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These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're going to l

These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. Just the other day I had the urge to watch ghost in the shell. Not available on any of the major streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu, Prime) but available on stars via prime. So I have to pay an addition $7/month to watch a single show? No thanks. Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to do with $7 like buy dinner.

skinnymuch 8y ago
Lionsgate Starz isn’t a big company with a lot of products so paying extra to watch things for that channel will be a challenge no matter what. On the other hand, HBO seems to be doing well enough with their not so cheap stand alone offering. Disney with Fox’s media would be a pretty big streaming provider and many people would likely get onto it. Good chance of it becoming a standard streaming service. So I don’t see how that specific merger is a bad idea in a battle against Netflix.
- yebyen 8y ago
  If you're talking about HBO Go, I don't know how you gauge success, but if it's subscriber numbers I would take that with a grain of salt. I am a Comcast subscriber, and like many Comcast subscribers I'm sure, I have one of their boxes in my house, with the most basic Cable TV package, because if I don't take it my cost goes up (I mean the overall price of the monthly billed amount from Comcast/Xfinity). We get crappy quality SD letterbox channels including some local OTA channels that we can watch Jeopardy on, at lower quality than OTA whenever the antenna isn't doing the job. Oh, and HBO/On-Demand is also included. That includes HBO Go (but not HBO Now.) I don't use either HBO service and I don't know how they are different, at the risk of adding anecdata to an otherwise solid argument... Whether or not any of this works out to be a favorable deal for HBO, I can't say, but I hope this explains why I would say to take their digital subscriber numbers with a grain of salt. (On the other hand, I will actually pay for Showtime standalone when they have put out a new season of Homeland.)
  - vincentmarle 8y ago
    HBO Go is what you get when you subscribe to HBO through your cable service, HBO Now is a direct subscription to HBO.
    - yebyen 8y ago
      Thank you. That was clear-as-mud every time I wondered what the difference was before.
  - tzs 8y ago
    > I am a Comcast subscriber, and like many Comcast subscribers I'm sure, I have one of their boxes in my house, with the most basic Cable TV package, because if I don't take it my cost goes up (I mean the overall price of the monthly billed amount from Comcast/Xfinity) This seems to vary region to region. Where I am (western Washington, west of Seattle) all the internet-only packages are cheaper than all the internet + TV packages at the same internet speed, as far as I can tell. When comparing the price with and without TV, are your taking into account the fees and equipment charges that go away if you don't have TV? Although here internet only is cheaper than internet + TV, it isn't much cheaper. I've got 400 Mb/s internet, Preferred TV (220+ channels + Starz), and Phone, and dropping down to just 400 Mb/s internet would only knock $20 off the base price. That's a small enough change that it is probably less than I'd end up spending on streaming subscription and rental services to make up for the lost TV. However, dropping TV and phone would also drop $11/month for the DVR service, $8/month for the broadcast TV fee, $6.30/month for the regional sports fee, and $4.60 for the franchise fee (and maybe some sales tax, if any of those fees are taxable). That's another $30/month, so we are talking $50/month less on my total bill. Now I would come out ahead even if I have to subscribe to multiple streaming services for my TV.
    - yebyen 8y ago
      The TV deal is a promotional pricing structure, I have found that you can get them to offer you a new promotional rate if you threaten to send their hardware back and downgrade your service to Internet-only. (Again this may vary from region to region, I am in the midwest/Indiana in case it matters.) These threats are credible when they know you have the crappiest TV service they offer and you probably aren't even using it but 30 minutes a day when Jeopardy comes on, but for some reason the sales reps seem to be pretty heavily incentivized to make sure you have some kind of TV service, even if you don't get any addons bundled with it. (Probably getting a kickback from the government, that's how they get their listening devices into your living room... /s) I've declined as many services as I can otherwise, I don't have DVR service, HD channels (I get about 10 channels, all SD), extra super-premium internet package (mine claims up to 150Mbit, while it is not the lowest they offer, it's also not the highest...) I don't get a paper bill in the mail, or manual payments for billing (all of those things also cost ~$10 extra each); still my cable internet service is good, and it does come with HBO as I mentioned. (I'm pretty sure it's standard def HBO over the wire, and that's another good reason to register for and use the bundled HBO Go service at least once...) I think that $8/mo broadcast TV fee is the only one you mentioned that I can actually identify on my bill. And as I've had it explained to me, I would not be able to qualify for any promotional pricing after my first year of service without that.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Even without Fox, Disney has the best chance of success even if it e dis up having a smaller library. Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. If you have kids, being able to pay $10-$15 a month for all Disney content is a great deal.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. > being able to pay $10-$15 a month That seems like a terrible deal, compared with just paying for that "same thing" once and watching it over and over for free.
    - EastSmith 8y ago
      That "same thing" this month is Finding Nemo, next month is Cars, next month is something else. Also, you can buy it and they watch it half a time and never think about it again. $10-$15 is cheaper.
      - mmt 8y ago
        Thanks (I'm not a parent). In those cases, yes, that pricing would make sense. Of course, it doesn't really matter if they control all the distribution anyway. They can just make "buying" a non-option, which I believe Disney has tried for certain titles already.
    - jasonjayr 8y ago
      ... and children + discs often ends poorly.
      - mmt 8y ago
        I can't imagine buying a disc and not immediately ripping and trans-coding it, though I was assuming buying some cheaper, downloadable content in the first place.
        8y ago
rhino369 8y ago
