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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#261

Post by tarr11 »

divs1210 wrote: post #225
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

THIS. Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10 movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents. YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable price.

Amazon allows this too.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#262

Post by alberth »

Does Amazon charge for Video today? I don't think they do. Maybe they plan too.

I know Bezos has stated in the past (can't find it though) that he believe Video will be the next growth engine, much like how AWS has been said engine over the last few years.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#263

Post by joombaga »

lostgame wrote: post #215
w0m wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

There is a way to combine search results. Use the search from the Roku/Google TV/Apple TV/FireTV OS. Unfortunately results are varied. I found search results missing from a lot of platforms when I used Roku. The Chromecast with Google TV has been better. I don't how the search is integrated, e.g. on the backend or in the OS via the app. I'd guess it depends on platform.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#264

Post by CharlesW »

margaretdouglas wrote: post #223
w0m wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cable providers were charging you $80/mo for commercial laden network aggregation. You cut that cord and complain when paying less for more content, without commercials, and is on demand, because it is unbundled and you need to manage each $5-15 "network" fee individually, instead of a single itemized bill. This is like complaining you have to pay for NBC to watch Friends when you'd much prefer to watch it on ABC so…

Absolutely. I see a lot of rationalization for piracy here, even though media consumption has never been cheaper or more convenient.

I can't speak for the Android ecosystem, but the iOS ecosystem's Apple TV app (Netflix notwithstanding) aggregates channels into one nice experience, and the App Store makes these channels trivial to subscribe to and cancel, making it easy to decide month-to-month what I want to pay for.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#265

Post by dorfsmay »

divs1210 wrote: post #225
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

THIS. Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10 movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents. YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable price.

Although very limited in its content, at least in Canada. My understanding is that it's because of old exclusivity contracts with cable providers.

And indeed, our process is: "Can we rent it? No, fine let's fine a pirated copy". Not going to get cable for one night to watch this one movie. Everybody's losing by hanging on those old outdated systems.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#267

Post by johnchristopher »

DrBazza wrote: post #230
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes. If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now…

> Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country.

My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies that are really mediocre. Now I see there's a lot of content on Netflix but I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#268

Post by ffggvv »

tguedes wrote: post #160
wut42 wrote: post #16

> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions. This part is a real nugget.

From https://stratechery.com/2021/distribution-and-demand/ : `I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”` Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just o…

yeah i highly doubt it’s true. but maybe over time if prime video gets compelling enough that people buy prime just for access to it, then it could be true. right now it’s just seen as a bonus if you already have prime for other reasons. maybe bezos just believes it anyway

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#269

Post by dangerbird2 »

andrew_ wrote: post #169
vimy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations?

Anything Marx Brothers is hilarious

Word of warning that Day at the Races has a "minstrel show" scene that's pretty offensive even by 30s standards. Other than that, the Marx Brothers are easily the greatest comedy troupe in American history, and their films are still some of the funniest ever made

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#270

Post by hardwaregeek »

paganel wrote: post #83
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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).

I love old movies, especially around the 50's-70's, but I'll admit that you're not gonna see a whole lot of diversity in that era. I'm not meaning to moralize. It's just hard to find movies that say, have an Asian character that isn't a horrible racist caricature.
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