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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#211

Post by xtracto »

andy_ppp wrote: post #188
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of dollars per year on content that I can own going forward. The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...

Right on. In the times of DVDs, you could get a DVD film for $5 dollars and here in Mexico even cheaper $50 pesos ($2.5 USD). I think the fact that a rental movie (even when you "buy" the digital version it is a rental as it has ben shown over an over) costs around $12 USD today that delivery process has been streamlined so much. That's pure greed.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#212

Post by eplanit »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

You're right. And yes, we could use those laws, but we're also now at a time in history where the combined power and influence of "big tech" is greater (by far, I fear) than the will and character of Legislators (i.e. low-character politicians) to enact any such law to constrain/regulate them, at all.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#213

Post by handrous »

mountainb wrote: post #91
libertine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase. And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate. It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.

Have they been releasing material worth pirating in the last 10-15 years? The movies coming out aren't even worth the bandwidth.

If by "they" you mean big-studio Hollywood, then there've been about 1500 of those movies in the last 15 years. There are another 600-700 or so non-major-studio films that see a wide release per year, which I think includes foreign films with US distribution, but also US productions outside the major studios.

Yes, at least a few of those 1500 major Hollywood studio movies are quite good.

Looking at the last few years of MGM's output, Creed and The Cabin in the Woods were both good. I didn't like Skyfall but mine seems to be a minority opinion, and AFAIK it's considered one of the best Bond movies by many people (for whatever that's worth). Stretching back closer to the 15-year mark... The Mist is pretty good. Casino Royale sneaks in right at the 15 year mark, and it's really well-regarded.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#214

Post by deegles »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #161
amelius wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it would be practically impossible to remove the item from the video, though. Or will Amazon shoot the scene multiple times, with different items?

I assume that can be handled trivially with today’s video editing capabilities.

Already happening: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56758376

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#215

Post by lostgame »

w0m wrote: post #121
joombaga wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're at or approaching a tipping point. For a long while I've not been able to justify the effort it takes to maintain automatic content downloads and a streaming server. But that maintenance cost isn't higher when I want content from an additional platform. If I'm gonna pirate an Amazon/MGM exclusive then I'm gonna cancel Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ too.

Piracy was the Easiest/Only way to get content until ~2008ish. Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming platform) made it easier/better to Pay for the content than pirate it. It does feel like we're approaching a tipping point now in the other direction with all of these streaming fiefdoms. My household has Netflix, Hulu, D+, and Prime streaming now - that's already too many and needs pairing IMO.

>> Piracy was the Easiest/Only way to get content until ~2008ish. Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming platform) made it easier/better to Pay for the content than pirate it.

Fragmentation still hurts this to an extreme, and - worse - God-awful region locks. As a fan of obscure, cult and independent cinema in particular it’s a wasteland of titles strewn across 5 different services, and being Canadian, piracy is just a fact of life for us.

Nothing beats the convenience of typing in what you’re looking for and actually finding it right away. That pretty much defines convenience. It’s what I expect.

I don’t want to Google what platform my current obscure interest is on, only to maybe find out because I didn’t bother with Paramount+ I’m going to have to torrent it anyway. :P

It’s literally just one extra search to find what streaming platform it’s on - which is an inconvenience* - when I can just do a quick Torrent search, and have a nice high quality copy of pretty much whatever usually within (on my connection) about 5 minutes.

By the time I make my popcorn, the torrent is done, I stream it through my Plex on my Roku, and Plex even gets the metadata for me. It’s kinda scary how good it is.

And talk about how inconvenient region locking is to the point where VPNs actually advertise* the ability to get around this inconvenience as a point of sale.

Piracy’s convenience and case for existence has only gotten seriously stronger as more and more competing streaming services open.

If there was a way to combine search results for services into one like overall UI that would then just direct you to the content even that would be better, but anecdotally most people I know are tired of the fragmentation issue.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#216

Post by humanlion87 »

frankbreetz wrote: post #8

If I had to pick a single politically uniting issue, breaking up Amazon and big tech would be it. Why has this not happened yet? Is the out of power party afraid the in power party will get credit? (This has been discussed when both parties were in power) If the government can't get something with this kind of support done, I fear the road we are headed down .

I think as a consumer, if we are talking about breaking businesses, first in line should be the the cable and telecom oligopolies. Big tech can come next. These companies control more critical infrastructure compared to big tech companies.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#217

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #175
eldaisfish wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

piracy and the subsequent success of platforms like steam and spotify prove time and again that it boils down to a delivery issue, not a human desire for illegal sourcing. Same issue with sports streaming. Why pay six different services to watch a 720p legal stream when i can watch a stream from Russia in 1080p with questionable ads?

Yep. I keep Prime for the shipping but I took a break from Netflix and just pirated Army of the Dead. If they want to be consumer hostile, we should be hostile as well.

I've paid for content and watched it on pirate sites anyway because they're better organized - and they don't bury some titles to promote others.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#219

Post by vanderZwan »

brightball wrote: post #124
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).

Our whole family has been doing that this year. Watching older movies and TV shows is much more pleasant all around. This was tougher growing up when kids all watched the same shows and talked about them, but with content so all over the place now that common thread seems to be mostly gone at school (outside of internet video stuff).

> Watching older movies and TV shows is much more pleasant all around.

My girlfriend somehow grew up completely unaware of Star Trek, so I introduced her to The Next Generation last year and we've been watching it (rewatching in my case, but for the first time in over two decades) one episode a day.

It's so relaxing, in a way that almost no modern TV is. No end-of-episode cliffhangers or other mechanisms trying to make you binge-watch. We can just watch one episode to unwind, discuss it a bit if it's one of the better thought-provoking ones, and then go to bed.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#220

Post by LaundroMat »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

Asking for a friend of course, but what would be the best setup for a Netflix/Prime/...-like experience for own media for a family of not-too-digitally-savvy users?

That friend uses Kodi (and a NAS) now, but it's still a bit arduous to use for his family. She wants profiles, availability on any device over wifi and 4G and movies and series only.

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