3 ms·

It's more about the convenience than the price, for me. I'd pay $30, maybe $40, per month for access to basically anything I want to watch (past that I may as w

It's more about the convenience than the price, for me. I'd pay $30, maybe $40, per month for access to basically anything I want to watch (past that I may as well buy as I watch, and even at $40 I'd have to do the math to make sure it's sensible). It's having to keep up with several subscriptions, having to figure out where something is when I want to watch it, inconveniences like logging in on a new device, expired sessions on devices that don't have password managers (or keyboards...), multiple different interfaces (for basically the same thing) to stay familiar with, crap like that.

lonelappde 7y ago
Google Search deep-links from approximately every supported movie to the steaming provider that supports it. Just as easy as Popcorn Time.
- lstamour 7y ago
  If you’re in the US. There’s significantly less support for niche, specialist streaming sites as well as non-US, country-specific listings. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked a Google result for a movie on Netflix only to have it be for a different country or currently unavailable...
- shantly 7y ago
  Just tried it with Mission Impossible: Fallout, which I just watched the other day on Amazon Prime's streaming thingy. Google search results give me a list of purchase options across the top in a little box, including Amazon, so that's good. Doesn't say I can stream it but I guess it doesn't know I'm logged in & have prime, which it shouldn't, so that's fine too I guess, but it doesn't tell me I could stream it with subscriptions to any of those places, just tells me purchase prices. Oh well, I happen to know it's streaming on Amazon in this case, which is cheating, but whatever. I click it. It takes me to Amazon, where I am already logged in. I can watch the trailer or "buy" (digital purchase, so "long term rental") it for $20(!). There's no indication I can stream it with Prime. Even knowing it's available I can't figure out how to do it from this screen—I'd have to just search again on Amazon and hope for the best.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Prime video has very user-hostile UX because they are simultaneously trying to provide an already-paid-for service and upsell other ones. Video 'rentals' are grossly overpriced. I've never rented anything from Prime, and their prices would have to drop to about 10% for me to feel like I'm getting value. I think ~$0.25/hr would be fair. Media companies are resistant to discounting the cost of discrete pieces of content despite the supply of entertaining free video exploding a thousand fold in the past decade.
phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
$40 would get you three or four full seasons of any individual show on Amazon, if you're lucky. There isn't anywhere that $40 would get you what you want. Disney+ is probably going to be the future, as much as I hate to say that. Edit: I pay for netflix, I pay for amazon prime, and I'm a member of a really good tv piracy site. My wife is happy with the TV access we have. My thing is video games so I don't actually care about TV.
- shantly 7y ago
  Three or four seasons a month is probably about the equivalent total TV+film watching in our five-person household, combined. As in maybe 50ish hours of distinct content of that sort watched a month, not counting one thing multiple times if several of us are watching it. Since some of that's re-watches we wouldn't necessarily be paying for it every time, too. $40's just the point where I might bother to check that the streaming service made sense—probably I'd conclude that it still did, just for convenience (again, assuming it had most everything) but that if they hiked the price to $50 I'd need to look again. I'm fairly certain, without adding it all up, that at $60 we'd save money just buying/library-ing/redboxing, $40's just where I'd start to go "hm, better run the numbers" and there's a chance it'd work out against paying for streaming, so I'd call it a decent upper bound on what I'd probably be willing to pay for such a thing. Hell, I'm paying almost that now, but the fact that I can still only find maybe 1/3 of what I want to watch available on my three services is why Amazon's set not to renew next year and Netflix is on the chopping block soon (3rd service is a cheap, niche one with mostly anime, b-movies, and some original web animation stuff, sticking with it pretty much just because it's cheap).

lonelappde 7y ago

Google Search deep-links from approximately every supported movie to the steaming provider that supports it. Just as easy as Popcorn Time.

lstamour 7y ago
If you’re in the US. There’s significantly less support for niche, specialist streaming sites as well as non-US, country-specific listings. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked a Google result for a movie on Netflix only to have it be for a different country or currently unavailable...
shantly 7y ago
Just tried it with Mission Impossible: Fallout, which I just watched the other day on Amazon Prime's streaming thingy. Google search results give me a list of purchase options across the top in a little box, including Amazon, so that's good. Doesn't say I can stream it but I guess it doesn't know I'm logged in & have prime, which it shouldn't, so that's fine too I guess, but it doesn't tell me I could stream it with subscriptions to any of those places, just tells me purchase prices. Oh well, I happen to know it's streaming on Amazon in this case, which is cheating, but whatever. I click it. It takes me to Amazon, where I am already logged in. I can watch the trailer or "buy" (digital purchase, so "long term rental") it for $20(!). There's no indication I can stream it with Prime. Even knowing it's available I can't figure out how to do it from this screen—I'd have to just search again on Amazon and hope for the best.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Prime video has very user-hostile UX because they are simultaneously trying to provide an already-paid-for service and upsell other ones. Video 'rentals' are grossly overpriced. I've never rented anything from Prime, and their prices would have to drop to about 10% for me to feel like I'm getting value. I think ~$0.25/hr would be fair. Media companies are resistant to discounting the cost of discrete pieces of content despite the supply of entertaining free video exploding a thousand fold in the past decade.

phjesusthatguy3 7y ago

$40 would get you three or four full seasons of any individual show on Amazon, if you're lucky. There isn't anywhere that $40 would get you what you want. Disney+ is probably going to be the future, as much as I hate to say that. Edit: I pay for netflix, I pay for amazon prime, and I'm a member of a really good tv piracy site. My wife is happy with the TV access we have. My thing is video games so I don't actually care about TV.

shantly 7y ago
Three or four seasons a month is probably about the equivalent total TV+film watching in our five-person household, combined. As in maybe 50ish hours of distinct content of that sort watched a month, not counting one thing multiple times if several of us are watching it. Since some of that's re-watches we wouldn't necessarily be paying for it every time, too. $40's just the point where I might bother to check that the streaming service made sense—probably I'd conclude that it still did, just for convenience (again, assuming it had most everything) but that if they hiked the price to $50 I'd need to look again. I'm fairly certain, without adding it all up, that at $60 we'd save money just buying/library-ing/redboxing, $40's just where I'd start to go "hm, better run the numbers" and there's a chance it'd work out against paying for streaming, so I'd call it a decent upper bound on what I'd probably be willing to pay for such a thing. Hell, I'm paying almost that now, but the fact that I can still only find maybe 1/3 of what I want to watch available on my three services is why Amazon's set not to renew next year and Netflix is on the chopping block soon (3rd service is a cheap, niche one with mostly anime, b-movies, and some original web animation stuff, sticking with it pretty much just because it's cheap).