It's hard to say who's winning the streaming wars, but customers are losing
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What there isn't is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. The cable bundle was close to that for TV content, but very lacking for movies. So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we're going backward, since there's no more one-stop-shop.
Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Some things have fallen through the cracks, particularly long-running (going back to the pre-streaming era) major-network content like the aforementioned Survivor (a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on). And getting US content stuff internationally is often sub-par, although... I don't recall stories of this being easy at all two decades ago.
So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it's not a perfect victory for everyone.
Music licensing?
It would not cover a typical US internet bill with speeds to support streaming, plus a couple streaming services.
I don't think it's realistic to assume "no internet" is a standard default these days, though, regardless of if/how you watch TV.
Streaming only was able to take off because broadband (back then this wouldn't even have been that much, >~2Mbps) was already widespread. So I'd say yes, nobody liked waiting for slow connections.
> I don't think it's realistic to assume "no internet" is a standard default these days
About 1 in 6 US households has no internet access, nowhere near a small enough number to start rolling up alternatives.
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-united-states-...
That also claims:
"The number of mobile connections in the United States of America in January 2020 was equivalent to 107% of the total population."
I'm not sure how to disaggregate that to humans. I do personally have more than one device with a data plan, although I'm not sure how typical that is.
Good internet is becoming more of an overall utility than just a luxury.
I have that feeling that internet is boiling frogs making people think it's that amazing christic thing when a few phone calls and organization would go as deep. Plus kids and teachers are often computer illiterate, a single file format can delay information for days if not weeks because people don't know how to mail or open something.
- The only major loss with the current system is local programming. You may be able to get it with free OTA channels, but people subscribed to basic cable in the 1980's and 1990's simply because cable was more reliable than a good residential antenna tower so it is justifiable to count this as a loss.
- The current system is much better in that you can watch commercial free programs when you please, any given streaming service is usually less expensive than any given cable bundle, and the content in any given streaming service will usually have more in common than the channels in any given cable bundle. (Cable companies were notorious for putting similar channels in different packages.) As an added bonus: the "watch when you please" aspect means that you can defer viewing, may that be to switch between streaming services to keep monthly costs down or to simply cancel during the months when you have better things to do than watch television.
- The current system is also better in that Internet service can replace many other products and services. Subscribing to newspapers is a novelty these days. If it wasn't for societal expectations, people would have dropped phone service since the Internet provides far better communications options than traditional landlines.
In almost every case like that, the answer is "we can't figure out if this is licensed for streaming because it didn't exist yet". Usually it's music, which they licensed for "broadcast and video cassette release" or some similar language. In most cases they've decided DVD is close enough to VHS to still count, but is streaming? Courts haven't really decided yet.
[1] https://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2012/09/03/a-rogue-3572732...
I would even settle for a way where I can ask, "Where can I stream X?" There used to be canistream.it -- which is apparently now being rebuilt but has long been mostly useless. Fingers crossed that it becomes useful.
Now if only someone would combine all of these search engines...
Since the marginal cost of selling an additional unit is near zero, it makes sense for sellers to heavily price discriminate such that poorer people are charged what they can afford and richer people are charged what they can afford.
That is where brands come in for differentiable products. The generic brand lotion and the name brand lotion might come from the same factory. Maybe it is even the same product, or the different in quality is only slightly better for the name brand. But now the seller can target people willing to pay $x for lotion, and people willing to pay $2x for basically the same lotion.
Or you implement “binning”, where products of worse quality get branded differently, even though the sale price difference between the better quality product and the generic quality product is disproportionately larger than the cost to produce the better quality product than the generic product.
Anyway, you cannot do this for a movie or tv show, so the sellers of movies/tv shows do it more crudely via country or region of the world.
Between the time element and snobbery, the market is segmented and revenues maximized.
Classic economic theory on pricing lists commonly used options that essentially try to achieve that but with various indirect methods:
1. provide discounts to various demographics that are known afford less - e.g. students, seniors, etc.
2. provide different prices at times or places that have customers with different average ability to pay - e.g. geographic discrimination, and also discounts provided at times when traditionally employed people can't take them.
3. simple "inconvenient obstacles" e.g. coupon schemes, intentionally created queues, etc where people who accept the inconvenience get a better price, and people who can afford to pay more simply don't bother and pay.
4. Direct, prolonged, serious personal bargaining and haggling, resulting in an individually negotiated price that depends on your willingness to pay.
But IMHO people would not like if it was explicitly based on their ability to pay, so companies try to disguise that.
What was the situation outside of the US if you wanted to watch The Sopranos or Sex and the City or something else on HBO back then? My assumption is that this wasn't all free and over the air?
In retrospect, they did a great job of curation.* I seem to spend more time looking for something to watch than watching, and often just give up and go to bed.
* Up til subscription satellite TV became available. Quality was inversely related to the number of available channels.
I think the focus should be on keeping the market fractured. If content is of poor quality that just means the population is ok with poor quality. There is business to be made on poor quality. /s
Once upon a time I worked as a CSR for a cable company, and a couple customers, old honest people, opened the conversation along the lines "I only come back because, impossible as that might appear, the other company is even worse than you are"
I highly disagree with that sentiment. Cheap cable packages maybe had 40 channels which barely expanded on the local broadcast availability, littered with advertisements. No real dedicated movie channels, movies were often cropped and edited to fit the time slots and ratings allocations for the channels when they did air. Time shifting meant having to keep a VCR well stocked, or later buy/rent a DVR. And if your VHS or DVR was full, well, you're out of luck, you just missed that episode. Decide you want to start watching some TV show that's been on for a few seasons? You're out of luck, better go rent some tapes or DVDs to get caught up. Want to watch on the go? Sorry, you're out of luck, the only place you can consume this is at home, or lug around a TV, VCR, and VHS tapes with you.
