The era of cheap streaming is officially over | Hacker News Reader

The era of cheap streaming is officially over

cnn.com

27 pointsjonathanzufi44 comments

Yar har har matey.

I imagine we will be hearing about the rise of piracy again in the next 6-12 months.

I’m definitely not interested in paying 20/mo per service as is the direction we are heading.

It will be interesting to see which streamers win and which fail then get bought up. In 5 years, we could see consolidation get us back to a reasonable number of services rather than the current situation.

In reality, ad free streaming will likely be the first casualty. And we will be back to cable tv.

Disney will promably dominate in the very near future. They own most of the content. But they didn't go the Netflix route of one streaming service with all the content. They'll have dozens of different thematic services that you can subscribe separately (Disney plus, hulu, espn, etc) or in a bundle. Basically exactly like cable but on demand. And every other service will basically die out because their content doesn't pull in new users.

This does seem like the logical conclusion.

Disney/Hulu/peacock/espn dominate market due to historical and current content. Disney first cuts off Netflix from any and all owned content. Disney buys netflix. Disney removes adfree plan. Disney raises prices back to cable tv levels. Piracy surges. Netflix 2 comes out and we repeat the cycle.

There's currently no oxygen left for a Netflix 2 to emerge. Netflix came out in a vacuum of streaming options and being the first to gain global adoption, everyone wanted their content on Netflix.

Netflix 2 will be an AI generated studio that makes big budget films cheaply and owns all the rights. The code will largely be generated. They will not need actors/writers/tech people in the way that netflix does. So their margins will be large enough to sustain the streaming / generation.

I've seen ChatGPT introduce pretty obvious bugs when asked to produce a simple chunk of code. I don't find it believable in the slightest that a significant portion of the code required to build and operate a large-scale service can be autogenerated.

You can't imagine it will improve in the future?

Improve? Sure. Improve enough to produce something in the order of millions of lines of code, maintaining internal consistency and implementing a well-thought, efficient and fault-tolerant software architecture? I don't see it happening in the short/medium term.

I would disagree. The problem here is the same problem that plagues contractors working in multiple global time-zones. Lack of clear communication and guidelines creates a mess. If there is the right structures and algorithms, I do think the current tech could create some very large outputs.

That said, there would need to be a host of manager/reviewers who knew how to wrangle the right "answers" at various steps.

it butchered my idea for a curb your enthusiasm spec script

It looks like, in the ranks of HN posters, cryptobros have been replaced by AInuts.

I really can't imagine that happening int he near future. Anything less than perfect when it comes to how AI generated faces look seems to fall in the uncanny valley. But script-wise, if Riverdale shown us anything is that scripts don't really need to make much sense to fair relatively well in Netflix.

I'd argue that AI will never be as original and creative as a human, but most of the stuff on Netflix is already so predictable that I'm not actually sure that's a good argument.

Disney is in no financial position to buy Netflix.

Today, you are absolutely right. If rights holders continue to reduce the available of premium content on Netflix, the situation may not be the same in a few years.

Netflix content alone can’t sustain the platform, imo.

I think this is where you're wrong. I can't remember the last time I watched any non-Netflix content on Netflix.

They're also adept at funding international content at a fraction of the price of US content. Assuming AI doesn't take over filmmaking I can see a future fairly soon were Netflix are making a ton of English language content in Africa/India/Eastern Europe. Or they are making international content and using AI to generate English vocals and lip sync.

> I can't remember the last time I watched any non-Netflix content on Netflix.

But that's exactly the point, isn't it? Netflix is popular today because it used to be the place where you could stream almost anything. Now you can only watch Netflix shows and movies, and some other low quality content or older shows and movies. Can Netflix keep up with more established media behemoths in producing enough content to keep its user base from flocking to Disney when they have all the most popular series and blockbusters?

Well, in theory it could - if it weren't so terrible and formulaic.

But why remove the adfree plan?

Its like The Matrix.

Isn't that just Cable but shittier and more expensive?

No, cable did not allow you to watch on almost any device anywhere at anytime.

Neither will streaming, it seems. The big players are already moving to a one household per account rule

Sort of, but it seems like most people complained about the high cost of cable combined with the low actual channel value you get. And it seems like dropping sports to something separate helps.

This is actually why I don't subscribe to any streaming services: they're all just cable TV in new clothes, still including most of the stuff that made cable TV suck.

