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Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

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Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#121

Post by ghaff »

sverige wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #16

There's possibly some opportunity that, if you really don't want any real-time sports, you could possibly save some money by stripping that from subscription offerings. But fantasies that removing the Home and Garden Channel from bundles reduces the monthly bill are just fantasies. In some respects, fragmentation is a mental overhead. But that's going to be the reality and the end result isn't going to be any cheaper…

ESPN accounts for a huge percentage of most monthly cable bill cost. I never watch live sports, nor do a pretty good percentage of cable subscribers. Just cutting ESPN could reduce cable bills by a third to a half in a lot of markets. This is why ESPN is suffering financially as cord cutting increases.

The cost for ESPN is something like $8-$9 per month so a lot but not the overwhelming cost of a cable TV bill. I also think you overestimate the number of people willing to totally give up being able to watch sports. I know I watch very little but I hesitate to totally cut the cord.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#122

Post by dingo_bat »

tertius wrote: post #120
dorfsmay wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it easier than piracy, done! Today you cannot pay for a recent movie unless you go to a cinema (which I personally find an anachronism). To pay for older content, you need to find who is streaming it, pay a subscription with them, then find in what country they streaming it, pay for some fancy VPN service, setup the fancy VPN, restart your device and now watch it. Or, you can pirate it and watch it!

Piracy will always be easiest. Much like most unethical things.

I think services like Spotify or Google play music are already much easier than pirating songs. Why do you think a similar state cannot be achieved for TV shows or movies?

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#123

Post by dingo_bat »

calafrax wrote: post #40
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Stupid article. There is the atavistic fantasy of "you can watch everything you want at one low price", except the price is not a low price, it is a high price. The big anti-competitive problem with cable is that cable and satellite providers do not offer a choice of packages. You get basically the same thing with all providers. Hollywood loves it because they get paid no matter how good or bad the stuff they make is…

don't forget that producing all this content costs 10's of billions per year so someone has to pay for it. both the cost of production and the amount produced keeps increasing so prices need to go up to.

I find the costs for producing films and TV shows a bit absurd. I'm sure they can optimise a lot, but they don't because they're used to paying 100 million dollars for a superhero movie. They can easily get 99% of the production value at far lower cost.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#124

Post by scarface74 »

Simon_says wrote: post #109
scarface74 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you find so strange about it? Even growing up in 70s and 80s, my parents had three televisions. It's not like TVs are luxury items. We had one in my room, one in their room and one in the family room. Now, they have five -- two additional TVs one in my dad's "man cave" and one in my moms office. TVs last forever or at least they did back in the CRT era. My Dad's TV is one I bought in 1996 when I first graduat…

Since you asked, it's not about cost. I've never owned a television, so I find the whole thing quite bizarre. Whenever I see how friends and family use their TVs in their houses and what plays on them, it redoubles my desire to never own one. I don't mean to be that guy, and it's not like I don't squander my time on trivia pursuits (I'm on HN, after all). But the quality is just so bad, and the ads so obnoxious. Mayb…

96% of households have TVs (http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/nielsen-esti...)

As far as ads. Neither Netflix, Starz, Hulu or CBS All Access (the on demand part) have ads -- for CBS and Hulu I pay for the no ads subscription. Because of a quirk in the way that channels work in Plex, I don't even see ads on the Plex channels.

As far as what a house needs, people would also say a family of three doesn't need a 5 bedroom house in the burbs, could exercise outside instead of turning one room into a gym, my son could use the one tv to play his PlayStation instead of having his own TV, doesn't need gigabit internet and every room wired with a gigabit connection, etc.

But honestly life isn't always about needs. If we decide that we don't want to compromise between three people in what we want to watch or where we want to watch it, what's the big deal?