For less than half the price of your supposed $20 cable package (before adding additional expensive hardware) I can watch literally thousands and thousands of movies and shows at a moment's notice anywhere I have an internet connection.
[1] https://openmedia.org/article/item/2021-rewheel-report-shows...
[1] https://www.offersnewcustomers.co.uk/sky-tv/complete-bundle/ [2] https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/packages
But now if all you wanted was HBO, you could get it for under 20 bucks if you have anything but the slowest internet packages!
I agree with the parent. Without live TV, a streaming bundle you assemble is clearly cheaper than you were paying for cable TV (or cable TV plus Netflix) in the US. Today, add a live TV streaming service and you're probably back to about price parity with a lot more choice of content.
For example, the current used car market has insane values with used vehicles costing more than the MSRP on new ones sometimes. Likewise, when Netflix had no competition, they were able to sign deals with content providers for almost nothing because content providers thought streaming was worthless. Either streaming was going to fail and that $10 deal would go away or streaming was going to succeed and content providers wouldn't license content so cheaply. That era was an odd thing in the market before content owners realized that streaming wasn't just a little additional revenue, but a replacement for their service.
I don't think you can really compare a market blip to a sustainable business model. HBO and others weren't going to continue licensing their catalogues to Netflix once it was clear that streaming was popular. They made the mistake of licensing to Netflix assuming that they'd be getting a little extra pocket money rather than cannibalizing their services. That mistake is probably the reason Netflix is the giant it is today. Netflix signed deals to license content before content owners realized the value of streaming. They used that content to gain subscribers until they could afford to build their own library of first-party content.
Even from Netflix's side, they might have been spending more on content than they wanted to long-term to try and gain subscribers that would be sticky as their library waned and they transformed from "we licensed most of the content you want" to "we're another HBO with a limited content selection".
These things happen. We saw MoviePass come and go because it was an unsustainably good deal.
I think it's also important to remember that back in that era of Netflix, most people were still paying for cable and renting DVDs. Maybe you weren't, but most people were. I think it's important to think about the whole amount that people were spending and people were spending a lot on their entertainment. It was perfectly normal to head to a Blockbuster and spend $10 renting two DVDs each weekend. That feels like such an alien concept today, but people were spending $100 on cable plus $40 on rentals and getting a lot less entertainment than they are today.
Sure, if you were one of the few that only had Netflix, it was a glorious time. $10/mo never bought so much entertainment! Likewise, if you were a MoviePass subscriber, no one had ever gotten so many theater tickets for so little money. But it wasn't going to last because it was unsustainably good. Once MoviePass found that people would actually use the service, it was dead in the water. Once content owners saw that people would cancel their HBO subscription because Netflix had HBO's content, the era of Netflix having such an expansive library for so cheap would end as the deals ran out.
Comparing current prices to a market blip isn't really a fair comparison - but there was a pretty great 5 years in there.
Do not pay Disney, and send an email to the US Tennis Association or whoever keeps contracting with ESPN.
If you keep paying Disney to watch Tennis, you will never get it a la carte.
> you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Add to that cheaper, since you don't have to deal with connection fees. If you know that you're not going to have the time to use the service for a couple of months because you're too busy with work, you don't have to pay for it. If you have decided that you are going to spend most of your summer pursuing outdoor recreational activities, you don't have to pay for it. If you're going on the road for a few weeks (vacation or business), you don't have to pay for it. If you decide that you want to watch programming on two different streaming services, you can simply rotate through the services on a monthly basis and only pay for one service at a time.
Why do I bring all of this up when it's not directly related to the article: it's because these articles reek of entitlement. Yes, there are times when licensing causes shows or movies to fall through the cracks. On the other hand, the situation is also far better than it used to be when using the same metrics. Not only that, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive even when factoring in the cost of an Internet connection.
I think what makes people frustrated is that cable channels were _themed_. I was frustrated that I was paying for TLC and Bravo because I didn't watch reality tv. I was paying for Discovery even though I didn't watch nature shows. I was paying for Lifetime even though I didn't watch cheap shows for women. I was paying for ESPN even though I didn't watch sports.
I wanted to pay for the comedy, the scifi/syfy, the cartoons, and the kids programming. That was, like, five or six channels.
Which streaming service do I go to now for the science fiction? Which streaming service do I go to now for the horror or the feel-good sitcoms?
Streaming arose during the collapse of genre channels. There are now three genres of programming: prestige, drek, and children's.
This is something I've been feeling for awhile but haven't managed to articulate this clearly. All new programming is either a mega-budget tentpole or it's something to fill out the menus.
Some of it is genuinely a failure. Funding an entertainment project is always a pig in a poke. Even promising things sometimes just flop. But streaming makes it possible to lower the opportunity costs of those flops, so they can take bigger chances.
In the sense that an F-22 is used for CAS / bombing in The Tomorrow War (which I'd assume was one of Amazon's better funded efforts).
A lot of them just feel like "Oh, you just gave some money to people, removed the usual checks and balances that exist in filming, and told them to deliver a movie ASAP."
It'd be one thing if they were making niche or more interesting content, but it feels like they're mostly just making more action movies and baking shows... faster and at lower quality.
Describes Red Notice by Netflix
How does one even write lines like:
"We need to work together!" "I won't give up on you!"
It's like an AI bot wrote the dialog.
The thing is so ripe it would have been easy to take the next step and make it a sly comedy.
Exactly. Every company has segmented their content by company, not by type. Sure, I can buy a subscription to Boomerang and get a lot of cartoons, but it's just the cartoons owned by Warner. But not all of them, because they've moved some of them--like Dexter's Laboratory--off to be HBO Max exclusives.
There's no way to say "I want a science fiction themed service" that includes Paramount and HBO and the old PTEN and the like, because no company would stand for another service mixing their IP like that.
Yes, sometimes you just want to watch a specific show and you want to watch it now, and the streaming services are great for that.
