Consumers Paying More Than Ever for Streaming TV Each Month (yahoo.com) 162
After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video. From a report: Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price -- up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month -- following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October. Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that's double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven't even been around for 10 years.
Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up. It's hard to say where their breaking point will be, but given that analysts believe the platforms are likely to continue raising prices even further, we'll probably find out soon enough. Part of what's driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy. Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy.
Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up. It's hard to say where their breaking point will be, but given that analysts believe the platforms are likely to continue raising prices even further, we'll probably find out soon enough. Part of what's driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy. Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy.
Seems backwards (Score:2)
Re:Seems backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
"Part of what's driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become."
Haven't you heard? Capitalism has shifted gears. No longer is competition a way to keep prices low to attract consumers. Now competition is a good way to drive prices upward. Something something "premium experience" and "value added for the user" and all that matters is quarter over quarter increases in revenue.
The fun part of this is going to be when they finally hit the point where people have had enough. I know, in a classical house with kids, Disney could pretty much charge ten million dollars a month and parents would pay to avoid the screaming and whining about FOMO, but the rest? What do they have that's really worth the premium price? Netflix left our house last month. Hulu and HBO/HBOMax/Max are not far behind.
Re:Seems backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't understand your question. "What competition?" They're competing by offering different content. I doubt you would say Honda isn't competing with Toyota because they won't sell you a Camry.
Re:Seems backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
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Assuming sleeping a typical 8hrs and working another 8hrs that leaves 6-8hrs/day in which people need to be entertained. If any of these platforms release that much content in a month it would be exceptional and any given person might be interested in 1-5% of what they release.
Unlike your car, of which you MIGHT purchase 2 per household and where one option more or less eliminates the need for others, subscribing to a streaming platform really doesn't impact your need to subscribe to its 'competitors.'
Even
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Re:Seems backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
So to start this, let me disclose that subscribe to 8 streaming services including a Hulu with the live tv option.
"encourage your kids to read"
Last I checked books aren't free. At least not according to the two or three books I have to buy from Amazon each week, not to mention the audible subscription. And if they become really into it they'll be buying into all the premium materials sold around the books.
"Encourage them to play board games."
Which are also a big money drain... I'm currently looking the bookshelf in the my office with several grand in board games and associated dice, miniatures, etc. Oh, also about a grand in bonus print books to tack on the previous column.
"Encourage them to play some kind of sport."
Even bigger money drain. Pick your poison, typically the base cost to participate is going to be about $250-400/mo. That is in addition to equipment and any sort of special events/travel/transportation/food/etc. Fortunately my 1yr old doesn't need any of this yet but my 6yr old has already done the paces for bjj (about $300/mo for 2 classes a week) and now is in swim classes ($300/mo, plus make up class fees). Compared to traditional sports, those are cheap.
But you left out video games. Those actually provide the most bang for the buck since you could get by with an Xbox for $400 and then a relatively low monthly fee for gamepass. But similar to the streaming services you can't just pay a monthly fee and everyone get to play what they want. So in reality we've also got three nvidia shields, a couple geforce now ultimate accounts, a $5k gaming pc, 2x quest 2's and a quest 3 accessorized out the yin-yang, a nintendo switch, a bunch of older consoles going back to the NES and metric crapload of games including many purchased multiple times because everyone wants to play at once or play together.
The fact is that NO entertainment option in isolation keeps everyone entertained. What we all crave is novelty and change and NONE of these platforms produce engaging new and novel content at a pace that fills up that 6-8hrs/day of entertainment need per adult household member let alone the additional 6hrs/day the kids have. The only upside is that it is much easier to come up with something which feels novel for the kids.
Reading this whole thing just makes me sad. How indoctrinated are you that you can't find any entertainment at all without paying someone? We used to go outside and toss a baseball or a football around. That's the cost of a ball, and maybe a glove, and you get literally decades of enjoyment from them if you take decent care of them. I'm still using the glove I bought when I was 15. I just turned 50. Though I will admit I've replaced the balls a few times in the intervening years.
One of my favorite things to do, as a kid or an adult, is just go for a walk. I know telling kids that today would make them freak the fuck out if they weren't allowed to keep their eyes glued to a phone the entire time, but there's a whole world right outside your door that you can be part of without paying a dime. Walk, bike, skate, just go out and do things. Entertainment being solely locked to, "How can I buy something to occupy my time" is such a weird way of looking at it. It makes me sad how many fall into that trap.
