Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 844 posts

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#801

Post by 8note »

rocqua wrote: post #498
watwatinthewat wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, though I think the time/generational factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I've never once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay that much for subscription entertainment, but I'm willing to pay for one streaming service and have considered a second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I don't think I'm an uncommon c…

Isn't it an issue if "willingness to pay" drops too much? In the end, content costs money to make. If money coming in goes down, then there might not be enough money to make all that content.

You still get advertisers willing to pay to put their stuff in your content

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#802

Post by neuralRiot »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #692
neuralRiot wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Why? We’re not talking about food, water or the environment. There is where laws should be enacted or enforced.

Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should be enacted and enforced everywhere. This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young. If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.

>This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking.

Culture is important and so is entertainment but the later is not always the former, and none is vital. There’s plenty of unmonopolized cultural options and one could even argue that much more benefiting than big blockbusters, it’s like worrying that pizza hut would monopolize the pizza market and losing nutritional values in the community.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#803

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

neuralRiot wrote: post #802
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should be enacted and enforced everywhere. This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young. If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.

>This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Culture is important and so is entertainment but the later is not always the former, and none is vital. There’s plenty of unmonopolized cultural options and one could even argue that much more benefiting than big blockbusters, it’s like worrying that pizza hut would monopolize the pizza market and losing nutritional values in the communit…

Well for one in this context you could say that I’m interested in the pizza and how it’s harder to find a good Neapolitan pizza place and all the mom’n’pop pizza places are being strangled to death.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, not necessarily something to be “worried” about.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#804

Post by andy_ppp »

lostgame wrote: post #776
andy_ppp wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do have sympathy with this view (that content creators can do as they like, of course!), but I’m just saying I want to be able to buy films (maybe > 5 years old), for very cheap, legally, in a format I own, that I can watch when I like on any device I choose. I think a lot of people would like this possibility too and would spend lots of money that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s difficult to prove either way of…

I think the problem is that you're pitching the value too low. It's like...$1 for a DRM-free song right now, and tbh that's not unfair. Even if I could buy movies DRM-free right now for $10, older movies for $5, that'd be fair; I think. :)

I’m saying the low price would make more money for the studios because it being cheap more people would buy 10x or more of the digital item.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#805

Post by vanderZwan »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #611
vanderZwan wrote: post #219

Earlier 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…

> My girlfriend somehow grew up completely unaware of Star Trek, so I introduced her to The Next Generation > It's so relaxing, in a way that almost no modern TV is. No end-of-episode cliffhangers That is not how I would describe Star Trek: the Next Generation. Every season ends with a cliffhanger.

Are you somehow forgetting that this is merely one out of the 26 episodes that make up a season, or are you cherry-picking?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#806

Post by DrBazza »

thayne wrote: post #337
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…

> I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country My experience has been that old (black and white or otherwise) movies are hard to find now. Especially if you just want to watch it once and don't want to buy an old DVD or VHS.

In the UK, a lot of channels still play these old films. In fact over the pandemic, there's actually a channel that was set up to specifically play these films:

https://www.filmstories.co.uk/features/talking-pictures-tv-t...

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#807

Post by supuun »

socialist_coder wrote: post #598

I wish people didn't watch so much television. It's too good and too easy to watch an unlimited amount of content. Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in your community. There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs, skating clubs, 4H…

Doesn't TV shows and movies also contain diverse cast and help us relate to people with different backgrounds, race, sexual orientation, etc.? For example, i think Hollywood movies depicting homosexuality have large impact on people watching them from conservative countries.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#808

Post by thaumasiotes »

vanderZwan wrote: post #805
thaumasiotes wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My girlfriend somehow grew up completely unaware of Star Trek, so I introduced her to The Next Generation > It's so relaxing, in a way that almost no modern TV is. No end-of-episode cliffhangers That is not how I would describe Star Trek: the Next Generation. Every season ends with a cliffhanger.

Are you somehow forgetting that this is merely one out of the 26 episodes that make up a season, or are you cherry-picking?

I'm saying that cliffhangers are a major element of TNG and constitute a very deliberate part of its "house style". They are a small percentage of episodes, but if you made a list of what made TNG distinctive, "seasonal cliffhangers" would be on that list. As such, it's strange to remark on how the show lacks cliffhangers. It's notable for having them!

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#809

Post by vanderZwan »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #808
vanderZwan wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you somehow forgetting that this is merely one out of the 26 episodes that make up a season, or are you cherry-picking?

I'm saying that cliffhangers are a major element of TNG and constitute a very deliberate part of its "house style". They are a small percentage of episodes, but if you made a list of what made TNG distinctive, "seasonal cliffhangers" would be on that list. As such, it's strange to remark on how the show lacks cliffhangers. It's notable for having them!

Words derive meaning from their context, and you're pulling mine out of theirs. The full sentence is:

> No end-of-episode cliffhangers or other mechanisms trying to make you binge-watch.

I'm talking about mechanisms that modern TV uses to trick people into watching a series many episodes at a time until they're too tired to go on. An end-of-season cliffhanger that was designed to ensure people would come back when the series returned next season after a long break from their weekly Star Trek watching habit is not at all the same thing. Nothing about TNG is attempting to make me, the viewer, binge-watch it.

In the case of me and my GF, since we know exactly when we are about to watch an end-of-season episode we just plan an extra hour for it that evening. That's it.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#810

Post by vanderZwan »

hboon wrote: post #229
brightball wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Agreed completely. Even early 2000’s shows like Smallville and The Flash have been pretty safe and fun.

I’m being pedantic, but the 2 Flash series ran during the 90s and mid-2010 :)

It's a comic book adaptation. Nerds being pedantic about it is part of the deal ;)
Post reply on HN