not if you raise the black flag
I did that many years ago and the fact that all content is in one place instead of multiple apps is so nice.
I miss the early days of Netflix when that held true too. If I remember right piracy was down too. But everyone wanted a piece of the stupid pie and we’re back to where we started all over again
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This comment should be at the top. We have a similar industry that has at least figured out a model giving enough value that listeners are willing to pay. Why not video? We also had a brief golden age of streaming video where Netflix showed how it could be. Why not now?
We can’t blame the companies completely, Netflix was having to much power and profits. Spotify for instance is still at a lose, and so are a lot of music streaming services. Netflix was very comfortable and starting to make their own content, promoting that content and not sharing the data with the studio’s.
Secondly consumers are not the smartest bunch and signed up immediately when HBO and Disney+ came to the market, not understanding that it was at introduction price to lure people away from other streaming services.
So people had the chance to have a more centralised streaming platform for tv or film, but some like to brag that they watched it already some weeks before anybody else. Plus most countries had a lockdown, so people needed entertainment.
In private hands this cannot work anyways IMO. We need to force an interoperable standard if we want to stop companies from screwing everyone over just to make a line go up.
I think that’s what they mean. They sail the high seas and put all the booty in one place, like a Plex media server.
Yeah, I was agreeing and relating it to the good ol days when pirating for a one asp experience wasn’t needed unless you really wanted to.
Now we’re back to that’s the only way to easily get it all in one place is pirating. Apple TV seems to sort of have that ability but it’s not seamless because it takes you to whatever app the video is on, which still means you have to pay for all the streams.
I’m just back to buying Blu rays. To me it’s the safer option, you legally own your product and you can host everything you want yourself still. MakeMKV is a great tool.
I check em out from the library
Plex and Google TV also work similarly, universal search that then opens the streaming app
It’s like if streaming platforms were good.
Even when we had a few streaming services, we’d end up pirating some stuff that was available because we incorrectly assumed it wasn’t on one of them and it’s just too annoying to have to look up where something is every time.
So we’d tend to go the piracy route first if we were seeking something out and only use the streaming services if we knew off the top of our heads where something was.
My Plex Server is a bastion of hope. I’m not paying for another streaming service ever again.
I’ve been a Plex user for over a decade now. I’m not impressed with the direction they’re taking, but the alternatives aren’t quite there yet in terms of polish. I hope that by the time they fuck it all up there’ll be a better solution to switch to.
No problem. When Plex turns into complete shit or collapses jellyfin will be ready to take the reins.
If not for live sports. That’s the only reason I’ve had “cable” off and on for the last decade
Shh, you trying to get c/technology banned from lemmy.world?
Costs of streaming from my Plex server haven’t changed.
Laughs in jellyfin
I tried jellyfin, but it just doesn’t do all of what I need it to do.
Check out
Kodi doesn’t, either. I also don’t like the interface.
thx for the suggestion, though :)
What’s your idle ram usage? After a few weeks uptime it’s sitting at 4GB. Plex is barely at 100mb. Fucking drives me up the wall.
Something’s up there, I run Jellyfin with a bunch of other docker services and it’s barely at 2 GB of ram.
Fuck yeahhhh bro
25 terabytes of mostly 2160p content and growing.
Ha, I’m pretty much exactly at 25TB as well. Though everything is 1080p max.
Still great!
I used to have 4k stuff, but my server is used by few family members and friends, and streaming 4k was just taking up to much resources. Upgrading to a more powerful NAS is planed when money is availible.
Also 4k uses conisderable more disk space and while I have 4k screen, I find 1080p with a good bitrate more than sufficiant for me. That saves a ton of storage.
Still better than dealing with ads. That’s my red line.
I absolutely refuse to watch programming with ads, free or paid. I won’t do it. My time is limited and I’m not every going to willingly hand over a portion of my life to advertisements.
I’m never going back. If ad-free options go away or become too expensive, I’ll simply stop watching shit. There isn’t a price at which ad-supported programming becomes attractive.
