
Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated - acdanger
https://www.al.com/life/2019/06/hollywood-studios-say-theyre-quitting-netflix-but-the-truth-is-more-complicated.html
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netwanderer3
Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days
are recycled garbage.

People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is
launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to
$40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.

~~~
CJefferson
I'm disappointed, but not suprised, to see this post so high. Despite all the
ways of watching films at home, cinema is having its most successful years
ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.

~~~
oliwarner
I'm disappointed, but not surprised in your measurement of success. Many tout
record box office takings as clear success but I rather think that really
reflects on inflation (both real and artificial).

Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite
an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers.
MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I
cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison.

So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but
that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not
breaking any records.

1: [https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-
figures/u...](https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/uk-
cinema-admissions-and-box-office/annual-admissions/)

2: PDF!! [https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-
Theatri...](https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-
Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf) (there are other reports for other single
years but they're hard to grok out the attendance numbers).

~~~
Cthulhu_
A big (huge) driver is the Asian markets, with China having allowed more
foreign movies in - and a huge upsurge of cinemas being built there. A lot of
(blockbuster) movies are actively made nowadays with the huge Chinese market
in mind, and / or are being co-produced and / or funded by Chinese companies.

(There's some common tropes in that category; PG-12, if that rating, has to
feature at least one major Chinese city and one or two Chinese actors, and the
Chinese are never the bad guys. These things also apply to the Americans.
Basically, the two propaganda machines combined.)

~~~
dillonmckay
I have also noticed a decent amount of new releases have both a Chinese and
American production company associated with the movie, and there appear to be
cultural and character references that resonate with both.

Pretty cool.

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Causality1
For me it's a simple equation that has as much to do with time and hassle as
it has to do with money. I'm not going to juggle five different monthly
subscriptions. I'll pay Netflix for their decent original content and all my
old favorites like Star Trek. I'll buy a month of Hbo every couple years to
catch up with them. I'm not going to pay $200 for a cable subscription and I'm
not going to pay for Netflix and YouTube Red and Disney+ and Hulu and CBS All
Access and whatever other service all at the same time. It's already a pain in
the ass to figure out if Movie X is available on the services I already pay
for. I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed.

~~~
paulcole
Am I the only one who doesn’t threaten piracy when I don’t get exactly what I
want for the price I want? Is it really that unusual to not take things that
you shouldn’t? I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just
watch something else, I won’t go take it because I feel entitled.

~~~
AnaniasAnanas
> I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch
> something else

Would anyone loose anything if instead of something else you ended up pirating
the movie that you wanted to watch?

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paulcole
Yeah, I’d lose respect for myself. I don’t take things that aren’t mine.

~~~
monetus
I appreciate where you are coming from. Many people understand that,
physically, 'pirating' is more akin to copying than taking though. ..And then
there is an argument that increasing the availability of content increases the
revenue of the producer in the long run. Some game developers and many
musicians are even releasing official torrents of their content, assuring
quality control. I'm curious how this would work out if bigger studios dabbled
with it.

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bitcoinmoney
Most people dont know but you can get P4S (plex for share) where you pay (or
free) someone to get added on their plex library. Some of these servers have
CDN and have 90+TB storage with automated requests system. Thousands of shows
and movies. You can also get IPTV, which is basivally cable TV through
internet for 10$/month. 5000 channels. You ask how its possible? Basically fly
by night companies redistributing cable. Some have sweared by it being good.
Does anybody in HN hsvr more ecperience in

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bscphil
Am I misunderstanding the idea behind the first thing, or is that just piracy
that you pay for? If you're going to go to the trouble and / or risk of
pirating things and have enough technical knowhow to setup Plex on your local
device, I don't know why you wouldn't just go for an old fashioned approach
... which is usually free, better quality, more reliable, etc.

~~~
Larrikin
Being able to setup a legal program like Plex and knowing how to pirate high
quality versions of all the media you want are two different things. People
bought into Hulu and Netflix when you could get nearly everything you wanted
to watch on their services.

~~~
bscphil
Plex is legal to use, but not all that easy to set up, at least in my
experience. At least, I would expect anyone capable of using Plex longterm on
a TV to also be able to pirate stuff.

The point about legality wasn't about Plex, however. It was about paying
someone to torrent stuff for you, which is still copyright infringement.

~~~
dbancajas
True. Running your own server probably costs more than 5$/month on electricity
alone. No brainer if you do it yourself vs some other dude.

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torgian
Piracy is alive and kicking in a lot of countries still, as I'm sure some of
you know. Netflix is probably partially at fault for this.

When I travel to different countries and pull up Netflix, I see shows
available in that country that aren't available in another. It's annoying.

