Streaming is Cable Now (theverge.com) 110
An anonymous reader shares a report: Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max are teaming up for a new bundle this summer, Netflix is focused on the WWE and celebrity boxing, Disney Plus is getting ESPN, and Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Max could get a price hike. A familiar refrain emerged around all this news: streaming is becoming cable TV all over again and getting crummier in the process.
And it's true! When streaming first emerged, it was a beautiful alternative to piracy, which was very convenient and very illegal, and cable, which was festooned with ads and weighed down by channels you were paying for and didn't want. Streaming gave you a world of content on demand for a fraction of the cost of cable. But that experience was never sustainable. Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to "increase revenue" and "make profit." This means Netflix spending billions of dollars a year on content isn't necessarily sustainable unless it's adding new users and monetizing them through some combination of ads and increasing subscription fees for stuff that used to be free, like sharing an account or streaming in 4K.
And it's true! When streaming first emerged, it was a beautiful alternative to piracy, which was very convenient and very illegal, and cable, which was festooned with ads and weighed down by channels you were paying for and didn't want. Streaming gave you a world of content on demand for a fraction of the cost of cable. But that experience was never sustainable. Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to "increase revenue" and "make profit." This means Netflix spending billions of dollars a year on content isn't necessarily sustainable unless it's adding new users and monetizing them through some combination of ads and increasing subscription fees for stuff that used to be free, like sharing an account or streaming in 4K.
Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to "increase revenue" and "make profit."
Those two things are not the same, and conflating them is the height of crony capitalism cuckery.
Yes, businesses exist to make a profit. That is absolutely reasonable and understandable.
The way trading happens in stock markets has turned business into a game, where the only goal is to get ever higher numbers in order to please shareholders. There is no reward for steady, reliable businesses which make a reasonable profit year after year. They have to make more money every year or they are considered failures and the stock market punishes them for not doing anything and everything to achieve that goal, no matter how antisocial or indeed self-destructive.
Re: Disingenuous (Score:1)
Couldnâ(TM)t agree more. The word âoegrowthâ in this context is cancerous.
Re:Disingenuous (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: Disingenuous (Score:1)
Yes. Yes we did notice that.
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Re: Disingenuous (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that anti-capitalist sentiment loves conflating these too, to rile up people against the reasonable idea of profit. Because apparently âprofitâ is stolen from the workers, nevermind that losses arenâ(TM)t taken from their paychecks.
So yeah, itâ(TM)s both extreme ends of this conversation that are trying to muddle up the terminology.
Re: Disingenuous (Score:1)
+0, Insightful? You know you are posting bullshit comments on Slashdot when you have to post as AC, then upvote yourself with your sock puppet accounts to get Insightful for a short time before other mods put your post where it belongs.
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If workers weren't having their labor exploited, their paychecks would come directly from the profits, because they would own the business. So yes, if there was a loss, they would not get paid.
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If workers weren't having their labor exploited, their paychecks would come directly from the profits, because they would own the business. So yes, if there was a loss, they would not get paid.
Not true. Workers in cooperatives & other kinds of worker-owned businesses do get paid when there's a loss. You really should read up on how cooperatives really work instead of spouting out ignorance about them.
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The moment companies start to feel reduced profits - not losses, just less profit - the layoffs begin. The below inflation pay increases. The removal of benefits.
Losses very much are taken from the workers.
Re:Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
> There is no reward for steady, reliable businesses which make a reasonable profit year after year
This is incorrect.
I have a significant amount of money invested in steady revenue producing boring companies most people have never heard of. The stock price doesn't move much but I get solid dividends from being a share holder. My income stream from this part of my portfolio is not as sexy as from my riskier and better known investments like Nvidia or Tesla but the risk is near zero and provides a good balance for when Nvidia takes a big dive or Musk tweets something stupid while drunk again.
Solidly performing companies are well rewarded by investors. Go look at what Warren Buffet has to say about these kind of companies. I suspect he has a bit more investing knowledge and experience than most of the slashdot user base.
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If you just want business and not stock, a mortician has a steady reliable business.
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No, I mean like regional utility companies, for example. Or real estate companies that are strip mall land lords across the country.
