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

The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

pajiba.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#311

Post by Stunting »

CabSauce wrote: post #181
halfnormalform wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

More like I snuck onto a ride without buying a ticket. Or snuck into a theater without buying a ticket. Wouldn't you call that stealing? Edit: Call it digital trespass then. I don't really care what you call it. There are obviously fixed costs to creating content. Just because there aren't incremental costs incurred from piracy, doesn't mean there isn't harm. Lost revenue is harm.

and then the carnival workers get fired, because there isn't enough income to pay 3 people. One person has to take tickets and run the rides, which is now more dangerous for you. So they shut it down, and all the cool rides leave town and you'll tell your kids how much cooler carnivals use to be and you'll never understand it's cause you stole income out of the workers pockets.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#312

Post by jerf »

Damogran6 wrote: post #254
e40 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a few years were I literally stopped all torrenting. Netflix and Amazon had everything I wanted. Sure, there were a few things that didn't exist, but I was too lazy to go after that minor amount of content. I was fully legal and paying for everything. I was fine with it. Then, the great splintering happened. I currently pay for 5 services, but that doesn't cover even 1/2 of what I want to watch. All the co…

In my case, it's where they wrapped up the long-tail movies. Want to watch Airplane!....$3 rental. Spaceballs? $3 rental Cannonball Run? $3 I am not going to pay to rent stuff I used to be able to encounter for free by surfing channels...well, on top of my dish/cable bill

Also: Airplane! and Airplane 2 DVD: $6. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XGD93BP Spaceballs $7, less if you're ok with used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004TJ1H32 Cannonball run, $10, though less if used and there are some $10 "Cannonball Run + another movie" sets on Amazon as well.

While I tend to agree that piracy and/or ripping isn't something everyone can do, I've filled out my Plex collection legally lately with DVD acquisitions at bargain-bin prices. Used doesn't matter if you only have to be able to read the disc once to rip it, and I'm yet to get something used off Amazon that couldn't be read once. (I haven't even had to clean it or anything, it's all just worked.)

So, my Plex install in terms of raw content isn't up to Netflix's size. However, I rather suspect there are some people reading this who have more hours of video on their Plex than Netflix even has available. And while mine isn't that large, it is much better tuned for me and my family's interests at this point. And I don't have to worry about getting halfway through a series, only for some licensor to notice it has become popular enough to pull it and run it on their own service. Netflix has the problem now that anything that becomes popular on their service will get yanked. I do not know how they overcome that. They hoped to do it with enough original content, but to my eye, that has failed, and there is now no longer enough time to fix that. While I understand the complaints that they treated it too much like "content", to be honest, I've never thought this would work out, from the moment they announced it. A single company just can't produce a sufficiently diverse set of "content" to be the everything-to-everybody they would have needed to be to justify a Netflix valuation.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#314

Post by californical »

Stunting wrote: post #291
cercatrova wrote: post #101

It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services. - You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering. - Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content. - Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can typ…

You're stealing income, specifically from me and all of my coworkers. Perhaps you think that you're only stealing from Producers and A list actors, but there are entire departments that receive residuals on a production. - On screen performers, stunt performers like myself and actors who grind out a comfortable living. Those residuals also go to qualifying for health insurance through earnings. You are directly steal…

Is it really stealing if they wouldn’t have ever paid for it in the first place?

If it’s not easy to find and use on a subscription service that I already have, I’m just not gonna try to search for it or pay for it. What difference would it make if I pirated it and watched it anyways?

(FWIW I personally don’t pirate anything, I just really don’t see the merit to the “stealing” argument)

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#316

Post by dQw4w9WgXcQ »

e40 wrote: post #231
CabSauce wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. It's also stealing. And doesn't provide any money for future shows that you might enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I've done it for some things that I wanted to watch, but wasn't willing to pay for. But let's not pretend that everyone torrenting is a reasonable solution.

There were a few years were I literally stopped all torrenting. Netflix and Amazon had everything I wanted. Sure, there were a few things that didn't exist, but I was too lazy to go after that minor amount of content. I was fully legal and paying for everything. I was fine with it. Then, the great splintering happened. I currently pay for 5 services, but that doesn't cover even 1/2 of what I want to watch. All the co…

>> the user experience absolutely sucks now

Understandable, I just cut back on all the TV engorging and rotate the streaming services every quarter. IMO it's a net win. Save money on the streaming services and life is better for having not watched so much television. Not going to the grave wishing I binged Season 2 of some random show one more time.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#317

Post by adam_arthur »

dehrmann wrote: post #296

I'd be careful to make a claim as big as "the bottom is dropping out," but Netflix is facing a few headwinds. - Lots of competition, some more serious (Disney+) than others (Amazon) - Nearing the top of the streaming adoption curve - End of the stay-at-home covid bump The covid impact is noise in the long (5+ years) term. Reaching full adoption is a sign of maturity overtaking growth. You run the company differently,…

Moving from a growth company to a stable company just implies it deserves a much lower valuation multiple, which is what the market is adjusting to.

My question is, how did people not expect this given that a huge XX% of the first world already uses it, and there are tons of viable competing streaming services popping up like weeds? They had a first mover advantage, and that was pretty much it, but streaming is a solved technology now. Competition took much longer to mobilize than it should have, but it's finally here now.

At the end of the day the only differentiator for Netflix is as a production company. Up to you to decide what their moat is there

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#318

Post by sgarland »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #268
cercatrova wrote: post #101

It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services. - You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering. - Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content. - Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can typ…

I don't know how to phrase this nicely, but this is precisely the type of Hacker News nerd-blindness that I find amazing. It's "easier"? Is it? For young children who want to watch their kids shows and don't know what 4k means? For grandparents who want to see some k-dramas and have no clue about DRM or geo-locked? Sure, Netflix has issues and it's made some bad decisions, but let's not delude ourselves here. The gro…

Agreed. While the *arrs are "easy" to set up once you have good knowledge of Kubernetes or at least Docker Compose, that's not exactly common. If you're using the native Windows clients, there's a pretty good chance you don't have a NAS set up (or at least not well), which means there's a decent chance you'll eventually have a hardware failure, and then be surprised when your media is suddenly gone.

ZFS pools with full backups, redundant hardware, and highly available servers is not normal.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#319

Post by TechBro8615 »

CabSauce wrote: post #160
cercatrova wrote: post #101

It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services. - You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering. - Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content. - Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can typ…

Sure. It's also stealing. And doesn't provide any money for future shows that you might enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I've done it for some things that I wanted to watch, but wasn't willing to pay for. But let's not pretend that everyone torrenting is a reasonable solution.

If I pay for Netflix, which offers Friends in some countries but not my own, and I want to watch Friends, am I stealing it by torrenting it? Who has less property now than before I torrented the show?

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#320

Post by orangepurple »

fullstop wrote: post #26

I get Netflix through my cell phone carrier, otherwise I would drop it. I don't watch a lot of content, and I find myself watching HBO Max more often when I do. With that being said, I might still buy some $NFLX. I thought that they were dead once before with the whole Qwikster thing, but investing in the company then would have been a very smart move.

How much are you paying for a carrier plan if Netflix is bundled with it?
Post reply on HN