Personally, I'd prefer frictionless fragmentation to centralization. I'm never going to subscribe to Paramount+ (or Whatever+) to see one or two shows I'm interested in, but I'd gladly pay $3-5 to stream a season of Star Trek: Discovery. If there's also a Paramount+ bundle that includes all of their original and licensed content, that's fine too.
Frictionless fragmentation would be that services adhere to some standard API and that viewing tools (we optionally build ourselves) can simply sign in to an arbitrary list of services. If that were possible, then yes.
For many streaming service, I can't even figure out if the support Linux (e.g. HBO does not explicitly state I can use their service with a browser on Linux). So, it makes no sense to sign up even if I thought it was worth the money.
They 'guarantee' things work on particular browsers on particular OSes, not on 'modern web tech'. Well, I'm not going to spend money on something that has no legal guarantee or even promise to work.
Web browser is the standard API. And the viewing tool is Windows.
I know you wanna plug in your $20 to $50 dongle into an HDMI port and hope for the best, but your laptop will work fine, and I'm pretty sure your phone (Android / iOS) will also work fine.
> support Linux
Well there's another problem. Linux isn't a standard (Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu all have different quirks). By the time we start looking at those weird hardware codec accelerators and whether or not Linux supports those drivers, you would have been done with your Windows + HDMI port.
This would shift the inventives back to where they should be for producers.
The old box office/TV rating systems were relatively public. Content producers had clear incentives and knew there was an advantage proportional to viewership.
I think you can do this on Amazon, but you have to "buy" the season. I did try this with one or two shows. But the price point is a little high considering I usually only watch once.
The price is a little high PLUS they can pull the licensing and remove that content from your account. The "buy" option is a "lease" with an open ending to when the lease expires.
Yes, I'm aware of the available pricing/packaging options. What I want is à la carte streaming access to TV seasons for $3-5. What I don't want is a bunch of extraneous content I don't care about and another subscription to have to remember to cancel.
Yeah, I guess where I landed is just subbing and unsubbing when a show I want is on. Sometimes I also watch a movie or two from the service while I'm at it. I follow few enough shows that it's not unmanageable.
There are currently 55 episodes available for $10 per month on paramount+ or $3 per episode via Apple’s TV app, or $30 per season for seasons 1 thru 3 in Apple’s TV app.
On Amazon, lower quality episodes are available for $2 each for seasons 1 thru 3.
The seller wants $30 per season and you are looking to pay $3 to $5.
The seller is also offering $10 to rent 4 seasons assuming you binge watch 55 episodes in a month. Or $20 in 2 months, or $30 for 3 months if you watch one every other day.
Looks like the options are there, just not at the desired price.
It actually sounds pretty terrible to pay $10/mo to watch a single show. Sure, they will let you watch other stuff, but if you just want the one show you still pay what amounts to almost an entire netflix subscription. You can own the blurays of all 3 seasons (a much higher quality video stream) for under $60 and likely even cheaper on a special which you can then keep or sell.
>You can own the blurays of all 3 seasons (a much higher quality video stream) for under $60 and likely even cheaper on a special which you can then keep or sell.
That is great, an additional option for people that want to watch,
My point is people’s problem is not accessibility, it is price. When I was younger, accessibility itself was the problem, but that problem is resolved for almost all popular media now.
I once spent 20 min trying to find which streaming service had the latest season of the Orville in New Zealand. Turns out none of them do. I tried to find a digital copy on every store I could think of and failed. I looked for the Blu-ray and learned that Fox isn't ever releasing one.
The whole time in the back of my mind I knew exactly where I could find it for free without any pain at all.
In my book if there's no legitimate way to get a digital copy then I'm sailing the high seas. The golden age of streaming is over.
I see two — subscribe to Yet Another Streaming Service or buy. YASS is a non-starter for me (at my limit + subscription fatigue), and buying is out for me because seasons are priced for ownership/repeat viewing. IMO there's a significant pricing/packaging gap here.