Ugly boring shit that isn't going away when a new technology comes along, doesn't depend on VC, is outside politics, and doesn't have a flashy media whore CEO tweeting random shit 4 times a week.
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"reasonable profit"
"make more money "
And just like that, you;ve conflated. A reasonable profit in light ofi inflation is 'more money'. Add in research and development, response to competition (woops, repeating myself), and it's 'more money'.
Please try not to cling to your indignation at capitalism, consider the alternatives and work to improve, not destroy. K? Bibi.
ps- from here you seem like a Libertarian. That was intended as an insult.
Re: Disingenuous (Score:2)
Great. Profit with responsibility to shareholders, bad. Profit with responsibility to, I don't know, those who don't like the corporation? Good. Oh sure. That doesn't work in the real world. That's why I think you're a libertarian, are you trying to make points that don't actually work in the real world? I don't buy it. I think you're misguided on this. But it's very popular and very satisfying to find fault with profitable corporations, especially the more profitable. They are. Not very fashionable to reco
Re: Disingenuous (Score:2)
Oh no, I think shareholders deserve to be responsible for the actions of the corporations they invest in. I'm giving you parts of the story you're asking for and then you're making assumptions about what I believe based on things you didn't ask about, and only imagined. I'm not responsible for shit you made up.
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There is a giant gap between laissez-faire capitalism and complete socialism. A big example is that we used to do a fair amount of trust busting. When you regulates parts of industry that have gotten out of control you can ensure the market remains mostly fair. This has not been done for 50 years at this point. The closest we got was Microsoft antitrust case and look how little resulted from that in the late 90s?
Capitalism is animalistic and you can't really blame animals for acting like animals. It is na
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Real libertarians aren't just that. You're describing pro-industrial or "fiscal conservative" maybe. Wherease libertarians are opposed to excessive government control over fiscal *and* social matters both. Ie, low tax and low regulatory environment for business, but also they don't want the government to restrict who you can marry, what you can smoke, or what medical procedures are allowed on your body. A lot of Republicans are described as libertarian but they're really not at all about liberty.
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Real libertarians aren't just that.
Oh look, the no true libertarians fallacy. This is my surprised face :|
Re:Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
Those two things are not the same, ...
No disagreement there. Profit and revenue are different things. Profit is ultimately the important one.
The way trading happens in stock markets has turned business into a game, where the only goal is to get ever higher numbers in order to please shareholders. There is no reward for steady, reliable businesses which make a reasonable profit year after year.
That's a bit of an overstatement. I'm looking for a new job and ran across a few at Cisco. I hadn't heard much about Cisco recently so I checked their financials. Turns out they're an absolute money making machine with rock steady increases in both revenue and profit year after year. Thing is, not all investors are stupid or short sighted. What they actually care about is the net present value of future earnings. What we're all guessing about is whether earning $2 in profit next Tuesday is better than $1 today. Naturally, some investors heavily discount future earnings and just want cash now. Others (typically retirees) want consistent income over time and the poster child for what they buy is utility companies.
What gets the headlines are spectacular price fluctuations. If you actually listen to any CFO giving a earnings report, they definitely talk about their prospects a year or three out and the analysts definitely pay attention to what's going to happen in a few years.
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If you actually listen to any CFO giving a earnings report, they definitely talk about their prospects a year or three out and the analysts definitely pay attention to what's going to happen in a few years.
"You'll earn a boatload of money buying our stock because of all the money we're going to make. Quick, buy our stock before everyone notices and buys it first, this means our stock is worth a lot today!" Do they care about the future, or about the reaction to estimates about their future? And those estimates tend to be optimistic...
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"You'll earn a boatload of money buying our stock because of all the money we're going to make. Quick, buy our stock before everyone notices and buys it first, this means our stock is worth a lot today!"
I can't say I've ever heard an earning call where a C*O said anything like that. They're very circumspect to stick with the facts so as to avoid shareholder suits.
Analysists, on the other hand, might say stuff like this, especially the yelling heads on cable finance shows (and Jim Cramer, I'm looking at you). Ignore those people.
Do they care about the future, or about the reaction to estimates about their future? And those estimates tend to be optimistic...