I’d love to see the Weird Al movie. I won’t, however, because Roku won’t let me pay to watch it.
So watch it pirated. They get $0 either way.
I fucking love Al.
I love how he DAREs TO BE STUPID about it. I guess it could get EVEN WORSE if he went OFF THE DEEP END.
Ha! Weird Al is bad ass.
This is one of the greatest replies I’ve ever seen. Rats off to ya Al!
what a legend
There isn’t a price at which ad-supported programming becomes attractive.
Even free isn’t good enough for ads. Ads are horrendous. They don’t even try to make them good anymore. It’s just “but our shit, dummies!”. Remember the milk commercials? That was probably the height of advertising. It’s all been shit since then.
Corpos kicked the artists out
What were the milk commercials?
Preeeeeeach!
yarr harr fiddle-dee-dee
being a pirate is alright with me
Do what you whant cuz a pirate is free
🏴☠️🦜
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That and insane production budgets. A lot of stream services are dumping hundreds of millions into shows that… Really didn’t need that?
I think that is the true reason. For example D+ has around 160 mil subs but they are still losing money. What are they going to do next, beat Netflix in sub count? No, they already reached their limit already and started to lose subs. They should cut costs instead of chasing revenue.
What are they going to do next, beat Netflix in sub count?
Disney Exec: “So you’re saying we should increase our prices and crack down on password sharing, right?”
This is a lousy article rehashing an article behind a paywall.
The cost they have is $87 a month. There is so much that’s confusing about this. They don’t specify how many streaming services they are counting in that, but it’s a good guess that is about 5, each at about $17 a month. I feel I have too many streaming services and share accounts with family, and I can stream from about 7, pay for one and watch 1.5. If I couldn’t share accounts, I wouldn’t have the accounts. I pretty much watch star trek and whatever show someone tells me to watch.
They also don’t specify what $87 a month gets you in cable. Around me that’s about basic cable prices, which is significantly less content presented in a less convenient format and is almost entirely reruns filled to brim with commercials.
Not only is the article missing key information it also misrepresents the information it has.
Note: I’m sure people will tell me to pirate everything, but there are reasons to not pirate. And it doesn’t address that this is a poorly written article giving incomplete and incorrect information.
Personally, the lack of ads is a big one for me. I will not watch ad filled content. Any time I’m on vacation and turn on a hotel TV and have to deal with ads it is so frustrating. Especially now that content is made for streaming, so there aren’t logical ad breaks in the story. Just random hard cuts in the middle of content.
Yeah I’m curious how they get that number. I look at it as my math is Internet ($50)+Hulu Bundle ($21)+Prime($12) is $83/mo
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I was doing it to try to make their claim seem sane. Are people really on 4-5 streaming services?
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I have access to Financial Times, and this is what they showed in their article
people that pirate give advertising its power.
pay your content creators and don’t tolerate ads.
Unfortunately the latter instance was recently defederated by lemmy.world
Yea … lemmy.world is probably not the “everything” instance some people were hoping … but more the “vanilla” instance (which also has a place IMO).
Vanilla instance for vanilla people.
Edit: LMAO I’m on .world too folks (⁀ᗢ⁀)
Completely unrelated to the topic but isn’t it strange how vanilla has somehow become a negative? Vanilla ice cream being the default is because pretty much everyone enjoys vanilla. It’s a fantastic (albeit now very common) flavour.
Real vanilla is also very expensive, so having an exotic and expensive flavour as the default is pretty weird.
Community*
Instance is still federated.
Not the entire instance, they only blocked the piracy community.
It is a shame that once you’ve signed up for a community you’re not allowed to make a user account on any other instance.
Yeah. And it’s a shame when they “ban” something, there aren’t like hundreds of different instances that can still easily access that content.
Some smart people should really come up with a decentralized federated system so these “bans” become total non-issues.
Ah well, one can dream.
Huh - a data network that routes traffic around missing or blocked nodes. That sounds like an advanced project from some kind of Defense agency. Someone should patent it - an Interconnected Network; I’ll bet it would be super popular. I wonder what they’d call it.
