[HN Gopher] Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 707 points
Date : 2021-05-26 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| miketyson2000 wrote:
| As much as I dislike Amazon, I am continually surprised at how
| hands off their streaming creations seem to be. Expanse is
| probably biggest anti-corporate rant on TV I saw in a while.
|
| If they continue to treat their streaming arms as another
| business and not PR, it is a great move.
| fullshark wrote:
| I guess Amazon hasn't yet been overtaken by a MBAS desperate
| for synergy deciding their programming should double as
| advertising for their other products yet.
| unmole wrote:
| I don't think the Washington Post has gotten any softer on big
| tech since Bezos bought it?
| rtoway wrote:
| Release The Apprentice outtakes! You know you want to, Bezos :)
| meepmorp wrote:
| Four more years of drama!
| null_object wrote:
| As others suggest, simply opt-out of these destructive
| monopolies. I'm in Europe and have been _immensely_ enjoying
| MUBI[0] for the last few months.
|
| Many classic and new films, updating all the time - and I've had
| none of the streaming problems that some AppStore reviews have
| mentioned. Also supports new independent film-makers (which
| piracy sadly does not do).
|
| Thoroughly recommended.
|
| [0] https://mubi.com/showing
| RhodoGSA wrote:
| The problem lies with the fact that the average person isn't
| smart enough to understand that some of these companies are
| destructive. Outside of tech, no one is concerned with privacy
| -> TikTok. Outside of tech, no one is thinking amazon is a
| monopoly. outside of tech, no one cares.
|
| With that mentality in mind, coordinating effective boycots of
| services is impossible. Governments need to step up and enforce
| a certain balance between capitalism and socialism. On one end
| of the spectrum you get monopolies and on the otherside you
| mob-rule and staterun monopolies.
| foxhop wrote:
| monopoly.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| I wish people didn't watch so much television. It's too good and
| too easy to watch an unlimited amount of content. Every hour you
| spend being entertained in front of your screens is an hour less
| you could be spending building actual social bonds with people in
| your community.
|
| There is a correlation to increasing tv watching and decreased
| social club engagement. By social clubs I mean bowling clubs,
| skating clubs, 4H clubs, knitting clubs, quilting clubs, book
| clubs, etc. Whatever other clubs people used to do back in the
| pre modern television era.
|
| Being a part of these clubs connects you with your local city. It
| encourages real social relationships. If the club membership is
| diverse, you are exposed to people of different backgrounds,
| experiences, and races, which decreases racism and xenophobia.
|
| All of this will increase the amount of trust we have for random
| humans. And that correlates strongly to how well government is
| working for us.
|
| This could also be fueling why the US has so much hostility in
| politics now. What if we were in clubs with people of different
| political viewpoints? You like these people, and you disagree
| politically. I think that would change things.
|
| So please, do your part and stop watching so much bullshit on
| television. Sure, a few good movies and shows every once in a
| while is understandable. But really do you need to watch all
| these new TV series and every single made-for-netflix movie??
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"Every hour you spend being entertained in front of your
| screens is an hour less you could be spending building actual
| social bonds with people in your community."
|
| I feel it didn't used to be like that; there was a brief period
| of limited TV choices where it seemed to _increase_ the bonds -
| it was a shared experience, and unlike most shared experiences
| which you have with couple of people physically present, it was
| shared with any number of friends colleagues and strangers.
| "Did you see the movie last night" or "Did you catch Ed
| Sullivan" show, do even "Remember the Friends episode
| where...". It was a common cultural reference point.
|
| Now of course there's so much content we are more divergent and
| everybody watches their own TV show or Movie or Youtube channel
| or TikTok etc.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Yeah, agreed.
| asdff wrote:
| I have some pretty bad internet addiction too. It was so bad I
| basically stopped playing guitar in my teen years. I restarted
| last year and had to basically start from scratch, it was so
| depressing. I used to be able to sight read sheet music, then I
| threw a budding life skill all away to look at memes I will
| never remember or play some dumb quest in a game.
|
| I was addicted really to consumption. I stopped creating. Now
| I'm trying to make more time for it. The other night I fell
| asleep on the couch before midnight with my guitar in my hand
| and my fingers forming a chord, rather than being wired and
| awake on reddit until I look and notice it's 2am again. Still,
| the sting of knowing I squandered probably 10 years of youth
| just consuming junk is a lot to bear.
|
| It's depressing knowing some very smart people are out there
| striving as hard as they can to get me and others away from
| looking inwardly and creating, or at least investing focus in
| one's own life and building yourself up, and instead hooked on
| the teet of endless content. It's like the end game with this
| endless consumption is _The Matrix,_ where most of humanity is
| just plugged into the machine sitting there, thoughtless,
| sucking on the feeding tube and fueling the robots until they
| eventually die and are replaced by another warm body.
| disqard wrote:
| I'm surprised that your insightful comment (questioning the
| very elephant-in-the-room assumption that we all must have
| content to consume) has not been voted higher by this community
| of hackers, tinkerers, and makers.
|
| Indeed, why is this so central to our lives? Why isn't a
| different kind of shared activity more sought-after?
|
| Your point about the sheer variety is also relevant -- there's
| just too many echo chambers of consumption for everyone now.
|
| Overall, the creative force has nary a chance to flourish in
| such environs.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Hopefully they are going to restart the Stargate franchise now
| :-)
| croes wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for.
| [deleted]
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Whatever, there is too little of sci-fi anyway. Having
| already watched everything many times, I feel suffocating.
| enterdev wrote:
| What do you recommend? Loved Star Trek Discovery, The
| Expanse, Travelers, Lost
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I dunno, all these you listed are pretty unique.
|
| Babylon 5, Stargate: Universe, Colony, Aftermath,
| Continuum may seem have something in common with these
| roughly.
|
| My memory also isn't very active. I would immediately
| recall the show you would name but I can't just list
| them. I have even forgotten about existence of the
| Westworld show although I enjoyed it and can probably
| tell what's next at any given moment of it.
| [deleted]
| hexo wrote:
| They shall summon new Stargate!
| softfalcon wrote:
| I really hope this is going to lead to Amazon funding more
| Stargate.
|
| Between The Expanse and Stargate, Amazon Prime could be a sci-fi
| power house!
|
| Probably won't happen though...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/wdA8m
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| James Bond on Amazon Prime with all sorts of mediocre spinoffs
| like "Miss Moneypenny & Q" or "The S.P.E.C.T.R.E Files".
| bwb wrote:
| Is it weird that I am excited about this? I want tech to rethink
| how distribution is done, and if I have to watch them buy shit
| and then get anti trusted to spin it out so be it :)
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Does anyone else think Amazon will acquire video game producers
| next? When I look at digital content, this seems the one area
| they're not already in, as they have TV, movies, books, but no
| games.
| fullshark wrote:
| They aren't doing this to acquire movie producers so much as to
| acquire intellectual property. If there some game IP that fits
| well with twitch?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| They already sorta do that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Games
| drexlspivey wrote:
| There was a huge backlash recently when they announced
| microtransactions and pay-to-win features on their upcoming
| MMO called New World
| wut42 wrote:
| > The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy
| that Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, articulated at a conference in
| 2016: "When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,"
| he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions.
|
| This part is a real nugget.
| ArcFeind wrote:
| "When we win a Golden Globe, it helps me get a subsidized
| rocket program and HQ2," he said, referring to Amazon's diverse
| business divisions.
| shmageggy wrote:
| That blew my mind. We have so much sci-fi depicting the evil
| mega-corp that's it has become a trope, yet we're just
| lumbering along towards that exact future.
| bemmu wrote:
| No need to resist, Buy n Large provides everything you need
| to be happy.
| nemo44x wrote:
| And the "evil mega-Corp" will gladly sell you that sci-fi in
| whichever medium you prefer. Hell, they'll even recommend it
| to you.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| There's probably books on that exact topic published by
| them and only possible to legally consume by purchasing it
| from them and reading it on their hardware.
| hnbad wrote:
| Carlos Maza's video on the pandemic (and Trump) provides a
| good explanation of this phenomenon IMO:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJaE_BvLK6U
|
| Basically we all see ourselves as the main character and
| don't think boring (i.e. systemic) problems will affect us.
| I'm not going to die from COVID like the rest because I'm
| special -- I'll die in an important way when it's narratively
| convenient, not like an extra killed off in act one to
| establish the stakes. Evil mega corps won't creep up on me,
| they'll introduce themselves spectacularly in a way that
| directly challenges me personally in a way that still allows
| me to defeat them and complete my hero's journey.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Maybe I'm in the minority but I definitely see the rise of
| mega corps as directly affecting me. They funnel obscene
| amount of wealth and resources(and thus political power) to
| a few individuals, lessening my democratic impact; they
| aren't beholden to any particular community and thus often
| are worse for workers and demonstrate worse negative
| externalities (such as environmentally); and so on...
|
| The thing is I just feel helpless to do much about it. I
| can shop locally, but that feels pretty insignificant.
| Lately it's not even useful to vote any particular way (in
| the US), since it seems bigcorps have essentially captured
| both major parties.
| awb wrote:
| I'm sure Bezos knows what he's talking about, but how does this
| work exactly? Amazon Prime Video and the marketplace have
| different entry points. Is the idea just general brand
| awareness?
| chrisin2d wrote:
| A customer buys into the Amazon Prime bundle.
|
| You can get standalone Amazon Prime Video membership -- buuut
| it's about the same price as complete Amazon Prime
| membership! So you might as well get the complete membership
| and get all the perks you might want in the future.
|
| And bam, you're now in the Amazon Prime universe. One day
| you'll be comparison shopping for a specific pair of shoes
| you like online, and you'll see that Amazon has the lowest
| (or one of the lowest) prices plus free one- or two-day
| shipping, and hey, you've got that Prime membership from back
| when you wanted to watch Amazon Prime Video. Deal sealed.
|
| It lowers the barriers for every Amazon Prime-connected entry
| point.
| awb wrote:
| Sure, just surprised that people are finding Amazon through
| Prime Video and not the other way around.
| graeme wrote:
| It's more like Prime Video helps _retain_ you once you're
| in Prime. And if you stay in, you order more. The goal of
| Prime Video is to decrease churn.
| divbzero wrote:
| I think it _is_ usually the other way around: people are
| finding Prime Video through Amazon. I suspect many would
| subscribe to Prime for deliveries even if Prime Video
| didn't exist, and few would subscribe to Prime for Prime
| Video alone.
| presty wrote:
| for what is worth, Amazon already won a few golden globes:
|
| 3 this year https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-
| takes-3-golden-globes-i...
|
| a few more in the past with Fleabag and others
| wut42 wrote:
| Yeah-- and it's deserved, they are producing good content.
| The rationale of WHY they are doing good content is... eh.
| seanicus wrote:
| They're not joking; this acquisition cost more than it cost
| Disney to buy Marvel and Lucasfilm COMBINED. They're definitely
| taking the entertainment end of their business very seriously.
| rchaud wrote:
| Indeed. The acquisition opens up numerous product placement
| opportunities. I can't wait to watch John Krasinski watching a
| mission briefing with his mPow 2021 Slim Noise Cancelling
| Bluetooth USB-C headphones.
| elliekelly wrote:
| And after having watched that episode of Jack Ryan those
| exact headphones will conveniently be "suggested" to you as
| you browse Amazon.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's a funny example considering mPow got banned from
| Amazon a few days ago for manipulating reviews.
| amelius wrote:
| I guess it would be practically impossible to remove the
| item from the video, though.
|
| Or will Amazon shoot the scene multiple times, with
| different items?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume that can be handled trivially with today's video
| editing capabilities.
| amelius wrote:
| What if Krasinski wears his Bluetooth headphones through
| the entire episode?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the video editing field. But it
| seems like a product that can edit the logos/item to be
| advertised for various markets could be valuable.
|
| So person wears an unbranded product or no product even,
| and then post production adds whatever logos or products
| it needs to for various markets.
| deegles wrote:
| Already happening:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56758376
| amelius wrote:
| Or getting a close-up of his shoes, for that matter.
| remir wrote:
| How meta would that be to see Amazon Basics products on their
| movies/shows. I think that would be too much.
| [deleted]
| hashtag-til wrote:
| This needs to go to the top
| vmchale wrote:
| Makes sense I guess. That goes deeper than I thought!
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Amazon is becomingly scarily huge. But if Bezos keeps funding
| Blue Origin (and it actually starts sending stuff to orbit),
| I'm okay with it.
| tguedes wrote:
| From https://stratechery.com/2021/distribution-and-demand/:
|
| `I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for
| Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that
| "there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and
| purchasing behavior" and that "any correlation was also
| obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its
| own."`
|
| Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the
| glamor of Hollywood?
| mynameisash wrote:
| >> "When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,"
|
| > Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with
| the glamor of Hollywood?
|
| Could it be more an idea of goodwill[0] ("the intangible
| value attributable solely to the efforts of or reputation of
| an owner of the business")? What I mean to say is, having
| Golden Globes or running a valued streaming service, even if
| it's not directly correlated with increased retail sales,
| makes customers generally regard Amazon more highly, more
| chic?
|
| For all of its faults (and I am very critical of the
| company), I don't know anyone who derides the company in the
| same manner that Walmart is derided[1], for example.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)
|
| [1] http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
| ffggvv wrote:
| yeah i highly doubt it's true. but maybe over time if prime
| video gets compelling enough that people buy prime just for
| access to it, then it could be true. right now it's just seen
| as a bonus if you already have prime for other reasons. maybe
| bezos just believes it anyway
| simias wrote:
| I find it hard to believe as well, although of course if you
| subscribe to prime for movies and TV you're probably more
| likely to use it for free deliveries as well.
|
| But if the plan is to make Prime more popular there seem to
| be many, many simpler and probably cheaper ways to do that.
| It's as if McDonalds started a movie studio in order to sell
| Movie + Big Mac bundles.
| hrktb wrote:
| In France McDonalds partnered with a book publisher to
| create a whole new collection to bundle books with Happy
| Meals.
|
| Small steps yet, but they could be getting there.
| tguedes wrote:
| For years McDonalds and other fast foods in America
| bundled toys with Happy Meals. Building cheap little toys
| is way less expensive than big budget media.
| asdff wrote:
| Happymeal toys probably cost McDonalds nothing. I'm sure
| Nintendo was covering the cost of those Pokemon. It's
| advertisement.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Not quite McDonald's, but KFC released:
|
| - a limited edition gaming console in partnership with
| Cooler Master (with integrated chicken heater):
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFConsole
|
| - a Lifetime mini-movie starring Christian Slater as
| Colonel Sanders in "A Recipe for Seduction":
| https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/kfc-colonel-sanders-
| mario-l...
|
| - a dating sim video game, "I Love You Colonel Sanders": ht
| tps://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colone.
| ..
|
| - a 96 page romance novel, "Tender Wings of Desire":
| https://time.com/4770024/kfc-romance-novel-mothers-day/
| xsmasher wrote:
| A.C. Slater, not Christian Slater.
| simias wrote:
| Ok I rescind my previous comment then. This is amazing.
| divbzero wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the argument that Prime Video attracts Prime
| subscriptions. The true motivation could be Hollywood glamor,
| or having the data to link viewing behavior to product
| recommendations.
| axaxs wrote:
| It does, for me. Prime Video is just the nudge I need to
| justify the cost.
|
| If not for Prime Video I'd probably not be a member, and
| without that fast free shipping, would probably buy more
| from elsewhere.
|
| All of that said, I generally don't like Prime Video so
| don't think it's worth much as a standalone.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with
| the glamor of Hollywood?_
|
| I'd trust the words of someone who actually has access to
| Amazon's financials over the word of a blogger on the
| outside.
| tguedes wrote:
| 1. It's Brad Stone, probably the person who has the most
| connections to people inside Amazon than anyone else, not
| just a random blogger.
|
| 2. You would blindly trust the words of someone who has to
| justify spending billions of dollars to shareholders?
| someperson wrote:
| This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise
| will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be
| great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more
| seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been
| made).
|
| I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video.
| Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a
| tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A completely
| different show that I found very boring and unwatchable.
|
| Hopefully any future Stargate revival will have the budget and
| writing it deserves. I would spend $20/month for the rest of my
| life to get a season of high budget Stargate with decent writing
| each year. I'm sure there is a million other fans are willing and
| able to pay a similar amount.
| loceng wrote:
| I'm hoping they'd drop $1+ billion into making a SG game.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime
| Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like
| it had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A
| completely different show that I found very boring and
| unwatchable.
|
| Ultimately that's one show though. Amazon have spent BIG on
| some of their series. The Grand Tour had an enormous, enormous
| budget compared to Top Gear. They are spending Game of Thrones
| money on Wheel of Time.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it
| had a tenth of the budget compared to season 1 and 2. A
| completely different show that I found very boring and
| unwatchable._
|
| Season 4 follows book 4, whereas previous seasons split the
| books in a non-typical fashion: e.g., S02E05 ("Home") was the
| end of book 1. Book 4 is also part of the second kind-of-
| trilogy and so is a bit slower paced, because it set ups the
| next two books.
|
| This isn't really Amazon's fault: it's from the original
| content.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| The show was weird from the start -- the first season was the
| first half of the first book, then they adapted the second
| half of the first book and the first half of the second book
| for season two (and likewise for S3 and books 2 & 3). Season
| 4 largely resolved that by wrapping up book 3 and adapting
| all of book 4 in one go, since book 4 is kinda slow on its
| own.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| The show is weird because the source material is kind of
| schlocky and the show improves it significantly. I think
| season 4 is so hard to watch because book 4 is a self-
| contained story so they couldn't blend characters and
| scenarios like in the previous book. The book characters
| are all a little too one-dimensional and the show does an
| excellent job condensing them into well-rounded characters.
|
| I had to stop reading halfway through book 5 because I
| couldn't take the heavy use of cliched language and tropes.
| The books are a great story at the macro level, but the
| writing is pretty terrible, especially as the series goes
| on.
| extr wrote:
| Jesus, if the show significantly improves on the books in
| that regard then I can't imagine what the books are like.
| I'm mid-way through S2 of the show right now. I like the
| realistic portrayal of what space travel/interplanetary
| colonies might look like. All the political stuff. But
| some of the dialogue and characterization is still
| embarrassingly cliched.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't know. People keep complaining about Cibola Burn
| (book 4), but I _liked it_. I genuinely consider it one
| of the better ones.
|
| That's perhaps because it's the first, and to date the
| most detailed, exploration of the aliens and their
| technology, which to me is the _most_ interesting part
| (after Earth-Mars politics).
|
| But then, I'm the weird guy who thinks character
| development is overrated, and reads sci-fi for the
| _ideas_.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Wow I thought it was just me who didn't like season 4 of the
| expanse. At some point they made a turn to focusing on the
| flaws of all the main characters to an obnoxious degree.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Stargate revival is my main hope about all this. I don't know
| that they could do a continuation/sequel because the world of
| Stargate at this point is pretty complex and far from our
| universe. So they would probably do a reboot which is risky
| because the actors had such great chemistry together.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| SG-1 is a great show. It holds up surprisingly well for its
| age. Strikes a great balance between serious and light-hearted,
| and the self-contained episodes often have interesting ethical
| or social issues. I'm also fond on how the early episodes
| emphasize that humans are new to interplanetary travel and are
| still figuring things out. There are several episodes where
| SG-1 travels to another planet and actually messes things up,
| making life worse for the natives. And the show did a great job
| with having things change in-universe.
|
| There are some cliches and flaws, of course. My least favorite
| part is probably how non-permanent deaths were, they really
| overdid the whole thing with characters dying and coming back
| to life, or being cloned.
|
| I'm surprised that Stargate has had some sort of franchise
| curse where other media never succeed. They had two more shows
| in the franchise (I'm in the minority that loved Universe, and
| I think Atlantis was for the most part bad), but never a movie
| aside from the one that started the franchise, never a game
| that succeeded (most attempts failed to even ship).
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| Honestly, I loved Atlantis and Universe. Atlantis was purely
| character driven imo. The plot was more or less a rehash of
| SG-1 missions to the point they directly start referencing
| the SG-1 mission report lol. But McKay, Sheppard, Weir,
| Ronan, Teyla, Carson, and Todd were all very fun characters.
| SG-1 was carried by the strong performances from O'Neil,
| Carter, Jackson, Teal'c and Hammond + interesting plots. So I
| was able to forgive the lazy plots in Atlantis since they
| focused more on the characters.
|
| Universe was really cool. They made some critical mistakes
| early that made it hard to see where the show could go, but
| the last season was so good and setup some cool stuff just to
| never get the opportunity to explain it. Rush getting control
| of Destiny so early really messed up the pacing of the show
| imo, but I would have loved to see the show continue.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| Atlantis couldn't decide what it was, I think. They got to
| some great characters, but with difficulty. Ronon replaced
| Ford in Season 2, with Ford being a very poorly written
| character, he didn't get a single interesting scene for a
| season. Weir was remarkably poorly written IMO, every time
| she made a decision it was wrong. Teyla had great moments
| but in too many episodes she was a "mystic Amazonian alien"
| cliche. Early on Atlantis tried to again do the "small band
| of humans versus powerful alien enemy" thing, abandoned
| that, transitioned to a cornier version of SG-1, then also
| abandoned that and went more for character stories, it was
| a mess. I'm also simply not a fan of its too lighthearted
| style, it intentionally avoided the more serious bits of
| SG-1.
|
| Universe was great in my book. Detractors say it's like
| Stargate trying to be Battlestar Galactica, but BSG is
| easily my favorite sci-fi show so I actually liked that.
| Universe did make some mistakes early on, but the second
| season was great, I enjoyed Dr Rush as a very non-Stargate
| style main character, and I enjoyed how Universe had a
| completely different take on aliens, keeping them
| mysterious.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on my
| to-watch list.
|
| As for franchising into other media... there's a brand new
| tabletop role-playing game that'll be launching later this
| year. I wonder how the Amazon deal will affect it.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on
| my to-watch list.
|
| Ooh, I _really_ enjoyed SGU. Granted, it was the kind of
| show that I had to try watching once, give up on, then
| rewatch years later during to really appreciate. It's
| fairly different from SG1 and SGA, but in my (humble)
| opinion, it's really good and I'm sad that it ended so
| quickly. It reminds me a bit of Lost In Space (the movie,
| not the relatively new tv series- I've only seen half the
| pilot so I can't make a comparison) but in the Stargate
| universe.
| ctrlc-root wrote:
| Well, I don't know about succeeded, but they did have two
| more movies that take place after SG1:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929629/
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0942903/
| bovermyer wrote:
| Those movies just wrap up plot lines left over from the
| show. They're basically extended episodes.
| xixixao wrote:
| I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid).
| It's incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a
| sane way that I'm not sure would happen in today's environment.
| It's incredibly rich in historical references and concepts.
| It's rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It's still worth
| watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).
| jerf wrote:
| I consider it hands down better than any Star Trek except
| possibly TNG. And that's giving TNG some grace due to being a
| bit older; take that away and I'll give SG-1 the prize. I
| will agree that people can reasonably disagree about Deep
| Space Nine vs SG-1. But that's the level of quality we're
| talking about, in my opinion. It's top tier, and much less
| well known.
|
| Also strongly recommend binging the first season in
| particular; they did a very good job of conveying the feeling
| of humans blundering about not really knowing what they are
| doing in the big new universe, and it really comes across
| when watched relatively quickly on top of each other. It is
| reasonable that as the seasons rolled on and they got their
| bearings this toned down in favor of other plot lines, but I
| think this is one of the more unusual tones in sci fi that a
| show managed to successfully convey. Enterprise really
| whiffed on this, in my opinion. (They should have had a first
| season more like SG-1's first season and saved the "temporal
| cold war" plot arc for later. Or perhaps even not at all.
| That would have been OK too. There are a couple of episodes
| that convey this sense but not enough to hold the tone IMHO.)
|
| Also, if you are starting out, I kinda recommend the Stargate
| movie first... it isn't strictly speaking necessary but it
| will contextualize some things, even though it's only sorta
| half in the continuity with SG-1. But I will say that if you
| kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1 anyhow. In my opinion
| it's a big step up in a lot of ways.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I had only seen TNG until two years ago. I knew almost
| every episode past season 2, and really loved it. Still do.
|
| But then I watched Deep Space Nine, and wow. I got hooked.
| I "only" watched about 80 episodes that are the plot arc +
| a few outstanding solos, but still. The quality of the
| acting, the more "on the nose" social messaging, the darker
| side of the Federation, the racial struggles between the
| crew - if I hear anyone make fun of DS9, I send them on
| their way (which doesn't happen much like it did in the
| 00's).
|
| I have some friends who liked SG-1 as kids, maybe I should
| take the time to watch it. But it can't be better than
| Battlestar Galactica :)
| Kye wrote:
| Stargate Atlantis might be a better starting point. It
| had the benefit of a fully-built world before the
| protagonist power creep hit its stride.
