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"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netf

by sbarre 7y ago

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (especially Disney shows). I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want. As long as you don't care about the zeitgeist, this would probably be fine for a lot of people.

scarface74 7y ago
“Your circle” unless it includes families with small kids, isn’t Disney’s primary audience. Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a month to just have the convenience of Disney+ to be a glorified babysitter. In 2003, people said that the iTunes music store was going to be a disaster. Who would pay to download music when they could get it for free. That worked out pretty well.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a month to just have the convenience of Disney+ to be a glorified babysitter. Depending on the country, you'd be surprised. I'm not sure why Disney has the hold it has in the US, but in most of Europe I know it's nothing special (to the point of being a "must have" brand). Kids can just sit in front of regular kids TV channels. And normal middle class families can and do pirate all the time...
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    Sadly Disney is a lifestyle choice for a lot of people and the passion they have for the brand can be downright cultish and creepy at times. Groups like hardcore Disney fans, R. Kelly fans, and Evangelical Christians all share a very similar devotion and loyalty to their idols.
    - myself248 7y ago
      This week, in "Speculative Mergers and Acquisitions Horror Theatre"...
    - beardedwizard 7y ago
      Tell me more about how R. Kelly and Disney fans are similar. Share your point by point analysis and include examples. Maybe you would like to bring Taylor Swift into the discussion? Your comment is a poorly disguised insult.
      - 0-_-0 7y ago
        I can tell you really like R. Kelly or Disney but I can' tell which.
      - cptskippy 7y ago
        It's unclear which you ascribe to but it's curious that you don't take offense to either being compared to Evangelicals. In either case, they're both almost a Cult of personality. The fans are so adorant of their object that they often overlook glaringly evil deeds. At the same time, the level of manipulation exhibited and the devotion demanded by the personality is extreme to the point that outsiders see it as absurd. Idk, maybe it's just me but I find fanaticism to be very off putting in general. When the idol asks fans to make sacrifices to stay it in their favor, that's when it crosses a line into creepy. Disney walks a fine line where it expertly cultivates that culture while simultaneously pretending it doesn't exist and remaining open and accessible to everyone.
        reroute1 7y ago
- gldalmaso 7y ago
  Pirating shows and putting them on an external drive that you plug on any TV and can take with you on trips works fine and most normal middle class people can manage it though.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Any TV except the ones in most hotel rooms that lock down the HDMI input and the ones that don’t exist in most cars. Then you have the issue of the kids fighting over what to watch and wanting to watch video on their phones and tablets.
    - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
      I use VLC on iOS to copy movies and shows to my iPad from a Windows share. Works perfectly fine. In some ways it's better than Netflix/Amazon offline mode since I know my files will always work in VLC whereas I don't know ahead of time which streaming content allows offline mode or not.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Yes and the typical household is going to download movies from torrent sites and use VLC.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  For Disney's kids stuff sure, but they're also pulling Marvel movies and Fox shows from Netflix
- hendersoon 7y ago
  You don't understand how low-friction piracy is these days. Only techies deal with automation and Plex. Most people just buy a "fully loaded" android box which lists thumbnails for all the latest movies and TV shows on various file storage sites. They select a thumbnail and the movie plays. Nothing local at all, all streamed.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Which again doesn’t help when so much video streaming is done on mobile devices....
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      There's plenty of streaming sites, and since web browsers work so well on mobile devices nowadays...
      - scarface74 7y ago
        See my previous comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005204
    - Fabricio20 7y ago
      Ever heard of Kodi? That's a set-top box OS but that also is an Android App.. Then watch some youtube videos on how to install the magic box addons and you have access to millions of movies for streaming. As hendersoon noted, nowadays, piracy is extremely low-friction.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Two problems -- middle class households in the US are overwhelmingly iOS -- not Android and that still doesn't solve the problem of mobile and having to depend on cellular connectivity to stream. Disney+ and Netflix allow you to download shows.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  Except the adults of families today were the kids who grew up with Napster, Limewire, and TPB so piracy has a sentimental feel to it like pulling a Nintendo out of your mom's basement.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I used Napster when it first came out, I was already 26. But as soon as the iTunes music store came out for Windows, I stopped using Napster and Kazaa. They were no longer worth the hassle. I didn’t buy an iPod until around 2005. I just made CDs. It’s the same with video now. If I plan ahead, I will still pick up movies that fall off the back of a truck and put them on my Plex server, but often, we don’t even bother. We just rent from Amazon Prime or iTunes. That’s even considering that I can just go to http://remote.vuze.com http://remote.vuze.com from anywhere on my phone and start a download on my home server.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      I have actually started buying movie codes off those dodgy looking sites Disney hates. You can usually own a movie for the cost of a rental from Amazon, Google or iTunes. I have never had a failure but I once had an issue with a purchase porting to Movies Anywhere from Google Play. Google was beyond useless in helping me out, I actually spoke with someone on the phone and it was as if they had never even seen the Play Store before. I emailed the seller about it and got an immediate email response with a couple suggestions to try before refund, the first suggestion worked.
- viraptor 7y ago
  That sounds terribly complicated. You know you can google "watch ... online free" and get a streamable version in the first two pages of results, right?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    And I just did that for Avengers on my iPad. The first result takes me to: - 5Movies4Free -- which then redirects me - mobilevpn.download -- and then when I click on "Install and Register Now". It redirects me to -"app.appsflyer.com" which then - redirects me to the app store - and then it just hangs Is that really the user experience that people want as opposed to just paying $8 a month and they can stream movies to 4 devices, download on mobile so they don't have to worry about poor connectivity and they can stream to almost any device? Not to mention your solution not only requires them to wade through shady sites, but they also would have to have a computer connected to their TV. In the US, Apple has close to half the mobile phone market and a much larger share of the market of middle and upper income households. Do you think that people who are willing to pay Apple prices for hardware will even blink at signing up for Disney+ and Netflix instead of going through all of these contortions? Edit: I forgot to mention that every major cellular carrier and MetroPCS (a sub brand of T-mobile) is bundling at least one streaming option as part of their family plan - except for Verizon. Edit 2: I would have never gone through the entire process on my computer, too much of a risk of drive by downloads. I knew that it probably wouldn't do too much damage on iOS.
