17 ms·

How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess

134 points by zonotope 7y ago

chadash 7y ago
Yes, if you want what you had before, then streaming isn't going to save you money. However, with the current system, I can pay $50/month for cable and then get whatever else I actually want when I want it. I get YouTube TV but only during the football season. I enjoy and pay for Netflix. I rent movies occasionally on Amazon, which I have Prime for, but I'd be paying for that anyway for package deliveries. If I had a kid at the right age, I'd probably shell out for Disney. Overall, I pay a lot less than I would for cable and I get 90% of what I'd use anyway. So I pay a medium amount, but use everything I pay for. Compare this with cable where you pay a lot and use very little of what you pay for.
- asark 7y ago
  I think cell phones, not streaming, replaced cable, as far as monthly bills. Home Internet replaced the home phone bill, cell phones replaced the cable bill. I bet lots of households are north of $200/mo between the two, which is probably close to (somewhat higher than—inflation, after all, plus we may just be spending a little more on this stuff) what phone + cable/satellite used to run for the some sorts of households. A streaming subscription or two's nothing next to those, though tack a couple on top and we are probably paying more, inflation adjusted, for this stuff than we used to. It's cell phones that're really soaking up the dollars, though. We've got about the worst you can get and still have any data (very low data limit) and it's still almost $100 for two lines, and we own both our phones outright so aren't paying the monthly add-on for a phone payment.
  - fwip 7y ago
    I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the internet. Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay ~$55 combined monthly on Ting.
    - asark 7y ago
      > I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the internet. Right, in functionality, but if you think in terms of a kind of slot for bills, I think home Internet fits close into where the phone bill used to (think back when phone bills were kinda high, especially if you wanted caller ID and voicemail and such, once those came around, or long distance) while cell phones tend to be a little higher and fit roughly where cable/satellite used to, as far as proportion of telecom bill goes. > Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay ~$55 combined monthly on Ting. Yeah, probably time for us to shop around again. We're on T-Mobile, which was easily the cheapest option from the big carriers at the time we picked it. We like that we still get (much slower) Internet service if we hit our tiny cap, which we can do by accidentally watching youtube for a few minutes with the wifi off. But maybe we should look at re-sellers. Seems crazy that they could be cheaper than going first-party, but I guess maybe they are, somehow. [EDIT] is that $55 with taxes and fees and such? I remember last time I looked into this, maybe a year ago, what I kept running into was that it looked like I'd save a lot looking at sales' version of the figures, but when it came time to get serious about paying and those things got added in it was no savings, or maybe just single digit $/mo so not really worth a switch.
      - fwip 7y ago
        Looking at my bank account statements, it looks like it was $42 for the last two months, and $52 for the two months before that, so that's after taxes/fees. It varies based on usage, and we're fairly light on data, so you might see higher numbers. (No cap, but if you use more you get billed more.)
  - ramraj07 7y ago
    It can be argued very easily that the combination of home internet and cell phones is 2-3x more valuable to any houseold today than cable + phone was decades ago.
  - maimeowmeow 7y ago
    people have been paying for cell phones for a while though. We used to pay about 30 a line for just a certain amount of talk minutes, but now we have cricket, and its only 20 a line with 5 gb of 4g. Granted with tmobile I had enough discounts for unlimited data for around 30 a line.
- milleramp 7y ago
  YouTube TV will raise rates to 50$/month in May, this imo is overpriced for what they offer. I have been with the service from the beginning, and was happy with it. Unfortunately I now need to find a replacement.
  - pradn 7y ago
    But they seem to offer pretty much all the major cable TV channels yea? Isn't that going to cost $50/month if you go for a traditional cable company? Why would the price of the content decrease? Disclaimer: Googler (not on YT)
  - phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
    I just went through this for my in-laws (their cable bill is pushing $200/mo) and settled on Sling because it seemed to be the only service that offered Motortrend, Golf Channel, and History Channel for any price. Lots of other services had two of those three channels. So they're going from that $200/mo through Charter to a $65 Charter internet-only package, $40 for Sling, and a $40 Roku Express+.
azhenley 7y ago
I rotate through streaming services every few months, catching up on the latest shows then canceling. I much prefer this to traditional cable!
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  This. HBO doesnt have enogh to justify keeping them on all thr time, but once a year ill get it for 2 months to catch up. Then its to another, etc.
- moviuro 7y ago
  Do you lose all content associated with your account each time, though? Like "sub-profiles", already watched shows, language preferences, etc.?
  - iainmerrick 7y ago
    Who cares? Is any of that particularly valuable? Setting up your language prefs again surely only takes a minute or two.
    - moviuro 7y ago
      Not having to skim through already-watched or downvoted shows is a gain of time, which is probably valuable if one takes the time to (un)subscribe regularly.
  - tristanperry 7y ago
    You don't with Netflix - you can just re-subscribe whenever you would like.
  - bluetidepro 7y ago
    You don't with most of them. I do the same as OP. With most of them (Hulu, Prime, and Netflix) you are just "deactivating" it so they don't charge you. All your watchlists, settings, etc. are still saved, so once you resume the service you still have all that setup. It's really not a hassle at all.
Helloworldboy 7y ago
Just torrent everything
Causality1 7y ago
Good thing I still have my massive media archive drives.
- rbritton 7y ago
  I’ve gone a similar route, partly because I want to own the content and partly because of availability. There are 20/30/40-year-old shows and movies that I enjoy, and few of them are on any streaming service. Those that are often have periods of unavailability due to licensing contracts expiring. I’m currently operating on an 8 TB archive, of which I have two copies. One is installed in a desktop computer, and the other is in a single drive Synology. I take the Synology when traveling with our RV.
  - JonathonW 7y ago
    Have you found a good way to streamline bringing content into your archive after purchase? I've tried to start archiving my collection of movies/TV on physical discs, but have never managed to get very far because the whole process of ripping/transcoding Blu-rays is a PITA and takes forever (ignoring the legal issues with Blu-ray and DVD ripping, as well).
    - joshmn 7y ago
      After purchase I usually just download a "backup" of the content.
      - berbec 7y ago
