If you look at twenty years ago, there's far more content available now, for far less money. Your minimum cable outlay back then would still cover the cost of a couple streaming services.
What there isn't is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. The cable bundle was close to that for TV content, but very lacking for movies. So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we're going backward, since there's no more one-stop-shop.
Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Some things have fallen through the cracks, particularly long-running (going back to the pre-streaming era) major-network content like the aforementioned Survivor (a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on). And getting US content stuff internationally is often sub-par, although... I don't recall stories of this being easy at all two decades ago.
So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it's not a perfect victory for everyone.
People seem to forget how bad things used to be. We are extremely fortunate with the ability to watch what we want, when we want, without being interrupted by commercials, for an extremely low cost. There also appears to be a great deal of progress with respect to being able to view programs/movies produced for foreign markets. But the best thing is:
> you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Add to that cheaper, since you don't have to deal with connection fees. If you know that you're not going to have the time to use the service for a couple of months because you're too busy with work, you don't have to pay for it. If you have decided that you are going to spend most of your summer pursuing outdoor recreational activities, you don't have to pay for it. If you're going on the road for a few weeks (vacation or business), you don't have to pay for it. If you decide that you want to watch programming on two different streaming services, you can simply rotate through the services on a monthly basis and only pay for one service at a time.
Why do I bring all of this up when it's not directly related to the article: it's because these articles reek of entitlement. Yes, there are times when licensing causes shows or movies to fall through the cracks. On the other hand, the situation is also far better than it used to be when using the same metrics. Not only that, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive even when factoring in the cost of an Internet connection.
There is also too much "content" being made, and not enough quality movies to watch. There's a recent reddit thread[1] about this weird trend lately where more and more of what's offered is junk "made for TV" quality content. Even the word we use for it is revealing: Content. So boring. So gray and bland. Like a dry cardboard media ration made specifically to be consumed by some global ISO-standard Consumer. Everything has this odd B-movie With Big Stars hue. But two months after you view it, you struggle to even remember what it was about. Polished, featureless content, but hey, it's in 4K and stars Dwayne Johnson.
High-quality, daring, inspired, more than superficially controversial, world-changing movies are another casualty of the rise of streaming.
> Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
I feel like people say they want a la carte but that's not actually what they want. What they want is all the good content and none of the crap filler content, for cheap. People pushed for a la carte because in their mind all content costs the same, so they figured that by removing the content they don't want and only keeping the content they do want, they would save tons of money. They don't understand that the good content (live sports, FX, AMC, HBO, et al) is precisely what studios are charging a premium for and what is driving most of the cost in packages in the first place.
It's roughly akin to someone looking at a Vegas buffet that costs $100 and features 100 entrees and saying "well there are 100 entrees but really all I want is the cheese, prime rib, crab legs, and caviar, so if I remove the other 96 entrees then this should cost $4" then being shocked when they are still charged 40 dollars. Sure it's cheaper but in their minds it should be an order of magnitude cheaper than it is.
> a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on
In almost every case like that, the answer is "we can't figure out if this is licensed for streaming because it didn't exist yet". Usually it's music, which they licensed for "broadcast and video cassette release" or some similar language. In most cases they've decided DVD is close enough to VHS to still count, but is streaming? Courts haven't really decided yet.
22 years ago Napster existed. 21 years ago the Gnutella (LimeWire etc.) and eDonkey2000 networks existed. 20 years ago Kazaar and BitTorrent existed. Around that time, LAN parties with hundreds of seats and 100mbps connections existed, and attendees would use Direct Connect or simple SMB shared to download pirated media for 24 hours straight.
This is mentioned in other comments, but a large part of the reason streaming services got going was because piracy was so much more convenient than the brutal grind of actually paying for something. Users could be sitting in their living rooms with wallets out ready to go, and still choose piracy, because the only other alternative was waiting for a physical CD or DVD to arrive.
If the streaming wars do too much damage to consumers, they'll just flip the playing board and go back to piracy.
> If you look at twenty years ago, there's far more content available now, for far less money. Your minimum cable outlay back then would still cover the cost of a couple streaming services.
That's an odd argument and reminds me of the situation with science publishers that led to scihub and friends: Publishers were offering package deals to universities which technically had a wealth of content, except the vast majority of it was garbage. Nevertheless, universities had to buy the packages, because of the few flagship journals that were embedded in the packages.
> Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Who was wishing for anything here? Streaming has always been pushed by the industry as an acceptable alternative to piracy. The supppsed benefits of streaming were always part of the sales push.
I think the archaic system with tv/movies that does not exist (in the same capacity) with games and music is the point of frustration with customers. The barriers are a bit strange. Consumers aren't really averse to spending money for content they want, as evidenced not just from streaming but Steam/GOG, which by contrast directly benefits creators more. With paid streaming it's more abstracted. You're paying, but with the machinations it's unclear how well content creators are compensated or how it will eventually benefit them. Even with music the option to directly support artists, with digital download purchases, is dead easy between Bandcamp and other options. Can't do that with film, have to buy a physical copy that will be eventually be obsolete hardware, and costs more. To be fair I think there's more of a "one and done" attitude people have towards film, consumed then disposed, so streaming lends better to it.
> What there isn't is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. [...] So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we're going backward, since there's no more one-stop-shop.
This is the issue for me. My lineup of currently-"airing" shows requires subscriptions to Netflix, HBO Max, CBS All Access, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. And I feel like I'm forgetting another one or two.
To be fair, these subscriptions, in total, do cost less than what I was paying for cable back in 2005 (last time I had cable).
I don't want one streaming platform to rule them all. A monopoly doesn't sound great. So ok, we keep the idea of several competing streaming platforms. I'm sure there are downsides to this, but maybe a legal requirement for compulsory licensing to competing platforms under RAND terms might help?
> What there isn't is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want.
I would even settle for a way where I can ask, "Where can I stream X?" There used to be canistream.it -- which is apparently now being rebuilt but has long been mostly useless. Fingers crossed that it becomes useful.
>Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
"a la carte" means I don't subscribe to anything and instead I have access to "all the things" with a separate charge for each thing. The whole idea back then was to compete with the ease and access of piracy like Steam did.
That said, "careful what you wish for" currently applies to sitcom episodes for rent on Amazon costing more per minute than mega budget movies.
Per https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ a $50 cable bill from 1990 is about $110 now. Depending on where your reference point is, more streaming for less money sounds good, but don't forget Netflix was around with no real competition for a long while, and at $10/month. $50 (for Netflix+Hulu+Paramount+Disney/whatever vs $10 is quite the increase!
I remember the VHS era of renting movies. I'm fortunate enough to live in a large city that had a great, independent, rental store. Lots of selection. I suspect the selection at that rental store is better than the selection at any of these streaming services, or all of them combined.
A la carte might only make sense in a world of themed channels. After that, pricing gets hard because no one wants to pay $3 for an episode of Friends (I suppose the season is only $10), they want to rent access to everything like with Spotify, but it's complicated because sports cost a lot more than most other content, and content like reality shows is dirt cheap to make. Then there's pricing streaming movies. Everything older than 2 years included, add-on charge for new releases? People don't like microtransactions. And this is in a hypothetical world where video streaming isn't balkanized.
> So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it's not a perfect victory for everyone.
You could say the same in an alternate reality where everyone is still putting up with using Sourceforge and getting the occasional binary download bundled with malware. People would have forgotten how much more difficult it was to receive CDs by mail, so by your definition these poor alt developers would be winning.
My dad recorded many made-for-TV movies in the 1980s. These movies exist on IMDB, but nowhere else. I wonder why TV networks don't make their back catalog available.
After all, TCM seems to do well running their back catalog of movies.
What bothers me is missing shows from my Countries' offerings. Netflix is supposed to have Arrested Development. Not from my Country. Why? No information.
I want more a la carte. Give me one service without bundles where every "channel" has a price. I don't want my provider negotiating a 14-channel package for every viewer (YouTubeTV and NBC Universal). I don't want MTV and VH1, but I do want Tennis Channel (which isn't an option).
Plus, you can share it with family members. And watch on multiple devices. And turn services on/off without having to get on the phone. It's much, much better.
Star Trek Discovery started a new season this week. Usually here in the Netherlands episodes come out a day later, so I thought I'd watch the last season finale the day before it came out so I was up to speed.
Turns out Paramount pulled the show from Netflix to put it on Paramount+
As a Star Trek fan, j thought what the heck, let's see how expensive a subscription to that is. Turns out it's not available in this country. It'll launch as part of something called SkyShowtime, a separate service including multiple American streaming platforms, somewhere in 2022.
