Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.
hungmung · 31m ago
It's almost like the corporate culture of being a bunch of greedy control freaks will push customers away when they have an alternative.
mvdtnz · 6m ago
That quote is literally in the article you didn't read.
neves · 56m ago
For me worse than the can't pay is the lack of options. In the VHS time I had more good movie options than in the current streaming services. I remember when I bing watched Kurozawa or Mario Monicelli's movies. Now it's very hard to find non American cinema. The tech is there, but the System fail us.
epolanski · 49m ago
Even many American movies are no shows on most streaming platforms. Sometimes I'm like: "Let's take the top 30 movies that critics loved the most in US in year X".
As soon as it's earlier than 2005 you're gonna find less than half available across most streaming platforms, unless for renting/buying.
whobre · 26m ago
Yep. I swear I liked the old Netflix with DVDs better. I could rent pretty much any movie I wanted.
rgblambda · 21m ago
Netflix found that while it was a nice advertising tool to boast about the broadness of its catalogue, most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff so it wasn't particularly profitable.
piva00 · 4m ago
MUBI is a good option for the more high cinema stuff, one of the few subscriptions I'd feel sad canceling.
weeznerps · 53m ago
Criterion Channel and Kanopy are very good (not perfect) for international films.
vhanda · 1h ago
All streaming services should have a pay per minute system as an alternative to the fixed monthly subscription.
That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it would be convenient, instead of piracy.
And it would be a reason for them to really improve their recommendation systems.
mvdtnz · 2m ago
That would only suit a portion of their user base and completely ream people who use Netflix to entertain/occupy their kids, who use TV shows to fall asleep, etc. Not to mention throwing away valuable subscriber dollars from idle users like me who maintain a subscription but rarely watch anything (mostly because there's nothing good on the entire platform).
sunrunner · 47m ago
> pay per minute system
And/or pay-per-episode, pay-per-season or pay-per-show. So I don't have to start thinking ahead too much about the _length_ of something and can just enjoy the thing itself based on some pre-determined price.
Fire-Dragon-DoL · 18m ago
Pay per episode could be an ok granularity. Anything above that I'm not ok, there is too much garbage
sunrunner · 2m ago
Perhaps pay-per-episode with a discounted price for an entire series (and an option to buy the remainders taking that into account). It seems fair to be able to dip your toe into a series and try a few episodes before committing. On the other hand, that seems just a bit too consumer-friendly...
duxup · 35m ago
I think they know how many dead / inactive subscriptions they have.
prasadjoglekar · 52m ago
A bundle of streaming services. That you can surf and choose one from and just watch. And a TV guide that tells you what's running where.
Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.
Sarcasm aside, the one problem folks had with Cable was the inability to upgrade without getting locked into another 2 year contract. Streaming solves that one problem while enshittifying all the other good things.
rkomorn · 48m ago
I thought the main complaint was "I'm paying for channels I don't watch!" while not realizing the channels they were watching were actually what they were paying for, and the rest of the stuff was just lumped in for nearly free to make the lineups look bigger and more appealing.
sunrunner · 46m ago
For some reason I always saw it in reverse, that I had to pay to subsidise a set of channels I'm _not_ interested in for the one I am.
nickthegreek · 46m ago
I assure you that there are many people who do not need nor want ESPN and knew damn well they were directly paying it.
nickthegreek · 47m ago
> .. the one problem folks had with Cable was the i...
and hardware rental fees
ads on top of your service
bundling a bunch of channels you didnt ask for and increase price
outages
the list goes on
not_your_vase · 1h ago
About 10 years ago Netflix became available in the country where I was living back then. I was very excited about it, I was on their email list for years, waiting for the announcement. As I got the email that they are available, after work literally the first thing I did was to grab my credit card, and subscribe.
I found 4-6 movies I wanted to watch, but when I saw that they had Godfather 1 and 3 without 2, I had a good laugh. Then I watched all the Archer episodes they had, and tried to find something interesting for 2 more days before I cancelled my (still trial) account.
Though I stopped watching movies some years ago, until than I used to watch them on the same old pre-netflix way.
Of course I have heard that they have spent many billions on content since then, I'm sure they have some interesting stuff... but that came way too late for me.