Re: Seems backwards (Score:3)
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However, prices are really really small compared to cable. Even if you sub to 4 services it's still a win. Though with 4 services, someone needs to start weening.
I just canceled netflix. I loved netflix, but I just hadn't been watching for various reasons, so why waste the money. Mostly when I'm watching TV I'm just exhausted and don't want to think or watch a full episode, stressed, etc. Oh well, there were things I did want to watch but if I'm not using it it makes sense to unsubscribe.
Re:Seems backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
However, prices are really really small compared to cable. Even if you sub to 4 services it's still a win. Though with 4 services, someone needs to start weening.
No they're not. You only save money over cable if you have a limited width of content you're interested in. That may work for some households but if you want to duplicate everything you have with a normal cable subscription it now costs more money [theatlantic.com] with SVOD. From the link: "For the first time this fall, the monthly price for a bundle of the top streaming services ($87) is expected to exceed the price of an average cable package ($83)."
I'd also point out that cable gives you local channels, which are huge if you live somewhere with severe weather. You can those with an antenna, unless you live in a RF dead zone valley like we do, then you're stuck with cable or it's online equivalent (e.g., YouTube TV and Hulu Live). Cable also allows you to use a DVR, including third party options (e.g., TiVo) that allow you to actually skip ads with minimum fuss. You can't skip ads on SVOD. They're even working towards worming them into allegedly ad-free tiers. :(
There are other reasons to hate the cable company, see the various South Park episodes/memes on the subject, but cost is no longer one of them.
Re:Seems backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Our out of pocket for streaming:
HBO Max: $15.99/mo (soon to increase [slashdot.org])
Netflix: $22.49/mo
Paramount+: $11.49/mo
Disney/Hulu Bundle: $24.99/mo
Apple TV+: $9.99/mo
That's $85 before you add in the cost of YouTube TV ($72.99) which ain't optional for us because OTA reception is impossible here. There's also a cost for Amazon Prime not easily separated from the other perks of membership, except, now that they're adding in ads it actually is: $2.99/mo to opt out of the ads nobody asked for.
If you sum it all together this is our biggest expense aside from housing. It's more than any utility (gas/electric/water/cellular/isp) bill. It's more than our car insurance bill and we have two new (2019 and 2022) vehicles with full coverage!
You will no doubt reply and nitpick the fact that we subscribe to so many services, except, that's the only non-pirate way to get all the content we want. That's how scattered the ecosystem has become. IMHO, this is an anti-trust issue, distribution should be separated from production. The day Comcast bought NBC and Netflix got into the production business was the beginning of the end.
The costs were semi-tolerable before the password sharing crackdown. Side note: That was a huge slap in the face after they all implicitly (for Netflix, explicitly [twitter.com]) encouraged it.
I have a disabled Mother that survives on roughly $900/mo of SSDI. At least I could offer some free to her streaming services. It was a nice little perk that made me feel better about the industry. So naturally, they took it away, and now I need to fork out another small pile of money. Thankfully, I have IT Guy Privilege, so I mailed her a VPN box and now all her streaming routes through my home connection. That's my middle finger to the industry, except, it doesn't matter, because 99.9% of people can't do that. You know what they CAN do? Pirate. Piracy has never been more accessible to the masses with Kodi and Plex.
I'm rooting for it frankly. I'd feel bad about denying the actors and writers residuals, except, they don't fucking get those with streaming anyway! The industry screws over labor as badly as it screws over consumers. The only winners are the assholes on Wall Street.
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It kills me that my mom pays for YouTubeTV. The cost is criminal. Unfortunately we kids can't figure out a better solution.
I am going to start walking with my wallet. We watch 6-8 hours of TV per week max and just Netflix plus Apple aren't worth the money. We have a couple more episodes of Ted Lasso to watch then Apple goes away. Netflix is harder, but out of principle I will cancel. We are in an TV/FM dead zone, so I need to figure out something for emergency broadcasts that doesn't involve Internet, but t
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Netflix is the first one you should cancel. If you dig into the minutia of the Hollywood strikes they have been the biggest obstacle to a solution. They built their entire business model on screwing over the actors and writers that make the content. The rest of the SVOD industry just copied from them.
