8 ms·

Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. This is to prevent people from subscribing

by prirun 4y ago

Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. This is to prevent people from subscribing to a service, watching a whole season, then canceling the service. But that still lets people wait until the whole season is over, watch it, then cancel. To avoid that behavior, IMO streaming will move more and more to the TV model: it's available for a limited time, maybe 1 week, maybe the last few episodes, then it's removed. If you want to watch the old stuff, pay more, either by the episode, by the season, etc. Amazon is already doing that with Fringe for example: you can watch Season 1 at no cost, but the other seasons will cost you. Media companies are gross. It's a damn shame the media producers didn't just put all their shit on Netflix for one low price, but greed all around would have likely never let that work either.

amelius 4y ago
I'm looking forward to find more seeders on Bittorrent.
- blobbers 4y ago
  The age of downloading content to your device is largely dead mon frère! It's sad, because things like the despecialized editions of certain "Disney" movies will never see large scale distribution. The world of bit torrent + the world of copyright / residual payments doesn't seem to meld well. If they made a player that was "legal" and any content you played would pay residuals back to the creator, they could just normalize views and make it fully "not for profit". Seeders would be purely altruistic. You would pay for the residuals you watched, and there would be no middle men making billions (NFLX making 1.5B per quarter). Side note: Is sesame street highly pirated? Are you really looking forward to more seeders of sesame street? ... why???
  - amelius 4y ago
    Downloading is still very much possible. The number of seeders is down since a decade ago, but the content is still there. You just have to wait a bit longer in some cases, that's all.
  - Krasnol 4y ago
    > The age of downloading content to your device is largely dead mon frère! I hear that since Netflix came up. I'm pretty sure it'll be there long after Netflix is gone. With all those 1-click-hosters it's easier than ever today.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Netflix deleted 36 shows. The merger is destroying a lot of stuff, as they do.
- ValentineC 4y ago
  Tip: private trackers are better at rare content retention.
blobbers 4y ago
The first season for free for many network shows has been going on for years and years. They're trying to get you hooked and then pay for the production X upgrade (Starz, SHOWtime... etc.)
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I am actually still totally blown away I can't watch at minimum the first episode of every TV show on any given app or streaming service for free. The format absolutely begs to use the early episodes to hook viewers so that you can charge them to continue/finish the show. I'm a big Vudu user, which used to have a much wider variety of temporary deals for first episodes for free, but any time I look at a show and see the first episode is $1.99, I'm just... confused, like the folks making those decisions missed Marketing 101.
notsapiensatall 4y ago
The media market seems to be cyclical. Piracy is always an option, but most people prefer to pay for content if it is reasonably priced with few strings attached. When a lot of people are paying for content, media companies look for ways to wring more money out of them. This degrades the quality of service and drives customers away. When few people are paying for content, media companies look for ways to get paid. They become more open to offering discounted rates to platforms with new ideas, distribution models, etc. This improves the quality of service, and draws in more customers. We fled from the sinking ship of cable to the HMS Streaming, like our parents fled the sinking ship of $20 CDs to the iTunes buffet. I'm excited to see what comes next - maybe a way to pay $5 per DRM-free downloadable episode? Sadly, it will probably be a painful decade until the winds of user experience finally change.
- dnsco 4y ago
  > We fled from the sinking ship of cable to the HMS Streaming, like our parents fled the sinking ship of $20 CDs to the iTunes buffet. I am apparently your parent now.
- pmontra 4y ago
  The point is that I don't know when I have the time or the will to watch a series. I watched the sixth season of The Expanse only this month. I think it was released close to the beginning of the year. While I was writing this comment I had to think about who streams the show. It's Amazon. In a perfect world I'd go to YouTube or any other similar service, look for the series at any time and watch the episodes by paying them 1 Euro each (or whatever.) Who cares who makes it, it's like gasoline's brand.
  - mhb 4y ago
    > it's like gasoline's brand Top Tier Gasoline Worth the Extra Price, Study Shows: https://www.consumerreports.org/fuel-economy-efficiency/top-tier-gasoline-worth-the-extra-price-a7682471234/ https://www.consumerreports.org/fuel-economy-efficiency/top-...
    - 4y ago
aardvarkr 4y ago
> This is to prevent people from subscribing to a service, watching a whole season, then canceling the service. I might be going against the grain but I actually like this... I prefer being able to digest a show at a slower pace so it can have more of a cultural impact. This allows me to talk to my friends about what we just watched and follow along, plus get other people to join us in the watching experience. It makes it a much more communal activity that helps us connect with others.
- brightball 4y ago
  Thinking back to shows like Lost and Walking Dead as examples. The community aspect of episode based shows is better IMO.
- pmontra 4y ago
  I think this was very important for the success of Games of Thrones. If everybody could watch it at any time and at any rate, we would have had not only spoilers but there wouldn't have been all the chatters at the coffee machines the day after the show and no buildup of expectations for the next episode. Probably nothing changes for not great series.
  - wowokay 4y ago
    Gross. Individuals are responsible for avoiding spoilers, not the community. Having a fixed time when episodes become available probably causes more spoilers anyway, once that time passes it’s open season. Plus that’s how disappointment and resentment are formed. You wait a week to watch the episode and then they kill off all the WW in a single episode, makes the years of build up feel like shit. If I could binge the season from the start I might not have stopped watching it because you are not sitting there almost expecting a letdown for the next week.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Why not throw in 15-minutes or 30-minutes of adds in certain part as well. To slow it down and allow the watchers to take to social media upon release.