> but I'd gladly pay $3-5 to stream a season of Star Trek: Discovery. If there's also a Paramount+ bundle that includes all of their original and licensed content, that's fine too.
That's how I treat it already. I subscribed to it for two shows, cancelled immediately after. They actually have other stuff I would like to watch, but their player/app is so awful that I was forced to go to pirate streams multiple times to watch what I paid for.
That's the real irony of the situation. Paying just a bit a month to not break the law and have easy access to good quality streams was amazingly attractive. Now the tech is more accessible and everyone wants to own their own piece of that revenue instead of renting their content out. That fracturing though is recreating a very similar situation to the height of piracy though where it's every expensive to get access to all the media you might want to watch.
That is the part that really gets me. Content owners are desperately trying to recreate cable model. I am not exactly a full blown pirate ( I mostly stopped after Netflix delivered a decent experience at negligible cost ), but my buddy is a hoarder for lack of a better term. Steam/GOG made me stop game piracy altogether.
Now, I am slowly starting to face a very simple question with streaming. Do I want to maintain 3-4 active membership on the off chance something is there or do I just ask my buddy?
If it were not for my wife, Amazon would already be my only streaming service and even that only, because it is currently included.
I think my final straw was Dexter being locked behind Hulu's Showtime additional subscription. Just in case you are wondering, I did not ask my friend for it nor did I pay for it. Not yet anyway. I may have some free time coming in a couple of weeks to indulge.
Make it convenient for me. Make it goddamn one place. Do not try to nickel and dime me. You will lose. You are fighting against superior quality at zero price and with people, whose entire existence is collecting for no other reason than collecting.
You NEED to deliver minimum fuss to me. 20 streaming services is not minimum fuss.
Netflix was that. It had almost complete library, but you chose to blow it up in a panic of greed. Now, I don't care how you do it, but you ( media conglomerate ) better recognize this reality.
Signed.
At this time, still a customer.
edit: I forgot one more thing. Side bonus of moving back to piracy will be that my watching habits will not be up for sale to the highest bidder.
Then when enough business is lost to pirating company's will start pushing for pointless laws to stop pirating because as we all know pirating is purely the result of people not wanting to pay and has not to do with the free thing providing better quality and greater convenience. Eventually some brilliant person will come up the idea of not making the consumers life difficult and the whole cycle will start again.
> as we all know pirating is purely the result of people not wanting to pay and has not to do with the free thing providing better quality and greater convenience.
Speak for yourself. What about those in locations where access to various forms of media is prohibited? Or those who are in poverty/in impoverished areas?
Because they're unable to pay to access media forms they should be prevented from accessing them?
Has youtube killed Spotify's business? How about piratebay? Is Hollywood in shambles? P2p media sharing has been around forever and is still conveniently available, yet these industries persist and rake in. They've had little impact to the bottomlines of these industries and will likely continue to have little impact.
The fragmentation of streaming services often conflicts with what consumers want to see. Spotify is a centralized service and people love it. That's basically what consumers want, a Spotify for TV. The other issue with all of these streaming services is varied compatibility based on your platform. HBO didn't work with Roku for a year or two over a contract dispute, other streaming services weren't available on all devices. Granted, I haven't run into this issue lately, but in the era of "smart" (eyeroll) TVs and other entertainment devices, you can't really assume that anything "just works" anymore without checking first.
YouTube didn't work on Amazon Fire devices for a long time because Amazon removed competing Google products from Amazon.com. It was really frustrating. The consumer always loses in these cases.
Because the real reason is that people do not want to pay the amount that the sellers are asking, not that they have to visit a different website or app.
I can easily search and watch anything outside of Netflix in the Apple’s TV app right now within seconds assuming I have no problem paying for it. Whether or not it is “fragmented” makes little difference in user experience.
Hulu itself is about the same costs as equivalent cable for me, except I have to buy the hardware (if I need any) and nobody comes out to hook it up. And then there's issues with the stream so very often...
