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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

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Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#701

Post by roguecoder »

flakespancakes wrote: post #483
ryandrake wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not attacking you in particular, but I've always hated how we talk about "licensing restrictions" as if they're some kind of vague law of nature, like gravity. Oh, Studio X can't do Y... Because Licensing. "Licenses" are entirely conjured up by humans, and if there was an actual desire by the people who make decisions to change something, those people would find a way to make the "licensing restrictions" disappear. R…

I'm with you in spirit, but I think you are underestimating how wide and complex the dependency trees can be in content licensing. And simplifying those licensing structures often mean removing control from individual artists, which we tend to consider a Bad Thing.

Much like local control of zoning, that is an principle that many folks take on faith as being "good" despite all the actual outcomes.

In collaborative productions it is almost never the "individual" artist anyway: it's whatever giant conglomerate bought whatever giant conglomerate that paid everyone involves as little as the union would let them get away with.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#702

Post by yibg »

phartenfeller wrote: post #52

I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming? Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that re…

I think such is the reality of serving a large customer base on something subjective like movies and TV. Most people would find most content not that appealing, and a small subset they like. The problem is everyone's small subject are different.

It's like having a restaurant that serves 300 million people. You can try to offer every type of food there is, but most people may not like most of them. Which is fine, as long as you have something they like.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#703

Post by taeric »

autoexec wrote: post #676
throwaway20222 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is you are right for some properties that WB owns outright, but legacy IP that has rights shared, especially pre-streaming rights will still have a lot of barriers/untangling to do. I think Netflix is the most well run media company today by a mile, but also on the spectrum of quality/art -vs- straight money/tech domination they fall into the latter category, and they are the among the least friendly to crea…

Netflix is a terrible media company. They don't invest in their library and are happy to cancel shows without concluding them screwing the creators and the fans. They canceled a show within the same month it released! If a show does somehow get more than one season they can also be painfully slow. Stranger things took a 9 years to drop just 5 seasons. The Witcher was 6 years for just 4 seasons.

I mean, I'm not going to try and defend them from never having made bad calls. But, I'm not clear that they are any worse at this than other media companies?

To wit, finding a show that was canceled the month it was released probably isn't that hard? Same for shows that had trouble keeping cadence. Especially during COVID.

Do we have data that shows they are worse?

(Also, I think it is perfectly valid to object to this acquisition on other merits. I just would love some old backlogged cartoons to get wider distribution.)

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#704

Post by Forgeties79 »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #341

I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions eve…

One only has to look at the word of mouth reputation of Plex these days to know what's going on. I'd say more of my circle knows about it than doesn't, and a solid 15% run one or use someone else's, including my non-techie friends.

Shoutout to Jellyfin it's great, but it is not nearly as turnkey, so Plex is clearly the dominant player for folks hosting their own media.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#705

Post by adventured »

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…

It's a combination of the over-valuation of Oracle - popping on the late stage of the AI bubble - and Ellison owning so much of Oracle.

Even after the recent drop, Oracle is trading for ~33 times last four quarters operating income. With their meh growth rate, fair value is closer to half that. Except we're in an AI bubble. Oracle is riding the tail of the AI bubble just as they popped to the moon toward the end of the dotcom bubble. Oracle will contract afterward accordingly. The stock probably won't see this era's highs again for another 20 years, if ever.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#706

Post by roguecoder »

As long as David Zaslav is kicked to the curb instead of given power inside Netflix, this could still be a win for the world. I don't know how else we were going to get him out of there.

Heck, Netflix might actually promote Our Flag Means Death!

(HBO being so terrible at modern promotion is what ultimately got them to this place. I found multiple series I really enjoyed there, but always by total accident scrolling alphabetically. The first time I ever saw a promotion for Warrior was when it came to Netflix.)

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#707

Post by jtuple »

dspillett wrote: post #359
wiseowise wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll care when there will be no physical media and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat.

> You'll care when there will be no physical media Physical media is on the way out for the most part, where it isn't already gone, and Netflix & co are the reason, not piracy. > and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat. WRT “compressed shit”: the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source. For those that have 4K-capable eyes it is often better as it Ju…

I believe the GP was referring to most quality rips originating from physical media (ie. 4K UHDs).

In a world without physical media, the best piracy can deliver is no better than the best encoding streamers have available (and that assumes DRM circumvention remains forever possible, otherwise we're gonna get worst quality from re-encoding decoded playbacks)

> the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source

"No worse than streamed" is a far cry from a quality high-bitrate 4k UHD physical release.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#708

Post by sleepybrett »

afavour wrote: post #182

Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know). From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix…

Ellison is already in trumps pocket, netflix is going to have to up it's bribes or else somehow paramount will end up with the studio.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#709

Post by hinkley »

MikeCapone wrote: post #635
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…

He still owns over 40% of Oracle, that's a much bigger equity stake than most founders, and most of these other trillion-dollar companies don't have founders in charge anymore.

Back when he was in competition with Gates for #1, I recall him changing his contract so he was getting paid in stock options instead of salary so he could get rich faster.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#710

Post by jaggederest »

skeptrune wrote: post #697
jasonvorhe wrote: post #341

I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions eve…

Hard agree. My read on the whole situation is that this is R.I.P. for Netflix as a tech company.

We're going to see something like the way Boeing was hollowed out by taking over McDonnell Douglas I'd guess. I have no insider knowledge but WB doesn't seem like a poison pill you can take without adverse impact.
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