        Sadly, this is generally faster, better quality and easier. Getting the right encoding settings, audio formats, video codecs etc is a surprisingly complicated dance. I've often downloaded a bluray I bought just because I know the release groups will get the job done better than I can.
        Causality1 7y ago
        Same with games, especially if they require some third party crap like Uplay.
gregmac 7y ago
After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service. It's kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content - which is not really competition. I don't care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don't want to watch similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service. What's crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is currently involved in. It's bad enough to not only see what the music industry was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2]. [1] https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-ris... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
- cageface 7y ago
  One big difference between the film and music industries is that film content is much much more expensive to produce. So I don't think we're going to see a comprehensive $10/month service any time soon. Even as cheap as music is to produce now it doesn't seem possible to make a profit with prices that low.
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    There is only so much content one can watch so it makes the point a bit moot. This is about greed. This is about wanting to squeeze every last penny. There is no reason for regional or even non-standard inter-company licensing apart from trying to squeeze the market dry.
  - mojuba 7y ago
    It is true that films are more expensive to produce, however: (a) there are fewer films produced every year than music albums, and therefore the revenue can be shared among fewer producers, (b) most expensive films are released to theatres first and many reach break-even during this period, and (c) a comprehensive film streaming service can easily be more expensive than a music one, say $20/mo or more.
GalacticDomin8r 7y ago
NPR also recently had a story with this conclusion. It doesn't seem all that pricey or complicated to me. Perhaps I'm missing some of the big picture, but it sure seems odd this angle has been hitting main stream media in a reinforcing manner.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  I want to re-watch Futurama. Can you tell me where it’s available to stream? It was on Netflix for a few months, now it’s a Hulu exclusive (IIRC). For how long? No one knows. How many services do I need to subscribe to to get most of the content I need/want? 3? 5? More? How much will it cost? Oh, and you’re lucky if you’re in the US. If you’re outside the US, finding whete content is available becomes a never-ending exercise in frustration due to territorial limitations (which for some reason still apply to globally available and accessible internet services).
  - krageon 7y ago
    Finding where content is available outside the US isn't a super hard exercise, it's just frustrating. The answer at least half the time is "you can't".
    - robochat42 7y ago
      I use this site. It isn't always accurate but it gives me a starting point: www.justwatch.com
    - tristanperry 7y ago
      Yep, and that's the sad thing. As a Brit, it used to be a simple flow: check Netflix, almost certainly on there, watch. Now it's usually not on there, and checking JustWatch shows that it's unavailable in the UK (without paying to buy or 'lease' the content, usually for a similar price to the streaming service's monthly rate). You can see why torrenting is on the rise again: a Netflix subscription just doesn't cut it anymore, and Hulu isn't available in the UK without a VPN.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
s17n 7y ago
The dream of cheap streaming television will always stupid. Given that there's zero marginal cost to distributing content, "unbundling" doesn't ultimately reduce providers' costs at all (of course it's not quite this simple, you have several players involved in providing content - studios, cable operators, aggregators like netflix, etc - but in the long run these details don't matter). So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease? On average they should remain the same. Maybe everybody expected to be on the lucky side of average? Or maybe people just hadn't thought this through at all.
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  > So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease? This was the part of the story I never understood. There seemed to be some sort of implied "and then VCs will subsidise things until everyone permanently accepts lower profit margins in order to lower costs". Which just didn't seem like a terribly plausible sequence of events. It kinda reminds me of how everyone thought e-books of the latest Harry Potter should cost $1 (compared to a more expensive print book) and, surprise, it didn't work out that way either.
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    Turns out that physical books and DVDs were a minuscule part of what made books and movies expensive. Who knew?* * Lots of people knew this.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      And a lot of people didn't. It's hard to internalize how cheap matter is at scale. For a long time I really did think most of a book's cost is in printing. I still catch myself assuming a random product is expensive because of its manufacturing; it's a hard habit to kick.
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    Well, i would have assumed that part of the price was mo opolistic behaviors by cable.
intended 7y ago
I suspect that This will inevitably lead to more legal battles and a violence in copy right enforcement not seen before.
ajmurmann 7y ago
The golden age to be really was around 2009 when I was able to buy pretty much every show I wanted for download on Amazon or iTunes and pay for just that. Now with Netflix and Amazon prime etc. we just traded one form of bundling for another. The only advantage is that I can rotate between some streaming services (e.g last month Netflix, now HBO bc GoT, then Showtime for Billions..)
- hsod 7y ago
  Isn't this still true? What shows can you not buy on Amazon or iTunes?
  - jakobegger 7y ago
    Availability of content on Amazon and iTunes is very country specific. In my country, there are no TV shows available at all, and the movie selection isn't stellar either. Half the stuff I want to watch just isn't available for purchase at all. And availability keeps changing! You want to buy a movie that was available last week, and it's gone! It's so frustrating...
    - hef19898 7y ago
      The last thing is want pisses me of the most, also the reason I don't maintain whatch lists anymore.
  - doktrin 7y ago
    In the US, very little if anything. Overseas, it depends greatly. I tried to use Amazon Prime in Norway, and it's a mess. The user can see all the titles, but can only play a fraction of them. I even got shafted after purchasing a movie because it wasn't available to stream to my location (this was on console so bypassing with a vpn wasn't a 1-click thing like on PC, that is if amazon hasn't blacklisted most major vpn providers to begin with) tl;dr - doesn't work that well, depending on where you live. I've become reacquainted with torrent sites these last few years.
