25 ms·

Are we going back to the cable days?

• nootropicat 4y ago
  Streaming isn't really competing with cable but with torrents. If DRM ever gets good enough to block piracy (imagine displays themselves using ml to recognize what are you watching and if you are allowed to) streaming will become worse than cable ever was.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jeffwask 4y ago
  Not really. 1) I get multiple services bundled with other things I already pay for 2) I only need to subscribe to 1 or 2 a month. You can drop one to go to another unless you live by the FOMO 3) Many of these services will die over the next few years. It's unsustainable.
• rbanffy 4y ago
  Well... Cable has real time streams and programming you need to catch (some do offer on-demand as well, and some extra services such as Disney and Netflix) and has tons of channels bundled in such ways you can't get the service without them (I'd pay extra not to have Fox News, for instance, even more for nobody within a 10 mile radius not to have it). The traditional streaming services? You don't have to subscribe to all of them. I'm very happy with Amazon, Apple TV+ (bundled with iCloud) and Netflix.
  • ale42 4y ago
    > I'd pay extra not to have Fox News, for instance, even more for nobody within a 10 mile radius not to have it) With old-school analog TV, injecting noise at the right frequency in the cable will blank the channel of your choice for all the people connected to the same cable, up to some distance... of course it's definitely illegal and the cable company can probably find you. Unfortunately with digital TV it's much more complicated as several channels will be modulated on the same stream/carrier frequency...
  • Markoff 4y ago
    > I'd pay extra not to have Fox News, for instance, even more for nobody within a 10 mile radius not to have it nobody stops you from buying big land I am happy with my subscription to these streaming services:
• phone8675309 4y ago
  Going back to? We’re already there. Every media company decided they wanted to take their own slice instead of having a small number of services cover different types of entertainment. At this point I’d rather pirate because a) it’s cheap as free b) I’m not at the mercy of my ISP deciding how fast my stream can go, and c) I never have to worry about a show I’m watching getting pulled and locked into another paywalled garden that probably has a shitty app that my HTPC doesn’t support in the middle of me watching it.
  • Markoff 4y ago
    it's not even pirating in EU if you use DDL (or torrent without uploading), check question 8 and 11 for instance in Czechia, Slovakia, Spain, too lazy to check other countries, but these are well known for allowing streaming/downloading unauthorized uploads https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/web/observatory/faq-cs#8 https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/web/observatory/faq-cs...
    • klez 4y ago
      I don't think "pirating" is a legal definition. By the way, point 8 has an important caveat at the beginning: "It is possible to make a copy of a work for personal use under the exceptions contained in the Czech Copyright Act." (Emphasis mine) Point 11 only says that you're not responsible for copyright infringement if your use falls into what's described in art.29 of the copyright act (the "three steps", which according to point 8 are described in that article), which according to google translate says --- > (1) Exceptions and limitations of copyright can only be applied in special cases established by law and only if such use of the work does not conflict with the normal way of using the work and neither does it the legitimate interests of the author are not unreasonably affected. > (2) Free use and legal licenses, with the exception of the official license and news (§ 34), license for school work (§ 35 par. 3), license for reproductions of works from own collections for archival and conservation needs [Section 37 paragraph 1 letter a)], license for temporary reproductions (§ 38a), a license for a photographic likeness (§ 38b) and a license for non-essentials secondary use of the work (§ 38c), apply only to the published work. --- Which to me reads like the usual fair use exceptions you find in other countries. In Italy, at least, downloading copyrighted content without authorization is not a felony, but you can still get fined. I expect much of the EU to have similar provisions.
• prmoustache 4y ago
  Who is subscribing to all of them really? It is actually mentionned in the article that typical streaming spending is around 20-30$ per house. Also, despite not being allowed by terms of service most accounts are widely shared accross families and friends which mean most of us pay for only one service.
  • tiborsaas 4y ago
    I wouldn't, but when providers are randomly removing shows and movies it's really annoying. For example Netflix just removed Rick and Morty in 16 countries and a few more pending. Should I just subscribe to another provider because of that, jump between apps or rely on a good old and convenient technology which has everything (torrent)?
    • prmoustache 4y ago
      You can do n months on one service, m other months on another. Especially when talking about series with seasons. I don't usually mix series and follow one at a time It can take me a 2 weeks to a month watching a season, why would I be paying for another service at the same time?
      • tiborsaas 4y ago
        Rick and Morty is good for a quick relax for 20 min after dinner, another might be good for thrills for longer time, how about a documentary the next day? It's easy to pick shows that match my interests and fits my taste, but they are scattered across platforms if they are available at all. Unsubbing for shows feels wrong. What if I just want to watch a pilot? I'm not that calculated to manage my subscriptions based on a schedule. What if friends come over? Sorry, no Netflix since yesterday :)
        • prmoustache 4y ago
          That is mild inconvenience. I would tend to say that if you watch shows on a daily basis you are probably in an addiction pattern. You can always use your friend's netflix account if they have it. By showing netflix content to people outside of your household you are already breaching terms of use anyway.
• moolcool 4y ago
  The flexibility is a nice option in contrast, at least. Like you can easily subscribe to Apple TV+, watch Severance in a month, cancel, and then use HBO to watch The Rehearsal the next month.
  • cassianoleal 4y ago
    I wish I had the flexibility to ditch Prime Video whilst keeping the rest of Prime at a discount.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Amazon knows exactly what they're doing with this. Prime Video is a crap service on its own, but it isn't bad for "free" and means when you do buy/rent a movie you do it there.
      • cassianoleal 4y ago
        It's not free though, the subscription went up by about 100% when they launched Prime Video.
        • bombcar 4y ago
          Yep, but I suspect that for most people the "free prime shipping" is valued at 110% of the price, and the video/music at basically nothing. Amazon apparently thinks Prime Video is worth $9/mo as you can subscribe to that alone (not that anyone does).