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| I have watched Stargate Atlantis but not SG-1 or SGU. I
| loved Atlantis and thought it was a very fun show.
| Looking forward to starting SG-1 when there is time...
| qilo wrote:
| > I kinda recommend the Stargate movie first... [...] But I
| will say that if you kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1
| anyhow.
|
| Thanks for pointing this out. Watched the movie as a kid,
| didn't like it, and thus never even bothered to check out
| the tv series.
| jerf wrote:
| Then I'd also add that while SG-1 does improve in my
| opinion as it finds its own footing as most shows do, if
| you don't at least somewhat enjoy the first episode of
| SG-1 you can walk away with your head held high. I don't
| think you have to give it half-a-season like many shows
| (or 2 seasons like TNG...), they came out very strong at
| the beginning. It's not the best episode by any means,
| but it's a fair representative.
|
| (Also as mentioned elsewhere in the thread the third
| episode is pretty weak.)
|
| (Some versions may have a quite literally gratuitous
| nudity scene in the first episode. Apparently Showtime
| demanded one, but a bit bizarrely, left them alone after
| that and that's the last such thing in the series. I
| suppose in this era of Game of Thrones this will seem
| less bizarre than it may have at the time, but it is
| worth pointing out this is a one-off. So if that happens
| to be the _only_ reason you like SG-1 's first episode,
| you can stop. :) )
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Also strongly recommend binging the first season in
| particular; they did a very good job of conveying the
| feeling of humans blundering about not really knowing what
| they are doing in the big new universe, and it really comes
| across when watched relatively quickly on top of each
| other.
|
| One thing I've never enjoyed about Star Trek is how the
| _Enterprise_ /DS9/ _Voyager_ and its crew are the ones that
| always save the day /week/universe.
|
| I've never watched Stargate, but I do know that
| occasionally the show shows other exploration teams
| enter/exit the gate. Does the franchise go further than
| that, and implicitly/explicitly state that the Stargate
| team that the show focuses on is just one of many doing
| comparably cool things?
| jerf wrote:
| I'd go with, yes and no, probably mostly no the way you
| mean it. They are always the elite team. It's clear
| others are functioning, yeah, but while I haven't watched
| this in a while I don't recall SG-4 ever saving the
| galaxy as we know it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Stargate: SG-1 series takes its name from SG-1 - the
| first of many teams USAF sends through the gate on a
| regular basis. The show focuses on that team, and in this
| way, it's similar to how Star Trek shows tend to focus on
| its eponymous ship/station. They somehow end up with most
| of the cool adventures and do most of the world-saving.
|
| Where it feels more believable/acceptable than Star Trek
| is:
|
| - SG-1 being special is at least somewhat justified. It's
| _the_ first team Stargate Command sent through the gate
| (after the events of the original movie), so they got to
| be the first to make new friends and enemies.
|
| - The show constantly reminds you about existence of
| increasing amount of other teams, through namedropping,
| discussing them, showing them, or showing multi-team
| missions. While SG-1 may be the tip of the spear, you
| know that SG-2 through SG-whocankeeptrack are following
| close behind.
|
| - Unlike in Star Trek, in Stargate, humans start having
| no idea what they're doing. Quite often, it's them who
| need to be saved by more powerful forces, whether aliens
| or institutions.
|
| Stargate: Atlantis starts with a focus on wider cast - so
| the gate missions are more fluid, you don't care much
| about who's assigned to which gate team on any given day.
| The whole ensemble of characters work similarly to a Star
| Trek series crew. But it makes sense for the same reason
| most of ST:Voyager made sense: Atlantis expedition is
| _very far away from Earth_ , alone and with (at least
| initially) no backup.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| I agree with all of this, but especially the last bit.
|
| It sets up the stories to come, even if some of it
| borderline contradicts SG-1. The characters that go from
| the movie to the TV show are much more likable in the TV
| show.
| delecti wrote:
| I did a full rewatch of SG1 a few years ago, and what
| surprised me is how instantly the show found its footing.
| If you watch the first and last season of any Trek show,
| you can see how the writing and characterization takes a
| while to settle into place. Character development is part
| of that, but it goes beyond that.
|
| If you watch the first and last season of SG1, the writing
| has its footing nailed down immediately. Not many shows
| find their footing so effortlessly.
| airstrike wrote:
| That may have been helped by the fact that SG-1 got the
| green light for 4 full seasons right off the bat, so it
| gave showrunners the opportunity to write a cohesive and
| comprehensive story which really laid the foundation for
| the franchise after the original movie.
|
| I don't have a source handy, but I recall reading about
| that many years ago.
| delecti wrote:
| Wikipedia says they were picked up for 2 seasons,
| totaling 44 episodes. So while it's not 4 seasons, that's
| still a lot of stability for a show to start with. That
| would explain how they felt comfortable enough to plan
| ahead.
| refracture wrote:
| My parents watched a lot of sci fi TV when I was kid, SG-1 is
| the only show that I ever actually sat down and watched more
| than the occasional episode of.
|
| I remember being struck by a scene that was (I believe?)
| pretty early in the series where Sam's about to fight some
| guy hand to hand; Jack protests this (but not in a way that
| makes it clear whether he thinks a woman shouldn't do it or
| if he's just unsure of her fighting skill), but once getting
| told what level she had trained to he immediately backs off.
|
| It gave me (who was at most 13 years old I think) the
| impression of what good respect between the sexes should look
| like.
|
| I could also be mis-remembering this because it's been a
| really long time though.
|
| Good show.
| trsohmers wrote:
| S1E3 Emancipation... one of the most disliked episodes by
| most fans but I agree that the scene was handled well...
| but the rest of the episode is not good. The writer of the
| episode (Katharyn Powers, who only worked on SG1 in season
| 1) was also the writer of the Star Trek TNG first season
| episode "Code Of Honor", which is frequently considered in
| the bottom 3 episodes of any Star Trek series, and many
| find very racist.
| refracture wrote:
| I now regret having read the plot summary to refresh my
| memory. It's terrible!
| dkarp wrote:
| I just started doing the same last week (weird to suddenly
| see this thread after not much mention of SG1 for a long
| time...) and agree it is great. It is nice to watch as a
| series instead of the random odd episode I saw as a kid
| watching cable TV in the 90s. There is so much more of it
| than I remembered. I've almost finished season 1, so it's
| going to tide me over for a good long while!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It only gets better!
|
| I envy you, I wish I could forget everything about the
| show, so that I could experience it fresh again. Having
| watched it end-to-end 3+ times over the past years, it's
| burned hard into my brain.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I recently finished a rewatch of it. It has held up far
| better than it has any right to. One thing that's really
| stood out to me is the insane amount of technology change
| that happened over SG-1 -- the show ran from 1996 to 2004. It
| went from laughable 3D CG on a Showtime budget, CRTs and
| landlines to heavy CG on a SciFi Channel budget, flatscreens
| and tiny cell phones.
|
| It does have its dumb moments though. Basically anything
| involving real-world weapons or explosives. There were also a
| few weak seasons in the middle, and it's pretty obvious the
| main cast started phoning it in around season 5. But on the
| whole I agree, it's one of the best Sci Fi shows ever made
| and absolutely belongs with the best of Trek.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _flatscreens and tiny cell phones_
|
| That one surprised me (positively) when I noticed it.
| Particularly when I binge-watched it end-to-end and saw how
| the cellphones evolve across the show.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| The characters are so good. The plot lines are great. The
| enemies are actually bad.
|
| While TNG is idealistic and more or less wholesome, SG1
| definitely lines up with DS9 in that it's more real/gritty
| yet still has all the hope, fun, morals, ethics, etc.
| bovermyer wrote:
| With the possible exception of the Ori, the villains in
| SG-1 weren't usually the "like the last one, but MORE
| POWERFUL" villain trope we see in most series.
|
| And the evolution of the replicants... that was a
| complicated adversary.
|
| Also, golfing through the Stargate.
| c9fc42ad wrote:
| In the _middle_ of my backswing, sir?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Like you I also recently restarted watching SG-1 for the
| first time since I was a kid. It holds up a lot better than I
| expected it to. There's the occasional eyerolling cliche (and
| Carter's dialog about internal vs external gonads is kinda
| ridiculous) but like you said the cliches are also lampshaded
| pretty often. I just watched an episode where the Stargate
| broke and there was an exchange that went something like
| this--
|
| General Hammond: How long will it take to fix the Stargate?
|
| Technician: It'll be about 24 hours sir
|
| Hammond: You have 12 hours
|
| Technician. Sir, that's not how this works... it'll take
| about 24 hours
|
| Hammond: Oh, okay then
| avaldes wrote:
| SG1 was a gold mine of genre savvy moments
|
| >Carter: We just passed -40 degrees > >Jackson: Farenheit
| or Celsius? > >Mitchell: At that temperature they're the
| same
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| SG-1 was my therapy during my worst years. I don't think
| I'd have gone through that period as well as I did, if it
| weren't for the mix of laughter and seriousness every
| episode of this show offered.
|
| And what I love about it, SG-1 _pulls it off_. It 's a
| serious show that's also very genre-savvy and full of
| quality gags. I haven't seen any other media product,
| sci-fi or otherwise, that managed to get this mix of
| opposites to work.
|
| (It's all nicely balanced, except that one time in Season
| 7 where you thought you're watching a joke episode, until
| the sudden change of tone punches you in the head, and
| you're left emotionally spinning and wondering what the
| hell did just happen. The two-parter I'm referring to,
| "Heroes", is a masterpiece. This kind of thing works only
| once - and fortunately, the producers were smart enough
| to not try it again.)
| figgis wrote:
| Just finished rewatching sg1 as well and in a later episode
| Carter even makes fun of herself for the absurdity of that
| first episode gonads comment.
| psalminen wrote:
| Just finished doing that myself and wholeheartedly agree. I
| came here to say SG-A does a great job as well.
| Kye wrote:
| Stargate did so well with so many topics.
|
| Hammond: "Colonel, the United States is not in the business
| of interfering in other people's affairs."
|
| O'Neill: (incredulous pause) "Since when?"
|
| And who can forget Carter beating the crap out of a Mongol
| warlord to prove women are equals?
| [deleted]
| forgingahead wrote:
| SG1 is indeed an amazing series, the showrunners did a great
| job blending action, mythology, and light-hearted sci-fi into a
| very watchable show.
|
| I was less thrilled with Atlantis, and thought Universe was
| completely horrible. Let's not even acknowledge the existence
| of "Origins".
|
| I do hope Amazon will be good stewards of the franchise going
| forward. I don't want them to make new content only for it to
| be dark, gritty, drama-heavy, and politicised the way much of
| modern "entertainment" has become.
|
| Maybe we'll even get a few good Stargate video games out of
| this! So many lost opportunities on the gaming front - an MMO
| was in the works, but never got released.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| If it makes you feel better the fourth book of The Expanse is
| the most boring in my opinion and the show stuck to the plot
| for the most part throughout. I still enjoyed both the book and
| the fourth season but the action and production really picks
| back up in the fifth season.
|
| EDIT: VAGUE REFERENCES TO SPOILERS BELOW
| colinplamondon wrote:
| Seeing Laconia with serious CGI budget is going to be
| amazing.
| Miraste wrote:
| Yes, season 4 has the exact same budget per episode and the
| same production company/crew as the other seasons. Amazon
| doesn't have anything to do with perceived changes (I thought
| 4 was still good and 5 was great).
| rapsey wrote:
| The expanse has a lot of problems. Mainly the fact that the
| creators dislike "disaster porn". Thus making the show
| completely devoid of any emotional impact.
|
| Like the rocks falling was filmed in such a way as to be the
| least emotionally impactful to the viewer. I don't think they
| could have done anything more than they did to make it un-
| emotional. It is incredibly bizarre.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I agree with that, I think the way the rocks were handled
| in the books was much more impactful. It all felt a bit
| analytical and detached in the show which I didn't like. It
| still had an emotional impact for me but that may be
| because I was relating it to how I felt while reading it.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I'm chugging through book 2 at the moment, I hate reading
| books right after I watched a show since I'm already aware of
| most of the events and the plot direction, but I want to see
| where the show diverged in the later seasons and of course
| get to the books after that.
| hrgiger wrote:
| totally agree and I hope we can see en of this year
| https://www.gateworld.net/news/2021/05/amanda-tapping-has-be...
| texaswhizzle wrote:
| Season 4 is bad because the book is bad. Unfortunately, the
| source material doesn't get any better after this.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I don't worry too much about the competitive aspects of this but
| I worry about the mega corps having a monopoly on our culture.
| Turn on any any radio station and they're all playing the same
| ten songs. Yikes.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Maybe I'll be able to see MGM movies again. I was sad when
| Comcast dropped their MGMHD channel.
| qubex wrote:
| One way of looking at it is that Bezos has just acquired Trump's
| Apprentice outtake tapes.
| question000 wrote:
| As a football fan I hate this, now a major broadcaster (Amazon
| TNF) owns a gambling company (MGM sports book) not good for the
| sport.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is a different company:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Resorts_International
| question000 wrote:
| It's actually looks like a slush fund for MGM execs to stash
| their money, pretty troubling.
| fullshark wrote:
| Why? I watched a few sporting events recently and I was
| surprised how often sports gambling was mentioned during the
| broadcast. Does that annoy you too?
| sumedh wrote:
| Watch Australian TV during, lot of gambling ads during prime
| time.
| valprop1 wrote:
| And the giant gets more humongous!!
| tptacek wrote:
| Good to see someone rescuing EPIX, which has a couple of really
| good shows that nobody watches because they don't know where to
| get EPIX.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| 10-20 years ago it felt like it was all the telecom companies
| buying out these media/production/conglomerates to serve as their
| auxiliary arms. Now it's big tech.
| Timothycquinn wrote:
| Now Bezos has all reels of DJT from filming the Apprentice. I
| wonder how long it will take until we see those leaked. I
| predict, it will come out once some big legal hammer falls on the
| 45th President.
| clircle wrote:
| Why does the story disappear from the webpage as soon as i open
| it in safari? Because i use a content blocker?
| Black101 wrote:
| > There are a lot of comments in this thread and the first page
| contains only the first subthread. To read the rest you need to
| click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: (Sorry for
| the interruption. Comments like this will go away eventually.)
|
| dang, since there are a lot of comments in this thread, you tell
| us about the next page link, thanks a lot... why don't you tell
| us about the flag link?
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from
| 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to
| a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you
| must go to Apple's VOD.
|
| We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets
| made in this kind of ecosystem.
| cbetti wrote:
| I think in the near term a combination of good content and
| enjoyable user experience with viewing application is going to
| drive adoption.
|
| I have a Roku and Samsung SmartOS TV. The only independent
| playback experiences that come close to Netflix, Prime Video,
| and Paramount+ in my limited experience are Plex, Apple TV, and
| for legacy stuff, TiVo.
|
| I'll take this weird world of locked-in distribution channels
| for a few years while innovation progresses, and hope Plex and
| Apple TV win once innovation stops.
| [deleted]
| GFischer wrote:
| Very insightful comment, I ended up reading:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic...
| .
|
| https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american...
|
| https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-cour...
| jccalhoun wrote:
| There are similarities but US vs Paramount was more about the
| dealings with the theaters and the movie studios and not the
| consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Param
| ount_Pic....
|
| If there was some kind of anti-trust to go on with streaming
| sources it might be more likely to be about something like
| Amazon only having its content on Fire devices or forcing Roku
| to only have Amazon content and not Netflix or something.
| snarf21 wrote:
| We have the laws and organizations but the FTC and SEC have
| failed us in the 21st century. There is no consideration of the
| consumer or marketplace, only shareholder value.
| asdff wrote:
| Netflix already owns the Egyptian Theatre. Disney owns El
| Capitan. History repeats again!
| beloch wrote:
| A century ago, if Library's hadn't existed, someone trying to
| create one might have had a chance. Today they'd have no chance
| at all.
|
| If you think to today's U.S. government would willingly choose
| to fight the U.S. vs Paramount battle again, you'll probably be
| disappointed. They're far more likely to close libraries.
| linuxftw wrote:
| It's outrageous. If you want to buy a new Chevy, you need to go
| to a Chevy dealer.
|
| Seriously though, who cares? It's just mindless time wasting
| entertainment. It's an art form who's time is rapidly passing.
|
| Let's get back to doing things together, like live music, any
| kind of hobby, just anything other than watching moving
| pictures.
| syshum wrote:
| We need FRAND for Copyright, if you are going to license your
| copyright in a commercial setting you must license it to all
| platform in a way fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory
| method
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution. Better stuff
| gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
|
| We have those laws for cars and beer and they are considered
| ongoing disasters. Why are films different?
| adaisadais wrote:
| You're looking at this wrong.
|
| This is a massive opportunity for someone to do what iTunes did
| to music and what Spotify did after. It just might end up being
| Amazon...
| kin wrote:
| I don't think you can make the same comparison to iTunes. No
| record label had the ability to reach millions of paying
| users like Netflix already has. Netflix has no incentive to
| license their original content to a different aggregate
| platform.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Well, the end of the 1930's to 1950's vertical monopoly
| shouldn't detract from the many ways the entertainment industry
| is monopolistic today. Indeed, my impression is no one could
| even summarize all the ways unions, rights, contracts and etc
| divide profits, limit who can do what, etc.
|
| My impression buying a historical piece of the entertainment
| industries is a lot like buying a company with large patent
| portfolio. No one knows whether the buyer is going to use the
| pieces "offensively" to cut off the rights of others or
| "defensively", to get leverage for cross licenses and so-forth.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| We definitely now know Apple won't be buying the James Bond
| franchise and making it exclusive. That would have been a
| huge loss for the other GAFA's entertainment libraries.
| sircastor wrote:
| I see the meaningful difference here being that there is no
| limitation to distribution across consumers. With studio owned
| theaters, if there wasn't a Paramount theater in your town,
| you're outta luck.
|
| Today, you can get Peacock and Paramount+ and Disney+, etc on
| virtually any device. Even Apple, who has been historically
| resistant to distribution on other devices has Apple+ on Roku
| and Amazon devices
|
| Because antitrust favors impact on consumers, I doubt we'll see
| any substantial legislation is this space.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Oh yeah, definitely.
|
| I do have my hopes on some sort of anti-trust regulation, but
| it's not going to be focused on film - it's going to be all
| about software and gaming.
| seanicus wrote:
| Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters
| more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket
| sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60%
| of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the
| future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by
| going to a Disney theater.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from
| 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go
| to a Paramount theater.
|
| Or the TV business throughout all of TV history. You know, if
| you want to see an HBO show, you can only watch it on HBO. If
| you want to watch _new+ episodes of Seinfeld, you have to watch
| it on NBC.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Agreed. It's artificial bottleneck based on outdated model.
|
| Currently the best catalog is with illegal streaming services
| and BitTorrent VOD and (for the cost of VPN).
| mudlus wrote:
| All hail Plex and torrents.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| The laws are there, it's our lawmakers that have been failing
| us the past ~30 years as big tech has run roughshod over the
| entire fucking planet doing whatever it wants with extremely
| minimal consequences.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content
| should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download
| and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of
| dollars per year on content that I can own going forward.
|
| The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make
| more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to _rent_ movies and
| absurd sums to "buy" them...
| simonh wrote:
| I wouldn't be at all surprised if reducing the price of a
| blockbuster flick by 50% only increased it's audience by 10%.
| dhimes wrote:
| My wife and I are no strangers to "buying" on-demand movies
| we enjoy. But our experience with Verizon FIOS is that every
| couple of months those titles "aren't available." Our
| "Purchased" area is empty.
|
| Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early
| for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-
| watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But
| we couldn't get it and ended up watching some junk
| (background while we talked mainly) and, of course, losing
| the kid's interest.
|
| The alternative was to try to call CS and spend perhaps an
| hour troubleshooting.
|
| If, however, we owned our own physical copy we could have
| watched it.
|
| My evening, crippled by tech failures of the vendor, and no
| recourse for compensation for loss of use or our time.
| iso1631 wrote:
| $5 to rent a movie seems a bargain compared with times past.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| But also in times past you had to have physical
| infrastructure in ever town to rent movies...