Maybe I'm getting old, lol
neves · 53m ago
If a movie has a Netflix label in it, it is a sure signal of a bad movie with a boring script made based on data.
This includes movies "streamed or distributed" by Netflix. Like the parent mentioned, Netflix has streamed the Godfather.
If you click through the movies on that list, you will find that almost none of them were actually produced by Netflix.
Movies produced by Netflix are highly likely to be as described, with a small handful of exceptions.
sunrunner · 24m ago
I mean when your company has enough money to essentially bankroll the creation of a greater-than-average number of productions and simply pay the individuals involved in the production of these films whatever it takes to get them on board, isn't it sort of inevitable that you end up featuring in the list of awards a greater-than-average number of times?
epolanski · 47m ago
Based on data (and Twitter) part is true of any studio since a decade, in any case Netflix has produced or co-produced a good bunch of movies.
Also, some excellent documentaries.
zo1 · 31m ago
We should coin a new term: "Straight to Netflix"
o0banky0o · 8m ago
A useful distinction is that upload is piracy and download is not.
godzillabrennus · 19m ago
I started buying Blu-ray discs and ripping them to my computer, where I run Plex. Why? I had a long-time subscription to HBO Max, but a few years ago, I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO. I ended up buying a season on Apple for the price of a monthly subscription to HBO. I cancelled my HBO subscription. I realized that second-hand Blu-ray discs of shows were selling for dirt cheap. I spent $40 to buy the rest of the seasons of Westworld on Blu-ray.
Clearly, new shows aren't getting Blu-ray releases, so this won't work for you if you care about new shows. My wife and I are so over the dystopian view from modern science fiction that we started focusing on shows from the late 1900s (80s/90s) to get more of a positive outlook from our entertainment. We are now going through Stargate SG-1.
duxup · 34m ago
I think a lot of the services competed themselves into a pricing corner with low subscription costs.
Now the audience is used to that pricing and doesn't like pricing relative to the price of the content.
jihadjihad · 44m ago
My thing is that we are expected to pay in perpetuity for the privilege of accessing content. It's rent, and it is just tiresome.
Yes I understand that we have content available on far more devices than 30 years ago, when all we had was the TV in the living room. But should I have to pay in perpetuity to show my kids Moana?
Screw streaming. I bought a smart TV a few years back. Services discontinued within 3 years. No external commercial streaming boxes work because of HDCP issues. Back to piracy until the TV gives up. Streamers and smart TV people, you had your chance and you blew it. I'm not paying through the nose any more.
buyucu · 23m ago
Having multiple streaming accounts just to watch a couple of shows I like is such an unnecessary hassle. It's much more easier just to pirate.
ModernMech · 26m ago
Yeah, because you pay for the thing and you still can't watch it!
Last year they brought Andor to Hulu and every time I played it on my brand new LG TV, the video would be completely green while I could hear the audio underneath. It only happened to Andor because apparently they had some super special DRM, which ostensibly would restrict people who weren't authorized from viewing it, but had the effect of also preventing authorized people from viewing as well. So in the end, they can't even satisfy willing customers who have their wallets open. Of course they're going to turn to piracy.
Of course, the rights holders got my money and as far as they're concerned, their DRM move was great for the bottom line.
y-curious · 21m ago
Fwiw the LG operating system kind of sucks. I got an Apple TV and it's been infinitely better. Paramount Plus was wholly unusable on the TV
jbirer · 1h ago
My main issue is that they're now slowly testing the waters to see if they can make you watch ads while still paying for the subscription, and at that point, might as well take advantage of Romania's lack of law enforcement and hit the torrent websites.
rootsudo · 12m ago
Thats what they said about cable too, pay for it so no ads. Then the ads came.
platevoltage · 59m ago
It's amazing how blurred the line is getting between streaming and cable TV.
sunrunner · 36m ago
It really doesn't seem like it has to be that complicated, yet somehow we've gone from channels with markedly anti-consumer fixed bundles to a massively fragmented ecosystem where it genuinely seems like the streaming services _don't_ actually want you to subscribe by the amount of the effort that goes into making things hard to watch or doing everything that could make the streaming experience worse (region availability, paid tier ads, lower bitrate stream quality, and so on).
squigz · 19m ago
It already came full circle some years ago when we started seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies pulling their content from other platforms to put on their own. Then you had to start thinking about what servces you need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like cable!