>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Don't really care if it's a single company so long as they operate actually independently of content production and are only a distributor.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  There seems to be quite a few available for music. Using apple music, spotify, tidal or whatever else doesn't seem to have the exclusivity problems that TV equivalents have. I can probably count the number of exclusive artists to each music provider on my hand.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    They're trying to recreate the cable TV channel package model on the internet, because it's a mechanism for price discrimination. If you make twenty shows and you want to sell subscriptions a la carte, how much do you charge per show? If you charge $10/month per show then you lose the business of everyone who might have paid you anything even slightly less than that. If you charge $.50/month per show to get those customers, you lose $9.50/month from everyone who would have paid $10/month per show. But if you put all twenty shows together in a bundle and sell them collectively for $10/month, you get $10/month from everyone who values the collection of shows at $10/month or more, regardless of the value they place on each individual show. Which can turn out to be more money. But that is less likely to work in a more competitive market. People only have so many hours to watch television. It may be worth $10/month for a package of shows to get the one you really want when that's the only option, but when someone else is offering an equivalently good show a la carte for $10/year and you don't have time to watch both, people will choose the one that saves them $90/year worth of shows they weren't actually interested in. The broader problem is that without a distribution monopoly to use as a chokepoint, content creation is a highly competitive market, and highly competitive markets have low margins. So the incumbents are flailing around trying to find something that looks like the model they're used to, even though that model is now defunct. The model which is likely to out-compete a la carte is the one where content producers make non-exclusive licenses to multiple aggregation companies that sell flat rate plans to their customers. Because $10/month for twenty shows can't out-compete $10/year for the one show you actually want anymore, but $20/month for every show can.
rayiner 8y ago
What you’re proposing would lead to a terrible market structure. It would eliminate the most important differentiating factor: content. Subscribing to multiple streaming services might be somewhat less convenient, but it also allows competition based on producing and distributing quality content.
- shmerl 8y ago
  Subscribing to many services because each offers some exclusive stuff is inconvenient and taxes the user with the overhead of each service. People want to find more in their favorite stores. If creators would have been independent of distributors, this wouldn't have been a problem to begin with. Each creator would distribute in each store. But all this integration causes exclusivity that only inconveniences the end user. Netflix isn't any better in this sense, since they have tons of exclusives too. Competition on exclusivity is not good in the end and only benefits the distributor. In this sense, the idea above is spot on. How are these fragmented services (with DRM to boot) going to compete with torrents that offer everything without DRM through unified hubs? Film makers need to pull stuff together and fix it.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The whole spiel about DRM is that you don’t truly own the content you buy and the inconvenience of not being able to use the content on the device of your choice. When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. As far as convenience, the major streaming services are all on the web for computers and they all have apps for everything imaginable. Netflix, Hulu, et. al. are much more convenient that piracy. Besides they said the same thing about iTunes back in 2003. I stopped pirating music when the iTunes Misic Store was introduced. I definitely wouldn’t worry about pirating now over paying $15/month for the family Apple Music plan.
    - shmerl 8y ago
      > When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. I personally prefer to avoid DRMed services and buy DRM-free. It's reasonably good with music and games for example, but with films you barely can find anything that way. The reason for renting digital goods is usually presented as an option to get it for lower prices, even though there is no scarcity like with physical goods. That's fine, people might want to rent something and pay less. But why does it mean there should be no option to buy (for higher price)? That is already not right, i.e. forcing renting only approach. That's why I quite dislike DRM attached to renting services as well.
sosborn 8y ago
> Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. The other option is to just not watch it.
- rayiner 8y ago
  The down voting you’re getting is emblematic of the entitlement mentality among tech folks when it comes to content. There is no right to consume entertainment someone else produced for free. If you don’t like the terms on which they’re selling the fruits of their labor, don’t buy it.
  - lovich 8y ago
    If that feeling went both ways I could agree. Companies however, obviously don't like not controlling everything the public has and do things like increase copyright to a length that their own company would have never started(Disney), or try to claim that users no longer own products they buy and can no longer repair things themselves (John Deere). Companies have already taken multiple sustained attacks against consumers rights so why would consumers care about the companies rights?
    - rayiner 8y ago
      “Companies” are not an undifferentiated mass. What does John Deere have to do with Dexter or Game of Thrones? Are people only pirating the work of “bad” companies?
      - lovich 8y ago
        Consumers aren't an undifferentiated mass either. Why are paying customers sitting through 5 minutes of FBI warnings in front of DVDs because some other people pirate? These arguments go both ways but a large portion of this forum seems to only view it from the companies perspective
        adventured 8y ago
tzs 8y ago
> Just the other day I had the urge to watch ghost in the shell. Not available on any of the major streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu, Prime) but available on stars via prime ... Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to do with $7 like buy dinner Or you could have rented the Blu-ray at Redbox for $2 (or streamed it from Redbox for $5).
- YokoZar 8y ago
  Or streamed it from Google Play for $2
  - lovich 8y ago
    How does any of this change the OP's point about fragmentation of the market? It does nothing to benefit the consumer, the competition is not lowering prices, so why would consumers not go back to piracy when it results in a superior product?
    - consumethreads 8y ago
      because we are not cheap and are ok with paying for a service. How cheap should it be. There will be no service that people will pay for if they pirate content. The service they want is a service where they dont have to pay. If you are pirating you are not a customer. Any business man should not be concerned with trying to gain your market, its not profitable.
      - lovich 8y ago
        Steam, iTunes, and Spotify have almost completely killed off pirating for games and music. It's still possible but people would rather pay for those services because the services actually add a value over the actual data which is post scarcity. TV and the film industry have decided they'll make more money by making a worse product and doing everything they can to prevent users from finding alternatives
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
consumethreads 8y ago
"We want an on-demand nexus." up until a point ... HBO has been all about the entire pipeline from its inception because it feels (and has proven) that its content alone is good enough for it to be purchased a la carte. Netflix and all others see this and say ... theres a business model here. Fastforward 20 years, creating good content is cheaper. There are more film grad students to make the supply cheaper. Add to that the internet which allows you to be your own distributor. Basically its easier to be HBO today than when HBO started and you still get the added profits that HBO gets vs not generating your own content. We want a hub but well take what we can get as long as the content is good. And we will get custom content because we have shown it pays. I guess we dont want the hub enough.
- AckSyn 8y ago