  - Mindwipe 7y ago
jeff_fenz 7y ago
Some companies would probably have more customers by merging with others. Like how HBO, Starz and others can be found on HULU. Although they didn't reduce their pricing through when doing that
jdofaz 7y ago
What we have now is the À la carte I always wanted that old media said we couldn’t have. I still pay less than I ever did with cable, I don’t have to subsidize ESPN or Fox News and I don’t have to waste time watching or fast forwarding through ads. I think what we have now is fantastic.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  But isn't this the opposite of À la carte? You have 2-3 massive "cartes" with content and all you can do is eat everyting on one menu. Or switch between them. If you like showA and a family member likes showB it's now not a fight over the remote, it's a fight over which month to subscribe to which service. Also since HBO/Netflix et.al don't carry regular live TV, most of us still keep their regular TV subscriptions for news/sports etc., making it not a replacement for TV but an expensive luxury extra.
moviuro 7y ago
Unpaywalled/GDPR-friendly: https://archive.is/2S7ib https://archive.is/2S7ib
Sander_Marechal 7y ago
There's a perfectly acceptable solution to all of this that has been used many times in the past: Compulsory licensing. The same thing that happens with music broadcast on the radio for example.
fcantournet 7y ago
Global Public Licence. Paid by everyone, according to their abilities, available to everyone. Revenue is split according to views. "Streaming" platforms just do that : streaming, and compete.
magwa101 7y ago
Like music, the internet supplied the dream of ridding us of the expensive middle man, instead, it was the dawn of the middle man. In time, software gets easier, and I'm still optimistic that the middle man will disappear and we will get very large, cheap distributed systems, with payments, that will allow peer to peer. Mix in UBI and the future will be bright, I mean, except for a couple of revolutions along the way.
- eof 7y ago
  I used to feel that way. I’ve also expected much broader democratization of production from 3D printing. It’s possible software is just not there yet, but I think network effects and de facto cartels are an equal or greater force against the natural progress of technology. At this point I am pretty convinced it’s going to take a union or pact amongst ai devs, or a revolution, to prevent a couple players from basically “winning capitalism”, and rent seeking off infinite labor supply for eternity.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Well, I think the internet can remove all middle men except one. The one that remains is de facto a monopoly. So prices go down as long there is competition and more then on middle man. The less middle men there are the higher the prices. And then there is no way back neither, so the remaining middle man is running a global experiment on price elasticity until growth declines. Maybe 3D printing will be different due the physical aspects of it.
tristanperry 7y ago
> Disney’s service will cost just over half the monthly price of the most popular Netflix plan... The goal is to achieve revenue through reach, not overcharging. That sounds exactly like what Netflix promised originally: cheap subscriptions, growing revenue through reach not higher prices. Y'know, like when they offered a $11.99/month subscription in 2017... which now costs $15.99/month - a 33% rise in 1.5 years, whilst reducing the amount of content available.
- nickjj 7y ago
  > whilst reducing the amount of content available. This is the part that bothers me the most. I've been a subscriber to Netflix since 2008 and I'm getting pretty close to cancelling the streaming service. I subscribe to the "standard" plan which is about to go up to $12.99 next month (from $10.99). Realistically the +$2/month isn't going to break me but it's the lack of content that will. Almost every time I want to go watch something on Netflix, it's like "oh yeah, I remember watching Contact a few years ago on instant watch, let's do it up!... Oh wait, it's been removed". Then I'll think about 5 other movies I want to watch which I know I've watched in the past and they are gone too. Before you know it, I've spent 15 minutes trying to find something to watch where I end up just turning it off and doing something else. It feels like you have to watch what Netflix is adding / removing every month instead of being able to select what you want to watch. To make matters worse I have an older smart DVD player and the Netflix UI doesn't show titles that are going to be removed if you have them added to your watch list (it only shows either or, and the watch list text always wins), which makes it a huge pain to tell if a title is about to expire since I have to use a third party website which breaks me from the watching / browsing experience. I'll probably cancel in a few months and just stick with the 1 DVD out at a time plan which has nearly every movie. Sure the DVD plan is horrible for watching shows because of how long it would take to finish them due to shipping logistics but I watch more movies than shows.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    True that! I remember that a couple of years ago Amazon and Netflix had a great overlap in the center, Netflix added at the show end of the spectrum while Amazon did the same with movies. Then it drifted away but you still could get most content by just the two with the monthly subscriptions. And now some content isn't there at all, some is buy-only and some is rental. Factor in that everything Disney will be gone soon that sucks. Streaming got me away from "alternative" sources, if they continue like that might just return Disclaimer: That counts for Germany
alexhutcheson 7y ago
Much shorter version: - Good content costs a lot of money to produce. - That money has to come from somewhere. - That money has to come either directly from viewers or from advertisers (or some combination).
judge2020 7y ago
There needs to be a "Movies Anywhere" for streaming.
dbg31415 7y ago
Can't open the site because it blocks users with ad blockers. Online newspapers have trained me over the last 20 years to need an ad blocker, without one they will serve up horrible experiences. * The Cost of Mobile Ads on 50 News Websites - The New York Times || https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-of-mobile-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost... What's frustrating about all this, and I suspect it's somewhat relevant, is that I really just want to pay a flat fee to get all the content and never see another ad. And because Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon, etc. can't agree... I'm left to go back to Rarbg -- who gives me easy access to content, for free, without making a fuss if I use an ad blocker or VPN. Remember that video about Jeff Bezos talking about customer experience, and how it was paramount? Right, so I need modern Jeff Bezos to be like, "Hey, all the streaming services need to get their act together... what we're doing now is really shitty customer experience and we're making it easier for people to pirate than to simply pay for our services." What's fucked up, I pay for Netflix, Amazon, and CBS... and still I'd rather torrent it so I can stream it from my Plex because I have no idea when Amazon will make changes to their content library, or Netflix will decide that I don't deserve true HD experience due to their bandwidth issues. So... back to good ol', never-let-you-down, BitTorrent... all because these content sellers can't get their heads into modernity. Anyway the whole thing is fucked.
