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What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

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Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#71

Post by rusk »

bambax wrote: post #35
chii wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how they ruined the opportunity presented netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service. I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective is…

Yes there should be something like a "mechanical license". Content owners would set their own price but it would be the same for everyone and they shouldn't have the power to pick their licensees.

This also solves the sports coverage issues. The clubs still make money but it’s the media companies that must compete on quality of service, punditry etc rather than it being an exclusive license to make money

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#72

Post by andrepd »

ugurs wrote: post #8

Mubi can be a slightly cheaper alternative. They now provide one movie-theater ticket per week in some countries, which is a good deal if you enjoy watching films on a slightly bigger screen with slightly louder speakers.

There's one called Filmin, also focused on independent and art cinema.

Good value for your money rather than rewarding enshittification, spyware, and slop.

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#73

Post by pu_pe »

blackdivine wrote: post #18

Can anyone give me an honest review of Kagi? When AI can summarize the web results and search for me, I have stopped using Google.

The perception of Kagi at HN is extremely positive, but in my personal experience the search quality reminds me more of Bing than Google, with Kagi sometimes surfacing puzzling results first. Also, I wasn't thrilled about giving them access to all my search data. As flawed as Google may be, I still believe they have better privacy standards than Kagi.

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#74

Post by xandrius »

dotancohen wrote: post #60
chii wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how they ruined the opportunity presented netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service. I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective is…

> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly. Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it. Now you could argue that some (much) older works are part of culture, and being exposed to that culture is necessary to function in society. But that then becomes an issue of how long copyright is necessary or reasonable. New works most…

Yeah but think of any other piece of media and how people might be forced to start a brand new subscription just to see it.

It's not about Mickey Mouse but it's about you wanting to watch the next season of something and having to make a choice: either submit to the monopoly or skip.

Consumer protection should be there to prevent this kind of abuse of IP.

Imagine if every single individual piece of art was in its own individual subscription-based location in the world ran by a different owner, being the only way to enjoy it. That'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#75

Post by contrarian1234 »

chii wrote: post #17
silisili wrote: post #11

It's weird. When Netflix came about, I was excited to dump all the bespoke pirating stuff that it replaced. I didn't mind paying for content, in fact, I was glad to. Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, ther…

> how they ruined the opportunity presented netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service. I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective is…

I mean.. if Netflix offered Disney more money then they wouldn't have felt it necessary to launch their own service. I think they simply underpayed or overplayed their cards. It's hard to imagine Disney with it's own service is getting the same amount of people viewing its content.

Having the services fractured just ends up with everyone making less money. Both the streaming services and the IP holders

Its possible Disney just completely overestimates how much they can make on their own - but market forces should correct for that eventually. We aren't privy to the accounting that went in to the decisions. They currently are making some amount of money off of their streaming service. If Netflix could offer substantially more than that amount (and more customers this way), then I don't see why they wouldn't shut it down

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#77

Post by jbstack »

gwd wrote: post #53
silisili wrote: post #11

It's weird. When Netflix came about, I was excited to dump all the bespoke pirating stuff that it replaced. I didn't mind paying for content, in fact, I was glad to. Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, ther…

There's a sort of joke in academia, about the "least publishable unit" for a paper: Since "how many papers produced" is much easier to measure than "impact on a field", one way to try to game the system is to figure out the smallest amount of research that can be called "one paper", and publish just that, to maximize the papers / research effort ratio. What we're seeing now is the same thing for streaming services. S…

Or you can pay £0 per month for 99% of the content.

I'm a bit like the parent comment. I've always wanted to be able to pay a monthly fee (even a high one, say £50 a month) to have access to a good quality selection of movies and TV shows. The thing is, it's always bugged me that you can get a much better experience by pirating than by paying for legitimate access. That seems the opposite to how things should work.

This pre-dates streaming. DVDs came with FBI warnings and other screens that couldn't be fast-forwarded or skipped. You couldn't buy a DVD in the US and play it in a DVD player in Europe because the "region" didn't match. You couldn't easily transfer it to watch on a device without a DVD player because of the DRM.

All of this means that, even ignoring the fact that it's free, it's just far more straightforward to torrent a movie and watch it wherever you want using whatever app you want.

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#78

Post by batiudrami »

xandrius wrote: post #74
dotancohen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly. Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it. Now you could argue that some (much) older works are part of culture, and being exposed to that culture is necessary to function in society. But that then becomes an issue of how long copyright is necessary or reasonable. New works most…

Yeah but think of any other piece of media and how people might be forced to start a brand new subscription just to see it. It's not about Mickey Mouse but it's about you wanting to watch the next season of something and having to make a choice: either submit to the monopoly or skip. Consumer protection should be there to prevent this kind of abuse of IP. Imagine if every single individual piece of art was in its own…

There is tonnes of private art in the world you are simply not able to see at all.

Many of these TV shows also come to DVD/Blu-Ray eventually.

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#79

Post by user34283 »

yason wrote: post #57
user34283 wrote: post #14

In the past I used to pay for Netflix, Spotify, and even YT Premium. However, they keep raising prices every year. In the past Netflix 4K cost like $22 and with family sharing it was about $5 - totally acceptable. Now they cracked down on family sharing in different households and charge $37. No way. Spotify: they increased prices again last month to $20 USD for the individual subscription. I bought a 12 month Colomb…

YouTube has the best content that you absolutely can't and won't find in commercial productions, and exactly because they aren't producing anything, they're just a platform. I think the sub-$10 premium without music was in the right price range but even at $20+ it proposes much, much more value than your random streaming service. However, what they're not clear about is how the Premium fees actually land on the YT ch…

45% of your subscription benefits Google as far as I know.

I'm not willing to pay $20 a month for watching like an hour or two of mediocre homemade content Google did not even produce.

Re: What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription

#80

Post by akho »

bambax wrote: post #35
chii wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how they ruined the opportunity presented netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service. I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective is…

Yes there should be something like a "mechanical license". Content owners would set their own price but it would be the same for everyone and they shouldn't have the power to pick their licensees.

Or just enforce United States v. Paramount Pictures.
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