It's also my subjective belief that Netflix's quality is pretty crummy in the aggregate. For every "The Crown" you've got dozens of low effort productions. We watch a lot of documentaries and their origin
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We have lots of hobbies. My partner is retired and does nothing but hobbies. One of those is consuming content. She worked in Hollywood, hard for her not to. My hobbies include week long hiking trips. We both travel a lot.
Re YouTube TV, I already said why that’s not optional, we need it for OTA channels. It's hard to retroactively binge watch a tornado warning. :(
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Re YouTube TV, I already said why that’s not optional, we need it for OTA channels. It's hard to retroactively binge watch a tornado warning. :(
Well, that's an excuse.... If you are able to watch Youtube TV, it means you have all of the internet at your disposal. I guess there should be much, MUCH, better sources for Tornado warnings available than OTA channels. And since you are travelling/hiking a lot, you should rely on mobile apps for that, in any case.
Haven't actually watched any OTA channels myself in months. If there's a football or hockey game available on one of the free channels, I'll just use their streaming service for the live stre
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"It's hard to retroactively binge watch a tornado warning"
Those come on your phone you know... also you could just buy a $60 Baofang radio.
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The trick is to find what services bundle Netflix as an option. For example, if you use T-Mobile, Netflix is a freebie.
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> However, prices are really really small compared to cable. Even if you sub to 4 services it's still a win
Yes but you get massivly more on cable, including their catchup/streaming services plus those prgramms show on that platform actually pay more to the actors.
Same with satellite and terrestrial TV, in fact in the UK teresstrial FTA TV and satellite are only just a bit more cost that Netflix alone.
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Seems backwards ...
Because the market is an oligopoly: In FTA Tv., a consumer can change the product (channel) for free. Cost and vendor lock-in mean subscription requires more commitment from the consumer. There is thus, vendor lock-in and consumer latency (laziness).
This is why so much of the internet is free: While paid subscription has obvious benefits, cost is king and consumers will instantly change to the free service. (Operating Systems are exempt because they have legacy issues, eg. purchased software, UI proc
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(Operating Systems are exempt because they have legacy issues, eg. purchased software, UI procedure/gestures, filesystems.)
Very few consumers directly pay for their OS. How many non-techies do you know who have a non-OEM Windows license? Apple's OSes are baked into the hardware price too.
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let the enshittification continue (Score:5, Insightful)
plex/kodi + piracy has never looked so good.
these greedy fucks just cannot seem to help themselves. every last dollar of surplus value must be extracted or else it's "money left on the table".
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plex/kodi
What did it for me was a combination of my broadband connection always deciding to act up when I feel like watching TV, and being completely over playing the "what streaming service has the rights to this show/movie now?" game. To be specific, I'm talking about back when Netflix lost the rights to Stargate SG1, which was a few years ago.
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The wife gets that at the library, often in bluray. At that she gets a big bag of DVD's and bluray's regularly. The libraries (can order from the whole Province) have a fairly good collection as long as you don't mind waiting a few months for new releases.
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SG1 is part of prime these days and I'd have a prime subscription regardless of streaming needs. But the quality is shit, so while I pay for the content I'm currently rewatching pirated copies on Plex. I also own the blu-rays, they also aren't not as good as the pirated copies and I don't even have the blu-ray player hooked up anymore.
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SG1 is included with prime. They literally own MGM but for some reason the quality is garbage.
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Aye matey, there be smooth waters in the bay tonight.
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plex/kodi + piracy has never looked so good. these greedy fucks just cannot seem to help themselves. every last dollar of surplus value must be extracted or else it's "money left on the table".
Really? Never? Not even when there were no streaming options?
Re:let the enshittification continue (Score:5, Interesting)
I too like to key in on colloquialisms and point out that they aren't 100% literally true.
So, okay fine; how about:
>Since the studios carved up netflix's offerings in an ill advised spate of stupid greed, kodi/plex are looking better and better each day.
Better? =P
Re:let the enshittification continue (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Never? Not even when there were no streaming options?
The other guy [slashdot.org] gave the real answer but I'll bite anyway: Believe it or not, there was less need for piracy before streaming.
