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You can rent all of these for sub £5 on amazon (probably itunes as well). There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, ev

You can rent all of these for sub £5 on amazon (probably itunes as well). There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work.

leoedin 6y ago
Why don't the finances work? As an example: I'm paying for Netflix and Amazon prime. I'm not going to pay for more services because I don't value watching TV more than that. We buy or rent a specific movie maybe once a quarter at most. So total expenditure on TV services is around $20/mo. Almost everyone I know is in a similar situation. Some swap one of those services for something else, many are sharing subscriptions with other households. So right now most people are paying a fairly fixed amount for access to a portion of TV and film. The total money flowing in seems to be enough to support the entire industry. If a service that cost $20/month for access to everything came out, I'd definitely switch. I imagine most of my friends would as well. Then the total money flowing into the industry would be the same, but everyone would have access to all the media.
- dageshi 6y ago
  It's not enough to support the entire industry, that's the point of the article. $20 a month has never been enough, bearing in mind it's effectively replacing (in north America) cable which used to cost much more than that and those channels used to run ads as well!
- ghaff 6y ago
  I suspect a lot of people buy or rent more than you and your friends. For example, many people have either a cable TV or online streaming subscription that's another $50-100/month. HBO would be another $15 or so. And so forth. There is an argument that, at some point, there are only so many hours in the day and a Spotify for video (i.e. most content for one monthly fee) makes sense but that's probably a $100-200/month fee in the US (assuming you could get most players to cooperate). YouTube TV alone is $65/month these days.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Are normal working people really willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for some TV? Nobody watches that much TV surely? And how many have that kind of spare cash? I feel like outside of the rich, $10-15 is about all you can reasonably ask people to afford for a pure luxury like this.
    - anoraca 6y ago
      lol "According to a Nielsen report, United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more than 77 days per year)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption
      - detaro 6y ago
        I.e. a good chunk of people has the TV running in the background all the time. Another chunk is just watching whatever during the day. How much do you think those demographics value that financially?
        jacobr1 6y ago
        My intuition is that the 90s provided a good high-water mark for pre-internet entertainment spend. The average price of a cable subscription which in 1995 was $22.35/month [1] (inflation adjusted to $38 [2]) So $40/month. I'd add to that whatever the average blockbuster price was $5 * 4-weeks (quick googling didn't give me a great answer, but I found 2.18 GPB for 1995, so probably $3-5 with conversion and inflation). That makes roughly $60/month for the average American at-home tv/movie spend in the 90s. I suspect that still is the rough tolerance. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-chart-2016-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-ch... [2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
        ghaff 6y ago
Izkata 6y ago
> There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work. It is the promise we were sold on when Netflix first started online streaming: without the costs of distribution and physical media creation, it would actually be possible.
- dageshi 6y ago
  I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't think costs of distribution or physical media creation actually add up to that much in comparison to the cost of actually producing the content which pretty much only ever gets more expensive.
- ghaff 6y ago
  People think physical media has much higher costs than it does. Don't know about movies, but about $2 of a hardcover book costs are associated with printing and distribution--and that has far less infrastructure associated with the digital version. Netflix has never had a great streaming movie catalog. As a senior Netflix exec told me, "people come for the movies and they stay for the TV." So, to the degree Netflix streaming ever claimed to be about having all the films, it was always something of a bait and switch. Theoretically, a fairly good subscription video catalog plus live TV is probably possible. But as I said elsewhere, it would probably be more like > $200/month than $20. Recreating the cable bundle streaming is already pushing north of $100.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >without the costs of distribution and physical media creation, it would actually be possible. Did anyone seriously think just because you don't need to make blu-rays any more a 50 million dollar TV show or movie can just be sold for next to nothing? It's probably not even 1% of the production costs. Even weirder because I've never seen anyone think that Red Dead Redemption would coast 5 bucks if they only sold it on steam
maccard 6y ago
The lack of unified interface is my biggest gripe. I pay £12/month for Netflix, £8/month for Amazon Prime, £6/month for Disney+. Used to have to pay £8/month for NowTV to watch GoT in 720p. My Android TV has a Google Play store embedded in it for me to rent/buy in one tap. I often find myself jumping ebtween 4 different apps on my TV to figure out what content is where to watch, and occasionally end up finding out it's an iTunes exclusive. That's assuming the content is available in the UK at the time - many TV shows just aren't available on any of the UK equivalent streaming services until months later than the US (Mandolorian for example) I don't want the content for free/bargain prices. I want the content in a reasonable format, that I can play legally on my TV, phone or laptop, and that I can discover easily. Compare that experience with something like popcorntime, where a user can type in a movie name, and have it streaming in 1080p/4k/highest available quality in under 30 seconds. I want that, but paid.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Yeah, I find myself spending 10 minutes searching for something on Netflix only to realize it's on Amazon. People didn't like cable bundles. Now it's a la carte in various ways and people are realizing that it's not only not cheaper if you want "everything" but it's a fragmented mess.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    There’s many sites you can use to see where something is. Inconvenience still but only one step first.
- slac 6y ago
  Have you tried the app that is called Just Watch? I use this to find what is available where. Saves a lot of time.
  - maccard 6y ago
    No, I'd never heard of it but it looks like _exactly_ what I want. Thank you!
- 6y ago
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
From some googling, It seems like the median movie costs about $18M to make, while the average is about $70-100M and something like the avengers is around $200M. Oscar winners seem closer to median or average cost than avengers cost. For shows, it seems to be in the $0.5-10M per hour range. I'll wave my hands lazily and call a season $5-100M. If about half of US households spend $20/mo on these services, that's $16B per year. If half of that went to making movies and shows, it could make something like 500 median movies per year, 100ish average movies, or 40 avengers-caliber movies. For shows, it'd be 80-1600 seasons per year. Apparently something around about 500movies and 500 shows come out each year. I'm sure these numbers are way off, but the orders of magnitude are probably reasonable and suggest to me that $20ish/mo for everything ever is likely a little low, but not insane.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  If you include China which is nearly as big as the US, and the EU which isn't far behind and it looks credible.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever I'm surprised, thought, that there's no service that offers a lot of old movies. I get it - the Avengers movie that was just released cost a few hundred million to make, so it would make sense that it would be harder to find on a streaming service than something that came out in the 80's. What I find is the opposite, though - it's easy to find recent big hits online than it is to find, say, Bladerunner or Bill & Ted.

