7 ms·

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded

• johnchristopher 5y ago
  > Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country. My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies that are really mediocre. Now I see there's a lot of content on Netflix but I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe.
  • hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Netflix is terrible if you have good taste in movies. I'm with you on the old black/white movies. I actually think Amazon got a great deal buying MGM. If TCM was available, Nefflix should look into buying it. They have a great library of old movies.
    • alborzb 5y ago
      TCM was available (alongside all of Warner Bros. Media, Turner Media and DC Comics)... It's getting absorbed by Discovery [1], I imagine that a competitive bidding process must have taken place, presumably Netflix didn't see the benefits. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/john-malone-sees-warnermedia-discovery-as-no-3-streamer-behind-netflix-disney.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/john-malone-sees-warnermedia...
    • jonny_eh 5y ago
      TCM content is mostly available on HBO Max.
  • minusSeven 5y ago
    Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it. Its a bad strategy because users waste time watching content they would rather not watch. HBO imo is the only platform that focus on quality rather than the number of shows.
    • quickthrowman 5y ago
      Yep, HBO is the only streaming platform with consistent quality. It’s also the only one I pay for. There are approximately 0 Netflix originals that are on par with the ‘good’ HBO series, same for amzn and Hulu.
    • matwood 5y ago
      I would argue Apple is trying to follow the HBO formula. They are not quite there yet, but the Apple shows I have watched have all been good, with Ted Lasso being great.
    • johnchristopher 5y ago
      > Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it. I read it was more than that. Shows have to bring in more customers, keeping them hooked to a show (or the platform) is not enough now. They will more and more invest only in content that bring in more customers, not just keeping the ones they already have. I read that's why the OA got cancelled: it wouldn't bring in more views and the show would have been more expensive.
  • geodel 5y ago
    > I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe. This is what machine learning, pattern recognition will get us. I watched one show in Amazon prime. One shocking thing I noted besides repetitive plots every few episodes, is that one character say something and after few minutes or next episode another character spoke exactly same sentence in different situation. And it happened so many times I thought I knew what is about to be said.
    • carschno 5y ago
      I think the machine learning part in that is massively exaggerated, perhaps to avoid personal responsibility. Detecting the patterns in commercially successful movies hardly requires complex pattern recognition algorithms. I would claim that most movies made in the past decades were copying ideas that had turned out to be successful earlier. Maybe machine learning can add some tiny extra on top of the recipe, but I think it's still the producers who are to blame for the lack of creativity.
      • fakedang 5y ago
        Not just the producers but the overall strategy. Right now, these media companies are competing on quantity because it's a numbers game and a marketing gimmick to showcase your "vast" collection, however mediocre.
      • geodel 5y ago
        > I think the machine learning part in that is massively exaggerated, You are right of course. I said that in half-jest. It is like at work where every product/project is working on something next generation. Irritates the hell out of me. So in morning meetings I so often ask "Are we fixing it now or it will be part of our next gen product?"
  • htrp 5y ago
    The ML lays out the broad strokes of what it thinks will perform thematically which coincidentally is what uncreative producers have been doing for years. (see Avatar is Dances with Wolves with Blue Aliens)
  • throwitaway1235 5y ago
    The Criterion collection is a good choice for those with a more discerning taste in film. Well curated too. But expensive.
    • daseiner1 5y ago
      Criterion Channel is a great, lower-budget streaming option ($11/month)
• kangaroozach 5y ago
  We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month. We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.
  • llampx 5y ago
    I have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.
    • jandrese 5y ago
      When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of: 1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon Network, USA 2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language channels, Starz, and a few more. You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month. I think they may have had a few other premium channel options as well, but I never paid that close of attention. We cut the cable because the price had crept up from about $50/month total to almost $100/month over the course of a few years. It was just unsustainable. Now we pay about $40/month for streaming services, and the streaming services don't have ads.
      • jonny_eh 5y ago
        > You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month Please note that that was only a channel (or two). You still had to tune to watch the movie/show you wanted! For the same price today (not even adjusted for inflation), you can watch any of this content on demand, on any device, but it has waaay more content available.