But sometimes you just want to turn on the TV and watch something, anything, without really making a choice. I still have cable because it's included in the rent, and sometimes it's nice to just switch the channel to FXX or something and get maybe an old episode of the Simpsons, or a new episode, or maybe some Family guy, or maybe an old episode of some other comedy series, or maybe something completely new.
And that's nice and has value, but streaming services absolutely suck at that, because you always have to make a choice yourself with them.
It was relaxing to me, post- many cable channels (81?), pre- guide/DVR, to just click through.
"Oh, Armageddon is on again. Hercules. (flip, flip, flip)" and then settle on something random, pulled from what's currently playing.
It used to be: survey and then choose from a very limited but rotating subset of all content.
Now it's: choose from all content ever and then find where the content lives and then figure out how much of it you want to watch.
For movies, the new way seems superior. For TV, it feels like a lot has been lost. And overall, I feel like the new system definitely leads to winner-take-all.
It's why I still subscribe to satellite radio.
(and yes, I've thought about subscribing to video service from Spectrum, but I'm not a huge TV watcher)
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/play-something-netflix-doe...
It can pick either something you're already watching (TV series or unfinished movie), or guess something based on what it has learned about you. Of course it's just the Netflix catalog, but that's pretty extensive.
It sounds godawful to me, so I've never used it. But it sounds like almost precisely what you just asked for.
Today, I have about 700 movied ripped from DVDs (and the DVDs still in boxes somewhere), and 500 movies purchased on iTunes. I don't subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or any other streaming service because, again, 99% of it is dreck I can't stand. So instead I have a collection of 1200 movies that I like and specifically chose and purchased. Some are better than others, but they're all ones I like.
iTunes sells licenses, not movies. Providers can pull content from iTunes and you lose access to whatever you paid for.
There have been cases where users thought they lost a purchase, but it ended up being an issue where they changed storefronts to one where the purchase wasn’t available. The movie reappeared when they went back to the original storefront (and I believe even that behavior was a bug that’s been fixed).
I keep an eye on this because I’ve also purchased a lot of movies from iTunes.
When it comes to that business sense, we probably have the closest thing to perfection today. Streaming services are forced to compete against each other, with the only real constraints being the cost/restrictions of licensing content and the cost of distribution (i.e. not controlling infrastructure to the home). It is very easy and relatively inexpensive to pick and choose, provided that you are willing to defer your viewing. You also have the choice between large streaming services that offer a broad range of genres and smaller ones that offer more specialized programming.
Yes, that closest thing to perfection is far from perfect. On the other hand, I very much doubt that we are going to get anything closer unless we are willing to pay the price.
Themed packages did and do exist, though most channels for cable were normally available mainly through stacked tiers. But alongside the main generic tiers, language-specific (especially spanish language) and some other (sports, often) themed packages were available from many cable providers, and premium channels were often available in themed groups as well as individually.
But we don't. It's worse than ever now. Shows are fragmented into way too many different subcriptions (netflix, etc) each with their monthly fee and a bunch of stuff I won't be watching.
True a la carte would mean eliminating all those exlusive distributions so I could get any show from any streaming vendor for a one-off price (say, 25 cents for a show, $2 for a movie, or whatever) without having to subcribe to any recurring service.
I've given up, I'm not going to subscribe to half a dozen things, that's way too inconvenient and expensive.
I remember most people, including myself, would get the full DirectTV/Cable subscription, hook up TiVo, and just record/watch on demand whatever you want. Those days seem impossible now. It certainly feels like things have regressed.
I canceled my cable TV as I increasingly realized I simply was watching either live or recorded on my TiVo stuff once in a blue moon.
To replicate that today I'd need to subscribe to many different services all with separate monthly fees and way less conveniece (a single unified interface through MythTV was magical).
So I don't watch any TV anymore, oh well. More time to code.
Plex shares or even Pseudo TV Live partially could replicate this. But it’s a grey area obviously.
I could get DSL, but it's shit here and anyway only ~$25 cheaper than the cable (which is 5x faster...).
For $15, I could get cable tv, apparently diverting what I currently pay for internet away from profit and over towards channel fees.
I've never fully digested them, but Michigan seems to have shitty franchise laws written in service of the large cable companies.
"a la carte" means I don't subscribe to anything and instead I have access to "all the things" with a separate charge for each thing. The whole idea back then was to compete with the ease and access of piracy like Steam did.
That said, "careful what you wish for" currently applies to sitcom episodes for rent on Amazon costing more per minute than mega budget movies.
It’s been good for me, I just watch a whole lot less crap and get more sleep.
High-quality, daring, inspired, more than superficially controversial, world-changing movies are another casualty of the rise of streaming.
1: https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/qx4rtu/i_think_movi...
Of course, I could be missing something about the industry and how streaming has shaped it. I just struggle to see how the streaming ecosystem has different content requirements than a normal movie studio.
I have no inside knowledge and am fully speculating, including some random tidbits I've read here and there.
Think about how Netflix changed when moving from DVD to streaming. They used to optimize for recommending you movies you would rate highly. Now it's all about what keeps people viewing the longest.
2 middle of the road acceptable movies that you rate a 6/10 is more viewing time than 1 higher quality production that you'd rate a 9/10 -- I doubt the costs are they cut and dry but I think that's the idea. More content that is passable wins out against less content that is of higher quality.
Yes. Movie studios and streamers have different business models. Movie studios also deal with more "legacy" actor contract negotiations and the like (see disney v scarlet). Theater released movies make most of their money upfront, and make money out on a per-view basis. So they need as many viewers as early as possible.
With streamers, they can lose the subscription any month, and only gain it back if they lure you - so they're incentivized to give you "anchors" that keep you there. Think game of thrones keeping people subscribed to HBO month over month or Squid Games that gets lots of attention. Once you're there, they just have to have "something" for those days you don't really know what to watch. That "something" is different for everyone, so they have to make lots of low budget generic stuff that appeals, collectively, to a wide audience. Each show/movie can have few viewers, because its going for niche targeting en mass - think themed cable channels but one company has to make something for each theme. Once a streamer makes a show, its "free" to them to share it with as many people as possible, but also doesn't cost them anything to not show it.
