost.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    The idea being conveyed here is that unless you're a sports buff or reality tv buff, the content that you consume probably costs <$2/mo of your cable bill. And that might be from a few networks. Now you're paying $10/mo for each network.
Clubber 9y ago
Comcast in my area was charging me around $130 a month for HD cable with a primary box and a secondary box with a DVR. I could subscribe to 13 premium channels @10$ a month before I started paying the same amount. I don't have 13 channels I like. I could buy 6 entire seasons @$20 a piece and that lasts longer than a month. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, all free with an antenna I just ordered. Would I like the same thing I had with Comcast @13$ a month? Sure, but that's not realistic. At least not yet. Cable in the US is a huge ripoff because they cornered the market through lobbying and deals with local municipalities. It's time for them to get their "come-upins." Next is internet service.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It's "comeuppance": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/comeuppance https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/comeuppance And yes, next is internet service. But the unfortunate side-effect of the cable monopolies is that they're currently the best positioned with infrastructure to reach homes with high-bandwidth connections over the same lines which previously served cable TV. I don't want to see these same companies becoming ISPs and continue shoveling the same crap in the future.

bendauphinee 9y ago

I don't think it's about paying that high a cost, I think it's about having to chase it all over the place. I'd pay double or maybe triple for Netflix, as long as it meant I could get most or all of the streaming content I wanted in one place. This is one reason why Steam is so popular.

ehsankia 9y ago
So then your issue isn't the cost, and if someone came with an app that would "merge" all service into a single app where you can stream for all of them from a single place, you'd be happy? I don't think that's what others are complaining about though. Price was definitely the issue of the top commenter as they mention 10$/month and 30$/year. But it makes no sense because back in the cable days, people paid 50-100$ if not more for packages. Now, even with all 4 big services, you're still only at 40$, and imo, having an ondemand service where you can stream anything you want at any time (not only that, but with most of them, with multiple people watching in parallel) is a far superior service. I think people are just getting more entitled for content that has had billions of dollars poured into it. 10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee. If you watch one episode per week and don't even share your account, you're already getting value out of it.
- freehunter 9y ago
  >10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee. This is, has been, and always will be a ridiculous argument. $10/mo is nothing, it's the price of two coffees. But I need four services, so it's $40/mo, which is eight coffees. So now to afford the same content that was 1/4 of the price last month, I need to give up drinking coffee on Monday and Tuesday, every week. "It's the price of a cup of coffee" is a terrible argument because I don't want to give up drinking coffee just to watch Disney movies. I want to drink my coffee and watch my movies like I did last month before Disney decided they needed to make more money.
- int_19h 9y ago
  The issue is that it's still a damn bundle. Except now it's several. What I want is to pay for access to the things that I want, which happen to be spread across more and more bundles the way things are going. What they want is for me to only consume things from their bundle, to ensure that I'm a permanent customer.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    You can still for relatively cheap buy shows on Amazon or Google play. Unless you watch a ton of TV it's still cheaper and you actually own it. Works for many shows except Netflix or HBO originals. For these I just only subscribed every few months, watch what I want and then unsubscribe.
  - supercoder 9y ago
    Just use iTunes then to rent TVs and movies ?
- cfmcdonald 9y ago
  Where do you pay $5 for coffee? I think you are getting ripped off.
  - SllX 9y ago
    Used to work in a café. It's not the coffee people are paying for, it's all the milk and sugar added on top. Unless you go to Philz*. Sometimes you're also paying for quality, but even then that only comes out to about a dollar premium, but a latte is literally just a crapton of steamed milk poured over some coffee, plus whatever syrups and other crap (chocolate and maybe whipped cream if you want a mocha) thrown in. Then it's the labor and time you're paying for because a pour-over takes 4 minutes per cup if you do it right, and each employee can only do so many of those at one station. 4 minutes of an employee's time at minimum wage in San Francisco is almost a dollar, about 93.33¢ give or take, and that's assuming the employee is being paid minimum wage and not more.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      Plus the costs of running the cafe! Plenty of HNers know how crazy Bay Area rent is. Business rent is just as much of a rip. It's $6 for a 12oz mocha because they have to pay a ton for space, taxes, labor, supplies, equipment, power, water, etc.
      - SllX 9y ago
        Actually I would say $6 for a 12oz mocha is (presently) still a rip-off. It might not just be you that's getting ripped off though, I talked to some guys who opened up a Boba joint and they were getting taken for a ride on their lease for a space they were subleasing from another restaurant, which was the main reason they went out of business. From the amount they quoted, they were probably paying the entire restaurant's lease, which is to say, some small business owners are unable to successfully negotiate a good lease.
    - cfmcdonald 9y ago
      Okay, but then you're not talking about a coffee any more. I typically pay ~$1.50 for a coffee, and it takes only a few seconds of labor (often just giving me a cup so I can fill it myself). Edit: Missed the pour over part, yes if you want to pay and wait for that. I'm not convinced that there's any discernable difference from a regular drip coffee that would stand up to a blind taste test (cf wine tasting).
- princeb 9y ago
  the economics of bundling is fairly straightforward. you pay $80 a month for let's say 100 channels. most people think they are paying $0.80 per channel. the cable providers know you don't want around 90 of those channels, but they're giving them to you anyway. what consumers are actually paying is $70 for their most watched channel, $5 for their 2nd most watched channel, $3 for the 3rd, $2 for their 4th, and every other channel is given to them free by the cable provider. if cable companies were to allow consumers to pick and choose, they'd more transparently charge it like this. you could pick just 5 channels you reduce all the crap that they're giving you, and you'd probably still pay the same amount.
nebabyte 9y ago
As far as pricing goes, steam has the benefit of games being much less excludable than media. If you want a racing game or shooter and can'tafford the biggest titles, there're always other alternatices that're cheaper. This keeps the biggest titles' pricing in check or at least anchor them around value marks people tend to like (40 or etc) Media by contrast is very steep. Either you're at the top of your genre or you're not worth it for those looking for the former. If you want an epic fantasy story GoT still beats out other shows cropping up around the same theme (even if you think the latter have better story or so on, that's not what drives dollars). If you want space operas you're not going to settle for less than Star Wars. These "staples" and their exclusivity create a high value proposition greedy execs can't ignore, and one that they don't worry as much will give their competition an opening.

