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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#421

Post by Kye »

unethical_ban wrote: post #276
jerf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it hands down better than any Star Trek except possibly TNG. And that's giving TNG some grace due to being a bit older; take that away and I'll give SG-1 the prize. I will agree that people can reasonably disagree about Deep Space Nine vs SG-1. But that's the level of quality we're talking about, in my opinion. It's top tier, and much less well known. Also strongly recommend binging the first season in par…

I had only seen TNG until two years ago. I knew almost every episode past season 2, and really loved it. Still do. But then I watched Deep Space Nine, and wow. I got hooked. I "only" watched about 80 episodes that are the plot arc + a few outstanding solos, but still. The quality of the acting, the more "on the nose" social messaging, the darker side of the Federation, the racial struggles between the crew - if I hea…

Stargate Atlantis might be a better starting point. It had the benefit of a fully-built world before the protagonist power creep hit its stride.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#422

Post by Joeri »

ElFitz wrote: post #174
mythz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content. There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players. When everything's online the primary d…

> if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services. Pricing and UX? But even though some companies are incapable of making good UIs, UX isn’t much of a moat. At the same time, differentiation through pricing leads to races to the bottom and unsustainable / worthless markets (and, in our case, probably diminishing content quality).

If UX isn’t much of a moat, why do most of the streaming platforms get it wrong? Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime have terrible UX for example. You might argue people don’t care about UX and that’s why it’s not a moat, and maybe they don’t, but personally I wish everyone would just plug their content into netflix and I could use that as the only platform.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#423

Post by sergiotapia »

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.

Been in usenet for a while now. 4k remux all the way!

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#424

Post by shmageggy »

hnbad wrote: post #312
shmageggy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That blew my mind. We have so much sci-fi depicting the evil mega-corp that's it has become a trope, yet we're just lumbering along towards that exact future.

Carlos Maza's video on the pandemic (and Trump) provides a good explanation of this phenomenon IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJaE_BvLK6U Basically we all see ourselves as the main character and don't think boring (i.e. systemic) problems will affect us. I'm not going to die from COVID like the rest because I'm special -- I'll die in an important way when it's narratively convenient, not like an extra killed of…

Maybe I'm in the minority but I definitely see the rise of mega corps as directly affecting me. They funnel obscene amount of wealth and resources(and thus political power) to a few individuals, lessening my democratic impact; they aren't beholden to any particular community and thus often are worse for workers and demonstrate worse negative externalities (such as environmentally); and so on...

The thing is I just feel helpless to do much about it. I can shop locally, but that feels pretty insignificant. Lately it's not even useful to vote any particular way (in the US), since it seems bigcorps have essentially captured both major parties.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#426

Post by rhino369 »

thayne wrote: post #386
jbay808 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockbusters used to be really good for this. You could even get a movie for a whole week for less than YouTube will rent it to you for 24 hours. Maybe they'll make a comeback?

This. I don't understand why streaming a movie is so much more expensive than renting a physical DVD or VHS from a brick-and-morter store. If I want to watch a new movie, it is generally much cheaper to rent a DVD from redbox than watching it from any of the streaming services that allow you to rent it online.

It's because of the first sale doctrine. Redbox and family video can buy DVDs and Blu-Rays (at a maximum) at the same price as consumer DVD/Blu-Ray--and rent them out without permission from the copyright holder. That means video rental stores can undercut the VOD prices.

Consumers are willing to pay more for VOD because its easier. Having to return the disc is a pain in the ass.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#427

Post by x4e »

LaundroMat wrote: post #220
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.

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 recommend jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/). It will require some tech skills to setup, but after that accessing it is as simple as going to the website address it is hosted at.

The best thing about Jellyfin is that it is free software: open source, permissive license, and no paid features (which alternatives like Plex have).

You can host Jellyfin on your own VPS, I host mine on a Hetzner VPS for just over 10 eur / month but that is very overkill, you can host one for far less. The only thing to keep in mind is that transcoding (streaming in a different resolution to the stored media) is quite computationally expensive so if lot's of people are transcoding at once you will need a good CPU.

Then any family member can just visit the IP address of the server in their web browser (or you can buy it a domain name). Jellyfin has a native iOS app they can use from their phones. For viewing it on TVs, there is an app for AppleTV which has Jellyfin support (cant remember the name right now but I can find it if you need it).

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#428

Post by [deleted] »

thakoppno wrote: post #353
dcolkitt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcast NBC was only "free" in the strictest sense. Every hour of content requires the viewer to sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials. At a labor value of $50/hour, watching ten hours of content a week imposes an economic cost on the viewer of $825/month. By comparison subscribing to all the major streaming platforms would cost about $100/month. Let's not even get into issues of higher quality content…

> sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials Commercial detection and skipping has worked well for me via MythTV for nearly twenty years at this point. Seems like there’s a free startup idea in there somewhere. $100 worth of equipment and a webapp and now your parents can watch network TV, local news, sports, and weather without ads.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#429

Post by thayne »

rhino369 wrote: post #426
thayne wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I don't understand why streaming a movie is so much more expensive than renting a physical DVD or VHS from a brick-and-morter store. If I want to watch a new movie, it is generally much cheaper to rent a DVD from redbox than watching it from any of the streaming services that allow you to rent it online.

It's because of the first sale doctrine. Redbox and family video can buy DVDs and Blu-Rays (at a maximum) at the same price as consumer DVD/Blu-Ray--and rent them out without permission from the copyright holder. That means video rental stores can undercut the VOD prices. Consumers are willing to pay more for VOD because its easier. Having to return the disc is a pain in the ass.

It seems like there should be a similar mechanism for VOD. Although, VidAngel tried to do that and was sued almost to death by big media.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#430

Post by dalbasal »

asperous wrote: post #409
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 actually are doing pretty large buybacks though: https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-giants-have-ramped-up-... Apple recently $77B in buybacks, Alphabet $8.5B, Facebook $3.9B

True, but I don't think buybacks are likely to be scaled sufficiently to solve the "problem." Apple, maybe. They do have a dividend paying history and they don't like to spread.

The Alphabet & FB buybacks represent about 5% of those companies' cash reserves... not enough to change anything. Apple have $200bn, though I'm not sure if this is net or gross of the buyback.

I think of these buybacks more as supporting evidence to what I said previously. There is a hell of a lot of "what are you going to do with all this cash" pressure on these companies.

That said $77bn (I've seen $90bn reported) is a truly stupendous sum. Has there ever been a buyback at this scale?

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