Ben Thompson (stratechery) has talked about this a lot, check him out!
yes, if streaming movies well-produced, middle of the road, not terribly expensive is most profitable - as per this recent discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29247571 on red notice
if cinema, big expansive events most profitable (currently)
if shows, high quality addictive, dramatic, character driven, etc. is most profitable
why is quality series more profitable than middle of road? because you have to get people to make the investment of spending 10+ hours.
why are medium quality competence streaming movies most profitable? because many people are willing to spend 90 minutes passing the time with something mildly enjoyable, despite the many draws on our time it's still not seen as a serious investment.
why are big events blah blah blah - because it costs a lot to go out it is a hassle compared to staying home, I tend to go to restaurant as well when I do it so for me at least it definitely has to have been a night worth it at the end, and something big is more likely to make everyone like whoa I had an experience I can't have at home.
I'm curious if they actually have scientifically valid data to back that up, or if it is just assumption and common knowledge from industry people with the common trait of not questioning if the assumptions are actually right. It is very hard to tell from where I'm sitting, because there is so much puffery and fake numbers tossed at the public. Actually comparing apples to apples would be difficult, as there are so many variables such as advertising budget and media placement to account for.
In what sense is "International Audiences" part of "The lowest common denominator"
So if you are selling a global movie, you are not going to be able to rely on cultural references, witty banter, or sophisticated plots. You will not even be able to rely on a lot of dialogue as the movie will need to be dubbed and subtle dialogue doesn't translate well.
You will rely on boobs and explosions, because that's the lowest common denominator that will sell well in New York, Indonesia, Nigeria, Italy, Egypt, Chile, and China. And if many nations don't allow boobs, then explosions it is.
There just isn't a lot that the world has in common, which forces movies with a global audience to be extremely shallow.
One reason, for example, for the dearth of good comedy films is that it's really hard for comedy to translate across different cultures. Maybe something like slipping on a banana peel will work, but more sophisticated stuff doesn't work.
Yes, but what has maybe replaced the movie is the high-quality, daring, world-changing series. Squid Game, Outlander, etc. Directors and consumers are now no longer limited to a 3 hour time in the theater, as far as the art of the motion picture is concerned.
I feel like people say they want a la carte but that's not actually what they want. What they want is all the good content and none of the crap filler content, for cheap. People pushed for a la carte because in their mind all content costs the same, so they figured that by removing the content they don't want and only keeping the content they do want, they would save tons of money. They don't understand that the good content (live sports, FX, AMC, HBO, et al) is precisely what studios are charging a premium for and what is driving most of the cost in packages in the first place.
It's roughly akin to someone looking at a Vegas buffet that costs $100 and features 100 entrees and saying "well there are 100 entrees but really all I want is the cheese, prime rib, crab legs, and caviar, so if I remove the other 96 entrees then this should cost $4" then being shocked when they are still charged 40 dollars. Sure it's cheaper but in their minds it should be an order of magnitude cheaper than it is.
but would streaming services rather compete with piracy than another big player?
With piracy, they have the law on their side - they can lobby for rules to punish piracy using state resources, rather than their own. They cannot do so for their competitors.
I'm paying twice as much for cable internet as I used to pay for basic cable, before even starting to pay for a streaming service.
After all, TCM seems to do well running their back catalog of movies.
Dear Lord, this! This!
I would dearly love to be able to get a good copy of Love is Never Silent with working subtitles but sadly since it was a Hallmark made for television movie it's simply not available to me. There are certainly others like that, half remembered movies that I'd watched in my youth that would be worth revisiting as an adult or to share with others but they're simply unavailable except through IMDB to remind myself that I didn't imagine them, they do exist.
This is the issue for me. My lineup of currently-"airing" shows requires subscriptions to Netflix, HBO Max, CBS All Access, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. And I feel like I'm forgetting another one or two.
To be fair, these subscriptions, in total, do cost less than what I was paying for cable back in 2005 (last time I had cable).
I don't want one streaming platform to rule them all. A monopoly doesn't sound great. So ok, we keep the idea of several competing streaming platforms. I'm sure there are downsides to this, but maybe a legal requirement for compulsory licensing to competing platforms under RAND terms might help?
This is mentioned in other comments, but a large part of the reason streaming services got going was because piracy was so much more convenient than the brutal grind of actually paying for something. Users could be sitting in their living rooms with wallets out ready to go, and still choose piracy, because the only other alternative was waiting for a physical CD or DVD to arrive.
If the streaming wars do too much damage to consumers, they'll just flip the playing board and go back to piracy.
I think that's already happening among the tech literate. The difference now is that the majority of consumers are not technically inclined and don't mind paying for several streaming services to get easy access to their favorite content, so the industry generally doesn't care about losing a small fraction to piracy.
Pirating content is now more technically difficult than paying for a service, but the benefits are still there: DRM-free content that can be consumed on any device, accessed offline, safe against removal, licensing issues, region locks, easily shareable, etc.
Paying for a streaming service now has the same issues as paying for cable did: you get access to tons of low quality content you don't care about just to watch the few shows and movies you actually do. Content curation is still an unsolved problem and the industry is ripe for disruption once someone figures out what I actually want to watch and how I can pay for only that.
Or pirating will become easier and they'll continue to lose revenue.
You could say the same in an alternate reality where everyone is still putting up with using Sourceforge and getting the occasional binary download bundled with malware. People would have forgotten how much more difficult it was to receive CDs by mail, so by your definition these poor alt developers would be winning.