leoedin 6y ago

Why don't the finances work? As an example: I'm paying for Netflix and Amazon prime. I'm not going to pay for more services because I don't value watching TV more than that. We buy or rent a specific movie maybe once a quarter at most. So total expenditure on TV services is around $20/mo. Almost everyone I know is in a similar situation. Some swap one of those services for something else, many are sharing subscriptions with other households. So right now most people are paying a fairly fixed amount for access to a portion of TV and film. The total money flowing in seems to be enough to support the entire industry. If a service that cost $20/month for access to everything came out, I'd definitely switch. I imagine most of my friends would as well. Then the total money flowing into the industry would be the same, but everyone would have access to all the media.

dageshi 6y ago
It's not enough to support the entire industry, that's the point of the article. $20 a month has never been enough, bearing in mind it's effectively replacing (in north America) cable which used to cost much more than that and those channels used to run ads as well!
ghaff 6y ago
I suspect a lot of people buy or rent more than you and your friends. For example, many people have either a cable TV or online streaming subscription that's another $50-100/month. HBO would be another $15 or so. And so forth. There is an argument that, at some point, there are only so many hours in the day and a Spotify for video (i.e. most content for one monthly fee) makes sense but that's probably a $100-200/month fee in the US (assuming you could get most players to cooperate). YouTube TV alone is $65/month these days.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Are normal working people really willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for some TV? Nobody watches that much TV surely? And how many have that kind of spare cash? I feel like outside of the rich, $10-15 is about all you can reasonably ask people to afford for a pure luxury like this.
  - anoraca 6y ago
    lol "According to a Nielsen report, United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more than 77 days per year)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption
    - detaro 6y ago
      I.e. a good chunk of people has the TV running in the background all the time. Another chunk is just watching whatever during the day. How much do you think those demographics value that financially?
      - jacobr1 6y ago
        My intuition is that the 90s provided a good high-water mark for pre-internet entertainment spend. The average price of a cable subscription which in 1995 was $22.35/month [1] (inflation adjusted to $38 [2]) So $40/month. I'd add to that whatever the average blockbuster price was $5 * 4-weeks (quick googling didn't give me a great answer, but I found 2.18 GPB for 1995, so probably $3-5 with conversion and inflation). That makes roughly $60/month for the average American at-home tv/movie spend in the 90s. I suspect that still is the rough tolerance. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-chart-2016-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-ch... [2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
        ghaff 6y ago

