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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible comparison because no one has to buy all those services and in fact few do. The problem with cable was, regardless if you wanted it you got almost everything, particularly the most expensive package ESPN, whether you watched sports or not.

Also, in Los Angeles, without any premium channels we have always paid more than $80.

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>>because no one has to buy all those services and in fact few do

I don't know if it's strictly the case. I think it depends on how we slice and dice.

I cannot pay for Marvel movies without paying for Alladin and Little Mermaid (Disney+)

I cannot just pay for Star Trek Strange New Worlds without paying for... I don't even know what, honestly, CBS All Access / Paramount + / whatever it's called these days holds no other interest to me.

I get Prime, but increasing amount of movies I want are behind complex channel bundles. wtf is STARZ?

If you are a family with parents, children, and perhaps even a grandparent, you will have an increasingly comparable number of subscriptions, monthly outlay, and hassle ("I want to watch X; is it on any services I subscribe or do I have to commit my life to yet another" is a privileged but unnecessary problem I do not desire to have and it's solely on industry's shoulders)

Netflix had promise. Netflix was the Spotify of visual content. My one place with simple good interface that I can find all the content available, or at least good 80-90% of the middle of bell curve. The one monopoly I wholeheartedly desired to remain a monopoly.

Here's a statement of personal perspective: "For me and anybody I know (friends & family), we are 100% moving toward Cable days in any and every way that matters to us". While we may be able to find a lens through which that is not technically the case, I personally find that immaterial. The immense prolifieration and fractalization of streaming providers benefits them, and is absolutely 100% against my convenience, budget, preference and best interest.

> I cannot pay for Marvel movies without paying for Alladin and Little Mermaid (Disney+)

> I cannot just pay for Star Trek Strange New Worlds without paying for... I don't even know what, honestly, CBS All Access / Paramount + / whatever it's called these days holds no other interest to me.

Do Blu-rays and VODs just not exist anymore? You can absolutely pay for just what you want. I mean honestly how much does a collection of all the MCU movies through Endgame cost if you were to buy them discretely? $20 per in iTunes/TV, and what was it something like 20-25 movies? So $400-500 if you wanted every single one, and you can get at least some of them for cheaper if you get the Blu-rays off Amazon and Renting is an option if you only want to watch a particular movie once.

Or $80/year if you don’t mind subsidizing Walt Disney Animations and Pixar. Honestly I think it’s a toss up whether renting, buying or streaming is more economical because it comes down to your habits, and streaming is only the clear winner if you binge a lot.

For me, a few streaming services make sense even without binging. But people do seem to forget there's a la carte streaming and DVD rental/purchase. In fact, if you want to watch a lot of films, you may be better off with something like Netflix DVDs by mail than another streaming option.

For sure. I think streaming is still the winner—but more debatably so—under certain other circumstances (international access, availability after air date, exclusivity, etc.) but only the clear winner versus the other options if you binge a lot.

>Do Blu-rays and VODs just not exist anymore?

Yes. My mom watched an episode of Ted Lasso on a flight recently, and was interested in watching more. It is straight up Apple TV+ only. No physical media release or VOD. Subscription only.

Same with a bunch of animated shows that HBOmax axed recently. They were streaming only with no other releases, and it is now impossible to watch any of the past episodes legally.

That sucks. I’m sorry.

I am curious whether Apple might release the TV+ VODs sometime down the line though.

Sure, but Blue rays or DVD or VHS existed in time of cable too, so either they're irrelevant go conversation / comparison, or we've moved the goalposts.

> I cannot pay for Marvel movies without paying for Alladin and Little Mermaid (Disney+)

Lol yes you can.

> Netflix had promise. Netflix was the Spotify of visual content. My one place with simple good interface that I can find all the content available, or at least good 80-90% of the middle of bell curve. The one monopoly I wholeheartedly desired to remain a monopoly.

