There Are Way Too Many Streaming Services 218
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.
fix (Score:3)
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Likely if you do, that is more TV than you can watch.
I cut the cord....I got an amazon FireTV unit (not usb fob)....and I got Playstation VUE, that takes care of pretty much ALL my stations I ever watched on cable. It has most of the local stations, and FX, TCM, all the various cable news channels, cooking...and during college football season, I do enjoy all the ESPN chan
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Agreed. Unless you're *really* dedicated to having a massive amount of choice available (which psychologists have shown tends to actually decrease satisfaction), the biggest problem I see with only having 1-2 streaming providers is that after a while you've watched most of their content that you're interested in - but at that point you can drop them and sign up for someone else for a year or two until you've watched as much of them as you like, and the original streamer's library has some new content. Jug
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To many AC bitching about to many stories about to many streaming services.
Why is it so hard? (Score:2)
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It already exists. It's called transmission.
You can click on a link from pirate bay, and it automagically opens and starts downloading whatever you want.
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very limited? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"
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Only in the US. Here in Spain, Prime Video has basically only old crap no one else wanted, and Amazon Originals.
Ah, but that's my secret, I like the "old crap no one else wanted".
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Does Prime Video work with Chromecast yet?
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Note: I am not a big fan of series.
There are too many webpages! (Score:2)
Still (Score:2)
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"I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
Well now home entertainment was my baby's wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond
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"Got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from."
The sentiment is as old as coaxial cable. Only the amount of crap changes over time.
"golden age" (Score:2)
WSJ:
My options are preposterously good—this is the Golden Age of Television, after all.
By what insane standard?
Most people could just buy (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
It's called Tivo. :) I purchased the lifetime subscription so I have no reoccurring payment from them but I get the channel guides and everything else, including interfaces to Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, etc. I haven't seen a cable bill in 20 years.
Of course, I also don't watch all that much TV, there are plenty of other forms of entertainment, but there are a few shows I like and special big events that make it nice to have a TV. Tivo also gives me commercial skip on prime time shows, or I just hit the "30
All 4 competitions except we need to buy them all (Score:2)
The problem with these streaming services is that they all have their own content that in terms of entertainment, if you want to watch all that you want to watch, then you need to buy them all. Granted I am talking in terms of entertainment, we should have self control to determine if it worth a monthly fee for only for entertainment. However, with the death of the Video Rentals, we need to find the streaming service to find the movie or shows that we cannot get on cable, being that Cable TV has degraded
Aggregation is the solution (Score:4)
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.
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The first wave against cable was actually the TiVo. Skipping the advertisements was necessary to actually watch the programs, and eliminating centralized schedule control gave the user freedom. At that point the “thing” that the cable companies provided was no longer what they were selling.
It will be worse for the streaming providers in the end, IMO. It just isn’t practical to have so many exclusives.
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Amazon has the ability to subscribe to channels, which are each the individual some of the streaming services you mention.
So, at least one person is starting to aggregate all the spread out stream offerings into a NEW MIDDLEMAN.
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The issue with Comcast and Time Warner is that it's a government protected monopoly.
You realize you are making this claim in a discussion entitled "There Are Way Too Many Streaming Services", don't you? If there are too many services, how can two of them be a monopoly? And since the government didn't grant them one, how is it government protected?
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I was responding to a comment about Concast/Time Warner.
Yes, that was obvious.
And besides, the distribution problem is what led to the streaming problem.
The "streaming problem" comes from the business plan for distribution of video content. Audio content has been distributed for many decades by thousands of radio stations, and to manage that large number of content users a central copyright payment system was created. Video has been an order of magnitude smaller, thus a central system was not needed.
What I replied to, however, was the claim that there was "government protection" for a monopoly, which is both absurd in the face of ho
Splitting it up wouldn't be horrible... (Score:2)
...if it was done right. I would have no problems with one service per show, because then I'm buying the specific shows I want and don't have the overhead of effectively buying the lot. It would cost more than buying from a single vendor, but we don't have a universal vendor (be it a commonwealth or a cooperative or some vendor that has bought the rights to everything). If we did, that would be the best solution of all.
I want at most one or two shows from a large number of vendors. If I got to do micropayme
Too many is not the problem (Score:2)
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write a letter to your congresscritters pushing for mandatory mechanical licensing of video. Don't hold your breath, though.
Service rotation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Service rotation? (Score:4)
Too much effort. If the effort is more than a torrent, it won't fly.
