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Comment by johnchristopher | Hacker News Reader

> Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country.

My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies that are really mediocre. Now I see there's a lot of content on Netflix but I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe.

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Netflix is terrible if you have good taste in movies.

I'm with you on the old black/white movies.

I actually think Amazon got a great deal buying MGM.

If TCM was available, Nefflix should look into buying it. They have a great library of old movies.

TCM was available (alongside all of Warner Bros. Media, Turner Media and DC Comics)... It's getting absorbed by Discovery [1], I imagine that a competitive bidding process must have taken place, presumably Netflix didn't see the benefits.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/john-malone-sees-warnermedia...

TCM content is mostly available on HBO Max.

> I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe.

This is what machine learning, pattern recognition will get us.

I watched one show in Amazon prime. One shocking thing I noted besides repetitive plots every few episodes, is that one character say something and after few minutes or next episode another character spoke exactly same sentence in different situation. And it happened so many times I thought I knew what is about to be said.

I think the machine learning part in that is massively exaggerated, perhaps to avoid personal responsibility. Detecting the patterns in commercially successful movies hardly requires complex pattern recognition algorithms. I would claim that most movies made in the past decades were copying ideas that had turned out to be successful earlier. Maybe machine learning can add some tiny extra on top of the recipe, but I think it's still the producers who are to blame for the lack of creativity.

Not just the producers but the overall strategy. Right now, these media companies are competing on quantity because it's a numbers game and a marketing gimmick to showcase your "vast" collection, however mediocre.

> I think the machine learning part in that is massively exaggerated,

You are right of course. I said that in half-jest. It is like at work where every product/project is working on something next generation. Irritates the hell out of me. So in morning meetings I so often ask "Are we fixing it now or it will be part of our next gen product?"

The Criterion collection is a good choice for those with a more discerning taste in film. Well curated too. But expensive.

Criterion Channel is a great, lower-budget streaming option ($11/month)

Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it. Its a bad strategy because users waste time watching content they would rather not watch. HBO imo is the only platform that focus on quality rather than the number of shows.

Yep, HBO is the only streaming platform with consistent quality. It’s also the only one I pay for. There are approximately 0 Netflix originals that are on par with the ‘good’ HBO series, same for amzn and Hulu.

I would argue Apple is trying to follow the HBO formula. They are not quite there yet, but the Apple shows I have watched have all been good, with Ted Lasso being great.

> Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it.

I read it was more than that. Shows have to bring in more customers, keeping them hooked to a show (or the platform) is not enough now. They will more and more invest only in content that bring in more customers, not just keeping the ones they already have. I read that's why the OA got cancelled: it wouldn't bring in more views and the show would have been more expensive.

The ML lays out the broad strokes of what it thinks will perform thematically which coincidentally is what uncreative producers have been doing for years.

(see Avatar is Dances with Wolves with Blue Aliens)

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