A la carte might only make sense in a world of themed channels. After that, pricing gets hard because no one wants to pay $3 for an episode of Friends (I suppose the season is only $10), they want to rent access to everything like with Spotify, but it's complicated because sports cost a lot more than most other content, and content like reality shows is dirt cheap to make. Then there's pricing streaming movies. Everything older than 2 years included, add-on charge for new releases? People don't like microtransactions. And this is in a hypothetical world where video streaming isn't balkanized.
That's an odd argument and reminds me of the situation with science publishers that led to scihub and friends: Publishers were offering package deals to universities which technically had a wealth of content, except the vast majority of it was garbage. Nevertheless, universities had to buy the packages, because of the few flagship journals that were embedded in the packages.
> Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Who was wishing for anything here? Streaming has always been pushed by the industry as an acceptable alternative to piracy. The supppsed benefits of streaming were always part of the sales push.
Turns out Paramount pulled the show from Netflix to put it on Paramount+
As a Star Trek fan, j thought what the heck, let's see how expensive a subscription to that is. Turns out it's not available in this country. It'll launch as part of something called SkyShowtime, a separate service including multiple American streaming platforms, somewhere in 2022.
So I shrugged and added the show to Sonarr. Within minutes, I had all the episodes available for my viewing pleasure.
It's like these companies don't want my business. They pull content from my existing subscription, make it impossible for me to buy their service and then complain about the terrible threat of piracy at the same time.
It's time for someone to set up a service that aggregates all other services so viewers can enjoy their content without chasing platforms. I'll pay for the extra services once content isn't being shifted around anymore, which is clearly going to take another decade.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service problem."
And yet they keep making this mistake over and over again. They have to make it convenient. Because what they're really competing against is a ~3 USD/month VPN subscription that lets me watch anything I want in HD quality.
I bought the entire of season 7 and most of season 6, at the (inflation adjusted) price of $16 per episode, or about $400 per season.
I have no problem with paying, but Paramount don't want my money. As such I watched Discovery Season 4 Episode 1 thanks to piratebay, which meant having to work out how to watch that on my TV. That minor hurdle has now been surpassed, lowering the barrier to acquiring any episode or film without cost.
We subscribe to a number of the services, but it's still cheaper than cable TV and there are no commercials, and it's all "on demand" which still seems to be pretty iffy on cable directly.
I feel like it's going to be a constant struggle to only subscribe to the ones that we're actually using, but it isn't as bad as I feared yet.
I'm still predicting that they'll get ridiculously fractured, and then realize their mistake and start bundling together again.
It has kind of already happened with Paramount+ and Showtime's bundle, and I think some of the others were doing it before them even. But these bundles are just a bandaid. You still need to actually use 2 different sites/apps to view your TV, and it's hard to get a list of what shows have new episodes across all the sites/apps. We end up just starting up each app and checking until we find something we want to watch right then.
I do not understand why anyone would have expected any different. Is that not the beauty of the internet? That you can consume the content from anyone, regardless of the owner of the wire coming into your house? (which should not be a private entity in the first place, but that is a different topic)
I want to watch shows that I'd like, I don't care who makes them. Finding good stuff to watch is harder than watching it, and people would clearly pay for a unified service that recommended you (and enabled 1 click viewing) of content regardless of license holder.
You can clearly see why content owners wouldn't want to do it, you lose the "stickiness" of your product, and have to compete with other shows for eyes, without the friction of "exit the app, open another app, find what you manually have discovered".
There's probably a 9 figure startup idea in there if you can figure out how to do it without getting sued.
When stated that baldly, it's fairly clear that this was never going to happen. Nevertheless, I think many of us would have preferred if, for example, content creators [0] did not all have their own streaming service, and cross-licensed to different streaming services, meaning that stuff wasn't available on only 1 such service.
[0] of course, in reality, no content creators have their own streaming service. They strike up deals with production companies, who strike up deals with distribution companies, some of whom have a streaming service, and those that don't strike deals with streaming services.
Disney doesn't seem interested in keeping a one-stop-shop, though. There's weird crosstalk where I can see NHL games from my ESPN+ subsciption on Hulu, apparently, now, but not Disney's own Disney+ stuff? And the HBO deal seems unlikely to live forever with HBO Max being its own thing now, with its own separate set of content.
"They don't sell what I want in the form that I want therefore it's OK for me to steal what I want in the form I want"
Would they apply to same logic to Costco for instance? "Costco only sells the widget I want in 10 packs so that gives me the (moral) license to steal one widget from the producer"
If consuming media without paying the copyright holder is morally wrong, then so is second hand purchasing and selling, as well as rentals. Indeed, copyright industries have a long and storied history of trying to shut down rental chains, to some success in Japan.
Just because you paid someone some money to view a TV series, doesn't mean you paid the people who funded production.
This assumes everyone who pirates media would not have paid for the media if piracy was not an option. If piracy was truly impossible or was highly enforced with strict penalties, do you think everyone who pirates media would just stop consuming that media?
I know of people who pirate every minute of content they watch on TV and pirate nearly every second of music they listen to. Do you think they would just cease watching TV shows and movies and cease listening to music? Or would they start purchasing access to some?
There's obviously some percentage of piracy that happens because content is truly unavailable in a way for the consumer to reasonably consume (region blocks, licensing deals, etc) or because the content is just astronomically priced out of their reach ($10/mo for someone who makes $100/mo income, $1,000 software packages for students) that would not have purchased it. I fully agree there would be some percentage of people who truly would never buy the media regardless of the ability to pirate. But I think if piracy was truly impossible or had almost assured steep penalties there would be some amount more sales.
Kind of muddies this righteous stance you're pretending to take.
You're projecting.
> But you still want to consume the media that Disney and Amazon makes
Barely. I'd never pay for it, except as stand-alone content.
I must have touched a nerve among the Netflix base
So I don't consider Netflix to have commercials... And I'm pretty sure I turned that autoplay crap off in every instance that I could anyhow.
