

Netflix, Amazon and Hulu No Longer Find Themselves Upstarts in Online Streaming - ryan_j_naughton
http://nytimes.com/2015/03/25/business/media/netflix-amazon-and-hulu-no-longer-find-themselves-tvs-upstarts.html

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aaviran
As a consumer, I don't like the direction where streaming services are headed
- many small services with limited content (original or not).

I've been a Netflix customer for years now (I also had Hulu Plus, cancelled it
due to their then-horrendous interface). While in the past I was very
impressed with Netflix's selection, I now find it... meh, despite all the
original content. When I pay Netflix, it's not for one, two or ten specific
shows, no matter how much I liked House Of Cards or Orange Is The New Black.
It's for a big, diverse, easy-to-explore library, in which I can discover new
content and I _always_ have something to watch.

And as much as I like HBO programs, there is no chance I'll pay 15$/m for
their streaming service, especially after I've already watched most of the
content! I understand everybody wants a piece of that streaming revenue pie,
but as a consumer, I can't but feel that this situation is bad for me.

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coloroadie
That's exactly why the cable guys have been saying that bundling is the most
economic option for consumers that want a large content catalog. As content
creators stand up their own streaming services they'll begin to pull their
content from third party streaming services (see Starz/Netflix). Consumers
will eventually have two choices: purchase a very small subset of services
directly from providers or go back to the big bundle.

Netflix and Amazon realize this, which is why they're scrambling to become
content creators. Without original content, they're doomed to be nothing more
than the Internet version of Nick at Nite.

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virmundi
I wonder if there is a third way, just not consuming content. As netflix
becomes narrower as well as others in the space, could it led to a natural dry
out of media? If I'm trained to not really use Netflix, but I already learned
to get rid of cable bundles, I think I'll look to spend my time somewhere
else.

I'm already doing this. For the most part I don't want to watch Netflix. I
watch because my wife watches. I'm on my phone most of the time the TV is
going.

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coloroadie
The average American watches 34 hours of TV a week. Keep in mind: the HN
audience is not representative of your average American. I don't think the
media companies are too worried about a natural dry out.

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cheriot
The streaming services created the a la carte programming people have wanted
from cable companies. They don't have a choice, content owners don't want any
of them to have too much bargaining power.

[http://www.lazyfan.com](http://www.lazyfan.com)

One big problem is the lack of a TV guide equivalent. I've been taking a crack
at this problem and have a prototype for movies (TV shows are still TODO).

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jstx
XBMC has a solution for TV, but it only applies to your own hosted media. Take
a look at PseudoTV.

I was actually writing a similar plugin for Plex.tv last year until my client
hours put that on the backburner indefinitely.

~~~
cheriot
I'll check out PseudoTV when I get home. Thanks.

I have a long list of tools that do something similar and I've not come across
that one before.

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ctdonath
Ok, so long-term participants aren't new anymore.

What's much more interesting is the death of the "long tail service" which
attracted so many to these services in the first place: the implicit promise
that their goal was to provide _everything_ in their catalogs, meaning you
could give up buying media outright because they'd have & host whatever you
could want. ...then others saw how very much money Netflix et al were making,
and either raised their licensing costs/terms or made their own streaming
services focused on some feature other than "long tail".

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fluidcruft
This is partly what makes Redbox is so infuriatingly frustrating. Netflix DVDs
are in awful shape and waits for the "long tail" disks are insane.

I really can't get behind the online rentals because they feel like
Blockbuster-style ripoffs. At the same time that I can rent a new release from
Redbox for $1.50, streaming wants to charging $4 for the exact same show.

Public library inter-library requests are becoming the only answer anymore but
it's so much freaking friction. And the local public library late fee policies
here would make 90's Blockbuster look like saints...

And I'm getting really, really tired of the Netflix streaming new releases
being exactly the same movies that are concurrently playing free on the HDTV
subchannel broadcasts (ThisTV, BounceTV, etc) or on Crackle. Netflix doesn't
have commercials, whoopee, I guess. That's only an issue because stupid
streaming sites don't allow ad fastforwards (which a DVR handles wonderfully)

And while I'm ranting, who at Sony thought that anyone pushing the eject
button on a Bluray player wants to stand around twiddling their thumbs while
the player mines a bitcoin block or whatever it's doing before spitting out
the tray? Sorry, I digress.

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ctdonath
"No ads" is huge for many of us. I'll pay $7/mo to not have my time wasted &
wallet seduced & continuity unbroken. Children in particular I want not
exposed to ads, as they suddenly & passionately want something _stupid_
(PopTarts? A teddy bear with a fishbowl for a belly? SpongeBob anything?
Borderline R-rated trailers? WTH? keep that crap away from my under-7yo kids).

Redbox at $1.50 vs. iTunes at ~$4 is a fine tradeoff per: cheap & max data
rate but travel time & unpredictable availability vs. right now & always
available vs. marginally more expensive & lower data rate.

As for buttons, why does the "Play" button _not do anything_ when "Play" is
selected on the disc menu? on _every_ disc player out there?!?

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fluidcruft
Agree about "no ads" being important. But comparing Netflix to DVR OTA is a
very different proposition than comparing it with the abomination of ad-
straight-jacketed streaming apps.

Streaming apps don't let you skip and play the same damn apps all the time. On
DVR it's just a fast-forward and it's not so difficult (caveat I use a TiVo
for this and I know they have a warchest of patents so I have no idea whether
it is worse on competing DVRs).

With respect to kids programming, honestly the Netflix kids section is
basically a huge toy product ad. It's full of the product crap. Bratz this,
Ponies that, Shortcake that, Legos this, Star Wars that, Barbie this,
Tikerbell that, Disney fad-coms etc and Netflix doesn't let you blacklist any
of that shit. Even rating it low, they'll still shove all the related shit in
front of your kids. The best we can find are European imports and PBS shows.
But you can get PBS shows without ads already.

Basically, for us Netflix streaming is becoming useful only for it's kids
programming but we've started building a local streaming media library because
we are so unsatisfied with the entire experience vs what it could and should
be.

There is very little interesting to watch on Netflix. With Netflix DVD you at
least used to (lately it's only true on paper, not in execution) have access
to quality programming in addition to the crap. There was a time when Netflix
content was broader than local rental options. Now the local rental options
have disappeared and Netflix only cares about serving the 90% of the idiots of
the world.

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ponyous
Can you read the article without subscribing/logging in? There are more and
more posts like that. Damn

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JTon
Did the original link change? I can read the article without logging in

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ponyous
No idea, I still cannot access it.

Only the header is fully exposed, everything else behind some semi-transparent
overlay. It seems that on on initial page load everything was visible and then
hidden with JS.

And there is a link behind overlay: "To see full article, subscribe here."

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Gurkenmaster
You probably ran out of free views. NY Times requires a subscription but the
first 10 articles per month can be viewed without paying.