alkonaut 7y ago
I wish Netflix/HBO would start to tier their subscriptions. E.g. I just watch the odd documentary and none of the new big series on Netflix/HBO and it feels like I'm paying a lot of my subscription money into Game of Thrones...
- swarnie_ 7y ago
  Isn't this one of the exact problems we're moving to streaming and away from cable to escape?
- rhino369 7y ago
  20-30 million US subscribers watch Game of Thrones and maybe 2 million will watch the most popular docs. I suspect the GoT viewers are subsidizing your docs, not the other way around.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    I suppose. I was assuming these old docs cost nearly nothing for them to stream.
edgarvaldes 7y ago
There is a view that has been expressed several times in HN when this topic is touched: "Netflix has enough current or future material (Netflix Originals) so that I can see it for the rest of my life, I do not really care if the quality is 10/10, I only use it as a form of light entertainment." However, for other people, like me, the quality of art is essential, and we do want to see the best that has been produced this year and the past 100 years. Where is this material? How can I consume good European cinema from the 50s and 60s? Where can I consume the best Latin American cinema from the 80s? etc.
- mitjak 7y ago
  it's def an unserved niche. Rn the answer is basically, niche streaming services (Criterion, OutTV, Shudder, HBO etc), torrents, and DailyMotion+Youtube
- dre85 7y ago
  Maybe people don't want to watch exclusively Netflix's originals. I personally wish there was a UI feature to just hide all of Netflix's own crap and show me what else they have. Of course that feature will never exist.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Weird, to me, that you judge the quality only on the financier. Do you do this the other way -- is their a company that you'll always watch? If you don't mind, do you generally go with labels rather than attempting to judge goods/services on their innate qualities? Seems like one could download a list of all Netflix content somehow and filter out their self-financed stuff? Would be a bit clunky.
- chewz 7y ago
  There is definitely a place for streaming service with classic and contemporary European cinema. Russian, Czech, Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish etc.
- sithadmin 7y ago
  >However, for other people, like me, the quality of art is essential, and we do want to see the best that has been produced this year and the past 100 years. Where is this material? How can I consume good European cinema from the 50s and 60s? Where can I consume the best Latin American cinema from the 80s? etc. Mubi is the best service I've seen for this, but their catalog is generally quite limited at any given time, as it consists of a constantly rotating collection of films.
dre85 7y ago
I think the dream was that Netflix would actually become the one-stop-shop for absolutely everything old and new. That you could watch the latest GoT as well as get your fix of all of the old Schwarzenegger movies for 10 bucks a month. Obviously that never worked out. For me it's clear that in the near future every production house will have its own streaming service and they will essentially become stream-channels once an aggregator comes in and gives you a package deal. You'll save 10% if you bundle up 10 different streaming services, etc. I'm sure the next step after that will be to re-introduce commercials? Why not profit even more by having people pay monthly and serve them ads at the same time? At that point the cycle will restart as a new wave of piracy will begin because obviously people don't want to pay a fortune to watch ads and have access to a bunch of crap they never watch.
bluetidepro 7y ago
I feel like too many people don't value how easy it is to signup and cancel these services. As others have mentioned in the comments, I usually rotate my subscriptions quite a bit throughout the year depending what shows are coming out, and that context is huge. Hulu, SlingTV, PS Vue, Netflix, Prime, etc. all make it SUPER easy and hassle free to deactivate/resume all the services on any whim. You can do it all in their interface in minutes. That's such an underrated feature that many forget about. Trying to cancel and resume cable with companies like Comcast is nothing short of a nightmare. They have 0 respect for the user's time, and they always try to hit you with sketchy hidden fees and dark pattern UX's. I'm personally very happy with this new system of being able to rotate, and juggle services where it makes sense and get the content I want, wherever it is offered. I don't mind putting that burden on myself to manage because it's easy with all the services, and at the end of the day, having no commercials and that freedom to choose is all I every wanted. Not to mention, it's still all cheaper than traditional cable.
ecolonsmak 7y ago
I'd like access to every platform, service and channel then only be billed for the amount I watch.
johnwalkr 7y ago
I signed up for Disney Theatre in Japan the other day to catch up on some Marvel movies before seeing the new Avengers movie. I’ve seen a few comments about how it’s easy to create and cancel accounts for these services. In this case it was extremely complicated and I almost gave up. Step 1: download the Disney theatre app on my Apple TV. Step 2: After it opens, use the resulting QR code to open the registration site on my phone and create an account Step 3: Link the account to another account for docomo (one of the main cell phone providers and the only way to pay) Step 4: Make a docomo account since I don’t have one Step 5: add payment to the new docomo account Step 6: login to my new Disney account when prompted Step 7: Download the Marvel, Disney and Disney Theatre apps when prompted Step 8: Open the Marvel app on my phone and login with my new Disney account Step 9: Find the movie I want to watch. Oops, it’s not there, find another one. Click on it and it opens the Disney theatre app on my phone, which I have to login to. Here I realize that the Marvel app is for extra content. Step 10: Realize that the app on my Apple TV is not authenticated yet, go back to the authentication site, which allows the app to work Step 11: Find and watch a movie They truly messed up the experience here. First, content here is even more fragmented in Japan and often bundled to mobile provider plans. This was a failure for consumers until Netflix gained enough content to blow the other streaming services out of the water. I suspect the docomo deal was made years ago when it was the norm and someone convinced Disney it was expected. I doubt the equivalent (eg link to your T-mobile account) will be required for payment in the US version. Second, downloading and signing in to multiple apps is a hassle. The extra apps have content such as interviews with actors and... themed cupcake recipes. It feels very corporate and I wouldn’t predict that the potential extra added value will surpass extra confusion. All of that being said, I could probably tolerate HBO and Disney as unique subscriptions, plus Netflix, Amazon and specific sports leagues. Any more fragmentation than 4-5 services and I’m more likely to unsubscribe from all of them.