          • cassianoleal 4y ago
            I would take the tenner discount if I had the option to be honest, even though it's still worse value than pre-Video Prime.
    • mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
      I ditched Prime altogether and don't miss it. Deliveries from amazon are still free over some threshold and they sometimes arrive early. I liked a couple of shows a few years ago but like most streaming platforms they don't invest in them or the good actors move on to other projects. There is one coming up that I might like so I might do the signup for a month near xmas shopping season and binge the show, get faster shipping on gifts, then bail.
• spydum 4y ago
  $79 would not have gotten you any of those premium content providers. That collection of content would have easily hit 120+/month, plus a bunch of bs service charges for devices. They also did not give you the ability to drop the content you didn't want. So much of it came as packages and bundles.
  • johnny_canuck 4y ago
    Where I am in Canada, if you wanted all that content for that price you'd also be stuck with a lot of content you did not want. If you wanted a la carte offerings then you'd pay a premium for going outside the packages they offered. While I'm not in love with the current situation, it's much better than where we were in the 2000s. At least I can say I don't want X and cancel it.
  • ourmandave 4y ago
    And the best times were the free weekends when they'd show great movies to lure new subscribers. Instead of the normal couple new movies you'd watched 4 times by the end of the month.
    • metadat 4y ago
      Yeah, those were the days.
• tjansen 4y ago
  Wasn't it obvious that if you want all shows/services, you will still pay at least the same amount? The cost of producing content is not going down just because there are more content providers. As long as the same amount of content is being produced, consumers still need to pay the same amount of money to see it all. If consumers decide to pay less, there will be less content.
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    You don't have to subsidize digging down another cable for streaming. One could expect streaming to be cheaper than cable since you pay for internet access separately. Also no satellites to rocket into space.
    • tjansen 4y ago
      ...but lots of content providers with their own infrastructure, people sharing accounts and many people are subscribing only to a few content providers.
    • jaywalk 4y ago
      > You don't have to subsidize digging down another cable for streaming. You don't have to, but your streaming content is usually being delivered over the same cable that provides TV anyway.
      • Falkon1313 4y ago
        You pay for that with your internet bill though. If your internet bill included all the streaming services, that might be different.
  • bee_rider 4y ago
    I don't think it is obvious. The default option is to hang on to your accounts, right? So if you cycle subscriptions, you are in a sense being subsidized by the people who just stick to a service. Or, if the expectation is that most people subscribe to multiple streaming services, if you just subscribe to one (not a big TV watcher for example) you would expect to pay less I guess.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  One advantage of streaming over cable is no contracts. This makes it easy for you to cancel/switch services. Because of this, and the fact that streaming is async, you can alternate services every month to save money while at the same time not missing out on exclusives.
  • kardos 4y ago
    > One advantage of streaming over cable is no contracts. This makes it easy for you to cancel/switch services. The deal will soon change from $10/mo to $10/mo (with annual subscription) or $20/mo (month to month)
• andrewclunn 4y ago
  I gave up piracy in my 20s. Looks like it might be time to sail the high seas again.
  • proton_9 4y ago
    PirateBay ftw eh? haha.
• etempleton 4y ago
  The one big advantage beyond on demand hs scheduled programming is a la carte pricing. Consumers asked cable for a la carte pricing for years and it was never an option because no one would subscribe to a 200 dollar package then. People only really watch 5-10 channels. With that said this was the perdictable end. These companies are going to want to grow their revenue and they are all peaking in subscriber growth so increasing pricing is the logical step.
  • bee_rider 4y ago
    I feel like I got into the habit of watching way too much TV during the pandemic, and haven't managed to shake it yet, but still only have like 2-3 shows in the queue at any given time. How are people watching 5-10 channels?
    • etempleton 4y ago
      If you are a sports person you might watch just one team but it could be spread across multiple channels. Then you might watch a couple of shows each on a different channel. And then maybe you have one or two other niche channels you like.
      • bee_rider 4y ago
        Ah, I forgot about sports. Well, that sounds pretty annoying!
    • MisterBastahrd 4y ago
      My sports teams are LSU, the New Orleans Saints, and the New Orleans Pelicans. LSU has games on CBS and ESPN. The Saints have games on Amazon, ESPN, CBS, NBC, and ABC. The Pelicans have games on NBC and TNT. And when I say ESPN, that could be ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN-U, The SEC Network, etc.
      • UweSchmidt 4y ago
        And for tennis if you go pure browser, no set-top boxes: Normal tournaments on tennistv.com for 15€/month. Australian, French and US Open on Eurosport (online over Eurosportplayer) for 7€/month. Wimbledon however is only on Sky, that's 35€/month, I skipped that. (That is for Germany). It's a lot of content, affordable, and you deal with slightly broken websites. Why can't they just show the unspoiled bracket, a notification if a match is complete or ongoing, allow manual unspoilering of individual matches or rounds, and a direct link from the bracket view to the individual match video or stream? /rant
• yrgulation 4y ago
  Well the internet is the new tv - full of ads, mediocrity and misinformation. No surprise some form of paid “channels” evolved.
• jrochkind1 4y ago
  I pay $85/month for my broadband cable alone, via the Comcast Xfinity monopoly I don't really have any other option. but I guess I'd need to pay that even if I watched no streaming TV.
• AJRF 4y ago
  We're going back to the piracy days, ya harr!
• Gualdrapo 4y ago
  Never left cable, in part because third world problems, but also couldn't justify the extra expense a streaming service meant. Not an avid consumer of TV content anyway, one can get almost as many TVs as they want without extra stuff or extra money and since the signal is through digital the quality is on par with optic fiber.