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content
| should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download
| and $2 for a 4k version
|
| Sounds like you need to go and produce some content and
| distribute it this way to show the world the way to
| englightenment. Please come back and post a Show HN on how
| well it worked out for you.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I do have sympathy with this view (that content creators
| can do as they like, of course!), but I'm just saying _I
| want_ to be able to buy films (maybe > 5 years old), for
| very cheap, legally, in a format I own, that I can watch
| when I like on any device I choose. I think a lot of people
| would like this possibility too and would spend lots of
| money that they wouldn't have otherwise. It's difficult to
| prove either way of course without a spare content library.
| I've no interest in starting to charge for content, all the
| films I make will always be free. :-D
| xtracto wrote:
| Right on. In the times of DVDs, you could get a DVD film for
| $5 dollars and here in Mexico even cheaper $50 pesos ($2.5
| USD). I think the fact that a _rental_ movie (even when you
| "buy" the digital version it is a rental as it has ben shown
| over an over) costs around $12 USD today that delivery
| process has been streamlined so much. That's pure greed.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make
| more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and
| absurd sums to "buy" them...
|
| That was actually the situation early on with videotape. The
| price of the tapes was set at something like $100 to make
| more money (indirectly) by renting because the rental stores
| had to pay a much higher price.
|
| Over time, tapes started also being "priced to buy" (often
| things like Disney animation that kids would want to watch
| over and over again). Eventually, I think pretty much
| everything became priced to buy.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| >We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution.
|
| Why? We're not talking about food, water or the environment.
| There is where laws should be enacted or enforced.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should
| be enacted and enforced everywhere.
|
| This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter'
| line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great
| deal. Especially when they are young.
|
| If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with
| any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing,
| then it should be to some extent over-seen.
| margaretdouglas wrote:
| What do you think cable networks were in the 90s? If you
| weren't paying a middle-man to aggregate them onto a single
| monopolized access point in your house you'd be paying
| NBC/ABC/CBS/etc individually. Think about how premium channels
| worked at the time; you'd pay for HBO or Cinemax on top of your
| monthly cable bill. It's not as though those premium channels
| were significantly cheaper than HBOMax or Netflix, and they
| didn't offer a fraction of the content you could consume at any
| given time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's
| VOD.
|
| When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had
| to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference?
|
| At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your
| leisure with the click of a few buttons.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I'm guessing that you're young-ish, then? Because that's not
| how it was when I was a kid. That changed in the mid-
| nineties, and it was a fairly controversial decision.
|
| From about 1970 to 93, antitrust regulations were put in
| place because only three networks could determine over 90% of
| broadcast media. A judge ended that rule under the rational
| that upstart networks like Fox and CW were now competitive.
| https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/13/business/judge-rules-
| netw...
|
| Critics said this would be bad because the networks would be
| incentivized to broadcast lucrative content over quality
| content, and subjectively I would say that is exactly what
| happened. But fortunately the Internet came along and made TV
| kind of moot... but anyway if you are of the opinion that
| radical centralization and corporate consolidation lead to
| crummy content, fewer opportunities for creators, and in a
| macro scale a widening wealth gap, this all just kinda sucks.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > But fortunately the Internet came along
|
| Yes, that's the difference. There used to be a gatekeeper
| to reaching your audience, but now there is none. A kid can
| take their 4K phone and make their own TV show with their
| friends and distribute it worldwide, or a company can get a
| professional crew and spend a couple billion dollars and
| distribute it worldwide.
|
| If the contention is that a few companies owning all the
| content will raise the prices, then that solution would be
| removing/reducing copyright protections, or compulsory
| licensing, but in the current environment, who owns what is
| mostly immaterial to customers.
| tl wrote:
| > Yes, that's the difference. There used to be a
| gatekeeper to reaching your audience, but now there is
| none. A kid can take their 4K phone and make their own TV
| show with their friends and distribute it worldwide, or a
| company can get a professional crew and spend a couple
| billion dollars and distribute it worldwide.
|
| Until Google or Facebook decide that your content is
| objectionable. Don't worry, punishment is instant and
| Court of Big Tech appeals process is even slower than
| actual due process [1].
|
| [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/05/fucking-
| facebook-4/#comment...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would you rather a business such as Google and Facebook
| not be able to do what they want with their computers and
| bandwidth?
|
| No one is entitled to someone else's computing resources.
| But unless the ISP is blocking access to your computers
| or from you to the network, then the point is the barrier
| to distribution is at its lowest in any point in history.
|
| Ideally, we'd have ipv6 and fiber connections to home so
| Google/Facebook would be irrelevant. But that is a
| governance issue, not a Google/Facebook issue.
| edent wrote:
| I'm unfamiliar with US television - but was NBC broadcast
| free to air, via a government regulated transmitter?
| echelon wrote:
| It wasn't bundled with a subscription to eCommerce/grocery
| store/ebook/video streaming.
|
| This is going to force subsidization of all entertainment.
| Then big tech will gobble it all up.
|
| We're going to have a lot of Netflix Original-caliber shit
| that gets cancelled once viewership changes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| NBC is one of the major studios that chose to license their
| content to broadcast networks around the country. I do not
| see how that is related, but in the event it is, you can
| replace NBC with HBO or any other non broadcasted channel.
| mivade wrote:
| The difference is simple: NBC was (and still is) free to
| watch if you have a television and an antenna.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Broadcast NBC was only "free" in the strictest sense. Every
| hour of content requires the viewer to sit through 22
| minutes of mind-numbing commercials.
|
| At a labor value of $50/hour, watching ten hours of content
| a week imposes an economic cost on the viewer of
| $825/month. By comparison subscribing to all the major
| streaming platforms would cost about $100/month. Let's not
| even get into issues of higher quality content and huge on-
| demand libraries. It's pretty clear ad-free streaming
| subscription is a massive improvement for consumers over
| "free" broadcast TV.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| The important implication of broadcast TV being "free"
| isn't that there's zero cost. It's that there's no
| subscription.
|
| Subscriptions mean you have to pay a certain minimum
| amount, even if you want to watch just one episode of
| something. That's a much bigger burden than changing the
| channel.
|
| Yes, in theory you can carefully manage things and cancel
| as soon as you've watched what you wanted, but in
| practice that effort is a cost too (like watching a
| commercial is a cost).
| athenot wrote:
| The heavy load of advertisements is a point well made,
| however the cost is a bit more nuanced. By your
| calculation, it would cost $2,166/month (+price of
| service) to just watch that amount TV.
|
| This is an _opportunity_ cost but only if you have the
| stamina to be doing billable work during all that time
| instead of relaxing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The biggest opportunity cost was having to schedule a
| specific time to watch something or not being able to
| pause and watch later or not being able to watch while
| waiting for your flight to board.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials
|
| Commercial detection and skipping has worked well for me
| via MythTV for nearly twenty years at this point.
|
| Seems like there's a free startup idea in there
| somewhere. $100 worth of equipment and a webapp and now
| your parents can watch network TV, local news, sports,
| and weather without ads.
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How can you skip the commercial in a live broadcast?
| thakoppno wrote:
| You can't skip live without a time machine. You can
| disable the audio and replace the video. Alternatively,
| you start the game 22 minutes / hour late. It's all about
| trade-offs but attention is being under-valued imho.
| woobar wrote:
| Pause -> get a snack/bathroom break -> fast forward.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 'free to watch' as long as you like commercials.
| asdff wrote:
| Advertising is a thing in netflix productions too, you
| know. Really takes you out of _Stranger Things_ when you
| see them set down a coke can with the label perfectly
| aligned to the camera.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And if you lived in a location close enough to a city to
| receive the airwaves. I do not see what that has to do with
| it, but you can swap out NBC for a non broadcast media
| owner like Comedy Central.
|
| Point is content is more accessible and cheaper than it has
| ever been in history, and that is partially due to the
| elimination of middlemen like cable/satellite TV
| distributors.
|
| But media is always going to have an owner, who is always
| going to be able to license it to whoever they want at
| whatever cost they want.
| pvg wrote:
| HBO wasn't and you needed to pay to watch an HBO show.
| There's really not much difference between and premium
| channel cable offering and these services, at least, it's a
| lot more similar and closer in time than studio-owned movie
| theatres.
| philistine wrote:
| You would be shocked at the amount of shows that were sold to
| NBC but produced by ABC Studios or whatever. It still happens
| today but the trend is going back to the closed loops.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How does that affect me as a customer?
| acwan93 wrote:
| It means shows that don't get picked up by the studio
| making the show can get picked up by other studios to air
| it.
|
| Two immediate examples I can think of:
|
| "House MD" was produced by NBC/Universal but aired on FOX
|
| "For All Mankind" was produced by Sony but currently
| airing on Apple TV+
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How are the incentives any different now? Why would
| Amazon not want to be paid for a show it does not want
| but Apple or Netflix does? Swap around any of the company
| names.
|
| If a different studio was selling to Apple/Amazon/etc
| then presumably they would have language that lets them
| sell to someone else if they did not end up distributing
| it.
| henvic wrote:
| No!
|
| On the contrary: stop trying to use the law for everything!
|
| Such strategy works a million times better than the horror of
| copyright law.
|
| The companies should be free to do it, and it's awful that
| someone wants to involve the force of the state to stop them
| from doing so, instead of seeing it as a way to get rid of the
| burden of copyright law to society.
| Pxtl wrote:
| One wrinkle of that era was how they even had their own stable
| of actors working for them exclusively. The new vertical
| integration doesn't seem to be going that far down. I imagine
| there's not as much interest in that, and actors have a
| powerful union now.
| croon wrote:
| I'm bad at name dropping, but I atleast know of Adam Sandler
| and Shonda Rhimes signing exclusivity deals. I'm sure there
| are many more examples.
| ajaimk wrote:
| That's kinda happening now too but with directors that have
| signed first look deals with VOD providers.
| salamanderman wrote:
| First look deals with production companies never went away.
| The first one coming to mind is The Weinstein company had a
| first look deal with Disney (yes, Disney turned down lord
| of the rings).
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not surprising. I can't see how that would help their
| brand.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution.
|
| Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a
| meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and
| other anti-consumer practices.
| divs1210 wrote:
| THIS.
|
| Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10
| movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents.
|
| YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying
| for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable
| price.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| In the USA, they came down hard of torrents.
|
| My neighbor got busted a few years back by Xfinity, and it
| was a big deal.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... and it was a big deal.
|
| It's my understanding that Xfinity sends a few warning
| notices, just a little slap on the wrist, before they end
| up terminating your account or something (though a quick
| cursory Google brings up a Reddit thread where someone
| claiming to have worked for Cumcrust said they never saw
| any accounts terminated for that). I know I received one
| letter like 7 years ago for downloading 'Christmas
| Vacation' and nothing else ever happened. Speaking from
| experience, if you use a VPN to torrent then they'll
| leave you alone.
|
| I'd be curious how much - and what - your neighbor was
| doing to have made it a big deal, and what Xfinity's
| response/reaction was.
| leetcrew wrote:
| maybe times have changed, but before I got a VPN, I used
| to get copyright notices all the time. I didn't notice
| for a few years because they went to an @comcast.com
| email address that I never checked. when I finally
| looked, I saw pages and pages of sternly written emails.
| if freely torrenting movies for years isn't enough to get
| disconnected, I dunno what is.
| baby wrote:
| Really? Got busted a number of time in France and in the
| US and nothing ever happened and I just kept torrenting.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Best solution IMO is to rent a $10 a month seedbox and
| use it for torrenting.
|
| And/or only use private trackers. Stay away from the
| public ones.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| This is the obvious outcome from customers wanting to drop
| the all you can eat cable model and pick and choose.
|
| If any one "stream everything" service popped up with every
| providers content, it would cost $200+ a month, and
| essentially a cable tv subscription all over again just
| without the cable box, and everyone would complain it's too
| expensive and go back to piracy.
| tarr11 wrote:
| Amazon allows this too.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Although very limited in its content, at least in Canada.
| My understanding is that it's because of old exclusivity
| contracts with cable providers.
|
| And indeed, our process is: "Can we rent it? No, fine let's
| fine a pirated copy". Not going to get cable for one night
| to watch this one movie. Everybody's losing by hanging on
| those old outdated systems.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Amazon does this as well, I can rent pretty much any movie
| or tv show through it.
| dhosek wrote:
| Amazon and Apple also have stream rentals. That said, I
| have Netflix (free with my T-mobile phone service) and HBO
| (free with my AT&T fiber internet) and Apple+ (free with
| the recently purchased iPads for the kids) and Hoopla (free
| from the library) and Kanopy (free from the library) and
| Disney+ (we actually pay for this one) and I never feel the
| need to say, I must watch _this_ movie which isn 't
| available on one of the services _right now_. If anything,
| I have too many options of what to watch.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The tyranny of choice.
|
| Have you ever heard of the indie mubi?
|
| https://mubi.com/
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| Mubi really is excellent if you like the kind of art-
| house content they license. I think if I only kept one
| streaming service it'd be them.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Blockbusters used to be really good for this. You could
| even get a movie for a whole week for less than YouTube
| will rent it to you for 24 hours.
|
| Maybe they'll make a comeback?
| adamrezich wrote:
| what will users insert physical media into, these days?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| USB ports?
| tomcooks wrote:
| One use QR codes?
| vlunkr wrote:
| Well blockbuster itself no longer exists, so don't count
| on that one.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Of course I meant their _business model_ , but...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(Bend,_Oregon
| )
| NortySpock wrote:
| Redbox automated movie rental machines, perhaps?
| thayne wrote:
| This. I don't understand why streaming a movie is so much
| more expensive than renting a physical DVD or VHS from a
| brick-and-morter store. If I want to watch a new movie,
| it is generally much cheaper to rent a DVD from redbox
| than watching it from any of the streaming services that
| allow you to rent it online.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can also still subscribe to the Netflix DVD service,
| although it's degraded compared to what it used to be.
| They're obviously not replacing a lot of disks when they
| wear out.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Depends on your cost priorities.
|
| If you're basically just walking by the box anyway while
| doing something you'd be doing otherwise, sure it's
| cheaper to drop $2 for a disc.
|
| If you have to make a deliberate trip, you've
| transportation & opportunity costs. 2 round trips to the
| box, just to get/return the disc, is 6 miles total (1.5
| miles one-way by road & parking lot) for me; at >$3/gal
| gas (wear/maintenance not included) that's >$1.50 plus
| the $2 rental. Then there's the time spent getting the
| disc, as several people wait around for someone to fetch
| it; if we're already at cumulative $4 cost, I'll pay the
| extra $1 (<$0.25 each) just so the group can watch what
| we want _right now_ with a mere wiggling my thumb and not
| wait around half an hour.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's because of the first sale doctrine. Redbox and
| family video can buy DVDs and Blu-Rays (at a maximum) at
| the same price as consumer DVD/Blu-Ray--and rent them out
| without permission from the copyright holder. That means
| video rental stores can undercut the VOD prices.
|
| Consumers are willing to pay more for VOD because its
| easier. Having to return the disc is a pain in the ass.
| thayne wrote:
| It seems like there should be a similar mechanism for
| VOD. Although, VidAngel tried to do that and was sued
| almost to death by big media.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's not possible to lend digital media out without
| making a copy(remotely streaming it still copying), which
| isn't protected by the first sale doctrine. Redbox isn't
| making a copy. That's the big difference.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Is it possible to _play_ a DVD without making a copy in
| the DVD player 's RAM?
|
| What if I extend an HDMI cable from my DVD player to your
| TV?
|
| My library manages to lend ebooks; they even have wait
| lists for them.
| thayne wrote:
| Assuming that is true that seems like yet another place
| where the law isn't well adapted to a digital world.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| ... There used to be this little startup company and
| service, where you could queue movie/TV shows, then you
| would receive the discs in the mail, with a paid envelope
| to return them as well...
|
| AFAIK - only in the US though, there was much talk at
| launch of how they got special deals with the US postal
| service.
|
| Whatever happened to those guys...?
| (https://dvd.netflix.com/)
|
| Apparently they still do it - I thought it was phased-out
| for streaming years ago.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I wish we had the data on this but I suspect a customer
| only selects a one or two video platforms and _MAYBE_
| juggles a third when a hot show like GoT shows up, which is
| rare. There is a limited number of attention hours, it
| doesn't make sense to be on 10 platforms.
|
| Regardless, the end game of these streaming services is
| probably going to be consolidation or partners, if it makes
| since because the market is too diluted. We're coming off,
| wha, $60-100 a month cable bills? The streaming providers
| are still siphoning this value before we start seeing
| consolidation of the losers with the winners.
| sharken wrote:
| I think you're very much on point on the number services
| a customer signs up for.
|
| In that light it makes perfect sense for Amazon to
| enhance their offering, as they are third or fourth in
| streaming.
|
| There never seems to be something to watch consistently
| on Prime at least here in Europe.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Prime is already enhanced by its delivery services,
| something the others can't offer. Like I had Prime
| already just for that and didn't really start watching
| shows on it much until recently.
|
| But that being said they've definitely stepped up their
| Originals game lately. Last few shows we've watched on
| there are all excellent (Invincible, The Boys, Upload).
| ghaff wrote:
| It's probably more than one or two. Amazon Prime Video
| and Netflix are two right there. But, you're right, The
| reality is that most people don't feel like they _have_
| to see a particular show. In any case, for the time
| being, it 's pretty easy to dip in and out. I guess I
| have four at the moment (though two of them are free for
| various reasons).
|
| Depending upon how you allocate the cost of Amazon Prime
| though, I'm saving a _lot_ compared to when I had cable--
| albeit at the cost of losing live TV.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yep, Netflix and Amazon Prime are a given for us (Netflix
| a bit less so lately, actually considering taking a break
| from it for the first time in years), and then we'll add
| Disney+/Hulu or HBO Now for a month or two a couple times
| a year.
|
| By the way, has anyone checked out the free movies on
| Youtube? There's some good 80s and 90s classics on there
| lately. Supposedly it's with ads, but I don't see too
| many when I watch, certainly less than Hulu.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Piracy is competition to bad content behavior.
|
| No it isn't. It's a workaround. This is an 8 billion dollar
| deal, there would have to be an impossible amount of piracy
| for it to count as "competition." This is precisely the
| reason why government regulation here is correct, as
| consumers, we don't have a lever long enough to have any real
| impact on the core problem.
|
| And we're just one side of the deal. These types of
| distribution setups are not just bad for consumers, but for
| actors, directors, producers and anyone who makes a living on
| any part of these productions.
|
| The knee jerk responses to avoid meaningful government
| regulation are always baffling to me.
| caeril wrote:
| > No it isn't. It's a workaround.
|
| Sure, but it's a trivially easy workaround.
|
| Our focus of attention on matters of regulation ought to be
| in those areas where working around the problem is not
| nearly as dead simple as a torrent client, a NAS, and a
| Plex server.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It's really not.
|
| I'm a computer geek, and I'm LONG past the point where
| setting up safe VMs and signing up to half a dozen
| services like newsgroup server and directories and search
| engines and what nots, download software with impossible
| names like sabnzbd (I'm waiting up for somebody to scream
| how nobody uses sabnzbd anymore, it's been replaced by
| jidwiaj and iqerqip, which are super easy, and that just
| proves my point:P), setup my own webservers that talk to
| themselves internally so my downloader would work with my
| cataloguer that would work with the sorter that talks to
| the video player, figuring out a VPN to keep me somewhat
| safe while introducing a whole 'nother threat vector...
| gawd I get a headache just thinking about it. And I end
| up paying the same as I would for 2-4 monthly legit
| services. And then my wife wants to watch this movie
| that's just come out and I download eight versions of it
| but four are fake and two have hieroglyphic subtitles in
| three languages baked into video stream and take up half
| the screen. And then it stops half way through. And then
| I'm on a business trip (remember those? hah!) and my
| family wants to watch something and now I have to spend
| 47 minutes on the phone trying to guide her on how to do
| that before we all quit in frustration.
|
| My few friends who still do that try to get me back on
| board, and their "quick & easy explanation on how to do
| it because it's so easy now" is still three pages long,
| while skipping 70% of crucial steps & detail.
|
| Just, NO. Whoever thinks piracy is "trivially easy" has a
| very specific mindset (Hey, it's OK, I used to as
| well...!), and lacks empathy for those with different
| mindset/circumstances/skills/priorities... who happen to
| make up the clear majority of public.
| rapind wrote:
| Well there is put.io (no affiliation). If it became
| popular enough though I'm sure it'd get shut down some
| how.
| saltyfamiliar wrote:
| I truly cannot relate. All one needs is a VPN, a torrent
| client, a browser and an internet connection. Most tv's
| nowadays are smart enough to either connect to a simple
| Windows share or at least be able to play movie files. My
| SO and I watch a new movie almost every single night with
| a very simple setup and rarely encounter problems. It
| reads to me like you've over engineered movie night and
| are now complaining about the complexity.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > All one needs is a VPN
|
| You don't need that. At least, I don't.
|
| > a torrent client
|
| All good operating systems (i.e. Linux) come with one.
| Though obviously most non-technical people don't use
| Linux.
|
| > a browser
|
| Pretty much standard on everything.
|
| > an internet connection
|
| Which they would be using anyway for streaming services.
|
| > Most tv's nowadays are smart enough
|
| Aaagh! Don't use "smart" TVs!
| d0gbread wrote:
| Three comments so far that highlight the exact point the
| parent was making, a true lack of empathy. VPN alone is
| enough complexity for most... it's hard to find one that
| doesn't have comments calling it potentially insecure,
| questioning the owner, nevermind keeping tabs on if it
| sells to another owner.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| Maybe. It is still more complex than just using Netflix.
| OTOH, there's enough stable software for this out there
| that's it can be a "set it up and forget about it"
| experience if you want it to be. The right client will
| search N sources for you with the click of a button,
| instead of you having to search Netflix, then Hulu, then
| Disney+, and so on until you find (or don't find) the
| thing you're looking for.
|
| At what point does the daily time savings from having a
| unified view into all the world's media outweigh the
| initial time cost of setting it up? It surely varies by
| person. Personally, spending one day setting up a media
| server is a far better experience than spending 5 minutes
| every #%$!ng night searching for some show on Netflix,
| then Hulu, then HBO, the Funimation, then Crunchyroll,
| and then _still_ not finding it.
| iso1631 wrote:
| My father-in-law has no idea about technology, yet tells
| me I'm dumb for paying for things like netflix when he
| just downloads them
| Fezzik wrote:
| On a Mac TPB + a decent VPN + BiglyBT = trivially easy
| torrenting. I have certainly never encountered any of the
| hardships you describe.
|
| I have been using that same setup for... 10+ years? With
| BiglyBT replacing Vuze after Vuze was purchased and
| turned in to garbage.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Well-crafted regulation is constructive, in that it
| expresses the social problem and provides guidance on the
| expected behavior. That can shape investment and allow
| companies to make long-term decisions.
|
| Piracy can have many reasons behind it, including just
| not wanting to pay for things in general. And it's easy
| for companies to dismiss as just an expense to manage,
| like shoplifting ("loss") in the retail channel.
| dkarl wrote:
| Trivially easy for a trivially small number of people.
| Does everyone else have to put up with whatever
| experience Amazon thinks they should get?
| threatofrain wrote:
| The two solutions don't play in the same ballpark of EV
| either. With Torrent and NAS and Plex you're talking
| niche phenomena forever.
| asdff wrote:
| It's a lot easier than that now. There are apps now that
| package the bittorent client and website with magnet
| links into a single unified app ecosystem that looks
| somewhat like the spotify app, but with practically every
| movie and TV show ever produced. You don't have to wait
| for downloads, the client will stream the torrent for you
| after maybe 30 seconds of buffer. It's often much faster
| for me to use this app to get to a show, than to navigate
| the website and do the same for a service I might pay
| for.
| Pmop wrote:
| This comment reminds me of the classic "For a Linux user,
| you can already build such a system yourself quite
| trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally
| with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted
| filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could
| be accessed through built-in software."
| MattRix wrote:
| For those who haven't seen it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| echelon wrote:
| The solution is to break up big tech.
|
| Amazon shouldn't be ten companies in one.
|
| Google shouldn't be able to set web and mobile standards,
| then reap ad monies by forcing everyone to accept their
| anticompetitive changes.
|
| Apple shouldn't be the sole guardian of iPlatform. You
| can't have a protection racket on 50% of all commerce
| (phones >> gaming consoles) and enforce what gets put on
| the device.
|
| These companies don't have moats the size of an ocean. They
| have moats the size of a Schwarzschild radius, and they're
| sucking up everything in their path. Google, in particular,
| is being lazy as fuck because they don't have to actually
| do anything anymore.
|
| Microsoft is literally the only tech giant behaving
| correctly, and it's probably because they got slapped with
| antitrust in the 2000s.
|
| Competition is supposed to be good for the economy. These
| companies should have to try harder. The minute they no
| longer face existential risks, they become destructive.
| [deleted]
| bg24 wrote:
| US can do so. Other countries, eg. China, Korea etc. will
| not. Their big players will trample on small companies of
| US.
|
| Anti-trust is good, and keeps them in check.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| > Microsoft is literally the only tech giant behaving
| correctly, and it's probably because they got slapped
| with antitrust in the 2000s.
|
| Ask Slack if they agree. Microsoft used the dominance of
| Office to take over that market by bundling Teams.
| bombcar wrote:
| What's more amazing to me is Google had Chat and
| Docs/Sheets all ready to go and integrate and take on
| Office and instead they closed down chat and brought out
| Hangouts which I've still never understood.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| It does seem like a big missed opportunity. My only
| thought is the failure of Wave loomed large and people
| didn't want to repeat it. Consumer messengers with huge
| user bases all had simplified UIs and that seemed like a
| better market to try (repeatedly) to break into.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I'm also astounded at how badly Google has squandered the
| opportunity in business productivity.
|
| Even companies that were all-in on Google for email,
| calendar, and documents went with (for example) Slack for
| chat and Zoom for meetings. Google has had multiple
| products in both categories for years! And yet somehow
| could not put together a compelling package the way
| Microsoft did with O365 + Teams seemingly overnight.
| johncessna wrote:
| Was Skype bundled as a part of Office? I'm not sure if it
| was included or if it was a license add on.
|
| The companies I worked at that had slack licenses still
| had teams using what they considered to be the best
| product. Slack, Hipchat (remember them?), and Zoom.
|
| There's also more to it than 'bundling.' Trusting your
| chat communications to the same company doing your email
| is a more compelling story than sending it to Slack,
| Discord, or Zoom. There are a lot of companies that still
| don't trust 'the cloud' and then you've got governments
| all over the world and all of their regulations that may
| block the use of something else.
