
How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess - zonotope
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/13/how-dream-cheap-streaming-television-became-pricey-complicated-mess/
======
gregmac
After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The
timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the
fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming
service.

It's kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to
the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a
reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content -
which is not really competition. I don't care what studio makes funny_show
(either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what
app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don't want to watch
similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service.

What's crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is
currently involved in. It's bad enough to not only see what the music industry
was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without
dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already
went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the
studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2].

[1] [https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-
ris...](https://www.maketecheasier.com/internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise/)

[2]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

~~~
SilasX
>I don't care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to
subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I
just want to watch it.

There's a joke that this is exactly what cable TV was.

Back then: "This is ridiculous! I'm paying for all these channels when I only
watch two or three of them. I should be able to pay for just the ones I use."

Now: "This is ridiculous! Every time I find something I want to watch, I have
to subscribe to a new service!"

~~~
notyourwork
Hilarious how the op and others have come full circle. I think what people
want is something more akin to cable 2.0. Better interfaces and browsing but
consolidation of all content so avoid this fragmentation we are moving closer
and closer to.

~~~
diogenescynic
Doensn't that already exist? Sling and DirecTV Now are basically just cable-
lite services that you stream. I actually like these better than Netflix or
Hulu.

------
chadash
Yes, if you want what you had before, then streaming isn't going to save you
money. However, with the current system, I can pay $50/month for cable and
then get whatever else I actually want when I want it. I get YouTube TV but
only during the football season. I enjoy and pay for Netflix. I rent movies
occasionally on Amazon, which I have Prime for, but I'd be paying for that
anyway for package deliveries. If I had a kid at the right age, I'd probably
shell out for Disney.

Overall, I pay a lot less than I would for cable and I get 90% of what I'd use
anyway. So I pay a medium amount, but use everything I pay for. Compare this
with cable where you pay a lot and use very little of what you pay for.

~~~
asark
I think cell phones, not streaming, replaced cable, as far as monthly bills.
Home Internet replaced the home phone bill, cell phones replaced the cable
bill.

I bet lots of households are north of $200/mo between the two, which is
probably close to (somewhat higher than—inflation, after all, plus we may just
be spending a little more on this stuff) what phone + cable/satellite used to
run for the some sorts of households.

A streaming subscription or two's nothing next to those, though tack a couple
on top and we _are_ probably paying more, inflation adjusted, for this stuff
than we used to. It's cell phones that're really soaking up the dollars,
though. We've got about the worst you can get and still have any data (very
low data limit) and it's still almost $100 for two lines, and we own both our
phones outright so aren't paying the monthly add-on for a phone payment.

~~~
fwip
I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the
internet.

Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay
~$55 combined monthly on Ting.

~~~
asark
> I think cell phones eliminated the home phone line for most people, not the
> internet.

Right, in functionality, but if you think in terms of a kind of _slot_ for
bills, I think home Internet fits close into where the phone bill used to
(think back when phone bills were kinda high, especially if you wanted caller
ID and voicemail and such, once those came around, or long distance) while
cell phones tend to be a little higher and fit roughly where cable/satellite
used to, as far as proportion of telecom bill goes.

> Edit: I recommend US mobile or Ting for cheap phone plans. My wife and I pay
> ~$55 combined monthly on Ting.

Yeah, probably time for us to shop around again. We're on T-Mobile, which was
easily the cheapest option from the big carriers at the time we picked it. We
like that we still get (much slower) Internet service if we hit our tiny cap,
which we can do by accidentally watching youtube for a few minutes with the
wifi off. But maybe we should look at re-sellers. Seems crazy that they could
be cheaper than going first-party, but I guess maybe they are, somehow.

[EDIT] is that $55 with taxes and fees and such? I remember last time I looked
into this, maybe a year ago, what I kept running into was that it looked like
I'd save a lot looking at sales' version of the figures, but when it came time
to get serious about paying and those things got added in it was no savings,
or maybe just single digit $/mo so not really worth a switch.

~~~
fwip
Looking at my bank account statements, it looks like it was $42 for the last
two months, and $52 for the two months before that, so that's after
taxes/fees.

It varies based on usage, and we're fairly light on data, so you might see
higher numbers. (No cap, but if you use more you get billed more.)

------
edgarvaldes
There is a view that has been expressed several times in HN when this topic is
touched: "Netflix has enough current or future material (Netflix Originals) so
that I can see it for the rest of my life, I do not really care if the quality
is 10/10, I only use it as a form of light entertainment."

However, for other people, like me, the quality of art is essential, and we do
want to see the best that has been produced this year and the past 100 years.
Where is this material? How can I consume good European cinema from the 50s
and 60s? Where can I consume the best Latin American cinema from the 80s? etc.

