Adults in the house, we are quite picky but if we love it then we will keep watching:
Netflix @£9.99: 2 tv shows, 4-5 films
Apple TV+ @£4.99: 3 tv shows, 2 films
Disney Plus @£7.99: 1 tv show, Loads of movies
Amazon Prime @£7.99: 3 tv shows, quite a few films, plus "free" shipping!
Kids (3 and 7): Netflix: They watch quite quite allot but we don't give them free access even to the kids profile (*see note)
Apple TV+: Only 1 tv show, but haven't really explored.
Disney Plus: All of it, I think they have "completed" it!...
Amazon Prime: None
Disney is by far the best value for money for us as a family, Apple TV+ for us grownups is best value. I don't think we would get rid of any but Netflix is probably now the least value.Point is, Netflix know from their retention metrics that you only need a couple of shows that a customer loves to keep them subscribed. Add in some content to amuse their kids and it's a done deal.
*Note: Netflix seems to still show image for adult shows in search results in the kids profile even if not available when clicked on, some of this images can be quite aggressive. Hence not giving the kids free access
Hulu and Amazon Prime are mostly irrelevant to me. I'll probably axe the Hulu sub.
HBO has a few things I like. Disney+ targets the kids/family/lighter theme demographic tightly.
I think that the general provider landscape is a bit overdone; some consolidation would be welcomed by consumers, and any competitor that falls behind in offerings will crash exponentially.
And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.
I’ll fucking delete my Netflix account and the Netflix app from our AppleTV device, if that shit gets any worse.
Not sure what you mean by not entirely? I've got both 'autoplay next episode' and 'autoplay previews' turned off and don't think I see it anywhere anymore, which dramatically improved the experience.
Peacock uses a white glow around the preview picture as their selection indicator. No border. Just a faint glow.
HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.
It's death by a thousand cuts, but jesus... use your competitor's app. See what UX works and what doesn't. I can't imagine any of the little stuff is actually patented.
Amazon Prime awkwardly splits their shows into individual seasons ('series' in UK) in such a way that it's difficult to ascertain how much of the show you'll actually be able to watch on Prime. Other seasons may be available to rent, purchase, watch on one of their partner subscription services, and/or watch for free on their IMDb TV ad-supported service, all of which is haphazardly jumbled together in their main window in no particular order.
I split my Amazon Prime with my neighbor so she can get free shipping. She doesn't care about the TV part, and to me, it's not worth much either.
It should always take you to a show page, from there you should have options to continue or see info or go to episodes, etc...
Meanwhile on Hulu, I recently watched episode 1 of Over the Garden Wall and instead of continuing on the the next episode, it autoplayed the episode of a completely different series.
They're in a really sorry state UX-wise.
Hit play then as soon as it starts hit back, you’ll be at the show.
My guess is most remotes or TVs don’t support long press or other alt-clicks so they just implement the main thing people would want in that carousel. Even on AppleTV or other platforms that have long press.
I had to hardcode a kill app shortcut just for them.
For all other android tv apps that I have been using so far, the back button works normally, exiting the app at the topmost layer. However, repeated clicks of the back button in netflix UI just re-triggers the menu - part of their dark patterns to make it harder to quit the app...
Netflix could have done what Prime video does
Prime Video: "Do you want to exit the app? (Yes/No)", then done
Netflix: scroll all the way down the menu options: Home, Play something, New & Popular, TV Shows, Movies, My List, Get Help, Exit Netflix (click), 8 clicks in total before you can exit.
So it takes orders of magnitude more clicks, and more time out of my life, every time I try to exit the Netflix app. Considering that exiting an app is something I do all the time, it is not great
And yes, we have the highest level of Hulu+ that is supposed to avoid most ads.
The thing that irks me w/ Hulu -- we have kids sleeping and it'll be soft for the actual show, then the ad comes in and it's like 5 decibals louder. and we have to physically just mute the commercials... it's the most annoying thing ever!
As a bonus this actually encourages them to work hard for your views.
Yes, you can say they just focus on family content. But that is kind of the point. They identified their market and cater to them really well. Who is the market for Netflix?
Their curse is that they can find untapped markets, but then the content owners can invest surprisingly well into clawing back that market.
I would estimate the Netflix target market is basically the non-family under-35s. It's actually closer to my tastes in general. Netflix also has a better real international selection IMO.
