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Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

98 points by acdanger 7y ago

Causality1 7y ago
For me it's a simple equation that has as much to do with time and hassle as it has to do with money. I'm not going to juggle five different monthly subscriptions. I'll pay Netflix for their decent original content and all my old favorites like Star Trek. I'll buy a month of Hbo every couple years to catch up with them. I'm not going to pay $200 for a cable subscription and I'm not going to pay for Netflix and YouTube Red and Disney+ and Hulu and CBS All Access and whatever other service all at the same time. It's already a pain in the ass to figure out if Movie X is available on the services I already pay for. I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed.
- rlayton2 7y ago
  Part of the "original" appeal of Netfix was that it was a one-stop-shop, and that effectively killed piracy for a large number of people. The legal solution was easier than the illegal one! Segregation will just revert many back to piracy as you say, until some future round of consolidation.
  - xvilka 7y ago
    Exactly. Same thing was with Steam from Valve. But now both streaming and gaming platforms get a split, thus creating many complications for users. I bet that will increase piracy in both worlds.
    - josephg 7y ago
      At least with video games, having access to multiple online stores is free. Steam and the epic store work side by side just fine - unlike video there's no subscription fee to have access to both catalogues.
      - mikepurvis 7y ago
        Well, and for those of us who had the GOG and/or Uplay launchers anyway, or already had our achievements fractured between PC and one or more console ecosystems, having to install the Epic Games one just wasn't that big a deal. Especially with the bait of free games, exclusives, and the crazy $10 off summer sale promotion. I got it for the Hades early access and to play Transistor and Rime for free.
        unionpivo 7y ago
        Used to be more lax about it, but now i limit where i have my digital goods at. I have steam and gog accounts. I had/have whole bunch of games both on other sites, but after having my cc info stolen several times when buying stuff from random sites, I limit my exposure. I do have uplay, and ea store on my computer, but i did not buy any games on them (and they don't have my cc info), they were requirements for playing games i bought on steam. I might eventually also get epic store, if it lives for couple of years, and doesn't get any breaches, and has games I am interested in (don't really care about shooters)
        raxxorrax 7y ago
        Does it finally allow for offline execution of games? Epic just had some good deals for market dominance. Makes sense, since they now have the capital. There are some interesting exclusives, but I resisted in creating an account because I would regret it later. There might be better deals for developers in there, but that will undoubtedly change if the goal of market dominance is reached. It is an overall really bad choice for consumers on nearly every level. I don't really see them as serious competition to steam and GOG.
        mikepurvis 7y ago
        Can you expand more on the "overall really bad choice for consumers"? Obviously it's missing a bunch of stuff that Steam has, like forums, ratings, cloud saves, offline play, shopping cart, wishlist, etc. But none of those are essential requirements, they're just features and can be built up over time. They're doing a better revenue split than Steam, and they're subsidizing many purchases to offer more attractive prices. And they're offering some previous PS4 exclusives on PC for the first time, like Journey/Flow/Flower and the Quantic Dream games. How is this worse for either consumers or publishers than a total Steam hegemony? I'm not trying to be combative, but I don't understand the mindset.
    - glogla 7y ago
      I should note that Epic store is mostly viable because of Valve believing they can get things as locked down as Apple and Google and thus can charge the same 30 % tax. "Alternate App Store for iOS" is never going to work, at least if someone doesn't break Apple monopoly. But that's not the case for PC games. So alternate store that charges less is obvious optimization.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Netflix streaming has never been a one stop shop for movies. It has usually had a relatively weak line up. They had deals with STARZ early on and later Epix that helped.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      It's never been a one stop shop for movie streaming. Let's not forget they started as a Blockbuster competitor that mailed you DVDs, and they had (have?) a pretty big catalog of those.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Yeah they still have a little over 3 million DVD by mail customers. But, I’m not overly price sensitive. I’ll just rent a movie most of the time. It got to the point where I’m too lazy to use But torrent even thousands though I do have a Plex server running.
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  I'm also happy paying for content but equally happy to immediately switch to pirating if it gets too complicated. Probably easier now than it was before - internet is a lot faster, anonymity is a lot better, hardware is a lot cheaper and things like Plex make it pretty damn straight forward to get it up and going. Almost everyone in Australia pirated Game of Thrones -- the only streaming service provider was also the only major cable TV operator and not many people took the bait and signed up.
  - guitarbill 7y ago
    Piracy is getting more attractive, too. Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month. So even when I have a subscription, I'll still pirate things (the same things!), to create a permanent library and make switching easer, now that streaming libraries per service are shrinking drastically.
    - dagw 7y ago
      Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month Either that or Netflix only has rights to the first couple of seasons (or in some cases the middle few seasons) so if you actually end up liking the show you're screwed since you won't be able to watch the whole thing. Another annoying problem is that in some cases and in some countries Netflix only has the dubbed version of a movie or show and so you're again screwed if you want to watch the original version.
      - michaelscott 7y ago
        Another weird corner case is when you want to watch a foreign language film, but because I happen to be in a country where I don't speak any of the local languages I also can't use subtitles (they don't provide English subtitles universally). This is probably an incredibly rare thing for most people though I admit.
        rusticpenn 7y ago
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  We roll the same way. But I have Amazon Prime as well. My current working rule is no more than two video services. Amazon Prime may be hard to dislodge because my whole family uses my account. So when we turn HBO on in a few weeks to close out GOT, we will shutdown Netflix for awhile at least. Unless I can find 7 day free trial of HBO somehow
  - Causality1 7y ago
    They offer a 4 week free trial actually.
- paulcole 7y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn’t threaten piracy when I don’t get exactly what I want for the price I want? Is it really that unusual to not take things that you shouldn’t? I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else, I won’t go take it because I feel entitled.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I will find movies that fall off the back of a truck onto my Plex server. But often, it’s not worth the hassle and I’ll just rent it from iTunes. For TV shows, I’ll pay For a month to stream a few shows I care about. That being said, we do have Netflix free through T-mobile, Hulu mostly for my sons, Amazon Prime, and DC Universe for the few originals and the comics. We also have DirecTVNow mostly for my wife.
  - eitland 7y ago
    No, you are not the only one. But I'll admit sometimes they try really hard to make a pirate out of us by brilliant moves like making 2 out of three LOTR movies available on Netflix or sending all except one single episode of a season of Deadliest Catch on my cable subscription. Maybe one day I'll start downloading too thought, but usually I don't care and don't have time for movies anyway.
  - AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
    > I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else Would anyone loose anything if instead of something else you ended up pirating the movie that you wanted to watch?
    - paulcole 7y ago
      Yeah, I’d lose respect for myself. I don’t take things that aren’t mine.
      - monetus 7y ago
        I appreciate where you are coming from. Many people understand that, physically, 'pirating' is more akin to copying than taking though. ..And then there is an argument that increasing the availability of content increases the revenue of the producer in the long run. Some game developers and many musicians are even releasing official torrents of their content, assuring quality control. I'm curious how this would work out if bigger studios dabbled with it.
- chx 7y ago
  I bought a Chromecast because it worked with Netflix and stupid cheap. It is convenient! Then comes Amazon Prime and says I need to buy another dongle to watch them. I am so not interested. Grow up, work together with Google, I can't care less whatever petty competition you are playing, your problem not mine. I will just pirate the things I wanted from Prime.
  - aplummer 7y ago
    “This is inconvenient and expensive which gives me the unilateral right to steal your intellectual property”. It’s an interesting take, that you get to steal anything you like if it isn’t priced and sold how you want.
    - stevewillows 7y ago
      its more likely that they already have a piracy workflow and the inconvenience isn't enough to disrupt that workflow, unlike their experience with Netflix / Plex with the Chromecast.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        How is that different from the comment you're replying to? "...and sold how you want"
        stevewillows 7y ago
        I'm just saying that for people who have no issues with piracy, the provider has an even more difficult time winning their business. For companies like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, it should be in their best interest to be available on all platforms like Chromecast, etc. We're not debating the views of piracy from the parent -- that was already established.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      While I get the moral argument here, I'm going to go with the market signaling. Hollywood can get its shit together and make something that's convenient, or it can die. Either choice is fine by me, and I'll figure out how to integrate piracy in my moral framework later. The future I want looks like what GoG is for games, or Bandcamp is for music.
- tw04 7y ago
  >I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed. It amazes me they seem to be completely oblivious that this will be the the result. A percentage of someone else's revenue is still a bigger number than a percentage of nothing...
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    I suspect they're gambling that once people have sampled the "don't get off the couch" convenience of streaming, piracy won't be an appetizing alternative. I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students.
    - koffiezet 7y ago
