Streaming Video Will Soon Look Like the Bad Old Days of TV (nytimes.com) 140
An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an opinion piece from The New York Times, written by Matthew Ball, former head of strategic planning for Amazon Studios. Here's an excerpt: The next 12 months will see several video services come to market, including Disney+, AT&T/WarnerMedia's HBO Max, Comcast/NBCUniversal's unnamed service, Apple TV+ and Quibi from the Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. This increased competition will offer audiences even more high-quality series, the sorts of films that can no longer be found in theaters, interactive storytelling they've never seen before, and further improvements in navigation and advertising. Yet in this new multiplatform world, viewers will find they have to pay for a fistful of streaming subscriptions to watch all of their favorite programs -- and in the process, they'll again end up paying for lots of shows and movies they'll never care to watch. AT&T's WarnerMedia, for example, is bundling its TV channels, like TBS, HBO and TruTV, and film studios, including Warner Bros., DC Films and New Line, into its HBO Max service. Disney+ will have Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm, but also National Geographic, "The Simpsons" and Disney's offerings for children. And to navigate these many subscriptions, most households will want companies like Amazon or Apple to further bundle these services together into a single app -- just as they do with Dish or Xfinity. All of this bundling will eventually mean the return of a high monthly bill. Behind this bill is the cost of making high-quality programming. Although much has been said about how Netflix and Amazon have disrupted the video business, no media company has figured out how to make premium movies or TV shows significantly more cheaply. In fact, competition has driven production budgets even higher. Ultimately, these costs are paid by viewers (especially if they choose to watch without ads).
But the rise of digital video is bringing back more than just bloated bundles and bills. Many companies are returning to TV's original business model: selling you anything and everything but the television show in front of you. For decades, all TV content was "free." Networks like ABC and CBS distributed their shows free of charge because they weren't really in the business of selling audiences 30 minutes of entertainment. Instead, they were selling advertisers eight or so minutes of the audience's attention. While most digital video services do charge their viewers, their real objective is to lock audiences into their ever-expanding ecosystem. Their TV network is the ad. Amazon, Apple and Roku, for example, use their networks to drive sales of their devices, software, services and other products. For YouTube and Facebook, original movies and shows are about increasing the number of ads they serve and the prices they charge for these ads. "Even as the video industry reconstitutes with new players -- under old business models and familiar problems -- most people agree that TV has never been better," Ball writes in closing. "Consumers have more options, better shows and more diversity than ever before."
"But at the same time, weâ(TM)re entering a world in which our culture is programmed by vertically integrated trillion-dollar corporations," he adds. "This may help us escape high prices and ads in the short term, but eventually the bill will come due."
But the rise of digital video is bringing back more than just bloated bundles and bills. Many companies are returning to TV's original business model: selling you anything and everything but the television show in front of you. For decades, all TV content was "free." Networks like ABC and CBS distributed their shows free of charge because they weren't really in the business of selling audiences 30 minutes of entertainment. Instead, they were selling advertisers eight or so minutes of the audience's attention. While most digital video services do charge their viewers, their real objective is to lock audiences into their ever-expanding ecosystem. Their TV network is the ad. Amazon, Apple and Roku, for example, use their networks to drive sales of their devices, software, services and other products. For YouTube and Facebook, original movies and shows are about increasing the number of ads they serve and the prices they charge for these ads. "Even as the video industry reconstitutes with new players -- under old business models and familiar problems -- most people agree that TV has never been better," Ball writes in closing. "Consumers have more options, better shows and more diversity than ever before."
"But at the same time, weâ(TM)re entering a world in which our culture is programmed by vertically integrated trillion-dollar corporations," he adds. "This may help us escape high prices and ads in the short term, but eventually the bill will come due."
More entertainment options (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh no!
If you don't want to pay for all the new entertainment options, then don't. Maybe find something else to do with your time.
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Yup, and more than need them, they feel they're entitled to them and get angry when they're not available. Though by the looks of things a couple of these bone idle couch potato losers have spotted your post and modded you down
The problem isn't that they aren't available. The problem is the bundle it in with a bunch of shit you don't want. There is an easy solution though. Pirate just the shows you want and fuck 'em. The cycle repeats.
