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Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

> I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick and choose what we actually want to pay for? Now we finally have that and people instantly want to go back? Why?

1) I don't want to pay for content I won't watch.

2) I don't want to be required to pay for content I won't watch in order to watch content I want to watch.

3) I want to easily watch the content I want without needing to have dozens of different separate accounts or services. I mean similar to "press button, get bacon" style of easy.

4) I want to pay in money and nothing else. I don't want to pay with my data; I don't want to pay with my viewing history.

5) I want to watch whenever and wherever I choose, no take-backs.

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Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all offer paid rentals of nearly anything, on a per movie, episode, or season basis. So what you are asking for definitely exists. It’s just priced disproportionately high compared to the streaming packages that are popular these days.

$4/movie when i could get a month of X service for $8-12/month is kind of too high. Pay per episode for the TV shows I want to watch is too high almost whatever the price (who would pay anything to watch the logan's run tv series??)

Maybe we can get a frequent renter's club. $20/month for 8 movies (two a week) and 20 episodes?

The Amazon Prime model works decent i think. Bunch of included content and stuff that’s too expensive to throw in for free gets a rental charge.

Was trying to find John Wick 3 this weekend and no joy. I would have paid a premium for that.

I agree movies are expensive.

However, I’m very okay with iTunes’s <$3 per episode. Sure it’s more than most vod subscriptions, but the shows are mine forever, and I can buy just about whatever I want.

If I watched more TV overall, it might get too expensive, but I don’t, so quality over quantity.

* Except, annoyingly, for Netflix and Amazon originals. I waited a year for Stranger Things Season 2 to come out on BluRay. :(

Use PLEX, buy dvds, and copy them onto your PLEX server. It satisfies all of your listed requirements.

Yeah if you have tons of free time and want to watch the same DVDs over and over.

Some of us don't have that much time anymore (I did run Plex when I was younger, though). I'm either willing to pay about $$25-$30 / month for a few services like HBO and Prime without commercials*, and available in demand, with plenty of quality series to keep my 1 hour / day TV habit satiated, or I'll just take my ball and go home. Cable TV and $100 / month for 30% commercials is something I can and will live without.

The only system that can cover all five of your points right now is piracy.

1) No charge, so you're not paying for content you won't watch

2) Same as 1

3) A torrent client speaking RSS + a private torrent site that serves RSS covers this

4) You pay with nothing - no money, no data, and no viewing history

5) Files without DRM can be played on any device and cannot be retroactively deleted by the service provider

Piracy really is most often a services problem.

Physical discs.

DRM, high cost, and ironically, poor availability (I bought all the seasons of ER in 1080p off iTunes, there exists no Blu-Ray sets for the show and the DVDs are often more expensive than what I paid Apple for digital copies that I promptly stripped the DRM from)

That's right! It would be interesting to see how torrented series statistics correlate with online streaming prices. My feeling is that as Netflix-like services become more expensive and/or fragmented, piracy picks up. Don't have any numbers to back this up with though.

And the silent 6) I want DVDs, but without the physical disc management and without the high cost and without the DRM that makes publishers feel safe distributing digital content.

Same here. I want Bandcamp for video.

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