We've also got Disney, Showtime, Paramount+, HBO Max, and ... I feel like there's another. I haven't seen commercials on any of them, though I understand that some of them have forced commercials for certain shows on them, which I think is total BS. The live TV streams on them still have commercials, also, which I don't watch, ever. When available, I chose the subscriptions that eliminated commercials.
Autoplaying content is the advertising of something you were not watching (if you wanted to watch something you would have selected it) and prevents you from watching what you wanted to (again, you wanted to watch nothing, otherwise you would have selected something).
Cable ate itself when most channels realized that reality programming is astoundingly cheap to produce and it made no difference on their income. If you are subscribed to the Sci-Fi streaming service and it switches to pro wrestling content, you just cancel the service.
They'll eat themselves then. We're being nickeled and dimed to death with all the streaming services and the kids at least are not going to pay: they'll share accounts. And when that stops working they'll just go somewhere else where the content is free.
The reality on the consumer end is that people are paying less money over all. Me personally I pay for like one service and have the logins from like six family and friends. I don't even know who is paying for the underlying account, someone's mother down the line I'm sure. I'm not alone with this either. As more services pop up, people become less likely to want to have yet another individual subscription, and its very common to hear about people sharing account info among friends and family.
However it's gotten to the point of annoyance where even I will just resort to piracy half the time, with access to every streaming service at my fingertips, because there are still some movies that for whatever reason are rented digitally for something like $4 for 72 hours as if we've stepped back in time and reverted to the brick and mortar blockbuster business model for the information age vs offering a sane alternative.
It really blows my mind how merciful the RIAA has been on the otherhand allowing Spotify and Apple Music to have such a vast and unsplintered catalog.
1) If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is.
2) They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN.
3) They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it.
There are other frustrations, but these are the high points. I need to find time to setup kodi again..
I spent years trying to get Kodi how I wanted it and it just never worked out. Between the jank and the way they've chosen to structure the UI, I don't think I'll ever like Kodi. Jellyfin is a much better fit for me, with no tweaking at all.
1.) This only happens for me if, say, I use youtube-dl to download a music performance and then drop it in. Every time I've gone outside of my Sonarr/Radarr setup to manually add a TV show or movie, it's always handled the metadata just fine. It's when I throw it a curveball (that, tbh, I expected) that it doesn't handle it for me. Maybe I've just been lucky?
2.) Completely agree with you here. I'd love to know if there's a workaround, though I haven't spent any time looking into it.
3.) Not the case for me. My home page goes Recently Watched -> Recently Added Movies -> Recently Added TV -> the streaming bullshit you mentioned. The UI loads with the left menu open, and all I need to do is hit "down" one for TV, twice for movies; no scrolling necessary. To your point, I wish that it didn't show those extra streaming options at all.
You can use the 'Fix Match' option within Plex and tweak it's search parameters (usually just title and year) until it matches. Alternatively you can paste stuff like IMDB IDs into the field and it'll match based on that instead. For some titles with obscene names etc, that's the best way to get an accurate match.
>They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN.
Settings -> Network -> List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -> Put your LAN subnet in there.
>They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it.
Yeah that's a bit annoying, but can be fixed: Use the 'pin' functionality to force your libraries to the top. This applies even for unauthenticated users (just tested in a private tab).
I ditched Plex a few years back due to UI annoyances. I've come back because they're mostly resolved, and honestly the alternatives (Jellyfin etc) aren't great. I chucked the money at them for a lifetime pass as well (mostly for PlexAmp), so I guess I'm pretty invested now :)
There used to be a way to not have any metadata, and just get plex to show you the files. I think they called it something like "home movies". The first time I setup plex, it was easy. But I can't find it anymore..
Now i just use a simple app on my iPad (nPlayer - no subscription!) and just play files from a network share. Plain and simple and it always works perfectly without all the bloat.
The latter is particularly interesting since there are no licensing issues. Every professional streaming service should have a better player than mpv. None actually do.
You could say that it's always like that because pirates get their content for free. However, Spotify and others managed just fine with music which used to be even more widely pirated than tv shows and movies.
(Survivor.S41E09.Whos.Who.in.the.Zoo is available on torrents in 1080p.)
The real competition is Plex/Emby/Jellyfin allowing access to people's media libraries in a way that's mostly on-par with existing services, and the added benefit of having all content truly in one place. The issue is that there isn't a completely legal way to get media content as unencrypted files (since ripping blu-rays is legal, but breaking the software protections to do it isn't).
All the other streaming services are fighting over your remaining 1-3 slots in your household. Of them it would seem Amazon looks good because they make you think you're getting a deal with Prime, but it doesn't seem to have the same pull as a 5 year old who needs to watch Disney.
The others also have the disadvantage that adults are going to know how to share an account. With kids you don't want to be coordinating it.
As for UX, I don't quite understand why anything is ever taken off the streaming service. Isn't it one of the things that makes it better than a Blockbuster? Every movie you've ever had on can be left there. There's gotta be a way to shove the long tail content on some slower/less replicated infrastructure, but maybe it isn't a technical consideration.
Probably won't happen for the first-party services like Disney Plus, Paramount, etc. but things leave Netflix because the deals for streaming usually last 5-15 years; no studio exec wants to be the name attached to something like "Netflix gets exclusive streaming rights to this film in perpetuity" when 50 years down the line it would've made more sense to relicense it to X other company or bring it into your own streaming library. It's not anywhere near a technical limitation like you suggest, it's a money issue.
Disney Plus meets the conscience criteria while having frictionless content switching if one’s kid wants to watch new content.
Netflix has made it clear to me that although many of the shows were awful, not all of them were, and that being able to see them without ads gave me a totally different appreciation for what (some) people were trying to do on TV over the last 3 decades.
My god, the ads. So many. So flashy. After every single one, she was convinced she needed whatever toy was being peddled.
Never again.
This is obviously a joke, but honestly, it seems like the direction we are heading -- cable V2.