134 points by zonotope 7y ago

Yes, if you want what you had before, then streaming isn't going to save you money. However, with the current system, I can pay $50/month for cable and then get whatever else I actually want when I want it. I get YouTube TV but only during the football season. I enjoy and pay for Netflix. I rent movies occasionally on Amazon, which I have Prime for, but I'd be paying for that anyway for package deliveries. If I had a kid at the right age, I'd probably shell out for Disney. Overall, I pay a lot less than I would for cable and I get 90% of what I'd use anyway. So I pay a medium amount, but use everything I pay for. Compare this with cable where you pay a lot and use very little of what you pay for.

asark 7y ago
I think cell phones, not streaming, replaced cable, as far as monthly bills. Home Internet replaced the home phone bill, cell phones replaced the cable bill. I bet lots of households are north of $200/mo between the two, which is probably close to (somewhat higher than—inflation, after all, plus we may just be spending a little more on this stuff) what phone + cable/satellite used to run for the some sorts of households. A streaming subscription or two's nothing next to those, though tack a couple on top and we are probably paying more, inflation adjusted, for this stuff than we used to. It's cell phones that're really soaking up the dollars, though. We've got about the worst you can get and still have any data (very low data limit) and it's still almost $100 for two lines, and we own both our phones outright so aren't paying the monthly add-on for a phone payment.
- fwip 7y ago
  I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the internet. Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay ~$55 combined monthly on Ting.
  - asark 7y ago
    > I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the internet. Right, in functionality, but if you think in terms of a kind of slot for bills, I think home Internet fits close into where the phone bill used to (think back when phone bills were kinda high, especially if you wanted caller ID and voicemail and such, once those came around, or long distance) while cell phones tend to be a little higher and fit roughly where cable/satellite used to, as far as proportion of telecom bill goes. > Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay ~$55 combined monthly on Ting. Yeah, probably time for us to shop around again. We're on T-Mobile, which was easily the cheapest option from the big carriers at the time we picked it. We like that we still get (much slower) Internet service if we hit our tiny cap, which we can do by accidentally watching youtube for a few minutes with the wifi off. But maybe we should look at re-sellers. Seems crazy that they could be cheaper than going first-party, but I guess maybe they are, somehow. [EDIT] is that $55 with taxes and fees and such? I remember last time I looked into this, maybe a year ago, what I kept running into was that it looked like I'd save a lot looking at sales' version of the figures, but when it came time to get serious about paying and those things got added in it was no savings, or maybe just single digit $/mo so not really worth a switch.
    - fwip 7y ago
      Looking at my bank account statements, it looks like it was $42 for the last two months, and $52 for the two months before that, so that's after taxes/fees. It varies based on usage, and we're fairly light on data, so you might see higher numbers. (No cap, but if you use more you get billed more.)
- ramraj07 7y ago
  It can be argued very easily that the combination of home internet and cell phones is 2-3x more valuable to any houseold today than cable + phone was decades ago.
- maimeowmeow 7y ago
  people have been paying for cell phones for a while though. We used to pay about 30 a line for just a certain amount of talk minutes, but now we have cricket, and its only 20 a line with 5 gb of 4g. Granted with tmobile I had enough discounts for unlimited data for around 30 a line.
milleramp 7y ago
YouTube TV will raise rates to 50$/month in May, this imo is overpriced for what they offer. I have been with the service from the beginning, and was happy with it. Unfortunately I now need to find a replacement.
- pradn 7y ago
  But they seem to offer pretty much all the major cable TV channels yea? Isn't that going to cost $50/month if you go for a traditional cable company? Why would the price of the content decrease? Disclaimer: Googler (not on YT)
- phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
  I just went through this for my in-laws (their cable bill is pushing $200/mo) and settled on Sling because it seemed to be the only service that offered Motortrend, Golf Channel, and History Channel for any price. Lots of other services had two of those three channels. So they're going from that $200/mo through Charter to a $65 Charter internet-only package, $40 for Sling, and a $40 Roku Express+.

azhenley 7y ago

I rotate through streaming services every few months, catching up on the latest shows then canceling. I much prefer this to traditional cable!

SubiculumCode 7y ago
This. HBO doesnt have enogh to justify keeping them on all thr time, but once a year ill get it for 2 months to catch up. Then its to another, etc.
moviuro 7y ago
Do you lose all content associated with your account each time, though? Like "sub-profiles", already watched shows, language preferences, etc.?
- iainmerrick 7y ago
  Who cares? Is any of that particularly valuable? Setting up your language prefs again surely only takes a minute or two.
  - moviuro 7y ago
    Not having to skim through already-watched or downvoted shows is a gain of time, which is probably valuable if one takes the time to (un)subscribe regularly.
- tristanperry 7y ago
  You don't with Netflix - you can just re-subscribe whenever you would like.
- bluetidepro 7y ago
  You don't with most of them. I do the same as OP. With most of them (Hulu, Prime, and Netflix) you are just "deactivating" it so they don't charge you. All your watchlists, settings, etc. are still saved, so once you resume the service you still have all that setup. It's really not a hassle at all.