  Apple has been trying to do the on-demand nexus on their platform for a while, but a lot of services don't want to play ball. Notably Netflix and Hulu. Which doesn't make sense to me since you'd be paying for whatever services anyways, just using the Apple branded app to view it through w/o their shitty interface (Netflix and Hulu interfaces really blow).
- hakfoo 8y ago
  "We want a hub but well take what we can get as long as the content is good." I'm not sure. Convenience seems to trump content in a lot of markets. If you have a solid baseline level of content, the best experience wins. In that regard, a fragmented market could cause the entire streaming model to-- well perhaps not collapse, but fail to flower fully. Cable says "Yeah, you're spending $80 per month, but there's one consistent UI, one login, one bill." Streaming with one service like pre-fragmentation Netflix, says "You're spending $10 per month, getting a modest content pool, and it's all still pretty easy to use." But how will people respond to "You're spending $50 per month, get a fairly broad selection of content, but it's all scattered across a bunch of services which behave subtly differently and have to be managed independently?" They might well respond by going back to the less-hassle cable option, or just shed services til they get to something that feels manageable-- one or two services, maybe paying for a month of something else to binge its signature show once a year. Netflix and HBO might kick out enough big draws to justify subscribing year-round, but will a low-budget or niche player?
always_good 8y ago
> We want an on-demand nexus. Ah right, the utopia of extreme centralization I keep hearing HNers rave about.
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  Technically pirates figured that one out a long time ago.
axaxs 8y ago
Agreed. TV for me is a nicety, I enjoy it from time to time. I'm already a bit putoff from having both Netflix and Hulu, forgetting which show is on which, two apps, etc. I have a feeling we're heading towards each player making their own ecosystem, apps, monthly charges. If/when that happens, I'll either not watch TV at all, or use the 'free' options widely available. I want to give them money, but not if it makes my life more of a hassle.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  >forgetting which show is on which On my Android TV device (Mi Box $60 at WalMart) if I search a show it aggregates results from all my apps so it doesn't even matter which app it's on I just click from the results and it opens what I want. Disclaimer: Not affiliated with anything I just mentioned just a happy customer.
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Ohhh...that sounds like a nice feature! I'll research this thank you.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Yeah no problem, I had seen the Android TV box at WalMart and said to myself: if this thing is awesome I'm gifting one to my parents, now they want two more... They've been asking for it to replace cable and they're not extremely tech savvy or anything! It's also a 4K capable device, so it's pretty good, I've had it for almost 2 years now. I otherwise would of had to use a Raspberry Pi with Kodi (and yes, the Android TV can run Kodi, much smoother).
  - henrikschroder 8y ago
    My current and my previous Samsung TVs had this built-in as well. It can search the channel guide in the cable-box, the installed apps, as well as some pay-per-view alternatives. Works pretty damn well, actually.
Karishma1234 8y ago
Well the ATT and other behemoths are set for a massive failure. Their core business has been navigating regulatory mazes while trying to seek near monopoly and push expensive and crappy subscriptions down the throats of old and gullible people. With each passing Year Netflix and Hulu are adding more and more original content which is becoming part of pop-culture. Within 5 years most of the cool things we want to watch would be from Netflix and Hulu and everything else would come from torrents or youtube. Dinosaurs are dying and we should cheer.
- paul7986 8y ago
  Hulu is owned by Fox, Comcast, Warner and Disney.
heroprotagonist 8y ago
Once that torrent download becomes 'Miscellaneous data' charged per gigabyte due to loss of net neutrality, won't that encourage you through their preferred channel? Personally, I'll start reading books more but I imagine 90% of my country won't. They'll go through the service that has a deal with their ISP. The scarier part being that regardless of whether I go through the recommended source or disregard the content altogether, it's an impact on the information and ideas I consume.
macspoofing 8y ago
>I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. No. That's not the correct way to think about this. You are dreaming if you think media and production companies are going to leave $90/mo on the table. You will see prices rise. You will see multiple streaming services. You will see bills in the same ballpark as those of cable/satellite ... because that's about the sweet spot for people willing to spend monthly for media content. >We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. You won't get it. Nobody is going to let anyone control all media distribution. >So I have to pay an addition $7/month to watch a single show? Yeah. Or you can just pass on that single show. >Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to do with $7 like buy dinner. Age of piracy is going to end as well. And by the way, you are free to go and buy dinner and read a book. Nobody needs to watch the latest season of GoT - its not a human right. Talk about entitled!
- DrJaws 8y ago
  some poeple will just go back to p2p and there is nothing they can do.
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    I think you'll find avenues for piracy are going to be limited. Even now piracy isn't quite the same as it used to be.
    - LeoNatan25 8y ago
      Easier than ever to get season packs, rips, remuxes. And that’s downloads. If you want to stream, it’s even easier.
    - freeone3000 8y ago
      You're right, instead of getting a XDCC link from a listserv, you now buy a modded HTPC off Craigslist. It's way easier to pirate things now. People are pirating music. Off youtube. ACCIDENTALLY. To the point where there's an elaborate automated filtering system. It's not even viewed as piracy!
im3w1l 8y ago
Careful what you wish for, because that hub will be censored and the useful idiots will scream that it's not censorship if it's not the government. I'd much rather a very very fragmented space with lots of diverse productions and perspectives.
SllX 8y ago
You have it backwards: a la carte is exactly what people want. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t pay for so many different subscriptions.
lgregg 8y ago
> We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. That is close to existing, it'd be nice if the top players agreed to open their APIs so you could integrate it into a unified TV external like Chromecast or Firestick. Or, to go further, a unified platform that can process subscriptions and PPV across each library. > $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. Amen, we cut the cord officially on Friday. We went to $67 (including modem rental) per month plus about $25 dollars in streaming services and $40 for YT TV per month. That's still $35 dollars cheaper than what we were paying for Comcast TV and once we buy a compatible modem then we'll drop our internet to about $55 per month. We also have renters, so we loop them into YTTV for them to watch to their heart's desire for an extra $5 on their rent per month. > Ghost in the Shell Respect just got done rewatching an episode of the TV show.
- JimmyAustin 8y ago
  The on-demand nexus already works on Apple TV. Say "I want to watch Billions" into the remote and it shows you all the services you can watch it on, then tap through to actually watching it. Now if only it existed on other platforms.