omginternets 4y ago
This is why I still torrent, and never managed to hop on the streaming bandwagon.
- avalys 4y ago
  How about just not watching TV?
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    Personally, I think this is a reasonable proposition, but I am afraid most people would respond to this by thinking, "How about just not living at all?"
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Take their TV away and I'm sure most of those would discover reasons to keep living anyway. Responses like that shouldn't be taken seriously.
      - registeredcorn 4y ago
        It would be great to see a resurgence in reading, or other forms of entertainment.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    How about just torrent the shows worth watching?
romeros 4y ago
>> It's a damn shame the media producers didn't just put all their shit on Netflix for one low price Steve Jobs was able to pull this off for music (iTunes). Netflix folks should have tried harder to become the default streaming platform.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I find this entire idea absolutely hilarious. That anyone thinks they would've been able to watch everything on TV they wanted for $15 a month or less when the cable industry was charging well over $100 a month prior. Anyone who believed this would be the case is... well, HN rules would rather I not be that blunt. Netflix briefly enjoyed this width of content solely because it was viewed as an additional revenue stream and not the primary one. As soon as streaming became the default, it was necessary to actually bring in enough money to make multi-million dollar episodes, and that means not selling content to Netflix for pennies on the dollar. Netflix wisely used the interim to build it's own first party content library (which everyone else already had), while everyone else had to build the distribution network (which Netflix already had). While they did it in a different order, they ended up placed about even with other TV companies in the long run.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The cable industry admittedly also included sports and some other live content--some of which is on various streaming services. And some other content is only available a la carte. But I agree with your basic point. A hypothetical all non-live available digital content for one monthly price would probably be over $200/month. The good news for someone like myself is that I can get tons of content (and access to more a la carte) for under $50/month. I could add a live streaming service and I'd still be paying less than my cable TV bill used to be.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      There are definitely some efficiencies... and inefficiencies of the new model. Used to get 200 channels for $100, and now I can get like 6-8 streaming services for that. But since it's a la carte I can pick which ones I use, including spinning down to only one or two. The sports surcharge model I'm especially glad to get rid of. During the pandemic, the Chicago Cubs decided to launch Marquee Sports Network, and require every carrier in the Chicago area to subscribe all customers to it for roughly $7 a month... or not be able to carry it at all. The ridiculousness of it is like if you were forced to buy HBO by your Internet provider. IMHO, the city of Chicago should've kicked the Cubs out of the city over it, but sports teams have too much power over municipalities. (Note that the carriers are presumably contractually required to deny you are being forcibly subscribed, but every carrier's sports fees uniformly went up approximately $7 a month when Marquee launched.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rr808 4y ago
> Media companies are gross. Yeah like someone else said earlier. Welcome to HN where everyone makes half a million dollars a year and no one wants to pay $50/mo for content.
- tehwebguy 4y ago
  Plenty of people here don’t make that much but the sentiment is largely true. Lots of hand wringing in a thread a while back about the tragedy of paying like $14.99 so a family of 4 could watch the newest Spider-man movie I think. Zero sympathy for the companies that seem to be burying content for tax benefits or residual avoidance, just saying the price for someone to watch video content has dropped in a pretty remarkable way, especially inflation adjusted, over the last few decades (theaters may be the exception), though people rarely “own” their copy of content these days. My DVD collection of maybe 40 movies & shows will last as long as I don’t get rid of my PS3 but in 10 years I haven’t watched any of them. There need to be legit competitors so the creators of new content can negotiate deals that don’t allow or incentivize the shelving of content. Currently if someone offers someone who isn’t a household name any contract to make their dream project they probably accept it with no redlining. Meanwhile John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski posted 8 episodes of maybe the dumbest, most tone deaf slop to YouTube in March of 2020 before immediately selling the “show” to Viacom and walking away. The “golden age of TV” ended super suddenly, hopefully this is the end of the re-bundling and we’ll see another unbundling soon!
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Optical media doesn't last well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      My CDs from the 80s and burners from the 90s are in excellent condition: https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx
      - 4y ago
RoboticWater 4y ago
> Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. This is to prevent people from subscribing to a service, watching a whole season, then canceling the service. It's as much this as it is keeping discourse alive. A week of reaction and speculation on social media is just free advertising.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I think this is by far the more natural reason. It's just more engaging to wonder what will happen next when you have to wait. Binging content all at once is a great way to feel like the platform has nothing.
  - wowokay 4y ago