      > I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students. True, I would pay 1 or 2 streaming services (as I do the right now) - but more? No thank you, this becomes cluttered, confusing and inconvenient. Today, I still torrent stuff even if it's available on a streaming service I already pay for (which I don't see as piracy), for 2 main reasons: guaranteed quality and ease of use. My Plex server is the go-to place for most of the better quality shows we follow, and Netflix is for a lot of the 'meh' content you browse when you're not sure what to see, or what I call 'throw away' content we would never watch a second time. I do want to encourage them to keep making good content however, so I don't mind paying for it. So far, Netflix has been rather consumer-focused and as a company has - afaik - done nothing to damage my trust, but that's not something I can say about all those companies having or planning to offer streaming services. I would gladly pay for an HBO subscription if it were available here, since they produce some serious quality content - but it isn't. I would however most likely still torrent their shows.
  - rhino369 7y ago
    The majority of people either have a moral issue with 100% piracy or cannot easily figure out how to do it. Public torrents lead to getting piracy emails from your isp. Private torrents are annoying and difficult. In general you have to deal with shady organizations and without experience it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what isn’t. And I suspect the vast majority of pirates never stopped. And wouldn’t stop unless the price was well below fair value. Winning over pirates is shitty business strategy. Also Netflix’s 12 bucks a month isn’t enough to fund all the media that’s created. Netflix would have to charge a lot more (indistinguishable from multiple services that charge less) or less tv/movies would get made. Netflix’s larger catalog of old was subsidized by network and cable companies. They sold rights for pennies on the dollar. But Netflix is killing those networks. The business method isn’t viable.
- chillacy 7y ago
  If money is really no object, then almost all content is available for individual digital purchase on iTunes or Amazon still. But I'd also understand if that cost is a completely different ballgame than streaming.
40acres 7y ago
I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or laptop to their TV?
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Plex is a really easy way to stream video files from your computer to a chromecast, and I can use my phone as a remote. It works just as well as googe play and better than my current amazon workflow.(Which I can only play from the computer because they won't allow streaming to chromecast)
  - dewey 7y ago
    You are not accounting for the important part of sourcing the pirated movies and running a Plex server though? That's what 99% of the people who only want to consume will be struggling with, not the playback client.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      Most people have a friend who's technical enough to follow the plex installation instructions or install utorrent.
      - dewey 7y ago
        These technical friends may exist, but I'd guess most of the people would rather pay 15$ / month to some provider than bothering their friend to set them up with a Plex server, maintaining it, figuring out what file to download ("What is this 1080p, 720p?), waiting for downloads to be done, clear out old torrents so they have disk space again. These are all things that are fun to "us" technical people and I don't mind doing them for myself but if you have to choose between relying on someone else to keep your setup running or just paying someone and have a hands off solution most people will do that. Don't forget that this is very biased community here, it makes comments like this sound a bit like the dropbox vs a pile of shell scripts post.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Of all the streaming services, Netflix is the one I’m most likely to cancel soon. The quality of Netflix original content is dismal. They have jumped the shark. Used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator crap hidden behind a huge marketing budget to capture zeitgeisty hype. I just watched the first episode of When They See Us today: total crap. Ridiculous over-acting, awful writing that feels at every minute like a bad attempt to modify a true story into a cinematic exaggeration (despite the content of the true story it’s based on, which needs zero punch up), choppy editing that needlessly obfuscates character development and makes various scenes feel almost comically unnatural (especially the police interrogation scenes). It was similar with Seven Seconds. I’m tired of feeling suckered into Netflix dramas that fall apart like a wet napkin.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  > used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator crap Given that it's Netflix we're talking about here, I find this extremely depressing as it likely means the studios were right; people don't want nuanced thoughtful drama, they want mediocre predictable sitcoms and cop dramas.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    HBO seems to still be producing very good dramas. Prime has had one or two offbeat gems recently. I think there’s still a strong market for it, but Netflix is clearly pursuing something else.
    - rhino369 7y ago
      Netflix is pursuing everything, not just the “prestige tv” niche. The strategy makes sense as it’s trying to be the replacement for cable tv and the movie industry all in one.
    - philliphaydon 7y ago
      What's good on HBO? I used a VPN to subscribe to HBO and Hulu and ended up canceling it because I ended up watching more Netflix than those services...
bitcoinmoney 7y ago
Most people dont know but you can get P4S (plex for share) where you pay (or free) someone to get added on their plex library. Some of these servers have CDN and have 90+TB storage with automated requests system. Thousands of shows and movies. You can also get IPTV, which is basivally cable TV through internet for 10$/month. 5000 channels. You ask how its possible? Basically fly by night companies redistributing cable. Some have sweared by it being good. Does anybody in HN hsvr more ecperience in
- deleted 7y ago
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- bscphil 7y ago
  Am I misunderstanding the idea behind the first thing, or is that just piracy that you pay for? If you're going to go to the trouble and / or risk of pirating things and have enough technical knowhow to setup Plex on your local device, I don't know why you wouldn't just go for an old fashioned approach ... which is usually free, better quality, more reliable, etc.