I really wish streaming video had a similar licensing model to audio -- pay a central licensing authority for the content, and it's the same price for everyone. Then the streaming services could compete on their UI and the content creators will compete on making popular content.
The distinguishing feature of cable (and satellite) was that you had no option to instantly play what you want when you want where you want. And no option to instantly watch from the media owner and cut out middlemen. And no option to watch select episodes or subscribe for only 1 month.
What cable did was bring multiple networks together into a single interface which had never been done before.
But the point is all those bundles were only necessary due to lack of technology that could connect content owners directly to content viewers. We even have search engines that, theoretically, you should be able to search the content’s name, get to the content owner’s website, and be presented with the options of how you can watch it.
Edit: I think I get your point, that bundling might be more economical for content owners. And that cable facilitated that by subsidizing less watched content with more watched content. But I guess in that case, I am guessing the cable company just becomes the content owner (like Comcast) and the various content owners get big and produce a variety of media.
Worse: SX only covers the recording. You still have to talk to the big three licensing agencies about the written music. (That was my understanding about 15 years ago in Internet radio. This point might have changed.)
There isn’t an insert coin receive MP3 with all rights attached service, which sounds like how you’ve understood SoundExchange to work, and what you’re lobbying for in video. I agree that would be cool but it’s extremely unlikely for the same reason you can’t do it with SX.
That’s the likely outcome. They’ll probably push for the mechanical video recording and the creative content within it to be different licenses just like music. And then you’ll still have to license the music within it, probably both the recording and the creative. IP structure in complex media is so entwined there won’t be a simple answer here, I’m afraid. I wish it weren’t so.
The worst outcome possible would be a lot of creative folks in a television production realizing the distinction between the two music licenses and creating a setup where there is five or six for video (script license, series license, translation license, likeness licenses, blah blah).
It's really, really shitty that media consumption has been commoditized in the way it has - with every service having to secure rights (at different times and varying prices), and users constantly being forced to either add an additional service or cancel a service to watch the content they actually want to watch.
The radio licensing model would have (and still would be) SO much freaking better.
Every new device requires logging into a bunch of services. When a login expires I have to explain how to log in again and what the password is. The kids (and I!) have to remember which content they want to watch right now is on which service.
At least with cable I could just leave a single page instruction sheet that said "press this button on the remote, and the cable will turn on, here are the channel numbers you care about".
Who is willing to do that? I bet many people will opt for illegal downloads again.
I think a lot of people will just do without.
My family wanted to watch Mandalorian so we subscribed to Disney+. It took us two months to get through the series so it only cost $15 or so which seems like a pretty good deal for that many hours of TV. Since I subscribed via Apple, cancelling was painless. We did the same with Peacock for a different show.
HBO, Hulu, and Netflix seem to have enough stuff that we watch that we've stayed subscribed to those for years now.
It's amazing to me that the company feels that the benefits of this outweigh the goodwill it costs them among the fanbase. Trekkies are going apeshit over this. It makes me more hesitant to buy Star Trek media in the future, and I'll admit I'm not one to change my buying patterns based on companies' behavior ordinarily.
The timing was so abrupt that I really doubt this was just a horrible rash decision. That's totally still possible though.
I subscribe to Netflix, HBO, and Disney. If what I want to watch isn't on either of those three, it's getting pirated.
This particular behavior should really be banned by App Store guidelines, as it generates no revenue for Apple, and I can't imagine a single provider willing to forgo ad revenue from iOS users as a whole over such a rule.
Show commercials, if you must, but trying to force me to pay attention to commercials via technological means is where I draw the line.
Instead of actually bothering to pirate the show, however, I generally just do something else.
I'm honestly curious why (AFAIK) major content producers haven't looked beyond existing revenue streams and experimented with freemium (or at least "low-costium") models, along the lines of Microsoft studios releasing current AAA titles through Game Pass — which, while not free, is arguably inexpensive — but charging extra for optional in-game purchases and DLC.
In other words, make base versions of shows available for free or at a low cost, then charge a few bucks per season for premium features like early access to episodes, 4K/HDR, and bonus content. For major franchises, at least, I imagine there are at least enough fans willing to pay, say, $10-20 per season for such features to make such a venture worthwhile.
Not like I have any other choice anyway when some stuff is just geolocked from me (Disney+, some HBO stuff, etc).
The day streaming providers allow downloading high quality, DRM free video files to watch for later, I'll happily pay 3 bucks per movie.
As it stands, I can't play anything >720p because of DRMs. If you're willing to prevent paying customers from watching what they're paying for, just for the sake of reassuring your shareholders that you're combatting piracy (though failing miserably), then I have no remorse torrenting your content.
Should be able to play 4k via the official Netflix app on Windows, assuming you have the relevant chain of DRM protection (ie. TPM might be required, along with HDCP cables and monitors).
> (though failing miserably),
I'd argue that they're winning, actually - torrenting these days requires some upfront costs (hard drives and a media server) and an initial time investment (dedicate $xx hours to learning and managing a media server + media library software). It's much easier to punch in your credit card to the 3 streaming services you want to use that month.
This is on top of the fact that most media giants contract out a service to automatically send DMCA takedown requests to the ISP of every torrent peer. If you're in the U.S. doing this, you're most likely going to get a letter from your ISP asking you to stop torrenting illegal content. Xfinity in particular has a 3 (or 6?) strike system for DMCAs, after which they'll terminate your service. Any torrenting effectively must be accompanied by a VPN that is torrent-friendly and ignores DMCAs.
Eh? I'm pretty sure at least 80% of pirates just delete the movie/show from their PC/laptop when they're done watching it, maybe casting it to a TV in the process.
Load of bollocks. The requirements are difficult to figure out and hard to fulfil. The standards in the ecosystem do not help at all either. Cables or monitors shouldn't be certified HDMI-compatible when they don't do HDCP for example.
The "just try and find out, and hope the situation won't change" approach is so customer-hostile I have no sympathy when someone moans about pirates yet again.