    But it also leaves you hanging, I bet more shows get dropped because people watch a filler episode and feel like they spent a week getting excited for no reason, or worse the anticipation creates a recipe for letdown. Like watching porn before having sex.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yes. I suspect that if binging + streaming service hopping becomes more of a thing--it's probably an outlier today--companies might shift to weekly drops more frequently. (Or doing annual subscriptions.) But, for me, I prefer that complex serialized shows are dribbled out. Otherwise I feel I have to stay away from any online discussions because some people will have binge-watched the season in a day.
- criddell 4y ago
  It's made me sit back and wait until the season or series ends. I prefer to watch on my schedule rather than theirs.
usefulcat 4y ago
> Media companies are gross. I'm shocked, shocked I say, to hear that these companies are acting according to their own self interest. > It's a damn shame the media producers didn't just put all their shit on Netflix for one low price Except it wouldn't be 'one low price', it would be 'whatever Netflix feels like charging' because in that situation Netflix would have a monopoly on media distribution. And for the same reason, media producers would get paid whatever Netflix deigns to give them.
- the_af 4y ago
  > I'm shocked, shocked I say, to hear that these companies are acting according to their own self interest That's a non-answer. Media companies could act in their own self interest and also not be gross. Instead of taking things away (i.e. removing stuff that used to be available) they could offer extra benefits to subscribers who stayed long term. Is it hard to think of these benefits without screwing us over? Maybe, but I don't care, they should move their asses or get the hell out of this business. I've zero sympathy for their "plight". Because you know, us consumers always have the option of piracy: free, high quality, available whenever we want, and it's never going away. So media companies better shape up and offer us the better product.
  - Jare 4y ago
    > extra benefits to subscribers who stayed long term. Indeed! That's partly the model of many game subscription services (PS+, etc), where (simplified description) each month you're subbed you can add a few games to your catalog, and you can only play your catalog while you're subbed.
alistairSH 4y ago
I’d be happy if… 1 - All streaming providers had a public API for show/movie listings. Apple manages to aggregate most content across providers, but I think Netflix refuses to play ball, making search harder than it need be. 2 - there isn’t really a 2. I rotate services regularly as shows go in and out of availability. If shows get yanked quickly, I just won’t subscribe to that service. Streaming has done wonders for my consumption. It’s a fraction of what it was back in the cable TV days. I can’t tolerate ads any more, so don’t get cable and refuse to subscribe to services that inject ads into their content (even after a subscription). If they all are ok with losing me as a consumer forever, at this point in ok with that. I’ll just rent the odd movie or show and be fine.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  That Netflix refuses to play ball with apple is why I unsubscribed from them. Who do they think they are, preventing their content from being findable via a global search?
  - drdebug 4y ago
    If Apple tries to get 30% of subscriptions when done through an Apple device, then I guess it makes sense to ignore Apple ?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Netflix does not need to allow in app purchases to be indexed in TV app.
  - noasaservice 4y ago
    Given how fast that rights-owners are delisting things from Netflix, my guess is that Netflix doesn't want people to know just how fast they're failing. And having stale search with "Show XYZ On-demand", and when you get there, it disappeared last Friday. That's never good.
    - 4y ago
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Downloading content from torrents will persist until the torrent service operators will continue to provide a better service. Better service includes no regional restrictions and more complete content catalog.
LeoPanthera 4y ago
> it's available for a limited time, maybe 1 week, maybe the last few episodes, then it's removed As Gabe Newell famously said about Steam, the solution to piracy is not DRM, it's making a service which is better than piracy. Hence, the success of Steam, and the iTunes Store, and so on. The above model is not better than piracy. It's far worse, and it costs more, and so the return of popular piracy is inevitable. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
rbanffy 4y ago
> Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. I don’t see Sesame Street’s audience as prone to binge watching. It may be a way to avoid paying for the material. I hope that, in that case, the rights revert to the original owners (be them PBS or Henson) so they can make the material available elsewhere. HBO may keep the deal for the most current episodes as they have now. BYW, since the current government seems sane, shouldn’t they properly fund PBS as something of strategic interest?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > fund PBS as something of strategic interest? Would have to rename it to Propaganda Broadcasting System.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    You joke, but PBS is exactly that - when other countries adopt its programming, it's helping push Western/American culture. I grew up in Brazil and we had a local licensed version produced with Brazilian actors interspersed with dubbed original material.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      My point, which is not a joke, is any media funded by the government will soon find itself pushing only the point of view of those in power in the government. This is inevitable.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        Absolutely not. You can make funding independent from government (see BBC's TV tax, for instance) and have a board of trustees that cannot be nominated by any government (more or less the same model as the SCOTUS, or make it so that the board can't be changed by more than 25% of its members over an 8 year period), and create clauses that ensure it represents various groups of society, in particular the underrepresented. While you are at it, make some bylaws that the entity can't change itself that ensure the board can't hijack it. Hire professionals using clear competency measures and give them tenure.
jusonchan81 4y ago
My thinking is that it will circle around to that. Meaning one or two streaming providers will remain and all content will be published there and likely the producers and studios will make the same amount of money regardless. Might be even more given no overheads of technology build and maintenance costs.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by prirun 4y ago

