Comment by deltaqueue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deltaqueue | Hacker News Reader

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Rant ahead...

Am I the only one dissatisfied with the way media delivery has played out the past couple of years? We started with a rapidly developing delivery system (the internet) and content makers who couldn't see the value in capitalizing on this sales channel by making movies, TV shows, and songs available to consumers at reasonable prices (read: less than physical media costs), which led to piracy, global dissatisfaction, and decreased industry revenue.

Fast forward to 2013, where we have...

Ecosystems: iTunes, Amazon Video, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Blockbuster Ondemand, Android, Cinema Now, and Vdio

Which can be accessed on TVs, web browsers, smartphones, tablets, dvd players, bluray players, gaming consoles, media streaming devices (Roku, Apple TV, etc.), and HTPCs.

... all with different user experiences (most are poor), varying media coverage / depth, and a pricing system that only satisfies bulk consumers that want to watch a bunch of legacy content.

Larger companies that were first to build relationships with content makers have been the most successful, but the entire process still wreaks of bureaucracy, middle-men, and band aids. Netflix seems to be the only one that realizes this, and has started producing their own content (e.g. House of Cards and Arrested Development), and I think this is the only true catalyst that will change the industry for the better.

I don't know how Netflix producing content and making it exclusive to their subscription service is a win for consumers.

I'm not saying it's a perfect model, but the alternative is having to pay $100/month for a cable subscription to watch garbage you don't want to see, or $10+ to see it in a dirty movie theater, or $15 to "buy" a movie that was $15 in the 90's for a physical DVD. Even if there are 5 Netflixes competing against each other I would rather pay 5 x $7.99 a month to watch content I actually find relevant than pay for junk I don't use.

If anything, merging content with distribution sparks competition to produce content at reasonable prices. Netflix has also resorted to releasing content in a more enjoyable manner (all at once vs. weekly with commercials).

> Even if there are 5 Netflixes competing against each other [producing their own content] I would rather pay 5 x $7.99 a month

You've just described cable. If those subscriptions start to come in packages we're back to square one.

The difference between cable and having 5 Netflix competitors is that you don't have one company with a local monopoly setting your pricing.

The original point was that a "netflix" provides better content than cable to start with.

The argument against it was that the company providing the content would be exclusively providing that content.

The rebuttal is that it would be better to pay 5 companies that all produce exclusive content than to pay for cable, which "provides" mostly stuff you don't want to see (and frequently don't have the option to not watch, if you're viewing any of their content, ie: commercials).

And my rebuttal is that paying 5 (or 10, 20, 50) companies that all produce exclusive content is almost exactly what cable is, the only differences are you pay a middleman instead of the companies directly, and usually can't choose individual providers, they come in preset packages.

I'd rather see independent producers distributing their content over various netflix-like providers, otherwise we're just transplanting our current content production model to the web. That will suck for both consumers and producers.

"Netflix seems to be the only one that realizes this, and has started producing their own content (e.g. House of Cards and Arrested Development), and I think this is the only true catalyst that will change the industry for the better."

There's a big difference between a company like Netflix producing their own content, making it available for watching uninterrupted, whenever you like -vs- any of the content providers that charge cable companies for their content streams that include commercials and are generally not available "on demand", packaged together through a single company that won't give you just the content you want, when you want it, but charges you for some combination of provider's streams in a package.

Hence the argument of "the alternative is having to pay $100/month for a cable subscription to watch garbage you don't want to see". 5x7.99 is not the cost of cable. The only cable packages you can get for that price are extremely limited. Also, they will require another $4.99 a month for on-demand, on top of your regular cable fee, unless you're paying more than $100 a month, in which case, it's included. ¬.¬

In that scenario most of the content you are paying for multiple times. Or you can look at it as the redundant content is free and you're paying $7.99/month for House of Cards.

Wouldn't it be better if prices for the content you want were more reasonable? Like, if you could buy a season of House of Cards for $7. And buy an old movie for $0.25?

Like, if you could buy a season of House of Cards for $7

I'd like to buy a new porsche for $10k but that's not happening either.

Most of Netflix's shows cost over $4M an episode[1]. Taking that as a base you've got a cost of $48M a season (these are production costs not total cost, at $7 a season you need 7M subscribers just to break even ). Considering most shows have less then 4M viewers a night your pricing model pretty much is just throwing money away.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/netflixs-cost-for-house-of-ca...

If it were to be used, how would advertising factor into this? Not saying $7/season is viable but could a low price be buffered out by advertiser sponsorship?

It's at least a step up from how studios like HBO operate. If you want to watch HBO's content, there's no legal way to do so without being part of an expensive cable package. If you wanted to watch House of Cards and you weren't already a Netflix member, you could just pay the $8 (or get a free first-month trial) to essentially rent the entire Netflix catalog for an entire month. That's what you might have paid not too long ago to borrow a single scratched-up DVD from Blockbuster for a few days.

HBO's content is available on a number of outlets as individual seasons and/or episodes.

There is a hefty artificial delay during which you cannot get access to newer content that way. I don't see last weekend's episode of Game of Thrones available anywhere other than HBO Go and torrent sites, currently.

Check out Vhx.tv too. A really great new service. I think this is the first I have seen a place go in the right direction. Or at least in the direction I would like to see streaming/downloading video services to go.

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