There's no clear differentiator between any of the above outside of (1) UX and (2) content. They all are a means of schlepping video to my screen. They are all almost perfectly commodity in my opinion.
$13.99 for Disney+, Hulu (with ads), and ESPN+. $19.99 if you want the Hulu with no ads.
Too bad Netflix doesn't have a sports deal for live content.
I’d be really happy if I could delete all sports from all video sources I have available to me, or at least just hide them so that I don’t have to look at any of that crap.
We have Netflix (via T-Mobile), Hulu, Prime, HBO, Disney+ and Apple TV. Some of these (Disney/Hulu) are from family or friends. WE only pay for Prime (probably the lowest quality of all of these) and Apple TV (because of Apple One subscription).
HBO and Apple TV and Disney+ have the best quality content IMO. Netflix is kind of around there sometimes but a lot of just pure garbage (Looking at you Cowboy Bebop). Hulu isn't bad. Comparable to Netflix but less content. Prime is just bad for the most part. If Wal-Mart had launched it instead it's about what I'd expect it to be.
What actual content do they have?
I've seen a Beastie boys doc, Ted Lasso and The morning show * edited from Newsroom when my error was pointed out.
That's a month's worth of content. What else do they have to justify continuing a subscription?
Disney has more content with just the Simpson's episodes alone. Add on top of that the entire Marvel catalog, the entire Starwars Catalog and the entire Pixar catalog.
The UX of Apple TV+(which is a terrible name) is nothing but bait and switch. After my first week of using my free subscription I completely gave up on trying to browse on the app.
90% of the content I would click on would then ask me for 5 to twenty dollars to pay for it, which is ultimately just a rental until Apple decides they aren't interested in running a streaming service anymore. There's no indication it's pay until you're already excited to watch a show and click on it.
There are good shows on there now, but I only ever bother to open the app when I see an article listing best shows on streaming services and happen to see an Apple one. Sitting down to relax and just opening the app brings about nothing but frustration.
The only thing that makes it worth dealing with is the excellent content. Oh, and the fact that I can generally download something quickly to watch on a plane after boarding but before takeoff, since T-Mobile throttles Netflix, but apparently not AppleTV.
Isn't this basically just asking why doesn't Ted Lasso appeal to you? I think the biggest problem is Apple doesn't have much of a catalog.
Looking forward to trying out For All Mankind, See, Macbeth, and Invasion; the first two seem especially well liked by friends.
Bounced off Physical and Dickinson, but that had nothing to do with the quality of the shows; they're well made and have excellent acting.
The wide variety of stories and genres are lacking, but I think the quality of the average Apple TV+ show is quite a bit higher than the average Netflix show, on par with most of HBO.
Netflix has a ton of content so 'average' is going to differ based on your algorithm. But in the last year I can think of... The Crown, You, Cobra Kai, The Queen's Gambit, Bridgerton, Squid Games, Arcane all being massive successes. There are probably more I'm forgetting because they pump them out month after month.
> on par with most of HBO.
Maybe on par with HBO Max Originals...
I agree they don’t have much of a catalog, but they also don’t charge much and give the service away bundled with new devices. It’ll take some time to build up content. No big deal.
If I had to pick 1...probably HBO because their movie rotation generally has great classics.
That being said, I think as they expand, it's going to get pretty good.
If I do, my kids will've gone from educational video about the rain forest to sponsored video to toy videos to slime to fart jokes to music videos of bikini-clad bimbos to steamy romance videos to ...
Anyway it's just too much work to curate youtube for a child, IMO.
For example, my kiddo found a bunch of inappropriately steamy fan fiction for her favorite cartoons narrated on youtube... and she demonstrated that she knew it was inappropriate because she started hiding her screen from us.
But he always prefers YouTube and when he's using YouTube, he mostly watches 3-5 minutes of something before getting enticed by another thumbnail.
At times when he's had free reign to YT, it really seems to drastically affect his general attention, patience, temperament and even ability to sleep (he wakes up super early asking for his tablet).
Once we cut it off hard, he goes back to normal.
We don't really believe in complete abstinence of those sorts of things (I think it will just make him even more sensitive to those algorithms in the future) but being aware of the effect, reducing YT and prioritizing actual movies/series has made a noticeable difference.