amelius 4y ago

I'm looking forward to find more seeders on Bittorrent.

blobbers 4y ago
The age of downloading content to your device is largely dead mon frère! It's sad, because things like the despecialized editions of certain "Disney" movies will never see large scale distribution. The world of bit torrent + the world of copyright / residual payments doesn't seem to meld well. If they made a player that was "legal" and any content you played would pay residuals back to the creator, they could just normalize views and make it fully "not for profit". Seeders would be purely altruistic. You would pay for the residuals you watched, and there would be no middle men making billions (NFLX making 1.5B per quarter). Side note: Is sesame street highly pirated? Are you really looking forward to more seeders of sesame street? ... why???
- amelius 4y ago
  Downloading is still very much possible. The number of seeders is down since a decade ago, but the content is still there. You just have to wait a bit longer in some cases, that's all.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  > The age of downloading content to your device is largely dead mon frère! I hear that since Netflix came up. I'm pretty sure it'll be there long after Netflix is gone. With all those 1-click-hosters it's easier than ever today.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Netflix deleted 36 shows. The merger is destroying a lot of stuff, as they do.
ValentineC 4y ago
Tip: private trackers are better at rare content retention.

blobbers 4y ago

The first season for free for many network shows has been going on for years and years. They're trying to get you hooked and then pay for the production X upgrade (Starz, SHOWtime... etc.)

