151–160 of 170 posts
I cancelled due to ads a few weeks ago after 10+ years of Prime. I was also sick of yelling at Alexa who pretends not to understand me. Streaming has lost its appeal to me compared to owning the discs. eBay is especially affordable now with so many Goodwill sellers offering used blu-rays.
What would it take to have an open alternative to the various license-required Dolby formats? Are there any initiatives already underway? Is it just algorithms and software or do they also make codec chips or some other kind of required hardware?
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Isn't the content and licensing costs are the majority of their costs? Honestly asking, I never assumed infrastructure and bandwidth might be the majority
It depends on the service. For Disney and Paramount+ they already own the IP and the costs then would be storage + bandwidth + metadata/transcoding servers + engineer time. Of those, the bulk would be bandwidth. Similar for content that’s owned by the platform. Netflix, Apple, and others invested in to original programming and in those cases there’s again no need to license.
The fifth paragraph goes directly to Qui Bono: It costs them licencing fees to people like Dolby Laboratories. So, it's the kind of choice which drives directly to outflows of revenue. They made a bet less people will cancel, than the net outflow of licences, and those who pay $2.99 are on their way to being made to pay more rather than meeting the licence-tax.
Prime Video is in that weird spot where most people have low expectations and don't feel like they paid for it. There were already pre-roll ads (for other prime shows) under some conditions, so people who stuck through them will probably also stick through the new sponsored ads I guess. I think this will be the straw in the camel's back for only a small slice of their members, especially as Netflix is also enshittify…
It looks like these streaming services have been hemorrhaging cash for years now and they just can't hide it any more. They're going to have to take drastic steps to try to become profitable - remains to be seen whether customers will bite. OTOH, we don't have the infrastructure to go back to the days of DVD rentals.
I salute with happiness everything that is disliked by people, multimedia is a waste of time, free shipping is shallow consumerism, well done amazon!
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That the maintenance of the rule of law requires One True Man to stand outside the law and protect us through extrajudicial killing and torture. It is a statement on the core concept of law and justice.
Ok, and what are the politics of that statement, if any?
Note that in the past we have had pop culture artifacts that argue the opposite, that stand for the triumph of the rule of law over individuals who arrogate extrajudicial powers to themselves. "A Few Good Men" was such a statement.
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See also every television/cable network ever. Every season a few shows would rise to the top and a few would get put out of the misery, you just move on and hope the good bets make more money than the bad bets burn.
I don't get why this would be an issue for Prime. They don't have to fill up a schedule so they can sell ad slots. They can make as little or as much content as they want. They don't need to make a "Veronica's Closet" to cram in between "Seinfeld" and "ER".
You are often buying a show based on some scripts or based on a pilot. Pilots are, generally, not a good representation of what a show can be. Often they can be weak because the actors and writers still haven't found character voice etc.
With rings of power they bought some licenses for an IP THEN made a show... at that point you have a significant sunk cost and there is pressure to get SOMETHING made.
Maybe some of the actors are weak on the show, maybe the show just looks bad once you get it, maybe qualitywise it's fine but it just doesn't click with audiences.
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Also 'The Boys' is quite popular, 'Bosch' and 'Reacher' are very popular.. there are a few others that do well. If you are old enough think back to the haydays of the network television evening programming. There were hits, there were misses, there was tons of stuff in between. For every 'Friends' there is a 'Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place'.
2GGPP launched Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillian and Susan Cryer from Silicon Valley. It’s a bit of a gem in its own way
I cancelled my Prime within 24hrs of them adding the ads to the base tier. Just isn't worth it anymore.
I only have prime for the actual amazon purchases and don't really use prime much except for the boys and invincible from to time to time. But even with that, this move makes me consider cancelling just to spite them.