Re:More entertainment options (Score:5, Interesting)
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Right now, streaming is easy, cheap and relatively complete.
I disagree with the cheap part. Streaming is clearly not cheap, as evidenced by a large number of people who share passwords, with estimates of 20% [clark.com] to 33% [dailydot.com] of all users sharing passwords. And due to the fragmented nature of streaming subscription offerings, the total paid for a set of subscriptions is close to the amount paid before cord-cutting.
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Re:More entertainment options (Score:4, Interesting)
What I see a few frugal friends do is only subscribe to one streaming service at a time but change it from time to time.
Personally I bittorrent a lot but that’s because I broke my C5 and I’m on disability, so at this point I have no shame - and very little income.
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NYT is full of shit. What they are pumping is the direct attempt by corporations to break up streaming into smaller and smaller libraries. So thousands of libraries and trying to force people to subscrive to many services not one or two by twenty to fifty, just insane over the top psychopathic greed. They want to print money, own everything and everyone, they are pretty sick fuckers and the NYT is nothing but their empty propaganda mouth piece.
They are screwed, people will only subscribe to at most three s
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Their plan is to use people's desire to see things at the same time as everyone else against them.
It'a already a pain when half the office has seen Game of Thrones and the other half doesn't want spoilers (spoiler: the last season was terrible).
Sports are similar, and it's pretty difficult to avoid finding out who won for months, and half the enjoyment is from talking to friends about it.
All they need is one urgent reason to subscribe.
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Their plan is to use people's desire to see things at the same time as everyone else against them.
This never worked on me.
I always thought people that were like that had a problem.
I have watched most of "Golden Age" series like The Wire, Madmen, GoT, SoA, Breaking Bad, etc; but I watched them at my leisure.
I never understood the binging thing, I never understood the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality.
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It's not really keeping up, it's being able to participate in the social events that happen around these shows.
Fortunately it is getting less common for most stuff now because of streaming. Sports is the main exception.
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That is a fucking pain in the ass. Why can't they just buy what they want? Why is that too hard for the TV industry?
Because then people don't buy the shit they don't want, which is like 90% of the output and they lose a fuckton of money searching for the hits. So unless they are going to ramp the price for those hit shows way above the rest they bundle all the shit together and even it out. It's basically the same result but they get to say they are giving you loads when you only really wanted 1 or 2 things anyway.
Re:More entertainment options (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup. Too many people seem to think that everyone's going to subscribe to lots of streaming services. The thing is, most people today using streaming services have cut the cord already. Now that they know how to do that, they'll cut the cord again more easily in the future, since they've already learned how to get by with fewer offerings.
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since they've already learned how to get by with fewer offerings
But have we? As far as I remember I cut the cord for a far better and larger offering that was cheaper, had more content, no ads, and didn't need a TV guide. What's my motivation to cut the cord when the alternatives are just as as crap?
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Hmm, I cut from $75/month satellite to $10 a month. Not all the shows I regularly watched were on Netflix, and those that were I would often be a season behind. The bonus here was from saving a ton of money after having had the number of shows I regularly watched drop quite a lot anyway. There were probably more current shows on satellite than Netflix, but Netflix had a decent back catalog. For the shows I could not get, I decided that I didn't need to get more and more subscription services just to get e
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Municipal fiber is the only way people can truly free themselves.
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Cut the cord? Cut what cord? Anyone who actually believes that they have 'cut the cord' is completely delusional.
Yeah, I've always been sarcastic about that phrase. What people mean by that is they're just changing one cord for a different one... and probably paying more for it.
You still have to have an Internet connection. And that means dealing with one of the phone/cable monopolies, who charge more for an Internet connection if you don't also pay for their other services. And data caps, so they can make even more money. And yearly price increases, because there is no meaningful competition for Internet services. There are are only two ways this can go (for the dopes who just HAVE to have television and can't live without it): You pay out the ass for multiple subscriptions to streaming services, or, you go back to cable television and pay out the ass, just like you are now.
Or, you can "cut the cord" by just watching only broadcast TV. You know that they still do that?
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You still have to have an Internet connection. And that means dealing with one of the phone/cable monopolies, who charge more for an Internet connection if you don't also pay for their other services. And data caps, so they can make even more money. And yearly price increases, because there is no meaningful competition for Internet services.