    - jeromegv 7y ago
      Agree with you. The only consistent experience for me is BitTorrent. But trying to google watching a movie for free? Does someone actually do that? It's always hundreds of popup, fake links, fake ads, and can never really get to the actual content.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Bit Torrent “consistent”? Having to worry about the quality of rips, whether there is a complete seed, titled correctly, has the right language, hard coded subtitles in another language, etc? This is somehow more convenient than just paying $8 a month? Even then, I would still need to pay for a VPN and no VPN provider provides the bandwidth to keep up with my gigabit internet.
- tbyehl 7y ago
  > Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server But they probably have a friend who has a friend who put in the effort and is willing to share.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I like to quote John Siracusa when people complain about my Plex Server. "Do not expect five 9's from my Plex Server" (https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-not-expect-five-nines-from-my-plex https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-n...) And you still have the abysmal state of upload bandwidth in the US and what are the chances that they will have all of the Disney movies?
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      So? Not everyone in the US is starved for upstream. Not everyone is going to lose their mind if their friend's Plex doesn't have Five 9s availability -- and let's be real, with all the things that can and do go wrong between a user and a service on the Internet, Three 9s is optimistic for anything. And whose subscription service has Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Saved by the Bell? Countless other shows and movies that aren't available with any of them? Disney movies? Add a Trakt list to Radarr, done.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        I have gigabit up and down via AT&T, most Americans get their internet via their cable company - cable companies always have crappy upload bandwidth around 30Mbps. People want a reliable service and will pay for it. I have no idea why this concept is forum. Hulu and Netflix publish their numbers every quarter and about 60% of households have Amazon Prime Video (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-percent-of-us-households-rbc-150743767.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-perce...) 76% percent of households use Netflix (https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-have-netflix-than-pay-tv-study-says/ https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-hav...) It’s also estimated that 40% of households will get Disney+ by 2022 (https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-to-get-disney-according-to-ubs https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-...) It doesn’t take too much to understand that enough of the American public values convenience over price to make paying for a service over the hassle of piracy worthwhile.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Why does everything have to be "streamed" these days? Hard drives are cheap. Just have a file and playback locally or on your LAN. No special set up of some server, your router, etc. Given the $/GB curve throughout the years you'll likely never run out of space. Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    So where are these files going to come from? Buying them from some place like iTunes or Amazon Prime Video - which is more expensive? Going through the trouble of finding a good rip on a torrent site? Ripping them themselves? Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home? Asking this question is close to the old Slashdot meme “I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years, do people still watch TV?” Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      > So where are these files going to come from? I’ve settled on buying physical media and ripping. The physical media serves as your backup in case of HD failure. > Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade. I suppose there are people out there who want to watch a full length movie on their 5 inch phone on a bus, but is that really a mainstream use case? I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though! EDIT (rather than replying because apparently HN doesn’t let you post more than 5 replies a day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Your points are taken and I guess I’m just out of touch! :-)
      - scarface74 7y ago
        I’ve settled on buying physical media and ripping. The physical media serves as your backup in case of HD failure. Do you think most people are going to do that? I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though! Yes, you are an old out of touch guy -- no offense the 74 in my name is the year I was born. But kids especially watch a lot of movies on mobile. Most middle class adults prefer convenience over cheap and a combination of Disney+, Apple Arcade, and a $329 10.2 inch iPad in a ruggedized case or hand me down phone is a great babysitting device.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  I suggest you step outside of your circle. When I did, I found that many lower and middle class parents were using pirating setups that I didn't even know existed. For example, I learned about PopcornTime from a single parent who ran it on a laptop connected to their TV. The guy is bus dispatcher. When I need a recommendation for a streaming site or tracker, I ask my old neighbor who works as a lab tech. I've found that I'm generally ignorant of such things because everyone in my IT circle just pays for streaming services.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Well, which should I give more weight to -- your anecdotal experience or the published number of subscribers for Netflix, Hulu, etc?
    - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
      They overlap and aren't mutually exclusive.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        One is better to build a business off of.
        fucking_tragedy 7y ago
        That's fine, someone else will find a way to profit from the situation you won't consider.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Good luck with that with all of the content being tied up by the studios. Ask all of the money losing Android OEMs about how profitable it is in a commodity market trying to serve people who aren’t willing/able to spend money.
- camel_Snake 7y ago
  There are VPS out there geared towards Plex/Torrenting. Mine costs ~$15 a month and came with all the bells and whistles installed, though I did some tweaking because I enjoy it. No need to worry about your home network speed or configuring your router, it's about the price of 1 or 2 subscription services, and I get to curate my collection of TV shows I watch so I just log in and see which new ones are available. I suppose the setup could be onerous of you find technology intimidating, but once it's working it's an absolute breeze to use. I do agree, however, that Disney's target audience is the 'I need a faux baby-sitter' type.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I’m speaking in general. I personally have gigabit up/down, no data caps, eight wired gigabit Ethernet connections throughout the house, 3 Roku TVs, a Roku stick 2 AppleTV 4Ks and my son has an Xbox 360 and PS4 with a wired gigabit connection on his room and a gigabit switch. Yes that’s a grand total of 6 TVs. I have a Plex server setup. But I know none of this is normal.
