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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

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Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#861

Post by 8fingerlouie »

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…

ignoring all "hate" against streaming services, you have to at least give Netflix credit where it's due.

They contribute a lot to the open source community, and their engineering blog is always a good read. Granted, not many people will benefit from their specific type of problems, but for those of us that work with large scale infrastructure, there's often inspiration to be had.

And no, it's usually not directly applicable in a financial setting. Most of the time it's actually the exact opposite, where Netflix thrives on distributed loads, eventual consistency, etc, finance is a lot more reliant on "real time" events.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#863

Post by derrida »

Does this mean Netflix is acquiring AOL? Can they bring back the internet cd on a magazine cover ? /s anyone remember AOL Time Warner ? Like the biggest company in the world when it merged … is that what Netflix are buying? The former largest company in the world just decade before last?

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#864

Post by ojosilva »

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…

Not only the movie theater, Netflix killed social life. Well, streaming, feeds and their algorithms in general, but Netflix is very much the ones that really owned the narrative of what to do on a weekend night.

This is very anecdatal, certainly, but I've spoken/overheard a few neighborhood hospitality business owners that had to forclose or cut down due to the constant decline of people leaving the house to just meet in a bar or coffee shop. Only sport nights keeps them going, because sports online remain expensive in most places.

Maybe just my observation or my neck of the woods, but seems to fit the general sentiment of a reduced social environment on the streets in certain parts of the world.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#865

Post by IshKebab »

cactus2093 wrote: post #579
thayne wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content. I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription t…

This is how it worked a decade+ ago, when there was still alpha to be had on providing better streaming service. It was great and we got things like the Netflix Prize and all sorts of content ranking improvements, better CDN platforms, lower latency and less buffering, more content upgraded to HD and 4K. Plus some annoying but clearly effective practices like auto-play of trailers and unrelated shows. Now these are a…

> The only thing left is competing on content.

I don't know. Music streaming services do pretty much follow this separation of content and service. At least unless you really care about exactly which music you can access which I think most people don't.

(That's probably partly why music streaming services don't compete on content; most people don't care exactly which funky music they're listening to as long as it is funky, and had most of the popular stuff. But they definitely care if they want to watch Stranger Things and they can't watch Stranger Things but maybe you're interested in these other crap knock-offs?)

Anyway the point is music streaming services still find ways to compete. I guess they would prefer it if they could compete on content though.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#866

Post by abustamam »

newsclues wrote: post #810
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…

Cinema needs to be a real experience, beyond just expensive popcorn and other people on their phone. The cinema experience lost its magic. If Netflix reimagined a new model of cinema, what would it look like?

Cinema used to be a really good shared experience. I don't go to cinema anymore because we have a newborn at home, but we used to pre-order tickets in advanced for movies we really wanted to see (like Wicked last year, Fantastic 4 this year) and the theater was almost empty at opening night for both of those.

Contrast a few years ago when avengers endgame came out, and Spiderman far from home came out shortly after that, and No Way Home a few years after that... They were lively events. People dressed up, the theater handed out free swag and merch, and it was just a really cool shared experience, almost akin to a live concert.

I don't know exactly what's changed in that time, considering No Way Home came out after Covid and it was still a spectacle of an event, but I don't think cinema will get its magic back.

A few years ago I did go to a "Stranger Things" experience and I think that might be the future of shared experiences/narratives. It was essentially a week-long pop-up event, you'd get tickets, and it was basically a "walking simulator" that took you through a narrative within the Stranger Things universe. This wasn't just a bunch of people looking at a screen, it was live actors, holographics, sound design, lights, a lot of crazy stuff for a pop-up venue.

As a fan of the franchise it was really well done. A friend of mine want to a similar "Experience" for the Bridgeton universe, which I care nothing about, but she really enjoyed it as well.

So I think if Netflix were to reimagine cinema, it would probably be in that direction.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#867

Post by tills13 »

issafram wrote: post #814
somehnguy wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usenet + the *arr stack + Plex or Jellyfin make it completely effortless to watch any movie or TV show I can think of. And I don't have to play the 'which service has this?' game.

If only there was an easy setup/tutorial for Usenet. I have no idea what I am supposed to pay for and what client program to use for acquiring files.

Having figured it out myself, I agree. And it's not obvious that you need both a Usenet _indexer_ (who tells you what content is available) and a Usenet provider (who actually serves you the content).

FWIW, and I'm not sure if this is against terms here, but I use newsgeek for the former and giganews for the latter. Both are paid services but reasonably priced imo. When I can find something on Usenet, it typically downloads with speeds > 10MBps vs. torrenting which can exceed that but is usually much slower.

You can use whatever client you want. I have the *arr stack mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well and SABnzbd is the recommended option there.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#868

Post by whackernews »

dfee wrote: post #801
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…

i was in Bend, Oregon last weekend at the last Blockbuster, and it was really appealing. - blu ray rentals were 99¢ / wk - a vast trove of content - no lock-in or monthly fees sure, you actually have to make it to the store... but, 2007 never looked better. now, Netflix was distributing by mail, and i think the promise was for them to stream all their content into homes. but, then it got messy. but yeah, for 99¢ / mo…

Turns out going outside and interacting with strangers is actually quite good for you too.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#869

Post by tills13 »

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…

yeah I'm back to Torrenting too. I was more than happy to pay for Prime, Netflix, and maybe Apple TV+ a few times a year but now they expect me to pay for HBO & Crave & x & y & z & a... I might as well get a cable package.

The funny thing is, between a NAS & a monthly VPN subscription & usenet subscriptions I probably could have paid for all those streaming services for a few years :D

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#870

Post by kmeisthax »

nonethewiser wrote: post #315
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…

> 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.)

People want consolidation in the sense that they want to just have a service that has everything instead of having to juggle multiple competing channels around. The problem is that this service would have to be very expensive. The glory days of streaming had 10 services all selling more or less the same product.

The kind of consolidation on offer here just means having to pay for two streaming services at once. That is, at some point HBO Max will get rolled up into Netflix, and Netflix will increase their prices to make sure you don't save any money from it. Because let's be honest here: the only reason why the glory days of streaming were so glorious is that nobody knew what anything was worth and everything was being subsidized by the suckers still paying for cable.

The problem is once you run out of suckers, you have to start charging what the show actually costs to make (or license). Once you account for that plus margin you have a cable bill again[0]. Except since there's like five major services they can split the content and bill five ways. They have to charge about the same as the others to maintain this equilibrium, but with fewer services there's less alternatives and they can raise prices higher.

What people really want out of their streaming service is a free ride, no more and no less. Either that, or they're going back to physical media because one time payments are the only fair and consumer-friendly way of paying for creative works.

[0] Yes, I know most of that was actually sports. For everything else, there was a second layer of subsidy involved: ads. Most of the stuff that didn't charge carriage fees were getting shittons of ad revenue, and that subsidy has also largely vanished.

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