• gniv 4y ago
  > Streaming services… > … are making price increases a regular occurrence This was (is? idk) the case with cable. I used to have Xfinity and they would increase the price every year, by non-trivial amounts. My company was paying for internet, so I didn't feel that the cable price was too steep, but in retrospect I should have cancelled it earlier.
• fritztastic 4y ago
  The biggest issues I have with cable are: -There is no option to pick a few channels you want for cheaper than the package of channels. I would love to pick a dozen channels (which are otherwise are only available with the more expensive bundles that come with hundred+ other channels I have no interest in). -Lack of availability of international channels. These often cost 30+ for each small separate package offered in cable, while better channel bundles are much more affordable through streaming providers- not to mention individual programs available in different platforms and news streams free online. I don't spend a lot of free time watching things, and I have specific things I enjoy (documentaries, foreign films/TV, educational content) so paying more for cable doesn't make any sense when I can get a better variety through streaming and/or through resources freely available online or through the library. Not to mention paying high prices and still having to contend with advertisements taking up ~20% of the time and interrupting what you're watching.
• condour75 4y ago
  The cable subscription has commercials. The experience of time shifting and fast forwarding through commercials is inferior to streaming. Also, a cable bundle forces you to pay for Fox News, which is primarily funded by carriage fees. They wouldn’t last long on robot insurance ads.
  • listenallyall 4y ago
    Since you're an expert, how long did CNN+ last?
  • yonaguska 4y ago
    Fox news has been beating out the other networks in ratings for a while now though. I have no love for fox news, but it doesn't seem true that they wouldn't last. Even more far right news networks, that have been cut out of the normal media distribution channels seem to be doing fine with organic viewer support. If Fox news ratings fall, it's because they are bleeding viewers as they attempt to move back to the center and ditch Trump. Notice that Carlson consistently has the highest ratings of any fox news show...
• ourmandave 4y ago
  I'd like to be able to binge a series for a one-time fee without having to subscribe to the monthly service. Food Network did that with Alton Brown's Good Eats Reloaded in 2018. You could watch it for free if you had a cablevision subscription. Or you could go to the Food Network site and watch the 1st season like renting a movie.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  I just pay for 2-3 streaming services BUT I haven't stopped paying for TV. They don't compete at all to me. Streaming is pretty bad for news and other live non-sports TV.
• benknight87 4y ago
  I'd like to pay creators directly for the things I watch and cut out the middle man entirely.
  • throw0101a 4y ago
    Isn't that what Patreon is for?
    • falcolas 4y ago
      Patreon is a middle man. But that aside, there's a limit to the type of content you can get via Patreon, and TV shows / movies are largely on the other side of that line. And it makes sense, film requires up-front funding and takes a fair bit of time to produce. Even one-creator studios like Adi Shankar only put out one video every year or two.
• danwee 4y ago
  The only "feature" I would introduce to streaming services like Netflix/Disney+/etc. is make possible to "constantly stream content". When I had cable, I liked to just turn on the TV, and bang! I got content on the screen. Switch channel, and bang! we are now in the middle of a classic movie! Next channel, and bang! in the middle of a great song from the 90s! Now, of course, I could just use "normal TV" for that. The difference is that "normal TV" doesn't offer a great catalogue like Netflix/Disney+ (to some extent). More often than not, when I want to sit down and watch something on Netflix/etc. (e.g., some weekends), I do this: - sit on the sofa - turn on TV, switch to Netflix (HDMI channel) - spend 30 to 40 minutes browsing the catalogue to find something decent to watch - I cannot find anything decent, so I give up and turn off the TV I like to have "background noise" from time to time, and I would prefer to have background noise coming from the Netflix/Disney+/etc. catalog than the one coming from the "normal TV" (mainly because I live in a country where I'm not fluent in the local language).
  • sudden_dystopia 4y ago
    “ - I cannot find anything decent, so I give up and turn off the TV” This is me about 50% of the time. I always hear that there is just so much content. But I would never watch most of it. I’d rather watch YouTube wood working videos all day.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • jsellers0 4y ago
    The feature I really want to see is a "marathon mode" for tv shows: play episodes in a random or shuffled order.
  • falcolas 4y ago
    > I liked to just turn on the TV, and bang! I got content on the screen. Netflix gets this, and random content is one button press from the first screen. Kinda neat, even if it's not something I use.
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    That's why my wife will never move over to streaming. She has a few channels she likes to watch, and knows when her favorite shows are on. She just wants to sit down at that time, switch to the right channel, and watch her show. None of the streamers offer this, from what I can tell. My wife and I have started traveling again, and when we visit AirBNBs, we've noticed that fewer and fewer offer basic cable with their homes anymore, so we played around with streaming and hate it. Instead of "turn on HGTV at 8PM" it's now: 1. Do some research on the Internet about which streaming service offers HGTV. 2. Sign up for it. 3. Figure out how to log into that streaming service in the AirBNB. 4. Scroll through the streaming's terrible UI to find the name of the show. 5. Decide which episode to watch ("I don't care--I just want to watch whatever is on right now!") In some AirBNBs you can skip 2 and 3 if the host left the previous occupants logged in. But either way, it's a terrible user experience compared to "sit down and turn on the TV". So, cable still wins in our household even though it's expensive.
• causi 4y ago
  Once upon a time I consumed content by keeping video files in folders and watching them with VLC. Then I subscribed to Netflix. Now I'm back to keeping files in folders, except now I have Plex to give me the convenience.
  • 300bps 4y ago
    IRC + Plex = automatic download of any content I want available for streaming on any device anywhere in the world. I still have Netflix (free with my mobile provider), Disney+ (free with my Internet provider) and Hulu (got Black Friday deal for $1 per month). Don’t really watch anything on any of those streaming services though.
    • jerezzprime 4y ago
      Do you have any references/documentation for how the IRC side of this setup works?
