Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#661

Post by autoexec » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

raddan wrote: post #595

mlsu wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix was still competing with blu-ray/DVD/cable at that point. "why should I watch TV on the fiddly computer when I can just pop a disc in?" or "why should I turn on Netflix when there's clearly stuff on cable TV?" -- that was Netflix's competition in those days. Because there was competition, they had to lower prices and improve service to win consumers. Now, that competition is being destroyed. Rest assured, Net…

Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point, although I would accept that discs aren't exactly winning. Most of the content I watch comes from blu-rays, and with a few exceptions (The Americans, grr), most of the things I want to watch have been released on disc. In fact, there is a small community of film enthusiasts who continue to purchase media outright, e.g., https://www.blu-ray.com . I started using N…

> Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point

An increasing number of shows are never getting released on physical media to prevent this. The only thing streaming services are competing with in any meaningful way is piracy and I'm guessing piracy is going to get more and more popular the more greed/enshittification keeps making streaming platforms worse

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#662

Post by joquarky » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

themerone wrote: post #573

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, but I've always been a bit skeptical of that vision -- it implicitly relies on the assumption that "THE streaming service" will choose to make as much content available as technically and legally possible; they're imagining something like "Spotify but for movies and TV shows". But I was always worried about "Apple's App Store but for movies and TV shows": one company with ultimate gatekeeper sta…

HBO owns Westworld and stopped streaming it to avoid paying residuals.

If they don't make their content available legally, then it should go into the public domain.

Don't want this to happen to your content? Then don't release it to the public.

We need to bring back explicit copyright registration and renewals.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#663

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

PearlRiver wrote: post #244

jmkd wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.

This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic. But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content. It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the st…

Other issues also took their toll on movie theaters:

--Ticket prices of $20 or more per person.

--Jaw-dropping prices on snacks and drinks.

--People talking and using phones during the movie.

--30 minutes of ads before the movie. Not coming attractions but straight-up commercials when you've already paid $20 to be there.

--The general slop quality of most movies being made if you're not a comic book or video game fan (and frankly even if you are).

The above bullshit was enough that I stopped going to movie theaters more than about once per year. And then COVID happened.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#664

Post by havblue » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

echelon_musk wrote: post #544

n4r9 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of good lesser-known stuff on Netflix if you wade through the crap: * The Devil's Plan * Alice in Borderlands * Extraordinary Attorney Woo * Brassic * Back to Life * Intelligence * Black Doves * Top Boy * Mo * The Breakthrough * Borgen * Love Death & Robots * Scavenger's Reign As well as well-known stuff like Stranger Things and Squid Game as a sibling comment mentioned. [Edit: replies point out some of these ar…

IMO their only truly noteworthy production is BoJack Horseman.

Long Story Short was pretty good and less stressful than Bojack.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#665

Post by autoexec » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #383

nonethewiser wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)

Consumers don't care so much about consolidation as they care about not getting ripped off. When Netflix and Hulu were the only streaming platforms you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted. Now you pay more for a worse experience. Netflix at least has technical chops. Other studios (looking at you, Paramount-) put out barely functional apps because they know consumers ultimately will pay for…

Netflix may have the technical ability, but they don't deliver. Their UI just gets worse and worse in terms of usability and they keep cutting features on top of steadfastly refusing to provide features people have been asking for since they started steaming movies.

Basically every streaming app is minimally functional and obnoxious in their own ways. netflix isn't the worst of them, but it's no exception and getting worse all the time.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#666

Post by andrewla » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

srameshc wrote: post #39

I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.

If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#667

Post by andrewla » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#668

Post by dangus » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

smallerfish wrote: post #565

hnben wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with. this is not how markets usually work.

Correct, but the current market is not working. 15+ streaming services is terrible for consumers. Catalogs are compromised. Bigger services can push prices up because they have more stuff. Clearly if there are too few players then there's less competition and no price pressure, but there's a sweet spot between what exists today and that.

This makes zero sense.

Can you name another scenario where consolidation helped the consumer? Where a sweet spot involved more consolidation?

Did Breyer’s ice cream get better when it was purchased by Unilever?

Did your local grocery store chain get better after it was acquired by Kroger or Albertsons?

Did the smartphone market get better when Microsoft acquired Nokia and HP acquired Palm?

What about Hashicorp? Sun Microsystems? Dark Sky? Red Hat? Slack? Nest? Any of these product markets get better post-consolidation?

I struggle to think of a single example of a product category that got better with industry consolidation.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#669

Post by scruple » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #348

moolcool wrote: post #169

https://theonion.com/just-six-corporations-remain-1819564741...

Lockheed-Northrop-Boeing-Pepsico is an excellent joke all on its own damn.

> Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the Franchise Wars. Now all restaurants are Taco Bell.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#670

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 6:21 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #626

Off topic, but I am boggled that Larry Ellison came back to “richest man in the world” this year. For all the enormous Reach of Facebook adverts, Apple, Microsoft breadth of products, Tesla and SpaceX and Twitter, Amazon’s massive cloud dominance, the AI boom for nVidia… Oracle?! “ On September 10, 2025, Ellison was briefly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$393 billion. In June 202…

Oracle is still the company that does database for everyone with money to spend, and the percentage of companies (and governments, and NGOs) that discover a meaningful percentage of their very purpose is "moving data around" only grows over time. Their market is essentially constrained to "entities that use computers and want to sort data," which may as well be unconstrained. And in spite of all the ways they can be criticized, they still compete at the top of their game; many cheaper or free alternatives are going to ask you to trade a lot of labor (and added risk of data loss and destruction).

In contrast, of the list of companies you highlighted,

- Apple makes hardware, which is lower margin

- Microsoft is under stiff competition (they are selling a product, an operating system, that is a commodity competing with free) and unlike Oracle is struggling to define why they should be the best choice (ads in the OS?!).

- Meta doesn't actually have a monetization strategy beyond ads that is revenue-positive, and the reliability of ads turns out to be dicey (Google built their nest-egg on ads earlier than Facebook, and even Google has been thrashing about to find tent-poles besides ads; they see the risk). In spite of that, Zuck is currently above Ellison in the Fortune 2025 rankings.

- AI is ghost money (behind the scenes, a lot of companies paying themselves essentially)

- SpaceX is in a tiny market ultimately (each launch costs a fortune; a handful of customers want to put things in space)

- Tesla suffers strong competition. In spite of the above, Musk is currently the top of the Forbes ranking.

- Amazon is... Actually wildly successful and Bezos is #3 on the Forbes ranking. I think the only reason Bezos might not be higher is he spends his money.

No, it's often the quiet ones nobody talks about that are the real leaders. Lions don't have to roar to be noticed.