| Natfan wrote:
| Skype for Business is licensed separately, from what I
| recall. Back when I was L1 I'd have to install Skype for
| Business from portal.office.com, because it wasn't
| installed as part of the standard Office2016/O365
| package.
| setr wrote:
| I don't think that really counts for much -- they
| literally just expanded their product suite, and
| integrated as such. If you're not supposed to do that,
| then I'm not sure what a company is supposed to do other
| than have a single standalone product per domain.
|
| Their monopoly lawsuit behavior was different -- the
| bundling of windows with forced IE was problematic
| (largely because windows was everything, and also IE
| being largely unrelated to the rest of the OS) but much
| more problematic was their OEM strategies, to enforce and
| maintain windows as the dominant OS.
| passivate wrote:
| "Bundling" isn't any indication of any wrong doing. The
| OS "bundles" a word processor, a music player, a photo
| editor, etc, etc. I don't think I'd choose to install an
| OS without an internet browser. But a decade or two ago,
| people thought differently that an OS shouldn't ship with
| a bundled browser.
| chuckSu wrote:
| That's just good business
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| I prefer Apple controlling their platform thank you very
| much. I remember Verizon controlling what I could use to
| connect to an old flip phone, not allowing me to use
| bluetooth but some service they charged for.
|
| I remember Verizon controlling what OS version was
| installed and what firmware and what updates were even
| supported by them.
|
| Remember when Cell Service providers charged us PER SMS
| text?
|
| I do.
| MereInterest wrote:
| You're presenting a ridiculous dilemma between phones
| that are controlled by the network, and phones that are
| controlled by the manufacturer. Turns out, there's a
| third option that you are handily ignoring, where phones
| are controlled by the owner.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'm not sure I can agree about Microsoft. I've come to
| not hate them in the last decade but they definitely have
| been buying up the developer scene too. They aren't as
| brazen as Google I'll agree (likely because of the
| antitrust issues) but they are still setting themselves
| up as a monopoly over the long term.
| bogwog wrote:
| The other day I was helping my brother setup Python on
| his Windows 10 computer. So I went to python.org and
| installed it as usual, then why I typed "python" in the
| console, it launched the Microsoft Store app and took me
| to the download page for their distribution of Python.
|
| Apparently, it's some kind of alias "feature" they added
| to Windows at some point. What legitimate reason is there
| for that if not to try and trick people into thinking
| they need to download the Microsoft Store version of
| Python (which probably includes analytics/telemetry not
| in a standard Python distribution)?
|
| Google, Apple, etc are all shameless, anti-competitive
| monopolists. Anyone can see that because they make no
| attempts to hide what they're doing. Microsoft's
| intentions are exactly the same, but they're a lot
| sneakier about it because they've already been burned in
| the past for their bad behavior.
|
| People who think _the new Microsoft is different!_
| because they released a free text editor and other open
| source projects are naive. Microsoft wants to lock you
| into their platforms and technologies like Apple, and
| wants to collect and monetize your personal data like
| Google.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Holy shit, you typed "python" in a console window so the
| OS looked for an existing install, didn't find one, so it
| tried to help you! How evil and awful! Burn M$$$$ down!
| Bring back "unknown command"!
| vel0city wrote:
| The Microsoft Store version is managed by the PSF and is
| a legitimate method of getting it. It went to that
| because you didn't choose the option to add python to the
| PATH, so the console didn't have a python executable to
| run.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A big part of this is because people see Nadella as some
| kind of angel after the reign of terror by Ballmer but
| that's only on a relative scale. Same shit, different
| day. The second component is Bill Gates' philantropism,
| which is used to whitewash a whole pile of despicable
| behavior (as the CEO of Microsoft, never mind the rest).
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Conglomerates have never been a good idea (imho), because
| they have this ugly tendency of cornering one market at a
| time using profits from all other divisions.
| aerosmile wrote:
| I love how the term "break up big tech" includes "break"
| in it. Kind of makes you realize what's really at stake
| here. Sure, you don't want monopolies, but is breaking US
| companies going to actually prevent monopolies, or are
| you just shifting the balance of power from US companies
| to Chinese companies? Because you sure as hell are not
| going to break those up - and Tik Tok has demonstrated
| what should be obvious: we are already neck-deep in the
| water trying to fend off Chinese companies from taking
| over the US market, and our competitive margin is only
| getting slimmer every day. A family member works a lot
| with Chinese companies and predicted this 13 years ago,
| and I remember laughing him out of the room. I am no
| longer laughing today, and I think most of us won't be
| with each passing day.
| nightski wrote:
| If you truly believe multinational conglomerates are the
| pinnacle of innovation then you may be right.
|
| But from my perspective they acquire because they can't
| innovate internally.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is such a cowardly view.
|
| > or are you just shifting the balance of power from US
| companies to Chinese companies?
|
| That's not going to happen. The biggest Chinese companies
| only exist because of stolen technology. This is a well
| documented fact. Tencent for example has this business
| model:
|
| 1) Identify trending games from competitors outside of
| China
|
| 2) Clone those games and release them internationally
|
| 3) Petition the Chinese government to block the game they
| cloned in China
|
| Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in
| the long-term innovation will always prevail.
|
| If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to
| more innovation as the smart people working at Google,
| Microsoft, Apple, etc. will no longer be tied by the
| "golden handcuffs" and will be driven to build and
| experiment with new ideas and technologies, instead of
| spending their days working on ads or other money
| printing businesses that provide little value to society.
| tmp231 wrote:
| This is such a cowardly view.
|
| > If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to
| more innovation
|
| Yes, let's violate a company's right to exist and conduct
| business just because we don't like ads, or have
| preferences for how the run things. If you're so
| concerned that they are not doing the right thing, then
| you go out and do it.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| I am not sure the right for a company to exist, is a real
| thing. These are artificial entities created by the
| government that give groups of people liability
| protection and the ability to act as one entity legally.
|
| It is not really a right, so much as a practical
| privilege we have set up. As such they should be open to
| whatever democratic will of the people. If the people
| arbitrarily decide they can only have so much power or
| size, then so be it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's a very scary thought. What you're saying is, these
| big companies already are, or about to become,
| effectively untouchable, because they're now important
| strategic assets for United States in its struggle to
| maintain global economic dominance.
| cabalamat wrote:
| Government regulation would be one solution. Another would
| be less government regulation, specifically making piracy
| legal.
| tmp231 wrote:
| Less government regulation doesn't mean violating
| contract law.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Piracy doesn't solve the more dangerous underlying problem of
| influencing opinions.
|
| For example all Apple TV shows are full of Apple product
| placement every minute or so.
|
| It's not something new, Disney creates most of their
| characters with merchandising in mind. Look at baby Yoda.
|
| But it also goes deeper, when it aims to spread ideologies
| and behaviors.
|
| Now that a James Bond villain write the show, I wonder who
| the bad guy will be.
| syshum wrote:
| >>Disney creates most of their characters with
| merchandising in mind. Look at baby Yoda.
|
| They may try for that, but recent star wars is a
| merchandising disaster. Baby Yoda is the only real success
| with Cara Dune coming in second before they nuked that.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Piracy is competition to bad content behavior
|
| I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the
| Napster-era.
|
| Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music
| industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on
| Spotify, and iTunes.
|
| If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to
| envisage something similar to what we see now in the music
| industry forced on the movie companies. Now it's honey pot
| torrents all over the place.
|
| No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z
| on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite fee
| either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd.
|
| Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies
| as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching
| old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my
| country.
| margaretdouglas wrote:
| Why do you need cable/satellite if you're playing the a la
| carte game of streaming? I feel like the world where you
| have cable and streaming services is ending and you either
| live in a world with cable and maybe or two streaming
| services; similar to paying extra for HBO and Cinemax with
| your cable service in the past, or you cut the cord and
| manage bundling the "networks" yourself.
| Netflix+Hulu+HBOMax+Sports/Local News subscriptions all
| tally to less than cable used to, you get more content, and
| all that content is on demand and free of commercials. This
| notion that service has backpedaled is nonsense. It baffles
| me why people still cling to their cable service and then
| expect "premium" channels be free and also share their
| content with one another. Which cable networks did that?
| When new episodes of Seinfeld were airing which networks
| could you watch them on? Just one? So unfair! I prefer the
| commercials on ABC! Perhaps you felt differently because
| you had no alternative to buying all the "streaming
| services of the day" under a single bundle. Now you do. You
| don't like TNT? Don't pay for it. ESPN never get turned on?
| Now you can drop it from your bill.
| thayne wrote:
| For many people in the states it is difficult or
| impossible to get internet without cable bundled in.
|
| And your argument assumes that the shows you want are
| clustered into one of the providers. But what if you like
| one show from Netflix, one from Hulu, one from HBOMax,
| etc. You still have to pay for all the shows you don't
| care about from each of those providers. The different
| streaming services is roughly equivalent to the different
| channel bundles that cable companies offered before.
|
| Sure, the streaming situation isn't any worse than cable
| was, but it could still be a lot better. Imagine if
| streaming services had to compete on the quality of the
| service itself instead of the content available on the
| network. If you are ok with ads if you get a lower price,
| use one service. If you are willing to pay more for 4K
| content for everything, use a different service, etc.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Maybe there could be a standard industry fee paid based
| on number of users and resolution instead of exclusives.
| This is kind of how radio works.
| DrBazza wrote:
| In the UK at least, it's Sky (satellite) or Virgin
| (cable), and they both bundle internet access with the
| service. Often it's more expensive to get the internet
| service on its own (Virgin) than getting the 'bundle'
| (tv+internet).
|
| Also, the free-to-air reception in some parts of the UK
| is still so poor, you need cable or satellite to watch
| any TV at all.
| timthorn wrote:
| On the FTA point, Freesat is the satellite equivalent of
| Freeview and needs no subscription. Many TVs have Freesat
| tuners built in so you just need the dish.
| pie420 wrote:
| But that's the thing. You don't have to pay for cable
| anymore. And if you want to watch a show, you can subscribe
| for a month, get your fill, and then unsubscribe. You
| couldn't do that before.
| nitrogen wrote:
| You can't do the pop in/pop out thing anymore, because
| they've (Amazon) started posting only one episode per
| week instead of a full season at once.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix,
| and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable/satellite
| fee either. Paying 200 GBP/USD a month is utterly absurd.
|
| When we're done talking about the quantity of movies, let's
| talk about quality.
|
| If an awesome movie goes to the cinema, like Twilight,
| you'll be able to watch Werewolf on Netflix. With abysmal
| plot and acting. If you type Mission Impossible, you'll
| certainly get Suits.
|
| The search is so abysmal, always suggesting the same 40
| series on and on, that people exchange numeric codes which
| allow them to discover new categories (but half the titles
| will be already seen). A/B testing probably shows that
| after seeing a title for 6 weeks and dodging it, you end up
| watching it, because, there's only that.
|
| It's not that I don't want to pay $40 a month for 4
| services, it's that even at that price, I still can't watch
| the quality movies.
|
| And let's not even start with ideology-pushing in movies.
| mavhc wrote:
| Imagine, people making art because they have something to
| say. The horror. The horror.
| thayne wrote:
| > I'm actually more interested in watching old black and
| white movies that are "free to air" in my country
|
| My experience has been that old (black and white or
| otherwise) movies are hard to find now. Especially if you
| just want to watch it once and don't want to buy an old DVD
| or VHS.
| minusSeven wrote:
| My rule of thumb regarding watching content is: if its only
| 1 movie or tv show I want to watch just pirate it, if its
| more than one on a streaming platform subscribe to it. I
| subscribe to netflix just once a year to watch everything I
| want to watch and then don't bother subscribing again for a
| year. I guess eventually I will do the same to other
| platforms if they have enough content in them.
|
| I can't fathom how someone can pay to streaming sites month
| after month unless they have quite a lot of stuff they want
| to watch.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I can't fathom
|
| A lot of people just can't be bothered tracking their
| usage over time of a bunch of services and keeping track
| of what lives where. I don't have a lot of services so
| it's not worth optimizing to save $10/month or something
| like that.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern
| movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in
| watching old black and white movies that are "free to air"
| in my country.
|
| My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and
| while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like
| the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by
| the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies
| that are really mediocre. Now I see there's a lot of
| content on Netflix but I feel like I am swimming in an
| ocean of never ending content produced with the same
| recipe.
| geodel wrote:
| > I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending
| content produced with the same recipe.
|
| This is what machine learning, pattern recognition will
| get us.
|
| I watched one show in Amazon prime. One shocking thing I
| noted besides repetitive plots every few episodes, is
| that one character say something and after few minutes or
| next episode another character spoke exactly same
| sentence in different situation. And it happened so many
| times I thought I knew what is about to be said.
| carschno wrote:
| I think the machine learning part in that is massively
| exaggerated, perhaps to avoid personal responsibility.
| Detecting the patterns in commercially successful movies
| hardly requires complex pattern recognition algorithms. I
| would claim that most movies made in the past decades
| were copying ideas that had turned out to be successful
| earlier. Maybe machine learning can add some tiny extra
| on top of the recipe, but I think it's still the
| producers who are to blame for the lack of creativity.
| fakedang wrote:
| Not just the producers but the overall strategy. Right
| now, these media companies are competing on quantity
| because it's a numbers game and a marketing gimmick to
| showcase your "vast" collection, however mediocre.
| geodel wrote:
| > I think the machine learning part in that is massively
| exaggerated,
|
| You are right of course. I said that in half-jest. It is
| like at work where every product/project is working on
| something next generation. Irritates the hell out of me.
| So in morning meetings I so often ask "Are we fixing it
| now or it will be part of our next gen product?"
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Netflix is terrible if you have good taste in movies.
|
| I'm with you on the old black/white movies.
|
| I actually think Amazon got a great deal buying MGM.
|
| If TCM was available, Nefflix should look into buying it.
| They have a great library of old movies.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| TCM content is mostly available on HBO Max.
| alborzb wrote:
| TCM was available (alongside all of Warner Bros. Media,
| Turner Media and DC Comics)... It's getting absorbed by
| Discovery [1], I imagine that a competitive bidding
| process must have taken place, presumably Netflix didn't
| see the benefits.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/john-malone-sees-
| warnermedia...
| htrp wrote:
| The ML lays out the broad strokes of what it thinks will
| perform thematically which coincidentally is what
| uncreative producers have been doing for years.
|
| (see Avatar is Dances with Wolves with Blue Aliens)
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| The Criterion collection is a good choice for those with
| a more discerning taste in film. Well curated too. But
| expensive.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Criterion Channel is a great, lower-budget streaming
| option ($11/month)
| minusSeven wrote:
| Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the
| ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it. Its a
| bad strategy because users waste time watching content
| they would rather not watch. HBO imo is the only platform
| that focus on quality rather than the number of shows.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Yep, HBO is the only streaming platform with consistent
| quality. It's also the only one I pay for. There are
| approximately 0 Netflix originals that are on par with
| the 'good' HBO series, same for amzn and Hulu.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the
| ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it.
|
| I read it was more than that. Shows have to bring in more
| customers, keeping them hooked to a show (or the
| platform) is not enough now. They will more and more
| invest only in content that bring in more customers, not
| just keeping the ones they already have. I read that's
| why the OA got cancelled: it wouldn't bring in more views
| and the show would have been more expensive.
| matwood wrote:
| I would argue Apple is trying to follow the HBO formula.
| They are not quite there yet, but the Apple shows I have
| watched have all been good, with Ted Lasso being great.
| kangaroozach wrote:
| We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to
| pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand
| for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you
| can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+,
| and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will
| hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month.
| We are creeping back up to those numbers because people
| will pay.
| ksec wrote:
| >We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness
| to pay
|
| Even if that is true, I am pretty sure it is specific to
| US only. I dont believe any other place in the world are
| paying that much for monthly TV content, where Free (
| paid by Tax or not ) OTA TV are the norm, and paid are
| mostly for Live Sports Content.
|
| In US it seems you need "Cable" for everything.
| seniorivn wrote:
| Russia and China are paying almost as much(adjusted to
| income)
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Instead of having cable, I used to rent or buy movies.
| It's no fun to rent now and the terms and duration suck
| and it's hard to get a physical copy now so you're tied
| to some service for life if you "buy"
| cronix wrote:
| Netflix still offers their original service that got them
| started and helped them wipe out Blockbuster and other
| competition: DVD's in the mail. https://dvd.netflix.com/
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Interesting; I didn't know that
| hollerith wrote:
| Did we just have a poor DVD player or are scratched disks
| a problem for everyone using this service?
| syshum wrote:
| I know a few people that pay $200+ for cable, PLUS all of
| the streaming services...
| llampx wrote:
| I have a hard time believing that that was the average
| monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more
| than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The price for essentially just 120Mbps (sold as 200) down
| and 6 up is over 100 for internet + 15 for the box if you
| don't get your own. With TV and a few premium channels it
| would easily be $200. They are also have only one
| competitor of note in the downtown of a city of 50K
| people, a DSL provider offering a service slow enough
| that its not technically considered broadband anymore by
| present standards.
| ghaff wrote:
| I saved about $120/month starting late last year when I
| dropped cable TV and landline from my cable package.
| (This is in NE US.)
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| My current monthly cable subscription is $135 (plus
| "fees"). And when people say, "cable", they generally
| mean TV service. For many, that may mean a pricey
| satellite TV service (very expensive back in the day).
| Basic cable is likely what you are getting, but many
| people want to watch sports or movies, which requires
| premium subscriptions and it adds up quickly.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's an insane price, and hopefully you can shop around
| or change packages.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There's one wire going into the house usually that
| carries media, a coaxial cable. Hence, your options were
| always Dish or DirecTV satellite or the cable company.
|
| Being able to buy and cancel on demand streaming for $15
| or less per month is a massive improvement over the
| previous situation.
|
| It has never been easier, cheaper, and more convenient to
| consume basically all content and yet people still find
| ways to complain.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Half the country can't really shop around they need to
| buy internet alone from the same cable company and then
| replace TV with netflix hulu etc but long term there
| isn't much stopping the cable provider from jacking up
| the price of just internet to what you are paying for TV
| and internet and claiming to offer you a deal for just a
| little bit more if you pay THEM for tv.
|
| Hi we've noticed you used to pay us $200 for internet and
| tv but now pay $100 to use and $50 for streaming
| services. How would you instead like to pay us 200 for
| internet and 220 if you want TV too. our $20 tv addon is
| cheaper than netflix because its subsidized by the
| monopoly rent we are charging you on internet access!
| Also we have noticed that despite bandwidth being cheaper
| than ever we can also discourage your netflix use by also
| charging extra for using "too much" data.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > hopefully you can shop around
|
| i.e., if you're lucky enough to have more than one
| alternative (if any).
| IncRnd wrote:
| There may be places that have only one provider with only
| one option in that provider, but are those places really
| $135/month with all the TV channels? The issue might be
| paying for things that are already free over the
| Internet.
| burntwater wrote:
| In the U.S. the vast majority of places have only only
| provider, there is no shopping around. $135/month sounds
| about right for the complete package. If you're lucky
| that includes a "special" on including HBO.
|
| Virtually all places have "specials" on the first year of
| service, wherein the price will increase 50% or even 100%
| after the first year, which will almost always put you
| well into the $100+ range.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I understand. For myself, I chose to solve that by not
| purchasing any TV, cable phone, or any other package and
| only getting Internet. Internet is the only useful thing
| for me from all of that, anyway.
|
| If the prices get too high I call them up and cancel. At
| that time, they try to keep me as a subscriber by giving
| me lower rates. If they don't have any available I ask
| when their new packages are coming out and call back a
| day after that time.
| amichal wrote:
| I can assure you there are.
|
| Comcast hides their real rates as well as they can but in
| some places they are required to publish them. In my
| rural area (where they are the only real option):
|
| $139.99 gets you "Select+ Includes Limited Basic,
| Expanded Basic, Digital Preferred Tier and HD programming
| for primary outlet, 20 Hour DVR Service, and Blast!
| Internet"
|
| You can't buy ALL the channels as s bundle but the top
| tier bundle is $189.99/mo (plus fees)
|
| The prices don't sum reasonably at all and it's not
| really feasible to calculate a price for TV without
| internet (and its very difficult to order such a thing)
|
| Source: https://comcaststore.s3.amazonaws.com/prod/wk/urc
| /585bc33c5b...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| There may be places? Try half of America.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _There may be places that have only one provider with
| only one option in that provider, but are those places
| really $135 /month with all the TV channels?_
|
| Yes, I've lived in places where there is one cable
| company and they abuse their monopoly position with
| predatory pricing like this. When you're a new customer,
| they offer you a deal at maybe ~$60/mo and then over the
| course of a couple years raise the price to over $120/mo,
| with price increases every year or two after that, as
| well.
| jandrese wrote:
| When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you
| can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you
| wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of:
|
| 1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to
| rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon
| Network, USA
|
| 2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set
| to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language
| channels, Starz, and a few more.
|
| You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month. I
| think they may have had a few other premium channel
| options as well, but I never paid that close of
| attention.
|
| We cut the cable because the price had crept up from
| about $50/month total to almost $100/month over the
| course of a few years. It was just unsustainable. Now we
| pay about $40/month for streaming services, and the
| streaming services don't have ads.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _and the streaming services don 't have ads._
|
| Yet. IIRC, when cable started, it didn't have ads either.
| It was its selling point.
|
| Advertising is a cancer on society that infects and
| poisons every communication medium available. It has
| already metastasized to streaming platforms, though it's
| not conspicuous yet. You don't have to watch interstitial
| ads between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix,
| but if that show is a modern production, it's likely
| overflowing with product placement ads. When that and
| other means of making easy money get used up, you can be
| sure that overt ads will follow.
|
| "All this has happened before, and all this will happen
| again." And that's a salient argument in favor of
| torching the whole advertising industry to the ground.
| vel0city wrote:
| When cable started, it had ads. Cable was just a bunch of
| broadcast stations pushed over a coax wire to your house
| so you could get stations that were pretty much
| impossible with an antenna from your location in pretty
| much perfect signal quality for the time. There weren't
| even "only cable" kind of channels when people started
| paying for their television to come over wires to their
| homes.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month
|
| Please note that that was only a channel (or two). You
| still had to tune to watch the movie/show you wanted! For
| the same price today (not even adjusted for inflation),
| you can watch any of this content on demand, on any
| device, but it has waaay more content available.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Fragmentation across streaming services may do more to
| increase piracy than overly-expensive cable packages.
| Even if the total monthly cost is lower with six
| streaming services, there is a higher likelihood to look
| at each of the $10/mo services and say "not worth it"
| than a single $100/mo cable subscription. The music
| streaming industry was smart enough to avoid primarily
| competing on catalogue exclusives. When all services have
| near-identical catalogs, they are forced to compete on
| price & UX.
|
| Amazon did not take over online shopping because it had
| the lowest prices at any cost. It grew dominant because
| it was the everything store and any higher prices they
| charged were not higher enough to make it worth the time
| to comparison-shop or look for specialty retailers.
| thegagne wrote:
| Sure maybe some are willing to pay, but finding what you
| want to watch across 10x different services is obnoxious.
| Signing up for a particular monthly service just to watch
| a single show is also not ideal.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I've never paid more than around $150/month for
| internet+tv.
|
| I switched back to cable TV a few years ago. It's just
| cheaper for me now. The price of streaming has risen, and
| the price of cable has fallen.
| watwatinthewat wrote:
| That's a good point, though I think the time/generational
| factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents
| unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I've never
| once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay
| that much for subscription entertainment, but I'm willing
| to pay for one streaming service and have considered a
| second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I
| don't think I'm an uncommon case. Again to your point,
| even though there's fuss every time a streaming provider
| raises the cost (especially Netflix being one of the
| larger players and who has been around long enough to
| have increased prices more than once), it seems each
| service is viewed as cheap and well under what people are
| willing to pay.