      • yeswecatan 4y ago
        I, too, am interested in learning more.
        • inversetelecine 4y ago
          Most common method of using IRC is using the irssi client with autodl-irssi typically done on a seedbox. Everyone's setup is different though. https://autodl-community.github.io/autodl-irssi/ https://autodl-community.github.io/autodl-irssi/
      • 300bps 4y ago
        Use any IRC client - I use MIRC on Windows. Join a good IRC network - I use Abjects. Subscribe to the shows and movies you want to automatically download, one of their bots sends you files as they are posted. Write a script to copy them to the appropriate folder that Plex monitors.
• pgtruesdell 4y ago
  The bundling and unbundling cycle continues.
• buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Just a reminder there is only one way you will ever own what you purchase, and it involves Jolly Roger and a bottle of rum. https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
  • wincy 4y ago
    I have a PLEX server/torrent box behind a VPN. I then wrote a fairly simple Apple Shortcut that grabs the magnet link off whatever page I’m on, then shoots the magnet link over the torrent API. It took some work to set up, but I shared the Apple shortcut with my wife and she now uses it and it’s super easy and convenient. So much so that I need to buy a new hard drive as she’s filled up our 8TB drive with TV shows.
    • 300bps 4y ago
      18 TB drives are the sweet spot for price right now.
      • inversetelecine 4y ago
        I feel this year around the holidays (US) will see good deals on HDDs. Prices have held steady for a rather long time e.g. 4TB still around 80-120 for consumer and nas based drives. Drive shucking is still viable depending on the external drive, for anyone who wants cheap(er) drives but with some work.
    • password4321 4y ago
      Do you watch content more than once? Just curious because I tend not to (except for Equilibrium, of course). I've heard most things worth watching are still out there later on, maybe just keep the links.
  • adventured 4y ago
    > there is only one way you will ever own what you purchase Other than the gigantic number of blu-ray and 4K discs available for movies and shows, which you can purchase to own.
• themitigating 4y ago
  My parents used to pay $110~ a month for a cable package, decent number of channels, and HBO back in the late 90s. This is significantly more expensive than it is today.
• scrivna 4y ago
  Best thing about streaming subscriptions vs cable IMHO is NO ADS - I find it baffling people spend a hundred bucks a month on cable and still accept like 30% of the airtime is ads…. just no
  • phone8675309 4y ago
    There are plenty of streaming services that have ads - Hulu and Disney+ have an ad-supported tier, for example, and it's foolish to think that Netflix won't introduce an ad-supported tier as soon as they think their customers won't revolt. It's the most obvious solution to login sharing - give a very cheap or free ad-supported tier and then monetize the hell out of them. Netflix already has ads - just for their own shows.
    • zerocrates 4y ago
      Netflix has already widely announced their intention to add a with-ads tier.
    • joegahona 4y ago
      > Netflix already has ads - just for their own shows. I think the industry term for this is "in-house ads," and they've existed for as long as I can remember on premium-cable channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. The experience would be better without them, for sure, but they're less ugsome than the typical programmatic ads you get on Youtube or Hulu.
      • ghaff 4y ago
        Or you call them trailers in the movie theater (which also have ads). I don't mind them and they're pretty easy to skip in my experience.
    • pnutjam 4y ago
      Paramount+ has ads even if you pay for the ad free experience. Really irritating.
• georgeecollins 4y ago
  This is a terrible comparison because no one has to buy all those services and in fact few do. The problem with cable was, regardless if you wanted it you got almost everything, particularly the most expensive package ESPN, whether you watched sports or not. Also, in Los Angeles, without any premium channels we have always paid more than $80.
  • edgyquant 4y ago
    Not only that but I feel that a lot of these “are we going back to cable” are people too young to have used it. Having to pay for a bunch of a channels you didn’t want wasn’t at all what separated cable from streaming. Being able to choose what you watch along with not paying for the pleasure of watching ads is why streaming won out.
    • dvtrn 4y ago
      Not to mention being able to cancel a streaming membership without going through the eight layers of contact center hell that still exists to this day for many cable providers.
      • palebluedot 4y ago
        And I remember being locked into a contract term as well for cable or satellite. All of these comparisons of streaming to cable of yore seem pretty far off, since you can mix & match services, binge, cancel some or all of them, re-subscribe later, etc. All without contract terms, and all without needing to do more than a few mouse clicks.
    • Johnny555 4y ago
      Not only that but I feel that a lot of these “are we going back to cable” are people too young to have used it. The worst part of cable is the ads - when I travel and go to a hotel, I find that cable TV is unwatchable, it feels like 25% of the playtime is devoted to ads. I've started carrying an Amazon Fire Stick with me if I'm going to be in a hotel for more than a few days (usually for work) since most TV's have an accessible HDMI port, then I can watch all my streaming channels. Hotel Wifi is so spotty that I normally use a hotspot.
• tristor 4y ago
  Jim Barksdale [1] is right again, the only way to make money is by bundling and unbundling. The cable companies bundled, streaming/cordcutting unbundled, and now we're seeing bundling again (Disney+, Hulu included w/ Verizon cellular as an example). [1]: https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...
  • _23sd 4y ago
    Most of the carrier "On Us" offers are just free trials, that Verizon one for example is a 6 month trial. T-Mobile does an ongoing one for Netflix, but even the most premium plan only gets the Standard tier, they're clearly counting on people being tempted to pay for 4K and more than 2 devices.
    • tristor 4y ago
      The Verizon one is not a 6 month trial. It's included in their highest tier along with Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, and it's "permanent".
• glanzwulf 4y ago
  This type of conversation always upsets me. No one person can consume so much content that they would subscribe to 8+ services. That's the beauty of streaming services. No forced ads, watch whatever you want whenever you want, and no yearly forced on contracts. Sign up to 1, consume, cancel, sign up to 2, and keep it up.
