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Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

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Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#91

Post by SllX »

MisterTea wrote: post #3

These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. Just the other day I had the urge to watch g…

You have it backwards: a la carte is exactly what people want. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t pay for so many different subscriptions.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#92

Post by lgregg »

MisterTea wrote: post #3

These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. Just the other day I had the urge to watch g…

> We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub.

That is close to existing, it'd be nice if the top players agreed to open their APIs so you could integrate it into a unified TV external like Chromecast or Firestick. Or, to go further, a unified platform that can process subscriptions and PPV across each library.

> $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have.

Amen, we cut the cord officially on Friday. We went to $67 (including modem rental) per month plus about $25 dollars in streaming services and $40 for YT TV per month. That's still $35 dollars cheaper than what we were paying for Comcast TV and once we buy a compatible modem then we'll drop our internet to about $55 per month. We also have renters, so we loop them into YTTV for them to watch to their heart's desire for an extra $5 on their rent per month.

> Ghost in the Shell

Respect just got done rewatching an episode of the TV show.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#93

Post by rainbowmverse »

lovich wrote: post #81
rainbowmverse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have this bizarre wish to support the companies and people who produce things we enjoy even if they sometimes make it difficult.

I pay for things I could steal as well, because I like to support those companies. However what we have here is an entire industry working towards setting up their offerings as a worse product than free. Not just more expensive than free, but an objectively worse product, and they've acommplished this in part by eroding consumer rights. You might expect some people to take an extremely principled stance but it would…

The choice isn't between stealing and paying for it. Choosing something else is the principled stand.

There's plenty of good media out there to support without stealing. I'd rather grab an eBook from the library (they get paid) or buy a random indie album on Bandcamp than spend time on media published by people who don't respect their customers.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#94

Post by scarface74 »

shmerl wrote: post #58
scarface74 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole spiel about DRM is that you don’t truly own the content you buy and the inconvenience of not being able to use the content on the device of your choice. When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. As far as convenience, the major streaming services are all on the web for computers and they all have apps for everything imaginable. Netflix, Hulu, et. al…

> When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. I personally prefer to avoid DRMed services and buy DRM-free. It's reasonably good with music and games for example, but with films you barely can find anything that way. The reason for renting digital goods is usually presented as an option to get it for lower prices, even though there is no scarcity like with phys…

It’s not about “scarcity”. Content costs money to make. Should developers not get paid because once they create a piece of software it can be infinitely reproduced?

How much would you be willing to pay for all the content you can get on Netflix, Hulu, etc.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#95

Post by waffle_ss »

petra wrote: post #55
JetSpiegel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can buy the CDN service from a myriad of companies in the world. It only takes money to get servers and bandwidth in many places.

True. But depending on what's you guess on how much it costs for netflix to get a content hour watched by a user(maybe ~$0.1-0.2), streaming costs may become meaningful, and higher streaming costs becomes a strategic disadvantage.

Exactly. Excepting Cloudflare which is free, CDNs are expensive (or at least more expensive than I think people realize).

Netflix says it uses about 3GB of bandwidth per hour for streaming HD-quality video. CloudFront for one will charge you $0.26 for that 3GB-hour. It's pretty easy to see how binge watchers will rack up pretty high CDN/bandwidth bills.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#96

Post by DmenshunlAnlsis »

friedman23 wrote: post #90
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, now you spend for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Stars, CBS, and soon Disney. Plus Crunchyroll if you like anime, plus a sports package for sports. If this keeps going $100 will seem like a bargain, and piracy will surge. I also think it’s rude and out of line to tell someone that arguing with them is pointless. Do the mature thing and just stop responding, or the even more useful thing and actually try…

>Right, now you spend for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Stars, CBS, and soon Disney. Plus Crunchyroll if you like anime, plus a sports package for sports. And why are you subscribed to every single streaming platform? Do you actually need to watch every single show you might possibly like?

I’m not, but neither is that the point. Obviously no one needs any of this, it’s always a matter of want. The question is how much it costs to get it, today, yesterday, and tomorrow. People crowing about the downfall of cable packages while ignoring splintering subscriptions for the same content are missing that point, don’t you think?