Yet another reason to spread out and not centralize on lemmy.world.
I haven’t used lemmy.world in a few weeks as it’s always down when I want to use it. Went back to my standby.
Heard about it. That’s a shame. There’s really nothing illegal there. Admins of my instance make a community voting before defederating.
I think I read somewhere that’s it’s possible to migrate your account to another instance. The idea of Lemmy is that we’re not at the mercy of someone’s whims.
It is not possible currently to migrate an account. There are tools that let you migrate eg. Your list of subscribed communities, but your posts and comments can’t go with you.
The instance wasn’t defedared, but the piracy community was blocked.
good thing I’m not on world 😂
Wait where was this announced?
It wasn’t initially announced. Later they made a statement via discord 🙄
It’s only piracy communities they banned though. Not entire instances.
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Bruh I’m not even on Lemmy.world you could see that by clicking on my profile
the Liftoff app shows it for everyone 😏 It should be a default feature imo
However, media execs acknowledged that the prices being charged by streaming services were unsustainable, and that a “crash” would follow – where companies would be forced to increase prices or go out of business.
Absolutely nobody believes you.
I pay for Hulu, Max, Disney+, Prime, and get Netflix for free. Half the time, I still can’t find the show or movie I want to watch. But 99.99% of the time I can find a torrent for it within 20 seconds of searching. Not only is pirating cheaper, but it’s more convenient and more user friendly these days.
I find it funny as hell that when I search for “where can I stream X?” Most of the time, I can only watch the thing on a pirate streaming site, unless I want to pay $15.99 for a single viewing on Amazon. lol fuck that.
My move is to go to the library and borrow stuff on DVD. I dunno where you are but up here in Canada you would be surprised what you can find legally for free if you got a library card.
I think more convenient and user friendly is a bit of a stretch.
My wife gets confused by the remote and different profiles. My parents needed me to explain how to use Netflix more than once. Saying going to your PC and finding a torrent is convenient and user friendly isn’t true. But the point that having to search where to stream a particular movie or show isn’t user friendly is also true.
I wouldn’t say that pirating is user-friendly, only that it can be more user-friendly than logging into and searching through multiple streaming services. That of course pre-supposes that you have some knowledge of how to torrent and where to find torrent files.
Some times I think maybe humanity has reached too far with technology. You’re absolutely right, lots of people get easily confused over even very simple things. It’s depressing to think about.
We’re all specializing in different things, and sometimes we get stretched thin. It’s understandable that most people have a hard time with more technical aspects of the digital world (and even the simpler aspects of it, due to constant innovations and paradigm shifts), but in this scenario in specific, it can pay off to be the more knowledgeable technical user, since you could set up Plex with *arr services to automate everything, and then just serve Plex on a golden platter to friends and family. It’s what I’m doing, recently set up Overseerr and friends are already using it to request content, and a couple of other friends are helping with moderating request and fixing minor issues on Radarr and Sonarr. I’m even getting donations from them in order to expand storage and improve infrastructure. It’s great, and I strive to ease the subscription cost burden of those around me.
Torrents are the hardest way to access things that are streaming on various sites. Or so I’ve heard. If you don’t need to watch everything in 8k it’s actually really easy. Just need an ad blocker and a quick search online
The wife and I are trying to watch all the conjuring/anabelle/nun movies. The movies are scattered across several services and makes it a pain to watch. Kodi is one search away from what I’m looking for.
Download a file, run on any player, on any device. It’s always been more convenient, online services had to catch up to filesharing, not the other way around, and in many ways owe their existence to non-commercial entities showing how it could be done. They might figure out a good way of doing it, until the executives get involved and want to put their stamp on it.
If anybody is interested: an old workstation/server costs about 100€, a 2TB external Hdd 50€, that’s about all you need to self-host your Netflix.
to proceed flash a Linux distro of your choice (I recommend Debian 12 stable) follow a tutorial on YT on how to install it, it’s very simple.