      • TeMPOraL 5y ago
• margaretdouglas 5y ago
  Why do you need cable/satellite if you're playing the a la carte game of streaming? I feel like the world where you have cable and streaming services is ending and you either live in a world with cable and maybe or two streaming services; similar to paying extra for HBO and Cinemax with your cable service in the past, or you cut the cord and manage bundling the "networks" yourself. Netflix+Hulu+HBOMax+Sports/Local News subscriptions all tally to less than cable used to, you get more content, and all that content is on demand and free of commercials. This notion that service has backpedaled is nonsense. It baffles me why people still cling to their cable service and then expect "premium" channels be free and also share their content with one another. Which cable networks did that? When new episodes of Seinfeld were airing which networks could you watch them on? Just one? So unfair! I prefer the commercials on ABC! Perhaps you felt differently because you had no alternative to buying all the "streaming services of the day" under a single bundle. Now you do. You don't like TNT? Don't pay for it. ESPN never get turned on? Now you can drop it from your bill.
  • thayne 5y ago
    For many people in the states it is difficult or impossible to get internet without cable bundled in. And your argument assumes that the shows you want are clustered into one of the providers. But what if you like one show from Netflix, one from Hulu, one from HBOMax, etc. You still have to pay for all the shows you don't care about from each of those providers. The different streaming services is roughly equivalent to the different channel bundles that cable companies offered before. Sure, the streaming situation isn't any worse than cable was, but it could still be a lot better. Imagine if streaming services had to compete on the quality of the service itself instead of the content available on the network. If you are ok with ads if you get a lower price, use one service. If you are willing to pay more for 4K content for everything, use a different service, etc.
    • michaelmrose 5y ago
      Maybe there could be a standard industry fee paid based on number of users and resolution instead of exclusives. This is kind of how radio works.
• pie420 5y ago
  But that's the thing. You don't have to pay for cable anymore. And if you want to watch a show, you can subscribe for a month, get your fill, and then unsubscribe. You couldn't do that before.
  • nitrogen 5y ago
    You can't do the pop in/pop out thing anymore, because they've (Amazon) started posting only one episode per week instead of a full season at once.
• thayne 5y ago
  > I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country My experience has been that old (black and white or otherwise) movies are hard to find now. Especially if you just want to watch it once and don't want to buy an old DVD or VHS.
  • DrBazza 5y ago
    In the UK, a lot of channels still play these old films. In fact over the pandemic, there's actually a channel that was set up to specifically play these films: https://www.filmstories.co.uk/features/talking-pictures-tv-the-story-behind-the-must-watch-uk-movies-channel/ https://www.filmstories.co.uk/features/talking-pictures-tv-t...
• minusSeven 5y ago
  My rule of thumb regarding watching content is: if its only 1 movie or tv show I want to watch just pirate it, if its more than one on a streaming platform subscribe to it. I subscribe to netflix just once a year to watch everything I want to watch and then don't bother subscribing again for a year. I guess eventually I will do the same to other platforms if they have enough content in them. I can't fathom how someone can pay to streaming sites month after month unless they have quite a lot of stuff they want to watch.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    >I can't fathom A lot of people just can't be bothered tracking their usage over time of a bunch of services and keeping track of what lives where. I don't have a lot of services so it's not worth optimizing to save $10/month or something like that.
• laurent92 5y ago
  > No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite fee either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd. When we’re done talking about the quantity of movies, let’s talk about quality. If an awesome movie goes to the cinema, like Twilight, you’ll be able to watch Werewolf on Netflix. With abysmal plot and acting. If you type Mission Impossible, you’ll certainly get Suits. The search is so abysmal, always suggesting the same 40 series on and on, that people exchange numeric codes which allow them to discover new categories (but half the titles will be already seen). A/B testing probably shows that after seeing a title for 6 weeks and dodging it, you end up watching it, because, there’s only that. It’s not that I don’t want to pay $40 a month for 4 services, it’s that even at that price, I still can’t watch the quality movies. And let’s not even start with ideology-pushing in movies.
  • mavhc 5y ago
    Imagine, people making art because they have something to say. The horror. The horror.
    • listenallyall 5y ago
      ... this comment reminds me of something about the smell of napalm, and victory ...