They absolutely care. The worst possible thing to happen to a CEO is to miss the numbers. The stock price collapses and CEOs get fired. They try very, very hard to hit right on the
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The way trading happens in stock markets has turned business into a game, where the only goal is to get ever higher numbers in order to please shareholders. There is no reward for steady, reliable businesses which make a reasonable profit year after year. They have to make more money every year or they are considered failures and the stock market punishes them for not doing anything and everything to achieve that goal, no matter how antisocial or indeed self-destructive.
There is a lot of truth to this. Ideally, there is a dichotomy between growth and stable companies, between stock price appreciation and dividends. This dichotomy still exists, but the stable company executives have long envied the outsized stock rewards of the growth companies, and so the stable companies are tempted to make stupid short-term decisions that bump stock price at the expense of long-term stability.
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Those two things are not the same, and conflating them is the height of crony capitalism cuckery.
It's not even Capitalism. It is government propped-up monopolies, and the media conglomerates who exploit those monopolies as far as they can in order to extract as much rent as possible. The concept of a Monopoly is as far from capitalism as you can get. These are behemoths who exploit non-Capitalistic features that are artificially created by the government Or inherent in the marketplace to create a re
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You are a bit confused. Monopolies most often are not the result of government enforcement, that is mostly unique to internet providers where it is a natural monopoly. Most Monopolies are created through acquisition. Big company A buys smaller company B competitor. Now the market has one less competitor, Company A repeats this procedure over and over and becomes Sinclair broadcasting or Microsoft or Google or all the meat packing companies who's names I can't remember off the top of my head.
Bell was broken
Probably explains why I have no streaming anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a reason for the initial cord cutting. Of course mine happened in about 2005.
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Bring back 1Channel and all those other places that worked through Kodi plug-ins to give us access to almost every TV show ever made and every Movie that had ever come out on DVD - for free! Hell, Kodi's YouTube plugin even worked without those horrible mid-roll ads!
Yeah, it was sometimes difficult to find a source for some of the titles but by and large it worked and you could find almost *everything* that had ever been published or broadcast. Kind of sad that we've lost that amazing repository of broa
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Precisely. Pay one price and all of a sudden people start paying. If they keep the greed down to a dull roar.
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One streamer to rule them all perhaps -- with each content-owner being paid on a "per view" basis from the pool of subscriptions?
Maybe not one streamer, but one index would be nice. Maybe make the index distributed too. Similar to what you said here, but have the streams come from the actual content owners.
There have been SO MANY attempts at that, both on "pirate" type of sites, and implemented on streaming devices (chromecast, roku, apple tv - all have a "global search" that doesn't actually search globally but has that goal), and even within streaming apps via the ability to add channels or find content under channels you're not ye
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It's hard to find stuff in streaming/DVD too. Often it's not available anywhere, or only at silly prices because it's out of print.
The more things change... (Score:5, Insightful)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Just making Youtube more popular (Score:5, Insightful)
Streaming was great when it was only Netflix who had StarTrek, StarGate, Lost, Heroes, and a all the other 80's, 90's, and early 2000's shows. Then everyone wanted to stream so all the good stuff was sucked off Netflix and moved to HBO, Paramount, CBS, NBC, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon, and probably more I forget.
I pay for Netflix and DisneyPlus and Amazon AND THAT'S IT! oh, Hulu too
I would like to watch old StarTrek reruns with my kids but the new trek is really garbage so no Paramount+ (I'd like to watch SouthPark too, but nope, not paying for 2 shows).
And now effing Hulu is playing ads even though I'm paying them! The only reason I paid for Hulu was to support The Orville, which is where now?!?!? idk. ARG it's just like the damn 90's again now with unskippable commercials.
It's nuts... Youtube and video games are filling the gaps though. Streamers can go suck a fart.
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And people laugh at me when I go buy old TV series on DVD and rip them. The old stuff was not HD anyway, so DVD is usually quite good and easy to rip and store. Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, etc. Lots of classic britcom. Perry Mason.
Plus there's still a lot of free, commercial-free old TV shows out there if you know where to look. Some are on Archive.org (for now anyway). Youtube has over 15 seasons of Midsomer Murders on an official channel.
More than enough material for me personally.
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You got me intrigued with that Marina Sirtis comment... Every time I see her in public she comes across as the most "Not like Deanna Troi" person you can imagine! It's hilarious. What's the deal? I'm guessing it's the uniform?
