Ways Streaming Services Are Getting Worse | Hacker News Reader

Ways Streaming Services Are Getting Worse

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20 pointsnkurz28 comments

It is shocking to me how few old movies are available on Netflix. Here is a complete list of English language movies from the 1960s on Netflix right now:

* Color Me Barbara

* My Name is Barbara

* Barbara Streisand: A Happening in Central Park

It does not seem that unusual to me to want to watch a movie starring Audrey Hepburn, Clint Eastwood or Elizabeth Taylor. The presence of even a dozen of the better movies from that decade would increase the value of Netflix to me and, I suspect, many others. What is going on?

> What is going on?

The copyright owners of movies with know stars from the 1960s have their own platforms and aren't licensing the movies to Netflix.

Hence, why Netflix has for years been making a huge original-contenr push; once it proved out streaming as a business model with other people's content, getting (or keeping) such content became more difficult.

I think the immediate reason why a lot of the older movies are not coming back is partly due to a rights management thing (films are usually negotiated for terms of n months/years, and renewing the contracts is a cost), but also they impact the size of CDN working set. The "long tail" where 90% of traffic is accessing only 10% of the files kept on origin makes for an inefficient proposition for an SVOD service. This is even more of a pressure when you are both the VOD service AND the CDN. I suspect Netflix spends a lot of man hours finding which titles perform in consistent viewership and prioritise those for the reasons above - besides, how many times can a person watch Breakfast at Tiffany's per month?

Netflix's data suggests those films won't be viewed enough to be worth buying.

I keep thinking why on earth the Hollywood system doesn’t realise the shear tonnes of cash there is out there for the following; DRM free downloads of HD movies for $2, 4K for $3-4. No-one would bother pirating and I’d probably spend a fortune over the next few years to legally have copies of this stuff. My bet is that most people would pay and do it legally because it’s far simpler this way.

Because this market doesn't exist to any statistically measurable amount.

Just because you want it to doesn't mean it does.

Well until it's tried I guess we'll never know... worth noting the DVD market is still pretty big. No reason it wouldn't be several times bigger with a simple online version.

Pirates going to pirate so it will literally make no difference providing people with a legal alternative that is easy and simple to use.

> Well until it's tried I guess we'll never know...

It has been. The BBC tried selling Doctor Who via Bittorrent for example, with signficant publicity.

The DVD market is big because it's cheap and no other reason.

People already have an abundant legal alternatives that are widely available and simple to use.

It’s currently £20 to buy an arbitrary superhero movie on Amazon Prime in 4K. I mean, it’s up to you if you want to believe selling Dr Who or selling all movies ever are the same thing...

And let’s not forget one of my “favorites”: ads before the content. Sure, for now it’s mostly just promos for their other shows, and it’s generally skippable, but that’s how it starts. They ease you into it, like boiling a frog.

HBO and AMC, I’m looking at you. You have, like, two or three shows worth watching at any given time of the year. I don’t need to be reminded about them every damn time I watch an episode.

And, FYI, when I’m binging some dark-ass drama series, nothing kills the feeling of immersion like a loud-ass promo for some upbeat sitcom between episodes.

Glad I've never dealt with any of that. Plex is great and my family loves it.

That's great, where did your content for your Plex server originally come from?

The most likely place HE got the content for his Plex server Is fRom legAlly archived dvds. ThE process for this is not so BAd, You should try it.

Regardless of where I've acquired it, content providers should distribute raw files so that consumers can decide their own viewing experience. I definitely don't mind paying for content if that's an available option. In fact, I regularly purchase music from various websites (beatport, bandcamp, artist direct, etc) that offer original sources and it's great having it all on one central platform that just works.

Several people in my family barely know how to turn a computer on, but in the past they've comfortably managed to figure out how to watch their old movies on their TV with a USB disk that contains an entire archive and they still prefer that experience over various streaming sites.

Fell off the back of a truck, obviously ;).

Trucks do, after all, have the best bandwidth.

back to torrenting we go...

Totally. The situation is absolutely ridiculous.

It was all fun when Netflix, Hulu & HBO were the only names in town. Now that they're constantly removing good movies, and adding cookie-cutter "original content", I'm actually considering cancelling my subscriptions. Trying to keep up without subscribing to everyone starts to feel more like buying individual movies, and half of the things I want to watch is geo-locked anyway. Meanwhile, random shady free streaming services are becoming more usable, especially for caching up with shows older than 5 years. All it takes is updating uBlock and killing an occasional cryptominer.

I'm strongly convinced torrenting will experience a resurgence of interest now.

Oh no, Filmstruck[0] shut down??

I guess we're going to find those old harddrives and swap them around.

[0] https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/filmstruck-shutdown-wa...

Online TV was so cool back around 2010. Balkanization:-(

That 16TB hard drive announced a few days ago is gonna fix that for me. I hear there is a 100TB in the works too.

To old really relentless extremely nice technology!

> There Are Way Too Many Platforms

What's the goldilocks number of platforms?

I'd say two, maybe three. Beyond that, one wishes for a meta-platform integrating this all together.

(The same applies to IMs and groupchats. Personally, I can't reliably follow more than 3-4 channels, e-mail included.)

Also, all the legacy content creators are clinging to their old production models and airing shows one episode at a time. Just sign up for one month a year, binge, and cancel. Or do it twice a year.

Thousands of different platforms with some sort of federated subscription service.

Yeah, and that single site could proportion money to the content owners depending on how much their content is watched.

And to make it really simple and easy, the federated subscription service could build and maintain the streaming tech so that streaming experience is consistent across all platforms.

Just if this could exist!

This is pretty much how broadcast television works.

disconnect content distribution from the content licensing itself. That's the only way forward imho - each platform needs to compete on price and speed, not availability of exclusive content.

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