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Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

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Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#151

Post by JustSomeNobody »

CJefferson wrote: post #87
netwanderer3 wrote: post #74

Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days are recycled garbage. People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.

I'm disappointed, but not suprised, to see this post so high. Despite all the ways of watching films at home, cinema is having its most successful years ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.

We like to see big movies (Avengers, Star Wars, etc) on the big screen. Everything else, we much prefer at home.

But, I don't disagree with OP. Movies are either Nth in a series are a remake of a remake or just meh.

Explosions are fun on the big screen, but that's about all.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#152

Post by dillonmckay »

dewey wrote: post #100
procinct wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to always use a VPN for Netflix but then they started cracking down and it stopped working. Are you still able to use a VPN to view content from a different region?

It also depends on which country you want to watch through a VPN. The most desired countries like US / UK usually have a lot of working VPNs available as the VPN companies put a lot of resources into keeping them working. Using a VPN for a smaller country usually doesn't work in my experience.

I always liked the idea of using VPNs from different countries to see what local and regional shows and movies are offered in the respective region.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#153

Post by paulcole »

vageli wrote: post #71
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever works for you I guess, lol.

> Whatever works for you I guess, lol. Do you consider libraries to be facilitating piracy? If not, how do Causality1's examples differ?

I would if my local library uploaded torrents to Pirate Bay.

But instead they check out the copies they’ve paid for OR are in some kind of paid arrangement with a streaming service.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#154

Post by JustSomeNobody »

syrrim wrote: post #49
40acres wrote: post #22

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or lap…

Cable costs ~$60 per month. If the majority of people switch from cable to streaming, we can expect it to reach a similar price (because people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay that much and because existing hierarchies are set up to consume that much money). If a person isn't paying full price, it will be because they cannot access to every show. In either case, it will be more desirable than you are p…

> Cable costs ~$60 per month. If the majority of people switch from cable to streaming, we can expect it to reach a similar price (because people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay that much and because existing hierarchies are set up to consume that much money).

People also need to have internet and a lot of people have the two bundled. If people switch to all streaming services, the cable cartel will raise internet prices and finagle with their caps to gouge even more.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#155

Post by dillonmckay »

40acres wrote: post #22

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or lap…

I have a couple issues with this theory, based on general trends in technology and US infrastructure (barring Elon’s satellite internet).

Storage costs continue to decrease, while 1080p is good enough for most people.

A 4 TB drive is less than $100. 16TB drives are available.

Combined with h.265, that can hold a decent amount of movies and tv shows.

These costs continue to decrease, while capacity continues to increase.

On the other hand, we see little investment in US broadband deployments or upgrades, and these capacities continue to increase in price, without any benefit.

Additionally, the majority of the US that does have broadband, has nothing close to symmetric upload ability.

Maybe I agree with you!

I think affordable internet could be the straw that breaks the camels back.

If you are being charged for every byte transferred, it makes no sense to transfer the same data over and over again, because you enjoy watching it.

Store it once locally, and consume at will.

The whole idea of streaming is kinda dumb when you think about it, it is basically a poorly implemented remote file storage. It is really a product manifestation of IP laws, not technological possibilities.

Probably wasteful from an energy perspective, too.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#156

Post by turk73 »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #133
netwanderer3 wrote: post #74

Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days are recycled garbage. People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.

Weirdly I was thinking of cancelling all subscriptions for a while. See how long I go before resubbing and what I resub to. The real threat to these services is that attention is finite, as is my money. I can't afford to have lots of services with low utility.

0 subs. Doing fine for well over a year now. Netflix was the last to go, but go it had to.

We borrow movies and tv shows from our local library system which has a pretty decent catalog. I own a few movies on Amazon, maybe by 1-2 a year.

We rarely turn on the tv in the family for actual television use, but I built an OTA antenna that pulls in the usual local stations except NBC is a weak signal.

This isn't how I pictured the 21 century. The greed got too much, I guess.

ETA: I have a 9 year old son so comic book movies have been kind of fun for us. I am personally sick of them, but Marvel did an ok job. I'm just shocked that something that was so unbelievably nerdy in the '80s would have such a huge cultural impact today. If you liked comic books in the '80s you were not in any way "cool."

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#157

Post by maeln »

dillonmckay wrote: post #150
maeln wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I travel to different countries and pull up Netflix, I see shows available in that country that aren't available in another. It's annoying. This is, a lot of time, not Netflix fault (or only partially). Distribution contract with exclusivity clauses can have been signed before Netflix ultimately implanted in the country. It means, they cannot get the right to stream even if they wanted before X years. They als…

The majority of users don’t care about the intricacies of international IP laws. People just want to watch a show or movie, and it is easier to travel to another country to watch something, than procuring it in one’s own country?

Yes okay, people also don't care about the intricacies of gravity but it's still affect them. Just like you cant decide how gravity works, Netflix cant get licensing however they want.

Also, I highly doubt that traveling to an other country is more easy than getting the show in you own country. Unless it is banned in your country, the cost of a blue-ray is usually way cheaper than a flight ticket.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#158

Post by paganel »

navigatesol wrote: post #140
paganel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that Hollywood still made movies for the the 30+ non-geek audience of which I am a part of, I almost literally fell asleep during the last Avengers movie. There are some gems here and there (the last two Peele movies) but they are getting really far and few between.

> There are some gems here and there (the last two Peele movies) but they are getting really far and few between. What do you consider "Hollywood"? Get Out and Us were both independent movies, were they not? Hollywood has always been Hollywood.

I thought that Get Out and Us had at least some Hollywood funding, looks like I was wrong. For example “Cape Fear” and “The Fugitive” made in the early ‘90s were pure Hollywood movies that were interesting for grown-ups, too, I fail to see something like that filmed nowadays (both of them were remakes, too, proof that you can film a remake and still produce an interesting movie after all). I also miss smart action-oriented/thriller movies like “Enemy of the State”.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#159

Post by oblio »

oliwarner wrote: post #127
oblio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not. Inflation adjusted, Endgame's about to beat Avatar. Only Gone with the Wind is ahead. There's tons more money out there now.

Those aren't the numbers I see [1]. For domestic US, Endgame is in 18th place. Why not worldwide? Even the US numbers are rickety. There are multiple ways to account for inflation, multiple ways of record counting for sales, trying to factor in re-showings, etc. Adding on multiple currencies and economies is a power of extra complexity. > There's tons more money out there now Yes. Money. My whole thing here has been…

The US economy hasn't grown much, adjusted for inflation, compared to the world economy. That's primarily because of the rest of the world was much poorer.

And your numbers are not accurate, I think. Inflation from 1950 to the present day has been 900% if this site is to be believed: http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1950?amount=100

So the 50 cent cinema ticket from back then would be 5 dollars now and instead it's around 9 dollars. Double, but not 18x.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#160

Post by whoisthemachine »

I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are different publishing methods. BitTorrent is one fairly effective publisher that does offer content for free, but it does require a consumer to take on some costs: risk of going to a sketchy site and risk to their computer (viruses). If a streaming service is good enough and cheap enough, it can offer enough value to a consumer that the consumer will choose the streaming service over BitTorrent.

Considering that this is going to require streaming services to really reduce the cost to the consumer, how can the streaming services have a sustainable business model over the long term to support themselves? The subscription model is one way, but the gaming industry may be ahead here: charge for each individual item, but make it really cheap. For example, a consumer might scoff at paying $3 per episode of GoT, but $1 or $.50 might be pretty nice... add that up for a season, and your streaming service has made almost as much as a subscription would have made. Of course, this requires streaming services to continue to offer new, good content to continue to entice consumers, which they might not like having to do.

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