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#125

Post by bunderbunder »

Retric wrote: post #35
bunderbunder wrote: post #17

It seems to me like more of this fragmentation will make streaming less like cable. I don't care much for Disney content. Now that Disney's leaving, that frees up Netflix resources to (hopefully) get more of the content that I want. Realistically I'm not fond of Netflix's offerings of late, so I don't have high hopes. It's like basic cable these days; very shallow coverage of a lot of different things, so my interest…

The problem is there is going to be a minimum monthly fee of around 10$ to keep the lights on. So, fragmentation just increases prices without any net benefit for the consumer. The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any form. If your watching ~10 hours a month then paying for more than one streaming service is just a waste. Don't forget it's the median viewer that's important not the ave…

As a consumer, I do feel I'm seeing a net benefit without any price increases - or at least a benefit commensurate with the price increase. I watch one alternative streaming service for a while, then, when another that interests me more comes along, I switch to that one and cancel the old one. So the amount of content available to me is "eventually better" at a price that's currently pretty stable.

You're right, though, part of this is that I don't watch much TV in any form. It's probably less than 2 hours a week. So it really doesn't make much sense for me to subscribe to more than one service at a time. Not that that means we've canceled the Netflix subscription, but it's becoming a perennial discussion topic around our house of late.

Let me turn it around, on you, though: What makes you think that having a really good library of streaming content available on a single service at Netflix's prices is even financially tenable? The last time Netflix had a really great selection was when their prime service was still renting DVDs, so I certainly don't think they've been able to demonstrate that it's possible. And if they can't, who can? As more of a long tail consumer, the One Streaming Service to Rule Them All future looks pretty bleak to me - cheap, sure, but also crappy. You get what you pay for.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#126

Post by bunderbunder »

froo wrote: post #92

To be honest, I think catchall solutions work best. I'm more likely to pay for content, if I can just pay 1 or 2 places. When I heard that Disney was leaving Netflix, I'm not inclined to sign up to Disney as well. To be honest, unless they give me a unique value proposition (like having their feature films available on site weeks after theatrical release) I'm unlikely to want to fork out extra bucks for the one studi…

Disney's deal with Netflix was estimated to have netted them $300M (per year, I'm guessing, but I'm not sure), and Netflix is estimated to have 100M users. Assume that Disney would only take home half their revenues from running their own streaming service. That puts their financial break-even point at 300M / (5*12) = 5 million people signing up.

5 million US families attracted to this as an easy way to keep their kids entertained? Doesn't seem a huge stretch to me.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#127

Post by Simon_says »

scarface74 wrote: post #124
Simon_says wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you asked, it's not about cost. I've never owned a television, so I find the whole thing quite bizarre. Whenever I see how friends and family use their TVs in their houses and what plays on them, it redoubles my desire to never own one. I don't mean to be that guy, and it's not like I don't squander my time on trivia pursuits (I'm on HN, after all). But the quality is just so bad, and the ads so obnoxious. Mayb…

96% of households have TVs ( http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/nielsen-esti... ) As far as ads. Neither Netflix, Starz, Hulu or CBS All Access (the on demand part) have ads -- for CBS and Hulu I pay for the no ads subscription. Because of a quirk in the way that channels work in Plex, I don't even see ads on the Plex channels. As far as what a house needs , people would also say a family of three doesn'…

No big deal. I'm glad your family is happy.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#128

Post by gbacon »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #91
gbacon wrote: post #30

It's capitalism. If you have a valid complaint, it can be rephrased as a business plan.

You're assuming an efficient market, when many deficits of market economics are already well-known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure The information economy has fixed some of those, but it would be more surprising if there weren't new types of deficits to take their place.

This alleged assumption that in fact I did not make would contradict the principle above. If the market were always and everywhere at every instant of time efficiently allocated, there would be no valid complaints.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#129

Post by dageshi »

CaptSpify wrote: post #76
rdtsc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it here on HN that some buy the show then just pirate it when they watch it. Just because pirated content has a uniform interface, and a better overall user experience.

I hear that too, and I mostly agree with doing it, but I kind of feel it's a problem: It tells amazon "Oh, sure, your system is fine, I don't mind paying for DRM!" when in reality we shouldn't encourage DRM. I wish I could go to the studio/artist/creator directly and say "Hey, I would like to pirate your content, here's some money", but outside of Patreon or the like, there's usually not an option to do that.

I've no doubt if amazon could just sell the raw file they would. It's rights holders who demand DRM and if amazon refuses itunes or someone else will happily step in and provide it.
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