YT Kids most popular channels are streamed play sessions and toy reviews with superhuman production values and unrealistic depictions of what the toys can do. Once a child has watched an episode of LOL doll play along (for example), YouTube algorithm will recommend LOL doll collection videos, which associate completist collecting with peer group social acceptance. Free to play video game spots were even worse, directly focusing on alluring introduction of the game’s addiction economy.
I gave my children access to YouTube kids for some of the excellent educational content reasoning that it would be a relatively safe experience. Within a month their homepage and all recommendations (and I do mean 100%) were sponsored 5-15 minute long toy commercials. Their interest in animals, nature, science, and dinosaur programming remained strong but disappeared entirely from view outside of keyword search.
All YT and Google apps are now removed from the devices they use. I allow unsupervised use of PBS Kids, PBS in general, Nat Geo, Disney Plus and Netflix Kids (with time limits) but YouTube is filtered from my kids devices at the router. They are not allowed Google accounts; all YouTube content access is done via keyword search with a parent selecting the material and remaining in the room during viewing.
There are programs on YouTube that can’t be replicated anywhere else. But the recommendation engine is distilled corruption and dismay.
But in general I really hate video sites too so I don't use it much at all. Too many harebrained "influencers" now trying to sell stuff
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
I can sit with my kid and watch a couple episodes of a show I've never heard of (Like Bluey) and say, "Yep, this is a definite thumbs up. You can watch Bluey when you have screen time" And I trust that when an episode ends, another episode of Bluey is what will show up.
For a youtube channel, I have to watch the entire video and I can say, "Yep, you can watch this exact video. Make sure autoplay is off."
I have no clue what video would play next. I have no clue what product the youtuber will try to shill in the middle of the video, etc.
Seems like the problem can be solved with a crowdsourced list of family-friendly videos (on GitHub?) managed by trusted collaborators and then a simple page that embeds only these videos?
Over time I assume it should work given enough people contributing. It's not like the content needs to be kept continuously up to date either (unless old videos disappear faster than new ones are added).
The worst part is that recommendations aren't in line with the content level of what you are viewing.
Here in the uk we have the joy that is CBeebies and CBBC, so have iPlayer (and all the other kids BBC apps) on iPads for the kids.
The only other one we let them have free reign on is Disney+, I’m sure this will change for the older one soon.
It's fine on a laptop or desktop where you can run an ad blocker. It's not fine when you're trying to let kiddo watch YouTube on an actual TV screen.
- Lorry trucks (semis/big rigs) driving on the road/motorway
- The tube/trains/subways coming in and out of stations
- Large excavators digging in quarries and loading dump trucks
The videos are usually pretty slow paced and calm, and we're happy to let him watch in small blocks (5-10 mins max) from time to time. He's shown no interest in typical cartoons, kids shows, etc. I'd love to cut off YT completely, but are there other places to get this type of content for him?
I remember one thread in particular where someone told me that you could find some very strange stuff just by typing a period in the search box (autocomplete does the rest, NSFW if that’s not obvious), and that school age Kids tend to figure this out or share this “trick” amongst themselves. So to each their own, but I’m not a parent yet so I abstain from having any strong opinions for the moment.
There’s an audience for everything but I am not the audience for everything.
Yeah I noped tf out pretty quick too. This isn't even the first time I've seen crazy shit about YT - these parents are 100% right not to let their kids on unsupervised. Weird how it's not news more often tbh.
IMO it's completely unsuitable for unsupervised children under, say, 13.
I think we get some Hulu shows on Disney Plus under the Star banner.
To quote my wife though “I would pay for Apple TV+ just for Ted Lasso”. That says allot about how people look at these services.
Apple are treating their tv service the way they do their whole product range, small number of products but done very well.
Subscribe for 6 months = 50% annual discount
Subscribe for 4 months = 67% annual discount
Subscribe for 2 months = 83% annual discount
etc. And that looks great!
But producing the content costs the same regardless. So as more people do this, a vicious cycle will set in. Prices must increase to cover production costs with shorter subscription periods. Rising prices cause more people to shift to cycling through shorter subscriptions. Which further drives prices higher.
Basically you end up with the a la carte cable nightmare where you pay the same amount to for access to only one channel at a time. The only real way to stop this is to switch to longer term discounts and early termination fees or bundles.
Admittedly, I'm not automatically entitled to all the things they release but still feels wrong and wanted to vote with my wallet.
