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Comment by totalperspectiv | Hacker News Reader

And we are one step closer to being back to cabel and likely a swing back toward pirating shows instead of working out what combo of 12.99 subscriptions are needed to watch some subset of shows and movies.

I would honestly just like blockbuster back.

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I found the selection of digitally rentable movies on iTunes and Amazon (not the streaming services, the pay per rental one’s) to be pretty good. If you are willing to pay to rent (ie the blockbuster model), I think either has a much larger and better selection than blockbusters ever had.

Blockbuster used to cost a Euro per day. 1.50 for new releases. Renting something from Amazon costs 3.99, about as much as buying a used DVD. I don't think that's a fair price.

Maybe that is what rentals at Blockbuster cost at the end of their run (or before they were super popular). I used to go to a wonderful local movie store for $0.99 - $1.99 rentals because blockbuster was $3.99+ a rental. Granted, that was for 5 days, but Blockbuster was definitely pricey in it's prime. Disclaimer: pricing is just based on one suburban area in the United States.

My childhood video store had a 5 movies for $5 for 5 days deal. But that's easier with a back-catalog oriented clientele.

Or often worse than $3.99 on new releases.

Alita: Battle Angel is $5.99 to rent in HD right now on Amazon.

Redbox is charging $2.12 for all Blu-ray releases on disc, including Alita. Their streaming version is also $5.99 in HD.

Hard to imagine running those kiosks 24/7, maintaining them and stocking them is cheaper than serving up a stream version. They're no doubt charging $5.99 because they're confident that they can command it based on convenience (laziness factor). $3-$3.50 for a new release in HD is around the edge of reasonable in my opinion; and $1 to $2 for everything else.

Don't the kiosks charge late fees? Isn't that where the money was in the rental business?

I'd have to assume they make a nice kicker from it. They add an identical rental fee each day. So if you roll it over past the return time, they re-rent it to you basically.

I know someone that owned a rental chain (the old style physical stores) in the 1980s and early 1990s. At any given time 15-20% of their sales came from late fees. Also interesting is that VHS tapes once cost $70-$100 ($40-$60 wholesale; $55 in 1984 is $140 today), so there was a serious investment and risk in renting them out to customers at the time. Stores typically purchased the tapes outright from the studios back then (so you can imagine the VHS tape inventory costs); more recently many independent stores switched to a shared revenue model, where they didn't have to front cash for inventory.

Part of the kiosks being cheaper is copyright; Redbox can buy retail discs if they have to, so they have a lot more leverage in licensing.

Since Blockbuster went bankrupt charging €1 and €1.50 it should be pretty obvious that's not a fair price either. Blockbuster was losing $1 billion a year charging those prices.

> Blockbuster was losing $1 billion a year charging those prices.

Blockbuster was also running bricks-and-mortar stores, and buying physical DVDs, and replacing them when they broke/wore out/weren't returned. A digital "rental", on the other hand, has basically zero marginal cost.

OTOH Blockbuster paid for the DVD once and got to rent it out as long as it lasted. How much do itunes/Amazon have to pay to the studio every time they rent out a movie?

It has to be close to the price they are a charging since every VOD store charges the same. I would think of that weren’t the case, someone would charge less.

Scarecrow Video in Seattle had a huge selection, more than any other video rental place. A small, independent video store was able to compete in a local market with the giant chain, and they did pretty well for themselves. I wonder how feasible it would be for a small, independent streaming service to even exist these days.

FWIW, the past tense isn't needed: Scarecrow Video still operates, five years on as a non-profit.

Reckless Video is also still in operation at Roosevelt and 90th in Maple Leaf.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/644154729/the-scarecrow...

What value would they provide in a world where it only costs $5 to instantly stream almost any movie ever created directly to your TV?

Location and inventory are now irrelevant, and recommendations are instantly accessible on the web. Viewing devices typically have multiple rental provider options.

The only things left to compete on are be bitrate and price.

> a world where it only costs $5 to instantly stream almost any movie ever created directly to your TV

Wait, where is this world you speak of?

I have a Netflix streaming subscription and it's way inferior in terms of selection to when I used their DVD mailing service ten years ago.

But it sounds like you're renting individual titles. I am a bit of a movie buff into old and slightly obscure titles so I went to Google Play and tried three of my old favorites from the 1990s off the top of my head. None of them were available. (I didn't even try the truly obscure stuff.)

On the other side of the market, Avengers: Infinity War is $10 to rent on Google Play!

Where is this place I can go where they have everything and it's all $5?

I actually still have the DVD mailing service from Netflix (in addition to their streaming). But their back catalog is really rotting away. I'll probably drop it. It's one of way too many services I have that I don't really get my money's worth from.

Their DVD catalog is shrinking? Why, from sheer apathy?

Literally bit rot. Not restocking discs that have to go out of service. I'm not sure apathy is quite fair. Netflix has been pretty clear their disc business isn't strategic.

Unfortunately, having pretty much put other DVD rental out of business, it means that you're pretty much stuck with buying discs if something isn't available digitally.

Pressed DVDs don't rot. If they get scratched, that's proportional to use, which is proportional to revenue, and shouldn't be a burden to replace.

DVDs can rot. But, yes, the problem is likely more scratched/broken/lost.

I assume that the vast bulk of Netflix' DVD rentals are new releases just as they were with Blockbuster. So they're essentially a Redbox competitor.

Netflix simply has no interest is servicing a long tail of DVD rentals. And no one else has figured out how to make that long tail profitable either. You're welcome to give it a shot.