  - Larrikin 7y ago
    Being able to setup a legal program like Plex and knowing how to pirate high quality versions of all the media you want are two different things. People bought into Hulu and Netflix when you could get nearly everything you wanted to watch on their services.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      Plex is legal to use, but not all that easy to set up, at least in my experience. At least, I would expect anyone capable of using Plex longterm on a TV to also be able to pirate stuff. The point about legality wasn't about Plex, however. It was about paying someone to torrent stuff for you, which is still copyright infringement.
      - westpfelia 7y ago
torgian 7y ago
Piracy is alive and kicking in a lot of countries still, as I'm sure some of you know. Netflix is probably partially at fault for this. When I travel to different countries and pull up Netflix, I see shows available in that country that aren't available in another. It's annoying. Of course, a VPN takes care of this (to an extent).
- procinct 7y ago
  I used to always use a VPN for Netflix but then they started cracking down and it stopped working. Are you still able to use a VPN to view content from a different region?
  - kkarakk 7y ago
    if the vpn is well known it gets blocked by netflix, have to experiment with what doesn't get tracked
    - maeln 7y ago
      Setting up you own VPN with a cheap VPS has a higher chance of working but you have to be careful about your VPS provider. For example, I know that a lot of OVH owned IPs are banned from Netflix.
    - Freak_NL 7y ago
      At that point simply grabbing a torrent seems easier and more reliable.
  - dewey 7y ago
    It also depends on which country you want to watch through a VPN. The most desired countries like US / UK usually have a lot of working VPNs available as the VPN companies put a lot of resources into keeping them working. Using a VPN for a smaller country usually doesn't work in my experience.
    - dillonmckay 7y ago
netwanderer3 7y ago
Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days are recycled garbage. People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.
- CJefferson 7y ago
  I'm disappointed, but not suprised, to see this post so high. Despite all the ways of watching films at home, cinema is having its most successful years ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.
  - oliwarner 7y ago
    I'm disappointed, but not surprised in your measurement of success. Many tout record box office takings as clear success but I rather think that really reflects on inflation (both real and artificial). Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers. MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison. So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not breaking any records. 1: https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/uk-cinema-admissions-and-box-office/annual-admissions/ https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/u... 2: PDF!! https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatri... (there are other reports for other single years but they're hard to grok out the attendance numbers).
    - oblio 7y ago
      He he. Your argument is that cinema is dead because it's not as popular as it was in the 50's, before TV, video games, home cinemas, and the internet? Even the fact that the numbers are comparable in 2019 says about cinema's staying power ;)
dmitriid 7y ago
> But their shows were a boon for Netflix's nascent streaming service, which had a small library of old movies when it debuted in 2007. That’s exactly what Netflix is right now. There’s a dearth of new content besides Netflix’s own originals. Netflix routinely suggests titles from 10-15-20 years ago and rarely any newer titles (outside some of the bigger blockbusters like Star Wars).
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  I don't know what Netflix is like in America but all my content is nothing but new stuff... The only thing that's "old" that shows on my "popular on Netflix" (or what ever its called) section is Friends.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    I’m watching from Sweden, so that may be the reason, but my suggestions are laughably bad: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153 https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153
    - philliphaydon 7y ago
      Oh wow my suggestions are nothing like that!
    - philliphaydon 7y ago
      https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag Hope this link works. Took a while to figure out how to upload without downloading the app. This is what I see in Singapore. Atleast on my phone. But I mostly browse the recently added or originals sections.
whoisthemachine 7y ago
I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are different publishing methods. BitTorrent is one fairly effective publisher that does offer content for free, but it does require a consumer to take on some costs: risk of going to a sketchy site and risk to their computer (viruses). If a streaming service is good enough and cheap enough, it can offer enough value to a consumer that the consumer will choose the streaming service over BitTorrent. Considering that this is going to require streaming services to really reduce the cost to the consumer, how can the streaming services have a sustainable business model over the long term to support themselves? The subscription model is one way, but the gaming industry may be ahead here: charge for each individual item, but make it really cheap. For example, a consumer might scoff at paying $3 per episode of GoT, but $1 or $.50 might be pretty nice... add that up for a season, and your streaming service has made almost as much as a subscription would have made. Of course, this requires streaming services to continue to offer new, good content to continue to entice consumers, which they might not like having to do.