Izkata 6y ago

> There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work. It is the promise we were sold on when Netflix first started online streaming: without the costs of distribution and physical media creation, it would actually be possible.

dageshi 6y ago
I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't think costs of distribution or physical media creation actually add up to that much in comparison to the cost of actually producing the content which pretty much only ever gets more expensive.
ghaff 6y ago
People think physical media has much higher costs than it does. Don't know about movies, but about $2 of a hardcover book costs are associated with printing and distribution--and that has far less infrastructure associated with the digital version. Netflix has never had a great streaming movie catalog. As a senior Netflix exec told me, "people come for the movies and they stay for the TV." So, to the degree Netflix streaming ever claimed to be about having all the films, it was always something of a bait and switch. Theoretically, a fairly good subscription video catalog plus live TV is probably possible. But as I said elsewhere, it would probably be more like > $200/month than $20. Recreating the cable bundle streaming is already pushing north of $100.
Barrin92 6y ago
>without the costs of distribution and physical media creation, it would actually be possible. Did anyone seriously think just because you don't need to make blu-rays any more a 50 million dollar TV show or movie can just be sold for next to nothing? It's probably not even 1% of the production costs. Even weirder because I've never seen anyone think that Red Dead Redemption would coast 5 bucks if they only sold it on steam

maccard 6y ago

The lack of unified interface is my biggest gripe. I pay £12/month for Netflix, £8/month for Amazon Prime, £6/month for Disney+. Used to have to pay £8/month for NowTV to watch GoT in 720p. My Android TV has a Google Play store embedded in it for me to rent/buy in one tap. I often find myself jumping ebtween 4 different apps on my TV to figure out what content is where to watch, and occasionally end up finding out it's an iTunes exclusive. That's assuming the content is available in the UK at the time - many TV shows just aren't available on any of the UK equivalent streaming services until months later than the US (Mandolorian for example) I don't want the content for free/bargain prices. I want the content in a reasonable format, that I can play legally on my TV, phone or laptop, and that I can discover easily. Compare that experience with something like popcorntime, where a user can type in a movie name, and have it streaming in 1080p/4k/highest available quality in under 30 seconds. I want that, but paid.

ghaff 6y ago
Yeah, I find myself spending 10 minutes searching for something on Netflix only to realize it's on Amazon. People didn't like cable bundles. Now it's a la carte in various ways and people are realizing that it's not only not cheaper if you want "everything" but it's a fragmented mess.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  There’s many sites you can use to see where something is. Inconvenience still but only one step first.
slac 6y ago
Have you tried the app that is called Just Watch? I use this to find what is available where. Saves a lot of time.
- maccard 6y ago
  No, I'd never heard of it but it looks like _exactly_ what I want. Thank you!
6y ago

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

From some googling, It seems like the median movie costs about $18M to make, while the average is about $70-100M and something like the avengers is around $200M. Oscar winners seem closer to median or average cost than avengers cost. For shows, it seems to be in the $0.5-10M per hour range. I'll wave my hands lazily and call a season $5-100M. If about half of US households spend $20/mo on these services, that's $16B per year. If half of that went to making movies and shows, it could make something like 500 median movies per year, 100ish average movies, or 40 avengers-caliber movies. For shows, it'd be 80-1600 seasons per year. Apparently something around about 500movies and 500 shows come out each year. I'm sure these numbers are way off, but the orders of magnitude are probably reasonable and suggest to me that $20ish/mo for everything ever is likely a little low, but not insane.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
If you include China which is nearly as big as the US, and the EU which isn't far behind and it looks credible.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever I'm surprised, thought, that there's no service that offers a lot of old movies. I get it - the Avengers movie that was just released cost a few hundred million to make, so it would make sense that it would be harder to find on a streaming service than something that came out in the 80's. What I find is the opposite, though - it's easy to find recent big hits online than it is to find, say, Bladerunner or Bill & Ted.