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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#321

Post by paxys »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #166
tzs wrote: post #77

I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies Anywhere"? MGM is one of the few major studios that currently does not participate in that. OT: how the heck does MA actually work? Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it using the Fandango app on my TV. Does it st…

The studios are basically paying the burden of cost for MA. It's one of the big reasons Paramount and MGM haven't joined, it's expensive on the studio side. Bandwidth is a nearly zero cost for a lot of the companies streaming the video on MA anyways. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all don't care meaningfully about bandwidth cost anymore, especially for prerecorded content they can CDN all over the place. The bigge…

Why is it expensive for studios if streaming companies don’t care about bandwidth? What are they paying for then?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#323

Post by hellbannedguy »

johnchristopher wrote: post #267
DrBazza wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Netflix is terrible if you have good taste in movies.

I'm with you on the old black/white movies.

I actually think Amazon got a great deal buying MGM.

If TCM was available, Nefflix should look into buying it. They have a great library of old movies.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#324

Post by delecti »

airstrike wrote: post #309
delecti wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a full rewatch of SG1 a few years ago, and what surprised me is how instantly the show found its footing. If you watch the first and last season of any Trek show, you can see how the writing and characterization takes a while to settle into place. Character development is part of that, but it goes beyond that. If you watch the first and last season of SG1, the writing has its footing nailed down immediately. No…

That may have been helped by the fact that SG-1 got the green light for 4 full seasons right off the bat, so it gave showrunners the opportunity to write a cohesive and comprehensive story which really laid the foundation for the franchise after the original movie. I don't have a source handy, but I recall reading about that many years ago.

Wikipedia says they were picked up for 2 seasons, totaling 44 episodes. So while it's not 4 seasons, that's still a lot of stability for a show to start with. That would explain how they felt comfortable enough to plan ahead.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#325

Post by pie420 »

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…

But that's the thing. You don't have to pay for cable anymore. And if you want to watch a show, you can subscribe for a month, get your fill, and then unsubscribe. You couldn't do that before.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#326

Post by kyriakos »

joshstrange wrote: post #231
LaundroMat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I couldn't speak directly to this of course but some kind of Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/NzbDrone/NzbHydra/Deluge/Jackett running in docker containers with a GPU or Intel QuickSync for transcoding is something... Maybe throw in Tautilli for monitoring and something like Ombi (There is probably something better now) to make requesting easier and you are off the races. I mean, in theory of course.

This. And do yourself a favour and rent a seedbox where you can run all the above and stream from anywhere. Costs less monthly than the electricity costs for running them in your home.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#327

Post by x4e »

ameister14 wrote: post #18
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 don't think that people are united about breaking up Amazon and frankly I don't really see the damage to consumer necessary to break it up; products come faster, cheaper. Could you articulate why Amazon should be broken up? Most of the arguments I've seen boil down to "It's so big" and not really "It's effectively dominated x market and there is no competition there" or even "they are harming competition by pre-ins…

Amazon's continuous expansion is resulting in powerful monopsonies - if you want to for example create your own book, soon there is going to be no option but to sell it to Amazon so it will be in kindles and on audible. Amazon will have complete power over what cut of the profits to give you. Why bother making that new product you thought of when the only way to sell it is by listing it on Amazon and eventually having Amazon copy it and sell under "Amazons Choice".

So while Amazon is great for consumers, it is terrible for producers. And you have to remember - if you have a job you are a producer too. For now you are getting cheaper and more convenient service, but soon you will be struggling to find a job if this continues.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#328

Post by jccalhoun »

someperson wrote: post #17

This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made). I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compa…

Stargate revival is my main hope about all this. I don't know that they could do a continuation/sequel because the world of Stargate at this point is pretty complex and far from our universe. So they would probably do a reboot which is risky because the actors had such great chemistry together.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#329

Post by dawnerd »

dalbasal wrote: post #300

The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind boggling. It represents 0.5% of their market cap, 20% of their cash-on-hand, nevermind their borrowing capacity @ near 0%. If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on. I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is…

They could increase wages for their non-tech workers to start

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#330

Post by 1cvmask »

dhosek wrote: post #314
divs1210 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 and Apple also have stream rentals. That said, I have Netflix (free with my T-mobile phone service) and HBO (free with my AT&T fiber internet) and Apple+ (free with the recently purchased iPads for the kids) and Hoopla (free from the library) and Kanopy (free from the library) and Disney+ (we actually pay for this one) and I never feel the need to say, I must watch this movie which isn't available on one of th…

The tyranny of choice.

Have you ever heard of the indie mubi?

https://mubi.com/

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