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I am actually still totally blown away I can't watch at minimum the first episode of every TV show on any given app or streaming service for free. The format absolutely begs to use the early episodes to hook viewers so that you can charge them to continue/finish the show. I'm a big Vudu user, which used to have a much wider variety of temporary deals for first episodes for free, but any time I look at a show and see the first episode is $1.99, I'm just... confused, like the folks making those decisions missed Marketing 101.

notsapiensatall 4y ago

The media market seems to be cyclical. Piracy is always an option, but most people prefer to pay for content if it is reasonably priced with few strings attached. When a lot of people are paying for content, media companies look for ways to wring more money out of them. This degrades the quality of service and drives customers away. When few people are paying for content, media companies look for ways to get paid. They become more open to offering discounted rates to platforms with new ideas, distribution models, etc. This improves the quality of service, and draws in more customers. We fled from the sinking ship of cable to the HMS Streaming, like our parents fled the sinking ship of $20 CDs to the iTunes buffet. I'm excited to see what comes next - maybe a way to pay $5 per DRM-free downloadable episode? Sadly, it will probably be a painful decade until the winds of user experience finally change.

dnsco 4y ago
> We fled from the sinking ship of cable to the HMS Streaming, like our parents fled the sinking ship of $20 CDs to the iTunes buffet. I am apparently your parent now.
pmontra 4y ago
The point is that I don't know when I have the time or the will to watch a series. I watched the sixth season of The Expanse only this month. I think it was released close to the beginning of the year. While I was writing this comment I had to think about who streams the show. It's Amazon. In a perfect world I'd go to YouTube or any other similar service, look for the series at any time and watch the episodes by paying them 1 Euro each (or whatever.) Who cares who makes it, it's like gasoline's brand.
- mhb 4y ago
  > it's like gasoline's brand Top Tier Gasoline Worth the Extra Price, Study Shows: https://www.consumerreports.org/fuel-economy-efficiency/top-tier-gasoline-worth-the-extra-price-a7682471234/ https://www.consumerreports.org/fuel-economy-efficiency/top-...
  - 4y ago

aardvarkr 4y ago

> This is to prevent people from subscribing to a service, watching a whole season, then canceling the service. I might be going against the grain but I actually like this... I prefer being able to digest a show at a slower pace so it can have more of a cultural impact. This allows me to talk to my friends about what we just watched and follow along, plus get other people to join us in the watching experience. It makes it a much more communal activity that helps us connect with others.

brightball 4y ago
Thinking back to shows like Lost and Walking Dead as examples. The community aspect of episode based shows is better IMO.
pmontra 4y ago
I think this was very important for the success of Games of Thrones. If everybody could watch it at any time and at any rate, we would have had not only spoilers but there wouldn't have been all the chatters at the coffee machines the day after the show and no buildup of expectations for the next episode. Probably nothing changes for not great series.
- wowokay 4y ago
  Gross. Individuals are responsible for avoiding spoilers, not the community. Having a fixed time when episodes become available probably causes more spoilers anyway, once that time passes it’s open season. Plus that’s how disappointment and resentment are formed. You wait a week to watch the episode and then they kill off all the WW in a single episode, makes the years of build up feel like shit. If I could binge the season from the start I might not have stopped watching it because you are not sitting there almost expecting a letdown for the next week.
Ekaros 4y ago
Why not throw in 15-minutes or 30-minutes of adds in certain part as well. To slow it down and allow the watchers to take to social media upon release.

omginternets 4y ago

This is why I still torrent, and never managed to hop on the streaming bandwagon.

avalys 4y ago
How about just not watching TV?
- Koshkin 4y ago
  Personally, I think this is a reasonable proposition, but I am afraid most people would respond to this by thinking, "How about just not living at all?"
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Take their TV away and I'm sure most of those would discover reasons to keep living anyway. Responses like that shouldn't be taken seriously.
    - registeredcorn 4y ago
      It would be great to see a resurgence in reading, or other forms of entertainment.
- omginternets 4y ago
  How about just torrent the shows worth watching?