Of course, a VPN takes care of this (to an extent).

~~~
procinct
I used to always use a VPN for Netflix but then they started cracking down and
it stopped working. Are you still able to use a VPN to view content from a
different region?

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kkarakk
if the vpn is well known it gets blocked by netflix, have to experiment with
what doesn't get tracked

~~~
maeln
Setting up you own VPN with a cheap VPS has a higher chance of working but you
have to be careful about your VPS provider. For example, I know that a lot of
OVH owned IPs are banned from Netflix.

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whoisthemachine
I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments
about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are
different _publishing methods_. BitTorrent is one fairly effective publisher
that does offer content for free, but it does require a consumer to take on
some costs: risk of going to a sketchy site and risk to their computer
(viruses). If a streaming service is good enough and cheap enough, it can
offer enough value to a consumer that the consumer will choose the streaming
service over BitTorrent.

Considering that this is going to require streaming services to really reduce
the cost to the consumer, how can the streaming services have a sustainable
business model over the long term to support themselves? The subscription
model is one way, but the gaming industry may be ahead here: charge for each
individual item, but make it really cheap. For example, a consumer might scoff
at paying $3 per episode of GoT, but $1 or $.50 might be pretty nice... add
that up for a season, and your streaming service has made almost as much as a
subscription would have made. Of course, this requires streaming services to
continue to offer new, good content to continue to entice consumers, which
they might not like having to do.

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40acres
I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated,
people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long
as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an
extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the
"hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people
do you know who can mirror a PC or laptop to their TV?

~~~
14
My old dad would rather pirate then pay any amount of money and still have
commercials shoved down his throat. He feels it is double dipping so to speak.
Plus pirates get 4K streams vs Netflix which serves you quality based on what
you pay. I feel the hassle was fixed a long time ago. It’s pretty much point
and click these days.

~~~
Freak_NL
> Plus pirates get 4K streams vs Netflix which serves you quality based on
> what you pay.

 _And_ based on your operating system and browser. Even FullHD is hard (might
still be impossible even) to get if you run a free software stack. Netflix
wants you to run the heaviest DRM stack possible (even though their content is
available in 4K from your local friendly neighbourhood torrent site).

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mlthoughts2018
Of all the streaming services, Netflix is the one I’m most likely to cancel
soon. The quality of Netflix original content is dismal. They have jumped the
shark. Used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator
crap hidden behind a huge marketing budget to capture zeitgeisty hype.

I just watched the first episode of When They See Us today: total crap.
Ridiculous over-acting, awful writing that feels at every minute like a bad
attempt to modify a true story into a cinematic exaggeration (despite the
content of the true story it’s based on, which needs zero punch up), choppy
editing that needlessly obfuscates character development and makes various
scenes feel almost comically unnatural (especially the police interrogation
scenes).

It was similar with Seven Seconds. I’m tired of feeling suckered into Netflix
dramas that fall apart like a wet napkin.

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Godel_unicode
> used to invest in serious drama, now it’s all lowest common denominator crap

Given that it's Netflix we're talking about here, I find this extremely
depressing as it likely means the studios were right; people don't want
nuanced thoughtful drama, they want mediocre predictable sitcoms and cop
dramas.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
HBO seems to still be producing very good dramas. Prime has had one or two
offbeat gems recently. I think there’s still a strong market for it, but
Netflix is clearly pursuing something else.

~~~
philliphaydon
What's good on HBO? I used a VPN to subscribe to HBO and Hulu and ended up
canceling it because I ended up watching more Netflix than those services...

~~~
Mashimo
Deadwood, Westworld, True Detectives and The Wire are some series I like.
There is also Game of Thrones.

~~~
philliphaydon
I couldn’t get into westworld or the wire. Currently watching Dead To Me,
Punisher, Bad Blood, Good Girls. Not seen deadwood or true detectives.

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dmitriid
> But their shows were a boon for Netflix's nascent streaming service, which
> had a small library of old movies when it debuted in 2007.

That’s exactly what Netflix is _right now_. There’s a dearth of new content
besides Netflix’s own originals. Netflix routinely suggests titles from
10-15-20 years ago and rarely any newer titles (outside some of the bigger
blockbusters like Star Wars).

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philliphaydon
I don't know what Netflix is like in America but all my content is nothing but
new stuff... The only thing that's "old" that shows on my "popular on Netflix"
(or what ever its called) section is Friends.

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dmitriid
I’m watching from Sweden, so that may be the reason, but my suggestions are
laughably bad:
[https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153](https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1120410479954993153)

~~~
philliphaydon
[https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag](https://imgur.com/a/dl4P7ag)

Hope this link works. Took a while to figure out how to upload without
downloading the app.

This is what I see in Singapore. Atleast on my phone. But I mostly browse the
recently added or originals sections.