hunta2097 7y ago
I think there is a model for rotating streaming provider. You can easily watch a year's worth of a provider's [good] content in 3 months. Just change provider every 3 months to a different one, then binge it all. Maybe a service that automatically deactivates your account at the best point in the billing-cycle? If you could do it without too much overlap you could actually do it on a monthly basis: Jan - Netflix Feb - Disney+ . .
- cptskippy 7y ago
  I look forward to Netflix et al removing the account deactivate button from our profile pages in favor of a phone number that calls into an IVR Labyrinth.
  - lucasverra 7y ago
    simpler method trick 1) Create virtual card 2) Switch payment method to new card 3) Delete virtual card 4) Cha ching !
    - Spare_account 7y ago
      If the contract states that you are responsible for payments until you cancel the contract, then the failed payments would (could?) simply result in your debt being sent to a collection agency. Defaulting on a payment isn't always a good way to end a contract.
      - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        You pay for a month and then receive service. In order for that to work they would have to keep providing service to users who's credit card rejected the payment. Then the model simply shifts: 1. Get credit card numbers illegally 2. Create Netflix accounts with those credit cards 3. Sell those accounts on EBay, even after the user reports the card as stolen it will continue to work.
    - Snoddas 7y ago
      In Sweden at least "non payment" is not a valid way to cancel a service. You could end up with late fees and debt-collectors after you instead.
mc32 7y ago
I agree. There is definitely a market for a streaming bundling service where you pay for a bundle and get subscribed to multiple services for some monthly fee which would be at a great discount to subscribing separately to each service.
- chii 7y ago
  the real question is if it's possible to make the bundle popular without having to discount!
  - mc32 7y ago
    I think the question boils down to the gym membership oversubscription model. People can’t consume (serially) all they subscribe to, but on average might consume X%, Y% & Z% of different streams but the sum is less than 100% of all the streaming services added together.
    - chii 7y ago
      i would assume the price of the streaming services already take this into account, but i could be wrong of course.
- adrianN 7y ago
  You could call it "TV over Wires" or something like that.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Yeah, then comes the inevitable attempt at squeezing more money from people through aggressive market segmentation, and we're back to square one, except now you can reorder programming in time without using a VCR.
- imtringued 7y ago
  I don't think Netflix and Disney will be too happy to hear that one customer is watching 100000 videos per day.
eyegor 7y ago
This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major service but the new era of fragmentation has drastically expanded it. We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Then we have scripts scraping the top x movies/shows from torrent sites once a week and a little web ui for adding individual magnet links or uploading files directly. It's so much easier to find things when they aren't changing availability every 2 months (netflix et al).
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  This makes me wonder if there's a luxury service somewhere providing the kind of access people want at an expensive, but reasonable price. So I don't have to go about building and maintaining a public resource.
  - jowsie 7y ago
    r/plexshares on reddit is a sort of open secret.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - missosoup 7y ago
      Delete this.
      - switch007 7y ago
        Oh Come on, it’s the second result on google for “Plex reddit”.
        fragmede 7y ago
        Sure, but unless you use Reddit on a regular basis, why would you even consider adding "reddit" to the search query? To be fair, just searching for "plex" does return Reddit results, though not on the first page (for me anyway, Google personalizes search results). It's no longer the Wild West of Internet, and it turns out information doesn't want to be free, it wants to live in invite-only areas who's members are vetted before invitation. DMCA take-downs can't be sent if the material can't be found.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Happened in my circle too. But most are spontaneous consumers. They don't plan ahead if they might watch a show at some point. They like to watch a movie or series from time to time, but I don't think anyone would put in effort for a "streaming service vcr". You would need to know about shows before watching them. Still, might work for some, but you would also get back to a point where a lack of accessibility increases piracy.
8ytecoder 7y ago
I think there’s also a major glut in TV shows right now. I’m not considering subscribing to anything new or pirating either. Just watching what’s available already in my existing ones. Another thing I’m planning on doing for movies is rotating subscriptions. Use Apple TV channels to subscribe to a different one every month or so and watch the movies that’s there
ssully 7y ago
In my family it basically led to everyone subscribing to the services that interests them the most and sharing accounts. I subscribe to Youtube TV, Netflix and sometimes Shudder. I use HBO and Hulu from my family members.
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
I agree with you here, to a degree. It seems the model of “one place” for all movies would be (and has been) a huge boon for viewers. But eventually I think that “one source” would become monopolistic, and we would see consumer abuse and degraded service. If you doubt it, Who would of thought anyone would abuse their monopoly on search? Or social? Or online retail? I guess I don’t know the best long term solution....
- pedrogpimenta 7y ago
  We could have "all the content" on several different platforms. It's like going to different supermarkets, they'll have the same products. Still, you might prefer one or the other for any other reason. Instead, we're going 100% on the other direction...
- lostgame 7y ago
  No - we had this in the past - it was a thing called 'television'. What we need is a universal platform for all of these streaming services, one app that streams Netflix, Hulu, et cetera - and, ideally - the ability to 'rent' movies or shows from the services without having to pay for a whole month.
doctorpangloss 7y ago
> People who had cut the cord... As long as you don't care about the zeitgeist... That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. People on Hacker News find IT stimulating, so their experience is basically moot. It's like trying to predict trends based on a nerd's hot take of the iPod. It has always been about enforcement. Seen in this lens, the hassle of pirating movies is itself a form of enforcement of copyright protections, even if the IT is not a legal instrument. Enforcement has definitely weakened. Why though? It wasn't limited to bad PR, although again the Hacker News crowd is wildly incomparable to the population at large when it comes to issues like this. What has changed is that TV makers are also now Internet providers. They are recouping the costs of piracy by raising your Internet prices. They don't make content you consume in the rest of the world, so naturally in the rest of the world fast Internet is dirt cheap. Calling this a consequence of consolidation is accurate! It's just not about consolidation among ISPs, but between producers and ISPs. And on top of that, all the people who held onto the cord were subsidizing your television. Now that they finally cut the cord, who's going to pay for it?
- pessimizer 7y ago