I do the same (Score:2)
I have a Mac mini that drives my TV, and a Synology NAS to store rips of my DVDs, Blurays, and 4K discs.
I have taken to avoiding complete series DVD sets though, they tend to use extra compression which results in a crappy image quality. For example the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes from individual season DVDs [amazon.com] are 2 GB in size, while the ones from the compete series DVDs [amazon.com] are 1 GB in size. DVD counts for each season are the same as found for that season in the complete series, the difference is older
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That was Phase I of streaming, where Netflix subscriptions skyrocketer because their product was all old reruns and movies, an extension from dvd rental models. When they became worth more than most countries, the people who owned all that old crap said hey let's stream it ourselves. And 15 years later, that's all getting old so new stuff is needed anyway. Phase II, which is a return to cable, which was itself broadcast but with many more channels than just CBS NBC and ABC.
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Streaming was great when it was only Netflix who had StarTrek, StarGate, Lost, Heroes, and a all the other 80's, 90's, and early 2000's shows.
I too remember the good ol' days of yore. The problem with Netflix of the oughties was it was they had a great back catalog but were much sparser for current content. If you wanted to see the latest blockbuster, you had to wait six months to a year and even then, it might not show up.
Then everyone wanted to stream so all the good stuff was sucked off Netflix and moved to HBO, Paramount, CBS, NBC, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon, and probably more I forget...ARG it's just like the damn 90's again now with unskippable commercials....It's nuts... Youtube and video games are filling the gaps though.
I'd urge patience. I don't know about you but I anticipated some market consolidation the moment everyone started introducing FoobarPlus streaming services. I didn't expect them all to stay separate forever and that there'd be
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Actually, what they'll do, is raise the price of the ad-free tier to the point that it's unaffordable for most. They're on record on earnings calls saying they make more money from the cheaper (to the consumer) ad tier than they do from the current ad free tiers. The Internet allows them to do highly targeted advertising in a way that was never possible for broadcast/cable television, so they can charge a lot more money to the advertisers for the privilege of airing their ads.
I wouldn't be surprised. Sadly it will make streaming much less attractive to me. But I don't see how I'd make a different position if I were in Reed Hasting's shoes. To get an ad-free stream, I'd have to out-bid the advertisers and as you point out, they are willing to pay a lot for them.
What I don't think is that Netflix et al will intentionally try to price ad-free out of the market. Ad insertion is a cost and a pain. I'm sure they'd much rather spend their clever beans figuring out a better recommendati
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Streaming was great when it was only Netflix
I get the sentiment, hell I agree with it to an extent. But keep in mind, what you are talking about is a monopoly. That was never going to end well for us either.
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Strange...I've never seen an ad on my Hulu....?
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You're right, but I think the key issue was since it was syndicated, the commercial breaks were not hard-coded for a particular network. National breaks are easy with NBC/CBS-produced shows, but syndicated stations might want to put extra ads in and cut out 10 second snippets here and there to put in a new ad break where none existed before. MASH is a good example if you watch what they do with the credits in some places/stations.
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The Orville was never meant to be more than three seasons.
Three seasons tends to be the sweet spot, most shows jump the shark right after that.
Have you put up an antenna? (Score:2)
I would like to watch old StarTrek reruns with my kids but the new trek is really garbage so no Paramount+ (I'd like to watch SouthPark too, but nope, not paying for 2 shows).
Star Trek TOS, TNG, DSN, Voyager, and Enterprise are being broadcast on Heroes and Icons 6 [handitv.com] nights a week (channel 2.3 here in Houston).
TOS is also broadcast on MeTV [metv.com] on Saturday night (51.1 in Houston).
I have a couple HDHomeRun Quad tuners [silicondust.com] on my network that allow me to tune in up to 8 OTA channels at once. I originally ran the DVR software on a Mac mini that's plugged into my TV, though migrated the DVR software to my new Synology NAS last year.
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Epic! I'm glad there's some hard core geeks still floating around /.
Nonsense (Score:1)
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I remember what cable tv was. I also remember what Netflix WAS... the one place with all the stuff. Not anymore, and it's been getting worse and worse. You can't even watch some things without unskippable ads - even when you PAY for it. The public accepting this is a problem, but it's an unfixable one I admit.