It’s probably the tenth comment that I read about Netflix DVD mailing service, but I hope that’s just the name of the service and you aren’t really watching DVDs in 2019. Can you please confirm that you are indeed receiving blu-rays? Or I’m missing something here?

I don't subscribe for Blu-Rays but I do indeed watch DVDs from Netflix. I also occasionally get new releases from Redbox. And I buy DVDs from time to time and I also get them out of the library.

Why wouldn't I watch DVDs in 2019?

If you have a half decent tv you won’t want to watch DVDs... In a 4K tv even Blu-ray don’t look that good.

Lord knows I was part of the 3% who had not canceled the DVD portion of the subscription until this Spring. Had 4 DVDs just collecting dust for way to many months.

Anyhow... was one of the folks who actually still did DVDs. I've got one gadget that can read a blu-ray, and the rest are either computer systems or have an up-scalar built into them. The newer format is crisper... but man, the endless unstoppable previews really took away the luster. With streaming... the DVD quality is about the same all things considered. I use to fly frequently, so ripping the movies to a tablet or laptop on the weekend, hop on a plane Monday, back Friday, and swap out for the next set was really easy to do with DVD.

Infinity War is showing up as $4 to rent on YouTube and ITunes.

https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=OxzKb4a1Qc4

I’ve never heard of a $10 rental though sometimes new releases are only available for purchase for an initial period.

For the three movies that aren’t listed I’m guessing they haven’t been digitized, which is usually a decision by the content owners who don’t see the ROI of paying for film scanning yet. It’s true there could be a niche streaming service that pays this upfront cost for an agreement to be the exclusive provider for a while but the economics of that would be rough.

I have been annoyed that on several occasions I wanted to rent a movie and iTunes only had it for purchase. I agree that iTunes has a decent selection, but I have basically zero interest in "owning" (renting for my lifetime, or the lifetime of the iTunes store, whichever is shorter) movie downloads from iTunes.

Are there any other decent options available?

I am not interested in giving money to Amazon due to how they treat their warehouse workers, and I'm not interested in trying to get itunes to run on linux.

Though I haven't used it personally, Google Play Store looks to have a pretty large collection as well.

I mean, you can just get Disney+ by itself for $7/month?

It's pretty easy these days to go, "Is this on Netflix? No. Is this on Prime? No." Adding "Is this on Disney+?" isn't a huge burden and it's still miles cheaper than cable and ad free...

Let’s add more: “is it on HBO?”, “is it on CBS all access?”, “is it on showtime?”, “is it on Stars?”

Not to mention some local options where I live: “is it on dplay? Sumo?”

You may say that’s ridiculous, but apart from Sumo I think each of those services has had exclusive rights for something I would like to watch.

How many services do these people realistically expect me to check, not to mention pay for?

It’s a fucking mess, and piracy is clearly more convenient at this point.

We try to make the "checking multiple sources" a bit easier at https://www.justwatch.com/us - Maybe it's useful for you too.

Disclaimer: I work there

that doesn't solve the fragmentation subscription problem, it just makes it easier to check which subscription service has content.

the point here is that there are too many subscriptions. You're not solving that.

I was referring to making the part “How many services do these people realistically expect me to check” easier. Fully agree on the fragmentation issue.

I don’t know about other devices, but on the AppleTV app on iOS devices, you can search for a title and it will show you all of the places where it is available.

Nope, you are wrong. Many people I know are switching subscriptions on monthly bases. So if you know GOT is on , get 2 month hbo and cancel netflix. You see stranger things trending, get 1 month netflix and pause other subs. People are combining shows to watch and then watch it in one month. Not like cable at all.

I imagine it's very much a demographic thing. Most people subscribe to things and stick with them. But, especially younger people with less money and more time, are probably more likely to optimize around viewing specific shows.

It is very easy to pause or unpause the service though. All through website within seconds.

I did that for a while but its not worth the hassle because often I Want to watch something that isn't on any of the services i have and dont want to wait.

Piracy will make a comeback and thats a logical conclusion from this fragmentation.

But cable is actual trash. It has ads despite already paying and you can't chose the show you want to watch. This is miles better even if it's more expensive (and it's not).

Hulu has ads in this package. And of course ESPN+, but that’s because of live sports. So 2/3 have ads.

Yeah, people are finding creative ways to share videos like they used to share tapes, I've noticed. Kinda fun coming across curated mini-collections, even just out on the web.

I think you mean Comcast? At a certain point, just getting cable is cheaper than buying all these subscriptions.

We’ve gone back to buying DVDs/Blurays and renting movies. My most recent purchase was all seasons of x-files in a single box for $15. Usually it’s a tad more expensive to pick up an entire season of something though, so there is some front load to pay, but in 10 years not having had 3-5 subscriptions will have saved us money. And we will still have access to our library of things.

That being said, if Disney+ makes it to Denmark, that might actually be the one streaming service we want because of our children.

It probably should be noted that the Danish national public service tv station has streaming apps for all their channels, as well as a Netflix style selection for their own content. So that gives us 6 commercial free BBC quality channels.

I recently bought a turntable and some records. Maybe its the tactile feel of the record or maybe it's the lack of a skip button, but it really does feel better listening to physical media.

I predict we will see the backlash against digital media become mainstream soon.

If cable were on-demand, sure...

Usenet still works well :)

YARRRR - it's easier than ever to get linux ISOs. It was tricky back in the day with irc bots, and dc++, emule. Now there's magnet links and the linux ISOs are just flooded right there. Oh you want ganoo loonix remuxes? There's a usenet for that.

I would like blockbuster to come back too, it was a fun family moment every saturday evening.

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