  • mywittyname 4y ago
    The problem is that content is pretty well dispersed across multiple platforms.
    • glanzwulf 4y ago
      Personally I think the problem is just our need to consume everything as fast as possible. Content being spread out means you use one for a while, then switch, the content won't run away (unless of course HBO's new CEO has something to say about it). But it's us, we're the problem. Like for example, you have Game of Thrones back on HBO and you have Lord of The Rings coming up next week on prime. Logically you subscribe to one, watch one, then cancel and switch to the other. A lot of people just can't do that, they must watch both as fast as possible, they must consume the content the moment it releases.
• basseq 4y ago
  I'm not seeing discussion of key comparison to steaming vs. cable: the ability to buy and access a variety of content from one source. "Having to buy more than you need", "annoying contracts", "ads", "bundling"... all true... for both streaming and cable in different ways. What's most annoying with the streaming ecosystem as it exists right now, is having to deal individually with each provider. That means multiple transactions, different apps, silo'd searching, etc. I like the ability to turn different services on and off at will... I want the ability to manage and access those services in one place. Having a single relationship with a cable-esque provider to abstract away the complexities of different streaming services would be awesome. At least with cable, I didn't have to buy Verizon and Comcast and Cox to watch ABC, ESPN, and HBO.
  • tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    Cable would be awesome if it let you purchase channels individually. I let cable TV go after my bill (including Internet) crawled up to $250 a month and then I realized the only thing I was watching was occasionally Food Network and most of the time everything else had either reality TV garbage I had no interest in, re-runs of shows I've seen a zillion times, or infomercials. I like streaming. For example, I got bored with Starz so I dropped it, but wasn't anywhere near as bad as the over $100 for cable TV part of my cable bill, nor as painful to cancel. If I could simply pick and pay for the couple channels I wanted and switch without hassle, yes, it would be awesome. Until then I'm fine dealing with separate providers. I'm sure it will be ruined soon though. Here's the thing though - we have almost two generations who did not grow up watching broadcast TV and aren't in that habit. Cable TV was able to jack up its price and keep people paying in my opinion because older people grew up with TV being a default background activity and kind of just wanted it there. That's not true anymore. Your default background activity is your phone. Make these streaming services too complex and too ad-ridden and I think people simply will give them up. They're already really easy to give up. Especially with the current trend of inflation and rising housing costs people aren't going to let subscriptions stick around they aren't really using.
  • naravara 4y ago
    Apple TV+ has a unified search (although Netflix doesn't participate), but something about the handoffs between APIs is painfully sloooow and the UX can get a little confusing if you're managing multiple user profiles (both at the Apple TV level and in each individual service) as well as getting very confused if you're able to access the same content through multiple services (e.g. HBO shows via Hulu or HBO Now). It needs improvement fast. Ideally we'd decouple the technology/UX side of it from the content library management side of it but that'll never happen.
• deegles 4y ago
  We hit peak content years ago (more content produced in a year than you could ever possibly watch). As more and more streaming services use their data to tailor content creation, we'll also hit peak personalized content as well. However, it's split up between all of those streaming services. IMO, all content should be available to license on a per-second basis (like radio music). Maybe with some tiers for more or less desirable stuff. Then streaming platforms could compete on features, and content studios could focus on content. And we can finally have one service for everything.
• mtoner23 4y ago
  Only 2 things you can do in business. Bundling and Unbundling
• y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
  My household has Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, ESPN+, and something else I can't remember. Yet I still find myself sailing the black seas for material that's been removed from or can't be found on those platforms. Sometimes I'll just buy the blu-ray on eBay then rip the disc onto my hard drive. My torrent downloads went from like 5 a year between 2014-2018 back up into the hundreds and continues to climb each year.
• bedast 4y ago
  First, those streaming services are ad-free. Cable is not. Second, those streaming services cover what would be considered "premium" content on cable, so that price comparison is grossly misleading. They're comparing subscribing to all of those services to what likely amounts to "basic" cable. The great thing about those streaming services is you can pick and choose. I used to subscribe to more services than I do now, and there's so much content on each of them that I found myself neglecting about half the services I subscribed to. So I dropped it down to what I actually use. You can't do that with cable. I spend far less with my ad-free streaming content than I would if I purchased ad-filled cable content. And when I say ad-filled, so much of it is every 5 minutes or so you get about 5 or so minutes of ads. For how much you pay for the service, that is completely unacceptable. So, no, I will not be spending MORE on cable in order to be served ads constantly. I'm doing fine on my small collection of ad-free streaming services.
  • focusedone 4y ago
    Excellent reply! Many were frustrated for so long with paying for alllll of the cable channels so we could watch < 10. All I ever wanted was to pay a flat fee per month for each channel. Well, now we live in a world where that's possible and it's great! Being able to subscribe to one service for a month or two, catch up on a favorite program, then cancel paying for it when that's done is an unimaginable convenience. Some make it unnecessarily difficult to do that, but it seems like those are the services with less interesting content anyway. Anyway, I think where we're at with this is fantastic. Likely we'll see some consolidation in the market where less successful services disappear and other services suck up the shows left behind. If that pendulum swings too far it'd be unfortunate, but where we are right now seems to be a sweet spot.
    • UberFly 4y ago
      Exactly. Also, who actually subscribes to everything in that list in the article? Maybe 3 of them with the freedom to jump around. Definitely an improvement over cable.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    When I dropped it my basic cable TV was more than $100/month. Now I pay something under $50 (depending on how you count Prime and my Apple One bundle) for what's probably frankly more streaming options than I need. I don't have any live TV though I could always add a service if I wanted to and I still wouldn't be more than my cable bundle was.