  - lgregg 8y ago
    > Now if only it existed on other platforms. and has everyone's original content.
  - developer2 8y ago
    Can you elaborate? Does Apple TV let you purchase à la carte (on-demand) from any service, or do you still have to buy into a monthly subscription for a service just to watch one movie or TV series from its catalog? The "one hub nexus" we are clamoring for requires either a) preferably, a single monthly fee to access everything; or b) less ideally, assuming reasonable prices, on-demand pay-per-view pricing. A nexus that simplifies signing up for a dozen different streaming service subscriptions from one UI is not good enough. All that does is improve the frontend experience, while doing nothing to resolve the subscription hell that expects consumers to shell out $80+/month across many services to watch maybe 1% of the content.
tootie 8y ago
Rent it. Usually $4 on Amazon or Google or Vudu.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
How noble of you to steal what you didn’t want to pay for to fulfill your urge. Do you try this at the grocery store also when you get frustrated by the prices charged by the people that created the items?
- IntelMiner 8y ago
  Piracy is not the same as theft. Please do not conflate the two
bookbinder 8y ago
People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their existence. I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms. CBS All Access would have been doomed without Star Trek: Discovery. Admittedly, the show isn't particularly good, but I'm a trekkie so it doesn't matter. On the plus side, I discovered The Good Fight (a surprising smart, entertaining and well written show) so I now I have a legitimate reason to give a damn about All Access. And then Apple will offer their own gateway drug (Lord of the Rings?) and Disney (...well they could just offer their back catalogue alone and still be a major player) and so on.
- adjkant 8y ago
  > continue to do so What are the numbers on that? My impression was that cable is declining fast.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  I've paid for 2 months of CBS All Access, once at the end of each season of The Good Fight. That one show only gets me to pay a bit less than $1/month. Comedy Central doesn't have a streaming service, so I have to pay for shows individually on Amazon. That also ends up being a lot cheaper than CBS All Access, and it cuts me off from learning about their other shows. I think all the Comedy Central shows I used to watch have been cancelled, so they won't be getting any of my money going forward unless I somehow learn about their new shows. That's a lot easier to do if my existing services start recommending Comedy Central shows to me.
- MikusR 8y ago
  Lord of the Rings is Amazon
- pwinnski 8y ago
  > People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades)... In the absence of alternatives, it seemed like what entertainment cost. The alternatives for free or cheap are enough that many, many, many people are opting out. > ...and continue to do so. Evidence[0] suggests otherwise. Leaving evidence aside, I think that each service will likely have something to attract some number of subscribers, yes. Amazon is doing LotR, Disney wants a piece, CBS has Star Trek, etc. I don't think it follows that a large number of people are going to subscribe to more than one or two on an ongoing basis. People subscribe to CBS All-Access for one month, perhaps a trial month, and binge all of ST:D, then cancel. They already have a subscription to Amazon Prime for non-TV reasons. Maybe they share subscriptions with friends, or maybe they turn to piracy, or maybe they just shrug and go back to watching Netflix and YouTube, which is enough. Most people never had all the available channels, including premium channels, anyway. Going without a show or two isn't a problem for most people when the marginal cost is so high. [0] https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-cost-cancellation-pay-tv-1202728922/ https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-cos...
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Ironically, when you ask for one big hub, you're asking for a traditional cable subscription: Comcast will give you most of the channels out there (often, throwing HBO in for free), and due to the APIs the major ISPs and channels are on board with, you can either watch them on Comcast's site or the individual channel websites. Oh, and Comcast boxes now integrate your Netflix subscription too. Cable packages when bundled with Internet service are often pretty price-competitive for what they offer. I recently left Comcast, but picked up their competitors' cable package for the same reasons: It's a pretty inclusive streaming package for a good price.
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  >>The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Reminds me of at&t. They made boatloads of money at one time until they didn't. I'm sure they didn't like it when suddenly their main product, long distance calls, became dirt cheap. I still remember paying huge amounts of money in late 1990s to make calls from NYC to Buffalo. The whole thing was such a big racket. I for one will not shed a single tear if these companies go out of business. Some other companies will take their place.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Bear in mind, everyone's talking about how must-see a given TV show is, and how much they loathe "having to" shell out money to see it on X streaming service. Prices go down when demand is low. Demand for TV is not low, ergo, prices are not going to go down. Also, when it does, the first casualty isn't going to be the companies: It's going to be the shows you love. People on HN were thrilled when Amazon saved The Expanse. But if The Expanse doesn't drive X number of new Prime subscribers, it won't be around much longer than that.
rileyphone 8y ago
The fact is the reason anyone pays for content online is because the cost to access it is less than the cost to download and manage it as well as the possible cost of acquiring it is less than the cost of accessing it, which goes down the more content can be accessed. Every monthly subscription has an additional cost of maintaining beyond it's numenary value which quickly bring them above just torrenting the content. Ultimately the content is just constant information, which is pretty cheap on the internet.
petre 8y ago
They will bundle Internet subscriptions with cable plans. UPC already does that.
chrismcb 8y ago
Instead of stealing" it, you could have just rented it. There was a time if you wanted to watch a show you went down and rented it.
NicoJuicy 8y ago
Well, except if your kids want it. Disney is probably in a good position there
SomewhatLikely 8y ago
We have the nexus for music and I assume for books, not sure why video is still a hold out except I believe music and books are more regulated.
Benji_San 8y ago
I would be OK with occasionally paying for other streaming services than Netflix if they actually worked, I.e. better than torrents and preferably on Netflix's level. The other services available in the Nordics are not even close with some "not working at all" and some have shitty/exclusive device support. Subtitle/language options tend to be abysmal and Netflix, which isn't very good on this front, seems to be the winner there too. I'm more or less still waiting for Steam for films and TV series where I could just download the video file with whatever audio/language track I want. Providing a Netflix quality streaming service seems to be ridiculously non-trivial so it would be great if less complex and better working solutions were offered until the streaming platforms are figured out. Until that happens torrents offer a vastly superior way to watch content that is not on Netflix.