| rocqua wrote:
| Isn't it an issue if "willingness to pay" drops too much?
| In the end, content costs money to make. If money coming
| in goes down, then there might not be enough money to
| make all that content.
| ska wrote:
| > If money coming in goes down, then there might not be
| enough money to make all that content.
|
| Content will be made, it just won't be the same content.
|
| Production budgets expand to consume available resources,
| but there is a very non-obvious relationship with
| quality.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Distribution costs have decreased greatly, while markets
| have grown remarkably. Looking at inflation adjusted cost
| of blockbuster movies today, film company revenue or
| indie scenes across the globe, I find it hard to argue
| that the last 20 years have been bad for the industry.
| Disruptive, for sure, but this creates winners and
| losers.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Big budget content is usually the worst. There were many
| pieces of indie media that had heart and shoestring
| budgets, that have been pushed out the market.
| powerslacker wrote:
| I don't think you can prove that piracy is an effective means
| to incentivize good behavior on the part of the media
| industries. Also, it seems irresponsible to openly promote
| theft as a 'good idea'. I understand there are arguments
| against calling or treating piracy as theft but at the end of
| the day you are taking something that isn't yours without
| paying for it. Encouraging people to take part in illegal
| activity on the internet has real consequences. I'm guilty of
| wanting to fight fire with fire as well -- and in the past
| I've pirated plenty. Looking back, it wasn't a good idea then
| and it still isn't today.
| leetcrew wrote:
| meh, it's a problem of their own making. I used to torrent
| tons of music. now that I can just buy unencumbered flac
| files (bandcamp) and stream the rest in good quality for a
| reasonable price, I don't torrent music. I have room in my
| budget for a $50/month or even $100/month service where I
| can stream any movie/show I want. I don't have room in my
| budget for 5-10 $10/month services where I have to keep
| track of who has what content and use a bunch of different
| UIs. it's not even about the money. it's that the paid
| service manages to be less convenient than VPN+NAS+plex.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Quite. I DCCed Trek and SG1 episodes in the late 90s and
| early 00s because they weren't available in the UK.
|
| I don't do that with Discovery, Picard, Wandavision, etc,
| because they are available.
|
| Then they completely cocked up Lower Decks and wouldn't take
| my money. Bittorrent to the rescue.
|
| There is always competition.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Another scifi fan. Good choices.
| cacois wrote:
| So wait, your solution is to encourage all consumers to break
| the law and put themselves at legal risk, rather than have
| reasonable legislation focused on consumer welfare and
| encouraging competition?
| autosharp wrote:
| Is not a solution but an observation. Your proposal could
| be a better solution but until then piracy is the next-best
| thing for many consumers.
| aboringusername wrote:
| Yes, because as of today, _right now_ , every human on
| earth could decide to not visit the cinema again and
| instead download the content off of the internet.
|
| The laws take time, need to be tested in courts and are
| generally not as effective.
|
| If you're constantly under threat of losing your entire
| income stream and there's _nothing_ you can do to prevent
| that (because the only way to prevent piracy of digital
| content is to ban the internet) it 's a pretty decent
| motivator to do the right thing.
| cacois wrote:
| Sure, but the idea of mass collective action is always a
| bit of a nuclear option, because it takes a huge bit of
| motivation to actually make _everyone_ do anything. So,
| could they? Sure. Will they en masse? No.
|
| Everyone could have stolen cable back in the day and
| caused a decrease in cable prices and increase in
| customer experience. They didn't.
| nradov wrote:
| Another meaningful consumer response is just to not watch the
| movies. No one actually needs them. Take your dog for a walk
| or read a book or play a video game or whatever. I've never
| understood why some people feel like they're entitled to
| watch particular movies.
| teawrecks wrote:
| It's not though. If you have a system with no piracy, it's an
| indication that the industry could be more greedy. This is
| what we saw with Netflix's disruption and the drop of piracy,
| followed by all the other streaming services and the return
| of piracy. So there's an acceptable amount of piracy that
| they're shooting for, and that amount is the line where it's
| cheapest to lobby the govt to prosecute pirates than it is to
| give customers a better experience. That's not consumer
| friendly IMO.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| My biggest gripe is that the prices are totally artificial. I
| rented The Fugitive (1993 irrc) for $5 for 2 days and it
| costs $20 to buy it--as much as a brand new blockbuster in HD
| on physical media. This doesn't seem like a particularly free
| market.
| ghaff wrote:
| It actually looks like the Blu-Ray DVD of The Fugitive is
| $10. Though in general, older content (whether e-book,
| streaming movies, or purchased music) never seems to be as
| much cheaper as you'd think it "should" be. I imagine most
| of the rights holders don't want to get into a race to the
| bottom for non-blockbuster content so they tend to stay
| around industry price norms for newer material.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It actually looks like the Blu-Ray DVD of The Fugitive
| is $10. Though in general, older content (whether e-book,
| streaming movies, or purchased music) never seems to be
| as much cheaper as you'd think it "should" be. I imagine
| most of the rights holders don't want to get into a race
| to the bottom for non-blockbuster content so they tend to
| stay around industry price norms for newer material.
|
| Right, the copyright holders effectively get to dictate
| the price and prevent redistribution (how does someone
| resell their digital [non-physical] copy to me without
| running afoul of DMCA and the like?). It's not a normal
| market, and the MPAA and similar organizations have
| lobbied to dictate the market rules to funnel as much
| money as possible to them.
|
| For example, copyright terms these days are absurdly long
| --70 years beyond the lifetime of the original author.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a
| meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and
| other anti-consumer practices.
|
| That's similar to saying that stealing candy bars is a
| meaninful consumer response to high prices at convenience
| stores.
| skystarman wrote:
| We for the most part have exponentially more and better
| content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more
| convenience than 10-15 years ago.
|
| But still people insist that they must pirate because the
| "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting
| hatred of corporations or whatever.
|
| Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I
| just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental
| gymnastics used to defend piracy.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > But still people insist that they must pirate because the
| "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting
| hatred of corporations or whatever.
|
| This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The
| frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to
| multiple services to get the content you want because it's
| otherwise siloed.
|
| Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more
| services to get a small subset of that service's offerings
| is driving people back to piracy.
| [deleted]
| ankalaibe wrote:
| Such laws already exist, to some extent. The issue is in the
| number of back doors providing large corporations to behave
| ruthlessly.
| paganel wrote:
| Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the '30s
| to the '50s, that's what I have been doing for more than half
| a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being
| (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after
| the Hayes code).
| pjc50 wrote:
| We've had a regular "bad movie night" throughout the
| pandemic, and there are a lot of these that are available
| to pirate up to about the 90s on Youtube (or occasionally
| dailymotion) simply because their distributors no longer
| care about them.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| I do the "bad movie night" with family too. I suggest
| Titanic 2 on Tubi. It's amazing in sheer awfulness.
| enterdev wrote:
| Why do you spend time watching bad movies?
| shard wrote:
| Have you ever watched MST3K? I think I have several dozen
| MST3K movies in my collection.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Yes. Used to watch with my father when it ran on scifi
| channel.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| I find humour in very bad movies. Not like run of the
| mill garbage, like "so bad it's good" stuff.
| excalibur wrote:
| Not enough is said about this. The amount of TV available
| for free (with an internet connection) these days is mind-
| boggling, and the vast majority of people ignore these
| options altogether.
| oblio wrote:
| People are social.
|
| I don't only watch a movie or a TV show for the intrinsic
| entertainment quality, I also do it so that I can talk
| about what I watch with others.
|
| That artsy Swiss movie from 1929 is not as popular a
| theme as the latest episode of Ozark.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I get your point but I don't think not having friends to
| talk to about a piece of media with is necessarily a good
| reason not to engage with it.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| Time is limited.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I've just made this comment myself. It's amazing how much
| casual violence there is in modern films that you just
| don't notice because it's everywhere.
|
| I've watched more black and white classics in the last 15
| months than I have in the last 20 years. Particularly the
| old sci-fi, horror, and slapstick films. Harold Lloyd, The
| Three Stooges, and Chaplin. Plus all the old St Trinians,
| and Sherlock Holmes. Abbot and Costello and so on. So
| pleasant to watch.
| jxramos wrote:
| oh yah, my family totally dropped out of modern media,
| and man whenever we go to visit extended family and other
| stuff and they happen to be watching something on TV or a
| movie or whatever holy smokes it's pretty incredible how
| _resensitized_ we have become to that violence. I can 't
| stomach it. Probably took several years to happen quietly
| in the background, not even doing anything particular
| other than not consuming such media.
| jxramos wrote:
| Now that I think about it, I've come to realize that a
| large fraction of entertainment operates at the extrema
| of human experience, otherwise it would be too mundane
| and unentertaining. But if most of those so called
| entertaining things took place in front of you they'd be
| crazy intense, too intense for daily living. Even
| something ordinary like a makeup commercial, if you had
| women staring at you like they do in those shoots that be
| pretty out of the ordinary. In that regard everything is
| sort of exaggerated.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Almost every episode of every show now has somebody
| vomit. Watch for it, it cannot be unseen, you wouldn't
| notice it until you can't stop noticing it
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The violence is getting to me too. God forbid children
| could see any kind of nudity but killing dozens of
| people, torturing and beating up people is totally OK.
| brightball wrote:
| Our whole family has been doing that this year. Watching
| older movies and TV shows is much more pleasant all around.
|
| This was tougher growing up when kids all watched the same
| shows and talked about them, but with content so all over
| the place now that common thread seems to be mostly gone at
| school (outside of internet video stuff).
| abcc8 wrote:
| Same here, but we haven't gone as far back as the 50s.
| Mostly we've been enjoying family movies from the 70s,
| 80s, and early 90s, back when sets were elaborate and
| most effects were practical. Many of these older movies
| have really stood the test of time. Hook, The Goonies,
| Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Muppets movies, Ernest Scared
| Stoopid, Willy Wonka, etc are all family favorites.
| brightball wrote:
| Yep. Agreed completely. Even early 2000's shows like
| Smallville and The Flash have been pretty safe and fun.
| hboon wrote:
| I'm being pedantic, but the 2 Flash series ran during the
| 90s and mid-2010 :)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Watching older movies and TV shows is much more
| pleasant all around._
|
| My girlfriend somehow grew up completely unaware of Star
| Trek, so I introduced her to The Next Generation last
| year and we've been watching it (rewatching in my case,
| but for the first time in over two decades) one episode a
| day.
|
| It's _so_ relaxing, in a way that almost no modern TV is.
| No end-of-episode cliffhangers or other mechanisms trying
| to make you binge-watch. We can just watch one episode to
| unwind, discuss it a bit if it 's one of the better
| thought-provoking ones, and then go to bed.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My girlfriend somehow grew up completely unaware of
| Star Trek, so I introduced her to The Next Generation
|
| > It's _so_ relaxing, in a way that almost no modern TV
| is. No end-of-episode cliffhangers
|
| That is not how I would describe Star Trek: the Next
| Generation. Every season ends with a cliffhanger.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > No end-of-episode cliffhangers
|
| Well, except for the season finale/openers from Season 3
| on; but, yes, TV in general (even before streaming,
| DS9-VOY-ENT all show this trend within thr Trek
| franchise) has become more episodic since the TNG era.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| I believe you mean more serialized. Episodic, defined as
| "containing or consisting of a series of loosely
| connected parts or events", is the opposite of what you
| mean.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I believe you mean more serialized.
|
| Yeah (I think the actual intent was "less episodic", and
| I've corrected it to that, but same thing.)
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| I feel the same way! My partner also hadn't watched much
| Star Trek before. During the pandemic, we watched all of
| Enterprise, Voyager, and now into DS9 (I had watched TNG
| so much when I was younger I wanted to start with my
| less-watched series). The episodes are calm, and the
| competence of the characters is refreshing as well.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Try the Stargate franchise, same era. Also Farscape (very
| good).
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| >No end-of-episode cliffhangers
|
| There are a handful of those in TNG. But only a handful.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Or just watch whatever one service provides. My queue on
| any service is always way longer than what I can get thru.
|
| YouTube & others provide a large library for free (with
| ads). I assume most here are Amazon Prime members anyway,
| so that vast library is practically free. Apple TV always
| has some good $5 movies.
|
| As I get older, the less I care about seeing the latest
| stuff - as there's always more I want to watch than I can
| get to.
|
| (And if there really isn't enough for you to watch, you
| really need be doing something else.)
| ggggtez wrote:
| I've seen a few myself. They probably don't hit as hard as
| when they were new, but certainly a few still hold up
| acceptably. Especially compared to some mass produced
| content today which is cringey and predictable.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Buster Keaton is a favorite of mine
| vimy wrote:
| Any recommendations?
| andrew_ wrote:
| Anything Marx Brothers is hilarious
| gverrilla wrote:
| The best comedy I know!
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| Word of warning that _Day at the Races_ has a "minstrel
| show" scene that's pretty offensive even by 30s
| standards. Other than that, the Marx Brothers are easily
| the greatest comedy troupe in American history, and their
| films are still some of the funniest ever made
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Casablanca
|
| Dead of Night
|
| Modern times
|
| The third man
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Arsenic and Old Lace
| snewman wrote:
| A thousand times this. Best screwball comedy ever.
|
| Also You Can't Take It With You. Now you've seen one Cary
| Grant and one Jimmy Stewart. To finish up you can get
| both of them _with_ Catherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia
| Story.
| brink wrote:
| Some Like it Hot is hilarious.
| lttlrck wrote:
| Gregory Peck made a lot of great movies. Charade and
| North by Northwest are both very good.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm surprised how well NbNW holds up.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| The Naked City by Jules Dassin is a really good police
| procedural. If you like stuff like Law & Order, this is
| the progenitor.
|
| The Third Man is classic, classic noir. Between the on
| location shooting in Vienna, fantastic performances by
| Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, and really distinctive
| cinematography, it's just stunning.
|
| A Man Escaped. To quote Godard, "He is the French cinema,
| as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German
| music". If you like simple, but beautiful films, watch
| Bresson. A Man Escaped makes all other prison break
| films, with their endless plot twists and convolutions,
| seem utterly pointless. Instead Bresson focuses on the
| character, the drama and the methodical process of
| breaking out.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Dr Strangelove, All About Eve, Singing in the Rain
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The intruder with William Shatner
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4dQ2QzBhE
|
| _The story depicts the machinations of a racist named
| Adam Cramer (Shatner), who arrives in the fictitious
| small Southern town of Caxton in order to incite white
| townspeople to racial violence against black townspeople
| and court-ordered school integration._
| godfreyantonell wrote:
| Shatner doesn't get his due. That guy's got chops.
| Shermanium wrote:
| HIS GIRL FRIDAY, THE AWFUL TRUTH, the SHERLOCK HOLMES
| series with Basil Rathbone
| psychomugs wrote:
| Reminds me of "breaking bread with the dead" by turning
| away from the constant deluge of content and looking at
| works of the past.
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2020/10/no-time-but-the-
| present-...
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I love old movies, especially around the 50's-70's, but
| I'll admit that you're not gonna see a whole lot of
| diversity in that era. I'm not meaning to moralize. It's
| just hard to find movies that say, have an Asian character
| that isn't a horrible racist caricature.
| keyboardCowBoy wrote:
| Awe yes diversity. Can't go a day with out reading this
| ever lasting buzzword.
|
| Is that really your determining factor while deciding to
| watch a movie? It isn't mine. I watch a movie because its
| a good movie, I don't go searching for diversity, I like
| watching a movie because of its entertainment value. You
| should try it.
| et-al wrote:
| If you're a minority, it's nice having a relatable
| positive role model in the media you consume.
| godfreyantonell wrote:
| Or, at a minimum, to not have a negative role model.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Yeah I'd just settle for not-racist-caricature, looking
| at you Mickey Rooney
| godfreyantonell wrote:
| Or Bugs Bunny for that matter.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Forced diversity is one of the big issues with modern
| media. Instead of making an actually diverse character,
| yano, with human thoughts and feelings, they just tick
| some skin and gender boxes and leave it at that. It's
| just another form of stereotyping.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| How about something legal instead?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| piracy and the subsequent success of platforms like steam
| and spotify prove time and again that it boils down to a
| delivery issue, not a human desire for illegal sourcing.
|
| Same issue with sports streaming. Why pay six different
| services to watch a 720p legal stream when i can watch a
| stream from Russia in 1080p with questionable ads?
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Yep. I keep Prime for the shipping but I took a break
| from Netflix and just pirated Army of the Dead.
|
| If they want to be consumer hostile, we should be hostile
| as well.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've paid for content and watched it on pirate sites
| anyway because they're better organized - and they don't
| bury some titles to promote others.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yes. A single service, with a single bill, that makes
| available every movie, TV show, or album ever produced.
| That's it. If you can provide this you can have my money.
|
| This is not a technical problem anymore. It's a business
| problem. The company who can make these nebulous
| "licensing problems" and "distribution rights issues" go
| away can make a fortune. I don't care that Company A
| can't distribute the digital version of Company B's
| product because Company C has the exclusive rights to it
| and Company D only has a license with Company A to
| distribute optical discs. That shouldn't be something the
| end user has to worry about or be limited by. These media
| execs are so smart, why can't they untangle this problem?
|
| I'm not going to subscribe to a dozen different services
| each with their own bill, their own account, their own
| password, their own rules and terms. Easier to hoist the
| Jolly Roger and move on with my life.
| MajorBee wrote:
| > Yes. A single service, with a single bill, that makes
| available every movie, TV show, or album ever produced.
| That's it. If you can provide this you can have my money.
|
| For this, don't expect to get this kind of service for 10
| or 20 bucks a month; be prepared to shell out at least
| $100 or even more. Would you be willing to do that? How
| many people would be willing to do that?
| ghaff wrote:
| Exactly. I don't watch a lot of video and there's very
| little that I _need to watch right now_. I 'm very happy
| that my video bill is mostly just Netflix plus the odd
| purchase vs. the $100 or so I was paying for cable TV.
|
| I suspect that most people aren't actually complaining
| about fragmentation. They want one $15-20/month site that
| has everything.
| EpicEng wrote:
| Yeah, apparently everyone wants cable TV back + more,
| just for 1/10 the price of course. And around and around
| we go...
| hnbad wrote:
| How about we make the platform exclusives illegal instead?
|
| What is and isn't legal is not an unchangeable property of
| the universe. These things can change. Piracy for personal
| use was (and still is) legal in many places before the
| RIAA/MPAA started exerting political pressure. Heck, piracy
| was the primary selling point of VHS recorders and tape
| decks. Only recently have we shifted to read-only media
| that's hard to copy.
| [deleted]
| charwalker wrote:
| If it isn't legal, and normal democratic processes won't make
| it legal in the short term, then it isn't viable competition.
|
| DMCA/etc vastly favors content owners who also lobby hard to
| maintain their ownership by extending copyright and similar
| protections.
|
| Anti-competitive behavior must be countered but unless it's
| well funded and focused will end up like the IRS and DMCA
| today, going after small fish due to lack of resources to
| challenge those that can afford to fight like players as big
| as Amazon and MGM.
| cheph wrote:
| Came here to say this, I avoid giving money to Amazon like
| the plague. I will go out of my way and invest my personal
| time as long as Amazon gets nothing. Don't give them your
| money.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Been in usenet for a while now. 4k remux all the way!
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Asking for a friend of course, but what would be the best
| setup for a Netflix/Prime/...-like experience for own media
| for a family of not-too-digitally-savvy users?
|
| That friend uses Kodi (and a NAS) now, but it's still a bit
| arduous to use for his family. She wants profiles,
| availability on any device over wifi and 4G and movies and
| series only.
| x4e wrote:
| I recommend jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/). It will
| require some tech skills to setup, but after that accessing
| it is as simple as going to the website address it is
| hosted at.
|
| The best thing about Jellyfin is that it is free software:
| open source, permissive license, and no paid features
| (which alternatives like Plex have).
|
| You can host Jellyfin on your own VPS, I host mine on a
| Hetzner VPS for just over 10 eur / month but that is very
| overkill, you can host one for far less. The only thing to
| keep in mind is that transcoding (streaming in a different
| resolution to the stored media) is quite computationally
| expensive so if lot's of people are transcoding at once you
| will need a good CPU.
|
| Then any family member can just visit the IP address of the
| server in their web browser (or you can buy it a domain
| name). Jellyfin has a native iOS app they can use from
| their phones. For viewing it on TVs, there is an app for
| AppleTV which has Jellyfin support (cant remember the name
| right now but I can find it if you need it).
| joshstrange wrote:
| I couldn't speak directly to this of course but some kind
| of Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/NzbDrone/NzbHydra/Deluge/Jackett
| running in docker containers with a GPU or Intel QuickSync
| for transcoding is something... Maybe throw in Tautilli for
| monitoring and something like Ombi (There is probably
| something better now) to make requesting easier and you are
| off the races. I mean, in theory of course.
| kyriakos wrote:
| This. And do yourself a favour and rent a seedbox where
| you can run all the above and stream from anywhere. Costs
| less monthly than the electricity costs for running them
| in your home.
| leetcrew wrote:
| this probably adds complexity for non-savvy users. for
| instance, my TV can handle a ~20mbps unencrypted stream.
| turn on encryption in plex, and that drops down to
| ~8mbps. I'm fine with routing an unencrypted stream
| through my LAN, but I'd rather not do that with pirated
| media through my ISP.
| kyriakos wrote:
| I see your point and it makes sense but it always depends
| on where you live.
| joshstrange wrote:
| While this can be true the local option can be quite
| attractive for the 90%+ use-case of watching at home. Not
| to mention the costs of storage in the cloud. Best deal I
| found was a Hertzner server for $30/mo with 6TB (2x3TB).
| I used that for a while but in the long run, local is
| king. I have gigabit fiber symmetrical so that does have
| to be factored in (if you have crappy upload and want to
| provide for remote access then a seed box might be
| ideal).
| kyriakos wrote:
| I have a basic nas at home which I periodically download
| content to from the seedbox so I'm getting away with just
| 1tb capacity online at around 11euro per month. Have plex
| running on a raspberrypi which just indexes from both
| seedbox and nas and serves to TVs around the house
| without transcoding.
| joshstrange wrote:
| So on the Pi are you mounting the cloud server (or part
| of it) and then Plex just "proxies" the file to the local
| TV?
| kyriakos wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Don't get me wrong I have Netflix and prime but Disney
| plus, hulu and hbo max are not available to me so I need
| to work around the stupid global restrictions.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I pay for multiple online services but I hate switching
| UI/UX/etc and remembering which platform has which show
| this week and where in the show I am. If I could cache
| files locally (on a server or phone/tablet) and suck all
| the content into Plex (or some other third-party client)
| then I'd pay quite a bit for that service.
|
| As it stands today you can build your own version of this
| but if you want to stay 100% above board you get a
| crappier experience (don't get me started on the
| cluster-f around rights). It reminds me of the jokes back
| when DVDs were still a "thing" and you had to sit through
| ads and piracy warnings if you bought it legitimately but
| if you "stole" it you were able to jump right into the
| movie.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I ditch the management completely and do a Plex Share.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Plex: https://www.plex.tv
| Ecto5 wrote:
| Lookup plex or jellyfin with sonarr or radarr to handle
| content. All projects are on github
| Cerium wrote:
| Your friend may want to look into Plex. It has a good web
| client, as well as mobile and desktop so family can use it
| without a lot of work. It supports profiles and the server
| manager can assign collections to profiles to enable hiding
| some content from some users.
| syshum wrote:
| Most people will suggest Plex, but I prefer Emby 1000x more
| than Plex
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Plex gets you part of the way, but for not-tech-savvy
| people, what you probably really want is a Plex Share, as
| that will keep you from needing to manage any of the media.
| You'll have to figure out how to adjust some settings on
| any TV streaming in 4k for most Shares, but it's not
| terrible to set up. There's a subreddit for it:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/plexshares/
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| Plex and Sonarr is a great place to start.