98 points by acdanger 7y ago

For me it's a simple equation that has as much to do with time and hassle as it has to do with money. I'm not going to juggle five different monthly subscriptions. I'll pay Netflix for their decent original content and all my old favorites like Star Trek. I'll buy a month of Hbo every couple years to catch up with them. I'm not going to pay $200 for a cable subscription and I'm not going to pay for Netflix and YouTube Red and Disney+ and Hulu and CBS All Access and whatever other service all at the same time. It's already a pain in the ass to figure out if Movie X is available on the services I already pay for. I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed.

rlayton2 7y ago
Part of the "original" appeal of Netfix was that it was a one-stop-shop, and that effectively killed piracy for a large number of people. The legal solution was easier than the illegal one! Segregation will just revert many back to piracy as you say, until some future round of consolidation.
- xvilka 7y ago
  Exactly. Same thing was with Steam from Valve. But now both streaming and gaming platforms get a split, thus creating many complications for users. I bet that will increase piracy in both worlds.
  - josephg 7y ago
    At least with video games, having access to multiple online stores is free. Steam and the epic store work side by side just fine - unlike video there's no subscription fee to have access to both catalogues.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Well, and for those of us who had the GOG and/or Uplay launchers anyway, or already had our achievements fractured between PC and one or more console ecosystems, having to install the Epic Games one just wasn't that big a deal. Especially with the bait of free games, exclusives, and the crazy $10 off summer sale promotion. I got it for the Hades early access and to play Transistor and Rime for free.
      - unionpivo 7y ago
        Used to be more lax about it, but now i limit where i have my digital goods at. I have steam and gog accounts. I had/have whole bunch of games both on other sites, but after having my cc info stolen several times when buying stuff from random sites, I limit my exposure. I do have uplay, and ea store on my computer, but i did not buy any games on them (and they don't have my cc info), they were requirements for playing games i bought on steam. I might eventually also get epic store, if it lives for couple of years, and doesn't get any breaches, and has games I am interested in (don't really care about shooters)
      - raxxorrax 7y ago
        Does it finally allow for offline execution of games? Epic just had some good deals for market dominance. Makes sense, since they now have the capital. There are some interesting exclusives, but I resisted in creating an account because I would regret it later. There might be better deals for developers in there, but that will undoubtedly change if the goal of market dominance is reached. It is an overall really bad choice for consumers on nearly every level. I don't really see them as serious competition to steam and GOG.
        mikepurvis 7y ago
        Can you expand more on the "overall really bad choice for consumers"? Obviously it's missing a bunch of stuff that Steam has, like forums, ratings, cloud saves, offline play, shopping cart, wishlist, etc. But none of those are essential requirements, they're just features and can be built up over time. They're doing a better revenue split than Steam, and they're subsidizing many purchases to offer more attractive prices. And they're offering some previous PS4 exclusives on PC for the first time, like Journey/Flow/Flower and the Quantic Dream games. How is this worse for either consumers or publishers than a total Steam hegemony? I'm not trying to be combative, but I don't understand the mindset.
  - glogla 7y ago
    I should note that Epic store is mostly viable because of Valve believing they can get things as locked down as Apple and Google and thus can charge the same 30 % tax. "Alternate App Store for iOS" is never going to work, at least if someone doesn't break Apple monopoly. But that's not the case for PC games. So alternate store that charges less is obvious optimization.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Netflix streaming has never been a one stop shop for movies. It has usually had a relatively weak line up. They had deals with STARZ early on and later Epix that helped.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    It's never been a one stop shop for movie streaming. Let's not forget they started as a Blockbuster competitor that mailed you DVDs, and they had (have?) a pretty big catalog of those.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Yeah they still have a little over 3 million DVD by mail customers. But, I’m not overly price sensitive. I’ll just rent a movie most of the time. It got to the point where I’m too lazy to use But torrent even thousands though I do have a Plex server running.
stevenjohns 7y ago
I'm also happy paying for content but equally happy to immediately switch to pirating if it gets too complicated. Probably easier now than it was before - internet is a lot faster, anonymity is a lot better, hardware is a lot cheaper and things like Plex make it pretty damn straight forward to get it up and going. Almost everyone in Australia pirated Game of Thrones -- the only streaming service provider was also the only major cable TV operator and not many people took the bait and signed up.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  Piracy is getting more attractive, too. Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month. So even when I have a subscription, I'll still pirate things (the same things!), to create a permanent library and make switching easer, now that streaming libraries per service are shrinking drastically.
  - dagw 7y ago
    Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month Either that or Netflix only has rights to the first couple of seasons (or in some cases the middle few seasons) so if you actually end up liking the show you're screwed since you won't be able to watch the whole thing. Another annoying problem is that in some cases and in some countries Netflix only has the dubbed version of a movie or show and so you're again screwed if you want to watch the original version.
    - michaelscott 7y ago
      Another weird corner case is when you want to watch a foreign language film, but because I happen to be in a country where I don't speak any of the local languages I also can't use subtitles (they don't provide English subtitles universally). This is probably an incredibly rare thing for most people though I admit.
      - rusticpenn 7y ago
pnw_hazor 7y ago
