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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

It isn't so far fetched. Time Warner is a producer of content and has a large library. It doesn't seem unreasonable for content producers to cut out the middle man and have a streaming service of their own. Disney in particular could very well build a Netflix clone of their content. Aggregated services like Netflix allow for more content and smaller library owner participation, but one wonders at what size of library could $5 a month be justified? How about $10?

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Speaking as a netflix subscriber, the problems I see with this are: 1) many of these libraries, on their own, wouldn't even be worth $5 a month to me 2) I don't want to have to buy a bunch of different services and somehow integrate them. Maybe if they all showed up as Roku channels... but netflix is available across many different devices. Few other services are so ubiquitous.

Honestly, if netflix failed and nothing took its place, I expect we'd just buy/rent dvds for a few years and wait it out. But I don't think they are going to fail. The sad truth is that there is so much content out there that it's pretty easy to live without the latest.

The thing is that 1 service with 5x content >> 5 services with x content each. Being able to find everything in one place is a very large benefit from a consumer perspective.

The thing is they don't all have same size libraries. If Disney took all content off Netflix and created its own service, then it probably could do it itself. Time Warner might be close to that size. Other need to be part of an aggregation.

Aside from the aggregation points from other responses, I think such a venture might fail at a fundamental product design level. These content companies don't have any particular know-how in that area, and they are going to be very greedy as they cling to their dying business model. It's just not a good recipe for a successful consumer product.

Looking at the ABC app for the iPad and Hulu, I am pretty sure they can figure it out if pushed.

I have tried the iPad version. Its frustrating. It actually drops out of full screen mode if the commercials are in a different resolution to the show. Oh, yeah, commercials. So now where are my XBox, Wii and PS3 versions?

Isn't that what Hulu is to some extent. I guess it's different forms of media (tv vs. movies) so one could convince themselves that they don't compete, but this seems in the same vain to me.

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