| joombaga wrote:
| I think we're at or approaching a tipping point. For a long
| while I've not been able to justify the effort it takes to
| maintain automatic content downloads and a streaming server.
| But that maintenance cost isn't higher when I want content
| from an additional platform. If I'm gonna pirate an
| Amazon/MGM exclusive then I'm gonna cancel Netflix, Hulu,
| Paramount+ and Apple TV+ too.
| w0m wrote:
| Piracy was the Easiest/Only way to get content until
| ~2008ish. Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming platform)
| made it easier/better to Pay for the content than pirate
| it.
|
| It does feel like we're approaching a tipping point now in
| the other direction with all of these streaming fiefdoms.
|
| My household has Netflix, Hulu, D+, and Prime streaming now
| - that's already too many and needs pairing IMO.
| comodore_ wrote:
| I'd argue that we've reached the tipping point already.
| It will accelerate now. netflix just increased their
| prices again to compensate for slowing growth.
|
| All these stream platforms produce their own exclusive
| shows and chances are that you're only interested in one
| or two flag ship series and the occasional movie or so. I
| believe this will hurt hulu the most then hbo before the
| rest, because compared to netflix and disney they have
| less exclusive content. This leads to a downward spiral,
| where you need more exclusive content to attract users
| which leads to more fragmentation and eventually drives
| costs, which is bad for platforms with less (exclusive)
| content, because user may ditch first because of
| unattractive content/cost ratio...
|
| Pirating is great if you're just interested in a
| particular new show but nothing else, for me that's HBO.
| What you're missing out on with pirating is discovering
| new shows/movies that you actually like just by browser
| the platform.
| odiroot wrote:
| If you're more into movies and don't care about the run-
| off-the-mill series then Netflix hasn't been a solution
| for a long time now.
| w0m wrote:
| I can probably cancel Netflix now; it's been my generic
| 'stream something' service for a decade now; out of habit
| as much as anything else.
| clajiness wrote:
| > Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming platform) made
| it easier/better to Pay for the content than pirate it.
|
| I'd argue that Sonarr, Radarr, etc, have made this
| process far easier and better than paying for it.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> Piracy was the Easiest/Only way to get content until
| ~2008ish. Since then; Netflix and (...x streaming
| platform) made it easier/better to Pay for the content
| than pirate it.
|
| Fragmentation still hurts this to an extreme, and - worse
| - God-awful region locks. As a fan of obscure, cult and
| independent cinema in particular it's a wasteland of
| titles strewn across 5 different services, and being
| Canadian, piracy is just a fact of life for us.
|
| Nothing beats the convenience of typing in what you're
| looking for and actually finding it right away. That
| pretty much defines convenience. It's what I expect.
|
| I don't want to Google what platform my current obscure
| interest is on, only to maybe find out because I didn't
| bother with Paramount+ I'm going to have to torrent it
| anyway. :P
|
| It's literally just one extra search to find what
| streaming platform it's on - which is an _inconvenience*
| - when I can just do a quick Torrent search, and have a
| nice high quality copy of pretty much whatever usually
| within (on my connection) about 5 minutes.
|
| By the time I make my popcorn, the torrent is done, I
| stream it through my Plex on my Roku, and Plex even gets
| the metadata for me. It's kinda scary how good it is.
|
| And talk about how inconvenient region locking is to the
| point where VPNs actually _advertise* the ability to get
| around this inconvenience as a point of sale.
|
| Piracy's convenience and case for existence has only
| gotten seriously stronger as more and more competing
| streaming services open.
|
| If there was a way to _combine search results_ for
| services into one like overall UI that would then just
| direct you to the content even that would be better, but
| anecdotally most people I know are tired of the
| fragmentation issue.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Nothing beats the convenience of typing in what you're
| looking for and actually finding it right away. That
| pretty much defines convenience. It's what I expect.
|
| You can do this for most items. For example, go to
| apple's TV app or play store and purchase or rent the
| item.
| joombaga wrote:
| There is a way to combine search results. Use the search
| from the Roku/Google TV/Apple TV/FireTV OS. Unfortunately
| results are varied. I found search results missing from a
| lot of platforms when I used Roku. The Chromecast with
| Google TV has been better. I don't how the search is
| integrated, e.g. on the backend or in the OS via the app.
| I'd guess it depends on platform.
| hooande wrote:
| The set of people who know how to set up Plex/Roku is
| very, very small. My parents can barely figure out how to
| use Netflix. This is why monthly streaming services exist
| and will continue to exist
| fabbari wrote:
| I think that 'most items' mentioned in the sibling
| comment is the problem. Who decides what's included in
| that subset?
|
| Practical example: "Mockingbird Lane" was released by NBC
| in 2012, they decided it was 'not worthy' and removed it
| from their streaming library.
|
| Can you guess what's the only way to watch it now?
|
| I do understand the concept of 'What NBC giveth, NBC
| taketh', but that doesn't mean I have to be happy with
| it.
| margaretdouglas wrote:
| Cable providers were charging you $80/mo for commercial
| laden network aggregation. You cut that cord and complain
| when paying less for more content, without commercials,
| and is on demand, because it is unbundled and you need to
| manage each $5-15 "network" fee individually, instead of
| a single itemized bill.
|
| This is like complaining you have to pay for NBC to watch
| Friends when you'd much prefer to watch it on ABC so you
| can avoid paying for both.
| w0m wrote:
| > You cut that cord and complain when paying less for
| more content.
|
| For a few years there; it felt like I could watch
| ~anything i wanted on Netflix or Crunchyroll. Now it
| feels like I need 10 services. Maybe my viewing habits
| have changed; but I haven't started a torrent in a decade
| and I've been tempted recently.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| We never paid for networks, we paid for a handful of
| shows that were worth watching, which happened to be on
| different channels because physics.
|
| Now they are on different platforms, because no good
| reason at all.
|
| A copyright holder of a creative work should be able to
| set the price, but should not be able to use their
| monopolistic powers to control who pays the price. Let
| each channel decide if they want to buy a given show at a
| given price.
| ghaff wrote:
| So let's imagine the streaming services operate like
| channels--which is to say they have some content they get
| created and other content that they license. Now imagine
| there's a common platform or at least common portal that
| aggregates them all and bills you for access to
| everything. You've now effectively recreated the cable
| bundle and your monthly bill is probably going to be
| $100-$200/month. (Maybe more if it includes something
| like YouTube TV.) Is that actually what you want?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I wouldn't pay that much, which suggests that I wouldn't
| have access to everything, but I would probably get best
| or alternatively everything in a certain niche (ie. a
| sci-fy channel that has nothing but sci-fy). Why pay for
| romantic comedy and horror when I don't want to watch it?
| margaretdouglas wrote:
| > which happened to be on different channels because
| physics.
|
| So why do we see wars for who gets to stream
| Friends/Seinfeld/The Office/etc now? The networks don't
| own that content, it was just physics?
|
| > Let each channel decide if they want to buy a given
| show at a given price.
|
| That's not how this works now, nor has it ever worked
| this way. If Network A is paying for the exclusive
| broadcast rights, then Network B doesn't also have an
| equal Right to also purchase the exclusive broadcast
| rights. This has always worked this way. If Disney
| produces Disney Mouse Club Cartoon it has no obligation
| to allow any network purchase the exclusive rights to
| broadcast that show because it already purchased them in
| the form of owning the original production, and therefore
| copyright, from its inception.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You are quite right in that it doesn't work this way, I
| am advocating a change in the law. Remember copyright is
| a temporary monopoly granted to promote science and the
| useful arts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why is a channel needed? You can go straight from
| copyright holder to viewer.
| ghaff wrote:
| So you want to go to every individual studio to watch
| movies and TV and pay separately?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Makes no difference to me, I just spend a few seconds
| searching the title and pay and watch what I want when I
| want. But I also do not watch much.
|
| If enough people want bundled content and are willing to
| pay enough to make it happen, then content owners will
| sell it. If not, then the buyers and sellers do not agree
| on price.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Absolutely. I see a lot of rationalization for piracy
| here, even though media consumption has never been
| cheaper or more convenient.
|
| I can't speak for the Android ecosystem, but the iOS
| ecosystem's Apple TV app (Netflix notwithstanding)
| aggregates channels into one nice experience, and the App
| Store makes these channels trivial to subscribe to _and_
| cancel, making it easy to decide month-to-month what I
| want to pay for.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
|
| Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over
| the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and
| A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a
| pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's
| game, content started getting so much more interesting.
| Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get
| involved so we can have a full FAANG entertainment.
|
| All of the Paramounts/WBs want to do is take the one franchise
| and squeeze every drop from it with endless sequels to the
| point I have completely lost any interest in explosions, cars,
| and super heroes.
| seanicus wrote:
| Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what
| Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you
| were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from
| the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the
| same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter
| out, but probably after all of us are dead.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem
|
| too bad it's not about making better stuff but more profit.
|
| it's like the market has been distorted out of its ability to
| better reward better stuff.
| seanicus wrote:
| Exactly. When the movie star system died, it took a lot of
| material made for adults with it. Even Robert Downey Jr.
| can't carry a movie that's not a popular IP. Now everything
| is a $200M sequel to something else or a $1M movie that's
| financed by 18 different companies. The TV golden age was
| serving adults for a while but seems to be dying off now.
| deegles wrote:
| Make all content available at a flat rate per minute streamed
| owed to the content creator. Maybe let the creator set the rate
| for the first N years (with a cap) if they want to capitalize
| on a new release etc. I would throw money at a service that had
| Everything(r) on it.
| secondbreakfast wrote:
| > Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
|
| Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there
| any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels
| like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every
| week.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This, in my opinion really depends on the content you
| consume, where you consume it and how you pay for it. Some
| types of content in competitive ecosystems, are thriving and
| flourishing. Other types, in large vertically organized
| systems, are languishing. Only time will tell, but for
| instance, it has been a really long time since I have seen a
| memorable film or tv show that truly stands out in my mind as
| something that will stand the test of time. And the best
| stuff can be found in obscure distribution channels while the
| worst stuff gets over financed and over promoted. But that
| has always been the story hasn't it, so it's tricky to make
| assessments as we only remember the best examples from the
| past. Certainly, more people than ever can make some thing
| and then rapidly deliver it to their audience and this is a
| good thing, even if there are fewer Stanley Kubricks around.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It's important to remember is happening now is not without
| precedent. There have been large monopolies in living memory.
| It's also telling that they have all but faded from the memory.
| It's not just some hopeless, "evil" power - grab. [Edit: so
| thanks for mentioning that!]
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| What's interesting is that the government had to step in and
| break the movie theaters from the movie studio in a famous
| anti-trust case. I wonder how it'll play out in this case.
| Presumably Amazon may still license Bond movies (for example)
| to Netflix. In fact Netflix is included in my Prime bundle I
| believe...
| tmp231 wrote:
| "Had to"
|
| They did not have to. They could have let market forces
| dictate how it played out.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The market is currently "dictating" that I have to do
| business with Amazon no matter how odious I think their
| practices are. They're almost as hard to avoid as Google at
| this point.
| tmp231 wrote:
| People seem to like them. And what a wonderful service
| they have done for society.
|
| But I guess Walmart is always available, or boutique
| stores if you don't like big box.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Yes - and this is by far the strangest aspect of it all. My
| local telecom advertising that Netflix is bundled into the
| cell service. Netflix licensing shows from BBC or ordering
| content from other outfits. Netflix being built on top of AWS
| infrastructure. Streaming brands being available as "apps" on
| AppleTV. HBO becoming a property of Paramount, and both being
| owned by ATT. So many examples of complex relationships and
| weird inter-dependencies.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| All this superficial cooperation is a front to hide the
| anti competitive and price gouging that's happening. Joe
| average doesn't understand that the marginal cost of
| delivering a 4K stream is a few cents, nor does he think
| critically about why it costs 9.99 to "buy" a decade old
| movie that's liable to be removed his account at any time.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Well, this is showbiz. The whole idea has always been to
| advertise an exciting show that "you absolutely must see
| today" and place it behind a barrier that you must pay to
| cross. How much you are willing to pay for it, what "it"
| is, not to mention if you will be happy with the
| entertainment is a very old question. "Joe average" has
| never been in the position to fully comprehend the
| economics. And those have always been very difficult to
| understand even for all the people involved in the
| production. There are always periods in which a select
| few acquire a superior understanding of how to extract
| the most value from that transaction for themselves.
| Today most of these people are software visionaries who
| realized ahead of time which way the wind is blowing. Is
| it a "front" is a tricky question because this has always
| been the way. Twenty years it was cable TV infrastructure
| and physical media. Decades before that it was a film
| distribution and theatre network. And then earlier it was
| having a theatre with troupes of actors and
| lighting/stenography technicians. And for most of human
| history, it was traveling with an exciting minstrel show
| from town to town. And it was always to some extent a
| rip-off ;)
| lukifer wrote:
| Low marginal costs presents an economic conundrum in
| general: it's expensive to produce material and yet cheap
| to distribute it, so how do you fairly divvy up the cost?
| If each viewer only paid the marginal cost ($0.01), it no
| longer makes sense to invest in production; and in the
| success case, once the production money is recouped, one
| could certainly argue that charging $9.99 for a $0.01
| stream is difficult to distinguish from price-gouging (or
| more formally, "rent-seeking" [0]).
|
| One answer to this is "club goods" [1]: bundle large
| collections of content together for a fixed price so that
| per-unit access is zero-cost, but every participant pays
| their share of the whole; this is the model of both cable
| packages and streaming services. It's hardly perfect
| (especially in that it centralizes both data and power),
| but it's arguably a better win-win than arbitrary unit
| prices.
|
| I do think it's shady that vendors are allowed to sell
| content using "buy" and "ownership" metaphors of physical
| goods, when in fact it's a limited license that can
| change or disappear at any time. I'd love to see some
| regulation in this space, to the effect that content can
| only be labeled "buy"/"own"/etc if the content is DRM-
| free and carries a permissive license for backups,
| remixing, transforming, etc.
|
| And of course, there's an excellent case for reforming
| copyright laws more generally, such that content that has
| already had plenty of time to recoup its costs enters the
| public domain. I think the original duration (14 years)
| struck a reasonable balance; and on a cultural level,
| there's a great deal of value in each generation having
| unlimited access to the previous (still-living)
| generation's culture, in addition to culture of dead
| antiquity.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good
| billyhoffman wrote:
| That Supreme Court case [1] stopped the vertical integration
| where the studios signed actors under exclusive multi-year
| contracts, made the films, and will only release them in
| their own theaters. It was overturned by new legislation in
| 2020.
|
| 1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount
| _P....
| caycep wrote:
| Tbh, probably completely off topic, but the first thing that
| came to mind are alcohol regulations at least in CA preventing
| vineyards and distilleries from opening or operating
| restaurants...hence the rise in "educational tasting/pairing
| classes"
| spideymans wrote:
| It's wild to see. It feels like only a matter of time before
| the tech giants eat Hollywood.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Isn't that the period considered the "golden age" of Hollywood
| cinema?
|
| I've no skin in the game, really, except that I do love film
| and I hope good films are increasingly made.
|
| It's not as if those films or productions are requisite
| viewing. It's casual entertainment or philosophy. I'm not sure
| what the pressing concern there is.
|
| Amazon, however, is a different beast and should probably be
| broken up to some degree for other reasons--not this one.
|
| It's definitely a streaming service arms race, though.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| To a degree the "golden age" is as more about a certain style
| as it is quality. Casablanca is an entirely wonderful movie -
| but at the time it was just one of a fleet of films pushed
| through the machine. The 'Hollywood style' was intended to be
| 1) immediately legible/easy to understand for a wide audience
| and 2) easy to make quickly on a factory line-like studio
| process.
| lpolovets wrote:
| > We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution. Better stuff
| gets made in this kind of ecosystem.
|
| Forcing this would also have many downsides:
|
| - if you make content that others don't want to distribute, are
| you not allowed to distribute it yourself? Freedom to publish
| whatever you want feels very valuable for society, IMHO.
|
| - costs for consumers might rise because you now have two sets
| of costs priced in, instead of one set of costs.
|
| - It's harder to launch new companies. If content providers
| don't want to work with you as a distributor when you're small,
| it's hard to get off the ground. If distributors don't want to
| work with you because your content is unproven, it's hard to
| get off the ground. Etc.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I don't see your line of thinking: - Yeah you um can, like
| build your own movie theatre and show your own movies. The
| point of the law in this case is to prevent vertically
| integrated corporate structures from forming.
|
| - I don't see the sets of costs argument - any price is made
| up of infinite sub-costs. You buy a carton of milk, it came
| from a distributor who bought it from a wholesaler, who got
| it from a carton plant and so on and so forth. At each step
| of the way someone verified the quality to ensure reputation.
| In a vertical corp quality control can be difficult.
|
| - The opposite - easier to launch new companies. This is
| already how it is in places like Europe. No problem to sign
| 'distribution' deals, and no problem in seeking
| 'distributors' if you have the content. What's more a ton of
| other types of incentives make it easier to start new
| efforts.
|
| I don't think you understand that mostly, this is how it all
| already works, by itself. That's the whole point of a 'free
| market'. Until Amazon rolls into town and starts buying
| everybody up and integrating it all into something else.
| eplanit wrote:
| You're right. And yes, we could use those laws, but we're also
| now at a time in history where the combined power and influence
| of "big tech" is greater (by far, I fear) than the will and
| character of Legislators (i.e. low-character politicians) to
| enact any such law to constrain/regulate them, at all.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Definitely, though I really do hope that will change at some
| point...
| echelon wrote:
| Call your legislators!
| mbesto wrote:
| "Gentlemen, there's only two ways I know of to make money:
| bundling and unbundling."
|
| https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...
| libertine wrote:
| This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this
| type of content will increase.
|
| And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for
| the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of
| people not being able to access content because everything has
| a paywall gate.
|
| It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and
| you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
| bdekoz wrote:
| Like this, you mean?
| https://www.wired.com/story/2021-platinum-age-piracy-
| streami...
| athenot wrote:
| > It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet,
| and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
|
| Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies
| who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize
| that in fact, they could _become_ the new cable TV.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with
| the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or
| the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you
| could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could
| not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe
| and cancel at your whim.
|
| None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to
| be owned and sold by someone. What other situation should
| we have expected?
| libertine wrote:
| It's still a matter of distribution.
|
| You won't have to deal with the company that owned the
| wire or the satellite service, but you'll have to deal
| with one of the few companies that are purchasing IPs
| left and right (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Disney).
|
| In the end it's just different people controlling the
| distribution.
|
| The difference was that the content owners still had the
| choice to have their content available in other media
| formats, now it's the distributors that own the content
| and will (probably) limit it to their distribution
| channels.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The content owners are also the distributors now.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I think that what the industry will move into will be into
| something very similar to cabletvm, so, instead of buying
| subscriptions from a few services, you'll buy a package from
| a bundler. On the bright side it won't be as bad as it was
| with cable, because it will be on-demand. But also, probably
| the MBAs are going to come out with infinite combinations of
| tiered-services that nobody will understand, at first, it
| will be cheaper to buy a bundle, but as it becomes popular,
| the consumer value extraction machine will go full throttle.
| libertine wrote:
| >But also, probably the MBAs are going to come out with
| infinite combinations of tiered-services that nobody will
| understand
|
| Like bundling stuff you would never subscribe to.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yes, and then you get a bundle with Prime, Netflix,
| Disney whatever. For the first year it will be great,
| SSO, maybe unified search, whatever. But then, this will
| become "basic netflix, basic prime". All the good stuff
| will be in a "new" premium tier. You'll have to add those
| to your subscription, and then you'll endup with cable tv
| over ip.
| libertine wrote:
| We just need to shove advertising somewhere and we're
| golden.
|
| I'll start making the pitch deck and crunch some numbers
| for the boys upstairs.
|
| "Subflix Prime TV+" sounds good to you?
| simias wrote:
| I wonder if the rise of smartphones will dampen this. Back
| when PCs were the standard piracy was relatively simple, you
| downloaded bittorrent or edonkey and sailed the high seas.
|
| Nowadays it would be rather difficult to install a piracy app
| on your phone (not impossible, but definitely harder than
| simply downloading a binary from sourceforge). So you're left
| wish shady streaming sites who in my experience have terrible
| usability.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Torrent clients are readily available in the Android app
| store (not sure about Apple), and web browsers can still
| get to any websites. Since the resulting download is DRM
| free, it can be viewed with standard video players.
| windock wrote:
| There are Telegram channels that post full episodes of tv
| series. It is really convenient to watch them as you can
| download for offline use.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Torrent clients are widely available for android.
|
| iPhones attractive a different sort of user who would
| probably prefer to keep paying .
| mountainb wrote:
| Have they been releasing material worth pirating in the last
| 10-15 years? The movies coming out aren't even worth the
| bandwidth.
| handrous wrote:
| If by "they" you mean big-studio Hollywood, then there've
| been about 1500 of those movies in the last 15 years. There
| are another 600-700 or so non-major-studio films that see a
| wide release per year, which I think includes foreign films
| with US distribution, but also US productions outside the
| major studios.
|
| Yes, at least a few of those 1500 major Hollywood studio
| movies are quite good.
|
| Looking at the last few years of MGM's output, Creed and
| The Cabin in the Woods were both good. I didn't like
| Skyfall but mine seems to be a minority opinion, and AFAIK
| it's considered one of the best Bond movies by many people
| (for whatever that's worth). Stretching back closer to the
| 15-year mark... The Mist is pretty good. Casino Royale
| sneaks in right at the 15 year mark, and it's really well-
| regarded.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I was a fan of GoT, I loved ST:P.
|
| I don't watch that many movies anymore.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean maybe but so many people have prime for the shipping
| that I doubt it will do anything to stir piracy.
| Retric wrote:
| You need to be ordering from Amazon weekly to break even on
| Prime for shipping costs. It's likely worth it for some
| people but it really doesn't fit my habits.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Disagree. Government oversight is usually never the correct
| answer. The simplest solution to this is through consumer
| choice. Simply pirate the content you want. If corporations
| don't want to lose money to piracy then they'll learn to stop
| doing anti-consumer behavior.
| novok wrote:
| Isn't this more like cable tv packages, where you add another
| $10/month to your bill for that package of channels, which were
| often focused by broadcaster, who had a bunch of exclusive
| shows, or themes, like sci-fi or 'cartoon network'.
|
| Netflix, Apple TV, etc are broadcasters and crunchyroll is
| thematic.
| fpoling wrote:
| In [1] Arthur De Vany showed rather convincingly that the split
| between distribution and production for movie production made
| things worse for the consumers. The problem is that the profit
| of the whole industry is dominated by very few titles and that
| split lead to a few non-trivial consequences like lack of
| diversity in Hollywood.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_po...
|
| EDIT: one of the Amazon reviews gave a very good summary of the
| above point:
|
| One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie
| studio system understood implicitly that this business was
| unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them
| up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors,
| distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the
| entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.
|
| This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in
| what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they
| could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they
| insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the
| hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with
| a healthy return.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This depends on what you think makes a great movie and a
| great system and there really is no right answer. I'm not
| sure the above 'proves' that things were made worse for
| consumers. Fact is, weird independent 'auteur' filmmakers and
| foreign films entered the market in the 1960's and were able
| to distribute without being locked out. The producers taking
| those risks perhaps didn't feel they were taking a risk at
| all. Maybe they knew they had a winning hand and had better
| know-how than the studio bosses and their risk avoidance BS.
| That's how you get those Easy Riders and Raging Bulls.
|
| At the same time, movie theatres ceased to be these lavish
| 'palaces'. So what 'going to the movies' meant shifted in
| consumers' minds. Film productions also shrunk in size and
| scale so there is that. I would assume the business side
| actually deteriorated while cultural relevance rose. Probably
| not everyone on the consumer side was happy with all of that.
|
| If we're talking about that studio era though, these
| portfolios of movies being managed from the top definitely
| made films bland and predictable. But then on the other hand
| they also forced the talent to hone skill through repetition.