skinnymuch 8y ago

Lionsgate Starz isn’t a big company with a lot of products so paying extra to watch things for that channel will be a challenge no matter what. On the other hand, HBO seems to be doing well enough with their not so cheap stand alone offering. Disney with Fox’s media would be a pretty big streaming provider and many people would likely get onto it. Good chance of it becoming a standard streaming service. So I don’t see how that specific merger is a bad idea in a battle against Netflix.

yebyen 8y ago
If you're talking about HBO Go, I don't know how you gauge success, but if it's subscriber numbers I would take that with a grain of salt. I am a Comcast subscriber, and like many Comcast subscribers I'm sure, I have one of their boxes in my house, with the most basic Cable TV package, because if I don't take it my cost goes up (I mean the overall price of the monthly billed amount from Comcast/Xfinity). We get crappy quality SD letterbox channels including some local OTA channels that we can watch Jeopardy on, at lower quality than OTA whenever the antenna isn't doing the job. Oh, and HBO/On-Demand is also included. That includes HBO Go (but not HBO Now.) I don't use either HBO service and I don't know how they are different, at the risk of adding anecdata to an otherwise solid argument... Whether or not any of this works out to be a favorable deal for HBO, I can't say, but I hope this explains why I would say to take their digital subscriber numbers with a grain of salt. (On the other hand, I will actually pay for Showtime standalone when they have put out a new season of Homeland.)
- vincentmarle 8y ago
  HBO Go is what you get when you subscribe to HBO through your cable service, HBO Now is a direct subscription to HBO.
  - yebyen 8y ago
    Thank you. That was clear-as-mud every time I wondered what the difference was before.
- tzs 8y ago
  > I am a Comcast subscriber, and like many Comcast subscribers I'm sure, I have one of their boxes in my house, with the most basic Cable TV package, because if I don't take it my cost goes up (I mean the overall price of the monthly billed amount from Comcast/Xfinity) This seems to vary region to region. Where I am (western Washington, west of Seattle) all the internet-only packages are cheaper than all the internet + TV packages at the same internet speed, as far as I can tell. When comparing the price with and without TV, are your taking into account the fees and equipment charges that go away if you don't have TV? Although here internet only is cheaper than internet + TV, it isn't much cheaper. I've got 400 Mb/s internet, Preferred TV (220+ channels + Starz), and Phone, and dropping down to just 400 Mb/s internet would only knock $20 off the base price. That's a small enough change that it is probably less than I'd end up spending on streaming subscription and rental services to make up for the lost TV. However, dropping TV and phone would also drop $11/month for the DVR service, $8/month for the broadcast TV fee, $6.30/month for the regional sports fee, and $4.60 for the franchise fee (and maybe some sales tax, if any of those fees are taxable). That's another $30/month, so we are talking $50/month less on my total bill. Now I would come out ahead even if I have to subscribe to multiple streaming services for my TV.
  - yebyen 8y ago
    The TV deal is a promotional pricing structure, I have found that you can get them to offer you a new promotional rate if you threaten to send their hardware back and downgrade your service to Internet-only. (Again this may vary from region to region, I am in the midwest/Indiana in case it matters.) These threats are credible when they know you have the crappiest TV service they offer and you probably aren't even using it but 30 minutes a day when Jeopardy comes on, but for some reason the sales reps seem to be pretty heavily incentivized to make sure you have some kind of TV service, even if you don't get any addons bundled with it. (Probably getting a kickback from the government, that's how they get their listening devices into your living room... /s) I've declined as many services as I can otherwise, I don't have DVR service, HD channels (I get about 10 channels, all SD), extra super-premium internet package (mine claims up to 150Mbit, while it is not the lowest they offer, it's also not the highest...) I don't get a paper bill in the mail, or manual payments for billing (all of those things also cost ~$10 extra each); still my cable internet service is good, and it does come with HBO as I mentioned. (I'm pretty sure it's standard def HBO over the wire, and that's another good reason to register for and use the bundled HBO Go service at least once...) I think that $8/mo broadcast TV fee is the only one you mentioned that I can actually identify on my bill. And as I've had it explained to me, I would not be able to qualify for any promotional pricing after my first year of service without that.
scarface74 8y ago
Even without Fox, Disney has the best chance of success even if it e dis up having a smaller library. Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. If you have kids, being able to pay $10-$15 a month for all Disney content is a great deal.
- mmt 8y ago
  > Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. > being able to pay $10-$15 a month That seems like a terrible deal, compared with just paying for that "same thing" once and watching it over and over for free.
  - EastSmith 8y ago
    That "same thing" this month is Finding Nemo, next month is Cars, next month is something else. Also, you can buy it and they watch it half a time and never think about it again. $10-$15 is cheaper.
    - mmt 8y ago
      Thanks (I'm not a parent). In those cases, yes, that pricing would make sense. Of course, it doesn't really matter if they control all the distribution anyway. They can just make "buying" a non-option, which I believe Disney has tried for certain titles already.
  - jasonjayr 8y ago
    ... and children + discs often ends poorly.
    - mmt 8y ago
      I can't imagine buying a disc and not immediately ripping and trans-coding it, though I was assuming buying some cheaper, downloadable content in the first place.
      - 8y ago

rhino369 8y ago

>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.