Absurd.
nickthegreek · 44m ago
they are done testing the waters. its standard practice for the majority.
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
All of these streaming services have started cracking down on family and friend account sharing to game their stock price. Turns out kicking off the broke college students doesn’t lead to them signing up for ~$80/mo. smattering of streaming services.
kotaKat · 1h ago
It’s also getting tiring of this massive fragmentation of streaming services as a whole combined with a weird game of rebundling various providers in either deals direct from the streaming platforms/their overlords, or rebundling all of these streaming services into “free” offers with other service providers and THEIR offerings.
Even my goddamn cable company does this now offering me one of the streaming services? with my Spectrum plan. I don’t even know which one(s).
Quite frankly, I’m tired of my Verizon plan trying to cram Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and crap down my throat, I’m tired of Walmart trying to cram Paramount+ at me with Walmart+. However, the market of ‘average (dumb) people’ seems to love this concept as “little extras” that eventually cause scope creep to their bill over time (and we all lose as a result).
rkomorn · 46m ago
There are services I already pay for that I'd likely save a handful of dollars on per month if I bundled them with my other services... but I can't bring myself to do it out of stubborn principle.
And that doesn't even actually list the movies, which are even more fragmented.
And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_ seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now encompasses:
- Availability by Company
- Availability by Global Region
- Stream Quality
- Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?)
- Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any other media accessibility options
[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...
Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.
As soon as it's earlier than 2005 you're gonna find less than half available across most streaming platforms, unless for renting/buying.
That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it would be convenient, instead of piracy.
And it would be a reason for them to really improve their recommendation systems.
And/or pay-per-episode, pay-per-season or pay-per-show. So I don't have to start thinking ahead too much about the _length_ of something and can just enjoy the thing itself based on some pre-determined price.
Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.
Sarcasm aside, the one problem folks had with Cable was the inability to upgrade without getting locked into another 2 year contract. Streaming solves that one problem while enshittifying all the other good things.
and hardware rental fees
ads on top of your service
bundling a bunch of channels you didnt ask for and increase price
outages
the list goes on
I found 4-6 movies I wanted to watch, but when I saw that they had Godfather 1 and 3 without 2, I had a good laugh. Then I watched all the Archer episodes they had, and tried to find something interesting for 2 more days before I cancelled my (still trial) account.
Though I stopped watching movies some years ago, until than I used to watch them on the same old pre-netflix way.
Of course I have heard that they have spent many billions on content since then, I'm sure they have some interesting stuff... but that came way too late for me.
Maybe I'm getting old, lol
If you click through the movies on that list, you will find that almost none of them were actually produced by Netflix.
Movies produced by Netflix are highly likely to be as described, with a small handful of exceptions.
Also, some excellent documentaries.
Clearly, new shows aren't getting Blu-ray releases, so this won't work for you if you care about new shows. My wife and I are so over the dystopian view from modern science fiction that we started focusing on shows from the late 1900s (80s/90s) to get more of a positive outlook from our entertainment. We are now going through Stargate SG-1.
Now the audience is used to that pricing and doesn't like pricing relative to the price of the content.
Yes I understand that we have content available on far more devices than 30 years ago, when all we had was the TV in the living room. But should I have to pay in perpetuity to show my kids Moana?
https://www.amazon.com/Moana-Ron-Clements/dp/B01MAZGH7Z/ref=...
Last year they brought Andor to Hulu and every time I played it on my brand new LG TV, the video would be completely green while I could hear the audio underneath. It only happened to Andor because apparently they had some super special DRM, which ostensibly would restrict people who weren't authorized from viewing it, but had the effect of also preventing authorized people from viewing as well. So in the end, they can't even satisfy willing customers who have their wallets open. Of course they're going to turn to piracy.
Of course, the rights holders got my money and as far as they're concerned, their DRM move was great for the bottom line.
Absurd.
Even my goddamn cable company does this now offering me one of the streaming services? with my Spectrum plan. I don’t even know which one(s).
Quite frankly, I’m tired of my Verizon plan trying to cram Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and crap down my throat, I’m tired of Walmart trying to cram Paramount+ at me with Walmart+. However, the market of ‘average (dumb) people’ seems to love this concept as “little extras” that eventually cause scope creep to their bill over time (and we all lose as a result).