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There Are Way Too Many Streaming Services
Cord-cutting promised us that we won't have to pay the ludicrously large cable bills. But it turns out, as long as you do not just want to watch a very limited set of movies and TV shows, you will have to subscribe to any number of these services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, Hulu, and Disney+ (and more.) For some living outside the US, the situation has become even more dire as they browse through as many as three dozen services. This, in addition to making watching TV expensive, is also creating a number of other confusions. No wonder piracy is on rise again.
s/again/still/
I haven't found Amazon Prime Video to be "very limited". There's a vast catalog, from every genre imaginable, more than I could ever watch.
Now sure, if you absolutely must have {something that Prime doesn't have}, then you'll need to add something else. And that's your choice.
But "doesn't have everything on earth" != "very limited"
z nice antenna and an OTA compatible DVR. Some new content, and better resolution than cable companies provide.
It's a one time purchase of a couple hundred bucks. Some OTA DVR services have a monthly charge for things like television guides or cloud services, I'm surprised that a whole lot of little companies haven't popped up to install stuff like this.
People neither want to feel nickel-and-dimed, paying $10/month for half a dozen services, nor do they want to feel taken advantage of by a $200/mo Comcast bill.
Each content provider wants to make the most money, and is using their content as leverage for their streaming subscriptions. The only thing that aggregates them all right now is The Pirate Bay. Roku does this to a certain extent, but having a middleman to aggregate billing and to give users a single, consistent UI with which to stream whatever content is desired.
To which everybody says, "Congratulations Voyager, you just invented the cable company."
I get it. However, the issues with Comcast and Time Warner were never their existence in the abstract, it's that they are inconsistent with delivering their service and that they charge a whole lot of money. If the average cable bill was $50/month and cable only went out during an actual-hurricane, I think there would be far less cord cutting, because there is still value from an end user perspective in the existence of an aggregator.
However, the content companies don't want to be 'just another option', and they're having to play the game because of the issues with the aggregators that people are leaving, so we're stuck with a dozen different smaller libraries and an equitable amount of bills to pay as a result.
Itâ(TM)s the content segregation. There is no clearing house of content. Instead the ball is still in the court of the content producers. If you want to watch X, you have to subscribe to A. If you want to watch Z, you must subscribe to B. The ideal way is to pay a central clearing house to get all the content. Think a paid version of BitTorrent.
Why cant one just cancel the subscription A when not finding enough stuff to watch there and only then paying for subscription B? Unlike with broadcast TV, one can actually have the whole library available at any time, and so I cannot really understand the point of having to have all of the services subscribed all of the time.
It's not the choices that are bad, it is limiting content to single streamers that is bad... meaning choosing just one gives you, uh, limited choices of content.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Subscribe to one of them. Watch everything that interests you. Cancel . Subscribe to another.
The problem is not too many streaming services. Competition is good for consumers. The problem is too many exclusives. Game of Thrones only on HBO Go, Star Wars only on Disney+, Star Trek only on CBS-All-Access. All of them are charging as if they were a full cable replacement instead of a single cable channel.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Major media firms FINALLY understand that the internet isn't their enemy, and that streaming is a way to deliver their content? Great.
Major media firms balkanize the shit out of it, trying to build their own little walled gardens assuming every idiot out there wants to pay $15/mo to access their crappy content? Ha ha ha, ....no. A-pirating we'll go.
My favorite is when Network TV tries to **charge you** for the shit they put on air for free. I guess I can see the idea if they are streaming it commercial free, but then the price should be about the $0.025 in ad revenue they'd have gotten from your eyeballs on broadcast TV. In most cases I've see it's charge-per-episode AND there are ads.
-Styopa
It's not unbundled, it's just bundled differently. Every streaming service has nearly the same batch of old movies and TV shows, to which they each add a few exclusive, internally produced titles. To get the good stuff, you've got to re-buy a ton of stuff you already have on the other streaming services.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
For most of us outside the US, we can't even subscribe to most of the services, evev if we want to. Or, if we can, the vast majority of the stuff that would motivate us to subscribe is unavailable due to assinine geolocking of content.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Digital OTA TV is still free. Still getting 56 channels in my area. Access to all the major networks, news, sports, etc. I can live without most of the other worthless cruft.
To get the content from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO - all for one low monthly fee.
