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Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

joe-steel.com

231–240 of 289 posts

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#231
post #15

Basically there was a finite amount of content and a lot of it appeared on Netflix. Then 4+ services launched and a near fixed amount of content was divided by 4. Then they doubled the price. So now for a worse discovery experience you are effectively paying 8x the price.

I'm waiting for Freenet 2023 to reach 1.0, then someone can build our P2P piracy websites.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#232
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney is also a huge tech company, and has been one for a while. They didn't buy a system for managing theme parks off the shelf.

Disney is a huge tech company in the same way Lockheed Martin is a huge tech company.

DIG or Disney Internet Group circa the early naughts was legit talented and influentially working in technology. Then the pyramid of management death arrived.

Protip and disclaimer: never work for Disney as a contractor. They'll blame you for their own faults and bring the lawyers out on you for shiggles.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#233
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep thinking about Plex but I struggle with the idea of teaching my kids that stealing is okay. Like, for a little kid: "This kind of theft is okay, this kind of theft isn't." seems nuanced for a little kid.

I have a bigger struggle with trying to tell them "Someone in a special building far away can make up a rule that says I'm not allowed to arrange the bits in one section on my computer in the same order as the bits on somebody else's computer because they did it first. If enough special people agree, they can give themselves permission to come steal my money or put me in timeout in a cage for a long time." But then i…

Quite enjoyed that tank you.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone has experience with cancelling and switching services periodically so that you can access all the content, but not at the same time?

I don't but know folks who do. They keep track of things they want to watch until they get to the point where subscribing for a month makes sense then cancel at the end of the month. The hard part is keeping track of what you want to watch and what service it's on and whether it's still there when you want to watch.

That sounds like a lot of work.

I just subscribe every few months to each platform and see what they have new.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people think it is OK to steal media? I never understand it. After university, I reduced my media stealing habits by 99+%. During/before uni, I was broke and could not afford to buy media. (Not an excuse, but just the reality.) After uni, I had a job so I could afford to buy some media.

I think a lot of people intuitively understand that there's a difference between pirating the works of JRR Tolkein, him being wildly successful and not alive anymore, and doing the same to an up-and-coming author who's eating ramen a lot. There's no difference legally, though, which is a great object lesson in how there are sharp topological differences between the world of ethics and the world of human law. If you p…

> If you pay for Spotify rather than hacking it, you're really not supporting artists financially very much, right?

The majority of your money goes to the artist/right holder, "[Spotify has] an approx revenue split of 70/30 - so that’s 70% to the artist/rights holders and 30% to Spotify."[1]

[1] https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per....

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't but know folks who do. They keep track of things they want to watch until they get to the point where subscribing for a month makes sense then cancel at the end of the month. The hard part is keeping track of what you want to watch and what service it's on and whether it's still there when you want to watch.

justwatch.com helps a lot with this. For each show, it tells you in which steaming service it is available. You can also track and wishlist everything.

I use Reelgood app/site for this.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#237
post #177
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing for me is that the media companies that thought they could just launch their own streaming services and keep all the money for themselves completely devalued the engineering of Netflix. It was "FAANG" for a reason. Viscerally, Netflix doesn't feel like it belongs alongside Google, but it did, because it was good. How does Disney fail to make money off Star Wars? Because they decided to build a shitty tech c…

I can’t square your comment with the fact that my experience of the other big name streaming services has been just as good as my experience with Netflix. They basically all just work almost all the time. If Netflix has more valuable technical excellence it should show in the customer experience of the product.

I disagree. Amazon Prime has an obnoxious UI, HBO until recently at least was even worse. Those other providers feel like these airplane interfaces for media, there is some flimsiness to it.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cancel each service as soon as we subscribe (easy through Apple subscriptions. Most of the time we don’t even realise the month has passed and the service has cancelled until we want to watch something on the service, then it takes 15 seconds to resubscribe.

Apple has changed the game in so many ways. This is definitely one of them.

Were any of the services hard to cancel before Apple? I didn't think so. Maybe Amazon Prime (which is more than just a streaming service). For the rest, I don't recall any dark patterns or required phone calls to some sort of "retention specialist". Just go to the website and click cancel. If anything, it was Netflix that led the way on this, and set the example that the others followed. Am I missing something?

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I doubt just because there are 4x streaming platforms there are suddenly 4x studios capable of producing even a low budget show. Knowing nothing of media production, but I assume there are a large number of technical roles which are advisable if trying to produce mainstream content.

The number of scripted shows tripled from 2009 to 2022. From 210 to 599. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/peak-tv-2022-co... !

An often-heard complaint is that Netflix cancels shows after a single season, despite there being a really enthusiastic fanbase for them.

The number of scripted shows is completely irrelevant when they don't say anything about the total number of episodes. Instead of six seasons of one show, you could just be getting one season each for six different shows.

Hard to call that an improvement when it leads to shows getting cancelled right as they start to become interesting, leading to their storyline never getting resolved.

Re: Please Pay for a Year of Nothing

#240
post #147
post #15

Basically there was a finite amount of content and a lot of it appeared on Netflix. Then 4+ services launched and a near fixed amount of content was divided by 4. Then they doubled the price. So now for a worse discovery experience you are effectively paying 8x the price.

The thing for me is that the media companies that thought they could just launch their own streaming services and keep all the money for themselves completely devalued the engineering of Netflix. It was "FAANG" for a reason. Viscerally, Netflix doesn't feel like it belongs alongside Google, but it did, because it was good. How does Disney fail to make money off Star Wars? Because they decided to build a shitty tech c…

So now we start complaining about competition and not care about monopolies at all? You seriously want all the power given to Netflix?
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