Helloworldboy 7y ago

Just torrent everything

Causality1 7y ago

Good thing I still have my massive media archive drives.

rbritton 7y ago
I’ve gone a similar route, partly because I want to own the content and partly because of availability. There are 20/30/40-year-old shows and movies that I enjoy, and few of them are on any streaming service. Those that are often have periods of unavailability due to licensing contracts expiring. I’m currently operating on an 8 TB archive, of which I have two copies. One is installed in a desktop computer, and the other is in a single drive Synology. I take the Synology when traveling with our RV.
- JonathonW 7y ago
  Have you found a good way to streamline bringing content into your archive after purchase? I've tried to start archiving my collection of movies/TV on physical discs, but have never managed to get very far because the whole process of ripping/transcoding Blu-rays is a PITA and takes forever (ignoring the legal issues with Blu-ray and DVD ripping, as well).
  - joshmn 7y ago
    After purchase I usually just download a "backup" of the content.
    - berbec 7y ago
      Sadly, this is generally faster, better quality and easier. Getting the right encoding settings, audio formats, video codecs etc is a surprisingly complicated dance. I've often downloaded a bluray I bought just because I know the release groups will get the job done better than I can.
      - Causality1 7y ago
        Same with games, especially if they require some third party crap like Uplay.

gregmac 7y ago

After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service. It's kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content - which is not really competition. I don't care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don't want to watch similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service. What's crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is currently involved in. It's bad enough to not only see what the music industry was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2]. [1] https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-ris... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....

cageface 7y ago
One big difference between the film and music industries is that film content is much much more expensive to produce. So I don't think we're going to see a comprehensive $10/month service any time soon. Even as cheap as music is to produce now it doesn't seem possible to make a profit with prices that low.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  There is only so much content one can watch so it makes the point a bit moot. This is about greed. This is about wanting to squeeze every last penny. There is no reason for regional or even non-standard inter-company licensing apart from trying to squeeze the market dry.
- mojuba 7y ago
  It is true that films are more expensive to produce, however: (a) there are fewer films produced every year than music albums, and therefore the revenue can be shared among fewer producers, (b) most expensive films are released to theatres first and many reach break-even during this period, and (c) a comprehensive film streaming service can easily be more expensive than a music one, say $20/mo or more.

GalacticDomin8r 7y ago

NPR also recently had a story with this conclusion. It doesn't seem all that pricey or complicated to me. Perhaps I'm missing some of the big picture, but it sure seems odd this angle has been hitting main stream media in a reinforcing manner.

dmitriid 7y ago
I want to re-watch Futurama. Can you tell me where it’s available to stream? It was on Netflix for a few months, now it’s a Hulu exclusive (IIRC). For how long? No one knows. How many services do I need to subscribe to to get most of the content I need/want? 3? 5? More? How much will it cost? Oh, and you’re lucky if you’re in the US. If you’re outside the US, finding whete content is available becomes a never-ending exercise in frustration due to territorial limitations (which for some reason still apply to globally available and accessible internet services).
- krageon 7y ago
  Finding where content is available outside the US isn't a super hard exercise, it's just frustrating. The answer at least half the time is "you can't".
  - robochat42 7y ago
    I use this site. It isn't always accurate but it gives me a starting point: www.justwatch.com
  - tristanperry 7y ago
    Yep, and that's the sad thing. As a Brit, it used to be a simple flow: check Netflix, almost certainly on there, watch. Now it's usually not on there, and checking JustWatch shows that it's unavailable in the UK (without paying to buy or 'lease' the content, usually for a similar price to the streaming service's monthly rate). You can see why torrenting is on the rise again: a Netflix subscription just doesn't cut it anymore, and Hulu isn't available in the UK without a VPN.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

s17n 7y ago

The dream of cheap streaming television will always stupid. Given that there's zero marginal cost to distributing content, "unbundling" doesn't ultimately reduce providers' costs at all (of course it's not quite this simple, you have several players involved in providing content - studios, cable operators, aggregators like netflix, etc - but in the long run these details don't matter). So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease? On average they should remain the same. Maybe everybody expected to be on the lucky side of average? Or maybe people just hadn't thought this through at all.

freddie_mercury 7y ago
> So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease? This was the part of the story I never understood. There seemed to be some sort of implied "and then VCs will subsidise things until everyone permanently accepts lower profit margins in order to lower costs". Which just didn't seem like a terribly plausible sequence of events. It kinda reminds me of how everyone thought e-books of the latest Harry Potter should cost $1 (compared to a more expensive print book) and, surprise, it didn't work out that way either.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Turns out that physical books and DVDs were a minuscule part of what made books and movies expensive. Who knew?* * Lots of people knew this.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And a lot of people didn't. It's hard to internalize how cheap matter is at scale. For a long time I really did think most of a book's cost is in printing. I still catch myself assuming a random product is expensive because of its manufacturing; it's a hard habit to kick.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  Well, i would have assumed that part of the price was mo opolistic behaviors by cable.

intended 7y ago

I suspect that This will inevitably lead to more legal battles and a violence in copy right enforcement not seen before.

ajmurmann 7y ago

The golden age to be really was around 2009 when I was able to buy pretty much every show I wanted for download on Amazon or iTunes and pay for just that. Now with Netflix and Amazon prime etc. we just traded one form of bundling for another. The only advantage is that I can rotate between some streaming services (e.g last month Netflix, now HBO bc GoT, then Showtime for Billions..)

hsod 7y ago
Isn't this still true? What shows can you not buy on Amazon or iTunes?
- jakobegger 7y ago
  Availability of content on Amazon and iTunes is very country specific. In my country, there are no TV shows available at all, and the movie selection isn't stellar either. Half the stuff I want to watch just isn't available for purchase at all. And availability keeps changing! You want to buy a movie that was available last week, and it's gone! It's so frustrating...
  - hef19898 7y ago
    The last thing is want pisses me of the most, also the reason I don't maintain whatch lists anymore.
- doktrin 7y ago
  In the US, very little if anything. Overseas, it depends greatly. I tried to use Amazon Prime in Norway, and it's a mess. The user can see all the titles, but can only play a fraction of them. I even got shafted after purchasing a movie because it wasn't available to stream to my location (this was on console so bypassing with a vpn wasn't a 1-click thing like on PC, that is if amazon hasn't blacklisted most major vpn providers to begin with) tl;dr - doesn't work that well, depending on where you live. I've become reacquainted with torrent sites these last few years.
- Mindwipe 7y ago

jeff_fenz 7y ago

Some companies would probably have more customers by merging with others. Like how HBO, Starz and others can be found on HULU. Although they didn't reduce their pricing through when doing that

jdofaz 7y ago

What we have now is the À la carte I always wanted that old media said we couldn’t have. I still pay less than I ever did with cable, I don’t have to subsidize ESPN or Fox News and I don’t have to waste time watching or fast forwarding through ads. I think what we have now is fantastic.