Netflix's DVD by mail service had everything thanks to the First-sale Doctrine [wikipedia.org]. There was no game of whack-a-mole to figure out who had the movie/show you wanted. That's why they killed Blockbuster. It wasn't speed -- it took one to three days to get stuff from Netflix, vs. a few minutes drive to Blockbuster -- it was selection. If it ever existed on DVD they had it. No brick and mortar could compete with that. The niche for piracy in the pre-streaming era was "current cable television not yet released to DVD". You didn't need it for Broadcast TV, for most that is free with an antenna and the /. crowd can easily roll their own DVR solutions, it truly was just cable/premium stuff.
Today the ecosystem is scattered. There's no legal one stop shop for anything. And Broadcast TV is dying. Paramount's decision to paywall Star Trek: Discovery saw to that. When the rest of the business saw how many people were willing to sign up for a proprietary streaming service they all decided to do the same with their IP.
You know who still has a one stop shop, filled with all current and nearly all old content? Bittorrent trackers. You know what's really sad? The good ones have better customer service than any streaming provider. They cost $0 and will provide more help for a technical n00b than Netflix or Paramount will if you have problems with their apps.
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The other thing Netflix had going for it was that they made sure it worked on everything. Most of these newer steaming services are hard to get. Take Paramount Plus as an example. I wanted to pay for it, but then I looked at the list of supported devices: https://support.paramountplus.... [paramountplus.com]
The only one I have is an Nvidia Shield, but it says that it only supports US devices and I'm not in the US. So I can't watch it an piracy is the only option. Well, I could wait, but these days shows are a community event,
Not me... (Score:2)
"Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up."
I've dumped apple TV after the latest hike. I also went down a tier on Netflix. I dropped Hulu (kept Disney+ -- for now). Dropped a tier from SlingTV Blue+Orange down to Orange.
The latest hikes ended up saving me quite a bit. Even they raised their rates.
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I dropped Netflix. They stopped having anything I wanted to watch.
Hulu went in the bin also, for the same reason.
I still pay for Youtube Premiue and usually when we want to see a movie we can pay a one time fee on Amazon.
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Netflix and Hulu really seem like they wanted to reach Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org] as quickly as possible. There's still some decent things in there but no longer a default option for streaming, just things you keep around because the amount of content is worth it.
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Same here. Also, their fuckery with the 6 episode """seasons""". Son, that's called a mini-series.
Netflix can't die fast enough.
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I used to watch a lot of foreign movies on netflix. Then they all went away.
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It's just the opposite from my perspective. Now it is all woke garbage, anime, and foreign crap. None of that is appealing.
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\
The latest hikes ended up saving me quite a bit. Even they raised their rates.
That fits us as well. We're paying less total than we have in years- we've gone from having a lot of stuff all the time to rotating between them, because nothing is worth holding on to all year anymore.
Of course they keep paying (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire industry is raising prices at the same time. There's no alternative, and it's not in any of the few players' interest to compete with the others and start a race to the bottom.
In short, it's a cartel.
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In short, it's a cartel.
That's the entertainment industry in a nutshell. Even if they were willing to compete on price, you're not watching Stranger Things on Amazon Prime Video, or Star Trek Lower Decks on Disney+, or Loki on Netflix.
Video on demand has always meant the studios would eventually figure out how to suck as much money out of your wallet as they can get away with. Just visit Universal or Disney's theme parks and it'll become abundantly clear exactly how their business models work.
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The problem isn't that nobody can compete. The technology to start competing with these guys has gotten cheap enough that you could produce better content after crowdsourcing from a couple trailer parks.
The problem is that we are all bored and nobody produces anywhere near enough content to fullfill the 180+hrs/mo content needs of anyone, let alone fill that need for the varied flavors of taste. Because of that nobody is willing to go without anything that sounds interesting from the existing content makers
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TPB kept its prices fairly stable.
Re: Of course they keep paying (Score:2)
Rarbg didn't.
Re:Of course they keep paying (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no alternative
Sure there is: don't pay. We're talking about entertainment products. Simply not using them has always and will always be a valid and viable alternative.
At one point, I looked back on our watch history and realized we had paid for eleven months of Netflix without anyone on the account actually watching a single piece of content. At another point, I realized we were subscribed to HBO Max for my benefit alone, even though I had been spending my downtime playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the last several months.
Awhile back we finally switched to monthly subscriptions on an ad hoc basis, and we couldn't be happier. We're spending way less money, we're watching more content, we're spending more time actually watching instead of looking for stuff to watch, and the stuff we're watching tends to be higher quality as well.