  > That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. I don't know anything about Plex, but torrenting is pretty effortless compared to figuring out which streaming service what you want to watch is on, figuring out how to get that, evaluating other content it has trying to justify the price, figuring out how to get it to your tv, and figuring out how to use it. The only thing I've seen that confuses people about torrenting is having to open a port. I think the thing that limits torrenting is the ISP emails, not any of this "nobody cares about your nerd stuff" know-nothing pseudo folk wisdom. People figure it out in five minutes, it looks too easy so it feels criminal, then they get an email from their ISP, so they retreat back to the difficult stuff out of paranoia because they vaguely remember stories about people getting in absurdly disproportionate trouble for it. For your conspiracy to be valid, I'd have to see significant evidence that internet costs have gone up in the US. Mine have gone down. Evidence that it's cheaper in other parts of the world is utterly irrelevant.
  - 7y ago
slothtrop 7y ago
> I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want. Yeah I think this is what people mean when they say they want "one service". An actual single service would mean a monopoly and extravagant prices. That being said the other streaming options are being offered up by large telecoms that dwarf Netflix in what they control. My ps4 menu already lazily sort of implements this in it's video section with a highlight menu of available shows on various platforms.
robertoandred 7y ago
Lowlifes who steal tv shows don't really need a push to keep stealing.
nradov 7y ago
The streaming services will never provide the APIs necessary for such a meta-service to operate efficiently.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I have those three services and I won't be adding any more monthly charges. Anything not on those three might as well not exist because it's not worth the risk of pirating (and my ISP blocks bittorrent anyway). So good riddance Disney, CBS, and anybody else. Your content is all dead to me.
epanchin 7y ago
I subscribe to a few services, but I travel for work and half of them don’t work abroad. Haven’t yet gone back to torrenting, but I do sympathise with those that do.
ekianjo 7y ago
> I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services The better model would be to have all video providers make streaming available thru a common standard API, and let other companies compete on front-end/store and features instead of having ever single provider re-inventing the wheel behind walled gardens over and over again.
nesadi 7y ago
Seems to me like everybody here is out of touch. It's not the 2000s anymore. Torrenting isn't the only option, or even the best option anymore. There's a crazy amount of great non-legit streaming sites where you have access to probably every movie or series you'd ever want to watch. No need to subscribe to 5 different services for 50€, I can go to one site and watch everything for free in a convenient, simple way. Everybody I know does it, especially now that Netflix is a husk of what it used to be content-wise and how terrible it's become usability-wise.
on_and_off 7y ago
It has already happened to me as well. Look, I want a convenient way to watch movies. I would even be ready to pay more than I do right now to Netflix to have a library of ALL the movies I want to watch. 1 library, not 10, especially if they may or may not contain the movie I want to see. My honeymoon period with Netflix and co is over. - I feel that their original content has dried out : there is even more of it, but it rarely interest me these days and I feel like the quality has dropped in favor of quantity. - Let's say I want to watch Blade Runner. I want the "final cut" (IMO the best version, it is the director's cut, unlike the "director's cut" which isn't one in this case). Well, I have just checked, this movie is not on Netflix. If it was, I would not have the choice of the cut. I would not be able to e.g. listen to the team commentary either. That's the first movie that sprung to my mind, but that's a good example of my experience with Netflix. A rolling library of content like what Netflix and co have is not what I want. At all. I want an ever growing one. I like to be able to get my content "legitimely" (quotes because if you watch old movies, chances are you are not paying the artists but the mega corporation who bought the rights to it but that's OT), and I am not looking for solutions to "cheat the system". However, right now torrenting sites are becoming again the most efficient (and in some cases only) solution to access the content I would like to watch.
- josephdviviano 7y ago
  This is why my local video store is still the better option.
  - uxp100 7y ago
    It has far more titles than US netflix, at least. IDK what the size of the streaming "rental" catalogs are though.
- auggierose 7y ago
  They have Bladerunner 2049 though ;-)
  - mey 7y ago
    But not in my region (US).
not_a_cop75 7y ago
We have a quality inversion at the moment. The amateurs on Youtube and other services are often 1000X better than the "original" (is it really original?) series by Netflix. Media companies are churning out pure shit and we, the public are supposed to open our mouths like babies ready to take the next "airplane" full.
- simlevesque 7y ago
  what does google have to do with that ?
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    Well obviously, none of this stuff is Netflix hosted.
UncleMeat 7y ago
We used to have that. It was called cable. And for years people said "ugh why do I need to pay for espn why can't I just subscribe to the parts I want". And now we are closer to that world and everybody is saying "ugh why do I need to subscribe to different services why can't I just pay more for a service with everything".
- thfuran 7y ago
  Cable was/is extremely dissimilar to an on-demand streaming service, regardless of selection.
enos_feedler 7y ago
I agree with the product opportunity around smart subscription management but feel it will come from the big players who are already in the space of managing tv package subs (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc)
MrMember 7y ago
Between the service fragmenting, hostile UX, and price increases I had no issue going back to piracy. I don't have a problem paying for content, but when it's significantly easier and more user friendly to just download what I want, and I can watch it on any device I want, that's what I'm going to do. I used to pirate music because that was the easiest and most straight forward way to get what I wanted. Now I buy it from Amazon because with one click I can pay for it and get a direct download link to the DRM-free mp3s.
LanceH 7y ago
If someone asks for payment and I don't want to watch it enough to pay them, I don't watch it. What this has driven me to do instead is to rotate subscription services and binge seasons in a month or less. So HBO is now a 1-2 month a year subscription. Showtime, Starz, etc... one month each.
js2 7y ago
I have Netflix and Prime, and use iTunes for movie rentals, but I have no qualms about backfilling with Plex for TV shows and for movies not available via iTunes. Especially for shows that originally were available to me OTA or that were broadcast on a service that I had subscription to at the time they were broadcast. I'm just time shifting something I could have recorded at the time, right?
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
I pirate based on principal. Most of these companies are actively trying to fuck me over as a user as much as corporately possible. I don't want to give them money. I can't help encourage this user hostile behavior.
zeruch 7y ago
"I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want." Basically a premium Chromecast/Roku/etc service would help seal that up I suspect......but I suspect the licensing wars are only starting to ramp up.