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I'm not so sure the public is accepting it. All these streaming companies are hurting.
Several are spending billions per year on new content but not getting their money back so they put ads on which chases away some subscribers and keeps new ones from joining. It's a whirling trip around the bowl, down the drain.
What we really need is services that don't piss away billions on random trash new shows hoping something sticks but making a smaller number of higher quality shows and going back to the old school
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I'm not so sure the public is accepting it. All these streaming companies are hurting.
And most of them did it to themselves. Many of them had no business creating their own streaming entity in the first place - they didn't have the existing content library to support it, nor did they have a reasonable chance of creating enough good-enough new material to maintain it. But they saw how popular Netflix was and thought "some of that is our own content already... how hard can it be?"
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You can watch everything without unskippable ads when you don't pay for it.
With Radarr, Sonarr, and Prowlarr installed on my media server, I've got an automated system that has ad-free content on my server within minutes of release, and I own it forever if it's not so horrible that I just delete it. (Sadly, most stuff is, but that saves me money that I'd have to spend on more disk space.)
It's a very fixable problem. Stop paying, start pirating. It's easier and better than ever now.
(Honestly, some of the
Re: Nonsense (Score:2)
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Cable was mostly a series of local monopolies, and they knew it.
I could almost stomach (at lease understand and accept) the annoyance of all the ads when viewing freely over the air, but I didn't get why people were willing to actually pay for that crap. The cable companies could get away with murder.
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Cable was about nickle & diming customers to death. Streaming is now the same (just slightly different methods). Netflix has recently informed me that the Basic plan I've had over a decade is no longer available and I'll have to choose either a more expensive plan with additional simultaneous streams (which are useless due to crackdowns on password sharing) or a cheaper plan with commercials. WTF?! I think my choice will be "none of the above".
So... business opportunity (Score:2)
Everything degrades over time. This just leaves an increasingly large gap for whatever the next thing is that inevitably comes along to address these problems. ...which will, itself eventually degrade when the beancounters get their hands on it, ... rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
Re:So... business opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is the superior alternative at this point. I don't see the magic Steve Jobs descending on the world and solving the video problem of a cartel of idiots who can't get out of each others' way long enough to make money. Which was the RIAA problem in a nutshell.
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Yeah, 'steal' is the right word here. Idiot. They lost nothing but a business opportunity they willingly failed to take up.
Besides which, I don't care about production companies' bottom line. If they go out of business, it's their own fault.
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I suspect you got brainwashed with the RIAA/MPAA's gratuitously misinformative redefinition of the word "stealing" for use in their anti-piracy marketing, rather than being aware of the actual dictionary definition of it.
By making a copy of something, you're not depriving the original owner of the original.
https://markcarrigan.net/2016/... [markcarrigan.net]
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> Piracy is an entitlement problem
Guess again.
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Copyright violation is a new concept. The idea is a trade, where the people give up the 100,000,000 year old tradition of copying what you see, to grant a limited time monopoly on "intellectual property" to it's creators, in the hope that it will "advance the progress of science and the useful arts". Some people feel the agreement was violated, and so to prevent cheating wish to take back the other half of the agreement.
And I do mean a 100 million year old tradition, squirrels for example copy from other sq
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I pirated an episode of 24 way back in like 2004 because it was raining and DirectTV's satellite reception was garbage. The very next day I got a call from Verizon telling me that they saw what I did and would report me to NBC if I did it again.... That was the last time I pirated anything... I'd prefer to just not watch anything than get in trouble like that.
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Learn about VPNs and such. Private torrent trackers, Usenet, whatever you wish.
The only time i've been contacted by my provider was when my cable modem was reused for some presumably young guy in an urban environment who downloaded something openly like that, probably 15 years ago now. Meanwhile I have been consistently pulling down many tens of terabytes of stuff.
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Same here, one letter from the ISP and I signed up a VPN right there, never a peep since (and ironically all the streaming providers lock things down when they see you logged in over the VPN)
All those ad's for VPN's are just cover for their 90% use case, hiding your traffic from your ISP and thus the media companies.
Could we go back? (Score:2)
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The content owners pulled the distribution rights from Netflix when the contracts expired and fired up their own services.