~~~
dre85
Maybe people don't want to watch exclusively Netflix's originals. I personally
wish there was a UI feature to just hide all of Netflix's own crap and show me
what else they have. Of course that feature will never exist.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Weird, to me, that you judge the quality only on the financier. Do you do this
the other way -- is their a company that you'll always watch?

If you don't mind, do you generally go with labels rather than attempting to
judge goods/services on their innate qualities?

Seems like one could download a list of all Netflix content somehow and filter
out their self-financed stuff? Would be a bit clunky.

------
bluetidepro
I feel like too many people don't value how easy it is to signup and cancel
these services. As others have mentioned in the comments, I usually rotate my
subscriptions quite a bit throughout the year depending what shows are coming
out, and that context is huge. Hulu, SlingTV, PS Vue, Netflix, Prime, etc. all
make it SUPER easy and hassle free to deactivate/resume all the services on
any whim. You can do it all in their interface in minutes. That's such an
underrated feature that many forget about. Trying to cancel and resume cable
with companies like Comcast is nothing short of a nightmare. They have 0
respect for the user's time, and they always try to hit you with sketchy
hidden fees and dark pattern UX's.

I'm personally very happy with this new system of being able to rotate, and
juggle services where it makes sense and get the content I want, wherever it
is offered. I don't mind putting that burden on myself to manage because it's
easy with all the services, and at the end of the day, having no commercials
and that freedom to choose is all I every wanted. Not to mention, it's still
all cheaper than traditional cable.

------
s17n
The dream of cheap streaming television will always stupid. Given that there's
zero marginal cost to distributing content, "unbundling" doesn't ultimately
reduce providers' costs at all (of course it's not quite this simple, you have
several players involved in providing content - studios, cable operators,
aggregators like netflix, etc - but in the long run these details don't
matter). So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would
anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease? On average they should
remain the same. Maybe everybody expected to be on the lucky side of average?
Or maybe people just hadn't thought this through at all.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> So given that the costs of production haven't been lowered, why would
> anybody expect the cost to the consumer to decrease?

This was the part of the story I never understood. There seemed to be some
sort of implied "and then VCs will subsidise things until everyone permanently
accepts lower profit margins in order to lower costs". Which just didn't seem
like a terribly plausible sequence of events.

It kinda reminds me of how everyone thought e-books of the latest Harry Potter
should cost $1 (compared to a more expensive print book) and, surprise, it
didn't work out that way either.

~~~
village-idiot
Turns out that physical books and DVDs were a minuscule part of what made
books and movies expensive. Who knew?*

* Lots of people knew this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And a lot of people didn't. It's hard to internalize how cheap _matter_ is at
scale. For a long time I really did think most of a book's cost is in
printing. I still catch myself assuming a random product is expensive because
of its manufacturing; it's a hard habit to kick.

------
azhenley
I rotate through streaming services every few months, catching up on the
latest shows then canceling.

I much prefer this to traditional cable!

~~~
moviuro
Do you lose all content associated with your account each time, though? Like
"sub-profiles", already watched shows, language preferences, etc.?

~~~
iainmerrick
Who cares? Is any of that particularly valuable? Setting up your language
prefs again surely only takes a minute or two.

~~~
moviuro
Not having to skim through already-watched or downvoted shows is a gain of
time, which is probably valuable if one takes the time to (un)subscribe
regularly.

------
tristanperry
> Disney’s service will cost just over half the monthly price of the most
> popular Netflix plan... The goal is to achieve revenue through reach, not
> overcharging.

That sounds exactly like what Netflix promised originally: cheap
subscriptions, growing revenue through reach not higher prices.