We'll subscribe when a service has enough stuff we want to watch, unsubscribe immediately so we don't forget later, watch what we want to watch, and then go back to other forms of entertainment afterwards. The fact that we purposefully subscribe because there's specific content we want to watch means that we spend our time watching content instead of swiping endlessly without finding anything. And if you only have it for a month, the sense of scarcity pushes you to finally watch that critically-acclaimed foreign language drama you've been putting off for the last decade, rather than swiping by it yet again.
When there's something that catches our eye we add it to AnyList (our grocery list app). AnyList lets you set up different stores for different shopping trips, but we've co-opted that feature by labeling each streaming service as a different store. When enough stuff piles up for a particular "store", we subscribe, burn through our backlog, and then move on for video games, crocheting, YouTube, or whatever else we want to purposefully pursue. In practice, we find that we'll frequently go months between subscriptions without ever feeling like we're missing out on their presence.
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"Simply not using them has always and will always be a valid and viable alternative."
Not being entertained isn't a particularly viable alternative. All the streaming, all the games, all the board games, all the activities, and still bored.
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> There's no alternative
I used to look down on gym rats but then I learned to compare them to couch potatoes.
Re:Of course they keep paying (Score:5, Insightful)
Biden is now responsible for the inflation in Europe, too?
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Yes. It is the scale of the dumping.
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The inflation was caused by Trump. Biden got it under some sort of control. I'm not thrilled with Biden, but only vote Trump if you want the economy to tank a second time.
Of course? (Score:2)
So, inflation means prices always go up. And video services have historically raised prices faster than inflation.
In related astonishing news, the sky is up and water is wet.
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The BBC's fees often increase below inflation.
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The minimum donation to get PBS Passport [pbs.org] hasn't changed the entire time it Passport has been a thing. The broadcast signal is remains free and no content has been paywalled. Passport is simply archives of previously aired content.
Remember when Hulu was free? (Score:2)
Those were the days. It's getting to the point where you'll need an app to cancel and resubscribe on a rotating basis because you've watched everything you want on one service and a new season isn't due for 6-12 months so you switch over to another service.
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Remember when Hulu was free AND had content from all the major networks? And when it would show ads, it seemed like there was maybe a grand total of 4 different commercials that would rotate?
Their price keeps going up, yet their content keeps dwindling. My wife and I are trying to get caught up on The Orville this month so we can cancel Hulu before the next billing cycle.
Re: Remember when Hulu was free? (Score:2)
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It's on both.
There was hope that driving viewer numbers on Disney+ would convince the corporate overlords to renew it. That seems like a long shot hope now with price hikes and reductions in other content across the whole industry. :(
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We were late to the Orville bandwagon. I used to roll my eyes where someone said "The Orville is the best of the new Star Trek"... but it really is. Although Lower Decks gives it a run for its money, IMHO.
Re: Remember when Hulu was free? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't get through Lower Decks. I want to like it but it throughly fails to hold my attention. I don't dislike it. It has never gotten me angry enough to scream at the TV, unlike Discovery or Picard, but I always seem to end up playing with my phone before it's over. Strange New Worlds, excellent show IMHO, that one holds my attention and feels true to the Trek ethos. If Discovery had done something like that I doubt anyone would ever have compared it negatively to The Orville.
And speaking of The Orville, excellent show. It's one of the very few shows of any genre in recent years that I cared enough about to clear my calendar to watch. Never caught it late. I feel like Seth pitched it as Family Guy in Space to con the studio into paying for it but it was really a TNG homage all along. That sense of optimism and wonder, even in the darker moments, that's what Discovery and Picard largely failed (a few great episodes notwithstanding) to capture. The darkest Orville episode -- which I won't name because I'm not sure you've gotten that far yet -- still ends on the optimistic/happy/forward looking notes that nearly all TNG episodes end on. They never lose sight of the better future that they're supposed to be living in.
Discovery and Picard frequently felt like modern day angst projected into the Star Trek universe. All Star Trek has done that -- TOS and TNG had lots of Cold War undertones -- but it was usually done as a teaching moment. Discovery and Picard feel like they're filled with violence and death for pure shock value. :(
Anywho, I think we'd have gotten at least four or five seasons out of the The Orville without the COVID production pause. It's not officially cancelled but I have very little hope looking at the economics of modern day Hollywood. At least we got what we did. Can't claim we got hosed as badly as the Firefly crowd did, lol.
