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Comment by lopis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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'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.

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.

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.

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

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?

But why remove the adfree plan?

Its like The Matrix.

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

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.

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

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