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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

#161

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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…

The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income.

Ironically, when you ask for one big hub, you're asking for a traditional cable subscription: Comcast will give you most of the channels out there (often, throwing HBO in for free), and due to the APIs the major ISPs and channels are on board with, you can either watch them on Comcast's site or the individual channel websites. Oh, and Comcast boxes now integrate your Netflix subscription too.

Cable packages when bundled with Internet service are often pretty price-competitive for what they offer. I recently left Comcast, but picked up their competitors' cable package for the same reasons: It's a pretty inclusive streaming package for a good price.

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

#162

Post by felipemnoa »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #161
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…

The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Ironically, when you ask for one big hub, you're asking for a traditional cable subscription: Comcast will give you most of the channels out there (often, throwing HBO in for free), and due…

>>The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income.

Reminds me of at&t. They made boatloads of money at one time until they didn't. I'm sure they didn't like it when suddenly their main product, long distance calls, became dirt cheap. I still remember paying huge amounts of money in late 1990s to make calls from NYC to Buffalo. The whole thing was such a big racket.

I for one will not shed a single tear if these companies go out of business. Some other companies will take their place.

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

#163

Post by ocdtrekkie »

woolvalley wrote: post #9
rhino369 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.

There seems to be quite a few available for music. Using apple music, spotify, tidal or whatever else doesn't seem to have the exclusivity problems that TV equivalents have. I can probably count the number of exclusive artists to each music provider on my hand.

This is actually untrue: Jay-Z and Beyonce's new album is Tidal exclusive, and I just saw someone complaining about it on social media today. I'd expect this trend to increase, not decrease, over time.

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

#164

Post by ocdtrekkie »

felipemnoa wrote: post #162
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Ironically, when you ask for one big hub, you're asking for a traditional cable subscription: Comcast will give you most of the channels out there (often, throwing HBO in for free), and due…

>>The idea you'd be able to see everything you want for $9/month when the going rate was $100/month is and remains an utter fantasy. There is no way, shape, or form where the industry is going to suddenly operate on 90% less income. Reminds me of at&t. They made boatloads of money at one time until they didn't. I'm sure they didn't like it when suddenly their main product, long distance calls, became dirt cheap. I st…

Bear in mind, everyone's talking about how must-see a given TV show is, and how much they loathe "having to" shell out money to see it on X streaming service.

Prices go down when demand is low. Demand for TV is not low, ergo, prices are not going to go down.

Also, when it does, the first casualty isn't going to be the companies: It's going to be the shows you love. People on HN were thrilled when Amazon saved The Expanse. But if The Expanse doesn't drive X number of new Prime subscribers, it won't be around much longer than that.

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

#165

Post by CuriousCosmic »

macspoofing wrote: post #147
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Age of piracy is going to end as well. I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other. >You are dreaming if you think media and production companies are going to leave $90/mo on the table. You will see prices rise. Then so do my sails >Talk about entitled! Not really, I'm willing to pay you something for…

>I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other. Ok. Piracy will be made harder and harder, to the point where it will be inaccessible to mainstream. This also means that the tech savvy pirates will be more exposed. >If studios weren't greedy and produced objectively garbage content I would buy a product…

I'd like to hear how you think piracy will be made more difficult. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I am just curious as I have only seen the piracy community grow in recent years.

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

#166

Post by geodel »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The down voting you’re getting is emblematic of the entitlement mentality among tech folks when it comes to content. There is no right to consume entertainment someone else produced for free. If you don’t like the terms on which they’re selling the fruits of their labor, don’t buy it.

What do you think about a situation in which a consumer would be happy to pay full price to watch content, but they are prevented entirely by a service provider? For example, suppose where you live there is a monopoly ISP-cable conglomerate, you cannot afford to move away, and you are literally unable to consume from any other ISP / cable level provider. For some content, like watching European soccer in the US, this…

> Telling the consumer to just not watch seems morally hollow in that specific case

Seems like big word for something which is not food, water, life saving drug or some such. Now people are free to consider entertainment as basic human right. But similarly other powerful people/institution feel free to take away more fundamental things from helpless people.

From where I am, government is more than happy to offer free entertainment produced by private parties while feel no obligation to clean up almost sewer quality water running through taps of millions of homes.

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

#167

Post by friedman23 »

ryandrake wrote: post #112
friedman23 wrote: post #90

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. And why are you subscribed to every single streaming platform? Do you actually need to watch every single show you might possibly like?

I think he is simply addressing the argument that today’s environment (multiple streaming services each with exclusive content) is any different than yesterday when it was multiple cable bundles each with exclusive channels.

Of course it is different, today you can pick and choose what you want whereas before you needed to buy the entire thing

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

rhizome wrote: post #143
sosborn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Off to a torrent site or asking around to see if someone has rips or a box set. The other option is to just not watch it.

The other option is to just not watch it. Why wouldn't I take advantage of every possible opportunity and technology to participate in our shared culture?

[deleted]

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

#169

Post by Tiktaalik »

I wonder if this market segment will evolve to be similar to the games industry, where market leadership shifts along with customers interests.

In the games industry a few big exclusives can shift fortunes significantly. The Playstation 4's significant success has come at the expense of the Xbox, and a driving factor of this success has been a superior exclusive content library.

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

#170

Post by Sargos »

JimmyAustin wrote: post #127
lgregg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

The on-demand nexus already works on Apple TV. Say "I want to watch Billions" into the remote and it shows you all the services you can watch it on, then tap through to actually watching it. Now if only it existed on other platforms.

Like most features this has existed on other platforms like Android TV way before Apple TV.

The parent comment was actually talking about paying for one service that has everything I think not just a shortcut to each disparate service.

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