P.S., Happy Arbor Day. :)
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I have to admit with episode 1, I was (momentarily) disappointed that Captain Mercer didn't sound like Peter Griffin.
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Remember when Hulu was free AND had content from all the major networks?
Seems to be "customer acquisition" phase where they invest (lose) money to get prospects to try a new product. It can't last for long.
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In a healthy market the savvy consumer just jumps to the new contender in the customer acquisition phase while the original company get bought and shuffled around creating billions in economic activity while spiraling down the train and it rolls on and on and on....
Stopped all of them. Never been better. (Score:2)
Too much verticality (Score:4, Interesting)
This probably can't for legal reasons and won't for political reasons but seeing how things have shaken out and look to be going it's my thinking that there needs to be separation from the content production side of the business and the distribution deal, very similar to US vs Paramount where the studios had to divest from owning the movie theaters themselves (which is gone now I believe, Disney operates its own theaters i believe).
Streaming distributors can rent content and compete for customers based on their curated libraries, more services like Shudder which serve content to specific niche audiences can start to shake out and increase competition as the ability to spin up your own streaming service becomes much simpler. Also no exclusive content forever, timed exclusives only then all content has to be available to all distributors at reasonable prices.
There's probably a ton of holes in this but right in the span of a mere decade we have gone from the "streaming revolution" to "streaming dystopia", a goddamn speedrun in taking something consumer friendly and popular and ruining it.
Re:Too much verticality (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is simply copyright length. Make it something reasonable again and the problem will sort itself out, as less expensive streaming services would then be able to stock their libraries with content from a public domain which no longer takes a lifetime to gain new works.
If companies want to paywall their new shit until 14 years (that was the original length of copyright protection) runs out, that should be their prerogative. However, since they'll now have to compete with their own back catalogs, that may be all the incentive necessary to keep prices reasonable.
Re:Too much verticality (Score:5, Interesting)
You're certainly not wrong but even for what I am thinking 14 years is too long, in my mind the timescale on exclusivity is like 6-12 months, tops. You can pay to get that show right away on the exclusive service or you can wait and see if your streaming distributor picks it up.
Bring back the idea of a "market for content", end of copyright means no royalties whereas I am thinking more of "forced royalties", you will get paid for your content but you can't hold it hostage behind your own service, at least not forever. If Netflix is willing to pay the rate to have "Friends" on their platform they should be able to, MAX just can't say "lol, no it's mine", like it was a show that aired on NBC but you can't watch it on Peacock, it's just ridiculous.
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I've long shared the idea of mandatory royalties, like the music industry, but I'll go one further than both of you and say the issue is with distribution and production being combined. In my mind, they should be separate. That might still allow for exclusives, look at sports leagues that are only available to a particular cable/satellite provider, which should also be abolished, IMHO. If it's a violation of Network Neutrality for AT&T to block/degrade Netflix it should be a violation of the same pri
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In addition to the 14yr copyright length, require them to separate out their distribution platforms and make all content available to all competitors at the same pricing/terms [which cannot include anything which de facto reduces access].
Let the distribution platforms compete on technical features rather than content.
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Maybe 6-12 months of exclusivity, then mandatory licencing at reasonable cost for another few years.
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"Streaming distributors can rent content and compete for customers based on their curated libraries"
We should make them work like common carriers and provide their entire libraries to any commer on an equal access basis. Let the distributors compete on algorithms, technical features and costs but end differences in what is available to watch altogether.
high seas (Score:2)
Consumers have grumbled, but have so far been willing to keep paying up
Not I, for a long time I had quit the high seas as a couple of subs at reasonable price was good enough, now the market has fragmented because of cunt organizations like Disney and prices are going through the roof I am back to just Netflix and that will be gone soon too. Basically they are trying to bring back the old cable TV lockin models at obscene prices, well fuck them.
and cable tv ends internet pricing may go to cover (Score:2)
and cable tv ends internet pricing may go to cover the lost.
Maybe less at some ISP's and more at others.
Now what will comcast do?? force peacock to be part of all internet plans?
"keep investors happy" (Score:3)
"keep investors happy"... when instead it should be all about keeping customers happy and following through with your mission. But alas we're all slaves of Wall Street :-(
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It's called greedflation [marketwatch.com]. It's been the driving force [marketwatch.com] behind inflation for some time.
