Anyone knows of a service in Europe similar to what Netflix was doing originally, sending DVDs per post?
It would be nice to have access to a big catalogue without pirating, and I don't mind waiting 2/3 days.
The golden age of streaming TV is over
31–40 of 83 posts
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#32I wish there was just a standard protocol for making movies and music available on the global market and then a pay per view based payment system. Cut most of the middle men and maximize availability across the world (instead of just/first to the US like is still common for some reason). I think that would result in shows reaching maximum audiences at minimal prices. For all I care put some ad filled alternatives out…
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Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#33Things I can think of that have changed since streaming started that are making streaming less attractive.
1. weekly releases of shows (episodes) instead of the whole thing
2. creep of advertising, including 'watch this rubbish trailer before we play your choice'
3. studios pulling their series/movies from netflix and trying to launch their own
The last one really annoys me. In the UK there is, last time I looked, apparently 70+ streaming services. I'm not paying 70x £8 per month for TV. Even just netflix, disney, and amazon is £30 or so a month. Now there's Paramount trying hard as well by pulling Disco off netflix. Well, sorry, that wasn't enough to make me pay for Paramount. Similarly with Disney pulling all the Marvel films off netflix.
It's as if the movie studios haven't learnt from Spotify/Apple Music/Napster etc. One service with all the things.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#34The big takeaway (for me) from this article is that streaming services are actively removing shows from their archives to save on residual payments. So it's not just about a slowdown in new shows coming out, but also the loss of access to existing shows. For example HBO Max has entirely removed Westworld, a show that's not that old and just completed it's 4th and final season this year. So the whole idea of "I'll wat…
>That or this will just send everyone back to piracy.
I understand you're using "everyone" in a rhetorical sense but just to level-set about the real difficulties of piracy for non-techie viewers:
- downloading videos via bittorrent or visiting dubious warez websites of illegal videos with the risks of javascript popup malware
- downloaded videos (e.g. .mkv files) not easily playable on smartphones, tablets, or TVs that have the built-in "smart os" such as Android TV and Amazon Fire Stick.
A lot of viewers don't have media computers or laptops hooked up to TVs to take advantage of downloaded pirated videos. Even fewer will set up a DLNA media server so that their tablets can stream self-hosted videos.
This leaves only the computer-literate geeks as the group that can substitute paid streaming with piracy. This small subset is irrelevant to streaming companies. For everyone else, they just pick 1 or 2 streaming subscriptions (e.g. Disney+ for the kids and HBO MAX for the adults) -- and just live with the fact that their choices of shows are more limited and the existing ones may even disappear.
So "everyone" switching to piracy is a really small group of people.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#35One of my proudest investment moments was predicting this and selling all my NFLX (that I'd held for over 5 years) at its peak value.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#36> Streaming isn't going away, but there will be more ads and higher prices, and we'll have to see what happens to content libraries. They'll all be available to those who pirate. When Netflix first started its streaming service it obviously couldn't compete when it came to the amount of content, but it did a fantastic job competing in terms of convenience. This is gone now. Netflix and all others are competing with e…
Did they do that in the past? Or will they just invest more into anti-piracy lobbyism, that ocassionally busts some ex-pat server farm half way around the world? One would demand active change and interest in the user, the other is easy scape goating. The ugly truth is, the state has no interest in preventing piracy. Piracy keeps the poor dormant and busy. Piracy reduces other crime and works like paracetamol on soci…
> Piracy keeps the poor dormant and busy.
Literally nobody considers this aspect, at all, ever.
Content providers compete with each other, yet all of them think watching something without paying is taking money from the mouths of their babies even when that content is already ad-supported and shown free on OTA (over the air) broadcasts.
Depth of government thinking on this is inversely proportional to depth of content lobbyist pockets.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#37The big takeaway (for me) from this article is that streaming services are actively removing shows from their archives to save on residual payments. So it's not just about a slowdown in new shows coming out, but also the loss of access to existing shows. For example HBO Max has entirely removed Westworld, a show that's not that old and just completed it's 4th and final season this year. So the whole idea of "I'll wat…
>That or this will just send everyone back to piracy. I understand you're using "everyone" in a rhetorical sense but just to level-set about the real difficulties of piracy for non-techie viewers: - downloading videos via bittorrent or visiting dubious warez websites of illegal videos with the risks of javascript popup malware - downloaded videos (e.g. .mkv files) not easily playable on smartphones, tablets, or TVs t…
I dunno. During the earlier age of piracy (before the described "golden age"), I was seeing talk from a lot of less-computer-literate people who were doing just fine with pirating shows.
More recently, there's even a new kind of piracy that has arisen: pirate streaming websites, where you just go and watch whatever shows in the browser, and as long as you have a decent adblock, you proooobably won't get a nasty virus.
Where there's a will, there's a way, and there's a lot of will among younger people who aren't already indoctrinated into the idea that we must accept what shows our corporate overlords give us.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#38The big takeaway (for me) from this article is that streaming services are actively removing shows from their archives to save on residual payments. So it's not just about a slowdown in new shows coming out, but also the loss of access to existing shows. For example HBO Max has entirely removed Westworld, a show that's not that old and just completed it's 4th and final season this year. So the whole idea of "I'll wat…
Can/Should writers, actors, etc unions contractually obligate availability? Seems shitty for HBO to drop content just to avoid having to pay residuals.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did they do that in the past? Or will they just invest more into anti-piracy lobbyism, that ocassionally busts some ex-pat server farm half way around the world? One would demand active change and interest in the user, the other is easy scape goating. The ugly truth is, the state has no interest in preventing piracy. Piracy keeps the poor dormant and busy. Piracy reduces other crime and works like paracetamol on soci…
> Piracy keeps the poor dormant and busy. Literally nobody considers this aspect, at all, ever. Content providers compete with each other, yet all of them think watching something without paying is taking money from the mouths of their babies even when that content is already ad-supported and shown free on OTA (over the air) broadcasts. Depth of government thinking on this is inversely proportional to depth of conten…
They all learn the sentence: "panem and circensis" and other aspects of the roman culture equivalent in every ivy league school ive heard about. Its there. Its implicit.
Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over
#40I wish there was just a standard protocol for making movies and music available on the global market and then a pay per view based payment system. Cut most of the middle men and maximize availability across the world (instead of just/first to the US like is still common for some reason). I think that would result in shows reaching maximum audiences at minimal prices. For all I care put some ad filled alternatives out…
Not quite what I think you're describing, but we functionally have that for music. For a while, pirated music was hugely popular; now, for a fixed subscription, you can choose between a few major providers and they each have a global catalogue (or pretty close to it, for the requirements of most users).
It's not as if Spotify et al. provide particularly good services, but they're convenient enough for most people.
Making life less convenient for users in terms of streaming video is going to be a hard sell. No one wants to pay more for a worse service with less choice, more restrictions and adverts.