So I shrugged and added the show to Sonarr. Within minutes, I had all the episodes available for my viewing pleasure.
It's like these companies don't want my business. They pull content from my existing subscription, make it impossible for me to buy their service and then complain about the terrible threat of piracy at the same time.
It's time for someone to set up a service that aggregates all other services so viewers can enjoy their content without chasing platforms. I'll pay for the extra services once content isn't being shifted around anymore, which is clearly going to take another decade.
If anything these media companies should all have learned the obvious lesson from the last 10 years. The lesson that Gabe Newell put so succinctly years and years ago:
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service problem."
And yet they keep making this mistake over and over again. They have to make it convenient. Because what they're really competing against is a ~3 USD/month VPN subscription that lets me watch anything I want in HD quality.
The predicted fracture has started, with different networks starting their own streaming services. Luckily, there seems to be an acceptable minimum level of quality in the UI and service so far, which was one of my fears.
We subscribe to a number of the services, but it's still cheaper than cable TV and there are no commercials, and it's all "on demand" which still seems to be pretty iffy on cable directly.
I feel like it's going to be a constant struggle to only subscribe to the ones that we're actually using, but it isn't as bad as I feared yet.
I'm still predicting that they'll get ridiculously fractured, and then realize their mistake and start bundling together again.
It has kind of already happened with Paramount+ and Showtime's bundle, and I think some of the others were doing it before them even. But these bundles are just a bandaid. You still need to actually use 2 different sites/apps to view your TV, and it's hard to get a list of what shows have new episodes across all the sites/apps. We end up just starting up each app and checking until we find something we want to watch right then.
This is true and it is annoying, but there is an upside. When a streaming service starts to suck, it is super easy to cancel just that one service. Consumers finally have some pushback on the programming.
Cable ate itself when most channels realized that reality programming is astoundingly cheap to produce and it made no difference on their income. If you are subscribed to the Sci-Fi streaming service and it switches to pro wrestling content, you just cancel the service.
The anticipation on the executives part is probably something like a total squeeze on consumers, where they have no other option but to pay for these services to be in the know with the times or whatever (like how Squid Game memes have popped up everywhere overnight).
The reality on the consumer end is that people are paying less money over all. Me personally I pay for like one service and have the logins from like six family and friends. I don't even know who is paying for the underlying account, someone's mother down the line I'm sure. I'm not alone with this either. As more services pop up, people become less likely to want to have yet another individual subscription, and its very common to hear about people sharing account info among friends and family.
However it's gotten to the point of annoyance where even I will just resort to piracy half the time, with access to every streaming service at my fingertips, because there are still some movies that for whatever reason are rented digitally for something like $4 for 72 hours as if we've stepped back in time and reverted to the brick and mortar blockbuster business model for the information age vs offering a sane alternative.
It really blows my mind how merciful the RIAA has been on the otherhand allowing Spotify and Apple Music to have such a vast and unsplintered catalog.
Hulu, for Showtime and HBO pre-HBO-Max, had the best approach I've seen to bundling. Amazon offered the same stuff - and more add-ons, even - but their UI is godawful, while Hulu's has improved a lot since it's crazy redesign.
Disney doesn't seem interested in keeping a one-stop-shop, though. There's weird crosstalk where I can see NHL games from my ESPN+ subsciption on Hulu, apparently, now, but not Disney's own Disney+ stuff? And the HBO deal seems unlikely to live forever with HBO Max being its own thing now, with its own separate set of content.
I was kind of agreeing with the author, right up until he talked about setting up a pipeline involving Plex to have a good UX. Maybe I'm in the minority, and maybe I'll get downvoted, but to me, Plex has a horrific UX.
1) If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is.
2) They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN.
3) They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it.
There are other frustrations, but these are the high points. I need to find time to setup kodi again..
It's hilarious that after a decade of explosion in streaming the corps still can't (don't want to) beat the experience of torrents + mpv.
The latter is particularly interesting since there are no licensing issues. Every professional streaming service should have a better player than mpv. None actually do.
You could say that it's always like that because pirates get their content for free. However, Spotify and others managed just fine with music which used to be even more widely pirated than tv shows and movies.
(Survivor.S41E09.Whos.Who.in.the.Zoo is available on torrents in 1080p.)