romeros 4y ago

>> It's a damn shame the media producers didn't just put all their shit on Netflix for one low price Steve Jobs was able to pull this off for music (iTunes). Netflix folks should have tried harder to become the default streaming platform.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I find this entire idea absolutely hilarious. That anyone thinks they would've been able to watch everything on TV they wanted for $15 a month or less when the cable industry was charging well over $100 a month prior. Anyone who believed this would be the case is... well, HN rules would rather I not be that blunt. Netflix briefly enjoyed this width of content solely because it was viewed as an additional revenue stream and not the primary one. As soon as streaming became the default, it was necessary to actually bring in enough money to make multi-million dollar episodes, and that means not selling content to Netflix for pennies on the dollar. Netflix wisely used the interim to build it's own first party content library (which everyone else already had), while everyone else had to build the distribution network (which Netflix already had). While they did it in a different order, they ended up placed about even with other TV companies in the long run.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The cable industry admittedly also included sports and some other live content--some of which is on various streaming services. And some other content is only available a la carte. But I agree with your basic point. A hypothetical all non-live available digital content for one monthly price would probably be over $200/month. The good news for someone like myself is that I can get tons of content (and access to more a la carte) for under $50/month. I could add a live streaming service and I'd still be paying less than my cable TV bill used to be.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    There are definitely some efficiencies... and inefficiencies of the new model. Used to get 200 channels for $100, and now I can get like 6-8 streaming services for that. But since it's a la carte I can pick which ones I use, including spinning down to only one or two. The sports surcharge model I'm especially glad to get rid of. During the pandemic, the Chicago Cubs decided to launch Marquee Sports Network, and require every carrier in the Chicago area to subscribe all customers to it for roughly $7 a month... or not be able to carry it at all. The ridiculousness of it is like if you were forced to buy HBO by your Internet provider. IMHO, the city of Chicago should've kicked the Cubs out of the city over it, but sports teams have too much power over municipalities. (Note that the carriers are presumably contractually required to deny you are being forcibly subscribed, but every carrier's sports fees uniformly went up approximately $7 a month when Marquee launched.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rr808 4y ago

> Media companies are gross. Yeah like someone else said earlier. Welcome to HN where everyone makes half a million dollars a year and no one wants to pay $50/mo for content.

tehwebguy 4y ago
Plenty of people here don’t make that much but the sentiment is largely true. Lots of hand wringing in a thread a while back about the tragedy of paying like $14.99 so a family of 4 could watch the newest Spider-man movie I think. Zero sympathy for the companies that seem to be burying content for tax benefits or residual avoidance, just saying the price for someone to watch video content has dropped in a pretty remarkable way, especially inflation adjusted, over the last few decades (theaters may be the exception), though people rarely “own” their copy of content these days. My DVD collection of maybe 40 movies & shows will last as long as I don’t get rid of my PS3 but in 10 years I haven’t watched any of them. There need to be legit competitors so the creators of new content can negotiate deals that don’t allow or incentivize the shelving of content. Currently if someone offers someone who isn’t a household name any contract to make their dream project they probably accept it with no redlining. Meanwhile John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski posted 8 episodes of maybe the dumbest, most tone deaf slop to YouTube in March of 2020 before immediately selling the “show” to Viacom and walking away. The “golden age of TV” ended super suddenly, hopefully this is the end of the re-bundling and we’ll see another unbundling soon!
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Optical media doesn't last well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    My CDs from the 80s and burners from the 90s are in excellent condition: https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx
    - 4y ago

RoboticWater 4y ago

> Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. This is to prevent people from subscribing to a service, watching a whole season, then canceling the service. It's as much this as it is keeping discourse alive. A week of reaction and speculation on social media is just free advertising.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
I think this is by far the more natural reason. It's just more engaging to wonder what will happen next when you have to wait. Binging content all at once is a great way to feel like the platform has nothing.
- wowokay 4y ago
  But it also leaves you hanging, I bet more shows get dropped because people watch a filler episode and feel like they spent a week getting excited for no reason, or worse the anticipation creates a recipe for letdown. Like watching porn before having sex.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yes. I suspect that if binging + streaming service hopping becomes more of a thing--it's probably an outlier today--companies might shift to weekly drops more frequently. (Or doing annual subscriptions.) But, for me, I prefer that complex serialized shows are dribbled out. Otherwise I feel I have to stay away from any online discussions because some people will have binge-watched the season in a day.
criddell 4y ago
It's made me sit back and wait until the season or series ends. I prefer to watch on my schedule rather than theirs.

usefulcat 4y ago

> Media companies are gross. I'm shocked, shocked I say, to hear that these companies are acting according to their own self interest. > It's a damn shame the media producers didn't just put all their shit on Netflix for one low price Except it wouldn't be 'one low price', it would be 'whatever Netflix feels like charging' because in that situation Netflix would have a monopoly on media distribution. And for the same reason, media producers would get paid whatever Netflix deigns to give them.

