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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Amazon and Apple lure you in but many shows it seems need to be rented or bought. How much disposable income do these companies think the average Joe has to spend? the answer seems to be $10 to $20 to rent or "buy" movies. Which you never own a physical copy of. They seem to be out of touch with reality.

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People used to buy DVDs or blu-rays for $10-20. But of all the ones I have, there's probably only a handful that have been watched more than once.

That's what the renting system is built off. The fact that most people only watch a film once.

I couldn't care less about whether I own a copy of a movie. All I care is that I can watch it when I want to watch it. That's a different issue though, not one of disposable income, but of licensing and content availability.

Christmas is a good example. A couple years ago I threw out all of my DVD's.

We watch the same ten or so movies every holiday season. Now we scramble to find them on streaming services and pay $3-5 each to watch.

At one point I had them all downloaded on a portable HD (along with others) but it failed, and why back up what you can just re-download?

I don't understand why the major streaming services don't have the good Christmas movies. They all have these new "made for TV" quality awful movies they push really hard.

It's A Wonderful Life

A Christmas Carol

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (old animated version)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (old animated version)

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Home Alone

Miracle On 34th Street

Elf

White Christmas

There's tons of GREAT Christmas movies. On any given Christmas season Netflix might have 1-2 of the greats. Same for Amazon Prime.

I'm confused because it seems like an easy win for these streaming services. Is licensing them really so expensive?

Imagine you re a tv station with a license. I think you re ready to MURDER to keep some of these exclusive, must be their last easy butter these days.

Last time I watched tv I did the whole vpn + american tv package thing and I just was appalled at the sheer amount of unwatchable content (ads)... I pity these things, how did it even work in the first place?

Christmas without a Die Hard?

Not a christmas I want any part of.

I agree with the points that you are making, which makes the high quality entertainment cheap or affordable at scale.

I stupidly “rented” a copy of Apollo 13 for $3.99 and being a long movie fell asleep halfway through. I came back to watch it a few days later and found the rental had “expired” in 2-3 days and was required to pay again to continue watching.

Sometimes I think these people live in an alternate universe. last time I did that.

And what happened in the VHS days?

You connected the player to another player and copied it.

That typically didn't work very well, as there was crude anti-copying tech in most VHS consumer machines.

macro block, a.k.a. MacroVision.

as a child I knew a guy that knew how to make the recording VCR record those properly, though I don't know how it was done.

I'm guessing it was something like a jumper over an AGC (auto gain control) circuit VCRs use to avoid saturating the tape, since the MacroVision mechanism was basically to intermittently blast out-of-frame lines with too-intense brightness, which has no effect on a typical TV, but does make the AGC clamp down so the whole frame is intermittently too dark.

It had to do with screwing around with the vertical blanking interval. TV's had no issue with it, but VCR's would fail.

Cable TV "scrambling" was similar back in the day as well. It wasn't so much that the signal was "encrypted" as it was "modified" in such a way it wouldn't play on a normal tv anymore. Over time they could modify the scrambling technique so that any box you did buy to descramble a signal would be worthless in a few months when they changed the method.

The only way to really descramble Pay TV was to be an electronics guy who could reconstruct the video signal. Usually you needed the minimum of an oscilloscope to analyze the timing signals, and then the ability to create a circuit to fix it -- it wasn't exactly easy.

My dad had a black box that worked awesome. It had a little dial in the back that you could twist to dial in a channel to be super clear.

In the early 80s where I lived, there was some kind of filler that, once removed, allowed you to watch HBO. It was housed in a green box exterior to each house, where the cable left the street and entered your house.

I don’t know if it was a filter really. It was just an electronic component of some kind that screwed on/off.

When you ordered HBO, someone visited your property to remove this thing.

Back when TV stations were broadcast on frequencies, it would be as simple as a notch filter to block out that particular frequency that HBO/Skinemax was on.

Ah yes, crude indeed. We used to cut a small piece of payer, around an inch. Then fold it into a little square and place it inside that little empty square space on the front of the cassette tape. That's all it took to subvert it.

By the way this worked just as well for audio cassettes tape.

I thought that was a write-protect tab. That shouldn't have affected the ability to read from the tape, but only the ability to record to it.

As sidpatil says, that's a write-protect tab. If you bought blank VHS tapes and recorded something you could rip the tab off to stop you or someone else accidentally overwriting, say, your wedding video. Of course, all retail tapes were tab free.

And you could simply use masking tape to bypass it, because it was only designed to stop unintentional overwriting, not intentional overwriting.

I'm pretty sure as a kid I wrote over a few (bad) retail VHS movies this way, tapes that served more value as blanks.