This is true.
In our previous apartment, we did not have tv service, just internet. If we wanted to watch something on tv, we streamed it. When we moved into our house, our best connection option was Comcast... they are currently feeding us a bundle of tv + internet for $10/month less than they offered us internet alone. The kicker was that they waive the monthly data cap with the bundle.
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Re:More entertainment options (Score:4, Interesting)
> The problem is that the first dose was free (not exactly, but cheap and carefree enough) and now many are addicted.
The flip side is that the industry may also have set the anchor price for such services way too low to be sustainable (aka Netflix may accidentally end up destroying the industry by making people believe that you can have a "library of all shows" for $10/month). A combination of studios seeking "extra cash on the side" and investors throwing enormous amounts of their money into technology/entertainment plays led companies into under-pricing their product and consumers into believing you magically can have more than you had before, but at 1/10th the cost.
No industry survives a loss of 90% of its income.
And the industry, not embracing self-destruction is pushing against this by increasing the number of services offered and the increasing the price of each service until it comes fairly close to what the consumer expenditures were before.
But if they fail, and the consumer has truly been trained to expect to pay $10/month for everything, then most of the industry will die, and we'll look back at the current times as a golden era when the industry was rich enough that they could afford to make something more than reality shows and soap operas.
After people have gotten used to a free lunch, it's always a toss up whether people will reluctantly decide to start paying again, or decide that they'd rather starve.
After all, there are lots of other countries where people are unwilling to pay what is needed to sustain a large, vibrant (and expensive) video entertainment industry, so they simply don't have one. Maybe we get used to more dubbed content from countries where the consumers pay way more than we're willing to.
Re:More entertainment options (Score:4, Insightful)
led companies into under-pricing their product and consumers into believing you magically can have more than you had before, but at 1/10th the cost.
There is no 'magic' involved. The biggest expense in movie/television production is greed.
The entire movie/television industry is run like Internet startups from the late 90s/early 2000s. Actors and directors paid millions of dollars a year. Studio executives paid millions of dollars a year. Every TV show has a dozen or more 'executive producers' -- people who do little or nothing and essentially get paid a lot of money just for a fancy title.
The truth is, you CAN produce good programming for a lot less that what is spent now.
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Sure you can. But TV, unlike movies, has a feedback cycle. If a TV actor is getting paid a lot of money, it's because the show is generating a lot of cash. It's the same reason basketball stars and football stars get a lot of money - they're generating cash.
Movies are much the same, but they sometimes flop. It's not as common as folks think, and it's true that putting a big name in the starring role usually pays off.
It's possible to make quality content for far less, but without those big names the draw
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Sure you can. But TV, unlike movies, has a feedback cycle. If a TV actor is getting paid a lot of money, it's because the show is generating a lot of cash.
But this isn't a feedback loop - and that's the problem. A real feedback loop would put extra profits back into the production of the show to raise the quality to a reasonable maximum and then put the remainder back into the production company so that they can produce additional high-quality shows. Sending the profits into the black hole of actor's and producer's pockets does not increase quality or quantity. You might as well just be throwing that money away for all the good it does for the show or the
So show us your proudction credits. (Score:2)
The truth is, you CAN produce good programming for a lot less that what is spent now.
You think this is easy? Try it sometime.
The MCU franchise is worth billions in theatrical revenues alone. The Avengers Endgame arc consisting of 22 films released over twelve years. It is the executive productive production team that makes that possible. The trust they inspire on the financial side of things plus the ability to recruit, organize and motivate talent at all level.
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What you're saying is sort of true. There's a lot of stuff that goes into the TV industry beyond the production of the TV show.
Someone has to raise the money, set the budget, hire the directors, handle the business-end, and those are the producers. There are some that don't do much, but they might still be somehow instrumental toward producing the show. Then you have a lot of marketing people, creating promos, building social media campaigns, making cross-promotional deals with fast-food restaurants or
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I dispute your narrative. I don't see the split to many streaming services as a last desperate attempt to make an unsustainable effort solvent again. I see it as a ploy to reach for profits at a level once seen in the past that someone thinks must still be achievable. It's the old establishment in the industry trying to push things back to their glory days without really understanding what changed or why.
