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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

#101

Post by benterix »

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…

> old and foreign content

I don't really mean old, I'd even say old movies were "better" in the sense of more variety, also foreign is often not a problem provided it's good (my favorite genre here is comedies like Norsemen or British Ghosts).

What I really dislike is this bland, characterless, boring, inauthentic, unengaging, but neverending stream of pulp that Netflix is producing and promoting. Most people I know just got fed up with it.

Personally I watch maybe one movie a month, and when I do, I make sure my time won't get wasted.

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

#102

Post by troupo »

watwut wrote: post #89
troupo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it. As if Disney only owned original content like Mickey Mouse. Or as if Disney didn't own huge swaths of culture.

You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have. Yes copyright should be shorter. Yes, these companies abuse artists to the maximum they can away with. But there is zero reason to create state monopoly around this.

> You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have.

I'm not eleveating Disney to anything. It already is at that level. It owns huge swaths of, well, everything spanning back decades.

For example there was a minor viral news that Winnie the Pooh finally entered public domain. Well, Disney owned it exclusively from 1953 to 2021. All of it, from print to video.

Pooh is just the most famous and advertised example. Since Disney owns most of movie and TV production in the States, through that alone they own rights to a huge number of written works. That's before we go into how many audio and visual media they own.

Disney isn't just Mickey Mouse and Marvel. There was an article on HN yesterday on how the author "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" finally got the rights back after 35 years: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/

Next time you watch a movie you like or even read a book you like there's a very high chance it's owned by Disney (or some other huge license holder).

Or if you can't find that movie or book you like anywhere? Same reason.

> But there is zero reason to create state monopoly around this.

I didn't say anything about this or imply anything of the kind.

Besides, copyright literally exists only due to state exercising its power.

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

#103

Post by helsinkiandrew »

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…

> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly

That sounds similar to the 1984 Cable Communications Act (where large cable operators were required to lease channels to others, separating content delivery from content creation) but in reverse! requiring content producers to licence content to distributors

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

#104

Post by whitehexagon »

EliteGadget wrote: post #67
dotancohen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jellyfin is how you're serving it. Where is the content coming from?

They said Bluray and DVD. Some of us have quite a few DVD/Blurays that we could rip. A lot of good stuff can be found in bargain bins and closing down sales (I got all the 9 series of the X-files for next to nothing). I am personally not bothering to rip them and download them instead, but I am not paying like 5 times for the same movie/tv series that I have already paid for. A lot of films have been re-released now…

I have to investigate this further. I bought a bunch of bluray UHD documentaries that I cant watch because my 4K TV is a 'monitor'. Which I only found out was a problem after also having to buy some expensive 4K HDMI cable which was supposed to fix the problem.

Since I couldn't work out how to backup the discs, I now also just buy 2nd hand DVDs for when I need my pacifier box. Anyway, for this old man it turns out that the old movies are the best; no shaky camera and clear audible dialog. Plus some of the modern discs are now also polluted with adverts, horrible.

If we lived in a sensible world, buying the item once should give me rights to every format available. I might even consider digital purchases again if that was the case, especially since we have seen too many of these services fold and take our purchases with them.

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

#105

Post by watwut »

troupo wrote: post #102
watwut wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have. Yes copyright should be shorter. Yes, these companies abuse artists to the maximum they can away with. But there is zero reason to create state monopoly around this.

> You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have. I'm not eleveating Disney to anything. It already is at that level . It owns huge swaths of, well, everything spanning back decades. For example there was a minor viral news that Winnie the Pooh finally entered public domain. Well, Disney owned it exclusively from 1953 to 2021. All of it, from print to video. Pooh is just the mo…

There are hundreds minor viral news about a lot of stuff daily. I am not even trying to keep up with it all.

> Next time you watch a movie you like or even read a book you like there's a very high chance it's owned by Disney (or some other huge license holder).

And in all seriousness, very likely not, because the ones you keep mentioning are not the stuff I would read or my kids would read. My kids do watch some superheroes, I dont because I find that super boring. Like I said, you can happily ignore the Disney.

I agree that they abuse artists to the max, that artists should have more rights and corporations less of them. But, Disney is really not necessary and ignoring it is perfectly workable strategy.

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

#106

Post by mlrtime »

pu_pe wrote: post #73
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.

Same, I tried it only because its spoken highly here and I dropped it after paying for a year. I was not able to find what I wanted at least 25% of the time, not worth it to pay.

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

#107

Post by b112 »

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…

Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it.

That's not the point. The parent was saying "if you own content and display content, you must license it", not "the price needs to be reasonable".

Typically, there are ways to do this. One way is forcing a company's distribution and streaming to be separate, and this already exists in some other parts of the market.

So if Disney sells Mickey Mouse content $x to its own streaming service for $5, they have to do the same for Netflix. Disney can still set the price. It just has to pay it as well, and that reflects on its own balance sheet. The problems involved in regulating this have already been solved in other markets, it's a solved issue.

Now, you can typically enter volume sales agreements still. So Disney streaming can buy 100k 'streaming options' for $4 if they hit the volume. But that means the same agreement has to be available to, say Netflix.

Of course, the same will be true for any Netflix created content!

Nothing is perfect, but this is the sort of common carry stuff that separates out 'cable companies' from 'TV studios', and there's been loads of legislation about this over the years.

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

#108

Post by mlrtime »

867-5309 wrote: post #46
DeathArrow wrote: post #20

Stremio is free. Real Debrid costs about $3 per month, though.

RD started honouring DMCA around a year ago and I jumped ship to Premiumize. have RD since reverted their stance?

Does Premiumize have a fuse mount driver and something like the debrid manager page?

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

#110

Post by herunan »

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…

It was inevitable. Netflix rose thanks to studios and distributors selling them rights to content for peanuts. Streaming wasn’t taken seriously as it wasn’t a main source of revenue. Some years later and it’s a completely different story. Demand for streaming sky-rocketed, digital rights value increased and now every studio wants to create their own walled gardens.
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