We roll the same way. But I have Amazon Prime as well. My current working rule is no more than two video services. Amazon Prime may be hard to dislodge because my whole family uses my account. So when we turn HBO on in a few weeks to close out GOT, we will shutdown Netflix for awhile at least. Unless I can find 7 day free trial of HBO somehow
- Causality1 7y ago
  They offer a 4 week free trial actually.
paulcole 7y ago
Am I the only one who doesn’t threaten piracy when I don’t get exactly what I want for the price I want? Is it really that unusual to not take things that you shouldn’t? I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else, I won’t go take it because I feel entitled.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I will find movies that fall off the back of a truck onto my Plex server. But often, it’s not worth the hassle and I’ll just rent it from iTunes. For TV shows, I’ll pay For a month to stream a few shows I care about. That being said, we do have Netflix free through T-mobile, Hulu mostly for my sons, Amazon Prime, and DC Universe for the few originals and the comics. We also have DirecTVNow mostly for my wife.
- eitland 7y ago
  No, you are not the only one. But I'll admit sometimes they try really hard to make a pirate out of us by brilliant moves like making 2 out of three LOTR movies available on Netflix or sending all except one single episode of a season of Deadliest Catch on my cable subscription. Maybe one day I'll start downloading too thought, but usually I don't care and don't have time for movies anyway.
- AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
  > I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else Would anyone loose anything if instead of something else you ended up pirating the movie that you wanted to watch?
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Yeah, I’d lose respect for myself. I don’t take things that aren’t mine.
    - monetus 7y ago
      I appreciate where you are coming from. Many people understand that, physically, 'pirating' is more akin to copying than taking though. ..And then there is an argument that increasing the availability of content increases the revenue of the producer in the long run. Some game developers and many musicians are even releasing official torrents of their content, assuring quality control. I'm curious how this would work out if bigger studios dabbled with it.
chx 7y ago
I bought a Chromecast because it worked with Netflix and stupid cheap. It is convenient! Then comes Amazon Prime and says I need to buy another dongle to watch them. I am so not interested. Grow up, work together with Google, I can't care less whatever petty competition you are playing, your problem not mine. I will just pirate the things I wanted from Prime.
- aplummer 7y ago
  “This is inconvenient and expensive which gives me the unilateral right to steal your intellectual property”. It’s an interesting take, that you get to steal anything you like if it isn’t priced and sold how you want.
  - stevewillows 7y ago
    its more likely that they already have a piracy workflow and the inconvenience isn't enough to disrupt that workflow, unlike their experience with Netflix / Plex with the Chromecast.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      How is that different from the comment you're replying to? "...and sold how you want"
      - stevewillows 7y ago
        I'm just saying that for people who have no issues with piracy, the provider has an even more difficult time winning their business. For companies like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, it should be in their best interest to be available on all platforms like Chromecast, etc. We're not debating the views of piracy from the parent -- that was already established.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    While I get the moral argument here, I'm going to go with the market signaling. Hollywood can get its shit together and make something that's convenient, or it can die. Either choice is fine by me, and I'll figure out how to integrate piracy in my moral framework later. The future I want looks like what GoG is for games, or Bandcamp is for music.
tw04 7y ago
>I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed. It amazes me they seem to be completely oblivious that this will be the the result. A percentage of someone else's revenue is still a bigger number than a percentage of nothing...
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  I suspect they're gambling that once people have sampled the "don't get off the couch" convenience of streaming, piracy won't be an appetizing alternative. I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students.
  - koffiezet 7y ago
    > I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students. True, I would pay 1 or 2 streaming services (as I do the right now) - but more? No thank you, this becomes cluttered, confusing and inconvenient. Today, I still torrent stuff even if it's available on a streaming service I already pay for (which I don't see as piracy), for 2 main reasons: guaranteed quality and ease of use. My Plex server is the go-to place for most of the better quality shows we follow, and Netflix is for a lot of the 'meh' content you browse when you're not sure what to see, or what I call 'throw away' content we would never watch a second time. I do want to encourage them to keep making good content however, so I don't mind paying for it. So far, Netflix has been rather consumer-focused and as a company has - afaik - done nothing to damage my trust, but that's not something I can say about all those companies having or planning to offer streaming services. I would gladly pay for an HBO subscription if it were available here, since they produce some serious quality content - but it isn't. I would however most likely still torrent their shows.
- rhino369 7y ago
  The majority of people either have a moral issue with 100% piracy or cannot easily figure out how to do it. Public torrents lead to getting piracy emails from your isp. Private torrents are annoying and difficult. In general you have to deal with shady organizations and without experience it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what isn’t. And I suspect the vast majority of pirates never stopped. And wouldn’t stop unless the price was well below fair value. Winning over pirates is shitty business strategy. Also Netflix’s 12 bucks a month isn’t enough to fund all the media that’s created. Netflix would have to charge a lot more (indistinguishable from multiple services that charge less) or less tv/movies would get made. Netflix’s larger catalog of old was subsidized by network and cable companies. They sold rights for pennies on the dollar. But Netflix is killing those networks. The business method isn’t viable.
chillacy 7y ago
If money is really no object, then almost all content is available for individual digital purchase on iTunes or Amazon still. But I'd also understand if that cost is a completely different ballgame than streaming.