As a father my guess is Disney is winning. They'd get 2X my money if they had fine print that said "You have to pay again for Frozen". Basically they just have to hook your kid on one thing and then they're getting your subscription. The number of rewatches of the same content has got to be through the roof for them.
All the other streaming services are fighting over your remaining 1-3 slots in your household. Of them it would seem Amazon looks good because they make you think you're getting a deal with Prime, but it doesn't seem to have the same pull as a 5 year old who needs to watch Disney.
The others also have the disadvantage that adults are going to know how to share an account. With kids you don't want to be coordinating it.
As for UX, I don't quite understand why anything is ever taken off the streaming service. Isn't it one of the things that makes it better than a Blockbuster? Every movie you've ever had on can be left there. There's gotta be a way to shove the long tail content on some slower/less replicated infrastructure, but maybe it isn't a technical consideration.
I think not being subjected to terrible, emotionally manipulative ads for 1/3 of the time you’re watching TV/Movies is the actual win for consumers in the streaming era.
What we need is a company to come together and make deals with all the different streaming services and put them into one interface. The could charge like $100/mo and share the fees with all the other companies.
This is obviously a joke, but honestly, it seems like the direction we are heading -- cable V2.
I really wish streaming video had a similar licensing model to audio -- pay a central licensing authority for the content, and it's the same price for everyone. Then the streaming services could compete on their UI and the content creators will compete on making popular content.
Star Trek new season got canceled just recently, because Paramount pulled it off Netflix. It was due to start coming days. Now people have ti wait until 2022 and get the then available paramount subscription on top of Netflix, Disney, and A+.
Who is willing to do that? I bet many people will opt for illegal downloads again.
There's no point in paying for essentially any streaming service these days. Piracy legitimately provides a better user experience for free if you know how to do it right
Another advantage of pirating: If you play 4K you actually get 4K, no throttling for weird reasons while internet speed is fine. On Netflix you can’t even see or verify what quality you’re actually playing (on an iPad.)
Also, it still works when crossing borders. I live close to the border between Netherlands/Germany, and moving a few km to the east means i suddenly can’t stream many videos anymore. It’s idiotic.
Want to stream while using a VPN? Nope… expect trouble too.
So many annoyances.
PS. I pirate even though i also pay for the streaming services…
Apologies if anyone is having issues with my site. It was down for a bit while I was on the road earlier, but seems to be working now. Here's an archive just in case it happens again:
Pre-streaming watching episode 9 looked like waiting and hoping the DVDs would come out for this show. They’d cost about $50 for a season.
Pre-DVD you’d just be screwed. Your show would be episodic (much of Star Trek TNG) and you’d hope to catch as much as you can on syndication or reruns.
This isn't a very strong post. Customers are losing because you can't access an episode of a show you like?
Difficulty in watching some things has been present from the earliest days of streaming, and has only been less of a pain as the world has moved away from cable. (I never had DVR, so the pre-streaming world for me meant either watch it live, record it to VHS, or maybe catch it "On Demand".)
I know what it's like to be in your situation (usually when trying to stream live sports), but the remedy is almost always to do a bit of research and decide if you want to take the path they want you to take.
I'm very happy with the streaming landscape right now, and I think it's way better than it was five years ago.
I got interested in the show Alter Ego on Fox and wanted to catch up on what I'd missed. Fox let me watch one episode before registering (and paying?) but I was able to watch it all on Youtube.
Odds are better that you find anything on Youtube than any place else unless it is a Chinese TV series that shouldn't be obscure but practically is. (Like how I had to get a bootleg of Three Kingdoms from Singapore.)
About 15 years ago, the torrent scene perfected the stack from a UX perspective. Everything was automated and xbmc was a player my 5 year old could figure out.
The licensing was off (obviously) but everything just keeps getting worse and the pirate setup still works best.
Even when I subscribe to these services it’s still better to use Plex to watch all shows together than navigate five different apps looking for new shows.
[+] [-] majormajor|4 years ago|reply
What there isn't is a good way to get a single subscription to watch anything you want. The cable bundle was close to that for TV content, but very lacking for movies. So if you want to watch a really wide sampling of TV content, it can feel like we're going backward, since there's no more one-stop-shop.
Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Some things have fallen through the cracks, particularly long-running (going back to the pre-streaming era) major-network content like the aforementioned Survivor (a random missing episode seems like a weird problem, would love to know what was going on). And getting US content stuff internationally is often sub-par, although... I don't recall stories of this being easy at all two decades ago.
So consumers are overall definitely winning, but it's not a perfect victory for everyone.
[+] [-] II2II|4 years ago|reply
> you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Add to that cheaper, since you don't have to deal with connection fees. If you know that you're not going to have the time to use the service for a couple of months because you're too busy with work, you don't have to pay for it. If you have decided that you are going to spend most of your summer pursuing outdoor recreational activities, you don't have to pay for it. If you're going on the road for a few weeks (vacation or business), you don't have to pay for it. If you decide that you want to watch programming on two different streaming services, you can simply rotate through the services on a monthly basis and only pay for one service at a time.
Why do I bring all of this up when it's not directly related to the article: it's because these articles reek of entitlement. Yes, there are times when licensing causes shows or movies to fall through the cracks. On the other hand, the situation is also far better than it used to be when using the same metrics. Not only that, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive even when factoring in the cost of an Internet connection.
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
High-quality, daring, inspired, more than superficially controversial, world-changing movies are another casualty of the rise of streaming.
1: https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/qx4rtu/i_think_movi...
[+] [-] OminousWeapons|4 years ago|reply
I feel like people say they want a la carte but that's not actually what they want. What they want is all the good content and none of the crap filler content, for cheap. People pushed for a la carte because in their mind all content costs the same, so they figured that by removing the content they don't want and only keeping the content they do want, they would save tons of money. They don't understand that the good content (live sports, FX, AMC, HBO, et al) is precisely what studios are charging a premium for and what is driving most of the cost in packages in the first place.
It's roughly akin to someone looking at a Vegas buffet that costs $100 and features 100 entrees and saying "well there are 100 entrees but really all I want is the cheese, prime rib, crab legs, and caviar, so if I remove the other 96 entrees then this should cost $4" then being shocked when they are still charged 40 dollars. Sure it's cheaper but in their minds it should be an order of magnitude cheaper than it is.
[+] [-] stefan_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|4 years ago|reply
In almost every case like that, the answer is "we can't figure out if this is licensed for streaming because it didn't exist yet". Usually it's music, which they licensed for "broadcast and video cassette release" or some similar language. In most cases they've decided DVD is close enough to VHS to still count, but is streaming? Courts haven't really decided yet.
[+] [-] strken|4 years ago|reply
This is mentioned in other comments, but a large part of the reason streaming services got going was because piracy was so much more convenient than the brutal grind of actually paying for something. Users could be sitting in their living rooms with wallets out ready to go, and still choose piracy, because the only other alternative was waiting for a physical CD or DVD to arrive.
If the streaming wars do too much damage to consumers, they'll just flip the playing board and go back to piracy.
[+] [-] xg15|4 years ago|reply
That's an odd argument and reminds me of the situation with science publishers that led to scihub and friends: Publishers were offering package deals to universities which technically had a wealth of content, except the vast majority of it was garbage. Nevertheless, universities had to buy the packages, because of the few flagship journals that were embedded in the packages.
> Careful what you wish for? The big desire then was a la carte, and right now you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Who was wishing for anything here? Streaming has always been pushed by the industry as an acceptable alternative to piracy. The supppsed benefits of streaming were always part of the sales push.
[+] [-] slothtrop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|4 years ago|reply
This is the issue for me. My lineup of currently-"airing" shows requires subscriptions to Netflix, HBO Max, CBS All Access, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. And I feel like I'm forgetting another one or two.
To be fair, these subscriptions, in total, do cost less than what I was paying for cable back in 2005 (last time I had cable).
I don't want one streaming platform to rule them all. A monopoly doesn't sound great. So ok, we keep the idea of several competing streaming platforms. I'm sure there are downsides to this, but maybe a legal requirement for compulsory licensing to competing platforms under RAND terms might help?
[+] [-] mynameisash|4 years ago|reply
I would even settle for a way where I can ask, "Where can I stream X?" There used to be canistream.it -- which is apparently now being rebuilt but has long been mostly useless. Fingers crossed that it becomes useful.
[+] [-] wintermutestwin|4 years ago|reply
"a la carte" means I don't subscribe to anything and instead I have access to "all the things" with a separate charge for each thing. The whole idea back then was to compete with the ease and access of piracy like Steam did.