No, it didn't. Netflix never had anything like this. Netflix never had even a tenth of modern, mainsteam content. Not even close. Never in it's entire history. It just used to be aimed more at Hacker News typical audience demographically.

Netflix streaming never had the majority of video content available like Spotify has the majority of music available

But that was the promise and hope.

Or to put it another way - myself and everybody we know would prefer if Spotify for video content existed. The proliferation of services that are removing content from Netflix so they could host it on their own crappy system and app is purely bad for me with no benefit. Just like I don't want Spotify to suddenly become Columbia+ and bmg all access and whatever million music publishers there are each with their own crappy service.

No one who knew how movie licensing work with the various release windows thought that was possible.

It worked with DVDs because of the first sale doctrine.

> But that was the promise and hope.

There was no promise, no sign of this ever happening, and no chance of it ever doing so.

There is no economic model that makes sense for it - music is licensed collectively because the economic cost of producing music doesn't vary that dramatically (and the difference has shrunk dramatically since the advent of Spotify et al). That's not true for AV, nor would it ever become so.

I really don’t understand the issue — you’re not forced to pay for more than a month at a time. Pay for a month of Paramount+ and then cancel once you’re done watching Strange New Worlds. You just paid $10 for 10 episodes of Trek. Seems fair.

Disney+ is an even better deal — _all_ of the Marvel movies you can watch at their monthly price.

And did you ever actually use cable? Top end packages can be $200 a month, and you generally don’t get to choose what to actually watch when you want to watch it. And most of it is unwatchable trash.

The cable days bordered on a dystopian nightmare. Channel flipping, appointment viewing, endless ads. Most content was inaccessible most of the time. Miss an episode? Tough shit. We were watching what someone else wanted us to watch, when they wanted us to watch it, and we payed for the privilege. The only people that ever seemed to like that grotesque relationship with TV were the Boomers.

Not only that but I feel that a lot of these “are we going back to cable” are people too young to have used it.

Having to pay for a bunch of a channels you didn’t want wasn’t at all what separated cable from streaming.

Being able to choose what you watch along with not paying for the pleasure of watching ads is why streaming won out.

Not to mention being able to cancel a streaming membership without going through the eight layers of contact center hell that still exists to this day for many cable providers.

And I remember being locked into a contract term as well for cable or satellite. All of these comparisons of streaming to cable of yore seem pretty far off, since you can mix & match services, binge, cancel some or all of them, re-subscribe later, etc. All without contract terms, and all without needing to do more than a few mouse clicks.

Not only that but I feel that a lot of these “are we going back to cable” are people too young to have used it.

The worst part of cable is the ads - when I travel and go to a hotel, I find that cable TV is unwatchable, it feels like 25% of the playtime is devoted to ads.

I've started carrying an Amazon Fire Stick with me if I'm going to be in a hotel for more than a few days (usually for work) since most TV's have an accessible HDMI port, then I can watch all my streaming channels. Hotel Wifi is so spotty that I normally use a hotspot.

It was ESPN years ago that broke the camel's back for my family and i to cut the cord...and the cost involved was only $4.95 per month. I say "only" because compared to the rest of my monthly cable bill, that didn't repsrenst a majority. It was the fact that i had no choice to remove ESPN - which i never watched anyway. So, Cablevision - or really maybe Disney/ESPN's contracts with cablevision - forcing me to pay a fee every month for something that i don't want was just so annoying, that i forever killed my cable subscription. And, in fact, all those years ago i even stopped watching "regular" TV...and i got my news from the web...and i'm not a mileniall which is often the assumption that many poeople make of me, when i tel them my streaming services origin story. Finally, all those years ago since i cut the cord, i have been hell bent promoting to everyone about the advantages of cutting the cord and moving to streaming services...in essence Cablevision and Disney/ESPN converted me int o an unpaid PR person for years now for streaming services! :-p

Exactly. That was my thinking.

Who would pay for all these services that have so much overlap in content with one another?

Terribly inefficient way of doing shit.

There was always OTA (over the air). To hell with ESPN.

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