>I'm pretty sure as a kid I wrote over a few (bad) retail VHS movies this way, tapes that served more value as blanks.

Now that I think about it, I've never gotten a Blockbuster/Hollywood Video rental that was damaged in this manner. This method of property destruction never even crossed my mind. It seems so obvious given how easy it is to disable write protection. Was I just lucky or were people more considerate back then?

Just to clarify, I meant retail tapes I (read: my parents) owned. I never overwrote rented tapes.

I recall rental shops would have rewind machines, but I don't remember them ever checking the content of the tape.

Maybe people were just considerate. Maybe the threat of having a whopping fine when the the next unhappy renter returned and complained about the tape, causing the shop to check the rental history, dissuaded such behaviour.

Or, maybe people respected the institution. I used to really like video stores as they offered affordable access to entertainment and were just nice places to visit.

I never encountered that. Country related? I wasn't in the US. Year related - from the get go, or later on?

You can still do the same. HDCP has been broken for a long time now...

He would have made a similar comment but instead would complains of late fees.

You’re the only one who seems to have gotten that :)

He would have recorded it with a VCR during a promotional free weekend on HBO or similar, then watched it whenever desired.

Yes this used to be a fun hobby. All my favorite films were TV runs and i'd have to time the stop button so I minimized any commercials ending up on the recording. Same goes for recording audio on the Radio onto tapes. It was a simpler time back then.

Pirate if you want (and can) but let’s not keep persisting the myth that these companies are being unreasonable. The average family paid 100 for cable and on top kept buying dvds for 10-20 a pop. These streamers are just trying to replicate that level of spending (and for the most part, failing).

> The average family paid 100 for cable and on top kept buying dvds for 10-20 a pop.

Lol, no way in hell that was the average. That was the high end dream consumer that very few of the people I knew matched even back in cable’s heyday.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/680645/number-of-cable-s...

In my family we would rent lots of movies each week with an 2-3 times a week ritual trip to the video rental store to pick something out for $2 or so.

Movies we liked were bought when they went on sale at the cheap DVD trough at Walmart for $5.

probably it was the average family but not the median family, which of course means that the high end dream consumer family was paying much more than that.

Man, I grew up lower/lower-middle class, about 30-40% of the median family income, and we had the $80/month cable package plus went to Blockbuster for 5+ rentals per week

I don't think that was unusual, either.

If you're watching 5+ rental films per week, when do you have the time to watch anything on the cable package?

Sounds like a ridiculous waste of money to me, but then I'm firmly at the other end of the spectrum. I finally cancelled my £30 a month TV package, I've not rented a film for over 10 years, and would buy blu-rays or DVDs only for things I thought I'd watch more than once, or where buying them was cheaper than renting (common in the case of box sets).

It's not particularly difficult to imagine a family situation where that would happen - although perhaps not nowadays when there is a much broader entertainment landscape:

1. traditional patriarchal setup, male parent works, mother at home, watches some cable during the day.

2. Kids come home from school / kindergarten at 4, watch some cable.

3. Eat dinner at 7, watch movie.

4. kids go to bed at 9, folks watch cable for couple hours.

5. Kids at age where they have their own tastes, 3 kids, buy 2 movies for adults 3 movies for kids or variations thereof.

I mean obviously the time to do this stuff is a waste of time, but often families waste the time because parents are burned out from various things and the easiest way to get through the time is to give everyone media to consume and forget about them.

Yeah, it probably wasn't the most efficient use of my family's limited budget, but that's how it goes

Nowadays I'm a big /r/financialindependence guy, and I was shocked recently to find out that a lot of my lower-middle class friends and family are constantly ordering food with those ripoff delivery apps. It's completely insane IMO to pay $50 for cold, soggy food that should have cost 25, but I guess people do it. They buy new top-end smartphones every year or two, lease cars, and do all sorts of other ridiculous money-wasting stuff.

Of course you don’t think it was unusual, that was your upbringing. The stats I linked showed that cable’s peak was 40 million households.

No, it wasn’t the median either. That would be the high end of a cable subscriber setup in the 90s and 00s. About the only way to go above it is constant on demand rentals and PPV fights.

They are being unreasonable, though.

They had a moat that let them gouge consumers for years, but the moat dried up and now they're throwing a tantrum because they can't continue their outdated and overpriced business model.

TL;DR: They are being for the most part perfectly reasonable, and the rest of this comment suggests why that is.

Yes, and average cost and risk exposure that family sees is higher now, wages down or flat.

First order realization:

I've long maintained most families have a fixed entertainment budget. They have their monthly nut to crack, and entertainment falls into that somewhere, with a little flexibility here and there.