Exactly this. It's exclusive licensing that allows for the balkanization of content among increasingly various streaming services. Instead, we should insist on FRAND type licensing like we do for many patents. That along with separating the content creation from distribution will allow a competitive market to develop rather than the monopoly on creative content we are trending toward.
Knowledge Brings Fear
This was obvious from the very first time someone was clamoring for a la carte cable. This was never going to be as cheap as standard cable. There was no way that the media companies were going to come away making less money. Despite the protestations, we've actually gotten what people wanted. They just didn't consider the ramifications. At least not in real world context.
I see a lot of talk comparing the sum cost of streaming services being higher than the price of cable, and they are absolutely right. If you subscribe to everything it is. But, here's the catch: most subscription based streaming services operate with No Commercials during the stream. You get to binge watch an entire series without seeing a single commercial. Cable TV is heavily subsidized by advertisements.
The second thing I see a lot of people doing is including the cost of internet service with the cost of subscription streaming services and saying that it's much higher than the cost of cable, and it is. But, what they ignore is the fact that most people are buying internet service regardless of whether or not they have cable TV service. Now, you might opt for more bandwidth/larger caps/unlimited when you "cut the cord", but that's not necessarily something people wouldn't do anyway.
The third thing: streaming services are for the most part not directly comparable to cable. When it comes to cable you watch what they broadcast when they broadcast it (or you DVR it and watch it shortly there after). Some stations will let you stream episodes from their websites shortly after broadcast, but access still tends to be restricted (and I'd bet those streams are laden with commercials just like the on air broadcast). Streaming services are more analogous to a library. You get to browse the content and pick and choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, no matter how much of it you want to watch.
Now, are multiple streaming services anti-consumer? It certainly feels like it when previously Disney licensed it's library to Netflix and now they're pulling it all off and demanding you pay them more money if you want to watch any of it. But, you also have to admit that by doing that Disney is going to put it's money where it's mouth is and produce more content for it's service to keep people engaged than they would have if they just continued licensing their library to Netflix. So, there's pluses and minuses to the change. Ultimately, it's a decision that you the consumer have to make with your wallet. If their service flounders then they'll probably go back to licensing to the other services. If it takes off, then they'll end up producing more content.
You people expected bundle/meal deal/combo pricing per item on a la carte product. Sorry it doesn't work that way.
The Pirate Bay does. All content together in one place for a single price.
Like it or not, that's the competition that content providers face. I'll happily subscribe to any one of these services.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In hindsight, I guess I found more than one thing to remember.
Except it's not really a la carte. We effectively have the same channel bundles, just all tied together in streaming services instead of random collections of channels determined by your cable company.
I can't really come up with a good example because I don't watch enough TV, but basically you can't pick and choose certain exclusives from the various streaming providers and only choose them. It's all-or-nothing: you either subscribe to ALL of Amazon Prime, or NONE of it. You get ALL of NetFlix, or NONE of it. If you want to watch Game of Thrones, you have to get ALL of HBO, including shows you have no plans of watching.
It's not "a la carte cable" - it's the same old "pick your channel bundles" that we've always had, just separated from a single cable company.
You people expected bundle/meal deal/combo pricing per item on a la carte product.
Except you have it backwards. People are expecting a la carte products on a system that only allows bundle/meal-deal pricing.
It's like if you wanted a steak with a coke and a slice of apple pie, and the only way to get it was to first buy the steak meal, which has soup, a roll, steak with a baked potato and peas, and a blueberry muffin; and then you have to buy the coca-cola bundle, which consists of a 24-can case of coke, and then you have to buy the Early dinner special, which is salad, chicken-pot pie, a glass of milk, cole slaw, and an apple pie. To get what you actually want, you need to buy three different bundles, and throw out most of it.
Most of what you get with the bundle is stuff you don't want.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I can subscribe to nearly half a dozen streaming services before I approach the cost of a single cable bill. Still a win.
For your comparison, you should probably also include at least part of the cost of internet access. Cable TV doesn't require it; streaming does.
#DeleteChrome
The constitution requires giving the creators "exclusive right" of the work.
No it doesn't. It allows congress to give the creators "exclusive right" for limited times.
U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
And I would like to add for the record that 5 nanoseconds satisfies "for limited times" quite well.
I don't watch Netflix, but other folks in my house do. Same for Hulu. But I do watch Crunchy roll, which nobody else does.
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