alkonaut 7y ago
But isn't this the opposite of À la carte? You have 2-3 massive "cartes" with content and all you can do is eat everyting on one menu. Or switch between them. If you like showA and a family member likes showB it's now not a fight over the remote, it's a fight over which month to subscribe to which service. Also since HBO/Netflix et.al don't carry regular live TV, most of us still keep their regular TV subscriptions for news/sports etc., making it not a replacement for TV but an expensive luxury extra.

moviuro 7y ago

Unpaywalled/GDPR-friendly: https://archive.is/2S7ib https://archive.is/2S7ib

Sander_Marechal 7y ago

There's a perfectly acceptable solution to all of this that has been used many times in the past: Compulsory licensing. The same thing that happens with music broadcast on the radio for example.

fcantournet 7y ago

Global Public Licence. Paid by everyone, according to their abilities, available to everyone. Revenue is split according to views. "Streaming" platforms just do that : streaming, and compete.

magwa101 7y ago

Like music, the internet supplied the dream of ridding us of the expensive middle man, instead, it was the dawn of the middle man. In time, software gets easier, and I'm still optimistic that the middle man will disappear and we will get very large, cheap distributed systems, with payments, that will allow peer to peer. Mix in UBI and the future will be bright, I mean, except for a couple of revolutions along the way.

eof 7y ago
I used to feel that way. I’ve also expected much broader democratization of production from 3D printing. It’s possible software is just not there yet, but I think network effects and de facto cartels are an equal or greater force against the natural progress of technology. At this point I am pretty convinced it’s going to take a union or pact amongst ai devs, or a revolution, to prevent a couple players from basically “winning capitalism”, and rent seeking off infinite labor supply for eternity.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Well, I think the internet can remove all middle men except one. The one that remains is de facto a monopoly. So prices go down as long there is competition and more then on middle man. The less middle men there are the higher the prices. And then there is no way back neither, so the remaining middle man is running a global experiment on price elasticity until growth declines. Maybe 3D printing will be different due the physical aspects of it.

tristanperry 7y ago

> Disney’s service will cost just over half the monthly price of the most popular Netflix plan... The goal is to achieve revenue through reach, not overcharging. That sounds exactly like what Netflix promised originally: cheap subscriptions, growing revenue through reach not higher prices. Y'know, like when they offered a $11.99/month subscription in 2017... which now costs $15.99/month - a 33% rise in 1.5 years, whilst reducing the amount of content available.

nickjj 7y ago
> whilst reducing the amount of content available. This is the part that bothers me the most. I've been a subscriber to Netflix since 2008 and I'm getting pretty close to cancelling the streaming service. I subscribe to the "standard" plan which is about to go up to $12.99 next month (from $10.99). Realistically the +$2/month isn't going to break me but it's the lack of content that will. Almost every time I want to go watch something on Netflix, it's like "oh yeah, I remember watching Contact a few years ago on instant watch, let's do it up!... Oh wait, it's been removed". Then I'll think about 5 other movies I want to watch which I know I've watched in the past and they are gone too. Before you know it, I've spent 15 minutes trying to find something to watch where I end up just turning it off and doing something else. It feels like you have to watch what Netflix is adding / removing every month instead of being able to select what you want to watch. To make matters worse I have an older smart DVD player and the Netflix UI doesn't show titles that are going to be removed if you have them added to your watch list (it only shows either or, and the watch list text always wins), which makes it a huge pain to tell if a title is about to expire since I have to use a third party website which breaks me from the watching / browsing experience. I'll probably cancel in a few months and just stick with the 1 DVD out at a time plan which has nearly every movie. Sure the DVD plan is horrible for watching shows because of how long it would take to finish them due to shipping logistics but I watch more movies than shows.
- hef19898 7y ago
  True that! I remember that a couple of years ago Amazon and Netflix had a great overlap in the center, Netflix added at the show end of the spectrum while Amazon did the same with movies. Then it drifted away but you still could get most content by just the two with the monthly subscriptions. And now some content isn't there at all, some is buy-only and some is rental. Factor in that everything Disney will be gone soon that sucks. Streaming got me away from "alternative" sources, if they continue like that might just return Disclaimer: That counts for Germany

alexhutcheson 7y ago

Much shorter version: - Good content costs a lot of money to produce. - That money has to come from somewhere. - That money has to come either directly from viewers or from advertisers (or some combination).

judge2020 7y ago

There needs to be a "Movies Anywhere" for streaming.

dbg31415 7y ago

Can't open the site because it blocks users with ad blockers. Online newspapers have trained me over the last 20 years to need an ad blocker, without one they will serve up horrible experiences. * The Cost of Mobile Ads on 50 News Websites - The New York Times || https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-of-mobile-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost... What's frustrating about all this, and I suspect it's somewhat relevant, is that I really just want to pay a flat fee to get all the content and never see another ad. And because Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon, etc. can't agree... I'm left to go back to Rarbg -- who gives me easy access to content, for free, without making a fuss if I use an ad blocker or VPN. Remember that video about Jeff Bezos talking about customer experience, and how it was paramount? Right, so I need modern Jeff Bezos to be like, "Hey, all the streaming services need to get their act together... what we're doing now is really shitty customer experience and we're making it easier for people to pirate than to simply pay for our services." What's fucked up, I pay for Netflix, Amazon, and CBS... and still I'd rather torrent it so I can stream it from my Plex because I have no idea when Amazon will make changes to their content library, or Netflix will decide that I don't deserve true HD experience due to their bandwidth issues. So... back to good ol', never-let-you-down, BitTorrent... all because these content sellers can't get their heads into modernity. Anyway the whole thing is fucked.