• AlwaysRock 4y ago
  thehustle went from putting together decent articles to absolute garbage like this low effort graphic. Sure if you purchase all the popular streaming services it will be more expensive than cable. But like cable you will be paying for a lot of content you dont actually watch. That content will be on demand but that doesnt mean you will ever actually watch it.
• Johnny555 4y ago
  I limit myself to 3 streaming services, when I get bored with the content in one, I cancel it and switch to another. It's still annoying that content is spread over so many streaming services, but I'm never going back to cable.
  • mxuribe 4y ago
    Same here! And, on the rare occasion, my partner every once in a while wants to watch a "blockbuster movie" that is out only in theaters (not includied in any streaming services' regular content library for the subscription price)...so on a rare occasion we will rent/buy a "blockbuster" from amazon prime, vudu, etc. I dislike it because sometimes just 1 new, big-budget movie might cost as much as a full month's worth of streaming service...but it is still waaaay cheaper (and pletny more convenient) than both of us going to see the movie in an actual, physical theater (with the rest of the germ-producers out in the world). ;-)
• FalconSensei 4y ago
  With cable you can't just choose "I want Disney and Discovery". If those channels are on the most premium subscription, you get 100 channels of useless content. Also, as other commenter pointed out, cable has ads
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  The difference is I pay for ad-free content. Otherwise I would never watch the shows to begin with. As these providers look to profit with more ways to add ads to their services, I'm sure people like me will find new ones who respect that transaction of pure content. I don't want images to be implanted in my head because I'm too cheap. I don't think you can put a price on that.
• FredPret 4y ago
  I've pivoted to buying DVD box sets and then ripping and NAS-ing them. It takes time but: zero ads ever no matter what, cheaper in the long run, and my shows never get taken down or moved to a different company. Why pay $20 per month to rewatch Friends/Seinfeld/whatever if the box set is $60? I can even set up some sort of internet-facing NAS server that I can watch on the go.
  • kjkjadksj 4y ago
    Up your game and start getting the dvds from the library
    • yegle 4y ago
      Or better, if you are in the US chances are your library has collaboration with Kanopy so you can just stream for free using your library card.
      • AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
        Kanopy's great, but it's probably not gonna have Friends/Seinfeld or whatever the parent comment was ripping.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    Yeah but for someone like me who rarely rewatches things it’s not really a solution.
    • thewebcount 4y ago
      I'm the same. I want new content. I very rarely go back and watch something I've already seen. (And I never need to see Seinfeld or Friends again! After long runs, they ran in syndication for years, and then were on streaming services that were ad-free for years. Really, they weren't that good to begin with!)
      • ghaff 4y ago
• fullshark 4y ago
  Yeah the market share war is ending and now it’s about consumer surplus capture from whatever market you’ve established + acquiring/merging with other services.
• rcarmo 4y ago
  The site is almost unreadable since it aggressively tries to redirect to itself with my adblocker active, but there’s a point that it doesn’t address: non-US viewers are still getting the short end of the stick where it concerns content availability, and moves like HBO’s removal of content are twice as hurtful to us. (We have our own streaming services and telco bundles, of course, but the content itself does not move freely)
• pdntspa 4y ago
  There's a simple solution to this: stop watching TV Consume media that you own. Buy physical copies. Pirate. Read. Play! We gave up control of our media and now we pikachu_sad_face.gif when it turns against us. This is what we get for being lazy consumers. Meanwhile those of us with hoardes of media files, DVDs, and Blu-Rays can sit atop our pile of entertainment and laugh at the peasants that gave it up
  • dudul 4y ago
    Couldn't agree more. In my house, Han shoots first.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    Waiting for the old Slashdot meme: “I haven’t owned a TV for 20 years. Do people still watch TV?” Yes how much have you spent for your “hoards” of DVDs?
    • pdntspa 4y ago
      For some of us, a lot, but at the end of the day... it's paid for and ours in perpetuity. The will and greed of adversarial publishers means nothing to us. Can you say that about the cloud? Now that I think about it... I've probably spent less on my physical media than you've paid in subscription fees, in total. And again, I can do what I want with it.
      • scarface74 4y ago
        I’m slowly getting through all of the Star Trek series right now. The box sets for TNG, DS9 and Voyager alone are $135 each. I didn’t bother to look to see the cost of the box sets for TOS, ENT, and the movies. Let’s say around $900 in all. Paramount+ has all of those available for $9.99 a month and I can watch them while I’m traveling on my phone, my iPad, the hotel TV using the Roku stick I bring with me. Yes I know I can set up a Plex server and spend the time to rip all of those DVDs. Been there done that. I had a Mac Mini connected to my TV running Front Row from 2006-2012 and then a Plex server from 2012-2020. And that doesn’t take into account all of the new series that are only available for streaming - Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. If you’re not a ST fan, substitute whatever you are a fan of.
• magwa101 4y ago
• TheRealPomax 4y ago
  "Starting to reveal"? The first time Netflix had to remove content from their catalogue because a competing streaming service was getting set up by the license holders, this was both the inevitable and immediately obvious conclusion. There was a brief utopian moment in time where you could just watch what you wanted, when you wanted, the way you wanted, `from a single service, and then reality kicked back in. In the same way the internet was a weird and free place and then reality went "actually, no, we can make more money if we make it a terrible place and charge you a fee to temporarily make it slightly less terrible for you".
  • nightski 4y ago
    It's not that simple. Providers simply can't go back to the old days. They will push consumers to their limit, but I just don't think people are interested in paying $150/mo for scheduled programming with ads any more. In the end it will likely be a compromise. But it's a good time to vote with our wallets.