Spivak 8y ago
Don't really care if it's a single company so long as they operate actually independently of content production and are only a distributor.
woolvalley 8y ago
There seems to be quite a few available for music. Using apple music, spotify, tidal or whatever else doesn't seem to have the exclusivity problems that TV equivalents have. I can probably count the number of exclusive artists to each music provider on my hand.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  They're trying to recreate the cable TV channel package model on the internet, because it's a mechanism for price discrimination. If you make twenty shows and you want to sell subscriptions a la carte, how much do you charge per show? If you charge $10/month per show then you lose the business of everyone who might have paid you anything even slightly less than that. If you charge $.50/month per show to get those customers, you lose $9.50/month from everyone who would have paid $10/month per show. But if you put all twenty shows together in a bundle and sell them collectively for $10/month, you get $10/month from everyone who values the collection of shows at $10/month or more, regardless of the value they place on each individual show. Which can turn out to be more money. But that is less likely to work in a more competitive market. People only have so many hours to watch television. It may be worth $10/month for a package of shows to get the one you really want when that's the only option, but when someone else is offering an equivalently good show a la carte for $10/year and you don't have time to watch both, people will choose the one that saves them $90/year worth of shows they weren't actually interested in. The broader problem is that without a distribution monopoly to use as a chokepoint, content creation is a highly competitive market, and highly competitive markets have low margins. So the incumbents are flailing around trying to find something that looks like the model they're used to, even though that model is now defunct. The model which is likely to out-compete a la carte is the one where content producers make non-exclusive licenses to multiple aggregation companies that sell flat rate plans to their customers. Because $10/month for twenty shows can't out-compete $10/year for the one show you actually want anymore, but $20/month for every show can.

rayiner 8y ago

What you’re proposing would lead to a terrible market structure. It would eliminate the most important differentiating factor: content. Subscribing to multiple streaming services might be somewhat less convenient, but it also allows competition based on producing and distributing quality content.

shmerl 8y ago
Subscribing to many services because each offers some exclusive stuff is inconvenient and taxes the user with the overhead of each service. People want to find more in their favorite stores. If creators would have been independent of distributors, this wouldn't have been a problem to begin with. Each creator would distribute in each store. But all this integration causes exclusivity that only inconveniences the end user. Netflix isn't any better in this sense, since they have tons of exclusives too. Competition on exclusivity is not good in the end and only benefits the distributor. In this sense, the idea above is spot on. How are these fragmented services (with DRM to boot) going to compete with torrents that offer everything without DRM through unified hubs? Film makers need to pull stuff together and fix it.
- scarface74 8y ago
  The whole spiel about DRM is that you don’t truly own the content you buy and the inconvenience of not being able to use the content on the device of your choice. When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. As far as convenience, the major streaming services are all on the web for computers and they all have apps for everything imaginable. Netflix, Hulu, et. al. are much more convenient that piracy. Besides they said the same thing about iTunes back in 2003. I stopped pirating music when the iTunes Misic Store was introduced. I definitely wouldn’t worry about pirating now over paying $15/month for the family Apple Music plan.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    > When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. I personally prefer to avoid DRMed services and buy DRM-free. It's reasonably good with music and games for example, but with films you barely can find anything that way. The reason for renting digital goods is usually presented as an option to get it for lower prices, even though there is no scarcity like with physical goods. That's fine, people might want to rent something and pay less. But why does it mean there should be no option to buy (for higher price)? That is already not right, i.e. forcing renting only approach. That's why I quite dislike DRM attached to renting services as well.

sosborn 8y ago

> Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. The other option is to just not watch it.

rayiner 8y ago
The down voting you’re getting is emblematic of the entitlement mentality among tech folks when it comes to content. There is no right to consume entertainment someone else produced for free. If you don’t like the terms on which they’re selling the fruits of their labor, don’t buy it.
- lovich 8y ago
  If that feeling went both ways I could agree. Companies however, obviously don't like not controlling everything the public has and do things like increase copyright to a length that their own company would have never started(Disney), or try to claim that users no longer own products they buy and can no longer repair things themselves (John Deere). Companies have already taken multiple sustained attacks against consumers rights so why would consumers care about the companies rights?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    “Companies” are not an undifferentiated mass. What does John Deere have to do with Dexter or Game of Thrones? Are people only pirating the work of “bad” companies?
    - lovich 8y ago
      Consumers aren't an undifferentiated mass either. Why are paying customers sitting through 5 minutes of FBI warnings in front of DVDs because some other people pirate? These arguments go both ways but a large portion of this forum seems to only view it from the companies perspective
      - adventured 8y ago

tzs 8y ago

> Just the other day I had the urge to watch ghost in the shell. Not available on any of the major streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu, Prime) but available on stars via prime ... Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to do with $7 like buy dinner Or you could have rented the Blu-ray at Redbox for $2 (or streamed it from Redbox for $5).

YokoZar 8y ago
Or streamed it from Google Play for $2
- lovich 8y ago
  How does any of this change the OP's point about fragmentation of the market? It does nothing to benefit the consumer, the competition is not lowering prices, so why would consumers not go back to piracy when it results in a superior product?
  - consumethreads 8y ago
    because we are not cheap and are ok with paying for a service. How cheap should it be. There will be no service that people will pay for if they pirate content. The service they want is a service where they dont have to pay. If you are pirating you are not a customer. Any business man should not be concerned with trying to gain your market, its not profitable.
    - lovich 8y ago
      Steam, iTunes, and Spotify have almost completely killed off pirating for games and music. It's still possible but people would rather pay for those services because the services actually add a value over the actual data which is post scarcity. TV and the film industry have decided they'll make more money by making a worse product and doing everything they can to prevent users from finding alternatives

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

consumethreads 8y ago

"We want an on-demand nexus." up until a point ... HBO has been all about the entire pipeline from its inception because it feels (and has proven) that its content alone is good enough for it to be purchased a la carte. Netflix and all others see this and say ... theres a business model here. Fastforward 20 years, creating good content is cheaper. There are more film grad students to make the supply cheaper. Add to that the internet which allows you to be your own distributor. Basically its easier to be HBO today than when HBO started and you still get the added profits that HBO gets vs not generating your own content. We want a hub but well take what we can get as long as the content is good. And we will get custom content because we have shown it pays. I guess we dont want the hub enough.