That said, "careful what you wish for" currently applies to sitcom episodes for rent on Amazon costing more per minute than mega budget movies.
[+] [-] fragmede|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mymythisisthis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|4 years ago|reply
A la carte might only make sense in a world of themed channels. After that, pricing gets hard because no one wants to pay $3 for an episode of Friends (I suppose the season is only $10), they want to rent access to everything like with Spotify, but it's complicated because sports cost a lot more than most other content, and content like reality shows is dirt cheap to make. Then there's pricing streaming movies. Everything older than 2 years included, add-on charge for new releases? People don't like microtransactions. And this is in a hypothetical world where video streaming isn't balkanized.
[+] [-] margalabargala|4 years ago|reply
It would not cover a typical US internet bill with speeds to support streaming, plus a couple streaming services.
[+] [-] jancsika|4 years ago|reply
You could say the same in an alternate reality where everyone is still putting up with using Sourceforge and getting the occasional binary download bundled with malware. People would have forgotten how much more difficult it was to receive CDs by mail, so by your definition these poor alt developers would be winning.
[+] [-] Beaver117|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fshbbdssbbgdd|4 years ago|reply
Music licensing?
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
After all, TCM seems to do well running their back catalog of movies.
[+] [-] dwighttk|4 years ago|reply
I'm paying twice as much for cable internet as I used to pay for basic cable, before even starting to pay for a streaming service.
[+] [-] anothernewdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZetaZero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freetinker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stocknoob|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hypx_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeroenhd|4 years ago|reply
Turns out Paramount pulled the show from Netflix to put it on Paramount+
As a Star Trek fan, j thought what the heck, let's see how expensive a subscription to that is. Turns out it's not available in this country. It'll launch as part of something called SkyShowtime, a separate service including multiple American streaming platforms, somewhere in 2022.
So I shrugged and added the show to Sonarr. Within minutes, I had all the episodes available for my viewing pleasure.
It's like these companies don't want my business. They pull content from my existing subscription, make it impossible for me to buy their service and then complain about the terrible threat of piracy at the same time.
It's time for someone to set up a service that aggregates all other services so viewers can enjoy their content without chasing platforms. I'll pay for the extra services once content isn't being shifted around anymore, which is clearly going to take another decade.
[+] [-] Oddskar|4 years ago|reply
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service problem."
And yet they keep making this mistake over and over again. They have to make it convenient. Because what they're really competing against is a ~3 USD/month VPN subscription that lets me watch anything I want in HD quality.
[+] [-] wccrawford|4 years ago|reply
We subscribe to a number of the services, but it's still cheaper than cable TV and there are no commercials, and it's all "on demand" which still seems to be pretty iffy on cable directly.
I feel like it's going to be a constant struggle to only subscribe to the ones that we're actually using, but it isn't as bad as I feared yet.
I'm still predicting that they'll get ridiculously fractured, and then realize their mistake and start bundling together again.
It has kind of already happened with Paramount+ and Showtime's bundle, and I think some of the others were doing it before them even. But these bundles are just a bandaid. You still need to actually use 2 different sites/apps to view your TV, and it's hard to get a list of what shows have new episodes across all the sites/apps. We end up just starting up each app and checking until we find something we want to watch right then.
[+] [-] jandrese|4 years ago|reply
Cable ate itself when most channels realized that reality programming is astoundingly cheap to produce and it made no difference on their income. If you are subscribed to the Sci-Fi streaming service and it switches to pro wrestling content, you just cancel the service.
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
The reality on the consumer end is that people are paying less money over all. Me personally I pay for like one service and have the logins from like six family and friends. I don't even know who is paying for the underlying account, someone's mother down the line I'm sure. I'm not alone with this either. As more services pop up, people become less likely to want to have yet another individual subscription, and its very common to hear about people sharing account info among friends and family.
However it's gotten to the point of annoyance where even I will just resort to piracy half the time, with access to every streaming service at my fingertips, because there are still some movies that for whatever reason are rented digitally for something like $4 for 72 hours as if we've stepped back in time and reverted to the brick and mortar blockbuster business model for the information age vs offering a sane alternative.
It really blows my mind how merciful the RIAA has been on the otherhand allowing Spotify and Apple Music to have such a vast and unsplintered catalog.