by sbarre 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

“Your circle” unless it includes families with small kids, isn’t Disney’s primary audience. Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a month to just have the convenience of Disney+ to be a glorified babysitter. In 2003, people said that the iTunes music store was going to be a disaster. Who would pay to download music when they could get it for free. That worked out pretty well.

coldtea 7y ago
>Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a month to just have the convenience of Disney+ to be a glorified babysitter. Depending on the country, you'd be surprised. I'm not sure why Disney has the hold it has in the US, but in most of Europe I know it's nothing special (to the point of being a "must have" brand). Kids can just sit in front of regular kids TV channels. And normal middle class families can and do pirate all the time...
- cptskippy 7y ago
  Sadly Disney is a lifestyle choice for a lot of people and the passion they have for the brand can be downright cultish and creepy at times. Groups like hardcore Disney fans, R. Kelly fans, and Evangelical Christians all share a very similar devotion and loyalty to their idols.
  - myself248 7y ago
    This week, in "Speculative Mergers and Acquisitions Horror Theatre"...
  - beardedwizard 7y ago
    Tell me more about how R. Kelly and Disney fans are similar. Share your point by point analysis and include examples. Maybe you would like to bring Taylor Swift into the discussion? Your comment is a poorly disguised insult.
    - 0-_-0 7y ago
      I can tell you really like R. Kelly or Disney but I can' tell which.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      It's unclear which you ascribe to but it's curious that you don't take offense to either being compared to Evangelicals. In either case, they're both almost a Cult of personality. The fans are so adorant of their object that they often overlook glaringly evil deeds. At the same time, the level of manipulation exhibited and the devotion demanded by the personality is extreme to the point that outsiders see it as absurd. Idk, maybe it's just me but I find fanaticism to be very off putting in general. When the idol asks fans to make sacrifices to stay it in their favor, that's when it crosses a line into creepy. Disney walks a fine line where it expertly cultivates that culture while simultaneously pretending it doesn't exist and remaining open and accessible to everyone.
      - reroute1 7y ago
gldalmaso 7y ago
Pirating shows and putting them on an external drive that you plug on any TV and can take with you on trips works fine and most normal middle class people can manage it though.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Any TV except the ones in most hotel rooms that lock down the HDMI input and the ones that don’t exist in most cars. Then you have the issue of the kids fighting over what to watch and wanting to watch video on their phones and tablets.
  - CoolGuySteve 7y ago
    I use VLC on iOS to copy movies and shows to my iPad from a Windows share. Works perfectly fine. In some ways it's better than Netflix/Amazon offline mode since I know my files will always work in VLC whereas I don't know ahead of time which streaming content allows offline mode or not.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Yes and the typical household is going to download movies from torrent sites and use VLC.
kalleboo 7y ago
For Disney's kids stuff sure, but they're also pulling Marvel movies and Fox shows from Netflix
hendersoon 7y ago
You don't understand how low-friction piracy is these days. Only techies deal with automation and Plex. Most people just buy a "fully loaded" android box which lists thumbnails for all the latest movies and TV shows on various file storage sites. They select a thumbnail and the movie plays. Nothing local at all, all streamed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scarface74 7y ago
  Which again doesn’t help when so much video streaming is done on mobile devices....
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    There's plenty of streaming sites, and since web browsers work so well on mobile devices nowadays...
    - scarface74 7y ago
      See my previous comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005204
  - Fabricio20 7y ago
    Ever heard of Kodi? That's a set-top box OS but that also is an Android App.. Then watch some youtube videos on how to install the magic box addons and you have access to millions of movies for streaming. As hendersoon noted, nowadays, piracy is extremely low-friction.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Two problems -- middle class households in the US are overwhelmingly iOS -- not Android and that still doesn't solve the problem of mobile and having to depend on cellular connectivity to stream. Disney+ and Netflix allow you to download shows.
cptskippy 7y ago
Except the adults of families today were the kids who grew up with Napster, Limewire, and TPB so piracy has a sentimental feel to it like pulling a Nintendo out of your mom's basement.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I used Napster when it first came out, I was already 26. But as soon as the iTunes music store came out for Windows, I stopped using Napster and Kazaa. They were no longer worth the hassle. I didn’t buy an iPod until around 2005. I just made CDs. It’s the same with video now. If I plan ahead, I will still pick up movies that fall off the back of a truck and put them on my Plex server, but often, we don’t even bother. We just rent from Amazon Prime or iTunes. That’s even considering that I can just go to http://remote.vuze.com http://remote.vuze.com from anywhere on my phone and start a download on my home server.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    I have actually started buying movie codes off those dodgy looking sites Disney hates. You can usually own a movie for the cost of a rental from Amazon, Google or iTunes. I have never had a failure but I once had an issue with a purchase porting to Movies Anywhere from Google Play. Google was beyond useless in helping me out, I actually spoke with someone on the phone and it was as if they had never even seen the Play Store before. I emailed the seller about it and got an immediate email response with a couple suggestions to try before refund, the first suggestion worked.
viraptor 7y ago
That sounds terribly complicated. You know you can google "watch ... online free" and get a streamable version in the first two pages of results, right?
- scarface74 7y ago
  And I just did that for Avengers on my iPad. The first result takes me to: - 5Movies4Free -- which then redirects me - mobilevpn.download -- and then when I click on "Install and Register Now". It redirects me to -"app.appsflyer.com" which then - redirects me to the app store - and then it just hangs Is that really the user experience that people want as opposed to just paying $8 a month and they can stream movies to 4 devices, download on mobile so they don't have to worry about poor connectivity and they can stream to almost any device? Not to mention your solution not only requires them to wade through shady sites, but they also would have to have a computer connected to their TV. In the US, Apple has close to half the mobile phone market and a much larger share of the market of middle and upper income households. Do you think that people who are willing to pay Apple prices for hardware will even blink at signing up for Disney+ and Netflix instead of going through all of these contortions? Edit: I forgot to mention that every major cellular carrier and MetroPCS (a sub brand of T-mobile) is bundling at least one streaming option as part of their family plan - except for Verizon. Edit 2: I would have never gone through the entire process on my computer, too much of a risk of drive by downloads. I knew that it probably wouldn't do too much damage on iOS.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    Agree with you. The only consistent experience for me is BitTorrent. But trying to google watching a movie for free? Does someone actually do that? It's always hundreds of popup, fake links, fake ads, and can never really get to the actual content.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Bit Torrent “consistent”? Having to worry about the quality of rips, whether there is a complete seed, titled correctly, has the right language, hard coded subtitles in another language, etc? This is somehow more convenient than just paying $8 a month? Even then, I would still need to pay for a VPN and no VPN provider provides the bandwidth to keep up with my gigabit internet.
