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Comment by croon | Hacker News Reader

I really like Netflix originals (the ones I've watched), but it also makes me fear for the future of consolidated streaming. I want to be able to keep up with, and watch good recommended shows.

If I want to watch shows like The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), Game of Thrones (HBO, duh), Difficult People (Hulu), HarmonQuest (Seeso), etc. Is it reasonable to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services?

Don't get me wrong, $9,99 is likely too cheap to get mostly everything like you do with Spotify, but I'm willing to pay double or triple that, as long as I can keep it in one service, and that it's not five or six times as much, which is a bit steep.

Can we expect anything other than a fractured market, where each service has a lot of content, but not even half of what we want to see?

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Almost everyone I know pays for Netflix and just torrents the rest. And it will stay that way as long as the market stays fractured. Spotify succeeded in dropping music piracy by ~80% because they have almost everything. Remember when Kanye said his album would only be on Tidal? Or Taylor Swift her new album only on Apple music (I know I know, shitty artists).. people didn't subscribe to those services just for that album, they just torrented it. TV production is more expensive than music production, so a $20-30 would be a more reasonable pricepoint, but anything above that, and again: people will just pirate.

One thing Netflix does right is being everywhere. Most any device that has streaming has Netflix.

The availability of Amazon Instant Video sucks. It's not available on a Chromecast. It's not on Apple TV. It's not on a lot of devices that I wanted to buy. I don't want to be forced into buying a crappier device just so I can stream Amazon programming. They went a step further, and stopped selling the Chromecast on Amazon.com. I want a Chromecast. I don't want your stupid Fire TV Stick. If you have to maintain a list of devices compatible with your service like this one...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/devices

...I don't want to use your streaming video service.

For what it's worth, an NVIDIA Shield can do Amazon video, and it is also a Google Cast device.

if only there was a service that "bundled" all the "channels" you like into some sort of "package" and provided a unified interface to stream them all into your TV through a "cable" like device

That'd be pretty amazing. I hope when someone does make that service, they don't then "inject ads every five minutes" like youtube does, don't turn streaming into "only at prespecified times" like those "theaters" and "cinemas" we hear about in history class, and don't start exploiting the fact that there is no real competition by doing things like charging for "bundled content" that you never opted in for while also not being able to opt out of.

> don't start exploiting the fact that there is no real competition by doing things like charging for "bundled content" that you never opted in for while also not being able to opt out of.

I mean this is basically what the OP is asking for

It is amusing that people have been complaining about not having a la carte cable for years, and suddenly the opposite complaint is surfacing about these streaming services.

I wouldn't mind having a cable package again if it weren't for all the ads. I'm simply not going to pay for a service for it to inject ads into my experience, and that includes cable television.

I'm not sure it's comparable. I wouldn't say TiVo was as convenient as streaming, the shows were at predefined times on different channels, it was harder for providers to track what shows got views from which customers, which I believe is why streaming services has been able to produce such high quality shows. They both have the benefit of not being reliant on advertisers, as well as tracking exactly what their paying customers mostly focus on and put money there.

Spotify pays whatever artists I listen to. If I buy a cable package I pay for a bunch of reality TV I have never watched.

It is almost as if the companies providing these services don't have the consumer's best interests at heart, and people sense that...

It's not legal, but per my comment above Kodi offers a pretty good solution via a Mi Box, Roku, Fire TV etc. Exodus has pretty much every show you could wish to watch on demand, and then there's (paid) IPTV services that you can access if you have to watch live TV. Again, it's not legal but it beats torrenting as you're never uploading any content, only consuming.

tivo+cable card is pretty close to this now - especially since they added the button to skip ads in recorded shows. It definitely could be better, but if your primary sources of video content are mostly cable/TV channels it is probably the best experience. Also it integrates netflix, hulu, vudu, amazon, and cable's on-demand into a single search (at least it seems to, I have not used hulu or vudu through my tivo). You tube is still a separate search though.