The Mandalorian was an amazing series though!
Probably needs a recent client as well. One of our tablets couldn’t upgrade, believe it was because it was on Android 4.x or something.
Combined with how frustrating their library is to explore, at least on desktop, I'm really having trouble justifying a Netflix subscription.
Endless horizontal scrolling which repeatedly presents the same movies/TV shows on sequential pages, extremely limited information before you click on a show and various other quirks in their UI add up to an extremely frustrating experience, to the point when I'm strongly considering going back to piracy.
I get big "direct-to-dvd" vibes with most other stuff they put on. And nobody talks about these films, which for me is a big indicator that it's not worth watching.
I'll admit Netflix spends a lot of money, but they spend it safely; they try to min/max their content, try to fit ever box / category.
They made the switch from physical, mail-order rental to digital streaming when the average connection supported a streaming model.
But as soon as they switched from owning content (DVDs) to leasing it (limited time streaming rights), they saw the countdown until the content owners would eventually have an equivalent platform offering.
That's what kicked off the Netflix originals spend, and continues to drive their content creation spend today.
Netflix is 100% sober that (1) they need enough already-owned back-catalog to stay competitive & (2) they will never be in a stronger future financial position than they are today.
So it's literally "accumulate content or die."
And I'm not crediting them with foresight. It was abundantly clear to everyone that eventually the content owners would see {cost of developing platform} < {content value being pocketed by Netflix}.
It was only a question of how long it would take the legacy companies to random stumble into a viable offering.
---
The more timely question is "What is Netflix's edge, once they've finished becoming a traditional content producer?"
Because from the last few years of hits and misses, they don't seem particularly better than HBO or Amazon Studios at picking winners.
In short they may be spending a ton on content, but so does all the others and while I do pay for Netflix, I continually wonder if I should just cancel.
Honestly I don't know why I'm still paying.
Being Walmart doesn't work in a digital space, because you can't starve the business out from the physical neighborhood around you to prevent competition.
And once people get it in their heads that "All movies on Netflix are trash" or "All stuff on Amazon is trash," you have a much bigger problem.
Could it be that Netflix has seen that they can't compete in a crowded market with "the big boys" (though their bank share might disagree) and they're making the prudent, global market move? (I'm totally speculating and genuinely looking for an answer. Global enterprise is so far from my field)
EDIT: grammar
I remember a local movie (1) that became, almost over night, the most watched movie in Quebec's history with more than 21M viewer. Quebec population is ~8M.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-first-netflix...
Almost all of my home screen in Netflix is foreign language shows because that’s what’s good on Netflix.
Yeah, same here. I've watched an obscene amount of kdramas and they are adding new ones all the time.
That's something I love about Netflix. Watching German, Russian, Spanish, Danish TV shows is really cool for change
Do you watch anything particular in Russian or Danish?
Russian: I loved Road To Calvary and To The Lake, and watched some of Better Than Us and liked it.
German: One of my favorite shows of all time is Babylon Berlin :)
Norwegian: Ragnarok is kinda interesting.
Egyptian: Paranormal is good, and only 5 episodes long.
Spanish: Cathedral of the Sea is interesting, and I loved Ministry of Time - although this one vanished from all online streamings :/
Swedish: The Restaurant is available on Sundance/Star or some other channels. Like Downton Abbey. Just watched a couple episodes, but it was nice
French: Lupin and Les Revenants (The Returned) - although I think the second is not on Netflix now, but somewhere else. Watched it many years ago
Belgium: not fantastic, but Thieves of the Wood is just one season long and enjoyable.
Italian: I liked Curon, although it didn't seem to please too many people, I think?
On my list: Trapped, which is Icelandic.
Cheat: Hinterland - it's made in both English and Welsh
Disney is even more content limited and better for kids. Apple never got it right, cant see them fixing it now. And Amazon stuffed it between their mixed model where half the stuff you want to watch has extra fees + generally limited inclusive content, though the prime membership might buy that back. Both Disney and Amazon will fix the back catalogue with money I would guess, something Netflix should have done more aggressively before the competitors arrived.
While Netflix content is on the decline, there is a huge inertia in the best existing catalogue + 200million subscribers. It does surprise they haven't flooded extra content on the price increase as that is a good way to justify to users. Nothing worse than feeling there's a lack of content + pay increase.