Say that's a few hundred dollars. Might be $200 or less, depending.

The various entertainment forms compete for those dollars, and sometimes compete to stretch the amount a little too. Something really special might displace some other spend, or warrant a draw from savings, use of credit, whatever.

This was my experience bringing up a family through the 90's and 00's. I had a few hundred bucks for entertainment, special spends, and that was basically it, unless there were very compelling reasons, say getting a new game console, or special event that warranted some other adjustment to allow for greater entertainment spending.

There is a near infinite demand for entertainment! Maybe not infinite, but it's a lot higher than the budgets would fund at the generally accepted market prices. This demand is both material, in that real, liquid dollars are there to satisfy the demand, as well as demand not backed by liquid dollars. (the latter being an opportunity to build relevance and sell through later, whether that is recognized as marketing efforts tend to be is another discussion)

Second order realizations:

The entertainment spend is made each month and every month overall, and that's true whether there is massive piracy, or not.

Additionally, content that is pirated hard also earns well. Content that is lightly pirated also tends to not do well.

Entertainment forms compete. Video game vs movie vs whatever. There is a little flexibility, but overall the dollars go where the value perception is highest. Basically max entertainment per dollar. How people see this is all over the map too.

Pricing up can be the right move, as can pricing down. Depends on value perception, relevance, and how that stacks up to the entertainment budgets out there and the different forms.

Third order:

Piracy =/= a loss.

Infringment is weird. It's not theft in that no one is denied property or rights. It's all about people doing or experiencing something they were not supposed to.

There is value created via infringement too. A lot of the sales opportunity boils down to personal relevance. When a content creator is irrelevant, they must somehow reach potential consumers, who then become opportunities for income.

Infringement builds relevance the same as licensed users do, and it all works the same, personal recommendations, sharing, all that stuff people do in order to trade on and participate in culture and relevance applies when people use the content whether it's infringing use or not.

All this suggests a strategy allowing infringement as investment in relevance which will deliver returns in the form of high value license rental or longer term media entitlement purchases later. Higher quality, greater availbility, as in "I'll buy this and share it with the others on my subscription.

Many people subscribe and share with parents, friends, family making good use of both the profile capability and device allowances. This is "infringement" in a similar sense to piracy, but different in that it's not a high priority for enforcement.

Finally, pricing / piracy / competition with other media forms tend to make pricing self-correct and settle in to maxima. There is a right price to capture more value with material demand backed by dollars. Too high, and other forms will garner more of the entertainment dollars, or other works in the same form may do that too. Too low, and value perception may be impacted as well as leaving money on the table.

Subscriptions / content distribution agreements are a way to leverage many works and secure a more consistent share of the entertainment spends without as much risk and costs associated with going solo against high value, easy access, players.

See HBO MAX and how it's basically owning the new release. Used to be going to a theatre or buying a first release media copy was the way to go on a new movie. HBO MAX subscribers get it on release day, and it's great, easy, you name it. Tons of revenue locked in, forecastable, and so on.

The more of this we see that adds value, the less piracy will matter because that will be satisfying demand not backed by liquid dollars, but will still contribute to relevancy and can be considered an investment in the future as those people may change socioeconomic status and be able to meet demand with real dollars in the future.

Where it does not add value, say exclusives to drive new subscriptions, like we see with Paramount+ carving out a new service for "Star Trek" essentially, piracy may well be a response as will other higher value subscriptions and purchases win out over the arguably crappy deal required to see what is compelling, but not worth the hassle production. Basically, the program was used to add value to the basic subscription tier, then elevated to a new / higher service level without adding very much other value.

As examples:

Our family loves HBO MAX for the no bull shit, flat fee get new movies deal. We watched the new Matrix movie on release day, as we have others, and gladly buy this service.

We hate the CBS games being played. Do not gladly buy. Would consider just waiting and pirating the Star Trek, because it's a PITA now, or too expensive / time consuming to sign up, watch, then cancel because there isn't anything else, blah, blah...

Prior to these common sense streaming services, our family would pirate quite a bit, while buying quite a bit with the problem being unable to buy in ways, and on time, to make sense. It was often unavailable, or painful, or way over the top expensive...

If they’re out of touch with reality, there will be a price adjustment or they’ll fail. Something tells me they’ve done the research to determine what the average person will pay.

Looking at some newer films rentals are $4-$6 and “buying” $8-$15. Probably more for really new releases.

$4 for a rental isn’t bad compared to renting a VHS or DVD at Blockbuster a few years ago.

Compared to taking a few adults and kids to a movie theater, it’s a steal.

But why is rebutting a few days and not at least a week. Never made sense.

s/rebutting/renting?