In any case, if what we're experiencing now is the slow death of this industry then can we please bas
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Exactly.
I stopped paying for Cable TV years ago.
I don't miss television AT ALL.
Informed by this, I have several streaming services that I use, large incumbents like Amazon and Netflix.
I only have Amazon because I'm subscribed to Amazon Prime.
I only keep Netflix because I'm sharing my streams with friends and family who DO watch.
I basically refuse to subscribe to umpty bajillion "Yet Another Streaming Service" offerings because everyone wants a bigger slice of an ever-shrinking pie.
Because I CAN do without t
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I can't mod you up any further and there are no little "like" buttons to click. So I'll just reply with a virtual nod in your general direction.
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Oh no!
If you don't want to pay for all the new entertainment options, then don't. Maybe find something else to do with your time.
Yeah, just search your preferred pirate bay for the shows you want, get them and away you go.
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If you don't want to pay for all the new entertainment options, then don't. Maybe find something else to do with your time.
The good old "if you don't like the change then completely abandon all hope change hobbies" line. Thanks for the tip. I didn't realise I should just bend over and take it everytime some greedy shit decides to try and milk me more for something I am perfectly happy with.
An Alternative Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An Alternative Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. They'll also learn that we have a host of other entertainment options available. I went many years without cable before trying out streaming TV. If they start getting greedy, streaming services get cut just like cable.
The big difference here is that we don't have to rely on a single company to offer the "bundles". Instead, the "bundles" (streaming services) are competing against each other. I think that will make a huge difference in keeping prices down to reasonable levels, unlike cable, which often had a monopoly within their specific markets. I've never believed that actual market competition would support $100-150 a month for TV. Turns out, I was right - it's more like $10-15 per month, and for that price, just about anyone can afford to subscribe to several services.
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Re:An Alternative Prediction (Score:4, Informative)
That's why they bundle things. They know you can only watch 4 hours per day (example value), so they add a package that offers 60 hours per day and you have to pay for 20 hours per day, so they claim you get it cheaper than if you got the individual shows but in reality they reap a profit from it.
(the real figures may very well be different, it's just an example regarding how the thinking is)
So in the end people will find other means of getting around the cost.
Until you have to pay for a streaming version (Score:2)
for the Home Shopping Network, and a separate service for QVC, it won't be as bad as TV.
This should be considered the golden age of "Alternate Methods of Streaming"
There are very few people who will even bother with more than a couple streaming services.
Most people will sign up, binge what they want, and cancel services (Like HBO).
Now that my time is worth money.. (Score:3)
I'm never going back
The only time I see ads now is when I visit my parents, and they're shocked that I haven't seen an ad.
who cares because (Score:4, Insightful)
bittorent.
Kids don't even watch "tv" anymore, they watch clips on youtube and make their own content to share with eachother.
Streaming services turn into pay per view movies, but those in the know not need to concern themselves with any of this.
Re:who cares because (Score:4, Insightful)
Netflix ruined evergthing. By handing people DVDs and streaming, they ruled the world. The producers hated that. Netflix struck back on exclusives. Now everyone has exclusives. Now it's back to sharding. Fuck that, torrent it.
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Every person should be doing something illegal. We need the state to have compromising power over everyone, so that the smackdown can be brought against anyone who makes the wrong kind of waves. If you're not doing anything illegal, I'd say you're a troublemaker and we need to do something about you, so that people don't get the idea that it's ok to not be blackmailable.
Do you at least drive too fast sometimes, with a phone in the car? I'll take that as a totally acceptable answer, for now. If not, then le
pay for what you watch... (Score:4, Interesting)
I simply pay for a film / TV series I watch.... every so often if I cant find it on the apple/youtube/ondemand then I acquire it other ways...
If your content is good charge a reasonable $ and people will pay don't lock it behind exclusive agreements as long term you will get less
I'm just not going to pay a "network" I'm going to pay for "ON DEMAND"
Still a million times better (Score:5, Insightful)
Which "Bad Days"?
Is it like the Bad Days where you had a handful of OTA fuzzy channels and had to watch when they were broadcasting? Nope.
Is it like the Bad Days when you had cable, also had to watch when they broadcast, and oh BTW were forced to subscribe to a bunch of channels you did not want to get anything?
Also no.