My guess is Netflix keeps building the moat with content creation/ownership and we'll see mergers start kicking in as groups with back catalogues like HBO & NBC realise gaining/holding subscribers on smaller catalogues is hard and there more value in selling than renting. Who forks out more money at this point will probably win. Wild card is sport, that can be attractive and sticky if someone merges that in.
Their play here might just be waiting for Paramount+ and Peacock to throw in the towel and license their catalogs.
Amazon Prime Germany has been showing me adverts, that they have soccer/football games (not sure what league or if there is an extra cost associated as I don’t watch sports), so they are at least in some regions already there.
I hear rumors alot of content that should be in their portfolio has streaming rights tied up in Hulu atm which doesnt help them.
(Of course in the books there is some mention of how the math looked. Just a fuckton of equations on a wall :D)
That's what independent movie studios used to do like Miramax, It gave us Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, No country for old men, and dozens of gems. Even Miramax failed in their quest.
Anyway, Netflix has produced solid movies regardless of what you think, well rated by critics and public. Not all or most of them, but no way worse than competitors studios.
Now I have HBO for south park and then my family got into some of the DC shows. I'm cancelling after this season. Then turning it back on when Titans or young justice comes back.
I want to make a script that suspends all my subscriptions every day, or cancels every month if youre not allowed to suspend. Then automatically signs me back up when I want to watch something. The main problem is you would need a reliable way to see every service's catalog without an active account.
Also it's about the easiest task for a marketing team to email you to resubscribe when a new season of a show you watched comes out
As far as keeping up with the channels catalog, I meant I would want to build a discovery/search interface with data from every service so I could seamless signup/resume when I want to watch something.
[1] njpwworld.com which is the streaming service for a japanese pro wrestling company, will cancel your subscription the moment you cancel, no matter how much time you have already paid for. So if you sign up and immediately cancel you would be charged for a month, but never get access to it.
I disagree with this claim. Their problem is that they enjoy losing money - a fetish if you will - in an attempt to draw and cater to a very particular and very young crowd. Its like they forgot that somewhat mature people over 35 actually do exist and are usually the ones paying for the service.
Its a pity because with all that talent and resources - they should be well above everyone else of they werent so damn focused on everything but good storytelling. I've seen stick figures on youtube tell better stories than Netflix.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/entertainment/only-murders-in...
> Netflix spent approximately $17 billion on content in 2021 and ended the year with an estimated 222 million subscribers, a cost per subscriber of $76.60 (keep in mind that Netflix has other costs like sales, marketing, facilities, and labor just like any other company). Under the new subscription pricing model, 41% of the annualized price of the standard plan will go towards covering Netflix’s content costs, down from 47% before the price hike.
I have a few streaming services and rarely ever am I watching old content (the key stuff I've already consumed). I subscribe to services for their new content, not their old catalog. Maybe I'm the exception and not the norm of the typical subscriber.
I blame the lack of investment in target shows and focus on broad short lived and quickly canceled shows to the decline. I understand their business model catering to short attention spans but it puts me off a large swath of their content. Unless it's a movie or mini series with full conclusion, I tend to skip right over the content anymore no matter how interesting the story may seem to be. The last thing I want is to get drawn in and invested in a story only to have wasted my time and have the remainder canceled. Entertainment is part of it but many people want a beginning to end story of some sort. If you want to cater to short attention spans, good luck competing with YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok content.
New content gets infinitely more views.
I suppose there was a sieve that their guests went through but it is still fascinating to see the parade of suburban Los-angelites: housewives, people with strong ethnic ties to the "old country" that had yet to be melted into the pot that was 1950's America. Who knew door to door salesman really was a typical working class occupation?
Netflix seems overly reliant on small scale KPIs at the expense of the overall experience. Of course it's possible that they know exactly what they're doing and I'm just far away from their target consumer.
[0] -- https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-originals-cancelled-...
>Of course it's possible that they know exactly what they're doing and I'm just far away from their target consumer.
Maybe. So long as a show doesn't get canceled at a completely unnatural point, I'm actually fine with just a couple seasons a lot of the time--especially with the historical network model of 20 episodes per season or so. And, conversely, by the time a show hits 4 or 5 seasons I'm done with it even if it's still pretty solid. I'm just tired of it.
There are a bunch of network shows I liked that stayed pretty good but I just stopped watching them at some point.
Firefly fan forever.
