Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I highly doubt Disney is going to release one of their most flagship titles online before or same day as theaters. That would just be cutting into their own bottom line, makes no sense.

I'm starting to get a little worried about all of this vertical integration in the streaming industry. It would be nice if there were just 2 or 3 streaming-only services, preferably with heavily overlapping libraries, that licensed content from content producers. The way it's going, it looks like you're going to have start paying $50-60/month (Disney, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, HBO) just to have access to all your favorite shows... which is pretty much the reason people ditched cable. At least it's on demand now, I guess

That's how it was always going to end up. You can't reduce the money going into TV from ~$60 a customer to $10 a customer and expect the same content quality.

Netflix had a relatively brief moment in the sun where they could buy lots of content cheap because streaming was add on revenue to the production companies. That's not going to keep happening for much longer.

IMHO, I think we will end up back to a cable like situation. It doesn't make sense to pay two middlemen for access to content. In other words, I don't want to pay Comcast and Netflix to deliver Disney's content. Eventually, we will end up with ISPs providing access to a handful of streaming services each with their own exclusive content.

Packages will also come back because they make economic sense. Ultimately, the NBA, NFL, MLB, NCAA, et al will get more money from a streaming sports package than trying to sell individual streaming services.

The irony is that pirating is getting way better now because of this fragmentation (it was going downhill for a while). Plex is damn amazing. The fact that you can share with your friends means that even a person with a modest social network will have access to gobs of content, and it will likely be the most popular stuff.

But you can wait until the season is over, subscribe for one month and binge. 10-13 episodes for $10.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com