AckSyn 8y ago
Apple has been trying to do the on-demand nexus on their platform for a while, but a lot of services don't want to play ball. Notably Netflix and Hulu. Which doesn't make sense to me since you'd be paying for whatever services anyways, just using the Apple branded app to view it through w/o their shitty interface (Netflix and Hulu interfaces really blow).
hakfoo 8y ago
"We want a hub but well take what we can get as long as the content is good." I'm not sure. Convenience seems to trump content in a lot of markets. If you have a solid baseline level of content, the best experience wins. In that regard, a fragmented market could cause the entire streaming model to-- well perhaps not collapse, but fail to flower fully. Cable says "Yeah, you're spending $80 per month, but there's one consistent UI, one login, one bill." Streaming with one service like pre-fragmentation Netflix, says "You're spending $10 per month, getting a modest content pool, and it's all still pretty easy to use." But how will people respond to "You're spending $50 per month, get a fairly broad selection of content, but it's all scattered across a bunch of services which behave subtly differently and have to be managed independently?" They might well respond by going back to the less-hassle cable option, or just shed services til they get to something that feels manageable-- one or two services, maybe paying for a month of something else to binge its signature show once a year. Netflix and HBO might kick out enough big draws to justify subscribing year-round, but will a low-budget or niche player?

always_good 8y ago

> We want an on-demand nexus. Ah right, the utopia of extreme centralization I keep hearing HNers rave about.

phobosdeimos 8y ago
Technically pirates figured that one out a long time ago.

axaxs 8y ago

Agreed. TV for me is a nicety, I enjoy it from time to time. I'm already a bit putoff from having both Netflix and Hulu, forgetting which show is on which, two apps, etc. I have a feeling we're heading towards each player making their own ecosystem, apps, monthly charges. If/when that happens, I'll either not watch TV at all, or use the 'free' options widely available. I want to give them money, but not if it makes my life more of a hassle.

giancarlostoro 8y ago
>forgetting which show is on which On my Android TV device (Mi Box $60 at WalMart) if I search a show it aggregates results from all my apps so it doesn't even matter which app it's on I just click from the results and it opens what I want. Disclaimer: Not affiliated with anything I just mentioned just a happy customer.
- axaxs 8y ago
  Ohhh...that sounds like a nice feature! I'll research this thank you.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Yeah no problem, I had seen the Android TV box at WalMart and said to myself: if this thing is awesome I'm gifting one to my parents, now they want two more... They've been asking for it to replace cable and they're not extremely tech savvy or anything! It's also a 4K capable device, so it's pretty good, I've had it for almost 2 years now. I otherwise would of had to use a Raspberry Pi with Kodi (and yes, the Android TV can run Kodi, much smoother).
- henrikschroder 8y ago
  My current and my previous Samsung TVs had this built-in as well. It can search the channel guide in the cable-box, the installed apps, as well as some pay-per-view alternatives. Works pretty damn well, actually.

Karishma1234 8y ago

Well the ATT and other behemoths are set for a massive failure. Their core business has been navigating regulatory mazes while trying to seek near monopoly and push expensive and crappy subscriptions down the throats of old and gullible people. With each passing Year Netflix and Hulu are adding more and more original content which is becoming part of pop-culture. Within 5 years most of the cool things we want to watch would be from Netflix and Hulu and everything else would come from torrents or youtube. Dinosaurs are dying and we should cheer.

paul7986 8y ago
Hulu is owned by Fox, Comcast, Warner and Disney.

heroprotagonist 8y ago

Once that torrent download becomes 'Miscellaneous data' charged per gigabyte due to loss of net neutrality, won't that encourage you through their preferred channel? Personally, I'll start reading books more but I imagine 90% of my country won't. They'll go through the service that has a deal with their ISP. The scarier part being that regardless of whether I go through the recommended source or disregard the content altogether, it's an impact on the information and ideas I consume.

macspoofing 8y ago

>I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. No. That's not the correct way to think about this. You are dreaming if you think media and production companies are going to leave $90/mo on the table. You will see prices rise. You will see multiple streaming services. You will see bills in the same ballpark as those of cable/satellite ... because that's about the sweet spot for people willing to spend monthly for media content. >We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. You won't get it. Nobody is going to let anyone control all media distribution. >So I have to pay an addition $7/month to watch a single show? Yeah. Or you can just pass on that single show. >Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. I have better things to do with $7 like buy dinner. Age of piracy is going to end as well. And by the way, you are free to go and buy dinner and read a book. Nobody needs to watch the latest season of GoT - its not a human right. Talk about entitled!

DrJaws 8y ago
some poeple will just go back to p2p and there is nothing they can do.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  I think you'll find avenues for piracy are going to be limited. Even now piracy isn't quite the same as it used to be.
  - LeoNatan25 8y ago
    Easier than ever to get season packs, rips, remuxes. And that’s downloads. If you want to stream, it’s even easier.
  - freeone3000 8y ago
    You're right, instead of getting a XDCC link from a listserv, you now buy a modded HTPC off Craigslist. It's way easier to pirate things now. People are pirating music. Off youtube. ACCIDENTALLY. To the point where there's an elaborate automated filtering system. It's not even viewed as piracy!

im3w1l 8y ago

Careful what you wish for, because that hub will be censored and the useful idiots will scream that it's not censorship if it's not the government. I'd much rather a very very fragmented space with lots of diverse productions and perspectives.

SllX 8y ago

You have it backwards: a la carte is exactly what people want. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t pay for so many different subscriptions.

lgregg 8y ago

> We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. That is close to existing, it'd be nice if the top players agreed to open their APIs so you could integrate it into a unified TV external like Chromecast or Firestick. Or, to go further, a unified platform that can process subscriptions and PPV across each library. > $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. Amen, we cut the cord officially on Friday. We went to $67 (including modem rental) per month plus about $25 dollars in streaming services and $40 for YT TV per month. That's still $35 dollars cheaper than what we were paying for Comcast TV and once we buy a compatible modem then we'll drop our internet to about $55 per month. We also have renters, so we loop them into YTTV for them to watch to their heart's desire for an extra $5 on their rent per month. > Ghost in the Shell Respect just got done rewatching an episode of the TV show.