I didn't get to see Buffy until it was on Netflix and I enjoyed it as much as I would have when it was new, I think. Granted the computers and cellphones are obviously dated (but if you think of it as a period show, it is fine) and it is a bit grating how everybody is always fully covered during/after sex, but the stories are as great as they were back then.
I admire how the company has evolved over the years. It's cool that they distribute (and sometimes fund) movies made by excellent directors (Coens, Scorsese, Sorrentino). It does seem like a precarious business model: they have to keep picking or making winners but so far they're doing well.
Have they? Have they really? As far as I can tell, nothing that Netflix has ever done in-house has ever come close to the best of the cable channels. Like, The Witcher is fine, but Game of Thrones it is not, neither in quality nor buzz/cultural significance. House of Cards is no Succession and Ozark is no Breaking Bad. Nothing they have could even come close to comparing to stuff like The Sopranos or The Wire in terms of cultural impact. The closest they've ever come, in my opinion, is probably with Making a Murderer, and they've spent the last couple of years churning out pale imitations that make Netflix look like "True Crime TV".
You're paraphrasing that quote from the Netflix CEO that goes like "We want to become HBO faster than HBO can become us". To me, HBO has won that race handily.
Breaking Bad isn't an HBO show. So I assume we're just asking, "has Netflix produced any world-class content". The answer to that is yes.
The jewel in their crown, their "Game of Thrones", is clearly Stranger Things. It's undeniably successful, each new season a cultural event. I'd put Stranger Things up against any HBO show for relevance and impact. (Perhaps not for artistic excellence; but, The Wire is the best show that's ever been on television, and it's far from the most watched).
Add to that Black Mirror, Bojack Horseman, Sex Ed, the annual Flanagan miniseries (Hill House, Bly Manor, Midnight Mass), Master of None, and Big Mouth.
They're doing about as well as any premium cable channel ever has. Doesn't, of course, mean you like their content! But I have about as much faith in Netflix coming up with a new prestige show than I do in HBO, most of whose recent stuff has left me pretty cold.
Honestly, Game of Thrones notwithstanding, I'm not sure that there's a lot on HBO I consider must see level content either although some is quite good.
I'd probably consider them about a wash for content.
Considering they have a lot more flexibility than your average network, I’m surprised Netflix hasn’t made movies or mini-seasons to wrap up stories more common. That would be a huge improvement over what they’ve done with a lot of their original content that didn’t quite make the cut.
Game of Thrones had far more consistent cultural impact across all seasons (although they managed to nuke its legacy completely with the horrible last season).
(I also have no knowledge or interest in LoL.)
Another thing that's easy to sleep on is that Netflix is much, much better connected to its audience than HBO is to its own. Netflix makes a lot of content that I couldn't be less interested in, but that's probably a strong positive indicator for them; I obsess over The Wire, Deadwood, and Community, and am thus pretty clearly a niche audience. For years, HBO did a good job of serving people like me, to their detriment.
Tiger King & Squid Game were both pretty impactful.
I don't think the data is proving this out at all. Streaming will probably be a winner-take-most market and Netflix is on track to remain the leader.
We'll see what total 2021 subscriber growth was on Thursday, but estimates for Q4 are still around a net addition of 8 million subscribers. Compare this with Disney Plus growth in the same period of 2 million subscribers and I think the results are quite favorable.
If you pay attention to the details, such as in earnings calls, executives have reported that average subscriber watch time has only been increasing over the past few quarters. (Also see refs such as: https://backlinko.com/netflix-users#time-spent-with-netflix)
Keeping in mind that Covid has slowed production of content, in 2021 Netflix still managed to create the two most watched movies _ever_ on the platform (Red Notice, Don't Look Up). There are follow-up seasons launching for at least three of their strongest series, including Witcher (released tail end of 2021), Bridgerton, and Stranger Things. Plus the regular spikes of culturally relevant content such as Squid Games, Cheer, etc. which now happen fairly often.
> is destroying the business model that made them so appealing in the first place
I'm not sure how you are inferring that the business model has been destroyed here. It's certainly evolving over time but the promise has always been 'pay us a monthly subscription and we'll give you lots of things to watch'. I don't see how that has changed meaningfully or negatively.
Netflix has had naysayers at every stage of its growth. The landscape is always changing but I believe the critical idea is that Netflix leads in streaming and this has only strengthened over time. Total subscribers, revenue per user, and watch hours per account are all drifting up, and I fail to see how that represents a downward slope.
