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Comment by tpmoney | Hacker News Reader

For now we’re still better than cable because you don’t need to stay subscribed to everything just because you want to watch something. Especially in this modern age of “dump a whole season at once and then spend 2 years making the next season”. You can subscribe to something for a month to watch the latest season and then drop the subscription.

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The next season usually sucks anyway. It's like they hire decent writers for first season and then hand it off to the B team for the rest of the show.

It's usually the same team. In addition to the sophomore slump, the team will also be squeezed for time as they have a tight deadline to deliver a finished product after they learn whether they have been renewed or not.

Coupled with the required ambiguity. Every first season has to both stand on its own, in case Netflix doesn't renew, while also leading smoothly into plot lines for the next season if they do get picked up

Landing that ambiguity, and having the second season be as good as the first, doesn't look like an easy job

A lot of (good) series are also just fresh and different when they land. They're not as fresh in Year 2 much less any subsequent years. Yes, sometimes they can build on a serial story but, personally, I lose interest in most TV series after a bit. I realize others have a different mindset where they hate not being able to live with their favorite characters for more or less forever.

That is worse than cable if you had something like TiVo. Back with a cable subscription you were "locked in" but it was cheaper than buying all the subscriptions. We have taken a massive step backwards in UI/UX when it comes to TV, piracy is the only thing that beats TiVO but TiVo (old TiVo, before Cable Card was killed) beats pretty much everything else today.

Yeah its also interesting seeing the niche apps that pop up that basically pick what to watch for you and where everyone watches the same thing at the same time. Seems like converging on old school television.

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