In a 30-minute cable TV show, roughly 10 minutes of it is ads. Streaming is nothing like this (yet).

Not all of the awfulness of cable TV exists in streaming, of course. But a whole lot of it does. For example, the fragmentation of streaming among many services is essentially the same as the old cable TV "packages".

The free services (UK) are like this.

But yeah, the paying ones are not.

Alternatively, people will just consume different media or… I dunno, go outside?

I’m partially kidding, but it’s also true that if I can’t rent or buy a show/movie a la carte off Amazon or whatever, I usually just skip it. As a result, I watch less TV, which is probably good for me.

Totally agree. I never understand the complain that goes "if I want access to all the shows i need 6 subscriptions at $20 each!" OK, then maybe dont watch all the shows? Or do a rolling subscription?

But I'm ready to admit that my position may be fringe. As far as I'm concerned we could just stop making movies and shows tomorrow and I'll be perfectly happy. There's enough quality content to occupy many life times.

> OK, then maybe dont watch all the shows? Or do a rolling subscription?

Rolling subscriptions are the best way to handle the current streaming fragmentation. We frequently cancel services to see if anyone in the household notices. If someone does, it is easy enough to resub and cancel again.

That said, I fully expect the step after "No more ad-free streaming" to be "12 month contracts minimum" or $120/mo for month by month or just $600 per year, charged monthly at $49.99.

I’m definitely interested in paying 20/mo per service if it is for 1 or maybe two services that cover all my needs.

I’m definitely not interested in paying 20/mo per service if it is for 14 services that barely cover my needs.

Completely agreed. I'd be happy to pay even more to have a Spotify-like video streaming service. One price for everything, without commercials, would be worth the same or more than what I used to pay for cable. "Without Commercials" being the key point. I won't pay to be advertised at.

The only argument needed is the one by The Oatmeal[1]. This is the exact reason I pirate for all my media needs (except for games, because, Steam figured this out 2 decades ago).

[1]https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

It's interesting that Spotify is accused of underpaying artists but provides an all you can eat across a seemingly limitless catalogue, whereas video streamers struggle to make it work. My guess is that the 'artists', in this case big companies, feel they can demand fees for content which are unsupportable. In the end they will suffer with no outlet for their back catalogue.

I can assure you that the hosting costs alone make these very different animals. A gig of storage gets you 20 minutes of hi-def video or 200 songs. There are also a LOT more people who have to get paid in order to make a TV show vs an album.

Music can also be cached on device and is often replayed. Reducing the amount of bandwidth requirements even further.

Shouldn't that lead to more concentration? Netflix had the expertise and ISP agreements to deal with this, now every streaming service has to redo it.

Good point about hosting.

As to payment, old shows and movies have been paid for. It must be a case of getting what you can for them. Used to be DVDs.

It was a fool's errand to think that we were going to have 10-20x more content for 1/5th the price forever

Streaming's original premise was cheap content in Netflix. People were fine waiting 2-3 years to watch a show when it came to Netflix (Breaking Bad, anyone?)

But when Netflix became more than just reruns with a good interface and became original content, and then a race to have more original content among all the players, it was obvious that we'd eventually be back to paying the same overall as we did for cable

Cable companies and traditional media companies could've easily prevented all of this by not getting so greedy on pricing and actually caring about the customer experience. Shitty cable boxes and $250 a month broke the system.

In many ways streaming is actually worse (broadcast of high def video is way more efficient than point-to-point individual streams, aggregation of all content into one UI was better than now having to bounce between apps) but in many ways it's better (Rokus and Apple TVs are lightyears better than 15 year old recycled cable set tops, and even if the total of all streaming ends up not being that much cheaper at least you can pick and choose what you get instead of a bundle)

They've been running streaming at a loss to get market share, but now they're all freaking out about the losses and trying to make it so they make just as much from streaming as they did before when you had to bundle everything and they locked most of the content in a vault to divvy out when they felt like remarketing it to make more money. Things are going to keep getting worse because making less money overall is not allowed, neither is making the same amount of money. Only more money.

I wonder if we get to a point where studios go back into the theater business but show there larger blockbuster TV shows to help offset the production costs.

my boutique plex setup will pay for itself in… <checks watch>… several years

My jellyfin on an old dell will never pay for itself, because I don't pay for video.

I had a Netflix account, but the content is thin in the UK, so I ceased it.

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