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""keep investors happy"... when instead it should be all about keeping customers happy"
Keep in mind, these are generally the same people. For the most part the investors are people with retirement accounts and since that is everyone who works it is really inclusive of everyone that matters.
The reason we invest money isn't to make consumers or employees happy. It is to grow our money. Otherwise we'd just keep it and use it on something which makes US happy personally.
Rotating services is a pain... but we're doing it (Score:5, Interesting)
End of this month, Netflix and Hulu are likely going away. We might add Max back in for a month or two. Daughter is re-watching Deep Space Nine, so Paramount+ will be part of the rotation for another couple of months. Still need to chat with my wife about the BritBox add-on to Prime.
Crunchyroll is inexpensive so we keep it (daughter and I both watch it). Peacock we get for free from our Comcast cable subscription, so that stays around... but the only thing there that anyone in our household has watched is Yellowstone.
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... our Comcast cable subscription ...
That's cable internet, not cable TV.
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How long do you think you'll get to keep doing that? My prediction is they all introduce annual contracts with termination fees in the not too distant future. They were okay with password sharing until they weren't. I see no reason to believe "binge it all in a month" will remain a thing. It's not like that "hack" isn't well known to the C-suite assholes making these decisions. :(
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Obviously I can't speak for anyone else, but - if that happens, we'll just do without a bunch of streaming services.
YS (Score:2)
I can't see why this series is popular after watching its first season. I like 1883 and 1923 much more.
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Beg to differ, those feel like cheap sequels.
Much better offerings! (Score:2)
Also, the streaming services offerings have become so much better and deeper!
Just kidding, it is way worse than even pirating 20 years ago.
The more... (Score:2)
...streaming services price gouge (and, in some cases, still have adverts as well), the more I like the BBC's license model. The BBC is expensive, but it's cheaper than some of the streaming services now and the quality is about as good.
The problem, though, is that there's a lot of content that's only available to stream. It'll never be on regular TV channels and will never be released to DVD.
(Which means that, in 20-30 years time, we'll start seeing "missing episodes" scandals, as the streaming service wil
I've shrunk my streaming footprint. (Score:5, Interesting)
For my part, I discontinued Paramount+ and Disney+ recently. I wouldn't have Prime if it wasn't bundled free... I don't subscribe to music services.
I'm down to... Netflix. I use it exclusively for 1 hour every day - I have a nice TV mounted five feet in front of my treadmill. And for all the badmouthing that people do about Netflix content, I'm nowhere close to running dry. I just started watching Pluto... and damn if it isn't a pretty decent show with episodes that run over an hour each (so far at least).
If it wasn't for that treadmill, I'd cut the cord on that too... passive consumption is dropping further and further down on my list of priorities. But that's just my trajectory, and I understand that people are at different places in their relationship to media. But I'd almost always rather play guitar than watch TV.
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Like you, we rotate, and we even quit Prime. I've found that in many cases, after quitting Prime, packages still arrive in 2-3 days. The estimated ship date will say something like a week for delivery, but then I get this nice email after a couple of days saying, "Great news, your package is arriving early!" It seems Amazon's infrastructure is so tuned for Prime that they don't know how to slow things down for non-paying customers anymore. Just don't mention it to Amazon please!
Oh, and for packages that do
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We've got it good overall (Score:2)
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"we have way more decent originals now"
We did... for like a year. Now we have loads of crappy originals and when they occasionally get lucky they stop making it.
Churn, Churn, Churn (Score:2)
I find the best answer, and the only one that really saves money, is to churn. Disney+ has some unique content, totally give them that. So, over Christmas, when I'm parked on my butt and it's cold and dark outside, I pay for a month of it and binge. Then cancel. Some other month, I'll pick up a month of Netflix and catch up on six things. March, I like to watch the NCAA tourney, so I'll pick up Sling for a month. June? It's freaking nice outside and the days are long, why would I have any package?
I fig
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I assume that pricing is coming, but I am not sure how much it will really help them. A bigger up-front fee makes someone re-consider a purchase. I generally prefer to buy movies, as I load them on my tablet and watch them on flights or when I am away... but there is no way I am going to spend $20 on a "new release" movie or season of a TV show. The value just isn't there for me.