Download and configure jellyfin. Open the 8096/8099 port on your router.
If you live in a country where downloading “Linux ISOs” is frowned upon, be sure to use a VPN while downloading the latest Linux Mint release for your jellyfin server.
Load those fancy new kali Linux live CDs on your jellyfin servers, download clients for all your devices and enjoy!
Guides for everything I said can be found online, expecially on YouTube.
Just to add: jellyfin is free and open source: you know it does not spy on you and it does not build a profile on you to then sell your data to ad companies, a huge plus if you ask me.
I personally use Kodi with Seren and a Real Debrid sub(£15 for 6 months is great) .It’s basically Netflix but has pretty much everything.
Really want to get into real debrid, can you ELI5 it to me?
Real-Debrid is one of Debrid services. To summary what Debrid services does is that it downloads the file for you.
You know Mega ? You know hexashare? All the file host service that limit your download with very low speed and only allow you to download only 1 file every hours or so without paying 10 USD for a premium account? Real-debrid bypasses most of them.
First real-debrid will use their own premium account to download the file for you (completely legal) to their server with their ultra-high speed. It’s only take a second for them to download 100GB. And they will share the file to you so you can download it to your computer so there is no previous mentioned restriction. Think of Real-Debrid like a middleman, multi-purpose middleman because Real-Debrid supports multiple host such as Mediafire, FileFactory, RapidGator, so on. So instead of paying every website 10 USD for a premium account, you can just pay 5 USD for Read-Debrid account and use it to download files on almost every popular file host website.
Moreover, Real-Debrid also supports download Torrent (without seeding back). With their high-speed download, you can watch movie via torrent seamlessly. That’s why most buy Real-Debrid just to watch movie using both Real-Debrid and Stremio.
I like OpenMediaVault (based on Debian) with a few docker images… really helps :)
Just curious, is jellyfin only linux?
Nope, you can host it on windows if you want (although I recommend the stability of a Linux system) as for supported clients, windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, iOS, Android auto, Android TV, Apple TV, and much more.
Can you explain how it’s the same and how it’s different then Plex? I’ve never really looked into jellyfin but I’ve heard good things.
I don’t really have experience with plex (I only used jellyfin) but AFAIK plex has ads, collects data and has paid plans, although their UI should be nicer, something you could circumvent with custom CSS (freely aviable on jellyfin’s site) there are many plex vs jellyfin comparisons online, but as far as I understood jellyfin is just FOSS self hosted plex with a slightly worse UI and maybe less device compatibility (still a lot of it, considering it’s a FOSS small project not backed by companies)
the sea is still here my friend.
That article is full of it. I was paying $120-150/month for cable on top of Internet. YoutubeTV is still only $75. I don’t even bother with YoutubeTV anymore. That was way too much money per month and despite 100+ channels, there was almost nothing worth while to watch. I’m not paying $75/month for Saturday Night Live a few times per year and MSNBC on in the background while I work.
I have Netflix and Disney+. When the kids are gone I will also get rid of those. Netflix is a joke now. It takes me so much time scrolling to find a show that I even want to watch, that I usually fall asleep before that can happen. Disney+ filled their service with horrid crap from Star Wars, Marvel, and other formerly beloved intellectual property that they have sullied and ruined.
Bottom line. The Streaming services are just as bad or worse than cable was and is. The quality of the shows is mostly so low that there is nothing worth paying $75, $20, $15, or even $5 per month for. I will happily pay zero because that is what streaming and cable shows are worth, for the most part, right now.
If anyone would please just make some quality shows I would happily pay a reasonable price for it. There has been maybe one show this entire year that thought was good and that was Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Guess what? It isn’t worth paying Paramount+ for a whole year just for one show. Sorry, but they all need to get their act together. Peak TV is long gone. It is Peak Crap TV now.
Severance on Apple was outstanding!
The Expanse on Amazon is good.
DS9 on Paramount.
Seinfeld on Netflix.