| So you had some specific aspects of the films being executed
| on a high polished level like the noir cinematography. I'm
| feeling/seeing something similar going on right now with the
| VOD offering. Even though it's all really well produced and
| shot and put together, I just sense everyone is following the
| same seemingly risque but safe playbook optimized for social
| media marketing.
|
| Seen in another way, the internet aspect of these
| distribution systems really can make all of the above
| completely irrelevant too. I find my satisfaction with MUBI
| and weird niche shit on YouTube. A piece of my money _still_
| goes toward partially paying for the very same
| infrastructure. As someone else mentioned here already - I 'm
| not physically limited from seeking what I want to find
| online, and it's all there side by side for me to view. This
| was not at all the case in the 1950's.
|
| In my mind one thing is certain, and this is just my take - I
| don't really want to watch a James Bond that has been
| developed by a goofy logistics e-commerce corporate giant. I
| just really don't see it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Would you also establish compulsory licensing so that studios
| and distributors can't have exclusive content?
| 1-6 wrote:
| My point as well. A law to break up content and distributors
| seems far-reaching. Let the studios do what they want.
| sib wrote:
| Exclusive content --> more value for distribution channels
| --> ability to pay producers more money --> better content
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Haven't even thought of this - would be amazing at
| neutralizing the entire field.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| Compulsory licensing would be fantastic. It already exists
| for e.g. radio
| [deleted]
| rhino369 wrote:
| A studio recording is what? 100k investment? A season of TV
| is at least 10M--and Amazon and Netflix are spending 200M
| on some.
|
| I think it would be very challenging to set compulsory
| licensing rates for TV and Movies.
| mythz wrote:
| Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only
| watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will
| likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4
| subscriptions to watch most new content.
|
| There's nothing stopping production companies from producing
| content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to
| license it out to the big players.
|
| When everything's online the primary drawcard to different
| video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are
| funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could
| impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if
| they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be
| nothing distinguishing the different services.
| ssharp wrote:
| > It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so
| we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content.
|
| How do you see this playing out when there have been so many
| big investments by traditional players to put forward new
| streaming services?
|
| The major players went from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and
| have now added Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and
| Paramount+, with more on the way.
|
| Untangling all the licensing deals is quite confusing as well
| and starts to get into the innards of production. I always
| associate Friends and Seinfeld with NBC, yet they aren't on
| Peacock, they're on HBO Max and Hulu, respectively. That and
| content shifting from one platform to another constantly,
| makes the web even more confusing and it's hard to determine
| which services you really want.
| mythz wrote:
| Hulu is majority owned by Disney who'll likely want to keep
| it running as a separate subscription service like ESPN in
| order to charge multiple content subscriptions.
|
| The major players I expect to be around after the streaming
| wars ends is: Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Apple. I expect
| most of the other platforms are going to end up as premium
| channels that you can subscribe to and watch on the other
| platforms, which you can do already in AppleTV+ and Amazon
| Prime.
|
| HBO and Hulu will be around as long as they have exclusive
| content they can't stream on other platforms. I don't
| expect HBO's content & licensing strategy of limiting it to
| higher margin cable services will last. In Australia you
| can only watch HBO through Foxtel which I'll never do,
| basically anything that's not accessible from Netflix,
| Prime, Disney+ or AppleTV+ doesn't exist for us.
|
| If the platforms were banned from producing their own
| content I expect it would dramatically favor platform
| owners like AppleTV+ where most iOS users would use to
| watch their content on as they can do now. Owning the UX
| would make them like Amazon.com storefront for 3rd party
| sellers, giving them unilateral power over the discovery of
| content, e.g. over time they could favor their own content,
| which is behavior I'd expect from Amazon, for Apple I think
| they'd be happy to just own the streaming platform as
| another lock-in & drawcard for iOS users.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This kind of confusing experience is certainly advantageous
| towards extracting more from the viewer. It's like shopping
| malls being designed to be difficult to get out of.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's a far less confusing experience than it was pre
| streaming services. You basically paid for an unknown
| item - you did not even know which content was going to
| be available or when it would be available.
|
| Now you can search for what you want to watch, follow the
| prompts, and it shows you the price, and you agree or
| disagree. And then you cancel if you do not want it
| anymore. Some of the purchasing flows can surely use more
| work, but it's leagues better than it used to be.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Oh yeah definitely. It's all a matter of perspective and
| possibility enabled by the technology.
|
| But it's definitely still structured to kinda slightly
| force your hand towards a subscribtion, and then towards
| maybe forgetting to cancel it in a couple weeks etc.
| ElFitz wrote:
| > if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there
| will be nothing distinguishing the different services.
|
| Pricing and UX?
|
| But even though some companies are _incapable_ of making good
| UIs, UX isn't much of a moat.
|
| At the same time, differentiation through pricing leads to
| races to the bottom and unsustainable / worthless markets
| (and, in our case, probably diminishing content quality).
| cgriswald wrote:
| Curation, which you may be including in UX. I'd pay $$$ for
| decent curation. As it stands, I apparently want to watch
| every low quality period piece known to man because I
| enjoyed Downton Abbey.
| Joeri wrote:
| If UX isn't much of a moat, why do most of the streaming
| platforms get it wrong? Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime have
| terrible UX for example. You might argue people don't care
| about UX and that's why it's not a moat, and maybe they
| don't, but personally I wish everyone would just plug their
| content into netflix and I could use that as the only
| platform.
| Nkuna wrote:
| Can't really vouch for Netflix's UX. I'd believe other
| platforms are better based on my experience with Netflix.
|
| Major personal gripes:
|
| 1. No watch history. Have to visit the web, dig into
| account settings to view it, having to click through 5
| items at a time!
|
| 2. Content added to your list is displayed randomly, not
| by date added. No option to sort with various standard
| parameters such as aforementioned date added, popularity,
| year released, genre, etc.
|
| 3. Licensed content disappearing with not so much as a
| "we know you saved this to watch at some point but it's
| no longer available". Instead you're left second guessing
| yourself as to whether you suffer from dementia or not.
| (I get the business aspect of this, but still!)
|
| 4. Suggests content you've already watched and/or rated
| _multiple times_. At times recommends said show or movie
| _immediately_ after watching /rating it.
|
| 5. Originals have trailers. Other content sometimes has
| trailers but most licensed content does not despite said
| trailers being available elsewhere for free. Most (all?)
| content used to show trailers but that's recently
| changed. (My guess is trailers convert better so you're
| more likely to watch original content)
|
| 6. No ratings history. Tangential to #1 I guess.
|
| 7. Can't click through to 'Coming Soon' titles to explore
| synopsis, trailers, cast, etc. Even for shows with prior
| seasons available; have to first search to access. To
| exasperate frustration, releasing soon titles are shown
| in searches where you can't do anything besides stare at
| a thumbnail.
|
| Pretty sure I have other issues with their UX but these
| are the most irritating.
| ElFitz wrote:
| I'd add that it's impossible to move profiles between
| accounts.
|
| Broke up recently. What do I do with my former
| girlfriend's profile?
|
| Delete it and make her loose her watchlist and where she
| was in some shows?
|
| Keep it and get that awkward moment when I invite someone
| over and we want to watch something?
|
| Give her my account and lose _my_ profile?
|
| Ridiculous
| ElFitz wrote:
| Because we indeed have been proven, time and time again,
| that people will rarely pay a premium for UX.
|
| We _will_ complain about it, mock it, but rare are those
| willing to pay more for it (or even merely change
| products), unless the advantage is significant (ie
| Netflix vs P2P & streaming websites)
|
| Regarding Netflix, honestly, their UX is a mess.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| > We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of
| separation between production and distribution
|
| Why though? I wasn't aware these laws exist(ed). Why are they
| needed?
| leifg wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see some kind of cable box equivalent where
| private companies will go ahead and bundle a subset of all the
| content on the streaming service into a package to sell you.
| Possibly subsidized with ads...
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| This is kind of what Roku does, yeah? Each Roku device comes
| pre-loded with a suite of streaming services installed (but
| you still have to subscribe to each one...) and the remote
| even has dedicated buttons for whatever streaming services
| are paying Roku the most at the moment.
| interestica wrote:
| Does MGM still hold the rights to the The Outer Limits? I haven't
| been able to find out.
| mywacaday wrote:
| The real question here is where players like SKY in the UK
| eventually go for content, I pay EUR40 a month for Skys satellite
| service and I am on the edge of cancelling it, I have
| Netflix/Disney/Prime for a combined approx EUR30 a month,
| recently when watching live TV I spent 40 minutes channel hopping
| and watched nothing, most channels are now reality show filler
| junk, the occasional gem in there is looking less and less worth
| the cost and its only a matter of time before they get squeezed
| out of the live sports market as well.
| k-mcgrady wrote:
| I think SKY is well prepared for this. With their NowTV service
| you can get the movies/entertainment/sports packages all
| separately. You can even buy the sports package for a day or a
| weekend. They also have quite a lot of exclusive content
| through SKY Atlantic + their sports offerings.
|
| On top of that they are a major Broadband provider. If they
| started losing full SKY TV subscriptions I think their other
| business areas will make up for it. I would never get SKY
| TV...but I've paid for their broadband + pay PS30 a month for
| sports via NowTV.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The problem in most countries I've lived is that there is a
| market capture with the whole 'triple play' trap.
|
| I only really need a fast internet connection but I can only
| get that if I bundle it with TV + Phone. Regardless of how much
| of a 'cable-cutter' I am, it is only financially worth getting
| internet-only, if I go for lower speeds.
|
| Definitely something I thing the EU competition/anti-trust
| teams should be looking into.
| zerkten wrote:
| Wikipedia suggests Sky are a subsidiary of Comcast which would
| suggests Universal is where they'd go for content.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I for one am very happy with all of the content consolidating
| into 4-5 major brands. I can pay $10-15 a month and rotate
| through individual streaming services. I don't need to be able to
| watcth James Bond at any particular point in time, I just need to
| be able to find some content I'm going to enjoy _tonight_.
|
| Interestingly enough, Prime Video is bundled with my Amazon Prime
| subscription so it's the one video service that I don't actually
| rotate.
| messe wrote:
| Here's hoping they pick up Stargate along with some of the SG-1
| writers and producers. With the Expanse ending next season,
| there's definitely an opening for an exclusive sci-fi show in
| Prime's catalog.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I think the SG ecosystem has had a good run - however, Stargate
| Universe would be a welcome expansion/reboot.
|
| Or a show based on Pohl's Heechee series, which has all the
| same pleasure points.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I think it would be interesting. But even at the end of SG1
| they had already 'jumped the shark' as it were. They tried to
| make up a new bad guy but it just was not as good. I think
| reviving it would detract from what is there.
|
| Now more Bob and Doug McKenzie I would be down with that.
| tzs wrote:
| I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies Anywhere"?
| MGM is one of the few major studios that currently does not
| participate in that.
|
| OT: how the heck does MA actually work?
|
| Suppose I buy a movie from Apple that came from a studio that
| supports MA. It almost immediately shows up in my Amazon Prime
| Video library, my Fandango library, and others. I then stream it
| using the Fandango app on my TV.
|
| Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for that
| bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid them any
| money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance out due to
| people who bought from Fandango streaming on other services? Or
| does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from Apple and
| Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store movies played
| via Fandango?
|
| Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of all
| this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
|
| Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the
| movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple
| servers?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The studios are basically paying the burden of cost for MA.
| It's one of the big reasons Paramount and MGM haven't joined,
| it's expensive on the studio side.
|
| Bandwidth is a nearly zero cost for a lot of the companies
| streaming the video on MA anyways. Apple, Amazon, Google,
| Microsoft, all don't care meaningfully about bandwidth cost
| anymore, especially for prerecorded content they can CDN all
| over the place. The biggest value to a streaming provider
| participating in MA is user acquisition: People might redeem
| their existing collection on MA, and then buy new titles on
| their platform.
| paxys wrote:
| Why is it expensive for studios if streaming companies don't
| care about bandwidth? What are they paying for then?
| bogwog wrote:
| Opportunity cost of not being able to sell the movie
| multiple times to the same customer on different streaming
| platforms?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > I wonder if Amazon will change MGM's stance on "Movies
| Anywhere"? MGM is one of the few major studios that currently
| does not participate in that.
|
| MGM's home ent catalogue isn't that big tbh but maybe.
|
| > Does it stream from Fandango's servers? If so, who pays for
| that bandwidth?. Fandango accounts are free, so I've not paid
| them any money. Do they just eat it, assuming it will balance
| out due to people who bought from Fandango streaming on other
| services? Or does MA tell Fandango that I bought the movie from
| Apple and Fandango periodically bills Apple for Apple store
| movies played via Fandango?
|
| It streams from Fandango and Fandango eat it, in the hope that
| if you're using their services you're more likely to buy from
| them.
| elithrar wrote:
| > Or does it stream from some common CDN that keeps track of
| all this and bills each seller for their share of bandwidth?
|
| You might be overestimating the costs here: it's a fraction of
| a penny per GB to deliver.
|
| > Or does some magic happen so that even though I'm playing the
| movie in the Fandango app, it is actually streaming from Apple
| servers?
|
| It's directly from Fandango - there is a shared revenue model +
| Fandango treats the MA content just as they would any third
| party content. They acquire source material and ingest it into
| their catalog as they would from any other studio.
| didibus wrote:
| Hum, seems they paid a lot for it, not sure MGM brings that much
| to the table, but I might be short sighted.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Just curious as I'm an idiot regarding laws. Does this trigger
| any anti-trust/monopoly or whatever similar clauses?
| lifty wrote:
| Any good guesses as to what name will the final world corporation
| take?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| FAANG Corp
| dexwell wrote:
| E Corp
| rapnie wrote:
| And what would be their subscription model?
| glenneroo wrote:
| 95% of your salary will be directly deposited into the
| account of E Corp (Mr Robot) since they own everything, no
| need to make x payments to x entities per month. Everyone
| wins!
| mikewarot wrote:
| Alpha will merge with Omega. 8)
| eganist wrote:
| BnL Corp.
| lifty wrote:
| What does that stand for?
| eganist wrote:
| https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Buy_n_Large
|
| It's a Wall-E reference
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| vmchale wrote:
| Lots of opportunities for vertical integration, given their cloud
| (doesn't netflix rely on them?)
| dalbasal wrote:
| The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind
| boggling. It represents 0.5% of their market cap, 20% of their
| cash-on-hand, nevermind their borrowing capacity @ near 0%.
|
| If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's
| worth spending $8bn on.
|
| I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial
| climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely.
| Antitrust, or fear of is the only restraint... and it is not very
| restraining.
|
| Unless Apple & Google are going to start issuing
| dividends/buybacks on an epic scale (doesn't seem likely), they
| have no way to put cash they have to work (besides
| vanguard/bitcoin). Google would need to do 10 Waymos (in for
| about $20bn so far) simultaneously, to invest what they need to
| invest on internal projects, but even their one Waymo is dubious.
| Acquisition is the only remaining option.
|
| Consider that these companies can currently afford to buy whole
| _industries_ outright, perhaps without involving a bank. Does
| Waymo need a friend? Why not buy it Ford & GM? Anything outside
| the S&P 10 is a snack. They literally have cash enough for both
| lying around... and these deals are never all cash.
|
| 5 more years on the current trajectory, and the VOC/EIC days will
| look quaint.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is
| mind boggling.
|
| My coworked compared it to the Dogecoin marketcap of $44b...
| kinda puts things in perspective.
| dalbasal wrote:
| You know, at least crypto is obviously/intentionally
| arbitrary. The current market cap of GME is exactly 2X this
| acquisition.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Crypto "market cap" isn't really comparable to the market cap
| of companies. Nobody would (or could) ever buy Dogecoin for
| 44b. But companies are usually purchased for more than market
| cap.
| manquer wrote:
| No one can buy Amazon or Tesla at their market cap today
| either.
|
| Sure companies valuation are backed by revenue and profit
| numbers unlike crypto.
|
| However the multiples both these companies trade at along
| with the way Amazon treats "profit" their dividend habits
| means no buyer can actually recoup the investment by means
| of profits generated in a reasonable investment window.
|
| The only way to make actual money with these stock is to
| sell it even higher not that different from crypto.
|
| Look at last 2 years of the stock market even ignoring
| GME/AMC there seem to very little correlation with the
| actual numbers for these companies.
| archie_diak wrote:
| Er, yes they would. Thousands of people already have,
| that's why its 44bn. It's a market cap not a paper
| valuation. Are you suggesting that if someone wanted to buy
| Doge outright they could pay less than it's market cap?
| rhino369 wrote:
| There is no mechanism to buy all Doge and the "market
| cap" of Doge includes lost coins. If you bought all of
| Doge, its value would be gone since it would be like it
| didn't exist.
|
| You might as well calculate the market cap of baseball
| cards.
|
| It's just not the right way to measure the worth of a
| crypto.
|
| Put another way, if Doge owners decided to collectively
| sell it would be worth 0.
| archie_diak wrote:
| Hypothetically if some whale wanted to 'buy' Doge say to
| shut it down or something, they would probably have to
| spend a lot more than the market cap and as you yourself
| point out they still wouldn't have bought all the Doge
| that existed. OP was comparing amounts i.e $8bn seems
| like peanuts when 'joke' coins are hypothetically worth
| more than $44bn, and not really comparing market caps
| (which doesn't really make sense, again as you yourself
| pointed out).
| secabeen wrote:
| True, but the flipside is also the case, if someone
| wanted to sell a significant fraction of a cryptocurrency
| or high-value stock, they wouldn't necessarily get close
| to the current market cap either.
| totalZero wrote:
| Think about the total basis in Dogecoin. Compare that
| number to the takeout valuation for a public company,
| which would be the basis of the acquirer. That's the
| point GP is trying to make, in a roundabout way.
| charrondev wrote:
| On the other hand a surge in demand would likely raise
| the prices as you tried to buy it all up.
| dawnerd wrote:
| They could increase wages for their non-tech workers to start
| dalbasal wrote:
| Technically, that'd be increasing their expenses rather than
| capital investment.
|
| They could also, in theory, build schools in central africa.
| They could even pay their taxes. I think acquisitions are
| more likely though.
| muxator wrote:
| What's the most appropriate word for this? There could be
| many, but I am a bit tired of justifications. For me it's
| greediness, distillated.
| golergka wrote:
| That's the same honourable pursuit of self-interest that
| have built the modern world of abundance that we live in.
| proto-n wrote:
| Capitalism?
|
| Greed is a very human emotion, corporations are like very
| powerful sociopaths. No-emotion machines that optimize
| for a single end goal (shareholder money) within the
| given ruleset: the law.
|
| (Or more realistically whatever they can get away with
| while still turning profit, ie profit is greater than
| whatever the repercussions cost).
| potatoman22 wrote:
| In many ways, Capitalism is fueled by greed.
| FredPret wrote:
| That's the genius of it. Why fight human nature?
|
| As parent said, corporations are restricted only by the
| market and by the legal system, so it's up to the voters
| to implement effective taxes and rules as needed
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| 'voters' in America = gerrymandered district super pac
| funded politicians
|
| The actual people have no say whatsoever.
| FredPret wrote:
| I wouldn't agree with "no say whatsoever" but of course
| constant reform is needed in any society.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| "lol" -Google/Apple/Amazon/etc CEOs
| prvc wrote:
| >The price is about 37 times MGM's 2021 estimated EBITDA - or
| almost triple the enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple that
| Discovery's deal implied for AT&T's content assets - according
| to Reuters Breakingviews.
|
| Was there another offer for slightly less than $8.45B? What
| kind of thinking would lead them to that figure, rather than a
| different one?
| asperous wrote:
| They actually are doing pretty large buybacks though:
|
| https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-giants-have-ramped-up-...
|
| Apple recently $77B in buybacks, Alphabet $8.5B, Facebook $3.9B
| dalbasal wrote:
| True, but I don't think buybacks are likely to be scaled
| sufficiently to solve the "problem." Apple, maybe. They do
| have a dividend paying history and they don't like to spread.
|
| The Alphabet & FB buybacks represent about 5% of those
| companies' cash reserves... not enough to change anything.
| Apple have $200bn, though I'm not sure if this is net or
| gross of the buyback.
|
| I think of these buybacks more as supporting evidence to what
| I said previously. There is a hell of a lot of " _what are
| you going to do with all this cash_ " pressure on these
| companies.
|
| That said $77bn (I've seen $90bn reported) is a truly
| stupendous sum. Has there ever been a buyback at this scale?
| totalZero wrote:
| Apple does the largest buyback in the equity markets. Their
| derivative-based ASR is larger than the entire buyback
| program of many major companies.
|
| https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q2
| /...
|
| At $77B, that buyback program bids for about $300m of Apple
| stock every trading day....much to the delight of
| executives whose compensation is tied to share price
| performance.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/apple-ceo-tim-cook-
| receives-...
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| They could have used that $77B to fund fusion research,
| carbon capture research, build private space stations and put
| man on Mars, but no they wanted to make their already high
| share price even higher.
| dalbasal wrote:
| In fairness, it is impressively large.
| bravo22 wrote:
| the investors who get the money back through share buybacks
| can do that with the 77B. There is no reason for Tim Cook
| to be leading fusion research and everything else you
| listed.
| ajpkco wrote:
| The $77B didn't vanish, it went back to shareholders.
| Indeed Apple could have used it to fund fusion research,
| but this seems like a complete stretch of their expertise
| and capacity to execute on a project like that, the money
| could just have ended up being wasted on projects that went
| nowhere. Shareholders can cash out, the government tax the
| capital gains, and both entities can use the cash in the
| investments that seems worthy to them
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Actually a better way to think about it is that they are
| compensating their shareholders...
|
| That $77B that is now returned to shareholders can be spent
| on whatever those shareholders want. It isn't really
| Apple's money to begin with... kind of the issue with being
| a public company. Unless of course its shareholders would
| look at that investment as sound, which might be a stretch
| given Apple's lack of background in any of those fields
| (maybe carbon capture given they have a great understanding
| of their supply chain and could already be thinking of ways
| to reduce their energy impact)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > That $77B that is now returned to shareholders can be
| spent on whatever those shareholders want. It isn't
| really Apple's money to begin with... kind of the issue
| with being a public company.
|
| Apple and its shareholders are the same entity when
| discussing "whose" money it is. If shareholders want it
| used to do buybacks, they vote for company leadership to
| do that. If they want dividends, they vote for company
| leadership to do that. If they want to invest in travel
| to Mars, they vote for leadership to do that.
|
| Saying Apple's money belongs to shareholders is a
| meaningless statement. It belongs to the collection of
| shareholders as a whole, who have opted to elect in
| leaders to decide how to spend it.
| SilasX wrote:
| >That $77B that is now returned to shareholders can be
| spent on whatever those shareholders want
|
| Well, 85% of the $77 billion, anyway.
| golergka wrote:
| It's a decision someone can make with their own money. Not
| money of their shareholders.
| igravious wrote:
| One of these things is not like the others.
| paulpan wrote:
| In this vein, $8.45B seems a bargain for the likes of Apple to
| instantly booster their very limited TV+ offerings. Was this an
| exclusive, closed door negotiation between owners of MGM and
| Amazon?
|
| I'm perplexed how the final price isn't a lot higher due to a
| potential bidding war between all the streaming giants. Even
| Netflix would benefit - if anything to force competitors to pay
| more.
| twoodfin wrote:
| What about MGM's back catalog makes Apple TV+ qualitatively
| more compelling to your marginal subscriber? Versus say
| spending that same $8.5B on new content?
|
| There's not much "forward looking" IP of value tied to MGM
| except the Bond franchise, and it sounds like the Broccoli's
| aren't giving up control of that in this deal.
| loceng wrote:
| Very easily are a few million people who'd be willing to
| have access to the Stargate library as part of a
| subscription + hopefully they start production again of at
| least Stargate Universe; it's premise would make for an
| awesome game too.
| manquer wrote:
| Not yet. The key is to keep adding properties and unlock
| other deals, eventually Amazon/Apple could convince
| broccoli in ways MGM never can try. Deeper pockets, way
| better distribution etc.
|
| It took several deals for Disney to line up MCU fully. They
| spent a lot on Pixar, star wars and MCU , fox acquisitions
| to become the force they are today.
|
| Without these acquisitions, Disney would also be largely a
| back catalog like MGM being sold today .
|
| The theory is that sum of the properties are worth more
| than each individually.
| totalZero wrote:
| > they have no way to put cash they have to work
|
| Apple could have built the most incredible semiconductor mega-
| hub in the world with the money it spent on dividends and
| buybacks in the past decade.
|
| In-house R&D is still a thing. Capital expenditure is still a
| thing. Pay raises for rank-and-file staff are still a thing.
| Please don't suggest that acquisitions, buybacks, and dividends
| are the only ways for Apple and Google to put their free cash
| flow to work.
|
| Not to mention that both companies carry debt.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| For all the green energy virtue signaling, Bezos & co. could
| achieve the greening of the US with their own money (and also
| turn a small profit).
| fairity wrote:
| Worth noting that based on AAPL's latest 10-Q, the vast
| majority of their cash is invested in corporate bonds, which
| have a nominal annualized return of ~6%. I'm sure the financial
| value of any acquisition is pitted against this alternative.
| dalbasal wrote:
| In theory, sure.
|
| In real business culture, there is an imputis (especially for
| tech companies) to "maKe money work." If their best
| investment is other companies' bonds, they should (again, in
| theory) just return cash to investors who can buy the bonds
| themselves.
|
| More importantly, The ability to reinvest profitably is a
| sign of horizon, at least traditionally.
|
| I stress "in theory," because theory is a long way from
| practice when it comes to modern tech giants. The theory is
| financial theory... how companies are financed. In theory,
| equity investment is a way of financing companies. Google and
| Facebook did not need to be financed by the time they became
| publicly traded. They never had debt. Software companies
| don't require capital investment to expand, like a
| theoretical "firm" does. In practice, public markets have no
| role in financing companies per se, they're only there to
| provide liquidity.
| fairity wrote:
| > If their best investment is other companies' bonds, they
| should (again, in theory) just return cash to investors who
| can buy the bonds themselves.
|
| This is what they're effectively doing, in practice. AAPL
| has conducted ~$500B in share buybacks since the
| commencement of their buyback program in 2013. Their
| current cash and cash equivalents sits at ~$200B.
|
| So, one could say that of the $700B AAPl could have
| returned to shareholders, it returned $500B (or most of
| it).