[+] [-] majormajor|4 years ago|reply
Disney doesn't seem interested in keeping a one-stop-shop, though. There's weird crosstalk where I can see NHL games from my ESPN+ subsciption on Hulu, apparently, now, but not Disney's own Disney+ stuff? And the HBO deal seems unlikely to live forever with HBO Max being its own thing now, with its own separate set of content.
[+] [-] drewg123|4 years ago|reply
1) If I import something its scanners cant' scrape metadata for, it might as well not even exist. Its not displayed to me at all. I have to fiddle with title and re-scan until its metatdata scraper finally realizes what it is.
2) They've gone to some dark patterns to convince you to make a plex account and log in, just to talk to a server on the same LAN.
3) They now hide your content and promote their own streaming content in a tv-channels like grid. I don't want any of that, I just want my movie library, don't make me scroll for it.
There are other frustrations, but these are the high points. I need to find time to setup kodi again..
[+] [-] blfr|4 years ago|reply
The latter is particularly interesting since there are no licensing issues. Every professional streaming service should have a better player than mpv. None actually do.
You could say that it's always like that because pirates get their content for free. However, Spotify and others managed just fine with music which used to be even more widely pirated than tv shows and movies.
(Survivor.S41E09.Whos.Who.in.the.Zoo is available on torrents in 1080p.)
[+] [-] lordnacho|4 years ago|reply
All the other streaming services are fighting over your remaining 1-3 slots in your household. Of them it would seem Amazon looks good because they make you think you're getting a deal with Prime, but it doesn't seem to have the same pull as a 5 year old who needs to watch Disney.
The others also have the disadvantage that adults are going to know how to share an account. With kids you don't want to be coordinating it.
As for UX, I don't quite understand why anything is ever taken off the streaming service. Isn't it one of the things that makes it better than a Blockbuster? Every movie you've ever had on can be left there. There's gotta be a way to shove the long tail content on some slower/less replicated infrastructure, but maybe it isn't a technical consideration.
[+] [-] bikeshaving|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|4 years ago|reply
This is obviously a joke, but honestly, it seems like the direction we are heading -- cable V2.
I really wish streaming video had a similar licensing model to audio -- pay a central licensing authority for the content, and it's the same price for everyone. Then the streaming services could compete on their UI and the content creators will compete on making popular content.
[+] [-] shoto_io|4 years ago|reply
Who is willing to do that? I bet many people will opt for illegal downloads again.
[+] [-] zibzab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threevox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avalys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavideNL|4 years ago|reply
Also, it still works when crossing borders. I live close to the border between Netherlands/Germany, and moving a few km to the east means i suddenly can’t stream many videos anymore. It’s idiotic.
Want to stream while using a VPN? Nope… expect trouble too.
So many annoyances.
PS. I pirate even though i also pay for the streaming services…
[+] [-] anderspitman|4 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20211119221003/https://apitman.c...
[+] [-] softwaredoug|4 years ago|reply
Pre-DVD you’d just be screwed. Your show would be episodic (much of Star Trek TNG) and you’d hope to catch as much as you can on syndication or reruns.
[+] [-] Brendinooo|4 years ago|reply
Difficulty in watching some things has been present from the earliest days of streaming, and has only been less of a pain as the world has moved away from cable. (I never had DVR, so the pre-streaming world for me meant either watch it live, record it to VHS, or maybe catch it "On Demand".)
I know what it's like to be in your situation (usually when trying to stream live sports), but the remedy is almost always to do a bit of research and decide if you want to take the path they want you to take.
I'm very happy with the streaming landscape right now, and I think it's way better than it was five years ago.
[+] [-] mgaunard|4 years ago|reply
Can you not just download stuff from NZB and use whatever open-source software you like to stream and play it on your computer device of choice?
[+] [-] tamaharbor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|4 years ago|reply
Odds are better that you find anything on Youtube than any place else unless it is a Chinese TV series that shouldn't be obscure but practically is. (Like how I had to get a bootleg of Three Kingdoms from Singapore.)
[+] [-] prepend|4 years ago|reply
The licensing was off (obviously) but everything just keeps getting worse and the pirate setup still works best.
Even when I subscribe to these services it’s still better to use Plex to watch all shows together than navigate five different apps looking for new shows.