alkonaut 7y ago

I wish Netflix/HBO would start to tier their subscriptions. E.g. I just watch the odd documentary and none of the new big series on Netflix/HBO and it feels like I'm paying a lot of my subscription money into Game of Thrones...

swarnie_ 7y ago
Isn't this one of the exact problems we're moving to streaming and away from cable to escape?
rhino369 7y ago
20-30 million US subscribers watch Game of Thrones and maybe 2 million will watch the most popular docs. I suspect the GoT viewers are subsidizing your docs, not the other way around.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I suppose. I was assuming these old docs cost nearly nothing for them to stream.

edgarvaldes 7y ago

There is a view that has been expressed several times in HN when this topic is touched: "Netflix has enough current or future material (Netflix Originals) so that I can see it for the rest of my life, I do not really care if the quality is 10/10, I only use it as a form of light entertainment." However, for other people, like me, the quality of art is essential, and we do want to see the best that has been produced this year and the past 100 years. Where is this material? How can I consume good European cinema from the 50s and 60s? Where can I consume the best Latin American cinema from the 80s? etc.

mitjak 7y ago
it's def an unserved niche. Rn the answer is basically, niche streaming services (Criterion, OutTV, Shudder, HBO etc), torrents, and DailyMotion+Youtube
dre85 7y ago
Maybe people don't want to watch exclusively Netflix's originals. I personally wish there was a UI feature to just hide all of Netflix's own crap and show me what else they have. Of course that feature will never exist.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Weird, to me, that you judge the quality only on the financier. Do you do this the other way -- is their a company that you'll always watch? If you don't mind, do you generally go with labels rather than attempting to judge goods/services on their innate qualities? Seems like one could download a list of all Netflix content somehow and filter out their self-financed stuff? Would be a bit clunky.
chewz 7y ago
There is definitely a place for streaming service with classic and contemporary European cinema. Russian, Czech, Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish etc.
sithadmin 7y ago
>However, for other people, like me, the quality of art is essential, and we do want to see the best that has been produced this year and the past 100 years. Where is this material? How can I consume good European cinema from the 50s and 60s? Where can I consume the best Latin American cinema from the 80s? etc. Mubi is the best service I've seen for this, but their catalog is generally quite limited at any given time, as it consists of a constantly rotating collection of films.

dre85 7y ago

I think the dream was that Netflix would actually become the one-stop-shop for absolutely everything old and new. That you could watch the latest GoT as well as get your fix of all of the old Schwarzenegger movies for 10 bucks a month. Obviously that never worked out. For me it's clear that in the near future every production house will have its own streaming service and they will essentially become stream-channels once an aggregator comes in and gives you a package deal. You'll save 10% if you bundle up 10 different streaming services, etc. I'm sure the next step after that will be to re-introduce commercials? Why not profit even more by having people pay monthly and serve them ads at the same time? At that point the cycle will restart as a new wave of piracy will begin because obviously people don't want to pay a fortune to watch ads and have access to a bunch of crap they never watch.

bluetidepro 7y ago

I feel like too many people don't value how easy it is to signup and cancel these services. As others have mentioned in the comments, I usually rotate my subscriptions quite a bit throughout the year depending what shows are coming out, and that context is huge. Hulu, SlingTV, PS Vue, Netflix, Prime, etc. all make it SUPER easy and hassle free to deactivate/resume all the services on any whim. You can do it all in their interface in minutes. That's such an underrated feature that many forget about. Trying to cancel and resume cable with companies like Comcast is nothing short of a nightmare. They have 0 respect for the user's time, and they always try to hit you with sketchy hidden fees and dark pattern UX's. I'm personally very happy with this new system of being able to rotate, and juggle services where it makes sense and get the content I want, wherever it is offered. I don't mind putting that burden on myself to manage because it's easy with all the services, and at the end of the day, having no commercials and that freedom to choose is all I every wanted. Not to mention, it's still all cheaper than traditional cable.

ecolonsmak 7y ago

I'd like access to every platform, service and channel then only be billed for the amount I watch.

johnwalkr 7y ago

I signed up for Disney Theatre in Japan the other day to catch up on some Marvel movies before seeing the new Avengers movie. I’ve seen a few comments about how it’s easy to create and cancel accounts for these services. In this case it was extremely complicated and I almost gave up. Step 1: download the Disney theatre app on my Apple TV. Step 2: After it opens, use the resulting QR code to open the registration site on my phone and create an account Step 3: Link the account to another account for docomo (one of the main cell phone providers and the only way to pay) Step 4: Make a docomo account since I don’t have one Step 5: add payment to the new docomo account Step 6: login to my new Disney account when prompted Step 7: Download the Marvel, Disney and Disney Theatre apps when prompted Step 8: Open the Marvel app on my phone and login with my new Disney account Step 9: Find the movie I want to watch. Oops, it’s not there, find another one. Click on it and it opens the Disney theatre app on my phone, which I have to login to. Here I realize that the Marvel app is for extra content. Step 10: Realize that the app on my Apple TV is not authenticated yet, go back to the authentication site, which allows the app to work Step 11: Find and watch a movie They truly messed up the experience here. First, content here is even more fragmented in Japan and often bundled to mobile provider plans. This was a failure for consumers until Netflix gained enough content to blow the other streaming services out of the water. I suspect the docomo deal was made years ago when it was the norm and someone convinced Disney it was expected. I doubt the equivalent (eg link to your T-mobile account) will be required for payment in the US version. Second, downloading and signing in to multiple apps is a hassle. The extra apps have content such as interviews with actors and... themed cupcake recipes. It feels very corporate and I wouldn’t predict that the potential extra added value will surpass extra confusion. All of that being said, I could probably tolerate HBO and Disney as unique subscriptions, plus Netflix, Amazon and specific sports leagues. Any more fragmentation than 4-5 services and I’m more likely to unsubscribe from all of them.