The thing is that I’m not interested in paying for a different service for every single show. Star Trek used to be on Netflix until Paramount got greedy and decided to spin up their own shitty service. You used to be able to get almost everything with 1-2 subscriptions. We used to pirate until Netflix and Amazon made good enough products that people decided they were worth the money.
These media companies fought tooth and nail against streaming, but Netflix made it possible. Netflix proved the business model. Now everyone wants to pull their content and put up their own shitty service with barely functional controls. They fought against progress until progress proved profitable, and now they want the whole pie. Fuck them. We’re going back to piracy.
I dislike Apple so I probably won’t ever watch Severance there.
I watched the Expanse.
I watched DS9 and Seinfeld when they originally aired.
Totally agree with the whole service per 1 good show thing. It is exhausting to figure out what service to get to watch a specific show. I play Star Citizen for entertainment mostly now and I probably watch Youtube 10x more than any other streaming site. I like certain podcasts, news, camping/bushcraft, tech reviews, movie reviews, and Dungeons & Dragons play streams.
I’m not sure I agree that Netflix showed that it was a viable business model. HBO was the real success with a subscription model. Its just that they weren’t streaming and just on cable. I wish Netflix were HBO from 10 years ago. Heck. I wish HBO was HBO from 10 years ago now. The purchase by Discovery has screwed them up even worse than they were before. Netflix is heavily in debt and has no useful content to show for it. They only care about new subscribers and don’t care about the existing ones. They seem to cancel every show that might have potential after a 8-10 episode season. It was already really difficult to even find a good show on Netflix, and then when you do, it is all but certain they will cancel it if it was good.
There is a reckoning coming. People don’t have the extra income to pay for useless crap.
I play Star Citizen for entertainment mostly now
The irony of you complaining about streaming prices lmao
We know where his budget went tho
Also…
You guys know you can stop subscribing when you’re done with your shows, right?
We’re going back to piracy.
I’m already there.
As someone who basically hasn’t since limewire… Where do I begin?
Pay for a seedbox and install Plex on it (something like whatbox.ca). You’ll have your own streaming service that you can add anything you want to, and it only costs as much as the seedbox. It will give you insularity so you don’t get ISP notices, you can access it from anywhere, it’s great.
From there it’s just finding where you want to get your torrents from and getting used to adding them to the torrent client on your seedbox.
Fascinating! Never heard of this. Thank you.
Plex is truly great! I forgot to mention it streams music in addition to movies and tv. The Plex web app is not particularly fantastic for streaming music, but they have a separate app called Plexamp that is really great. So all in all you can use this setup to eliminate all your streaming subscriptions.
Start by reading about the torrent network. That’s the easiest and most popular method now. If you want to get more technical then you can look into newsgroups, but it’s a lot to ingest. For torrents 1337… Idk if I can link here, but there’s the leetspeak numbers for leet, then an x, then a dot then a tw. Feel free to ask if you need more information.
Thanks for sharing! Do you recommend a VPN?
If you think your ISP will hasle you, then yes, but it’s not mandatory. Do use a peer blocker to block common anti-torrent groups (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, etc) so they can’t log you seeding. Most torrent clients have Blocklist features built right into them now. You used to have to configure firmware level blockers like Protowall, but it’s super simple now. Some of the clients even have lists for you to choose from to populate the Blocklist. I recommend the Transmission client since it’s simple, while still being full-featured.
Now everyone wants to pull their content and put up their own shitty service with barely functional controls. They fought against progress until progress proved profitable, and now they want the whole pie.
I’m pretty sure they were happy with the cable arrangement - you wanted one channel but you had to pay for everyone because it was bundled together. Now they all have to compete to get paid. They’re forced into the streaming business because streaming is killing cable and they don’t want to let the streaming service hold the money. If they price reasonably it would still be acceptable.
I have 5 different streaming packages and pay less than I did for cable/satellite while having a vastly superior experience.
It’s not even remotely comparable.
