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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#341

Post by seanicus »

dylan604 wrote: post #292
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.

>Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's game, content started getting so much more interesting. Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get…

Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter out, but probably after all of us are dead.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#342

Post by iso1631 »

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...

$5 to rent a movie seems a bargain compared with times past.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#343

Post by whatgoodisaroad »

1cvmask wrote: post #330
dhosek wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Mubi really is excellent if you like the kind of art-house content they license. I think if I only kept one streaming service it'd be them.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#344

Post by thegagne »

kangaroozach wrote: post #275
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…

We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month. We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.

Sure maybe some are willing to pay, but finding what you want to watch across 10x different services is obnoxious. Signing up for a particular monthly service just to watch a single show is also not ideal.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#345

Post by libertine »

elzbardico wrote: post #144
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.

I think that what the industry will move into will be into something very similar to cabletvm, so, instead of buying subscriptions from a few services, you'll buy a package from a bundler. On the bright side it won't be as bad as it was with cable, because it will be on-demand. But also, probably the MBAs are going to come out with infinite combinations of tiered-services that nobody will understand, at first, it wil…

>But also, probably the MBAs are going to come out with infinite combinations of tiered-services that nobody will understand

Like bundling stuff you would never subscribe to.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#346

Post by joshstrange »

kyriakos wrote: post #326
joshstrange wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While this can be true the local option can be quite attractive for the 90%+ use-case of watching at home. Not to mention the costs of storage in the cloud. Best deal I found was a Hertzner server for $30/mo with 6TB (2x3TB). I used that for a while but in the long run, local is king. I have gigabit fiber symmetrical so that does have to be factored in (if you have crappy upload and want to provide for remote access then a seed box might be ideal).

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#347

Post by Matticus_Rex »

kyriakos wrote: post #326
joshstrange wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I ditch the management completely and do a Plex Share.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#348

Post by minusSeven »

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…

My rule of thumb regarding watching content is: if its only 1 movie or tv show I want to watch just pirate it, if its more than one on a streaming platform subscribe to it. I subscribe to netflix just once a year to watch everything I want to watch and then don't bother subscribing again for a year. I guess eventually I will do the same to other platforms if they have enough content in them.

I can't fathom how someone can pay to streaming sites month after month unless they have quite a lot of stuff they want to watch.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#349

Post by dalbasal »

dawnerd wrote: post #329
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

Technically, that'd be increasing their expenses rather than capital investment.

They could also, in theory, build schools in central africa. They could even pay their taxes. I think acquisitions are more likely though.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#350

Post by flavius29663 »

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…

For all the green energy virtue signaling, Bezos & co. could achieve the greening of the US with their own money (and also turn a small profit).
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