Walmart may launch a video streaming service to battle Netflix, Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Walmart may launch a video streaming service to battle Netflix, Amazon

arstechnica.com

14 pointsokket15 comments

At a certain point there's simply going to be too many options. There's already a huge overlap of content between the big players, so it'll come down to who has the best originals.

People aren't going to pay for 3-5 disparate video services, especially where 80% of the same content is available on all of them.

>People aren't going to pay for 3-5 disparate video services, especially where 80% of the same content is available on all of them.

Sure about that? HBO, Showtime, Starz, sports packages, etc. Plenty of evidence that they _will_ do exactly that. I hope it doesn't go that way, but there's a reason we ended up with cable in its current form.

Eventually it'll end up just like a bundled cable subscription. Anecdotally I don't know anyone that pays for all of those services + an Amazon video and Netflix.

Most of the people I know have Netflix + maybe one premium channel add-on subscription.

Yeah, we have Netflix, and I get HBO for about 3 months/per year till I'm caught up on the major shows, except this year (No game of thrones).

Lots of people have Amazon Prime which includes the video streaming service.

Maybe a third party will arise which would bundle the services at some discount -kind of like we have with museum passes and other bundling services.

We'll come full circle

OTA TV => Cable and Satellite Companies => Streaming services => Service or company that wrangles in all streaming services

The evolution of this would be providers combining services for a single price (let's say 19.99) and then sharing the revenue amongst themselves based on the viewing / usage patterns of the user.

Good, we need more competition. Here are my thoughts:

Netflix is to metric driven and the creative uniqness of their original content isn’t that great.

Prime Video has a lot of UX issues.

I gave up on Hulu years ago, no idea what it’s like these days.

YouTube is the next social platform, which has a whole new set of issues.

I just want to watch a movie or show every now and then, offline, and with no compression artifacts.

There is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to purchase and download movies or shows.

> There is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to purchase and download movies or shows.

Google Play Music & TV supports purchase and rental, and download of at least purchased content (possibly rental, too, not sure.)

I did not know that, thank you for sharing.

What would lead you to believe that Walmart would have a clue on UX, let alone provide anything more than bland content given their approach on music, books and magazines?

It may be more prudent for Walmart to enhance user experience on Vudu, their movie renting/purchasing service, and add streaming features on it down the line. Why launch a new service when you can use preexisting infrastructure?

This is genius. All walmart has to do is turn on their security cams, hire a producer to pick out the best feeds from hundreds, and they've already got their reality TV Show.. People of Walmart IRL.

The real news would be that they join a common platform, saving the user to have 1000s accounts for watching content..

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