Its a few days because you can rent digitally just before you buy it. Back in the Hollywood Video days, you also had to make a special trip to the video store. Often this was done days in advance.

There has never been a better time to be a consumer of home media than today. I wouldn't trade the (legal) access I have to essentially any film or TV show I can imagine wanting to watch for any conceivable bookshelf full of DVDs. The Blockbuster Video and Comcast Premium Channel Package era was no more cost effective, and things just get worse as you go further back in time.

I used to live next to a DVD rental place that was 1€ per day. Often I would return the movie the same night. I used to watch 1-2 movies per month. Nowadays I have Netflix for what, 12€ a month? I still watch maybe one movie a month. So I guess I pay ~10x for not having to step outside?

Bit of a niche anecdote.

You pay 10x for access to Netflix’s content.

The fact that you only want to watch 1 movie out of their catalog is irrelevant. I do not find their content worth it, so I do not pay Netflix.

I find it better to just rent a movie from an online provider if/when I want to watch one, since I rarely watch. If I want to watch it over and over, I buy it (kids’ movies).

So I pay for what I don't need to get the little that do I need. What you call irrelevant I call the core of their business model.

My point was that it is not productive to compare a la carte business models to all you can eat business models.

If you want to compare DVD rental to renting a movie on Apple/Google Play/Amazon, that would make more sense.

So I suppose we should all move within walking distance to a rental place (that too a cheap one at that). Even back then it’s a pipe dream.

I sure did watch a lot more stuff when I lived a block away from Scarecrow Video, one of the last great video rental stores. With shelves full of stuff that had been curated, with staff notes here and there calling out the occasional film.

Theoretically the streaming services are more convenient, they're all lurking right there on my PS4, but... I never really touch the things.

> the (legal) access I have to essentially any film or TV show I can imagine

My imagination runs amok..

There is a Disney+ but https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Dog_Lost is not on it. Nor is any other Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color or whatever name the anthology ran on television since 1954 but to me this is the only one that matters, what can I do, I love corgis :)

The Mists Of Avalon mini series from 2001 is nowhere to be found.

Many, many movies have been made out of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo but what many consider the closest to the book, Robert Vernay's version from 1954 with no less than Jean Marais in the lead is impossible to find these days. This was Vernay's second Cristo movie, the vision he always wanted to make but couldn't in 1943 when he made the first. But no one knows of it because streaming, DVD, whatever you want just doesn't exist. Rare Films And More sourced a high quality 16mm print (it's in German) and digitized it and wrote English subtitles for it -- but it's a pirated copy, I don't think it entered the public domain yet.

About your Disney+ example, I do wonder why it seems that a lot of content like that isn't available on the platform.

Are there streaming rights issues? Are they holding back content to drip feed content drops for as long as they can? Did they determine that some content isn't worth digging up the tapes and preparing for streaming?

I wonder also how much of the older content is self-censored for e.g. political correctness reasons.

This is indeed true of movies such as Disney’s Song of the the South. You won’t find that anywhere;; even eBay prevents sale of the DVD.

Cartoons have also been censored:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven

https://deadline.com/2021/03/pepe-le-pew-space-jam-2-new-yor...

Many cartoon shorts from the 30s and 40s with blackface and other offensive material has been edited. I can’t find references right now, but have noticed this personally.

That’s certainly seems to be true for Kundun (1997).

The Chinese Communist Party wasn’t happy the film was made in the first place and would probably ban Disney from their market if it was available for streaming in the USA.

It’s quiet, limited sale on DVD is still tolerated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundun

Disney has always made a big deal out of the "Disney Vault"—back in the VHS days, they tried to replicate the scarcity of waiting until a movie was showing in a local theater by arbitrarily refusing to sell copies of some of their movies for years at a time. I believe they continued this practice with DVDs and Blu-Rays, though not nearly as widely.

This seems likely to be part of the same philosophy.

Yeah, it's sad some stuff isn't available. I think it was worse in the past though.

Sure, but how many streaming packages do you need to pay for (every month!) to be able to say you have that?

I find I have access to a ton of content for the cost of a couple cds and dvds.

I like it.

Content is mostly ephemeral for me. I don't want to manage a ton of files or physical media.

I assume that's mostly indicative of the rights they were able to grab, vs. seeking profit.

they count on you to price it against going to the movies and a lot of people (particularly families) choose to stay home and spend 1/5 to 1/10 what they would have spend going to the theater

It’s bad UI design that mixes up two different services.

Amazon should offer an NFT of a physical copy for each streamed movie you buy. Then they could also sell that physical copy to another consumer. It’s a win-win!

How does decentralization help with a centralized service?

Magical acronyms and thinking.

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