JimmyAustin 8y ago
The on-demand nexus already works on Apple TV. Say "I want to watch Billions" into the remote and it shows you all the services you can watch it on, then tap through to actually watching it. Now if only it existed on other platforms.
- lgregg 8y ago
  > Now if only it existed on other platforms. and has everyone's original content.
- developer2 8y ago
  Can you elaborate? Does Apple TV let you purchase à la carte (on-demand) from any service, or do you still have to buy into a monthly subscription for a service just to watch one movie or TV series from its catalog? The "one hub nexus" we are clamoring for requires either a) preferably, a single monthly fee to access everything; or b) less ideally, assuming reasonable prices, on-demand pay-per-view pricing. A nexus that simplifies signing up for a dozen different streaming service subscriptions from one UI is not good enough. All that does is improve the frontend experience, while doing nothing to resolve the subscription hell that expects consumers to shell out $80+/month across many services to watch maybe 1% of the content.

tootie 8y ago

Rent it. Usually $4 on Amazon or Google or Vudu.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

How noble of you to steal what you didn’t want to pay for to fulfill your urge. Do you try this at the grocery store also when you get frustrated by the prices charged by the people that created the items?

IntelMiner 8y ago
Piracy is not the same as theft. Please do not conflate the two

bookbinder 8y ago

People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their existence. I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms. CBS All Access would have been doomed without Star Trek: Discovery. Admittedly, the show isn't particularly good, but I'm a trekkie so it doesn't matter. On the plus side, I discovered The Good Fight (a surprising smart, entertaining and well written show) so I now I have a legitimate reason to give a damn about All Access. And then Apple will offer their own gateway drug (Lord of the Rings?) and Disney (...well they could just offer their back catalogue alone and still be a major player) and so on.

adjkant 8y ago
> continue to do so What are the numbers on that? My impression was that cable is declining fast.
daveFNbuck 8y ago
I've paid for 2 months of CBS All Access, once at the end of each season of The Good Fight. That one show only gets me to pay a bit less than $1/month. Comedy Central doesn't have a streaming service, so I have to pay for shows individually on Amazon. That also ends up being a lot cheaper than CBS All Access, and it cuts me off from learning about their other shows. I think all the Comedy Central shows I used to watch have been cancelled, so they won't be getting any of my money going forward unless I somehow learn about their new shows. That's a lot easier to do if my existing services start recommending Comedy Central shows to me.
MikusR 8y ago
Lord of the Rings is Amazon
pwinnski 8y ago
> People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades)... In the absence of alternatives, it seemed like what entertainment cost. The alternatives for free or cheap are enough that many, many, many people are opting out. > ...and continue to do so. Evidence[0] suggests otherwise. Leaving evidence aside, I think that each service will likely have something to attract some number of subscribers, yes. Amazon is doing LotR, Disney wants a piece, CBS has Star Trek, etc. I don't think it follows that a large number of people are going to subscribe to more than one or two on an ongoing basis. People subscribe to CBS All-Access for one month, perhaps a trial month, and binge all of ST:D, then cancel. They already have a subscription to Amazon Prime for non-TV reasons. Maybe they share subscriptions with friends, or maybe they turn to piracy, or maybe they just shrug and go back to watching Netflix and YouTube, which is enough. Most people never had all the available channels, including premium channels, anyway. Going without a show or two isn't a problem for most people when the marginal cost is so high. [0] https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-cost-cancellation-pay-tv-1202728922/ https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-high-cos...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Ironically, when you ask for one big hub, you're asking for a traditional cable subscription: Comcast will give you most of the channels out there (often, throwing HBO in for free), and due to the APIs the major ISPs and channels are on board with, you can either watch them on Comcast's site or the individual channel websites. Oh, and Comcast boxes now integrate your Netflix subscription too. Cable packages when bundled with Internet service are often pretty price-competitive for what they offer. I recently left Comcast, but picked up their competitors' cable package for the same reasons: It's a pretty inclusive streaming package for a good price.

felipemnoa 8y ago
>>The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Reminds me of at&t. They made boatloads of money at one time until they didn't. I'm sure they didn't like it when suddenly their main product, long distance calls, became dirt cheap. I still remember paying huge amounts of money in late 1990s to make calls from NYC to Buffalo. The whole thing was such a big racket. I for one will not shed a single tear if these companies go out of business. Some other companies will take their place.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Bear in mind, everyone's talking about how must-see a given TV show is, and how much they loathe "having to" shell out money to see it on X streaming service. Prices go down when demand is low. Demand for TV is not low, ergo, prices are not going to go down. Also, when it does, the first casualty isn't going to be the companies: It's going to be the shows you love. People on HN were thrilled when Amazon saved The Expanse. But if The Expanse doesn't drive X number of new Prime subscribers, it won't be around much longer than that.

rileyphone 8y ago

The fact is the reason anyone pays for content online is because the cost to access it is less than the cost to download and manage it as well as the possible cost of acquiring it is less than the cost of accessing it, which goes down the more content can be accessed. Every monthly subscription has an additional cost of maintaining beyond it's numenary value which quickly bring them above just torrenting the content. Ultimately the content is just constant information, which is pretty cheap on the internet.

petre 8y ago

They will bundle Internet subscriptions with cable plans. UPC already does that.

chrismcb 8y ago

Instead of stealing" it, you could have just rented it. There was a time if you wanted to watch a show you went down and rented it.

NicoJuicy 8y ago

Well, except if your kids want it. Disney is probably in a good position there

SomewhatLikely 8y ago

We have the nexus for music and I assume for books, not sure why video is still a hold out except I believe music and books are more regulated.

Benji_San 8y ago

I would be OK with occasionally paying for other streaming services than Netflix if they actually worked, I.e. better than torrents and preferably on Netflix's level. The other services available in the Nordics are not even close with some "not working at all" and some have shitty/exclusive device support. Subtitle/language options tend to be abysmal and Netflix, which isn't very good on this front, seems to be the winner there too. I'm more or less still waiting for Steam for films and TV series where I could just download the video file with whatever audio/language track I want. Providing a Netflix quality streaming service seems to be ridiculously non-trivial so it would be great if less complex and better working solutions were offered until the streaming platforms are figured out. Until that happens torrents offer a vastly superior way to watch content that is not on Netflix.