Y'know, like when they offered a $11.99/month subscription in 2017... which
now costs $15.99/month - a 33% rise in 1.5 years, whilst reducing the amount
of content available.

~~~
nickjj
> whilst reducing the amount of content available.

This is the part that bothers me the most. I've been a subscriber to Netflix
since 2008 and I'm getting pretty close to cancelling the streaming service.

I subscribe to the "standard" plan which is about to go up to $12.99 next
month (from $10.99). Realistically the +$2/month isn't going to break me but
it's the lack of content that will.

Almost every time I want to go watch something on Netflix, it's like "oh yeah,
I remember watching Contact a few years ago on instant watch, let's do it
up!... Oh wait, it's been removed". Then I'll think about 5 other movies I
want to watch which I know I've watched in the past and they are gone too.
Before you know it, I've spent 15 minutes trying to find something to watch
where I end up just turning it off and doing something else.

It feels like you have to watch what Netflix is adding / removing every month
instead of being able to select what you want to watch. To make matters worse
I have an older smart DVD player and the Netflix UI doesn't show titles that
are going to be removed if you have them added to your watch list (it only
shows either or, and the watch list text always wins), which makes it a huge
pain to tell if a title is about to expire since I have to use a third party
website which breaks me from the watching / browsing experience.

I'll probably cancel in a few months and just stick with the 1 DVD out at a
time plan which has nearly every movie. Sure the DVD plan is horrible for
watching shows because of how long it would take to finish them due to
shipping logistics but I watch more movies than shows.

~~~
hef19898
True that! I remember that a couple of years ago Amazon and Netflix had a
great overlap in the center, Netflix added at the show end of the spectrum
while Amazon did the same with movies. Then it drifted away but you still
could get most content by just the two with the monthly subscriptions.

And now some content isn't there at all, some is buy-only and some is rental.
Factor in that everything Disney will be gone soon that sucks. Streaming got
me away from "alternative" sources, if they continue like that might just
return

Disclaimer: That counts for Germany

------
jdofaz
What we have now is the À la carte I always wanted that old media said we
couldn’t have.

I still pay less than I ever did with cable, I don’t have to subsidize ESPN or
Fox News and I don’t have to waste time watching or fast forwarding through
ads.

I think what we have now is fantastic.

~~~
alkonaut
But isn't this the _opposite_ of À la carte? You have 2-3 massive "cartes"
with content and all you can do is eat everyting on one menu. Or switch
between them. If you like showA and a family member likes showB it's now not a
fight over the remote, it's a fight over which month to subscribe to which
service.

Also since HBO/Netflix et.al don't carry regular live TV, most of us still
keep their regular TV subscriptions for news/sports etc., making it not a
replacement for TV but an expensive luxury extra.

------
ajmurmann
The golden age to be really was around 2009 when I was able to buy pretty much
every show I wanted for download on Amazon or iTunes and pay for just that.
Now with Netflix and Amazon prime etc. we just traded one form of bundling for
another.

The only advantage is that I can rotate between some streaming services (e.g
last month Netflix, now HBO bc GoT, then Showtime for Billions..)

~~~
hsod
Isn't this still true? What shows can you not buy on Amazon or iTunes?

~~~
jakobegger
Availability of content on Amazon and iTunes is very country specific. In my
country, there are no TV shows available at all, and the movie selection isn't
stellar either. Half the stuff I want to watch just isn't available for
purchase at all.

And availability keeps changing! You want to buy a movie that was available
last week, and it's gone!

It's so frustrating...

~~~
hef19898
The last thing is want pisses me of the most, also the reason I don't maintain
whatch lists anymore.

------
dre85
I think the dream was that Netflix would actually become the one-stop-shop for
absolutely everything old and new. That you could watch the latest GoT as well
as get your fix of all of the old Schwarzenegger movies for 10 bucks a month.
Obviously that never worked out. For me it's clear that in the near future
every production house will have its own streaming service and they will
essentially become stream-channels once an aggregator comes in and gives you a
package deal. You'll save 10% if you bundle up 10 different streaming
services, etc. I'm sure the next step after that will be to re-introduce
commercials? Why not profit even more by having people pay monthly and serve
them ads at the same time? At that point the cycle will restart as a new wave
of piracy will begin because obviously people don't want to pay a fortune to
watch ads and have access to a bunch of crap they never watch.

------
moviuro
Unpaywalled/GDPR-friendly:
[https://archive.is/2S7ib](https://archive.is/2S7ib)

------
intended
I suspect that This will inevitably lead to more legal battles and a violence
in copy right enforcement not seen before.

------
GalacticDomin8r
NPR also recently had a story with this conclusion.