When GOT was done, so was I with HBO. When they have something on again want to see I'll just wait, subscribe for a few months, then drop then again.
Same for any service that doesn't have ongoing content I really like, I just take or leave them as I please - I could NEVER do that in the Bad Days of cable.
Oh and did I mention my approach is ALSO ad free by the way?
Even keeping a few subscriptions around all the time because they have just enough new material to keep me interesting, is vastly less than what I have paid for cable in the past.
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Re: Still a million times better (Score:2)
I think that's the issue -- people want to pay for just want they want, but with a single account and a single bill. It stinks to have to keep hauling out the credit card, set up multiple passwords, then log in to multiple different accounts when you get a new laptop/TV/etc... then deal with multiple different UX while flipping channels.
At least cable had that right -- one account, one bill, one UX.
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Well, if you keep subscribing/unsubscribing a few months at a time, they'll just move to an annual subscription. Prime already is.
As for ad-free, it's not going to take much. Once it shakes down to 4 or 5 providers, then all it takes is one moving to add ads and the rest following. Especially since ads are more reliable than constant subscribes/unsubscribes.
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No, Prime originally was annual only. They introduced monthly in 2016.
https://www.consumerreports.org/streaming-video-services/new-monthly-amazon-prime-membership-plans-offer-little/
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It will be like the bad days when you had to watch commercials. There are more and more of them on streaming sites. When I watch things alone I mostly download them somehow and then I don't have that problem, but when I watch with other people I still see them.
Yes slashdot, I know it's only been a minute since the last time I posted a comment, but now I wrote this other one, and it's not going to get any better with age. Fucking submit.
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Did you watch HBO's Chernobyl? I kept HBO around until that ended. It's worth the cost.
And speaking of the Bad Days, I remember a time when our cable box would emit a weak FM frequency so the stereo could pick it up for a better sound experience.
Those were the days, programming the TI99-4A or fiddling with the stereo to get the sound working (or climbing trees, waling in the woods, and disassembling anything broken that I could get my hands on).
I already have the only streaming service I need. (Score:2, Troll)
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You must not watch British or other non-American tv series much then. Except for the most popular shows a lot is simply unavailable outside of specialized and closed private trackers. Torrents are far from a perfect ecosystem. Only private trackers can keep less popular or lesser known content seeded long term and most of those are closed systems that you can't join. I've never had the chance to join a private tracker that specialized in films and/or television. It saddens me that no better distribution sys
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it really is the golden age of telly (Score:3)
New Television is trying to fill the gap between the ever increasing mega-budget blockbuster movies which more and more have little to no story and are just a bunch of special effects and micro budget indie films.
What is surprising is that at least to a small extent it is succeeding, but the old networks have pretty much zero involvement in this new model. I have not watched a tv series from ABC, CBS or NBC for decades. Every time I have checked they are still doing everything the way they always have. All of this new as-good-as-film content is coming from AMC, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, the BBC and to a slight degree from Showtime I guess. Pretty much everyone else is making television in the same lazy, these-people-will-watch-anything way they always have. The BBC and Showtime seem to be hedging their bets with a mix of the old model and the new one.
I am much too poor to support any of this stuff. So I torrent it. I just hope there are enough people with money who are rewarding this never before seen quality in television series and keeping it economically viable because this new Golden Age is an experiment. If these expensive made-like-movies TV series aren't profitable we will be back to the same old crap we had before or just 100 channels of Reality TV. The so called 'Syfy' (ridiculous name for a ridiculous network) channel decided to go in the opposite direction from making series like BSG and Caprica to reality shows and just cheaper content aimed at less picky viewers who will watch pretty much anything. I guess the execs at Syfy dumped this whole TV Should Be As Good As Movies idea and just chose the safest, proven path to keep the money rolling in. They seem to think Horror is more profitable than science fiction but they cannot seem to do that well either. I wonder if the execs find their content embarrassing at all. I would be deeply ashamed if I were responsible for it.
I suppose television has improved every decade since I've been alive at least to some degree, but this is not even a curve. It's a spike in the graph, a complete discontinuity. They are essentially long movies that have been chopped up into serials. I hope they figure out some way to finance it. I don't think people are really going to go back to watching advertising at least not like it used to be on television. So I guess we'll see what happens. The old networks and most of the old cable channels aren't betting on this horse at all. I would imagine they have their fingers crossed hoping it will fail even as they probably watch at least some of it themselves.
