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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

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Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#951

Post by Normal_gaussian »

bfeynman wrote: post #179
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House of Cards is the original Netflix Original, and it came out in 2013. Prime started competing with Netflix the same year. But the other platforms - Disney+ (2019), Apple TV (2016/2019), HBO Max (2020), Peacock (2020), Paramount+/CBS All Access (2021 / 2014) - are all later.

HBO has been around for way longer... HBO Go started in 2010.

Fair point. I had assumed it was a catch up TV rather than a true streaming platform. Most VoD catch ups started in the 2007-2012 period.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#952

Post by philipov »

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.)

The availability of exclusive content should not be the point over which streaming services compete. The same content should be available on all streaming services, and they should compete on the quality of their delivery and discoverability technology.

Content producers must not be vertically integrated with content distributors.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#953

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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…

When we first moved to our rural area here the high speed wireless situation was atrocious and we found that because of that the local gas station & convenience stores still had a pretty active business renting DVD/BluRay movies. Until we could finally get decent high speed Internet without caps, we did that (and bought BluRay discs as well) which was only about 5, 6 years ago.

There was something quite nice and nostalgic about it.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#954

Post by hglaser »

jakubmazanec wrote: post #949
softwaredoug wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of shows go on too long. Andor, the best show of the year, had 2 perfect seasons.

AFAIK Andor was supposed to be 5 seasons, and the story for seasons 2-5 was squashed into season 2, because the production was too long, because that's how it goes these days in streaming.

It was indeed originally conceived as 5 seasons, but the creator Tony Gilroy has consistently said shortening it was his decision because the production was too long and taxing:

"We were halfway through shooting season 1, coming through Covid, and the monumental size of the show, the effort, and everything else was just dawning on us. We realized that I didn't have enough calories to do it, and Diego's face couldn't take the timing, because it just takes too long to make it."

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/star-wars-tv-shows/...

"By that point, the work that was required to make the show, at its minimum, was just dazzlingly blinding to look at. And Diego was like ‘Oh my god, we told them we’d do five years.’ Nobody, if we were gonna do it like this, you couldn’t physically do it. It was just impossible."

https://screenrant.com/andor-tony-gilroy-original-five-seaso...

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#955

Post by Fidelix »

jascination wrote: post #903
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.

This, but Real-Debrid. No need to self-host TBs of content and manually download them. This slightly outdated guide helps you set it up pretty easily - instead of Zurg+ Black hole, use Decypharr https://savvyguides.wiki/sailarrsguide/ Real-debrid == imagine a huge cloud storage service. You have 1000 people trying to download Burgonia.4k.mkv. it downloads the torrent once to the shared server, then gives each user th…

Why would one need to self-host TBs of content with Usenet? That makes no sense.

It's also a lot less prone to failures than debrid services, especially with old content.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#956

Post by dan-robertson »

walterbell wrote: post #939

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo... > [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee pro…

More different shows each with fewer seasons seems better to me. I suppose if you compare to YouTube it seems that view preference is for both a lot of variety and for those shows to have many similar episodes and doing both while maintaining some quality is presumably hard for streaming services.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#957

Post by dan-robertson »

xp84 wrote: post #763
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 Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed. With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content: - Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc. - "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern F…

Wouldn’t an alternative be to increase watch time by making each show desirable to a larger set of people. That wouldn’t necessarily require quality to decrease?

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#958

Post by trunnell »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #803
trunnell wrote: post #602

Commenters here seem to be missing the larger David vs. Goliath story... Netflix was a silicon valley start-up with a tech founder (Reed) who teamed up with an LA movie buff (Ted). They tried to solve a problem: it was too hard to watch movies at home, and Hollywood seemed to hate new tech. The movie industry titans alternated between fighting Netflix and making deals. They fought Netflix's ability to bulk purchase a…

It’s nice to see business that rewarded customers with convenience win in the end. Well, except for Netflix refusing their catalogue to be indexed in the TV app on macOS and iOS. I won’t pay for Netflix until they drop that anti customer practice. If you want me to buy the video content you’re selling, it better be searchable in the TV app. And if not, there should be a better reason than you want to keep people trap…

Have you considered the possibility that much like App Store rules, Apple's requirements for "catalog indexing" go far, far beyond the Netflix catalog merely showing up in TV app?

Perhaps the judgement about Netflix being anti-consumer might be hard to sustain if you could more fully inspect the details of what Apple requires.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#959

Post by Guvante »

taeric wrote: post #389
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…

This particular one could be ok for them? A major cost for Netflix in the modern era is licensing contracts that never adjusted to the streaming world. As such, consumers may actually get access to some backlog of WB stuff that is otherwise not worth offering?

"Never adjust to the streaming world" implies the studios were wrong.

Netflix is buying Warner Brothers and you think Netflix was wasting money on licensing costs?

More like Netflix's bet that if it didn't share usage information it could keep underpaying for what it was getting paid off.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#960

Post by softwaredoug »

walterbell wrote: post #946
softwaredoug wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of shows go on too long. Andor, the best show of the year, had 2 perfect seasons.

Competitive markets provide natural death of weak content, without premature euthanasia of strong content. With on-demand streaming, viewers can stop watching if/when a show deteriorates in quality. Some shows have maintained relatively high quality over multiple seasons. The Americans (6 seasons, 75 episodes) Battlestar Galactica (4 seasons, 88 episodes) Borgen (3 seasons, 30 episodes) Burn Notice (7 seasons, 111 ep…

Yes but some badly ended, serialized, long running shows have made consumers fairly wary.

After Game of Thrones, I think the average consumer is less likely to dive in feet first without knowing the show runners have a clear plan.

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