busterarm 9y ago

Maybe because people have a little bit more pricing data than they used to and know what $10 of programming is worth. Your $80/mo cable bundle is split something like: $12 taxes, $43 ESPN, $9 Viacom and the rest split by everyone else. $10 buys a lot.

DigitalJack 9y ago
Very true, but I'd rather spend $40 on the shows I like than $80 on the shows I like plus a crapton of garbage. If the producers get more money out of the deal, I have no problem with that. I'd rather they be the ones getting the money. As it is now, I buy my stuff ala carte. I do subscribe to netflix, but I've pretty much seen what I want there. Every once in a while they get someting new I want to see, but not often enough for it to be my go-to for entertainment. So I pay per show rather than channel. My wife and I consistently pay less than cable and just get the shows we want to see. I wasn't sure it would work out that way, but a month or so ago I asked my wife how the cost was working out (she does the finances), and it's less than cable. I can't remember how much at the moment, but less than half I think. Personally, the part I don't like about paying multiple providers isn't the paying multiple part. It's not having a single interface to get to them.
ehsankia 9y ago
Is 10$ a lot? First, consider the experience then and the experience now. Before, only a single person could watch pre-scheduled content (unless you have an extra device to record). Now, multiple people can watch any show they want in parallel. And your way of splitting the money is silly. At the end of the day, you were paying 80$ but were only interested in a very small portion of the content. Now you're getting that same content you cared about, but for a far smaller cost.
- busterarm 9y ago
  The idea being conveyed here is that unless you're a sports buff or reality tv buff, the content that you consume probably costs <$2/mo of your cable bill. And that might be from a few networks. Now you're paying $10/mo for each network.

Clubber 9y ago

Comcast in my area was charging me around $130 a month for HD cable with a primary box and a secondary box with a DVR. I could subscribe to 13 premium channels @10$ a month before I started paying the same amount. I don't have 13 channels I like. I could buy 6 entire seasons @$20 a piece and that lasts longer than a month. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, all free with an antenna I just ordered. Would I like the same thing I had with Comcast @13$ a month? Sure, but that's not realistic. At least not yet. Cable in the US is a huge ripoff because they cornered the market through lobbying and deals with local municipalities. It's time for them to get their "come-upins." Next is internet service.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
It's "comeuppance": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/comeuppance https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/comeuppance And yes, next is internet service. But the unfortunate side-effect of the cable monopolies is that they're currently the best positioned with infrastructure to reach homes with high-bandwidth connections over the same lines which previously served cable TV. I don't want to see these same companies becoming ISPs and continue shoveling the same crap in the future.