My streaming bill has gone down (Score:2)
My streaming bill has gone down, because I canceled all of them. I decided that for the amount of stuff we watch it's cheaper to just buy it on Google TV (or iTunes if you prefer). In the case of TV series it sometimes makes sense to subscribe to a service for a month or two in the winter when I have lots of time to binge, but other than that the fragmentation of streaming video has convinced me to dump them all.
The era of peak Netflix, when Netflix was the only service and it had approximately everything
TV (Score:2)
People pay for streaming TV?
More fool them.
(If you want me to give you money for your show, have a download button and a shopping cart. I'll gladly pay for anything that's decent, to the legitimate owners of the property, with no middle-men beyond a WorldPay transaction percentage. I'm more than happy to pay for a product. Hell, I bought WinZIP / PKZip back in the day. But... I will need to see what the programme is like before I pay for it... maybe a few ad-supported episodes on your website)
I don't ge
Plex (Score:3)
Went without a TV for half my adult life, didn't miss it.
Spend years obtaining a small DVD collection. Barely use it (in fact last time I moved, even my parents were questioning why I had DVDs on my bookshelves because even they see them as old hat).
Moved into a place of my own for the first time ever, after various relationships. Thought I'd be lonely so I signed up to free trials of all the big names. Never bothered to renew any of them. The only one I found vaguely interesting was one that streamed live free-to-view TV. It was convenient and saved me having to set up a TV, aerial, etc. However it had ads and often showed me the Irish broadcast TV instead of the UK, and often blanked-out things like movies shown on TV.
Bought a house and built a Plex. Added a TV aerial. Ripped all my DVDs. Now I have a personal Netflix, which contains exactly the series I want, only the episodes I want (I hate when old series try to piggyback on their fame with poor episodes... I just cut them off at the point it went downhill), and is there for me whenever I want, for zero cost, on any devices I like, for as many devices as I like, and I can share it with friends.
I spent some time downloading some antique TV series off things like the Internet Archive, grabbed some stuff off YouTube that isn't on TV, downloaded from iPlayer, etc. etc. I even went to the effort of getting some old second-hand DVDs just to rip them because the programmes on them haven't been broadcast in decades, and putting in documentaries that I downloaded years ago that I've never seen since.
Put it all on the Plex. Watch it on my phone, laptop, projector (still don't have a TV!), Steam Deck, tablet, etc. either at home or remotely. All I need is a browser. No DRM. And can watch live TV if I like - I usually don't bother, I have it set up to record certain programmes as they air, then I just edit it with Shotcut, cut out the ads, and put it into the Plex. I have become very proficient with Shotcut and can do it in about 60 seconds per episode, and then it renders in about 2-3 minutes while I'm doing the next episode. And then I never have to do it ever again, nor see any ads.
At the current rate of consumption, I estimate that I have about 10 years worth of content for my purposes. I add to it occasionally, but never remove anything (unless I find an ad I missed or an episode that I can't stand).
And it means that there's ALWAYS something on, always something to my tastes, no nonsense, and I have - for example - a Christmas list of movies that I play every Christmas, and also I can say to friends "Oh, you need to see this documentary that I watched years ago, it's all about that, and it was fascinating. I'll share the link with you", and whether they watch it or not I don't care but they can watch it any time they like and are extremely unlikely to ever find that documentary anywhere else by that point.
I don't understand subscription TV, and haven't since the early days of satellite TV in the UK.
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There are some old shows and movies I watch. Usually to put on as background noise. But ideally I'm looking for content that I haven't already seen. If watching TV is a waste of my limited lifespan, how much more of a waste is it to spend time having an experience I've already had?
Still less than cable (Score:2)
We're paying for Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and a local service, and all of them together still cost less than we used to pay for cable.
While content segregation is annoying, prices are still not too bad.
Cost for Netflix is still cheaper than DishTV (Score:2)
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Why I still have a TV, even if I'm taxed for it (Score:2)
In the UK it costs me a mere £149 or so to have a TV license.
That pays for up to a hundred FREE to view channels or so. Add a recorder and associated FREE to access catchup/streaming services from the same TV networks and boom you have loads of live TV, which is a must for sport and news, with VOD/catchup services attached letting you watch practically anything that was broadcast and / or from the archives. In fact you want to watch a TV programme that you missed the first 10 mins of? No big deal, th