For me it’s High Seas and Tubi, Amazon Prime, but that has uses outside of watching stuff, so it’s really more a side benefit
Yeah I guess I have Amazon Prime as well. I watched a few shows that were OK on Prime. I enjoyed The Legend of Vox Machina a ton. The Boys, The Expanse, and Reacher were also good. So what is that like two series per year? It is still pretty low for an entertainment value. Lucky for them it has other uses. The Wheel of Time and The Rings of Power were ambitious, but disappointing.
The good thing is that you don’t have to sign up for all the services; sign up for a few. Once you see all the content that you want, cancel and sign up for something else.
Yep. Disney+ (for now).
Netflix, HBO, and Hulu gradually cancelled over the last few years.
What’s stupid of them is that if they’d stayed around $8-10/mo each (ad-free), I probably would have stayed subscribed forever. Now they each get nothing.
Biggest blocker I get for doing this is the family plan… There’s at least one out two in the household who are watching Netflix to mean we keep it, and I don’t want to downgrade as they take away the HD streams… That’s my biggest peeve, HD/4K should be standard, not a premium (yes I know, it’s more data but we’re not in the 90’s anymore.
It has pushed a lot of people back to piracy, what did these money grabbing schmucks think would happen
I’m not in the US, and even though most (but not all) services adjust for local pricing, finding and keeping track of where something is (often isn’t, or not anymore) available to stream is more of a hassle (PITA really) than going to my favorite magnet site.
Just like streaming music where 95% of the content I want is available on all providers, I’d pay for an all-in tv-streaming service. I do buy digital/physical copies of music through Bandcamp. It’s all about convenience.
Roku helps with that as it has a global search. Maybe other streaming hardware does too. Not sure.
I am happy and a bit surprised that music streaming ended up so good.
PlayStation of all places has this. I will often turn it on just to see if something is available on one of the services I share with family. Then I turn to sketchy streaming sites or the public library.
Roku isn’t available in my “area”, so it (still) says. It’s a bummer because I wouldn’t have any issues with paying to binge something at high quality.
Edit: I have used justwatch.com in the past, but it isn’t always correct or up-to-date either.
Try reelgood.com
Unfortunately, I’m neither in the US nor the UK.
I think the price hikes are basically relying on or incorporating this practice into their pricing models.
I do wonder though if we’ll see changes made to the cancellation policies. I’ve certainly been expecting a change there for years.
I do wonder though if we’ll see changes made to the cancellation policies. I’ve certainly been expecting a change there for years.
What kind of changes to the cancellation policies are you imagining?
That you can’t cancel each month? Like a six or twelve month minimum?
Well, rather the subscriptions. IE, no monthly subscriptions but 6-monthly or 12-monthly. Or cancellation fees.
No idea if my expectation is valid, but it intuitively seems to me like an obvious way to grab some cash.
I wish there was a way to support the production, actors, writers, vfx artists, animators, etc. of good shows adequately while getting the piracy experience. This system really just fucking sucks. Even if you pay exorbitant amounts to streaming services, the people that made the art get jack shit.
Piracy + donations or something idk
That would be cool, but there is no good way to donate directly to the people contributing to the media you consume.
Artists are going to have to set up Patreons.
Hmm, let’s see… You could subscribe for all the services and still pirate the content…
subscribing to the services does the opposite of support the workers. that’s why there’s a massive strike right now.
The fuck are you on about?
Merely suggesting the easiest way of paying creaters, while getting the benefits for pirating. What other interpretation can there be?
Like I said, subscriptions barely matter for the artists on those projects. Actors and animators generally get no royalties from streaming.
So if the actors and artists get a fair contract, you will happily pay for subscriptions?
Happily, not really. I pay for YouTube Premium, but I don’t like the monopoly they have and disagree with a lot of their decisions. I’d rather have a different economic system.
But yeah, I’d be willing to pay for the subscription in that case, even if I end up pirating most everything to get a better service.
Oh, you mean to tell me that paying for a gazillion streaming services individually is somehow more expensive than bundling them all together with cable? Who could have seen that coming?