    • TheRealPomax 4y ago
      I never said it was sustainable, but the chain of events definitely is that simple. Netflix ran into the fact that it offered literally too good a deal for others to not cash in on by making the ecosystem worse so that they can charge people to make it convenient again instead. The fundamental principle behind making money is having something that people want, and then making sure it's inaccessible to them unless they pay you for it. The "making things terrible" comes from content companies going "we have a licensing system in place, we've used it for cable providers for decades, and we even used it for streaming services, but now we're going to cancel that and start our own vertically integrated lock-in service because we'll make way more money that way". While it makes sense, and everyone could have, and very much did, see it coming, it's still the kind of move that historically would have gotten your company broken up. But that's a power modern government seems to no longer want to wield anymore, despite our wishes they did.
      • tomjakubowski 4y ago
• JohnFen 4y ago
  Streaming services are already as bad as the cable days, it seems to me.
• pnutjam 4y ago
  Anybody try this out? Looks interesting, but might be a pain to use with a family. https://bobstreamingclub.com/ https://bobstreamingclub.com/
• Night_Thastus 4y ago
  At one point I was subscribed to most of those listed. I like a lot of niche/older content and it's just really split up now. I was getting sick of it. Every single one of the shows I wanted was on a different service, almost no overlap. I wasn't using any one service enough to justify their monthly costs. The alternative would be to cancel and re-subscribe when you want to, but that gets exhausting very quickly for 6+ services. I decided to cancel all of those subscriptions and go elsewhere. It's just not worth it at this point for me.
• rhacker 4y ago
  I think I said this a few months ago, but the main difference is that I'm not paying for all those services all the time. I only get HBO when the entire next season is out of something I am watching. Prime is probably the exception, however even for that, with inflation I'm considering cancelling that too and just upping my Amazon orders past the $35 (or whatever it is) minimum to get free shipping. Point is, Cable is like one giant minimum price of boring with ads. Individual services are better even if I can't watch some netflix show right now, I can do so after I cancel Hulu or whatever I am binging is done.
  • thewebcount 4y ago
    Yeah, we've taken to signing up for services, watching what we want and unsubscribing. We do it all through AppleTV, which allows us no-hassle cancelling, so no calling anyone or whatever. For several services, there was so little we were interested in that we ended up cancelling before the free trial was up.
• kat_rebelo 4y ago
  i primarily torrented initially because i was broke. i was a super early netflix adopter (back in the DVD by mail days). for awhile netflix, hbo, and amazon prime were all i needed to watch 80% of the stuff i wanted to, and it felt fair to pay what i did. with more content being paywalled behind the proliferation of superfluous streaming services, consistent rate hikes, and a huge drop in quality of content i've eliminated everything except prime (which i keep mainly for the two day shipping). i don't want to declare myself as a bellwether, but i got into netflix early and i got out early as well (cancelled my subscription Dec of 2021). at the end of the day, torrenting is always the best value proposition. you can possess the files you download, they are not subject to being randomly taken down, and there are plenty of options for streaming them to multiple devices in your home. i download some really weird obscure stuff and i have never had an issue not being able to find subtitles. sometimes quality can vary but for most things you can get a decent 720 or 1080 rip.
  • slg 4y ago
    >at the end of the day, torrenting is always the best value proposition. Weird that the one that is free and doesn't pay anyone who had a hand in creating the content is the one with the most value. It is almost like creating content has a cost that needs to be passed on to the consumer.
    • kat_rebelo 4y ago
      for content you have purchsed (ie: prime) there is nothing stopping them from giving you a file in case they delist the content (Bandcamp is a good example of a service that offers exactly this). this may be more of a political stance, but most of this content is produced by huge media corporations with deep pockets and histories of nefarious business practices. do i really care if disney gets paid for their content? no not really. if they amortize this loss by paying their employees less than that says more about them than it does about anyone pirating from them.
      • slg 4y ago
        >for content you have purchsed (ie: prime) there is nothing stopping them from giving you a file in case they delist the content (Bandcamp is a good example of a service that offers exactly this). Sometimes you aren't purchasing the content and are instead getting a license because Amazon doesn't have the contractual right to sell you the content because they are also just licensing it rather than owning it themselves. >this may be more of a political stance, but most of this content is produced by huge media corporations with deep pockets and histories of nefarious business practices. do i really care if disney gets paid for their content? no not really. if they amortize this loss by paying their employees less than that says more about them than it does about anyone pirating from them. Disney isn't the content creator I am talking about. I am instead referring to the actual individuals that were hands-on with the creation of the content. One of the primary reasons that HBO Max is removing content is they don't want to pay residuals to the individual artists involved in creating the removed shows. Keeping those shows on the platform means HBO Max would have to literally send out checks to the writers, actors, etc. who have negotiated for those ongoing payments. They would never have gotten those checks at all if you never pay for that content.
• syrrim 4y ago
  The price advantage was always going to be temporary. People have clearly demonstrated that they are willing to pay however much for access to content. Furthermore, the content producers have gotten used to a certain amount of funding, and are unlikely to give it up willingly. The biggest difference is that today people can pirate content that they can't otherwise find conveniently. But people are likely willing to pay even a very high fee to stream content conveniently, and if streaming services play there cards right, I suspect they will manage to raise fees substantially.
• madrox 4y ago
  This was obvious to me in 2014, when I was part of the earliest discussions at Disney for building a streaming service. It was obvious to everyone working in the space. As we started discussing partnerships with various providers to help distribute, it became clear they wanted a window into our service where they could see what was available and direct link to content in our streaming apps. Essentially, they wanted to keep owning the customer's experience and pass them to us to watch something. Everyone wanted to be in the position to be the next cable company. Even Apple. Apple TV+ is one of the latest movers here, and I think it's because they were pushing hard for a while to be that "we own the customer experience" layer but the content companies had gotten wise to Apple's tactics since the early days of iTunes.
  • dopeboy 4y ago
    This is fascinating. Can you share more on when and why Disney decided to build their own streaming service?
