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Comment by Brendinooo | Hacker News Reader

Still a great ecosystem and value for dollar overall! That's one reason why prices have gone up.

No long-term contracts, no additional hardware needed, no hidden fees. Still the option to not see ads for most of the services. You can freely jump from service to services.

Plenty of promos out there still, too: for example, I get $10 back per month on an ad-free Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle through my credit card. That plan costs me about $31/month: $31 doesn't buy me a meal out with my family, it doesn't buy me a single football ticket, it might get me into one movie with the family if I do some cheap matinee (not counting gas to drive up and snacks).

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Exactly, what we have now is vastly better than whatever existed before (in terms of convenience and price). Watch when I want, what I want, how I want, and never pay for anything I don't want and never see ads and never have to go somewhere to get it.

I especially like not paying for sports to watch the few shows/movies I like.

Some people who like to (legally) own media might be disappointed, though.

As someone who loves buying music - yeah, I hear that.

I just never really felt like the incentives were quite the same to purchase movies. They've always been constrained by their formats/vendors in a way that was never as true for music, they've always cost more, I don't rewatch movies as much as I'll re-listen to albums, and I think the...I dunno...nature, telos of movies lends itself better to ephemeral access.

They will own nothing and be happy

Are you a netflix exec by any chance?

I, for one, don't see any problem here.

If you go to a restaurant for a meal, you own nothing after that, but you can be happy. If you go to an entertainment park, you own nothing after that for your ticket, but you can be happy.

Making customer happy is an extraordinary valuable service one can provide, and that doesn't have to require connection with materially owning anything.

Nope, not a Netflix exec. One would imagine if I was, I'd have used Netflix as my example.

I dunno about you, but in my lifetime, if I would have invested in owning VHS, DVD, or HD-DVD, that would not have paid off for me. (I might have owned a lot, but I wouldn't have been happy.)

I guess Blu-Ray has stuck around, but I find that I don't rewatch a ton of movies anyways. I've never felt comfortable buying digital video because I never liked the idea of buying into an ecosystem.

And...discs aren't cheap anyways? Just did a random search - Tron: Legacy (a movie that's been out for awhile, I like, I would re-watch) costs $27.99 to buy a physical copy. So again: $28 to acquire one movie; $31 for me to watch that movie or hundreds of others I want within the course of a month.

Thanks for making me think of this, it's another bullet in support of what I was saying before.

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