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Comment by personlurking | Hacker News Reader

Though unrealistic, all things considered, there needs to be a single site for everything (akin to pirated tv/film sites, incidentally).

The user would go to a central place where all streaming options are available to be browsed and watched. The point of differentiation would be at payment, as the cost to the user, for whatever they just selected, would go to those who own the rights. No walled gardens, everyone wins. The user pays one monthly price, or within a fixed range. How to figure that all out, well, that's where complexities arise.

My personal soltuion, thus far, is to pay for the service I'm using the most (currently, MhZ Choice), then find other solutions for that which I don't pay for.

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> Though unrealistic, all things considered, there needs to be a single site for everything (akin to pirated tv/film sites, incidentally).

I'm from the Netherlands. I live in Sweden. In both countries the banks have been able to set up a shared service to make digital payments easy for consumers, despite them being competitors[0][1]. In the Netherlands we also have one national transport chip-card used by all public transport providers[2].

Based on that I would say that what this may need is just the right amount of (and type of) government regulation to force the different competitors to play nice enough to create a better end-product for consumers and to compete healthily with each other. I won't pretend to know what that regulation would look like though.

[0] https://www.tikkie.me/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)

[2] https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/home-1.htm

Technical aspects are trivial - pirate streaming sites have no problem managing a single portal that pulls from a wide array of video sources and players.

The problem is with the exclusive deals, with the IP holders ruining the space for everyone in an attempt to maximize short-term revenue (it will kill their long-term revenue), perhaps thinking this is battle royale, and they obviously will be a platform that wins in the end.

> battle royale

I don't think it's the Highlander end-game they are envisioning, rather there seems to be a drive towards a new (imagined) equilibrium with specific streaming services servicing specific demographics — like Disney is aiming straight for the 'wholesome and family-friendly'-niche.

Of course we all lose as consumers (until you hoist the Jolly Roger in despair).

Disney owns wayyy too many different subsidiary companies and IPs to just focus on wholesome, family programming. Like they own Fox, FX, ESPN, National Geographic, Hulu, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, huge chunks of other networks like A&E and Vice Media.

You know that hip, edgy Vice News, the one with stories about doing drugs in war torn Africa? Yeah Disney owns like ~16-20% of that.

Disney is EVERYWHERE; be afraid of The Mouse.

That's Disney the company. Disney+, the streaming service, is pursuing family-friendly.

All the edgier material goes on Hulu apparently.

https://www.justwatch.com/us at least lets you search across lots of services. Also if you haven't cut the cord, your cable company's portal page might let you search streaming content that's included with your subscription, e.g. https://portal.metrocast.net/video/details/category/episode/... shows "Food Network - Subscription" and links me right to it.

Amazon could be this. Hulu could be this. They both have a foot in the water with add-on subscriptions. The site that's best suited might actually be YouTube.

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