Because people have families (Score:3)
Meh, still cheaper than cable (Score:2)
Re:Meh, still cheaper than cable (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Pick one (Score:4, Insightful)
Subscribe to one of them. Watch everything that interests you. Cancel . Subscribe to another.
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Subscribe to another.
Why bother, at that point you'll have seen spoilers for all the interesting stuff that was released ages ago on the other service.
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that's fine, we have solutions (Score:3)
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.
I guess I am old and remember BUD/Sat Tv (Score:2)
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At one point it was common to have a dozen annual bills.
As BUDS got more popular and out of the hobbiest stage, package companies came into existence that sold packages of channels ( Dish network got started this way.) This got you better prices and one bill.
The led to the consumer s
Outside the US.... (Score:3)
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.
Digital OTA TV (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yes, but not everyone can get OTA TV due to their locations like my rural areas with giant hills and small mountains. :(
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Maybe in the US... But here (Quebec, Canada) we got only 4 channels : 3 boring French channels and 1 "ok" English channel.
Unlike with cable, the market will sort this out (Score:2)
While cable was a monopoly, with only one cable service in a given area, nobody is forcing you to sign up for streaming services. Cord-cutters subscribe to the two or three streaming services that represent most of their desired content, then complain about the number of services they would have to get to see allthe content they want.
As content providers realize this (watch for online surveys and use complaint feedback contact opportunities that may be available) we will see more opportunities for a la cart
We need a "Netflix" for Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
One more to subscribe to... (Score:2)
TV vs Computer (Score:2)
Few years ago, I used to read satirical articles about how you can spend $2500 and convert your PC into $500 TV. Same thing goes for replacing cable with streaming for now. I have switched to Netflix and Amazon Prime couple of times only to go back again to cabal. Streaming is way too restrictive for live programs and quality depends on your internet service and too much lag time when switching shows.
One thing to remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Several things to remember... (Score:3)
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"Cable TV is heavily subsidized by advertisements."
Yep. Really expensive for the consumer, *and* heavily subsidized by advertisements. Making conventional cable TV an easy target for streaming services.
I'm not sure internet services plus on-demand services are collectively higher than cable TV. But internet is relatively cheap in our area ($40/month for 30/30) and we don't subscribe to "all the services". Our total is still roughly 1/3 of what Comcast was charging for conventional cable TV plus (slower!
Never happy (Score:2)
This is a case of there's no winning.
If content creators offer a streaming service, people complain there's too many service providers, and piracy ensues.
If all the content creators glom on to one major provider, then they get accused of collusion and price fixing. Piracy ensues again.
If they opt to not provide any streaming for specific content, then they are accused of holding back content, and providing justification for piracy. The lack-of-access issue. And of course, piracy ensues.
Is there any way t
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It works fine for music. I can pay for one of Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Google, etc... I can listen to all the music. If I had to pay for all of them to get all the music I wanted, I would pay for none of them and go back to maintaining my own library via whatever means I felt like. That's the problem. We don't care how many services there are to choose from, we care that there is so much exclusivity. The reason music piracy is fading is that streaming services have everything and are cheap. Some are even fre
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"We don't care how many services there are to choose from, we care that there is so much exclusivity."
Agreed. The problem being, exclusivity is these services' differentiation. "Sign up for OurCompany all access, as it's the only way to see these new shows! Netflix and Hulu won't have them for years!"
And then, piracy ensues.
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And, yet, I don't need 4 different music streaming services to listen to everything. Metal, country, rock, pop, boy bands, funk, jazz, it's all there in one app for one price. And somehow they manage to make money. If you want my money, that's the level of service I require. I don't want to exit the app I'm in, and load HBO for Game of Thrones, then switch to Netflix for Altered Carbon, then switch to CBS for ST:D. I want to simply tell the app I'm in and paying for that I want to watch something else. They
Ultraviolet model (Score:2)
Maybe content creators need to set up something similar to how Ultraviolet works, where a centralized database is maintained, which keeps track of who has access to which content. You pick the stream provider, attach your account, and stream content you have access to.
Seems to work great for movies using UV. I remember when Flixster died off, instead of losing all my content I had on Flixster, I just moved over to Vudu and they provide access to all the content I have under UV's system.
This was because the
still better (Score:2)
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So far.
We fought against digital divide... (Score:2)
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...because we wanted to increase the information accessibility on the net, as well as to increase the number of information providers (digital multiply). Each provider claimed that they add something original to offer to the end user (digital add). We now discover that each provider wants nothing but money from our pockets (digital subtract).