The point is that it seems media companies, in their greed, have forgotten that streaming only works when it offers something better than piracy. A dozen subscriptions that cost more than a cable package did is offering less, with more impediments to use than a Kodi box. The model will, as a previous poster said, fail. The attempt turn everything from software to hardware into a subscription service, because it’s the easiest way to milk money isn’t some god-given right of corporations either.

Now you can yell about entitlement and whatever else, and I’m not wading into that mess, just explaining how it is based on past precedent.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#97

Post by lovich »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #93
lovich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for things I could steal as well, because I like to support those companies. However what we have here is an entire industry working towards setting up their offerings as a worse product than free. Not just more expensive than free, but an objectively worse product, and they've acommplished this in part by eroding consumer rights. You might expect some people to take an extremely principled stance but it would…

The choice isn't between stealing and paying for it. Choosing something else is the principled stand. There's plenty of good media out there to support without stealing. I'd rather grab an eBook from the library (they get paid) or buy a random indie album on Bandcamp than spend time on media published by people who don't respect their customers.

Art doesn't have competition in many cases. There is no alternative good to "Gone in the Wind", it is a unique product with a monoply on it due to copyright.

Many of these companies, and Disney especially,have done their best to prevent works from falling into the public domain when they make a lot of money off of deriviations of public domain works

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#98

Post by casefields »

goodmattg wrote: post #73
majani wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and yet they still make mind boggling losses with no end in sight. I think in the next 10 years Netflix will serve as a reality check that shows why content creators have had to resort to their ugly business practices.

"no end in sight" is false. It took ~5 seconds to Google this. https://www.barrons.com/articles/netflix-will-be-cash-flow-p...

That’s assuming all the customers will continue to subscribe including a bunch of price increases and nearly double the current amount of subscribers.

“We expect the steady subscriber growth, together with gradual price increases will outpace the increasing investment in content and the upfront working capital spending on self-produced and owned programming, resulting in steadily improving margins. We believe that those margins will need to grow from the 7% range of 2017, to the low to mid 20% range to generate positive cash flows. As a result, we forecast the company becoming cash-flow positive in approximately five years.”

Yeah that increases as in plural.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#99

Post by DmenshunlAnlsis »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #93
lovich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for things I could steal as well, because I like to support those companies. However what we have here is an entire industry working towards setting up their offerings as a worse product than free. Not just more expensive than free, but an objectively worse product, and they've acommplished this in part by eroding consumer rights. You might expect some people to take an extremely principled stance but it would…

The choice isn't between stealing and paying for it. Choosing something else is the principled stand. There's plenty of good media out there to support without stealing. I'd rather grab an eBook from the library (they get paid) or buy a random indie album on Bandcamp than spend time on media published by people who don't respect their customers.

Oh please. So individuals have to play by a rigged and ever-changing set of rules laid down by media conglomerate lobbyists and copyright lawyers, or they’re unprincipled? By that logic everyone would still be buying CD’s with malware from brick and mortar stores because Sony makes more money that way than with iTunes or Spotify. The media landscape today didn’t just happen, it’s the result of a tension between different forces, and you don’t want to see what it looks like if one group lets go. Pirates were the first digital distributors, most not out of selfish desire to get something for free, which was proven by the overwhelming support for legal digital distribution.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#100

Post by mmt »

scarface74 wrote: post #50
skinnymuch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lionsgate Starz isn’t a big company with a lot of products so paying extra to watch things for that channel will be a challenge no matter what. On the other hand, HBO seems to be doing well enough with their not so cheap stand alone offering. Disney with Fox’s media would be a pretty big streaming provider and many people would likely get onto it. Good chance of it becoming a standard streaming service. So I don’t se…

Even without Fox, Disney has the best chance of success even if it e dis up having a smaller library. Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. If you have kids, being able to pay $10-$15 a month for all Disney content is a great deal.

> Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. > being able to pay $10-$15 a month

That seems like a terrible deal, compared with just paying for that "same thing" once and watching it over and over for free.

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