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

Netflix is turning into cable TV

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#41

Post by fullshark »

imgabe wrote: post #7

It's not even doing a good job of that, though. The other day someone mentioned the 1990 movie "Taking Care of Business" with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin. It's a pretty unremarkable movie, but I remembered liking it as a kid for whatever reason and wanted to see it again. Of course, it's not on any of the four streaming services I pay for (I'm outside the US so ymmv). And why? Why is the studio hoarding access to…

Odd argument, in the heyday of cable TV you had no control over what you could watch, it was just whatever TNT/TBA/USA decided to air that night. Not sure how your anecdote indicates netflix is doing a bad job at being cable tv.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#42

Post by pdimitar »

midasuni wrote: post #21
gumby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those owners are bleeding out, so to stanch the flow they are licensing their content to other companies like...netflix. It'll end up with a little oligarchy of a small number of streamers and then quality will plummet and ads will be unavoidable.

And pirate bay will once again be the place to go

You both are using future tense for something that's already happening for at least a year now.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#43

Post by skyyler »

jiggawatts wrote: post #30
Almondsetat wrote: post #5

Perhaps enshittification is like the capitalistic version of carcinization [0]. Stuff like TV or the music labels or the movie industry became the way they are because it has been proven to generate the most revenue. When a new service comes out after some time it naturally tends to gravitate to the proven strategies of money making which in turn makes it seem we are going "back to the cable days". [0] https://en.m.w…

I saw a great piece about how every cable channel eventually ends up the same, even if originally specialised. E.g.: Originally, MTV was the the MUSIC Television channel. Now it's reality TV and soap operas.

MTV is the Ridiculousness channel. I thought that's all they played.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#44

Post by ensignavenger »

kstrauser wrote: post #25
bxparks wrote: post #18

Netflix produced some interesting original shows. Most of them got canceled after a single season, on a cliff-hanger. That got frustrating, so we stopped watching Netflix original shows. Then we stopped watching Netflix. Then we canceled Netflix.

You know it. I won't watch a Netflix series until the series finale. I don't need any more rugs pulled out from under me.

I feel the same way, but at this point, I have extended the same policy to Disney and Amazon to at least some degree. If I can't verify that the show has a decent conclusion at the end of what is already released, I avoid it.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#45

Post by paxys »

"Netflix is shit". "No one watches Netflix anymore". "They cancel all the good shows". "There's nothing worth watching anyways". "Banning account sharing was a boneheaded move and everyone is going to cancel because of it". "Netflix is worse than cable now".

Also:

> Netflix tops Wall Street revenue estimates and adds a record 13.1 million subscribers in the last quarter.

At some point all the terminally online people on places like Reddit and HN have to realize that they don't represent the general population.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#46

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

midasuni wrote: post #21
gumby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those owners are bleeding out, so to stanch the flow they are licensing their content to other companies like...netflix. It'll end up with a little oligarchy of a small number of streamers and then quality will plummet and ads will be unavoidable.

And pirate bay will once again be the place to go

It still is, for me. And 1337x.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#47

Post by MostlyStable »

Sometimes I wonder what our media landscape would look like if exclusive licensing deals were prohibited. You still own your IP, you can sell it, but whatever price you set, it's the price that anyone who is interested in your product is allowed to buy.

I'm not sure how this would interact with companies that both create and distribute content. They'd either be forced to come up with a price, or else maybe that combination of services would be disallowed under an extension of market consolidation/monopoly rules?

I dunno, all I know is that the current regime sucks in everything from streaming to sports broadcasts.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#48

Post by jfoutz »

cromka wrote: post #16
jimt1234 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I miss the old, neighborhood, mom-and-pop DVD-rental store. The place near my apartment back in the early-2000s pretty much never removed anything from the shelves, so you could find almost any movie ever made. You just had to wipe the dust off some of them.

Any movie ever made in the US, that is…

It depended. I mean, nobody's going to have everything. It wasn't too hard to come by _man bites dog_ or _run lola run_. European art house stuff. A different place had a deep Spanish selection. In my part of the u.s. southwest, Bollywood, Japan and Korea were under-represented.

I'd imagine different proprietors had different tastes. See something they liked, if it rented, look for more of that flavor.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#49

Post by Kim_Bruning »

38 wrote: post #27
imgabe wrote: post #7

It's not even doing a good job of that, though. The other day someone mentioned the 1990 movie "Taking Care of Business" with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin. It's a pretty unremarkable movie, but I remembered liking it as a kid for whatever reason and wanted to see it again. Of course, it's not on any of the four streaming services I pay for (I'm outside the US so ymmv). And why? Why is the studio hoarding access to…

looks like its on Disney+ Canada, but agreed that is extremely limited given the age of the film: https://disneyplus.com/movies/taking-care-of-business/1cZIoq...

And of course it's available on the pirate bay.

As usual, it's a service problem.

Re: Netflix is turning into cable TV

#50

Post by ipaddr »

coder543 wrote: post #31
mvdtnz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I literally paid for a month of Netflix in December, as I mentioned in the comment you replied to. I subscribed to Netflix for many years continuously before they massively inflated their prices. Yes, I would pay for it if their prices weren’t so offensive. Netflix thinks they deserve to charge far more than anyone else, while offering content that is on average less valuable to me than the competitors that I am subs…

Why not go for the 14/15 price option? Do you really need the best quality video for shows you judge to be average at best? Why do you need the best most expensive package? Stay within your budget.
Post reply on HN