Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
581–590 of 844 posts
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not possible to lend digital media out without making a copy(remotely streaming it still copying), which isn't protected by the first sale doctrine. Redbox isn't making a copy. That's the big difference.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I find it hard to believe as well, although of course if you subscribe to prime for movies and TV you're probably more likely to use it for free deliveries as well. But if the plan is to make Prime more popular there seem to be many, many simpler and probably cheaper ways to do that. It's as if McDonalds started a movie studio in order to sell Movie + Big Mac bundles.
Not quite McDonald’s, but KFC released:
- a limited edition gaming console in partnership with Cooler Master (with integrated chicken heater): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFConsole
- a Lifetime mini-movie starring Christian Slater as Colonel Sanders in “A Recipe for Seduction”: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/kfc-colonel-sanders-mario-l...
- a dating sim video game, “I Love You Colonel Sanders”: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colone...
- a 96 page romance novel, “Tender Wings of Desire”: https://time.com/4770024/kfc-romance-novel-mothers-day/
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Can't really vouch for Netflix's UX. I'd believe other platforms are better based on my experience with Netflix.
Major personal gripes:
1. No watch history. Have to visit the web, dig into account settings to view it, having to click through 5 items at a time!
2. Content added to your list is displayed randomly, not by date added. No option to sort with various standard parameters such as aforementioned date added, popularity, year released, genre, etc.
3. Licensed content disappearing with not so much as a "we know you saved this to watch at some point but it's no longer available". Instead you're left second guessing yourself as to whether you suffer from dementia or not. (I get the business aspect of this, but still!)
4. Suggests content you've already watched and/or rated multiple times. At times recommends said show or movie immediately after watching/rating it.
5. Originals have trailers. Other content sometimes has trailers but most licensed content does not despite said trailers being available elsewhere for free. Most (all?) content used to show trailers but that's recently changed. (My guess is trailers convert better so you're more likely to watch original content)
6. No ratings history. Tangential to #1 I guess.
7. Can't click through to 'Coming Soon' titles to explore synopsis, trailers, cast, etc. Even for shows with prior seasons available; have to first search to access. To exasperate frustration, releasing soon titles are shown in searches where you can't do anything besides stare at a thumbnail.
Pretty sure I have other issues with their UX but these are the most irritating.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#585Earlier 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…
> No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite fee either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd.
When we’re done talking about the quantity of movies, let’s talk about quality.
If an awesome movie goes to the cinema, like Twilight, you’ll be able to watch Werewolf on Netflix. With abysmal plot and acting. If you type Mission Impossible, you’ll certainly get Suits.
The search is so abysmal, always suggesting the same 40 series on and on, that people exchange numeric codes which allow them to discover new categories (but half the titles will be already seen). A/B testing probably shows that after seeing a title for 6 weeks and dodging it, you end up watching it, because, there’s only that.
It’s not that I don’t want to pay $40 a month for 4 services, it’s that even at that price, I still can’t watch the quality movies.
And let’s not even start with ideology-pushing in movies.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ma…
I feel the same way! My partner also hadn't watched much Star Trek before. During the pandemic, we watched all of Enterprise, Voyager, and now into DS9 (I had watched TNG so much when I was younger I wanted to start with my less-watched series). The episodes are calm, and the competence of the characters is refreshing as well.
Try the Stargate franchise, same era. Also Farscape (very good).
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No it isn't. It's a workaround. Sure, but it's a trivially easy workaround. Our focus of attention on matters of regulation ought to be in those areas where working around the problem is not nearly as dead simple as a torrent client, a NAS, and a Plex server.
The two solutions don't play in the same ballpark of EV either. With Torrent and NAS and Plex you're talking niche phenomena forever.
It's a lot easier than that now. There are apps now that package the bittorent client and website with magnet links into a single unified app ecosystem that looks somewhat like the spotify app, but with practically every movie and TV show ever produced. You don't have to wait for downloads, the client will stream the torrent for you after maybe 30 seconds of buffer. It's often much faster for me to use this app to get to a show, than to navigate the website and do the same for a service I might pay for.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
SG-1 is a great show. It holds up surprisingly well for its age. Strikes a great balance between serious and light-hearted, and the self-contained episodes often have interesting ethical or social issues. I'm also fond on how the early episodes emphasize that humans are new to interplanetary travel and are still figuring things out. There are several episodes where SG-1 travels to another planet and actually messes t…
Honestly, I loved Atlantis and Universe. Atlantis was purely character driven imo. The plot was more or less a rehash of SG-1 missions to the point they directly start referencing the SG-1 mission report lol. But McKay, Sheppard, Weir, Ronan, Teyla, Carson, and Todd were all very fun characters. SG-1 was carried by the strong performances from O'Neil, Carter, Jackson, Teal'c and Hammond + interesting plots. So I was…
Atlantis couldn't decide what it was, I think. They got to some great characters, but with difficulty. Ronon replaced Ford in Season 2, with Ford being a very poorly written character, he didn't get a single interesting scene for a season. Weir was remarkably poorly written IMO, every time she made a decision it was wrong. Teyla had great moments but in too many episodes she was a "mystic Amazonian alien" cliche. Early on Atlantis tried to again do the "small band of humans versus powerful alien enemy" thing, abandoned that, transitioned to a cornier version of SG-1, then also abandoned that and went more for character stories, it was a mess. I'm also simply not a fan of its too lighthearted style, it intentionally avoided the more serious bits of SG-1.
Universe was great in my book. Detractors say it's like Stargate trying to be Battlestar Galactica, but BSG is easily my favorite sci-fi show so I actually liked that. Universe did make some mistakes early on, but the second season was great, I enjoyed Dr Rush as a very non-Stargate style main character, and I enjoyed how Universe had a completely different take on aliens, keeping them mysterious.
Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
#589Earlier 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.
In the USA, they came down hard of torrents. My neighbor got busted a few years back by Xfinity, and it was a big deal.
Best solution IMO is to rent a $10 a month seedbox and use it for torrenting.
And/or only use private trackers. Stay away from the public ones.