Hacker News Reader

Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Streaming just came full cycle to traditional TV broadcasting. An impressive feat of disrupting an industry right there.

View on HN

You need a streaming aggregator for the cycle to be complete.

At least one telecom provider in Canada has already started doing that [0]. I expect it won't be long before others join in.

[0] https://www.telus.com/en/streamplus

My Cable TV package comes with at least 5 different streaming platforms. I only have said package because it actually brings my bills total cost down, somehow.

Seeing the writing on the wall that we could be headed back to the cable TV era, I had a hairbrained idea (haha- really just a name) back in like 2011/12, that would aggregate the three big streaming platform's libraries in a single interface. called: HuFlixPrime.

My idea to get cooperation and buy-in across the streaming providers was to try and "nudge" customers to subscribe and bundle competing services by directly showing all programming that could be accessed in one interface. Ideally streaming and account management and signup would be done through this single clearing house. Perhaps an incentive if all three services were active.

Obviously would be fraught with issues, and I could never really see any cooperation like that working. but I liked the name...

The Pirate Bay

I'd add that I actually pay for Amazon Prime (mostly for the free shipping -- heavy stuff costs a fortune otherwise), but use other means to access Prime Video content because of the ads (there are a raft of Prime Video offerings that already have ads) and the spying.

I had a similar experience when I recently purchased Need for Speed: Heat on sale from Steam. The mandatory EA launcher that was installed along with game had separate spyware that launched at boot and couldn't (easily) be disabled. The "alternative version" didn't have that, so that's what I ended up playing.

Amazon was advertising during the football game last night that they could aggregate your subscriptions to at least Amazon Prime Video, Max, Paramount+, and AMC+ so you could get content from all of those platforms in the same place.

It splintered enough at the end with cable vs. DishNetwork vs. DirectTV. i remember specific local sports games only being on one and then another.

I think every country has at least 1-2 telco operators doing exactly that in their top-tier connectivity packages (usually pretty expensive)

I’ve noticed that the Apple TV app on Apple TV drags in content from other apps somehow.

Coming 2025.

Nor sure why anyone would expect somwthkng else. Streaming doesn’t make things any cheaper than traditional tv, production might be slightly cheaper but not because of streaming. Shareholders still want the same roi.

Everything being VoD is a pretty nice feature though.

> Streaming doesn’t make things any cheaper than traditional tv

Streaming is oodles cheaper than owning traditional TV station.

It really isn't cheaper. Netflix pays $1bil/yr to aws. The only advantage streaming providers have is that you're already paying for an internet connection. But TV over internet solutions have been a thing for a long time so even this doesn't really matter. At the end of the day it's just bits going through a plastic tube from one computer to another. If anything, the 1 to 1 on-demand aspect of streaming would make this the more expensive option.

> Netflix pays $1bil/yr to aws

So actual hardware would cost them like 1/4 of that.

But the networks didn’t (mostly) own the traditional TV stations. Streaming cuts the middlemen out of the loop which is probably a bit cheaper though overall.

The new middlemen are cloud (unless you're amazon/google) and internet providers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com