• racl101 4y ago
  Who's got time to watch shows from all these services?
• mr90210 4y ago
  Cable? Nah, a NAS and torrents is the way to go.
• kin 4y ago
  I can pick and choose which streaming service to subscribe to. I can cancel and resume at the click of a button w/o dealing with some retention salesperson. It's ad free. There's exclusive content. The apps are higher quality. I could go on and on. Cable seems to be advertised as cheaper somehow (if I bundle probably), but I'm stuck with Spectrum in my area and I refuse to give them more money than I need to. Knowing them, they're just going to raise prices quietly hoping I don't notice. The problem is that there are simply too many shows being made right now and quite honestly I don't think people actually have the time to watch all these shows so it's not sustainable that so much high quality content is being produced. At some point these services are going to drop down to just a few winners.
• eaglehead 4y ago
  I wonder if there is a room for a single viewer to bring all these subscription services into one place. You log into this one portal, connect all your streaming services with it and it creates a singular viewer. As a user I don't want to jump from app to app to find my fav programs. Perhaps a wishful thinking or a new YC startup?
  • spikej 4y ago
    It's called Pirate Bay :P
    • eaglehead 4y ago
      oh yeah.. I kinda forgot about that.. :)
  • MisterTea 4y ago
    At that point they are little more than fancy file servers with some form of shared auth instead of walled gardens which I'm sure will not happen. The main issue being that content hosts lose control over playback which the content owners want tight control over to ensure every penny is extracted.
• yesUgotit 4y ago
  Yeah? The Walmart model works; start low, inflate prices to make up margins as interest/competition falls off. You expect the owners to adapt?
• FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Ha! You are all going to be charged three times for content now! Once for the internet connection, once for the subscription service and again for the ads. This is progress? They have you by your addictions.
• redleggedfrog 4y ago
  I have an exceptionally hard time with the value proposition here, for either streaming or cable. $90/mo is about $3.00 a day (streaming) and $80/mo is about $2.66 a day (cable). I have a life, I don't have time to watch something every day. So maybe every other day, or every 3rd day. That has me paying $5 or $6 to watch maybe an hour every other day. There is nothing they can show me that's worth that - my time is too valuable. And really, I watch something maybe 4 times a month, and that breaks down to $22 a view. WTF. So I have Netflix DVD, and that's it. I watch a movie every once in a while, and the rest of the time am out and about which I'm fairly certain is a way better use of my time from just about every perspective. My questions becomes, why would anyone pay this much?
  • Jemaclus 4y ago
    > My questions becomes, why would anyone pay this much? The simple answer is that "anyone" is really broad! More specifically and to state the obvious, not everyone is you! There are a _lot_ of people who watch far more than you do. If you watch two 1-hour episodes per day, then it becomes $1.50 per hour is a pretty great deal in terms of entertainment. (Compare that to $25+ for a movie at a movie theatre, or $60 for a Broadway show, or $20 for an hour at your local rock climbing gym.) I don't disagree with your overall premise -- it's expensive! -- but it's not _not_ worth it for a lot of people, including myself.
• CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Once Netflix had a competitor and shows were forced to pick their streaming service it was only a matter of time before Cable 2 Electric Boogaloo happened. And now that markets are saturated and people are stretched thin by the last two years, we'll start seeing the nastier tricks like bringing back ad tiers, and maybe punitive and labyrinthine cancelation policies will be next.
• linsomniac 4y ago
  I have an incentive to minimize the number of streaming services I have, because the more I have the more time I spend flipping between them looking for who has what I want to watch. Example: The family sat down to watch a specific movie this weekend, and after trying 4 services I decided to buy it on one of them, clicked purchase exactly when my wife announced she had found it on 5th service I didn't know we had.
  • zdragnar 4y ago
    canistream.it used to be my go-to, but they're currently "rebuilding". For now, you can search movies on https://reelgood.com/ https://reelgood.com/ (and probably a half dozen other sites) and it'll list the services the movie is available on. Of course, if you didn't even know you had a particular service, it's not going to be terribly helpful...
    • Falkon1313 4y ago
      justwatch.com is one I've had good luck with. But as you mention, if you don't remember what all services you have or what your logins are, you'll have to figure that part out yourself.
• pleb_nz 4y ago
  I doubt many would subscribe to all services. Most people I know are 2 to 3. Would would be interesting though is if you started adding other digital services into that mix. e.g. you tube premium, Spotify and the like. I know my kids and their friends watch very little TV and movie streaming services, it's either gaming or you tube.
• running101 4y ago
  It is only a problem if you subscribe to all those services.
• kazinator 4y ago
  Comparing a stack of unbundled $5-$20 items to a monolithic bundle isn't very wise. That $75 bundle is one thing: a service with channels. Each one of those items is a thing like that: a service with channels. It's almost like those 8 services that add up to $89 are 8 different cable boxes in one (and in theory you could own 8 streaming boxes and install each on a separate one). Pick one or two and be happy. You can share passwords with friends and family members easily on some of them to save money. I don't know about cable everywhere, but cable boxes in Canada are tied to a particular subscriber line. You can't just put one in your suitcase and watch your stuff in another location, like a hotel room. They have shitty, antedeluvial remote controls with way too many buttons, which are hard to use. The software is garbage. You can't go back in time to view programs, except ones you've laboriously arranged to be recorded. The Shaw cable boxes don't even have their own HDMI-level volume control. The volume control on the remote sends IR commands to the friggin' TV to change the TV volume. With any decent IP streamer, that's not the case; you set the TV volume to 80% or whatever, and then forget about it, using the streamer's own volume control: the quick, responsive Bluetooth-based volume control that doesn't need a line of sight to an IR LED, and doesn't go through 100 steps. I don't understand why that has any customers at all, or any who are under 75.