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The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

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Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#101

Post by cercatrova »

It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services.

- You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering.

- Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content.

    - Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can type in a show into a piracy site, click the magnet icon, and start immediately watching it. I personally don't even use Plex, Radarr or Sonarr myself, it was just a suggestion. In contrast, I can't just type any show into Netflix and watch it, since it might not even be on Netflix! Then I'd need to get on justwatch.com just to figure out which streaming service is playing the show. This is harder than piracy in my view.
- You can use whatever media player you want without having to go through a browser and its DRM. I use mpv and filters like Anime4k to automatically upscale my content, something that I cannot do via a browser or otherwise without the physical file on my hard drive.

- You're not geo-locked to content, just because you're not in the target country doesn't mean you wouldn't want to watch it.

- Oh, and you can share with as many of your friends as you want without a restrictive password sharing penalty like Netflix seems to want to start enforcing.

Now, what would be a good model to stop such piracy? Something like Steam or Spotify but for movies and shows:

Perhaps a paid Plex server where I get all content from every distributor for a flat fee, and the service provider can then pay out to each distributor their portion of my subscription based on number of views. I retain access to the physical files without DRM so that I can do with them what I want, such as applying mpv filters.

Hell, it's probably in the best interest of all distributors to band together because clearly everyone having their own subscription service is a race to the bottom. See Netflix here struggling to make original content because major distributors like Disney and Paramount have already left. See CNN+ that shut down one month after starting. Due to the tragedy of the commons, where each distributor thinks they can make more money via starting their own service, this hypothetical new service would have to be some sort of joint venture between them all so that no one is incentivized to start their own.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#102

Post by jimmar »

Lots of people are complaining about terrible content on Netflix. Years ago, Netflix was praised for its "long tail"--basically it could have content that appealed to people with diverse interests. But it seems like people now see the long tail as useless junk and would prefer a shorter tail with more concentrated quality.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#103

Post by bradly »

cercatrova wrote: post #101

It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services. - You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering. - Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content. - Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can typ…

Not being able to set or see an actual resolution when using Netflix on my TV is so frustrating.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#104

Post by 8organicbits »

motogpjimbo wrote: post #100
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only use Netflix and Prime, and both feel really stale to me. It's all "content" - good to very good production values designed to fill a gap and appeal to a demographic. But very repetitive and production line, with no passion projects, nothing too arty or quirky, nothing outside of the box, no surprises. Some of it is quite watchable, but none of it is exciting or fresh. It's all some combination of stock soapy c…

Throwing money at graduate filmmakers and telling them to follow their passions would all but guarantee a catalogue full of $CURRENT_DAY political messaging, which would be poison for subscriber retention.

Dont throw all the money there, just some to have some unique, quirky, passionate, fresh content. Surely people can skip titles they don't like.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#105

Post by aiiane »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #92

Honestly for me I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad. I wish instead of pushing shows to me best on algorithms, it would just let me browse categories and recent additions etc in a simpler way. Maybe categorised by year.

I've always preferred to use https://unogs.com/ which lets you search with a lot of advanced search parameters and the resulting pages are much easier to browse, and then just pull up specific titles on Netflix itself.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#106

Post by npongratz »

motogpjimbo wrote: post #100
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only use Netflix and Prime, and both feel really stale to me. It's all "content" - good to very good production values designed to fill a gap and appeal to a demographic. But very repetitive and production line, with no passion projects, nothing too arty or quirky, nothing outside of the box, no surprises. Some of it is quite watchable, but none of it is exciting or fresh. It's all some combination of stock soapy c…

Throwing money at graduate filmmakers and telling them to follow their passions would all but guarantee a catalogue full of $CURRENT_DAY political messaging, which would be poison for subscriber retention.

> ... would all but guarantee a catalogue full of $CURRENT_DAY political messaging, which would be poison for subscriber retention.

Seems to me that's what they already have; which upon reflection, is indeed probably why they're currently having problems with subscriber retention.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#108

Post by rekoil »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
0xTJ wrote: post #21

The entire TV/movie streaming industry is pushing the world back to a cable-like one, and that's already pushing people back to pirating. There are a lot of people who were content to pay for a couple services, but even without any sports, you can easily be paying for 3 streaming services for ~$60, just to get content that used to be on Netflix (plus whatever's been released since). Once you add one or two sports, yo…

> you can easily be paying for 3 streaming services for ~$60 You can easily buy and cancel what you want when you want, so that is the not cable-like development. I do not see why people should fee they are owed all the content in the world for $x. The important part is the creator/curator/seller of the content and the purchaser of the content are not held hostage by a monopoly/monopsony distributor.

If people really start doing that en-masse, then the next thing the streaming services will implement is that cancellation means you lose access immediately.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#109

Post by yosito »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #92

Honestly for me I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad. I wish instead of pushing shows to me best on algorithms, it would just let me browse categories and recent additions etc in a simpler way. Maybe categorised by year.

Absolutely, Netflix would be 1000 times better if they just let me sort, filter and find content based on concrete metadata. Instead, I'm forced to rely on their recommendation algorithms that purport to know what I want to watch, but for some reason keep recommending low quality content in languages I'm just not interested in. I'd be happy if I could just filter Netflix to only show me content with original audio in languages I speak. The few shows I'm interested in watching with subtitles or dubbed audio are things I can search for on a case by base basis. And don't get me started on Netflix's non-intuitive categories which seem more intent on forcing me to view ideologically motivated content than on helping me to find content in a category I'm interested in. I don't want to search for "Christian Films with Family Values" nor do I want to watch "Films With Black Female Leads". Nothing wrong with those types of films, but I'm searching by "Action", "Romance", "Comedy", "Sci-Fi" etc.
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