tbyehl 7y ago
> Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server But they probably have a friend who has a friend who put in the effort and is willing to share.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I like to quote John Siracusa when people complain about my Plex Server. "Do not expect five 9's from my Plex Server" (https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-not-expect-five-nines-from-my-plex https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-n...) And you still have the abysmal state of upload bandwidth in the US and what are the chances that they will have all of the Disney movies?
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    So? Not everyone in the US is starved for upstream. Not everyone is going to lose their mind if their friend's Plex doesn't have Five 9s availability -- and let's be real, with all the things that can and do go wrong between a user and a service on the Internet, Three 9s is optimistic for anything. And whose subscription service has Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Saved by the Bell? Countless other shows and movies that aren't available with any of them? Disney movies? Add a Trakt list to Radarr, done.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      I have gigabit up and down via AT&T, most Americans get their internet via their cable company - cable companies always have crappy upload bandwidth around 30Mbps. People want a reliable service and will pay for it. I have no idea why this concept is forum. Hulu and Netflix publish their numbers every quarter and about 60% of households have Amazon Prime Video (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-percent-of-us-households-rbc-150743767.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-perce...) 76% percent of households use Netflix (https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-have-netflix-than-pay-tv-study-says/ https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-hav...) It’s also estimated that 40% of households will get Disney+ by 2022 (https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-to-get-disney-according-to-ubs https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-...) It doesn’t take too much to understand that enough of the American public values convenience over price to make paying for a service over the hassle of piracy worthwhile.
ryandrake 7y ago
Why does everything have to be "streamed" these days? Hard drives are cheap. Just have a file and playback locally or on your LAN. No special set up of some server, your router, etc. Given the $/GB curve throughout the years you'll likely never run out of space. Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home?
- scarface74 7y ago
  So where are these files going to come from? Buying them from some place like iTunes or Amazon Prime Video - which is more expensive? Going through the trouble of finding a good rip on a torrent site? Ripping them themselves? Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home? Asking this question is close to the old Slashdot meme “I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years, do people still watch TV?” Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    > So where are these files going to come from? I’ve settled on buying physical media and ripping. The physical media serves as your backup in case of HD failure. > Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade. I suppose there are people out there who want to watch a full length movie on their 5 inch phone on a bus, but is that really a mainstream use case? I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though! EDIT (rather than replying because apparently HN doesn’t let you post more than 5 replies a day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Your points are taken and I guess I’m just out of touch! :-)
    - scarface74 7y ago
      I’ve settled on buying physical media and ripping. The physical media serves as your backup in case of HD failure. Do you think most people are going to do that? I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though! Yes, you are an old out of touch guy -- no offense the 74 in my name is the year I was born. But kids especially watch a lot of movies on mobile. Most middle class adults prefer convenience over cheap and a combination of Disney+, Apple Arcade, and a $329 10.2 inch iPad in a ruggedized case or hand me down phone is a great babysitting device.
fucking_tragedy 7y ago
I suggest you step outside of your circle. When I did, I found that many lower and middle class parents were using pirating setups that I didn't even know existed. For example, I learned about PopcornTime from a single parent who ran it on a laptop connected to their TV. The guy is bus dispatcher. When I need a recommendation for a streaming site or tracker, I ask my old neighbor who works as a lab tech. I've found that I'm generally ignorant of such things because everyone in my IT circle just pays for streaming services.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Well, which should I give more weight to -- your anecdotal experience or the published number of subscribers for Netflix, Hulu, etc?
  - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
    They overlap and aren't mutually exclusive.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      One is better to build a business off of.
      - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
        That's fine, someone else will find a way to profit from the situation you won't consider.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Good luck with that with all of the content being tied up by the studios. Ask all of the money losing Android OEMs about how profitable it is in a commodity market trying to serve people who aren’t willing/able to spend money.
camel_Snake 7y ago
There are VPS out there geared towards Plex/Torrenting. Mine costs ~$15 a month and came with all the bells and whistles installed, though I did some tweaking because I enjoy it. No need to worry about your home network speed or configuring your router, it's about the price of 1 or 2 subscription services, and I get to curate my collection of TV shows I watch so I just log in and see which new ones are available. I suppose the setup could be onerous of you find technology intimidating, but once it's working it's an absolute breeze to use. I do agree, however, that Disney's target audience is the 'I need a faux baby-sitter' type.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I’m speaking in general. I personally have gigabit up/down, no data caps, eight wired gigabit Ethernet connections throughout the house, 3 Roku TVs, a Roku stick 2 AppleTV 4Ks and my son has an Xbox 360 and PS4 with a wired gigabit connection on his room and a gigabit switch. Yes that’s a grand total of 6 TVs. I have a Plex server setup. But I know none of this is normal.