I don’t know if you were old enough to pay for cable when that was normal. But I have never felt so ripped off as I did when I was paying $100/month for 50 channels when 10 of them were news channels, 10 of them were church channels, 15 of them were shopping channels, 10 of them were in Spanish, and the other 5 I might watch sometimes but 95% of what was on was junk and they ALL played more commercials than actual content.
I went from that to piracy. Then the streaming services came and they became more convenient. I am more than ready to raise the black flag again and dig my peg leg out of the closet.
Cable wasn’t exactly popular where I was growing up. I mostly watched movies in theaters or through DVD’s.
I remember a time when all the Disney content used to be on Netflix. That was the first time I actually invested in a streaming service. But, then they decided to make Disney+ and I went, “Well it’s time. Argh Matey!”
Where are you that cable wasn’t popular?
This is assuming that you actually pay for all the services simultaneously. I still think streaming is a way better service since it’s easier to pick and choose what you want.
Plus there are no long term contracts and no equipment rentals to worry about. And canceling can be done by clicking some buttons on my phone in seconds whereas with cable you have to block off time on your calendar to sit on the phone for an hour to cancel.
It’s annoying to see these comparisons with cable cause it’s like people forgot how bad of a consumer experience it actually is.
A better comparison is with studio-owned movie theaters, which eventually led to the United States’ Paramount Antitrust Consent Decree (which was the law of the land for movies until the DOJ killed this ruling in 2020.)
I don’t feel that studios should get to have their own streaming services much like how I don’t feel movie studios should be allowed to run their own theaters.
For all of its faults, cable had a ton of competition between studios on the same distribution system, often with multiple channels with the same focus by entirely different studios. With current streaming services, ther are more accounts to keep track of, completely different (and often lackluster) UX between each streaming service which can make navigating a pain, and instead of competing with new content it can be just as- if not more- viable to buy up as much pop culture video content as possible and centralize it behind one studio-owned streaming services’ paywall. (Looking at you, Disney.)
If streaming services weren’t allowed to have their own studios, we’d probably have a better streaming landscape than we currently do.
I’m glad to finally see someone else mentioning this aspect. Streaming services creating their own content is Vertical Integration and it’s a big reason for a lot of the problems with streaming. It’s essentially a conflict of interest where the platform wants to create as much content as fast as possible, which puts them at odds with the realities of creating quality content: it takes time, and is heavily dependent on the artists involved; there’s no simple formula to make something good consistently. Netflix originally had some good shows at first with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black but then both shows fell off and Netflix switched tracks to putting out a much as they could and cancelling anything that didn’t catch on (which is most things).
I think this also contributes to lowering payouts to the actors involved because of the lack of licensing agreements. I have seen a few news articles about how bad the pay is for residuals on streaming sites, and it’s not hard to imagine ways that a streaming platform could massage the numbers to make any specific show seem less profitable since all content is behind the same paywall. However, when a show is licensed, like the big popular shows such as Friends or Seinfeld, there is a public announcement for how much money is paid for the rights to stream that show, and this makes it much more straightforward to calculate how much money goes to everyone involved.
I agree, streaming was a lot better when the main players didn’t produce their own content. And it could get to be a bigger problem as the streaming players consolidate more which we’re already seeing with the HBO+Discovery merger for instance.
Not to mention how much media is consolidated under Disney currently.
This feels like a false history. Hulu had original content all the way back in 2008, with Dr horrible
No one is saying streaming is less convenient. Just more expensive to maintain the same level of choice. Some services did let you pick and stream things to watch too, so live choice isn’t unique to streaming.
I guess I still disagree with that premise. A single Netflix subscription offers more variety of content than a basic cable package for a lot less money.
And if you rotate services every 1-2 months you can get all the choice in content for a lot less money than a cable bundle that way as well.
It’s like saying there are too many restaurants because if you ate at all of them every month it would be more expensive than going to one really expensive restaurant that serves every type of food. Meanwhile it’s cheaper if you choose 1-2 of the cheaper restaurants to eat from every month and rotate. Probably a bad analogy but that’s kinda what I’m trying to say
