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Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

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Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#481

Post by holy_city »

kerkeslager wrote: post #406
holy_city wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the assumption here is that people open up a service knowing what they want to watch beforehand and/or without knowing where to find it. Those parameters are rarer than you'd think.

So your argument is that the value-added of i.e. Netflix is that it allows people to avoid typing i.e. "crime TV shows 2019" into their browser's search bar?

It's not really a comment on value-add, more on content consumption habits. All I know for sure is that exclusive content is the biggest factor in lowering churn and showing it up front in a catalog is the best way to get people to know it exists. And if you keep them on your platform, they're not going to even think about typing a query into a browser to find out what to watch next - you've already told them.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#482

Post by cgriswald »

CivilianZero wrote: post #448
eyegor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major service but the new era of fragmentation has drastically expanded it. We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Then we have scripts scraping the top x movies/shows from torrent sites once a week and a…

“It’s easier to setup and purchase and manage a shared server, write and manage scripts, and develop a frontend for managing the content than it is to search an app/a couple apps.” Can you just admit you don’t want to pay services out of spite? No one could possibly rationalize this as being easier.

When effort is required is as important as how much effort is required. Sure, if I want to watch something on my Plex server I have to have put the content on the server in the first place, but I can do that at my leisure. When I want to watch that content, it’s there, and I don’t have to spend 10 minutes with my dinner getting cold while I try to find the thing I want to watch.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#483

Post by on_and_off »

elif wrote: post #367
dfxm12 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to call switching libraries "inconvenient". We're talking about opening a new tab or switching an app. A few finger budges for ~2hr of entertainment. I don't know what to say if you find that so inconvenient, especially compared to the effort it would take to go to a torrent site, find a high quality stream, make sure it has the right special features you're looking for, or what have you, to pirate…

The inconvenient part is I have to labor for income to pay for all these services. That's really a bummer because I prefer to not labor. Additionally, I am in 6 countries for 9 months of this year. It is inconvenient that YouTube TV tells me the $35 I am paying them buys me absolutely nothing, despite the app saying "some content and local channels" will not be available, Netflix forces me to stop halfway through a s…

Ouch moving countries is something I did not touch because of what a nightmare it is for many of these services and because it is not the "common" case.

It took me one year to transfer my google account to another country.

I am not doing it again.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#484

Post by TeMPOraL »

scarface74 wrote: post #474
TeMPOraL wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one or two of the people I know personally have an iPhone; I'm in Europe, and here Android is the dominant hardware. I do sometimes see people with iPhones as I take the bus, recently increasingly often, but it's still far from dominant platform here. As I said, there are many similar sites - this one is primarily targeted to Polish audience, where Android is dominant. Maybe a different site works better on S…

According to the stats -- iOS has a 25% market share in Europe. ( https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe ). If it is the same trend as in the US, iOS is more heavily represented by the more affluent population.

More affluent population is more likely to just pay for half dozen streaming services, forgetting they're even subscribed to some of them. But all the remaining majority of the population is both price-sensitive and more likely to use Android.

Anyway, I'm not sure what's your point here.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#485

Post by fucking_tragedy »

scarface74 wrote: post #480
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They overlap and aren't mutually exclusive.

One is better to build a business off of.

That's fine, someone else will find a way to profit from the situation you won't consider.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#486

Post by deogeo »

holy_city wrote: post #398
elif wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inconvenient part is I have to labor for income to pay for all these services. That's really a bummer because I prefer to not labor. Additionally, I am in 6 countries for 9 months of this year. It is inconvenient that YouTube TV tells me the $35 I am paying them buys me absolutely nothing, despite the app saying "some content and local channels" will not be available, Netflix forces me to stop halfway through a s…

It's my understanding that the issues with international content distribution have to do with regulatory differences across borders, not the streaming services themselves.

> regulatory differences

Interesting way of saying "corporate exclusivity agreements", which is what this ends up being in 99 out of 100 cases.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#487

Post by kerkeslager »

hansthehorse wrote: post #463
kerkeslager wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. Compare these experiences: 1. Search Netflix. Discover it's not there. 2. Search Amazon. Discover they have it, but it's not available for free as part of your subscription. 3. Search Hulu. Leave Hulu, because it's not there. 4. Finally go back to Amazon and rent the movie, not sure why you're paying for Prime if you still have to pay on top of that for hal…

Or just go to JustWatch and let it tell you what your stream / rent / buy options are.

The fact that there's a tool to get around how janky the streaming service market is, does not prove that the streaming service market isn't janky.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#488

Post by scarface74 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #484
scarface74 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the stats -- iOS has a 25% market share in Europe. ( https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe ). If it is the same trend as in the US, iOS is more heavily represented by the more affluent population.

More affluent population is more likely to just pay for half dozen streaming services, forgetting they're even subscribed to some of them. But all the remaining majority of the population is both price-sensitive and more likely to use Android. Anyway, I'm not sure what's your point here.

That the people who are willing to jump through hoops to save $8.99 a month are not Disney’s or any other services target demographics. You can make quite a bit of money ignoring poor people and staying out of the race to the bottom. See Apple.

Or more relevant see Disney. Disney makes a killing with its resorts where the price per ticket is $100+ per day and most people pay for more than one day, but souvenirs, and stay at one of their hotels.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#489

Post by scarface74 »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #485
scarface74 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is better to build a business off of.

That's fine, someone else will find a way to profit from the situation you won't consider.

Good luck with that with all of the content being tied up by the studios.

Ask all of the money losing Android OEMs about how profitable it is in a commodity market trying to serve people who aren’t willing/able to spend money.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#490

Post by kerkeslager »

holy_city wrote: post #481
kerkeslager wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that the value-added of i.e. Netflix is that it allows people to avoid typing i.e. "crime TV shows 2019" into their browser's search bar?

It's not really a comment on value-add, more on content consumption habits. All I know for sure is that exclusive content is the biggest factor in lowering churn and showing it up front in a catalog is the best way to get people to know it exists. And if you keep them on your platform, they're not going to even think about typing a query into a browser to find out what to watch next - you've already told them.

> And if you keep them on your platform, they're not going to even think about typing a query into a browser to find out what to watch next - you've already told them.

It is sad to me that this is how you consider your fellow human beings.

Putting aside how disrespectful this assumption is to your users, I don't think it's true for all your users. It may be true for enough of your users that it looks like a good idea in A/B testing, but I'd guess there are enough users who don't want to be treated like a child being told what to watch, that some significant number of them are going to go elsewhere. Some of those who leave will go pirate the content they want.

Ultimately, I think bundling content with your platform and trying to force users to buy one to have the other is anticompetitive, and harmful to users, so it shouldn't be surprising that some users are looking outside platforms for their content.

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