By what metrics that they didn't slice just to be able to say this?
“Gremlins 2 is our most watched movie _ever_”*
* featuring a monster made entirely out of vegetables
The business model was never about being really underpriced, that was just a way to acquire customers.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/as-netflix-growth-slows-st...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/business/netflix-earnings...
The only sub I permanently keep is YoutubePremium.
In the beginning of their foray into original content it felt like everything was good or at least interesting even if it wasn’t for me. Now it feels like they have a new original every week, but less that I find compelling or even watchable. A lot of it is lowest common denometer trash content. They risk being associated with that. I once associated them with high quality content even if it was low budget. Now I associate them with shows that feel like were concepted and written by a user acquisition algorithm.
At some point they decided Netflix is for every human on earth and to be for everyone you have to have content that can be digested by everyone, but to do that you make a pretty bland product without much taste.
I definitely don’t disagree with this, but here’s a question for people: if Netflix used their original content budget to instead procure existing content like they originally did, would this save them? This is obviously complicated with everyone creating their own streaming service to charge for their own content, but I’d certainly be happier with Netflix if I had a much better selection of other stuff and not “Netflix Originals”.
Right now I use prime more often and I bounce around with various add-one’s. Right now using Paramount Plus.
And the voice-overs on Netflix are down right annoying. I wish I could hide content with voice overs. The translations are terribly comedic as they try to match the mouth movements somewhat. It’s terrible. I’m tired of sifting through them.
In the next five years, we should expecting the number of streaming players to consolidate dramatically probably to the top 3, whoever they might be.
The thing is that Netflix has established itself as a staple and most no one is going to cancel it unless they are just hurting. Netflix knows that and has hiked prices to show it has market power. It's like Amazon Prime, I honestly don't order enough from Amazon to justify that expense each year but when I do use it, it's convient.
Also, they are global. Are HBO, Disney+, Paramount, Peacock the same? (I leave Hulu off as it seems to limp along? Not sure).
nope, not available in my country and it is clear from their list too: https://help.disneyplus.com/csp?id=csp_article_content&sys_k...
https://www.bestvpnfordisneyplus.com/blogs/when-is-disney-pl...
https://help.disneyplus.com/csp?id=csp_article_content&sys_k...
That's incorrect.
>Disney Plus Malaysia officially launched on 1st June 2021, making streaming Disney+ movies and series more accessible and worth the purchase in Malaysia. After Indonesia and Singapore, Malaysia has become the third South East Asian country to get Disney+ as Disney Plus Hotstar in collaboration with Astro Malaysia.
It is also available in Thailand, but Philippines is only announced to be coming soon.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Netflix_original_progr...
First, Netflix' games have the same issue as Apple Arcade: the majority are ad-riddled trash. And Apple Arcade has App Store tie-in.
Second, the global numbers are likely to keep Netflix afloat (the same way they seem to for Facebook), but stateside numbers are abysmal compared to emerging services [0]: Netflix boasts 74.02 million subscribers in U.S. and Canada, and HBO Max has 45.2 million domestic (give or take 5 million). Within a year of launch, HBO Max has captured 2/3 the subscription size of Netflix! (Globally, it is barely doing double the numbers of Disney+.) The other competition has proven itself viable in a fraction of the time, and are using their built-in infrastructure to continue to compete. Netflix no longer has any differentiating factor, except that their US adult-targeted content is usually lower quality.
0. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/10/disney-netflix-and-other-str...
I won't say every, but most games that aren't designed as pay-once are just elaborate dopamine slot machines, with no winners. The exceptions are few.
> , but those parts cut out, usually leaving a grindy mess with no shortcuts (paid or otherwise).
Either of those would make me happy cause then it'd presumably be a bundled service... maybe $15 for hulu, netflix, and disney+. or slightly higher prime membership but much better content+interface. (Hopefully prime would move all their free stuff for prime members just to the netflix apps/ui/etc.
There is no possibility to create a 'moat' in showbiz. Technology (distribution over internet) was once, but now that has become a commodity.
Like instead of “netflix is garbage its oversaturated” it seems like they greenlight stuff in batches where some quality content is released all around the same time
Just an observation
While we have abundance of platforms with fresh english content, that is not true for our own language.