That's why there are so many services now and Netflix had to pour billions into making their own content.
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What we need is a mandatory licensing scheme that would allow any service to purchase content from content producers. A Fin-Syn rule for streaming would go a long way as well. We had that for TV for a short time, and it prevented studio
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Yes, it's called a torrent.
You don't even have to wait for DVD and blu-rays. As soon as the show is released on streaming, it is available to torrent.
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> Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
ok remove ESPN from the basic cable package and (Score:3)
ok remove ESPN from the basic cable package and drop the price by $15-$20 and only bill the people who want ESPN for ESPN.
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Growth for the sake of growth (Score:2)
Apparently we've forgotten that "growth for the sake of growth" is the mantra of the cancer cell. Given that the country is now riddled with economic tumors is it really any wonder why we have so many problems with how they behave?
They're literally just following nature. I'm sure we'll all be just fine. Plenty of people live quite long and happy lives with stage 4 cancer, right?
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Apparently we've forgotten that "growth for the sake of growth" is the mantra of the cancer cell. Given that the country is now riddled with economic tumors is it really any wonder why we have so many problems with how they behave?
They're literally just following nature. I'm sure we'll all be just fine. Plenty of people live quite long and happy lives with stage 4 cancer, right?
That's only when you're an adult.
When you are an infant, you have to grow.
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don't let it be (Score:2)
Now is the time to speak with your dollars. Do not sign up for services that force things on you that you do not want - this is how we end up with cable all over again. Reward those that serve your needs best and shun those that force profit centers on you.
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DirecTV too, now. my folks can log in anywhere and watch as if they're at their TV. It's not bad.
Sucks that ShowTime Anytime was shut down (Score:2)
Sucks that ShowTime Anytime was shut down and merged into Paramount+.
That means no more free ShowTime streaming when you also subscribe to their cable channels like you can with HBO Max and other streaming services run by cable channels.
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You can still do that with P+ for those who subscribe to Showtime cable channels: https://www.paramountplus.com/... [paramountplus.com]
Take it all back. (Score:3)
TV, movies, and popular music are all there is to american culture at this point. It's all been stolen, repackaged and hidden behind copyright, and only us old dirty pirates remember how to smuggle it back. Streaming companies made content so easy that the young people never bothered to learn how to pirate stuff at all.
Now streamings all so fat and lazy that they think they can just endlessly abuse the subscriber base while trickling out hot garbage.
Copyright has been corrupted and extended well past its purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. It's our culture, it's time we take it back.
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Looking to you Max... (Score:2)
wwe and sports they would have to pay me (Score:2)
Comparisons are NOT that simple (Score:2)
>"cable, which was festooned with ads"
Irrelevant. If you were/are watching ads on cable over the last 15 to 20 years, you were/are "doing it wrong." There is such a thing as a DVR. Yes, you have to factor that cost into the total cost ownership, but let's not pretend there is always forced content.
Yes, cable is way over-priced. Yes, there are tons of channels you don't want. But it also provides content that is not available except on premium streaming, if at all. And, as noted in this article, str
The wheel turns (Score:1)
I remember I used to download a lot of shows and movies because I wasn’t going to waste my time watching advertisements, and dealing with fixed schedules. Then streaming came along, and I dove into the various services which had the shows of interest. Well now, after subscribing for years, over the past twelve months I’ve slowly canceled off all subscriptions, and am now back to sourcing my entertainment ala carte via alternate means. It’s true what they say, what’s old is new again.
Not hardly (Score:2)
Look, as long as I can subscribe for a single month, watch what I want, and then cancel, it's not cable.
I cut the cord nearly 16 years ago, because I got sick of having to pay to rent a box for each room I wanted to watch in, and then getting charged rental on those boxes, and then, if you wanted to cancel being charged for the privilege.
I don't care if there's a dozen streaming services with different things on them. Competition is good. And as long as I can freely cancel whenever I want, it's an improve
Stream Cutter (Score:1)
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Well, "beautiful" is subjective, but it satisfied the demand for instant gratifications, much the way iTunes store did. The "well, it's not like they're making it easily available. I shouldn't have to drive an hour to the nearest mall to find a music or video store to buy this in this day and age" went away.