The way I see it, you have three choices:

- true a la carte; pay for exactly what you want (on disc or through some provider's store like iTunes, Amazon Video, Xbox Video, etc) - subscribe to a bunch of different services (the situation we're in now) - bundle them up

A la carte pricing will be more expensive than anything else, but you get some greater flexibility over the stuff you own. The situation we have now is annoying, but at least you can turn them on and off as needed (so you can pay for HBO only when Game of Thrones is airing). When you bundle them up, it's only a matter of time until you end up with the traditional cable bundle and all the customer abuses and fleecing that it entails.

At JustWatch, we've started aggregating the streaming market, and at the beginning the market looked like a lot of consolidation (harmonized prices for rent/buy offers, Netflix/Amazon Prime going for global deals...) - but by now, it looks nothing like we'll be out of business anytime soon. Movie rights and distribution are still very strategically fragmented into various differently sized individual deals and packages - and none of the established movie studios and new digital players particularly like each other. All of it creates a situation that makes a universal legal streaming service with a broad offering and flatrate pricing (like Spotify) highly unlikely. Bad for the user, good for us.

If for some reason this doesn't work out, look at doing the same thing for publications. It'd be nice to have one place to pay (and manage subscriptions for) the WSJ and other paywalled sites.

Yes, if everyone is charging a fair amount. Add YouTube Red. 6 x $10 = $60/month. That strikes me as a better bargain than most cable packages.

I agree. Once I can get Turner Classic Movies legally on the web, then no more cable. For myself, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube Red are all I need. As to the main topic, the original content is great, but then so is having a large number of tv shows and movies.

For TCM like content, try FilmStruck

Thanks for this, checking it out.

We pay for Netflix and have access to all of the Amazon content via our Prime subscription and then we just use Exodus on Kodi for everything else. I'd love to see a legal Exodus emerge one day but I think it's unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Even if your 5 on-demand subscriptions come in cheaper than basic cable would cost, you would not be willing to accept that?

It's hard to imagine consolidation in a winner take all market like we currently have. If content producers license their shows to Netflix, they're only going to get a fraction of that 9.99 a month subscription fee, with Netflix itself getting the lion's share of the money. They also become more beholden to Netflix' demands if they're the only major player in the video streaming market. Also, with Netflix now producing content, they're helping to prop up their competitor if they hand over their content libraries. This is pretty similar to how mind geek killed the porn production market, except instead of outright pirating content, Netflix gives producers a fraction of what they're previously making through TV. Basically, consolidation will only happen if Netflix can kill and absorb traditional TV media.

I would say that the issue is more like you like certain kinds of content and streaming services are not split among content types but among who makes the shows. And that you want to watch all the exclusive top shows that are made for dragging people to their streaming platform. I'm in Finland and I would be happy if could select 2-3 streaming services from American selection. But only real options HBO and Netflix with 38% of what they show in USA and a third option which was so terrible for me that I wouldn't even consider it.

It feels like this is a path they foresaw long ago and therefore worked out the cable TV infrastructure. Which may have flaws and got bloated but also has a lot of benefits compared to streaming.

What about a Spotify equivalent with everything, but you can only stream x amount of hours/shows/episodes per year?

I agree the market is too fractured and everyone subscribes for just a few shows on each service

What is the equivalent for TV content producers that concerts are for musicians? Seems to me there can be some advantage to having your music available for streaming as you provide significantly more access to your music, which you can then monetize through concerts/apparel, but would think those producing the in-demand content would not want someone else to be able to capitalize on that.

It is pretty easy to circumvent censorship these days, thanks to BitTorrent.

Censorship is the wrong term here. Plus, I want to pay for what I use. I just want the process to be somewhat simplified.

For like $2 extra a month you can get all the HBO stuff throguh Amazon Prime.

Where do you get 2 dollars? From prime: $14.99/month after trial https://www.amazon.com/gp/channels/offers/signup/ref=atv_cha...

Indeed. It's exactly the same price you pay going directly through HBO NOW. I don't quite see the point, although I will confess to using it to get an extra free trial month.

It's definitely $15 a month, not $2. I just signed up for it.

If you mean HBO go, it's $14,99 per month through Prime.

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