Hacker News Reader

Comment by vhanda | Hacker News Reader

All streaming services should have a pay per minute system as an alternative to the fixed monthly subscription.

That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it would be convenient, instead of piracy.

And it would be a reason for them to really improve their recommendation systems.

What these companies would "sell" would be DRM crusty shit that wouldn't work on my devices. And the 'Authorization servers' would be decommissioned at some unstated future date. Hell, even Microsoft couldn't manage to maintain these DRM servers.

If MS cant, why would I expect any company to properly maintain them?

https://community.spiceworks.com/t/how-to-play-content-prote...

So, unless these are MP4's or MKV's with correct subtitling and appropriate audio, I'm not going to pay a cent here.

Lets go back to old good CD/DVD era.

> pay per minute system

And/or pay-per-episode, pay-per-season or pay-per-show. So I don't have to start thinking ahead too much about the _length_ of something and can just enjoy the thing itself based on some pre-determined price.

Pay per episode could be an ok granularity. Anything above that I'm not ok, there is too much garbage

Perhaps pay-per-episode with a discounted price for an entire series (and an option to buy the remainders taking that into account). It seems fair to be able to dip your toe into a series and try a few episodes before committing. On the other hand, that seems just a bit too consumer-friendly...

Would be fine with that. I want a demo before committing, essentially

Isn't this precisely what Amazon already does?

For the subset of Amazon-available content that isn't counted as Prime Video I think yes, but not for the rest of it. Apple TV+ possibly too, though they also have what feels like their own confusing model that shows some things as being available with the caveat that it's actually available through either a) a proxy with a subscription to a third party or b) a one-time purchase from them. I'd hate to be in the meetings where the details of these licensing agreements get hashed out.

Some Disney series are already 20mins about the show and 10mins credits/something else. Don’t give them new ideas to reduce the actual content…

I was thinking along the lines of how much I actually watch, if I only watched 10 minutes of your show, I only pay for 10 minutes, not the entire thing.

You're also saving on bandwidth.

Paradoxically, I'd still want to pay per minute of viewing time, if I'm watching the show on 2x the speed.

Isn't this just renting, which is already offered by Amazon, Apple, Google ...

Sort of, but:

- the price to rent is comically overpriced, to the point it makes no sense to rent, especially at HD or UHD.

- you still require an online connection.

- the quality is shit unless your playing it on the holy Privacy Violator 9000.

- they give you an absurdly small amount of time to view the movie or show. 2 days? Really? Family video did a week!

Yes but then it must be in the form of a subscription (e.g. 300 mins/month), because recurring revenue is critical for the valuation of most companies.

Maybe the incentives would be better, but i also dont really want to keep track of budgeting when watching TV. I'm here to relax. I dont want to stress about how much i watched this month and if im going to blow my entertainment budget.

That would incentivize services to make their shows longer. Maybe they play them back at 95% speed, maybe they add their own intro or credits to the end. maybe if they make their own shows like Netfliz does, they stretch them out.

Movie shows will optimize for that by making half of the episode filler.

Idea for a service.

The service effectively rebroadcasts all the streaming services to provide exactly what you suggest. It’s still paying the streaming services, and users pay it.

Better not set it up in the US .

This is like cable with extra steps ;)

I think we are already seeing some packaged stream services and we will probably see more. It’s a lot of overhead to maintain a separate service to do the exact same thing (with only a different library and branding).

I think the NHL uses the streaming backend developed by MLB Advanced Media (they adapted it in 2015, not sure if still the case).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/a-closer-look-at-nhls-pa...

Na, not like cable. It’s all on demand so you can watch what you want when you want. You don’t pay a cent for stuff you don’t watch.

You can pay by minute, or episode, or season or whatever.

Like Netflix but with the catalog of every streaming service in existence, better per-use pricing, no ads.

That would only suit a portion of their user base and completely ream people who use Netflix to entertain/occupy their kids, who use TV shows to fall asleep, etc. Not to mention throwing away valuable subscriber dollars from idle users like me who maintain a subscription but rarely watch anything (mostly because there's nothing good on the entire platform).

Sling TV now has a "day pass" option for $5. (A weekend for $10.) https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/sling-tv-off...

A bundle of streaming services. That you can surf and choose one from and just watch. And a TV guide that tells you what's running where.

Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.

Sarcasm aside, the one problem folks had with Cable was the inability to upgrade without getting locked into another 2 year contract. Streaming solves that one problem while enshittifying all the other good things.

I thought the main complaint was "I'm paying for channels I don't watch!" while not realizing the channels they were watching were actually what they were paying for, and the rest of the stuff was just lumped in for nearly free to make the lineups look bigger and more appealing.

For some reason I always saw it in reverse, that I had to pay to subsidise a set of channels I'm _not_ interested in for the one I am.

Chances are that's not what was happening unless you were watching the channels nobody else watches.

I haven't looked into cable pricing for a while but i remember a few of the contract disputes that caused some big channels to drop off big cable providers in the 2010s. The price-per-customer those channels were asking the cable companies were significant chunks of what a package would cost the customer (eg upwards for $1).

Meanwhile some of the less common ones were a few cents per customer.

That means that unless you weren't watching any of the $1+ ones, you were mostly actually "paying for what you're watching".

I assure you that there are many people who do not need nor want ESPN and knew damn well they were directly paying it.

And those people were having part of their package subsidized by the people who were watching ESPN but not the other channels.

> .. the one problem folks had with Cable was the i...

and hardware rental fees

ads on top of your service

bundling a bunch of channels you didnt ask for and increase price

outages

the list goes on

> Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.

Honestly, Cable companies could make a comeback by using their relationships with producers to actually be a "one stop shop" streaming services. There's definitely a pain point to having to be subscribed to so many different services just to cover the gamut of shows and movies

For movies at least it's usually no problem to find them for "rent", i.e. 48h for an absurd amount of money.

I think they know how many dead / inactive subscriptions they have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com