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I think the "premium TV" market is very healthy, because streaming naturally means it's on demand and I only need as many hours of content as I'll be watching TV a week. Apart from the elderly that's about 2 hours [bls.gov] a day. Obviously not everybody likes the same shows but yeah that doesn't seem unreasonable. A few killer series, a few "genre" series I like, a bit of sports, a movie of sorts and a bit of filler I guess... but past that do I need 100 hours of junk? Nah. Of course making some of that is also damn
I can tell the future! (Score:2)
I'm having visions of the future. Piracy rates will go up in response to this and then all of these groups will will blame things that aren't their own stupid actions for the reason
there is free entertainment all around you (Score:5, Funny)
You get to watch the end of the Republic.
Wait for the (second hand) Blu Ray or digital down (Score:2)
And so it goes on.. (Score:2)
It sucks but (Score:2)
It sucks but as long I don’t have to pay for it in order to get an internet connection, I can live with it. I don’t watch much anymore as I have become tired of all the political bs baked into every show.
Streaming Video Will Soon Look Like the Bad ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... Days of Cable TV.
At least it seems like it's going to be the same mess we experienced when we last had cable TV (early '90s). Lots of things bundled together that we didn't care for -- back in the day, it was "WTF! Elton John in concert... AGAIN!?" -- with a monthly charge that knocked our socks off when we opened the bill.
No thanks. OTA's been working fine since we left the cable vendors. Any cable content that we really want to see we can, eventually, get from the library.
Who wants to deal with this s*h**it? (Score:2)
All these "apps" each with separate interfaces and content = piss poor UX
I'll stick to buying discs at Wal-Mart and eBay. Way better experience in terms of reliability, content quality and ease of use. Also cheaper over time, not being fucked over by disappearing content, censorship, market fragmentation and price hikes.
As long as there's no commercials/advertising (Score:2)
Subscription fees for a bunch of different services.. it's not the greatest result, but as long as it keeps the mind rot that is broadcast AND cable station commercials.. I'm ok with it.
Besides, no one said you have to subscribe to them all simultaneously. Subscribe to one, watch what's on it until you're bored. Cancel. Subscribe to another one. Repeat.
Also, you can outright purchase a lot of the most popular serials and movies on Vudu, so there's that route if don't like paying sub fees.
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No it won't (Score:2)
I've not had a cable TV subscription for 15 years, and haven't watched a terrestrial broadcast in the same amount of time.
There's nothing I can't watch, commercial free.
They can take their ''packages'' and deposit them in their rectums.
KODI
Just don't support the networks' streaming service (Score:2)
I mean Hulu is now Disney anyways but just stick to Amazon, Netflix and Hulu (provided it doesnt get screwed over). If they want our eyeballs they can play by our rules.
Only in Canada, eh? (Score:2)
Well, up here in Canada there is NetFlix only that provides a decent quality streaming service. Amazon (for what it has in Prime Video base) is passable. NetFlix UI used to be not bad, but is getting more unusable every time they "improve" it. Amazon Prime Video UI was obviously designed by someone who has never even used a TV tuner before, let alone operate a catalog with more than four entries in it.
Amazon Prime Video subscription crap is expensive low quality crap for the most part (probably so as not
Indeed (Score:2)
1000 channels^h^h^h^h^h^h^h streaming services and nothing on.
Too Late (Score:2)
Their bundling antics already led us to cut the cord, pull the TV off the wall and stick to YouTube and Netflix. We won't be going back to paying $100+ just to have access to more TV than I want to watch.
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
It's 2019.
I literally do not have a TV. I have a huge-ass projector.
I do not subscribe to any TV service. There are aerial and satellite services in my apartment... the aerial is free, and I wouldn't pay for extra services. I literally have it connected to a Raspberry Pi which tvHeadend which records what I tell it to and which otherwise just sits idle. Hell, I can stream British TV from the other side of the planet via it if I like. I don't.
