

Ask HN: What's still missing in Netflix, Hulu, Amazon video? - leoplct

What do you think are the needs that they didn't have filled yet?<p>Are you always been satisfied by Hulu + Netflix?<p>How are they if compared with the tv scheduling?
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fusiongyro
Content availability is the main problem. Hulu is really annoying because I
pay for it yet still have to endure commercials, and their have strange
restrictions on how you can consume the content. 30 Rock, for example, cannot
be streamed through my Apple TV's Hulu. I could stream it to my laptop,
however. Instead I wound up paying Apple for it, so I'm in the seemingly
absurd situation of paying Apple $20, Hulu $8/month and Netflix $8/month, and
I still don't get all the TV I want to watch--or even all of broadcast TV. I
can't get Seinfeld without Crackle, and Crackle is about the worst.

These services are all partially overlapping solutions. Here's what I want:

\- All TV shows, current season as it airs and all past seasons

\- No commercials

\- No time pressure to watch before "expiration"

I'm willing to pay substantially for this. I'm talking $40-60/month, and I
don't care about HBO or Showtime either. Instead I have two services that
charge me $8/month and have the selection of a small-town Blockbuster. If any
of these services were actually trying to compete with cable, they could
charge more and provide access to the rest of the content. Instead they seem
happy to play the annoying long-tail game with off-brand crap, and it's deeply
dissatisfying.

The real problem here is absolutely not technical. It's contractual with the
companies that own the content. I doubt you could do better than they have
without offering more money, but I think there could be a real niche there if
you're willing to charge customers actual money to provide actual service.

~~~
mark_l_watson
+1 I totally agree. I want to watch any show or available movie whenever I
want with no commercials and I am willing to pay a fair amount of money for
this.

After about 18 months, I just cancelled Hulu+ because the commercials are too
long. Otherwise a nice service and I wanted to support them, but...

Netflix is pretty good. Both my wife and I pay them $8/month and like the
content, the recommendations, etc. Good value.

I think that Directv is way too expensive because we don't actually watch much
content through Directv. I want to cancel but there there is some resistance
from my family.

~~~
fusiongyro
The commercials are too long, and they have the same problem Crackle does of
showing the same commercials back-to-back-to-back-to-back... It actually
really makes me angry when they say "This episode of X presented with limited
commercial interruption by Y" because there's nothing limited about it!
Especially if it's new. They seem to have some kind of back-off algorithm so
it doesn't show as many commercials for old stuff. But old stuff has a way of
vanishing randomly.

I'm thinking seriously of getting an old-school DVR and a massive antenna.
Problem is, I live out in the sticks where I'll need a huge antenna just to
get about half the broadcast TV.

~~~
timjahn
The commercial breaks on Hulu+ range from 15 seconds to 1 min 45 seconds (I've
found they're heavily on the shorter side for me). That's significantly
shorter than commercial breaks on broadcast television or cable in my
experience .

Was it really that bad for you? (Genuinely curious).

~~~
fusiongyro
When there are six of them it doesn't matter how long they are.

~~~
timjahn
There are at least as many on broadcast and cable. I still fail to see how the
commercials on Hulu+ aren't the lesser of the two evils...

~~~
fusiongyro
So we went from "genuinely curious" to "I'm going to debate you until you
decide to feel things differently."

Like I said, where I live broadcast isn't an option without an expensive
antenna. I have a cheap ($25) antenna and I get exactly one of three channels
depending on how I orient it. The other options are cable without internet,
which chafes badly, and satellite. The lesser evil I lived with for years was
no TV at all. I prefer Hulu to nothing, but not to the other two options, and
the question I was responding to above is "how can we do better than Hulu and
Netflix?" not "how can I convince strangers to man-up and love shitty
options?"

~~~
timjahn
Wow. Didn't realize this was such a touchy subject for ya. Forget I ever
asked. :)

~~~
fusiongyro
It's not a touchy subject. I'm just sick of everybody trying to turn every
conversation into some kind of fact-war, especially when opinions are
explicitly asked for. What do you think you're going to win?

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tjr
I mostly watch Netflix streaming on a DVD player, so I'm not sure if there's a
way to do this on other alternate interfaces or not, but it'd be nice if you
could tag particular episodes of programs. Mark your favorites, or even type
in keywords perhaps.

The ability to build playlists might be useful as well.

More of a blue sky wish would involve deeper searchability, like, find all
episodes of "Star Trek" across all series with an appearance of the character
Sarek, as an example.

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drharris
Sports. I would cancel my cable subscription in a heartbeat if we could either
subscribe to our favorite sports (NCAA Football, NASCAR - my wife's) or pay
per game to stream (I'd even take it with commercials). Also, there is a major
lack of current season shows, except for Hulu, and they're missing some
critical producers (CBS, many cable networks) and shows seem to expire
randomly. But sports is the only thing that refuses to let me cut the cord.
Oh, and Hulu+ is a joke with 90% of content being "Web Only".

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27182818284
Recommendation engines are broken. Once you get past rating 1600 movies on
Netflix the recommendations go to basically zero and you see the same thing
over and over again :(

for that reason I'm starting to like the mash-ups people are making like
<http://abetterqueue.com/>

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joonix
Channel surfing. Someone should make a system that creates a channel guide
with various "channels" playing different streaming content available. That
way you can surf channels and find something without actually seeking out
individual films/shows yourself. Replicate the cable experience.

~~~
reefoctopus
This! I am currently using Amazon prime and Netflix for my television/movie
consumption. I lack any sort of cable service. It is incredibly difficult to
laze on the couch and watch TV because unless I'm watching a television
series, I have to make a conscious decision about what to watch next.

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maushu
International support.

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mwg66
Discoverability is a massive issue for me still. I use a Netflix for most of
my content in the UK (I have no TV) but I struggle to find content that is of
interest - although after effort it does exist.

I am not sure it is as simple as just better recommendations.

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clueless
How about the DVD extras... I don't think outside of DVDs there is anywhere
one can watch the DVD extras: be it the commentary or the making of.

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pestaa
I'm in Europe. No, not satisfied by either of them.

~~~
J_Darnley
Yes. The ability to use them where I live is a major feature missing in most
services.

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krashidov
Here's a really simple one. Sometimes I just want to watch a random episode of
a show, or even a random movie based on my preferences.