It doesn't seem all that pricey or complicated to me. Perhaps I'm missing some
of the big picture, but it sure seems odd this angle has been hitting main
stream media in a reinforcing manner.

~~~
dmitriid
I want to re-watch Futurama. Can you tell me where it’s available to stream?

It was on Netflix for a few months, now it’s a Hulu exclusive (IIRC). For how
long? No one knows.

How many services do I need to subscribe to to get most of the content I
need/want? 3? 5? More? How much will it cost?

Oh, and you’re lucky if you’re in the US. If you’re outside the US, finding
whete content is available becomes a never-ending exercise in frustration due
to territorial limitations (which for some reason still apply to globally
available and accessible internet services).

~~~
krageon
Finding where content is available outside the US isn't a super hard exercise,
it's just frustrating. The answer at least half the time is "you can't".

~~~
tristanperry
Yep, and that's the sad thing.

As a Brit, it used to be a simple flow: check Netflix, almost certainly on
there, watch.

Now it's usually not on there, and checking JustWatch shows that it's
unavailable in the UK (without paying to buy or 'lease' the content, usually
for a similar price to the streaming service's monthly rate).

You can see why torrenting is on the rise again: a Netflix subscription just
doesn't cut it anymore, and Hulu isn't available in the UK without a VPN.

~~~
Mindwipe
> As a Brit, it used to be a simple flow: check Netflix, almost certainly on
> there, watch.

This is nonsense tbh.

This was never the case, and if it was it was because you had ridiculously
narrow demographic tastes.

~~~
dmitriid
It's not nonsense, it's facts and reality.

[https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-uk-vs-world-
content](https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-uk-vs-world-content)

Canada and the US have 10-11% more content than UK. The disparity was much
greater before most content providers left Netflix and before the advent of
Netflix's original programming.

It was and still is even worse for other countries (I live in Sweden, it has
30% less content than the UK)

------
Causality1
Good thing I still have my massive media archive drives.

~~~
rbritton
I’ve gone a similar route, partly because I want to own the content and partly
because of availability. There are 20/30/40-year-old shows and movies that I
enjoy, and few of them are on any streaming service. Those that are often have
periods of unavailability due to licensing contracts expiring.

I’m currently operating on an 8 TB archive, of which I have two copies. One is
installed in a desktop computer, and the other is in a single drive Synology.
I take the Synology when traveling with our RV.

~~~
JonathonW
Have you found a good way to streamline bringing content into your archive
after purchase? I've tried to start archiving my collection of movies/TV on
physical discs, but have never managed to get very far because the whole
process of ripping/transcoding Blu-rays is a PITA and takes forever (ignoring
the legal issues with Blu-ray and DVD ripping, as well).

~~~
joshmn
After purchase I usually just download a "backup" of the content.

~~~
berbec
Sadly, this is generally faster, better quality and easier. Getting the right
encoding settings, audio formats, video codecs etc is a surprisingly
complicated dance. I've often downloaded a bluray I bought just because I know
the release groups will get the job done better than I can.

~~~
Causality1
Same with games, especially if they require some third party crap like Uplay.

------
magwa101
Like music, the internet supplied the dream of ridding us of the expensive
middle man, instead, it was the dawn of the middle man. In time, software gets
easier, and I'm still optimistic that the middle man will disappear and we
will get very large, cheap distributed systems, with payments, that will allow
peer to peer. Mix in UBI and the future will be bright, I mean, except for a
couple of revolutions along the way.

~~~
eof
I used to feel that way. I’ve also expected much broader democratization of
production from 3D printing.

It’s possible software is just not there yet, but I think network effects and
de facto cartels are an equal or greater force against the natural progress of
technology.

At this point I am pretty convinced it’s going to take a union or pact amongst
ai devs, or a revolution, to prevent a couple players from basically “winning
capitalism”, and rent seeking off infinite labor supply for eternity.

~~~
hef19898
Well, I think the internet can remove all middle men except _one_. The one
that remains is de facto a monopoly. So prices go down as long there is
competition and more then on middle man. The less middle men there are the
higher the prices. And then there is no way back neither, so the remaining
middle man is running a global experiment on price elasticity until growth
declines. Maybe 3D printing will be different due the physical aspects of it.