But... are we surprised? Isn't that ultimately what any provider wants?
Playing devil's advocate... (Score:2)
So back around 2000 or so, there was all sorts of bitching and moaning about cable operators giving gobs of channels no one needs. At the time the call was:
'Give us a la carte!'
So now we have a la carte, the cry is 'put it all on one service, but don't charge a lot for it!'.
I personally would love a federated, unified interface to content that spans services, and wouldn't mind paying 'a la carte'.
Of course as it stands the content holders ownership is pretty random. People have to give money to Disney, wh
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The problem was that those “gobs of channels no one needs” from the aughties were essentially dominated by what would come to be known on Steam as the “zero effort asset flip”. For the cost of a hundred and fifty channels of bullshit attempts at micro targeting, we probably could have had ten or fifteen channels of solid gold. Except for one little problem
Every hour of TV is really forty minutes of content, and twenty minutes of advertising. If you spend your budget on fifteen gold-
there will be a consolidation (Score:2)
I strongly suspect that there will be at some point a consolidation of all these streaming services under a single umbrella, where you pay one bill and get access to a collection of services (including some you don't want, but are included in your tier whether you want them or not) plus a bunch of other features bundled in that nobody really needs. There will be an attractive introductory price offered followed six months later by an outrageous monthly cost.
There will be a set top box that you have to rent
Well .... (Score:2)
There is no free lunch (Score:2)
Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of crap and/or has a hidden agenda. Always remember that you are now living in a world where you have to rent EVERYTHING. Everything has some sort of monthly fee to it. But people cheerfully cough it up because, "Hey, it's only $19.95 a month! I'm really sticking it to 'the man'" No, you're not. You're now sampling the addictive drugs and you'll be hooked very quickly.
A little dab of research will do ya (Score:2)
I hate stories like this. IMOHO it's folks who don't want to see the cable companies take a dump (this article is from the WSJ), so I always assume there's a conflict of interest. Are there a lot of choices? Yes, and that's actually a good thing. The down side is you have to do a bit of research and you have to use a few different apps instead of having everything right at your fingertips. There are tons of sites out there that will tell you what each service carries.
When I cut the cord two years ago, I sp
Be careful what you ask for (Score:2)
Choice is Good (Score:2)
Sling (Score:2)
Content monopolies are the problem (Score:2)
Chinese streaming services go for $1-3 (usd). Subscribing to a dozen isn't a problem then. You can find the some shows repeated on many of them, so picking a few services that best match your preferences isn't so hard.
The problem is that the US have a few big content owners that keep their content as an exclusivity, so you don't have dozens of streaming services to chose from, you have a few, very expensive choices (yes, $15/month for a fraction of what you'd like to see is too expensive).
It's time copyrigh
In the US perhaps (Score:2)
Suppose there was a way... (Score:2)
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Exactly! Read, go outside, find a hobby, dance, practice some sports, take time with your family/friends, start a DIY project, ... :)
You had to see this coming. (Score:2)
I just love the way everyone's talking about this, as though it's shocking, and somehow unexpected. But this is economics 101. When the consumer demand exists for any given product, and the marketplace does not supply it, channels will rise in order to attempt to address the market need. The way this goes in history is pretty straightforward. First, one or two products show up. Then, you have a lot of copycats that offer the same or similar products as the market expands. Then, the market contracts and corr
Re: Too many choices? Bad? Are you fucking kiddin (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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The weakness is that most people don't *really* want to watch X, they just want to watch "something like X" (genre, quality, etc), and the competitor's options are good enough. Sure, there's a few long-lived franchises with dedicated fans (Star Trek, Simpsons, sports) that might go where they need to get their fix, but it's going to be really hard to attract new fans to your network.
I mean if NBC makes a great new show I hear about, it's unlikely I'm going to pay for an NBC streaming subscription for JUST
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Re:Too many choices? Bad? Are you fucking kidding? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Why isn't it reasonable? What are these various reasons?
As far as the constitutionality, the "exclusive right" applies to patents as well. How come FRAND patent licensing hasn't been shot down in courts yet? Copyright owners would still have the "exclusive right" to choose the terms of their license and FRAND wouldn't violate that. The terms would still be solely up to them. It would just mean that they cannot exclude another entity from accepting equivalent terms.
Re:Too many choices? Bad? Are you fucking kidding? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Too many exclusives!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too many exclusives!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And your friendly neighborhood 'torrent site offers all of those for the incredible price of nothing.
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I don't care about the price. I care about the convenience.