When I do watch stuff, I am one of the rare people who literally never watches anything illicitly. It's all licensed, subscribed and genuine. I am a dying breed. And I refuse to go with services that offer me little or get in my way. I have been through Netflix et al. I ended up on Amazon Prime because I already "pay" for that for other things anyway, and it pretty much has what I want - enough that if I want to watch something while I eat my dinner, I can, whether on my phone, tablet, laptop or projector.
I don't have landline broadband. I don't have a phone.
Now apply this to those people who are just coming into their own places, deciding what to buy, subscribe to, watch, download, etc. The ones who don't care about copyright and have a NAS full of the latest movies and a torrent client. The ones who have grown-up in front of a phone, not a TV. The ones who don't subscribe to anything that doesn't have a web address. The ones who don't do adverts and will rip their music from Youtube.
Do you honestly think they care about broadcast TV? I just can't see it. I've had 20-year-olds hand me an aerial antenna and say "I found this in my room, I have no idea what it is. By the way, my TV stopped working the other day, so I just switched to the set top box instead".
If you want to engage the next generation, you're almost too late anyway, but for sure not offering a simple "I want to watch this programme, now, here, on this device." kind of service is going to kill you. And you know why? Because the illegal services *are* offering that. From your own content. Usually before I can even ever see it myself, no matter what subscription I have (e.g. US TV coming to the UK takes months still... the end of series 1 of New Amsterdam literally was only added to Amazon a couple of months ago - we had episodes 1-15 for a little while, then there was over a month's gap with nothing, then the rest up until episode 24 or whatever it was suddenly appeared... I still can't buy or legally stream Third Rock From The Sun in the UK except on US DVD format, but I can watch random episodes on TV, and I can download the entire boxset in a few hours).
You've lost this generation, because you failed to keep up. And your plan is to go backwards?
In other words.. (Score:2)
Piracy will reassert itself in short order. What a complete surprise, .
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You can start and stop individual services (Score:3)
It isn't the same.
In the old days, if you wanted one of the 'premium' services, then you had to buy one of the most expensive bundles which included just about every channel.
If you lived in America, you probably had to go through a monopoly cable company to be able to buy anything.
Now if you want Netflix - you can just buy that (and stop when you're done).
If you want Amazon Prime - just buy that
you can go direct, you can pick and choose, you don't have to buy a gazillion channels you'll never watch, so competition is much more effective.
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The problem is when you have dozens of channels that want you to pay $8 or more per month when those channels only have a single show you might be interested in. Netflix and Amazon were grounded in movies and shows that people wanted to watch/re-watch, and then original content started getting added. Netflix now has so much original content that offering movies has become a distant secondary consideration. With the volume of content, at least both Netflix and Amazon have a good draw.
CBS all access is
I told you so. (Score:2)
I really did through the years. Its going to make cable services look attractive again.
Bundling (Score:2)
Dear studios. Nope. I am not going to pay a dime for things I don't need.
How Is This New or Different? (Score:2)
Companies make things people want to buy.
Companies spend money to make things.
Many companies want to compete, and therefore they enhance their offerings, in order to differentiate. This costs more money in the making of things.
People pay for these things.
If people are willing to pay more for enhanced things, companies will continue to enhance. If people start not being willing to pay, companies will either stop enhancing them to keep costs down, or find other ways to r
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The problem is that people don't want to pay $10/month for a channel that only has one show they would want to watch. In the end, most of these streaming sources will die off, not because they don't have a single show worth watching, but because they will charge too much for a single show. Honestly, CBS all access is a joke, and CBS itself should have just thrown Star Trek onto Showtime, which already has a streaming service.
It was good while it lasted (Score:3)
Things are more "a la carte" now. You can choose to sub to just the service(s) that have the content you're interested in. And that's not a bad thing. But the idea, the potential, of having access to the entire catalog of entertainment that humanity has every produced/is producing for a reasonable price is long gone for now. Maybe by 2150 and Internet3 (if humanity is still around) everyone will be free to enjoy everything humanity has ever created.
Meanwhile, torrenting will probably pick back up, especially as VPNs and Tor pick up speed. HDCP has obviously failed when Amazon is selling HDMI Splitters (*cough* Strippers) for under $50. Digital watermarking might allow them to track down and prosecute file originators. Encoding an individualized water mark into every 4K HEVC video stream in real time might have a high processing cost, but, they can probably get away with putting it in the audio stream instead.