hunta2097 7y ago

I think there is a model for rotating streaming provider. You can easily watch a year's worth of a provider's [good] content in 3 months. Just change provider every 3 months to a different one, then binge it all. Maybe a service that automatically deactivates your account at the best point in the billing-cycle? If you could do it without too much overlap you could actually do it on a monthly basis: Jan - Netflix Feb - Disney+ . .

cptskippy 7y ago
I look forward to Netflix et al removing the account deactivate button from our profile pages in favor of a phone number that calls into an IVR Labyrinth.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  simpler method trick 1) Create virtual card 2) Switch payment method to new card 3) Delete virtual card 4) Cha ching !
  - Spare_account 7y ago
    If the contract states that you are responsible for payments until you cancel the contract, then the failed payments would (could?) simply result in your debt being sent to a collection agency. Defaulting on a payment isn't always a good way to end a contract.
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      You pay for a month and then receive service. In order for that to work they would have to keep providing service to users who's credit card rejected the payment. Then the model simply shifts: 1. Get credit card numbers illegally 2. Create Netflix accounts with those credit cards 3. Sell those accounts on EBay, even after the user reports the card as stolen it will continue to work.
  - Snoddas 7y ago
    In Sweden at least "non payment" is not a valid way to cancel a service. You could end up with late fees and debt-collectors after you instead.

mc32 7y ago

I agree. There is definitely a market for a streaming bundling service where you pay for a bundle and get subscribed to multiple services for some monthly fee which would be at a great discount to subscribing separately to each service.

chii 7y ago
the real question is if it's possible to make the bundle popular without having to discount!
- mc32 7y ago
  I think the question boils down to the gym membership oversubscription model. People can’t consume (serially) all they subscribe to, but on average might consume X%, Y% & Z% of different streams but the sum is less than 100% of all the streaming services added together.
  - chii 7y ago
    i would assume the price of the streaming services already take this into account, but i could be wrong of course.
adrianN 7y ago
You could call it "TV over Wires" or something like that.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Yeah, then comes the inevitable attempt at squeezing more money from people through aggressive market segmentation, and we're back to square one, except now you can reorder programming in time without using a VCR.
imtringued 7y ago
I don't think Netflix and Disney will be too happy to hear that one customer is watching 100000 videos per day.

eyegor 7y ago

This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major service but the new era of fragmentation has drastically expanded it. We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Then we have scripts scraping the top x movies/shows from torrent sites once a week and a little web ui for adding individual magnet links or uploading files directly. It's so much easier to find things when they aren't changing availability every 2 months (netflix et al).

vinceguidry 7y ago
This makes me wonder if there's a luxury service somewhere providing the kind of access people want at an expensive, but reasonable price. So I don't have to go about building and maintaining a public resource.
- jowsie 7y ago
  r/plexshares on reddit is a sort of open secret.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - missosoup 7y ago
    Delete this.
    - switch007 7y ago
      Oh Come on, it’s the second result on google for “Plex reddit”.
      - fragmede 7y ago
        Sure, but unless you use Reddit on a regular basis, why would you even consider adding "reddit" to the search query? To be fair, just searching for "plex" does return Reddit results, though not on the first page (for me anyway, Google personalizes search results). It's no longer the Wild West of Internet, and it turns out information doesn't want to be free, it wants to live in invite-only areas who's members are vetted before invitation. DMCA take-downs can't be sent if the material can't be found.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Happened in my circle too. But most are spontaneous consumers. They don't plan ahead if they might watch a show at some point. They like to watch a movie or series from time to time, but I don't think anyone would put in effort for a "streaming service vcr". You would need to know about shows before watching them. Still, might work for some, but you would also get back to a point where a lack of accessibility increases piracy.

8ytecoder 7y ago

I think there’s also a major glut in TV shows right now. I’m not considering subscribing to anything new or pirating either. Just watching what’s available already in my existing ones. Another thing I’m planning on doing for movies is rotating subscriptions. Use Apple TV channels to subscribe to a different one every month or so and watch the movies that’s there

ssully 7y ago

In my family it basically led to everyone subscribing to the services that interests them the most and sharing accounts. I subscribe to Youtube TV, Netflix and sometimes Shudder. I use HBO and Hulu from my family members.

ImprovedSilence 7y ago

I agree with you here, to a degree. It seems the model of “one place” for all movies would be (and has been) a huge boon for viewers. But eventually I think that “one source” would become monopolistic, and we would see consumer abuse and degraded service. If you doubt it, Who would of thought anyone would abuse their monopoly on search? Or social? Or online retail? I guess I don’t know the best long term solution....

pedrogpimenta 7y ago
We could have "all the content" on several different platforms. It's like going to different supermarkets, they'll have the same products. Still, you might prefer one or the other for any other reason. Instead, we're going 100% on the other direction...
lostgame 7y ago
No - we had this in the past - it was a thing called 'television'. What we need is a universal platform for all of these streaming services, one app that streams Netflix, Hulu, et cetera - and, ideally - the ability to 'rent' movies or shows from the services without having to pay for a whole month.

doctorpangloss 7y ago

> People who had cut the cord... As long as you don't care about the zeitgeist... That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. People on Hacker News find IT stimulating, so their experience is basically moot. It's like trying to predict trends based on a nerd's hot take of the iPod. It has always been about enforcement. Seen in this lens, the hassle of pirating movies is itself a form of enforcement of copyright protections, even if the IT is not a legal instrument. Enforcement has definitely weakened. Why though? It wasn't limited to bad PR, although again the Hacker News crowd is wildly incomparable to the population at large when it comes to issues like this. What has changed is that TV makers are also now Internet providers. They are recouping the costs of piracy by raising your Internet prices. They don't make content you consume in the rest of the world, so naturally in the rest of the world fast Internet is dirt cheap. Calling this a consequence of consolidation is accurate! It's just not about consolidation among ISPs, but between producers and ISPs. And on top of that, all the people who held onto the cord were subsidizing your television. Now that they finally cut the cord, who's going to pay for it?