the_af 4y ago
> I'm shocked, shocked I say, to hear that these companies are acting according to their own self interest That's a non-answer. Media companies could act in their own self interest and also not be gross. Instead of taking things away (i.e. removing stuff that used to be available) they could offer extra benefits to subscribers who stayed long term. Is it hard to think of these benefits without screwing us over? Maybe, but I don't care, they should move their asses or get the hell out of this business. I've zero sympathy for their "plight". Because you know, us consumers always have the option of piracy: free, high quality, available whenever we want, and it's never going away. So media companies better shape up and offer us the better product.
- Jare 4y ago
  > extra benefits to subscribers who stayed long term. Indeed! That's partly the model of many game subscription services (PS+, etc), where (simplified description) each month you're subbed you can add a few games to your catalog, and you can only play your catalog while you're subbed.

alistairSH 4y ago

I’d be happy if… 1 - All streaming providers had a public API for show/movie listings. Apple manages to aggregate most content across providers, but I think Netflix refuses to play ball, making search harder than it need be. 2 - there isn’t really a 2. I rotate services regularly as shows go in and out of availability. If shows get yanked quickly, I just won’t subscribe to that service. Streaming has done wonders for my consumption. It’s a fraction of what it was back in the cable TV days. I can’t tolerate ads any more, so don’t get cable and refuse to subscribe to services that inject ads into their content (even after a subscription). If they all are ok with losing me as a consumer forever, at this point in ok with that. I’ll just rent the odd movie or show and be fine.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
That Netflix refuses to play ball with apple is why I unsubscribed from them. Who do they think they are, preventing their content from being findable via a global search?
- drdebug 4y ago
  If Apple tries to get 30% of subscriptions when done through an Apple device, then I guess it makes sense to ignore Apple ?
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Netflix does not need to allow in app purchases to be indexed in TV app.
- noasaservice 4y ago
  Given how fast that rights-owners are delisting things from Netflix, my guess is that Netflix doesn't want people to know just how fast they're failing. And having stale search with "Show XYZ On-demand", and when you get there, it disappeared last Friday. That's never good.
  - 4y ago

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

Downloading content from torrents will persist until the torrent service operators will continue to provide a better service. Better service includes no regional restrictions and more complete content catalog.

LeoPanthera 4y ago

> it's available for a limited time, maybe 1 week, maybe the last few episodes, then it's removed As Gabe Newell famously said about Steam, the solution to piracy is not DRM, it's making a service which is better than piracy. Hence, the success of Steam, and the iTunes Store, and so on. The above model is not better than piracy. It's far worse, and it costs more, and so the return of popular piracy is inevitable. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

rbanffy 4y ago

> Streaming services have already stopped publishing entire seasons, going back to the TV model of an episode a week. I don’t see Sesame Street’s audience as prone to binge watching. It may be a way to avoid paying for the material. I hope that, in that case, the rights revert to the original owners (be them PBS or Henson) so they can make the material available elsewhere. HBO may keep the deal for the most current episodes as they have now. BYW, since the current government seems sane, shouldn’t they properly fund PBS as something of strategic interest?

WalterBright 4y ago
> fund PBS as something of strategic interest? Would have to rename it to Propaganda Broadcasting System.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  You joke, but PBS is exactly that - when other countries adopt its programming, it's helping push Western/American culture. I grew up in Brazil and we had a local licensed version produced with Brazilian actors interspersed with dubbed original material.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    My point, which is not a joke, is any media funded by the government will soon find itself pushing only the point of view of those in power in the government. This is inevitable.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      Absolutely not. You can make funding independent from government (see BBC's TV tax, for instance) and have a board of trustees that cannot be nominated by any government (more or less the same model as the SCOTUS, or make it so that the board can't be changed by more than 25% of its members over an 8 year period), and create clauses that ensure it represents various groups of society, in particular the underrepresented. While you are at it, make some bylaws that the entity can't change itself that ensure the board can't hijack it. Hire professionals using clear competency measures and give them tenure.

jusonchan81 4y ago

My thinking is that it will circle around to that. Meaning one or two streaming providers will remain and all content will be published there and likely the producers and studios will make the same amount of money regardless. Might be even more given no overheads of technology build and maintenance costs.

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