40acres 7y ago

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or laptop to their TV?

JamesBarney 7y ago
Plex is a really easy way to stream video files from your computer to a chromecast, and I can use my phone as a remote. It works just as well as googe play and better than my current amazon workflow.(Which I can only play from the computer because they won't allow streaming to chromecast)
- dewey 7y ago
  You are not accounting for the important part of sourcing the pirated movies and running a Plex server though? That's what 99% of the people who only want to consume will be struggling with, not the playback client.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Most people have a friend who's technical enough to follow the plex installation instructions or install utorrent.
    - dewey 7y ago
      These technical friends may exist, but I'd guess most of the people would rather pay 15$ / month to some provider than bothering their friend to set them up with a Plex server, maintaining it, figuring out what file to download ("What is this 1080p, 720p?), waiting for downloads to be done, clear out old torrents so they have disk space again. These are all things that are fun to "us" technical people and I don't mind doing them for myself but if you have to choose between relying on someone else to keep your setup running or just paying someone and have a hands off solution most people will do that. Don't forget that this is very biased community here, it makes comments like this sound a bit like the dropbox vs a pile of shell scripts post.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

Of all the streaming services, Netflix is the one I’m most likely to cancel soon. The quality of Netflix original content is dismal. They have jumped the shark. Used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator crap hidden behind a huge marketing budget to capture zeitgeisty hype. I just watched the first episode of When They See Us today: total crap. Ridiculous over-acting, awful writing that feels at every minute like a bad attempt to modify a true story into a cinematic exaggeration (despite the content of the true story it’s based on, which needs zero punch up), choppy editing that needlessly obfuscates character development and makes various scenes feel almost comically unnatural (especially the police interrogation scenes). It was similar with Seven Seconds. I’m tired of feeling suckered into Netflix dramas that fall apart like a wet napkin.

Godel_unicode 7y ago
> used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator crap Given that it's Netflix we're talking about here, I find this extremely depressing as it likely means the studios were right; people don't want nuanced thoughtful drama, they want mediocre predictable sitcoms and cop dramas.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  HBO seems to still be producing very good dramas. Prime has had one or two offbeat gems recently. I think there’s still a strong market for it, but Netflix is clearly pursuing something else.
  - rhino369 7y ago
    Netflix is pursuing everything, not just the “prestige tv” niche. The strategy makes sense as it’s trying to be the replacement for cable tv and the movie industry all in one.
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    What's good on HBO? I used a VPN to subscribe to HBO and Hulu and ended up canceling it because I ended up watching more Netflix than those services...