Sign up here, login there. Hope that an app doesn't kick you off and make you log in again. Because typing in secure passwords with an on-screen keyboard is not exactly fun.
Or I can click a magnet link, from anywhere in the world, have it kick off a download and it'll pop up in Kodi as "new movie".
I moved to streaming services because, for a short time, it was straight forward and simple. If they move back to a PITA model then I'll move back to my c
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Just curious...at what level of fidelity is the video and audio you are snagging this way?
Is it full HD? Is the audio the same quality as broadcast?
Its interesting if it is, but if it is way over compressed or shrunk down to 7
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Pirated content can be had at whatever quality level you feel you need, up to and including 4k for some things. Most TV shows that have ever been released in 1080p with 6 channel audio are available in 1080p and 6 channel audio. Very often, a 45 minute TV show can be had as a 400MB Full HD h.265 file, so it's not like there's even much of an investment in storing the content.
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What did you expect? The only aspect of a la carte programming that is, in any way, attractive to the content providers is to control as much of the profits from such an arrangement as possible. Did people really think there would be a few "clearing houses," like the cable companies, that would voluntarily make less money than they were making before a la carte and that would be that?
Re:Too many exclusives!!! (Score:4)
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.
They all have exclusives because that is what gets people to buy their services. If multiple services offered their content they would get a smaller cut of the revenue. As for charging, they are charging much in the same way they charged the cable companies; i.e. their offerings were more expensive because it is what drove subscribers to cable, unlike the marginal offerings such as SyFi, Velocity, HGTV, etc. who only survive because they get paid a few pennies per subscriber, and don't have to depend on actual viewership to survive=. They haven't gone at it alone because for many of them they would not make enough to survive.
Re:Expectations. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 i
It's lot more flexible (Score:2)
Most streaming services have no commitment, in fact since you've been able to add things like Showtime and HBO to Amazon Prime it's made it super easy to have them on a month to month basis.
Wait until the season of GoT has ended and then sign up for HBO for a month and binge it. Then get a month of netflix for the latest House of Cards, or perhaps get a month of Hulu to watch The First. You don't need 5 streaming services all the time, you can cycle them.
However that obviously doesn't work well with current
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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.
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The problem with your analogy is that there isn't a "store" to begin with when it comes to streaming entertainment, it's literally just a bunch of vending machines that won't even sell you a single soda, only the entire content of the machine.
We're not complaining that purchasing individual shows will cost more, we know that. What we're complaining about is that you CANNOT GET just a single show (or ANY subset of content from a given provider) currently. I don't want everything on Disney, I just want Star W
A la carte [Re:Expectations.] (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The funniest part is their (HBO, Disney, CBS, etc) total failure to see the glaring flaw in their attempt to capitalize on people who really just want a-la-carte content: they still aren't offering a-la-carte content.
Maybe someone did the market research and decided that the revenue added by giving people more granular options wouldn't make up for the cost of supporting so many options and the revenue lost from people downgrading from "all the things" subscriptions to less costly subscriptions. But it still feels like a missed opportunity to me.
If they do go a la carte it is more likely to be through a service such as iTunes where you buy a season for a fixed price, somewhat less than the same price if you subscribed for the duration if the run.
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Maybe this is an American thing? In Canada Netflix has Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel movies, etc. It's not often I can't get something on Canadian Netflix because of an exclusive issue. Game of Thrones might not be on there, but I haven't checked.
Netflix Canada has all the same Disney-owned content as Netflix elsewhere at present (that's Disney/Marvel/Star Wars/Pixar/etc), but won't after the Disney/Netflix content deal expires some time next year. Presumably the Marvel Netflix Original shows like Daredevil would stay, but they weren't part of the larger content deal that's expiring.
Any mention of Star Trek being exlusive to this or that platform would be specifically referencing the current series Star Trek Discovery which is exclusive to CBS All A
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Canada Netflix has very little. No HBO, no CBS, almost no NBC.
Crave now has HBO at least, up until last week it wasn't even possible to stream new HBO shows in Canada.
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Foreigner msmash also said "No wonder piracy is on rise again."
Not unbundled (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the benefit of unbundled. (Score:2)
Unlike bundling, when you purchase a streaming service, you're not moving up to another tier that requires all the previous tiers. That's the ala carte aspect. It means that each service has to compete with better unique content; I'm not going to get every service; maybe I'll have three of fifteen. But that still means I'm getting 20% of the excellent content (more than I can watch), instead of 100% of the okay content because their is no competition.