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Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

Everybody wanted to control the entire pie, when in reality almost all of them would have been better off just licensing their content to Netflix and not worrying about streaming distribution

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So much this. Netflix was valuable to me because I could watch any movie at any time, but now the streaming space is so fragmented that no single provider is worth the price of the subscription, so our family doesn't pay for any of them.

We told ourselves that if we really want to watch movies we'd just rent them off Amazon on a case-by-case basis, but in practice we just completely stopped consuming streaming content as a family. If there are other families like us, then their greed made the whole pie much smaller.

I am in this boat as well. Our stream subscriptions are down to zero -- just the one I get for free with my cell carrier. And as for Disney and whatever the heck it is they have become, I have reverted back to purchasing purchased discs of any good movies or series.

Same, and with my toddler we’re back to good old fashioned DVDs. They may be slower, fragile and have a few unskippable parts but at least the ads are predictable, they don’t involve endless scrolling, and they belong to you.

I kind of skipped the whole blue-ray thing, but is there a reason for DVD over blue-ray besides the price?

I keep Netflix subscription most out of loyalty than anything else. I've had Amazon prime since it was first introduced but may drop it after the recent announcement.

I also tend to rent from Amazon if it's not on netflix, but if it's on neither or I disagree with the rent price or they don't allow you to rent, I just pirate.

I'm ok with them having my money, but once they started pulling everything off of netflix the entire landscape because anti-consumer. Their greed lost them my money.

Completely agree, but they never seem to learn.

The plumbing companies (like Netflix) look jealously at the content producers, and they desperately want that sweet content revenue.

The content producers (like Disney) look jealously at the plumbing companies, and they desperately want that sweet plumbing revenue.

Sometimes grabbing for the other revenue stream works out (like for Netflix) but most of the time it doesn't.

Disney was so eager to get into the plumbing business that it forgot how to create compelling content and now it can't do either.

Disney didn't forget :( They chose to stop, because they valued creating social change more than creating compelling content.

What did they do that makes you think they valued creating social change more?

I could explain, but South Park did it so well already.

If anyone is genuinely curious, you're looking for "south park panderverse".

If we didn't have at least 3 major services, ultimately said services would have made contracts that would have taken most of the value of the deal: That's basically what Netflix was doing when they were the only game in town. We have too many streaming services now, but a monopolist with sensible prices was never the way it was going to end.

It would’ve been interesting if the major studios made their own Netflix.

Assuming they could execute technically on it, then a consumer would have just one subscription to get a ton of great content, and honestly would probably be compelling to have that AND Netflix (all the long tail stuff).

That was the original idea behind Hulu back in 2007 (originally free but funded with mandatory ads).

Wasn’t that the original idea behind Hulu?

Depending on what you mean by "studios", is this not what Hulu was? A joint ownership between multiple partners... ultimately down to Disney now but not originally.

> better off just licensing their content to Netflix

the thing is, this makes your IP a commodity. If netflix truly has a monopoly on the market like this, then they can supress the price of the licensing down to very low, and therefore disney would make very little money from the licensing.

It's good for the consumer, but not for disney.

If the IP is valuable that would in the negotiation. Simply put, there would be a minimum Disney would require from Netflix for their content. Better yet, structure some type of Joint-Venture deal with Netflix if the Disney content is so valuable (I suspect it is not…)

> a minimum Disney would require from Netflix for their content.

and netflix would just play hardball, since the scenario proposed by the grandparent post is one where only netflix is doing streaming.

> Joint-Venture deal with Netflix

which is not the scenario proposed by the GP - and in any case, this is not different from today, where every media company wants to own their own distribution network.

The way around this is license it to another platform. No exclusives.

Well of course they'd have been. But prevailing wisdom just few years back was Disney's of the world can just steamroll Netflix of the world because they own all the content. Developing streaming system is only some low level implementation detail in larger scheme of things.

Well to be fair, Netflix got free money for years on the premise of future profits, whereas Disney are valued on quarterly earnings.

Back 7 years ago this is exactly what my company (one of those listed) decided was the right move.

Then they changed their mind and pivoted to streaming, now. They're thinking maybe they should have just been an arms dealer.

...and Netflix couldn't grow as a tech company paying the ever increasing content costs (and wasn't happy with a utility company valuation) so has spent enormous sums on just terrible shows.

If you're an executive at any of these companies: VERTICAL INTEGRATION

If you're an outsider looking in: GREED

Ok but what's wrong with becoming a basic content internet utility? Why can't Netflix "just" be YouTube for professionally made TV and movie content, with a great UI? Why is that a bad business?

The Netflix Ui/UX sucks bad enough that I quit the service over it. I for one do not want them to gain a foothold in the market similar to YouTube, because their market dominance would just lead to the formation of yet another cesspool of shit content.

It's not a bad business it's just a different business. What you are describing already exists and is less valuable than Netflix.

Nebula, brilliant, masterclass, dropout, ...

I do recommend all of these. They provide a stream of high quality YouTube like content.

They tried, didn't they? The move into content was forced when the content producers started pulling the licenses.

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