------
alkonaut
I wish Netflix/HBO would start to tier their subscriptions. E.g. I just watch
the odd documentary and none of the new big series on Netflix/HBO and it feels
like I'm paying a lot of my subscription money into Game of Thrones...

~~~
rhino369
20-30 million US subscribers watch Game of Thrones and maybe 2 million will
watch the most popular docs.

I suspect the GoT viewers are subsidizing your docs, not the other way around.

~~~
alkonaut
I suppose. I was assuming these old docs cost nearly nothing for them to
stream.

------
Sander_Marechal
There's a perfectly acceptable solution to all of this that has been used many
times in the past: Compulsory licensing. The same thing that happens with
music broadcast on the radio for example.

------
johnwalkr
I signed up for Disney Theatre in Japan the other day to catch up on some
Marvel movies before seeing the new Avengers movie.

I’ve seen a few comments about how it’s easy to create and cancel accounts for
these services. In this case it was extremely complicated and I almost gave
up.

Step 1: download the Disney theatre app on my Apple TV.

Step 2: After it opens, use the resulting QR code to open the registration
site on my phone and create an account

Step 3: Link the account to another account for docomo (one of the main cell
phone providers and the only way to pay)

Step 4: Make a docomo account since I don’t have one

Step 5: add payment to the new docomo account

Step 6: login to my new Disney account when prompted

Step 7: Download the Marvel, Disney and Disney Theatre apps when prompted

Step 8: Open the Marvel app on my phone and login with my new Disney account

Step 9: Find the movie I want to watch. Oops, it’s not there, find another
one. Click on it and it opens the Disney theatre app on my phone, which I have
to login to. Here I realize that the Marvel app is for extra content.

Step 10: Realize that the app on my Apple TV is not authenticated yet, go back
to the authentication site, which allows the app to work

Step 11: Find and watch a movie

They truly messed up the experience here. First, content here is even more
fragmented in Japan and often bundled to mobile provider plans. This was a
failure for consumers until Netflix gained enough content to blow the other
streaming services out of the water. I suspect the docomo deal was made years
ago when it was the norm and someone convinced Disney it was expected. I doubt
the equivalent (eg link to your T-mobile account) will be required for payment
in the US version. Second, downloading and signing in to multiple apps is a
hassle. The extra apps have content such as interviews with actors and...
themed cupcake recipes. It feels very corporate and I wouldn’t predict that
the potential extra added value will surpass extra confusion.

All of that being said, I could probably tolerate HBO and Disney as unique
subscriptions, plus Netflix, Amazon and specific sports leagues. Any more
fragmentation than 4-5 services and I’m more likely to unsubscribe from all of
them.

------
alexhutcheson
Much shorter version:

\- Good content costs a lot of money to produce.

\- That money has to come from somewhere.

\- That money has to come either directly from viewers or from advertisers (or
some combination).

------
dbg31415
Can't open the site because it blocks users with ad blockers.

Online newspapers have trained me over the last 20 years to need an ad
blocker, without one they will serve up horrible experiences.

* The Cost of Mobile Ads on 50 News Websites - The New York Times || [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-of-mobile-ads.html)

What's frustrating about all this, and I suspect it's somewhat relevant, is
that I really just want to pay a flat fee to get all the content and never see
another ad. And because Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon, etc. can't agree... I'm
left to go back to Rarbg -- who gives me easy access to content, for free,
without making a fuss if I use an ad blocker or VPN.

Remember that video about Jeff Bezos talking about customer experience, and
how it was paramount? Right, so I need modern Jeff Bezos to be like, "Hey, all
the streaming services need to get their act together... what we're doing now
is really shitty customer experience and we're making it easier for people to
pirate than to simply pay for our services."

What's fucked up, I pay for Netflix, Amazon, and CBS... and still I'd rather
torrent it so I can stream it from my Plex because I have no idea when Amazon
will make changes to their content library, or Netflix will decide that I
don't deserve true HD experience due to their bandwidth issues. So... back to
good ol', never-let-you-down, BitTorrent... all because these content sellers
can't get their heads into modernity.

Anyway the whole thing is fucked.

------
fcantournet
Global Public Licence. Paid by everyone, according to their abilities,
available to everyone. Revenue is split according to views. "Streaming"
platforms just do that : streaming, and compete.

------
ecolonsmak
I'd like access to every platform, service and channel then only be billed for
the amount I watch.

------
judge2020
There needs to be a "Movies Anywhere" for streaming.

