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The golden age of streaming TV is over

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Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#41

Post by NikolaNovak »

jasode wrote: post #34
sbarre wrote: post #3

The 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 would normally agree or even be the one making that point. But interestingly, and this hasn't of course always been the case, it's currently the non techies in my circle that are downloading pirated content and buying cheap android ip tv boxes. The techies don't want hassle and risk and just pay for streaming, they're busy enough with myriad geeky hobbies. The non techies are blissfully unaware of any risk and just want free tv.

And then there's the young ones :)

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#42

Post by Mountain_Skies »

wellpast wrote: post #38
sbarre wrote: post #3

The 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.

Or tie it to copyright law. Products that aren't readily available lose their copyright protections so others can make that content available to the people. Actually writing the law in such a way that doesn't enable the media companies to come up with some sort of malicious compliance, like requiring a VPN to Nepal and a payment of $10,000 for each episode of an show, would be challenging but since many of these tricks are already known from the music industry, the most common ones could be addressed. Problem is that the media companies have multiple branches of government in their pocket so such a solution will always be theoretical.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#43

Post by trident5000 »

Whatever service has the least commercials and little time commitment is basically what I watch.

Right now I like YouTube premium. Although YouTube is making big mistakes like removing the downvote count. Gaslighting your users to appease creators and control narrative is not good.

I'm about to cut YouTube TV though. Its all commercials and bad content. Even CNBC is unwatchable to me.

Bloomberg as well. I have a $400 subscription to Bloomberg and they're still showing me commercials its absurd. How greedy can you be. I cant take that repeating chime and same 3 commercials hitting me in the head in the morning. Going to have a seizure.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#44

Post by danaris »

AntoniusBlock wrote: post #22
synu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not work for everyone, but I’m quite happy again with dvds so I can watch what I want when I like.

But then you'd be stuck with 480p quality media.

Oh no—the horror! Not 480p!

I know some people swear they can never go back to anything less after watching one 4K show, but I, for one, have no problem watching lower-quality media when there's no convenient way to get a high-quality version.

Some of us lived through the RealPlayer era.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#45

Post by philippejara »

abigail95 wrote: post #8

I look forward to paying for value myself, instead of taking it from future subscribers. The more money the streaming companies charge, the more they can spend on bigger productions. Imagine the level of content you could produce if every subscriber paid $50?

why do you want bigger productions? especially now where we have the new lord of the rings, the MCU, the DCU and a new avatar that will most likely be forgotten just as quickly as the previous one to show for bigger budget productions.

There comes a point where having more money adds nothing, and in a lot of genres that point is quite low. I'd imagine CGI/SFX/animation is the biggest scaling cost, very few genres use it that much to justify it.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#46

Post by 23B1 »

I've found https://entertainmentstrategyguy.com to be a much better source of intel on streaming; he provides detailed breakdowns and actually takes apart what little data the streamers provide on viewership, performance metrics, and finances.

I would not consider the golden age of streaming over, btw. I'm not sure that ever existed. The entertainment industry is constantly being churned by economic conditions, trends, tastes, technology, etc.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#47

Post by maccard »

danaris wrote: post #37
jasode wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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.

These existed a decade ago too, yo be fair.

In reference to the computer literate part of your comment, my parents aren't tech savvy at all, and probably never pirated a movie in their lives until some guy came along with a £200 android TV box that just worked last year.

> 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.

This sort of dismissal of "it's the young people" and talking about "corporate overlords" having some kind of magical control is getting tiring here. It's not a meaningful discussion, it's just navel gazing.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#48

Post by 7jjjjjjj »

mr90210 wrote: post #26
AntoniusBlock wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you'd be stuck with 480p quality media.

When somebody these days mentions DVD, you can count Blu-ray as well.

Which is stupid. I'm not paying a premium price for a deliberately crappified version of a film.

Re: The golden age of streaming TV is over

#49

Post by j1elo »

sbarre wrote: post #3

The 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…

> the loss of access to existing shows

For a moment, Netflix was so great because they had "all" the stuff! (not all, but a lot of good stuff). Now every company and their mother are retiring their contents so they can have their own smaller subscription service. I have a couple of them, and that's my limit on all these companies' greed; for anything else that happens to not be available, I feel no issue with appealing to Jack Sparrow.

Problem with piracy, torrent at least, is that finding older stuff tends to be difficult. But that's exactly the kind of contents companies are removing, so there would be not much to gain by going with them.

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