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Streaming "choices"? It's fragmentation and rent-seeking behavior. It is simply a case of the supply not meeting the demand at a reasonable price point, when th
by toxik 7y ago
Streaming "choices"? It's fragmentation and rent-seeking behavior. It is simply a case of the supply not meeting the demand at a reasonable price point, when there is an alternative.
- scarface74 7y agoEveryone wanted to get rid of the cable bundle and have channels a la carte. Be careful what you ask for.
- fron 7y agoNo. Everyone wanted to get rid of both the cable bundle and channels. People just want on-demand access to whatever shows.
- jimcsharp 7y agoFor cheap ^ If someone finds themselves chasing whatever streaming service has The Office, maybe it's worth dropping the $300 or whatever for everything on iTunes.
- radmarshallb 7y agoiTunes regularly has sales on The Office complete series for $30. Someone who chases a single show through streaming services is not doing it right.
- lostgame 7y agoThey're still DRM'd. I can't use them in VLC.
- scarface74 7y agoAnd once again, you aren’t a potential customer. Do you really think that streaming companies are going to live an die by the people who want to use VLC?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAnd ads. Don't forget the ads.
- logfromblammo 7y agoWhat people wanted was for each channel to have its own subscription price, but all of them on the shelves of the same big-box store. With fewer ads, preferably. The choice people have now is to pay $200/month at the big box store for a pre-loaded shopping cart of channels, with maximum ads, or to pay $10/month, a dozen different times, to go all over town picking up one channel at a time from little niche stores that only sell that channel, some that come with ads, and some that don't. Multiple streaming marketplaces that all have the capability to connect all the same vendors to the marketplace customers would satisfy the consumer demand. But right now, everybody is taking their content back to put in their factory-direct exclusive content stores. In the physical goods world, someone could buy at the factory store, ship at their own expense to the common marketplace, and resell at their own risk with a markup. Consumers would pay the markup as the cost of convenience. But in the digital world, you can't necessarily resell anything, even if you bought the right to use it yourself. So we have still never received what we have repeatedly asked for. Netflix-by-shipped-disks approached it, because it could buy the disks at retail, and mail them around at its own expense, without getting any further permission. Netflix-by-download cannot, because the streaming rights are revocable, time-limited, and subject to constant haggling and renegotiation by the sellers every time the contracts expire. Fragmentation is not ordering from the a la carte menu; it's getting fries from McDonald's, a shake from Wendys, sandwich bread from Panera, meat from Arbys, lettuce from Taco Bell, tomato from Subway, and spending three hours in the car just to get your lunch. A la carte means you can order your whole lunch at one place, getting just what you want, and not getting something that you don't want means you pay less overall for your meal.
- mratzloff 7y agoYes, rent seeking by creating original content. A nefarious twist on the concept of rent seeking.
- toxik 7y agoI'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic, but yes, rent seeking is different from selling a product. In this case, the copyright holders would rather you pay for _temporary access_ to their libraries, rather than actual ownership -- a tradeoff that is (somewhat sadly) acceptable to many when it's a single, cheap subscription, no fuzz, and critically, no ads.
- mratzloff 7y agoThe definition of rent seeking is creating nothing of value. They are producing original content. You can pay more to buy the DVD or Blu-ray if you want to own the content outright.