Gabe Newell put forward his thoughts on piracy and the success of Steam as a digital content platform about a decade ago now, saying “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. ... It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.” And for a couple of years, I think streaming services achieved that. Netflix and Hulu really did seem to capture the market in paid services because they were so convenient. But as the market fractures into smaller and smaller services, I think a lot of people are going to turn back to piracy.
If that takes more than a few seconds, I open up TV app on my phone, search it, and decide if it is worth buying.
If it is any more difficult than that, I spend my time doing something else. The situation is much better than the old days of relying on Comcast.
How often can you just buy the content? There are many movies that I would love to buy and own but there is no option. It is either lend them for streaming or buy a super expensive blue ray which I don't get to own because of DRM. I wish there was a gog.com kind of solution.
The only way I can truly own a movie is to pirate it.
I get wanting to help content creators but I think it is fine to help just some of them (especially the smaller ones). There is no reason to feel bad about not helping all of them. Pirating something can still help the creators buy creating more attention. You might not pay for it but the friend you are telling about it, might. Or you might pay later after having more money.
Also, it still works when crossing borders. I live close to the border between Netherlands/Germany, and moving a few km to the east means i suddenly can’t stream many videos anymore. It’s idiotic.
Want to stream while using a VPN? Nope… expect trouble too.
So many annoyances.
PS. I pirate even though i also pay for the streaming services…
https://web.archive.org/web/20211119221003/https://apitman.c...
Pre-DVD you’d just be screwed. Your show would be episodic (much of Star Trek TNG) and you’d hope to catch as much as you can on syndication or reruns.
Difficulty in watching some things has been present from the earliest days of streaming, and has only been less of a pain as the world has moved away from cable. (I never had DVR, so the pre-streaming world for me meant either watch it live, record it to VHS, or maybe catch it "On Demand".)
I know what it's like to be in your situation (usually when trying to stream live sports), but the remedy is almost always to do a bit of research and decide if you want to take the path they want you to take.
I'm very happy with the streaming landscape right now, and I think it's way better than it was five years ago.
The Star Trek franchise is a grab bag between Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and Paramount+.
The thing is that everything is sliced up and packaged not to present a single package of what the customer wants. Rather, it is packaged so that what the customer wants is distributed across multiple packages which must all be purchased separately. Look at the NFL - Monday night football ESPN, Thursday Amazon Prime, Sunday Night - NBC, Sunday Day - various.
I'm just done chasing. Bring me my entire team's season or get no money from me at all. I can understand the odd game out, but this has been deliberate.
Can you not just download stuff from NZB and use whatever open-source software you like to stream and play it on your computer device of choice?
Maybe you're at the airport or on a plane/train/car, maybe you don't own a laptop, maybe you're traveling for work and just brought your work laptop, maybe someone else is using the TV, maybe...
Plenty of reasons you might watch a TV show on your phone lol...
I watch all my TV while walking usually. Trying to lose some gained weight. iPad/tablet can work too if I’d want to.
Unless it’s an action thing, a bigger screen isn’t needed. Phone is on me and quicker.
I’m not sure what NZB is. I just want to quickly watch something usually.
Heck, even when my Gen Z friends do have a TV right in front of them, they’ll often end up watching TV on their laptops or phones anyways. I suppose it’s easier than fiddling with a Chromecast.
In this case, the hope is that your VPN won't accept money from media rights holders, in exchange for your data.
Odds are better that you find anything on Youtube than any place else unless it is a Chinese TV series that shouldn't be obscure but practically is. (Like how I had to get a bootleg of Three Kingdoms from Singapore.)
It's not always real economical though. One season of the Handmaid's Tale is only available to buy, not rent. And it's $25. I could pay for 2 months of "no ads" Hulu and get that season and everything else they have, for less.
So fragmentation is still an issue.
Maybe Apple is doing the right thing by forcing everything to go through the App Store on iOS.
The licensing was off (obviously) but everything just keeps getting worse and the pirate setup still works best.
Even when I subscribe to these services it’s still better to use Plex to watch all shows together than navigate five different apps looking for new shows.
(I've had the same issue with music--my MP3 collection consists of a few dozen LPs that I've ripped because they were never digitized and added to the different services.)
Plus Netflix and Amazon are actually creating some decent content.
Presumably, if you subscribe to Paramount+, then you can also watch it as long as you are paying the monthly fee.
My point is I got to the media I was looking for rather quick. I would never spend my time watching Survivor for free, much less pay for it, but my opinion of the experience of trying to watch it was quick and easy.
CanIStreamIt used to fill this gap but no longer.
You can use it on the web, too, and it shows which channels require a subscription: https://www.roku.com/whats-on/search I assume it's accurate for those services across other platforms than just Roku.
I used to have this problem because my 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz SSIDs had separate LANs. So if Chromecast was connected to 2.4Ghz (as they like to do) and your phone was connected to 5Ghz, your phone won't be able to see the Chromecast. The remedy is to either bridge the networks or connect to the appropriate band.
There's no good answer here in markets this complicated
We watch what we want to watch, when we want to watch it. We pay a fraction of what we paid Dish and have a constantly updating list of great content.
My family likes older tv series, too. Streaming is advantageous in almost every way.
Apple was 'free' with the last phone I bought, but I'll pay for it when the next season of For All Mankind is on.
Still have to torrent stuff. Paramount literally won't let me buy the latest version of Discovery after their shocking "fuck you" to the world this week.
I did watch some of the Marvel tv content as it got a lot of hype. I don’t get it. The production quality is insanely high, but the shows and pacing seemed pretty tame. If that sort of action isn’t your thing, Netflix stuff blows it out of the water in my opinion.
HBO, Apple TV+ and Netflix have all mostly fallen into this trap of producing really elaborate, super expensive drama shows that are mostly really depressing, boring and dystopic. Fantastic HDR cinematography though.