bitcoinmoney 7y ago

Most people dont know but you can get P4S (plex for share) where you pay (or free) someone to get added on their plex library. Some of these servers have CDN and have 90+TB storage with automated requests system. Thousands of shows and movies. You can also get IPTV, which is basivally cable TV through internet for 10$/month. 5000 channels. You ask how its possible? Basically fly by night companies redistributing cable. Some have sweared by it being good. Does anybody in HN hsvr more ecperience in

deleted 7y ago
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bscphil 7y ago
Am I misunderstanding the idea behind the first thing, or is that just piracy that you pay for? If you're going to go to the trouble and / or risk of pirating things and have enough technical knowhow to setup Plex on your local device, I don't know why you wouldn't just go for an old fashioned approach ... which is usually free, better quality, more reliable, etc.
- Larrikin 7y ago
  Being able to setup a legal program like Plex and knowing how to pirate high quality versions of all the media you want are two different things. People bought into Hulu and Netflix when you could get nearly everything you wanted to watch on their services.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    Plex is legal to use, but not all that easy to set up, at least in my experience. At least, I would expect anyone capable of using Plex longterm on a TV to also be able to pirate stuff. The point about legality wasn't about Plex, however. It was about paying someone to torrent stuff for you, which is still copyright infringement.
    - westpfelia 7y ago

torgian 7y ago

Piracy is alive and kicking in a lot of countries still, as I'm sure some of you know. Netflix is probably partially at fault for this. When I travel to different countries and pull up Netflix, I see shows available in that country that aren't available in another. It's annoying. Of course, a VPN takes care of this (to an extent).

procinct 7y ago
I used to always use a VPN for Netflix but then they started cracking down and it stopped working. Are you still able to use a VPN to view content from a different region?
- kkarakk 7y ago
  if the vpn is well known it gets blocked by netflix, have to experiment with what doesn't get tracked
  - maeln 7y ago
    Setting up you own VPN with a cheap VPS has a higher chance of working but you have to be careful about your VPS provider. For example, I know that a lot of OVH owned IPs are banned from Netflix.
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    At that point simply grabbing a torrent seems easier and more reliable.
- dewey 7y ago
  It also depends on which country you want to watch through a VPN. The most desired countries like US / UK usually have a lot of working VPNs available as the VPN companies put a lot of resources into keeping them working. Using a VPN for a smaller country usually doesn't work in my experience.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago

netwanderer3 7y ago

Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days are recycled garbage. People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.

CJefferson 7y ago
I'm disappointed, but not suprised, to see this post so high. Despite all the ways of watching films at home, cinema is having its most successful years ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.
- oliwarner 7y ago
  I'm disappointed, but not surprised in your measurement of success. Many tout record box office takings as clear success but I rather think that really reflects on inflation (both real and artificial). Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers. MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison. So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not breaking any records. 1: https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/uk-cinema-admissions-and-box-office/annual-admissions/ https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/u... 2: PDF!! https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatri... (there are other reports for other single years but they're hard to grok out the attendance numbers).
  - oblio 7y ago
    He he. Your argument is that cinema is dead because it's not as popular as it was in the 50's, before TV, video games, home cinemas, and the internet? Even the fact that the numbers are comparable in 2019 says about cinema's staying power ;)

dmitriid 7y ago

> But their shows were a boon for Netflix's nascent streaming service, which had a small library of old movies when it debuted in 2007. That’s exactly what Netflix is right now. There’s a dearth of new content besides Netflix’s own originals. Netflix routinely suggests titles from 10-15-20 years ago and rarely any newer titles (outside some of the bigger blockbusters like Star Wars).

philliphaydon 7y ago
I don't know what Netflix is like in America but all my content is nothing but new stuff... The only thing that's "old" that shows on my "popular on Netflix" (or what ever its called) section is Friends.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  I’m watching from Sweden, so that may be the reason, but my suggestions are laughably bad: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153 https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    Oh wow my suggestions are nothing like that!
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag Hope this link works. Took a while to figure out how to upload without downloading the app. This is what I see in Singapore. Atleast on my phone. But I mostly browse the recently added or originals sections.

whoisthemachine 7y ago

I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are different publishing methods. BitTorrent is one fairly effective publisher that does offer content for free, but it does require a consumer to take on some costs: risk of going to a sketchy site and risk to their computer (viruses). If a streaming service is good enough and cheap enough, it can offer enough value to a consumer that the consumer will choose the streaming service over BitTorrent. Considering that this is going to require streaming services to really reduce the cost to the consumer, how can the streaming services have a sustainable business model over the long term to support themselves? The subscription model is one way, but the gaming industry may be ahead here: charge for each individual item, but make it really cheap. For example, a consumer might scoff at paying $3 per episode of GoT, but $1 or $.50 might be pretty nice... add that up for a season, and your streaming service has made almost as much as a subscription would have made. Of course, this requires streaming services to continue to offer new, good content to continue to entice consumers, which they might not like having to do.