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Like basically all DRM, HDCP only serves to frustrate paying users. Pirates can side-step it easily, while paying users end up with erroneous error messages and bugs.
Pure internet municipal fiber and OTA antenna (Score:2)
I will never pay for TV channels I will never watch. Not even streaming. Put up an OTA antenna. 70 channels for free. I know its not for everyone, you have to a line of site and be within range. I might actually use Netflix DVD rental service and pick out what movies to rent, or use a redbox, if I really, really want to see a movie. Cheap DVDs at Big Lots, but often hard to find anything of interest.
Municipal fiber, internet only, is something people need to demand, with this you can get cheap gigabit inter
Hello Piracy, my old friend (Score:3)
There's zero chance that people are going to go subscribe to a dozen different streaming services. I have three now (though one is Prime video, which is basically a free add-on for Prime), and I feel like that's too much.
People will go back to the old ways -- Bit Torrent, piracy, etc. if these companies don't figure out a way too work together. There's not enough money in the market to support Apple's $10 service and Netflix's $15 service and Disney's $7 service and CBS's $7 service and this times infinity.
Pay for content, or free for advertising, not both (Score:2)
If they want to charge for the content, I don't mind that, but if I am paying for a service, I don't want to be bombarded with advertisements as well. If they want to throw advertisements at viewers, then the advertisements should pay for the content, not the viewers at that point. This is why HBO, Showtime, Starz/Encore, etc. were able to survive in the first place, because people enjoy being able to watch uncensored content without advertisements, and people are still willing to pay. Now, if you pay
And Yet There's Still Nothing Worth Watching (Score:2)
So pirate it (Score:3)
There is also the very real problem of the internet not always being there, or the lack of net neutrality throttling your streams etc. which makes downloading whatever you want to watch again an attractive option. I often play games with something playing on another monitor and I fail to see why I should stream it over and over again (basically downloading it multiple times) when I can download it once and play it whenever I want to.
Exactly (Score:2)
You wanted to pick and choose which services you wanted.
Yep and we are now exerting content nirvana wholesome people whine.
Now, it's fragmented all over the place, and the new complaint is that it's too inconvenient to subscribe to multiple services.
Fragmented is perfect, and any service that is too inconvenient to subscribe to will die in short order in favor ozones that are easy to sub and drop on demand.
But everyone will still make a ton of money so it is cool.
Re: Isn't this what you wanted? (Score:2)
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Bzzt. Nobody ever asked for that.
They wanted to pick and choose shows.
And more specifically for me (though other people apparently wanted different things): shows as files you buy, not a streams you rent access to, and especially not proprietary streams that require a specific player instead of whatever player you're used to using.
Fortunately, we got there and have everything we want, with the minor exceptions of "you buy" and it being illegal. Othe
Re: Isn't this what you wanted? (Score:2)
I think that many old people that end up without friends and a spouse have nothing else to do but to be vegetative in front of a screen. Considering the loneliness and ostracization of us millennials, I really don't think that TV will die with the boomers.
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Re: Problem? Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue I have with the likes of Disney, HBO, CBS, and pals is this.
Initially, they licensed their properties for redistribution through Netflix (which was pioneering this market.) They then decided that they didn't like netflix, because it was harming lucrative channel subscription income through cable. They recinded those licenses, forcing netflix to go into "original content" mode. When netflix refused to die, they created competing services.
Those competing services all attempt to extract maximal cash flow from consumers, to end cord cutting.
No. I am not going to play that game with them. They can license through a single front, (does not have to be netflix, but their actions against netflix have been clearly discrimitory, and retaliatory, and I am not apt to reward that behavior) or I won't watch their content. They can accept that their profit expectations have declined, or they can get 0$ from me.
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They can license through a single front, (does not have to be netflix, but their actions against netflix have been clearly discrimitory, and retaliatory, and I am not apt to reward that behavior) or I won't watch their content.
You mean like cable?
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Disney will likely have the best offerings having bought 20th Century Fox as well as many smaller studios (Lucasfilm, Marvel etc...)
And once the Studio that owns Rick & Morty has it's streaming service up, it's gone from iTunes, you'll have to subscribe to that studio's service for the show.
Or go back to pirating every show you want to watch via bit torrent.
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