pessimizer 7y ago
> That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. I don't know anything about Plex, but torrenting is pretty effortless compared to figuring out which streaming service what you want to watch is on, figuring out how to get that, evaluating other content it has trying to justify the price, figuring out how to get it to your tv, and figuring out how to use it. The only thing I've seen that confuses people about torrenting is having to open a port. I think the thing that limits torrenting is the ISP emails, not any of this "nobody cares about your nerd stuff" know-nothing pseudo folk wisdom. People figure it out in five minutes, it looks too easy so it feels criminal, then they get an email from their ISP, so they retreat back to the difficult stuff out of paranoia because they vaguely remember stories about people getting in absurdly disproportionate trouble for it. For your conspiracy to be valid, I'd have to see significant evidence that internet costs have gone up in the US. Mine have gone down. Evidence that it's cheaper in other parts of the world is utterly irrelevant.
- 7y ago

slothtrop 7y ago

> I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want. Yeah I think this is what people mean when they say they want "one service". An actual single service would mean a monopoly and extravagant prices. That being said the other streaming options are being offered up by large telecoms that dwarf Netflix in what they control. My ps4 menu already lazily sort of implements this in it's video section with a highlight menu of available shows on various platforms.

robertoandred 7y ago

Lowlifes who steal tv shows don't really need a push to keep stealing.

nradov 7y ago

The streaming services will never provide the APIs necessary for such a meta-service to operate efficiently.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I have those three services and I won't be adding any more monthly charges. Anything not on those three might as well not exist because it's not worth the risk of pirating (and my ISP blocks bittorrent anyway). So good riddance Disney, CBS, and anybody else. Your content is all dead to me.

epanchin 7y ago

I subscribe to a few services, but I travel for work and half of them don’t work abroad. Haven’t yet gone back to torrenting, but I do sympathise with those that do.

ekianjo 7y ago

> I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services The better model would be to have all video providers make streaming available thru a common standard API, and let other companies compete on front-end/store and features instead of having ever single provider re-inventing the wheel behind walled gardens over and over again.

nesadi 7y ago

Seems to me like everybody here is out of touch. It's not the 2000s anymore. Torrenting isn't the only option, or even the best option anymore. There's a crazy amount of great non-legit streaming sites where you have access to probably every movie or series you'd ever want to watch. No need to subscribe to 5 different services for 50€, I can go to one site and watch everything for free in a convenient, simple way. Everybody I know does it, especially now that Netflix is a husk of what it used to be content-wise and how terrible it's become usability-wise.

on_and_off 7y ago

It has already happened to me as well. Look, I want a convenient way to watch movies. I would even be ready to pay more than I do right now to Netflix to have a library of ALL the movies I want to watch. 1 library, not 10, especially if they may or may not contain the movie I want to see. My honeymoon period with Netflix and co is over. - I feel that their original content has dried out : there is even more of it, but it rarely interest me these days and I feel like the quality has dropped in favor of quantity. - Let's say I want to watch Blade Runner. I want the "final cut" (IMO the best version, it is the director's cut, unlike the "director's cut" which isn't one in this case). Well, I have just checked, this movie is not on Netflix. If it was, I would not have the choice of the cut. I would not be able to e.g. listen to the team commentary either. That's the first movie that sprung to my mind, but that's a good example of my experience with Netflix. A rolling library of content like what Netflix and co have is not what I want. At all. I want an ever growing one. I like to be able to get my content "legitimely" (quotes because if you watch old movies, chances are you are not paying the artists but the mega corporation who bought the rights to it but that's OT), and I am not looking for solutions to "cheat the system". However, right now torrenting sites are becoming again the most efficient (and in some cases only) solution to access the content I would like to watch.

josephdviviano 7y ago
This is why my local video store is still the better option.
- uxp100 7y ago
  It has far more titles than US netflix, at least. IDK what the size of the streaming "rental" catalogs are though.
auggierose 7y ago
They have Bladerunner 2049 though ;-)
- mey 7y ago
  But not in my region (US).

not_a_cop75 7y ago

We have a quality inversion at the moment. The amateurs on Youtube and other services are often 1000X better than the "original" (is it really original?) series by Netflix. Media companies are churning out pure shit and we, the public are supposed to open our mouths like babies ready to take the next "airplane" full.

simlevesque 7y ago
what does google have to do with that ?
- not_a_cop75 7y ago
  Well obviously, none of this stuff is Netflix hosted.

UncleMeat 7y ago

We used to have that. It was called cable. And for years people said "ugh why do I need to pay for espn why can't I just subscribe to the parts I want". And now we are closer to that world and everybody is saying "ugh why do I need to subscribe to different services why can't I just pay more for a service with everything".

thfuran 7y ago
Cable was/is extremely dissimilar to an on-demand streaming service, regardless of selection.

enos_feedler 7y ago

I agree with the product opportunity around smart subscription management but feel it will come from the big players who are already in the space of managing tv package subs (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc)

MrMember 7y ago

Between the service fragmenting, hostile UX, and price increases I had no issue going back to piracy. I don't have a problem paying for content, but when it's significantly easier and more user friendly to just download what I want, and I can watch it on any device I want, that's what I'm going to do. I used to pirate music because that was the easiest and most straight forward way to get what I wanted. Now I buy it from Amazon because with one click I can pay for it and get a direct download link to the DRM-free mp3s.

LanceH 7y ago

If someone asks for payment and I don't want to watch it enough to pay them, I don't watch it. What this has driven me to do instead is to rotate subscription services and binge seasons in a month or less. So HBO is now a 1-2 month a year subscription. Showtime, Starz, etc... one month each.

js2 7y ago

I have Netflix and Prime, and use iTunes for movie rentals, but I have no qualms about backfilling with Plex for TV shows and for movies not available via iTunes. Especially for shows that originally were available to me OTA or that were broadcast on a service that I had subscription to at the time they were broadcast. I'm just time shifting something I could have recorded at the time, right?

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

I pirate based on principal. Most of these companies are actively trying to fuck me over as a user as much as corporately possible. I don't want to give them money. I can't help encourage this user hostile behavior.

zeruch 7y ago

"I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want." Basically a premium Chromecast/Roku/etc service would help seal that up I suspect......but I suspect the licensing wars are only starting to ramp up.