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Comment by e40 | Hacker News Reader

There were a few years were I literally stopped all torrenting. Netflix and Amazon had everything I wanted. Sure, there were a few things that didn't exist, but I was too lazy to go after that minor amount of content. I was fully legal and paying for everything. I was fine with it.

Then, the great splintering happened. I currently pay for 5 services, but that doesn't cover even 1/2 of what I want to watch.

All the content owners said to themselves "we can be Netflix or Amazon Prime, too" and they pulled their content into their own services.

But the biggest problem: the user experience absolutely sucks now. It's so hard to find stuff and remember where things are, there's no universal search. I have to use justwatch.com on my phone when I want to sit down to watch something new, which might mean a trip to the computer to download it if one of the many services I already pay for don't have it.

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In my case, it's where they wrapped up the long-tail movies. Want to watch Airplane!....$3 rental. Spaceballs? $3 rental Cannonball Run? $3

I am not going to pay to rent stuff I used to be able to encounter for free by surfing channels...well, on top of my dish/cable bill

And the cost of ads? Seems like a deal to me.

Does “encounter for free” also include instant access? I seem to recall that movies like Spaceballs would be shown for free, but probably next week.

The $3 is for fast-forwarding Mr Video to next week.

Maybe I’m crazy but $3 to have a HD movie instant play without ads on any device I want seems like an insane deal to me.

It's really about the repeat plays. The game service Steam is successful because you "own" something after spending, without paying a recurring fee.

Movies are different than games (and music) however. While I have rewatched movies--multiple times in a (relatively small) number of cases, movies are mostly one and done for me--and I imagine most adults.

That said, I don't know why the 48 hour limit on rentals got normalized. I've fallen asleep, gotten distracted, etc. while watching a movie and I don't like now being forced to watch it soon.

It was normalized back when the first video rental stores opened decades ago. It remains today because there needs to be some way to differentiate between a rental and a purchase, otherwise everything would become a purchase at a significantly higher price point.

Maybe the limit could be 72 or 96 hours instead. Or you could rent it with no time limit but maybe can't ever rewind then you can make it last as long as you need but when it's done, it's done.

Back in the 90s you would have had to pay $3-5 per movie at Blockbuster. Drive to the store, hope the movie you want was in stock, drive home, watch movie, remember to rewind the movie when it's done, drive back to the store to return it before the due date.

Now, for less money, I don't even have to get off the couch. What a world!

Also: Airplane! and Airplane 2 DVD: $6. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XGD93BP Spaceballs $7, less if you're ok with used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004TJ1H32 Cannonball run, $10, though less if used and there are some $10 "Cannonball Run + another movie" sets on Amazon as well.

While I tend to agree that piracy and/or ripping isn't something everyone can do, I've filled out my Plex collection legally lately with DVD acquisitions at bargain-bin prices. Used doesn't matter if you only have to be able to read the disc once to rip it, and I'm yet to get something used off Amazon that couldn't be read once. (I haven't even had to clean it or anything, it's all just worked.)

So, my Plex install in terms of raw content isn't up to Netflix's size. However, I rather suspect there are some people reading this who have more hours of video on their Plex than Netflix even has available. And while mine isn't that large, it is much better tuned for me and my family's interests at this point. And I don't have to worry about getting halfway through a series, only for some licensor to notice it has become popular enough to pull it and run it on their own service. Netflix has the problem now that anything that becomes popular on their service will get yanked. I do not know how they overcome that. They hoped to do it with enough original content, but to my eye, that has failed, and there is now no longer enough time to fix that. While I understand the complaints that they treated it too much like "content", to be honest, I've never thought this would work out, from the moment they announced it. A single company just can't produce a sufficiently diverse set of "content" to be the everything-to-everybody they would have needed to be to justify a Netflix valuation.

Do you also make backups of HD movies using this process, by any chance? Like you, I have no issue purchasing something. But I don’t like “purchasing” something stored in a walled garden online-only service that can be taken away.

Amazon and Youtube (and maybe other streaming services) also offer some of the movies for free with advertising. So the model hasn’t changed much from going to rent a movie at the store for a few bucks or watching it on cable tv, except you’re not paying for cable now.

I am fine with renting and paying. But the arbitrarily stupid rule “you have 48 hours to finish once you started” is what stops me from “renting” any lure.

How often are you renting a 2 hour movie without having a 2+ hour window of free time to watch it?

More often than you think. Usually we watch movies in the evenings and one of us ends up falling asleep after a long day.

>> the user experience absolutely sucks now

Understandable, I just cut back on all the TV engorging and rotate the streaming services every quarter. IMO it's a net win. Save money on the streaming services and life is better for having not watched so much television. Not going to the grave wishing I binged Season 2 of some random show one more time.

Why don't you just not partake in the content? You really don't need to spend all that time watching shows. If you don't like the terms under which it is offered, just find something else to do.

Who cares. What difference does it make to you if he pirates it or doesn't watch it?

I have a TCL TV (with Roku) and searching for a show using the voice remote generally gets me the result and also which app is streaming it. I use it all the time these days.

JustWatch is good for this, but it mostly reveals how sparse most of their catalogs are. It confirmed for me, at long last, that the reason I couldn't find anything to watch is because there wasn't anything to watch. Paramount+ at least has all the Star Treks after pulling it from every other service, but it seems like all they have other than that is 30 seasons of 5 cop shows.

Google search does a pretty decent job of surfacing where something is streaming

Most results would just be buried somewhere in the middle of a four page article filled with ads and popups about cookies and newsletters and the like.

I'm not sure where you're located but for me, I prominently get a panel with the streaming options. Something like this https://searchengineland.com/google-search-tests-new-interfa...

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