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'm not sure we should accept "returned to shareholders"
| at face value.
|
| Nothing is really returned to shareholders. Shareholders
| own that money (as they own all Apple's assets) before
| the buyback. After the buyback, they no longer own the
| money... but share value has (in theory) not changed
| because it now represents a larger portion of this
| smaller asset.
| fairity wrote:
| In the case of a buyback, cash is literally returned to
| the shareholders who participate in the tender offer by
| selling their shares back to the company.
| krono wrote:
| A radical idea but please hear me out: A new Stargate series that
| is not a reboot, not a remake, not set in an alternate timeline,
| not set far in the past or future, but rather a continuation of
| the story we know!
| Hongwei wrote:
| Could be the same timeline, but would still need a mostly new
| cast. Stargate SG-2 just doesn't have the same ring to it!
| Kye wrote:
| I like The Expanse post-Amazon acquisition, but I suspect Bezos
| being a fan has some impact on it staying good. How does he feel
| about Stargate?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Please make a Stargate show immediately. It will keep me watching
| Amazon Prime more often. Such a huge fan base just waiting to be
| willingly milked.
| louloulou wrote:
| Finally I can watch Stargate SG-1 on Amazon Prime!
| [deleted]
| totaldude87 wrote:
| Would be interesting to see whether the latest James bond movie
| gets a direct Prime release.. may be for few $$?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Would be interesting if you can buy the bond gadgets from
| Amazon :-)
| meepmorp wrote:
| Straight from the factory back door in Shenzhen; reviews are
| stellar and 100% genuine.
| ptha wrote:
| The article mentions complications with this because of
| existing deals:
|
| _Still, efforts by Amazon to profit off MGM 's library won't
| be easy, or cheap.
|
| In many cases, MGM's content is tied up in multi-year deals
| with television networks, the former Amazon executives said.
| Amazon cannot air MGM's reality show "The Voice," for instance,
| which contractually is in the hands of NBC.
|
| Bringing a new installment of the James Bond saga to Prime
| viewers may be a particularly difficult task, the sources said.
| The terms under which MGM acquired the franchise leave control
| in the hands of the Broccoli family, the Bond films'
| producers._
| TMWNN wrote:
| This explicitly did not happen with _No Time to Die_.
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/james-bond-film-no-tim...
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Upgrade (RelayFM podcast) covered this on this weeks episode
| and this apparently will come down to what the Broccoli family
| will agree too since really they own the rights to Bond
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's almost pocket change for the trillies
| genmon wrote:
| > the trillies
|
| As in companies with a trillion dollar market cap? I hadn't
| heard that slang before -- I like it.
| ben7799 wrote:
| It's from a David Brin book IIRC... Existence.
|
| Good book.. there are a class of people worth trillions of
| dollars and he explores all kinds of weird things that could
| happen. Like trillie teenagers launching themselves into
| space on joy riding rockets illegally.
|
| That's just one tiny little aspect of the story.
| [deleted]
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Never heard of that. Just made it up :)
| helloworld653 wrote:
| Find yourself a private torrent tracker and get a seedbox for
| $10/month.
| parthdesai wrote:
| back to sailing the seas :shrug:
| katbyte wrote:
| it's never been easier and with media servers like emby you can
| become your and your friends own VOD provider!
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Back to?
| MontagFTB wrote:
| I suspect the reference is to piracy.
| queuep wrote:
| I suspect he means that he never stopped, hence nothing to
| go back to
| [deleted]
| LightG wrote:
| Arrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhh me beauty ...
| vishnugupta wrote:
| My thesis is that to justify their P/E and valuation Amazon has
| no option but to keep expanding into new business lines.
|
| A side effect of this expansion is lack of attention to their
| existing lines of businesses. For instance, Amazon retail UX and
| website has largely remained unchanged for like well over a
| decade and in fact gotten worse as they cram more and more things
| to sell within a screen.
|
| Same with AWS, quite a lot of highly asked features haven't been
| implemented for years now, and AWS console is showing its age.
|
| I have a feeling those Alexa* devices will not age well.
| delecti wrote:
| Having worked at Amazon, things that are doing fine will
| definitely get put on the back burner, but I don't see why
| that's a problem. Why the need for everything to keep changing
| if it's working fine?
|
| Amazon has plenty of problems, but they're not Google; products
| stay supported for a long time. My three Echo devices are 5, 4,
| and 3 years old, and of them all work perfectly fine.
| ape4 wrote:
| MGM itself was formed from a merger: MGM was formed in 1924 when
| the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of
| Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer
| Pictures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Dear Amazon, the Prime menu is fairly awful - especially trying
| to find a way back to a previously watched series.
| pradn wrote:
| I found myself going to Netflix by default because its UI is so
| much smoother in every platform. Amazon does have things I want
| to see, but I don't want to put up with the slowness and jank.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Ugh, so bad. I pay for Prime in the US and UK, but the app
| gives me no way to switch countries like I can with the store.
| When I'm in the UK, I expect it to show me the local UK library
| that I get with my Amazon UK prime account. Instead, the app
| assumes I'm "traveling" and forces me into a reduced version of
| the US library. Worse, it renders all the thumbnails in the
| catalog view, while only telling me content is unavailable
| after I've decided to watch it and click play.
|
| For this reason I only watch Amazon originals on Prime, since I
| know they'll be available.
| sshagent wrote:
| couldn't agree more. who the hell made it. Its a mess. With
| separate seasons in different places.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Their awful UI is an artifact of trying to be a storefront
| (where shows are sold by the season) and a streaming service
| (where you can binge without regard for seasons).
| barbazoo wrote:
| This might depend on the device, I'm using the Fire stick and
| I _think_ it bundles the seasons under one show.
|
| I'm not praising that app at all btw, that's just why I think
| the award for worst app goes to CBC gem on the Fire stick. It
| shows you which episodes you watched. Past tense. To watch
| the next one you have to search for the show again and
| navigate to the episode. Why on earth would anyone want
| that?!
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Software by committee. (committee being defined as engineers
| who rarely stay for more than 24 months)
| dang wrote:
| There are a lot of comments in this thread and the first page
| contains only the first subthread. To read the rest you need to
| click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289924&p=2
|
| (Sorry for the interruption. Comments like this will go away
| eventually.)
| alberth wrote:
| Does Amazon charge for Video today? I don't think they do. Maybe
| they plan too.
|
| I know Bezos has stated in the past (can't find it though) that
| he believe Video will be the next growth engine, much like how
| AWS has been said engine over the last few years.
| depingus wrote:
| Only some movies and shows on Amazon Prime Video are actually
| "included with Prime". The rest you have to pay for
| individually.
|
| Their Music service is similar. As a Prime member, you have
| access to a portion of their music catalog. If you want access
| to everything, you have to pay for it.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > It was overturned by new legislation in 2020.
|
| Interestingly, there are some guys powerful enough to push that
| kind of legislation... I don't like Musk but sometimes I'd really
| love to leave for Mars :-)
| gentleman11 wrote:
| You would basically be property of the corporation in that
| scenario. Musk is not known for treating his dependents or
| employees or fans well, he's more popular to outsiders looking
| in. Market manipulation, Bitcoin pump and dump, a wife who left
| him, working conditions at Tesla, quality control issues,
| dishonest marketing for self driving features... nobody should
| go live on his colonies if he gets that far
| midasuni wrote:
| What makes you think Mars will have better laws?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Simple, the man is the man and the law and the court so
| behaviors and ethics and rulings naturally coincide /s
| anoncow wrote:
| If Musk playing with BTC is any indication, Mars would've
| been an interesting socio-political experiment if we had the
| terraforming technology.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Monarchies ruled by billionaires sounds horrid.
| hnbad wrote:
| Corporate towns were bad enough but now we're talking about
| corporate space colonies where the company can literally
| charge you for oxygen. I'd be interesting for sure, but not
| something anyone should want to participate in at table
| stakes.
| midasuni wrote:
| The original total recall had this set up
| debacle wrote:
| Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was an interesting socio-
| political experiment.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27290489.
| rubatuga wrote:
| Lol, just start your own country then.
| jtdev wrote:
| I suppose Bezos and co. will use MGM to push their cultural and
| political narrative much like they have done with WaPo... I'm
| fully on the boycott Amazon program at this point, having
| previously been a Prime member and heavy user of
| Amazon/AWS/WaPo/etc.
| dtjb wrote:
| WaPo seems pretty consistent pre and post Bezos.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _push their cultural and political narrative much like they
| have done with WaPo._
|
| WaPo is a product you pay for...Are you being forced to
| subscribe to the washington post?
| Kipters wrote:
| The only thing I can think of is that Stargate might finally have
| a change to reappear
| keanebean86 wrote:
| 20 years after Atlantis lands in San Francisco the camera flys
| over the now moon-based city. We see puddle jumpers zooming to
| and fro. A Daedalus class ship exits hyperspace from some
| mission far away.
|
| The camera fades to the control room. A ragged Dr Jackson with
| a headset is arguing with someone. The room is abuzz with many
| others doing the same.
|
| This is the moment the audience first can see the logo on his
| shirt. "Amazon Galactic"
|
| Atlantis has become the Amazon headquarters for the Milky Way.
| Daniel Jackson is just one of many customer service
| representatives. The Jaffa were retrained to do deliveries
| across the Galaxy.
|
| The Goa'uld are long gone.
|
| OR ARE THEY?
|
| Camera pans to Jeff Bezos. His eyes glow just as the camera
| fades to black.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Amazon Fan Fiction: Yet another ancient religious rite to
| puzzle far-future archeologists.
| lsiunsuex wrote:
| I asked years ago (and I'll ask again!)
|
| I wonder what Las Vegas would look like if tech companies started
| buying / building hotels in Vegas
|
| At one point MGM owned almost 1 third - half the strip (ish) -
| recently they've been selling off properties which is a shame,
| MGM properties are my preferred resorts.
|
| Maybe Amazon can breath some life into Excalibur or Luxor but it
| sounds like those are not part of the deal
| thedogeye wrote:
| It's a different MGM. They're not getting the casino
| astura wrote:
| Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc, which is the MGM Amazon bought
| is not the same company as MGM Resorts International, which is
| the MGM that owns casinos. The casino people become an
| independent company year and years ago.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Names are similar because they were one company until 40
| years ago
|
| Edit: comment was edited a bit. Before it mentioned the names
| are similar but unrelated.
| astura wrote:
| Yeah I got their history confused with a completely
| different company for a second then realized my mistake. I
| haven't had my coffee yet.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| MGM the studio was spun off from the much more profitable and
| burgeoning casino segment around the early 80s. Since then,
| tons of different buyers have gone in and out for the casino.
| Maybe MGM the studio too.
| akudha wrote:
| lol, online monopoly isn't enough for the tech companies? You
| want them to monopolize offline too? :)
| ameister14 wrote:
| >lol, online monopoly isn't enough for the tech companies?
|
| That raises an interesting question - how would non-tech
| companies compete online? Shouldn't tech companies be an
| effective monopoly in tech?
|
| Do mining companies have a monopoly on the mining industry?
| akudha wrote:
| I don't know how many mining companies there are, but if
| there is only one or two companies that take 80%+ of the
| market, then yeah, that is a monopoly/duopoly. Online - one
| company (Google) controls most of search, two companies
| (Google and Apple) control nearly all of mobile OS, one
| company (Amazon) more than half of cloud market, one
| company (Facebook) controls much of social, one company
| (youtube/google) controls most of video market.... etc etc.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The upside here is that MGM has been limping along for ages, and
| if Amazon ends up paying off their debts and relaunching a bunch
| of their titles, even if this all collapses in a few years, MGM
| will probably end up better off for it.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Will all the Bond movies available for free to watch for prime
| members?
| smm11 wrote:
| Amazon? You mean the company owned by a super-rich guy, who's
| taking $10 billion of our dollars, to prop us his rocket company,
| because he lost out on a contract?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| All they need now is a house building company and they can sell
| people everything they need for their entire life (the grocery
| store, entertainment, health, news, movies, music, goods). Then
| they can start selling Gatorade for plants to their customers.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Gatorade. It's got electrolytes. It's what plants crave. I
| think you might be onto something here.
| [deleted]
| thebrainkid wrote:
| Hopefully we might see a new Stargate show being developed!
| soheil wrote:
| It's important to note MGM went bankrupt not too long ago, they
| also sold a lot of their original releases to Warner Bros and
| others. To put this in perspective MGM is more and more just a
| shell company or just a brand that you use (by posting posters of
| James Bond franchise, which btw they only partially own) to lure
| in subscribers to your Amazon Prime service.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| If I had to pick a single politically uniting issue, breaking up
| Amazon and big tech would be it.
|
| Why has this not happened yet? Is the out of power party afraid
| the in power party will get credit? (This has been discussed when
| both parties were in power)
|
| If the government can't get something with this kind of support
| done, I fear the road we are headed down .
| newsclues wrote:
| It hasn't happened because big tech lobbies against it and
| deploy capital not only in the political arena but the general
| consumers culture landscape.
| tguedes wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Amazon is one of the most loved brands
| in the country https://www.zdnet.com/article/theres-a-new-list-
| of-americas-... and has been for quite awhile
| nautilus12 wrote:
| They are close to hitting a critical point in terms of
| political and economic power where they literally will no
| longer be able to be stopped. We will have no recourse but to
| replace our government with Amazon. It will be like Buy n Large
| in Wall-e.
| akudha wrote:
| I fear we are already beyond the point of stopping them.
| Remember those cringey, awkward videos by dozens of mayors
| begging Amazon to choose their city for their second
| headquarters? I'm all for gov-biz partnership, but gov
| literally begging big biz is not a good sign. There is a
| power imbalance here.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I disagree, there is a lot the government could do. Amazon is
| nothing with out the US Government. Protection of all of it's
| property, maintaining infrastructure, both the internet and
| transportation system. Simply charging business for the wear
| and tear the place on the roads would be a start.
| shmageggy wrote:
| So, like corporate taxes?
| sneak wrote:
| Amazon builds and operates internet-disconnected datacenters,
| on-prem in Langley, for the CIA. You're not getting rid of
| the CIA's drone video cluster sysadmins.
|
| They also operate several internet-connected regions
| (GovCloud) that have the special racist hiring policies
| required to fulfill US govt hosting regulations.
|
| That ship has probably already sailed.
| nomorewords wrote:
| I think that a lot of the big politics players realize that if
| the big companies get broken up, some of the businesses might
| not be as profitable.
|
| In other words, it seems like some businesses have been able to
| find a diamond//golden goose so much so that they are able to
| support different businesses. These other businesses will not
| have had the same success if they didn't have a cashcow behind
| their back.
| ameister14 wrote:
| I don't think that people are united about breaking up Amazon
| and frankly I don't really see the damage to consumer necessary
| to break it up; products come faster, cheaper.
|
| Could you articulate why Amazon should be broken up? Most of
| the arguments I've seen boil down to "It's so big" and not
| really "It's effectively dominated x market and there is no
| competition there" or even "they are harming competition by
| pre-installing free software that I can't uninstall"
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I would split it into three things:
|
| 1. They have the size and market control to crush and/or
| acquire all competitors e.g. diapers.com
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/amazon-
| em...
|
| 2. They purport to operate a neutral marketplace where they
| aren't responsible for the end product while also controlling
| what products you see and what company you will buy from and
| choose the ones that give them the best margin. The huge
| problem of counterfeit and faulty products on Amazon directly
| harms the consumer and because of (1) there isn't a general
| market remedy.
|
| 3. They leverage their position as market maker to figure out
| what products to manufacture and undercut innovative
| companies with their massive scale. In the short term this is
| a net benefit to consumers who get a cheaper product but it
| creates a mess of bad incentives down the line.
| ameister14 wrote:
| >They have the size and market control to crush and/or
| acquire all competitors
|
| I don't think that is true for all competitors, but it
| definitely is for many competitors. It's a good point if
| they are using that power, which I think they are,
| especially in particular industries. Same applies to
| Facebook, Apple, and many other companies as well.
|
| >2. They purport to operate a neutral marketplace where
| they aren't responsible for the end product while also
| controlling what products you see and what company you will
| buy from and choose the ones that give them the best
| margin. The huge problem of counterfeit and faulty products
| on Amazon directly harms the consumer and because of (1)
| there isn't a general market remedy.
|
| That's two different things, isn't it? Counterfeit products
| are a problem and a non-neutral market is a different
| problem. I think the non-neutral market bit is already
| covered by existing regulations, isn't it? Shouldn't we
| simply apply the rules we have?
|
| >3. They leverage their position as market maker to figure
| out what products to manufacture and undercut innovative
| companies with their massive scale. In the short term this
| is a net benefit to consumers who get a cheaper product but
| it creates a mess of bad incentives down the line.
|
| This one I've seen before but not as an argument to break
| them up - it's an interesting argument to me because I
| think a lot of companies engage in these practices. Grocery
| stores classically would release basic cheerios for example
| and undercut the price of the brand
| asdffdsa wrote:
| At the very least their marketplace and their store should be
| separate entities.
| x4e wrote:
| Amazon's continuous expansion is resulting in powerful
| monopsonies - if you want to for example create your own
| book, soon there is going to be no option but to sell it to
| Amazon so it will be in kindles and on audible. Amazon will
| have complete power over what cut of the profits to give you.
| Why bother making that new product you thought of when the
| only way to sell it is by listing it on Amazon and eventually
| having Amazon copy it and sell under "Amazons Choice".
|
| So while Amazon is great for consumers, it is terrible for
| producers. And you have to remember - if you have a job you
| are a producer too. For now you are getting cheaper and more
| convenient service, but soon you will be struggling to find a
| job if this continues.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > "It's effectively dominated x market and there is no
| competition there"
|
| Amazon often enough dominates local labor markets - they
| strategically set up their fulfillment centers in places that
| have high unemployment, so that employees have no practical
| (!) alternative than to accept the exploitative working
| conditions that Amazon offers.
|
| Regarding marketplaces: in accessible online shopping, Amazon
| and eBay _are_ a de-facto duopoly for the vendors. Get booted
| off of either and watch your business go dry in a matter of
| days.
|
| > "they are harming competition by pre-installing free
| software that I can't uninstall"
|
| That one was _literally_ used as a justification for the IE
| de-bundling many years ago.
| ameister14 wrote:
| >That one was literally used as a justification for the IE
| de-bundling many years ago.
|
| Yeah, that's what I was referencing by using it - that said
| my phone comes bundled with trash that I can't uninstall
|
| >Regarding marketplaces: in accessible online shopping,
| Amazon and eBay are a de-facto duopoly for the vendors. Get
| booted off of either and watch your business go dry in a
| matter of days.
|
| Their marketplace does seem to be pretty powerful, but I've
| seen a lot of vendors do well with a standalone site +
| Instagram/Facebook ads and marketplace so I'm not sure it's
| really a duopoly for all vendors. If you are only in one
| market and that market bans you your business will go dry
| immediately either way.
|
| >Amazon often enough dominates local labor markets - they
| strategically set up their fulfillment centers in places
| that have high unemployment, so that employees have no
| practical (!) alternative than to accept the exploitative
| working conditions that Amazon offers.
|
| This one I don't think works - it can apply to any employer
| that moves into a high unemployment area and I think that's
| something we want to encourage companies to do
| samdixon wrote:
| I don't know how large of a concern this is, but Amazons wide
| growth allows using revenue from their higher profit sectors
| (such as aws) to force out competitors in other lower margin
| sectors they are involved with such as grocery stores. This
| also may very well be a strategy other large conglomerates
| utilize.
|
| Video on subject: https://youtu.be/EYPs-ya_GDA?t=128
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Grocery stores use high margin products to sell staples
| such as bread and meat at cost or loss and force out
| smaller players like bakers and butchers.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > Why has this not happened yet?
|
| Regulatory capture, and campaign finance laws. Until we fix the
| latter, we can't fix the former.
| sarsway wrote:
| and then the world be magically better?
|
| I don't get this sentiment, what exactly do you think will be
| the benefits of doing this? It's a drastic action, you don't
| just break up multi billion companies in an afternoon, so you
| better come up with some very good concrete points on why this
| is necessary. Not just vague statements about improving
| competition.
|
| Also you know what a huge role Silicon Valley companies play
| for the U.S. internationally? And you want to cripple them?
|
| I don't understand how here on HN, where the majority is in the
| tech industry, the people are begging for government
| intervention and regulations. Be careful what you ask for, I'd
| rather have them stay out of the industry, thanks.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Every time Amazon enters an industry, they wipe away a
| competitor wallowing it total mediocrity.
|
| Is the appetite really there for anyone other then perhaps
| Facebook?
| nova22033 wrote:
| _If I had to pick a single politically uniting issue, breaking
| up Amazon and big tech would be it_
|
| Is it though? Where's the polling data suggesting a majority of
| people back splitting up Amazon or Google?
| frankbreetz wrote:
| A simple google search can return these results:
|
| https://www.vox.com/2021/1/26/22241053/antitrust-google-
| face...
|
| https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ibd-tipp-poll-
| majo...
|
| https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-newswire/virus-
| outbreak-...
| humanlion87 wrote:
| I think as a consumer, if we are talking about breaking
| businesses, first in line should be the the cable and telecom
| oligopolies. Big tech can come next. These companies control
| more critical infrastructure compared to big tech companies.
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