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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#351

Post by jszymborski »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #230
bo1024 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consolidation, or interoperability. Somehow any radio station can play any song they want (or seemingly any), for a standardized set of fees. And there is plenty of competition among radio stations. Couldn't we get the same setup for on-demand streaming of music and video?

That state of affairs was created by compulsory licensing. I'm not sure that really makes sense for TV/movies, since it would also mean a fixed royalty price for everything. But it sure would be nice.

> I'm not sure that really makes sense for TV/movies, since it would also mean a fixed royalty price for everything.

Any reason why you think it would be a problem to have a fixed price?

I think the studios would have to swallow it if it was compulsory, no?

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#352

Post by jdhbb »

heavyset_go wrote: post #123
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

I think the cable TV model was a mature business model for extracting the most amount of value possible from paying viewers before they choose to leave. Every streaming service will converge to what cable TV is like: paid channels, maximum amount of ads, additional premium content, attempts at lock-in, exclusive licensing of content, etc. Not adopting the cable business model is leaving billions of dollars on the tab…

Other side of the equation is - Production of Content has become cheap.

Distribution has become free with global reach.

So we have Infinite amount of content floating about. Not even bringing generative AI into the picture.

So infinite growing Supply. Finite demand.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#353

Post by jaredhallen »

thepasswordis wrote: post #226
giancarlostoro wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if Apple integrated Netflix and all those other services into a unified UI for Apple TV that transparently lets you go between the apps without realizing it (they do own the OS...) it would be exactly what I want to see happen to these streaming services, that or they somehow share their content to the official Apple TV app itself, and let Apple TV query across all those other streaming apps, it would be gre…

This is what amazon prime does.

True. But it only solves half the problem. Or to put it another way, their particular implementation just leads to a different frustration. So Prime aggregates content, which is great. So I can browse a great meta-catalog of content from various services. The problem is I'm not subscribed to all these services. So I scroll through the catalog and find something interesting, but... you need to sign up for a monthly plan to watch whatever show on whatever service. It might be a little more palatable if you could pay (a reasonable amount) per show, or series or movie, or whatever. But as is, it's just an exercise in frustration. I'm not committing to a subscription to watch one show that happened to seem somewhat interesting.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#354

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

cgearhart wrote: post #319

The content diaspora to other services has made Netflix tremendously less appealing; just par for the course as Netflix tries their hardest to lose me as a customer. I just had a support chat with them Friday because my kid has been in the hospital for several weeks after being hit by a car. Since they haven’t been home, Netflix has decided they’re no longer part of the household and we have to manually reauthenticat…

This kind of situation should really be gaining more attention from Netflix leadership and management. They're burning so much good-will and being assholes in the process.

The most frustrating part is that there's no accountability by company leadership towards paying customers. To which I'm sure someone would reply "they only have to be accountable to shareholders", which is utterly insane.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#355

Post by wkat4242 »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

Yup. It's a service problem, not a price problem.

I pirate again too. The fragmentation is just crazy now.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#356

Post by wkat4242 »

radley wrote: post #340
nerdix wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, H265 encoded 1080p is hitting the sweet spot between quality and file size. About 500-ish MB per hour of content for decent quality. Its sort of like when VBR encoded MP3s became the standard in the privacy scene in the early 00s. The quality is good enough for most folks plus the reduced file size means that it downloads really fast on average connections and isn't prohibitively expensive to store so you can c…

> About 500-ish MB per hour of content for decent quality. That's still YIFY-quality video, which is a few steps below HBO/MAX, which happens to be among the lowest quality paid streams. ATV+ is killing it with 30Mbps 4K HDR+ video (it used to be as high as 48Mbps). Disney+ is close. The Netflix 4K plan serves up high 1080p bitrates, 2x better than their 1080p plan. Worth paying for.

Meh not everyone has a 4K 120Hz TV :)

I still have an old 1080p 32" LG from 10 years ago and it looks fine. In fact I find the motion upscaling weird, it gives this creepy uncanny effect.

I still download H264 too because not all of my devices support H265 yet.

I was thinking about something new but they're just too expensive.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#358

Post by Mistletoe »

SurgeArrest wrote: post #63

Netflix has a problem that the front page is now filled with "B-rated" rather than "A-rated" content for more money than before. The amount of content that they spent money on in the past is hardly discoverable, genre search is barely exposed in the interface. You have to rely on 3rd party sites to find links to category selections, say Epic movies based on true events... good luck finding what they have in this cate…

The funny thing is they want to have a tech company valuation and everything you are describing is a tech issue that is easily solvable but they won’t do it.

They are a content creation company/studio now. Their price to earnings (PE) ratio is 45 for some reason and they are part of the FAANG acronym for some reason. I can’t even find anything I want to watch on there and we cancelled it until Stranger Things comes out again. Then we will cancel again. The PE for Universal Studios is 12. Paramount is -7.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#359

Post by boomboomsubban »

al_borland wrote: post #109
noman-land wrote: post #21

I sometimes wonder if more piracy will lead to more product placement directly in content and other insidious advertising strategies that would make up for the content being scooped up for free. It's still millions of eyes, after all.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but Subway used to be big on doing product placements with shows on their last leg. They probably got it for a steal, and they made it really, really obvious. For example, the episode of Community where Subway is a person. Chuck did a lot of obvious Subway stuff at the end too. I remember Zachary Levi (Chuck) posting on Twitter to buy Subway for the finale in hopes that it would b…

>I’ve actually been surprised the more subtle product placement isn’t more common

It's more common than you seem to think, just not omnipresent. Look for beer advertising in any scene that takes place at a bar, that's a scenario where not having it would look more out of place so it's almost always done.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#360

Post by fxtentacle »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

It's a content problem.

I cancelled my subscriptions when I noticed that I'm not using them anymore. Years ago, I remember me and my friends were eagerly awaiting every new episode of Agents of Shield or The Expanse. But when I was browsing the IMDB top movies and top TV series recently, I just didn't find anything I wanted to watch (and that hadn't been in cinema half a year ago, thus old). The result is that recently, me and my friends all watched a lot less movies and instead played more video games.

TLDR: Netflix's low-effort content is losing against video games.

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