All of the streamers' content is going all over the place. I can't keep up. Last I heard Westworld is no longer available on HBO (or was it Max?) but will soon be available on free-with-ads...
All of the streamers' content is going all over the place. I can't keep up. Last I heard Westworld is no longer available on HBO (or was it Max?) but will soon be available on free-with-ads streamers like Tubi and FreeVee. Making it a little less enticing to pay for HBO when the content will show up for free in a couple of years.
It seems like they've pulled a bunch of content, presumably to license. It is hard to tell here from Canada because here they already licensed it to different places - mostly Crave, but as an...
It seems like they've pulled a bunch of content, presumably to license. It is hard to tell here from Canada because here they already licensed it to different places - mostly Crave, but as an example I believe Close Enough (animated show) was an HBO Max joint and here in Canada it was on Netflix.
WarnerBros in specific is doing this as the new CEO had a goal of making Max profitable. And licensing content, that maybe people like but generally gets low viewership, to other streamers is part...
WarnerBros in specific is doing this as the new CEO had a goal of making Max profitable. And licensing content, that maybe people like but generally gets low viewership, to other streamers is part of that.
Warner Bros, has to be the worse run media company of them all. I’m unsubscribe from max if I can get all the HBO shows on Netflix. Which is good for me, forget what I said this a great plan WB!
Warner Bros, has to be the worse run media company of them all.
I’m unsubscribe from max if I can get all the HBO shows on Netflix. Which is good for me, forget what I said this a great plan WB!
It’s well known that the new CEO of Warners Discovery has no love for streaming. This seems like a sign of off boarding from the industry, or at least transitioning Max to be more for cheaper TV...
It’s well known that the new CEO of Warners Discovery has no love for streaming. This seems like a sign of off boarding from the industry, or at least transitioning Max to be more for cheaper TV serials than the prestige shows HBO makes.
In the end, you can’t entirely say it’s a bad decision - streaming has been a money pit for every company but Netflix. It is what it is. Maybe going back to selling content to distributors will be better for Warners Discovery than being a distributor.
Maybe this is a sign of good things for consumers? If everyone realizes how awful a moneypit streaming is, they can go back to one or two platforms again.
Maybe this is a sign of good things for consumers? If everyone realizes how awful a moneypit streaming is, they can go back to one or two platforms again.
Is that a good thing? Everyone wants monopolies in streaming which I think is slightly weird. You may be able to get content on less platforms but less competitors means both that subscription...
Is that a good thing? Everyone wants monopolies in streaming which I think is slightly weird.
You may be able to get content on less platforms but less competitors means both that subscription prices can increase and that less content will be made. The streaming wars led to the green lighting of so many excellent, experimental TV and movies. Things that would never get funding before for being risky were easily approved by companies more than willing to lose money to get metrics.
Well, it is what it is. Consolidation is a natural part of market evolution. But I think people look at a consolidated market with overly rosey lenses. The age of streaming competition was great in a lot of ways.
During the long period of time that Netflix was basically the only game in town, people tend to have fonder memories because Netflix was cheaper and they got the license to a lot of content from...
During the long period of time that Netflix was basically the only game in town, people tend to have fonder memories because Netflix was cheaper and they got the license to a lot of content from other companies.
Nowadays, the Netflix that we have is the one that rises prices, forbids password sharing, cancel their series after 1-2 seasons without a satisfying conclusion, etc. On every aspect, the multiplication of streaming services offered no obvious advantages to the consumer.
That Netflix was also a monopoly and not profitable. It wasn't something that was sustainable. And to say there was no obvious advantage is just not how it works. For one, prices absolutely would...
That Netflix was also a monopoly and not profitable. It wasn't something that was sustainable.
And to say there was no obvious advantage is just not how it works. For one, prices absolutely would have gone up higher than they are now, if there were less competitors. You can't just compare now and the past, you have to compare now and the counterfactual now.
Secondly, we got so much great content. Netflix canceling shows? Netflix didn't make shows before the streaming wars! Making shows is an expensive, risky business - they would've never bothered. And then we wouldn't have so much excellent prestige TV. Things like Squid Games, that traditional korean media refused to fund until Netflix swooped in, looking to dig deep in their content game. The Boys? Extremely violent satirization of super heroes? Never would've be funded, way too risky. Apple pouring money into masterpieces like Severance. The original House of Cards was industry defining - people were amazed at the production value and star power it had for a TV show, which only HBO grazed at before.
I think people take the media world we have now for granted. You use to have to argue your case to a bunch of penny pinching TV suits terrified of risk. The streaming wars was a huge boom in high production television especially, but also feature films.
The competition was great for creatives, but it is terrible for consumers. There is no reasonable pricing or easy ways to get everything, even if you subscribe to every service. there is always...
The competition was great for creatives, but it is terrible for consumers. There is no reasonable pricing or easy ways to get everything, even if you subscribe to every service. there is always something locked away and impossible to find. I would love one (or a few services) where EVERYTHING is available to everyone (no region-locking either) so anyone can watch from anywhere in the world. I'm willing to pay for content as long as it's easy to access.
The way it has moved to consumers is that the best practice is to subscribe to the platform that has the show that you want to watch, binge all of the content on the platform in a month, cancel...
The way it has moved to consumers is that the best practice is to subscribe to the platform that has the show that you want to watch, binge all of the content on the platform in a month, cancel the subscription, and move to the next platform that has something you want to watch. This is also extremely costly to the platforms because you're essentially just making everyone power users for the time that they are subscribed which makes them more likely to cost you more than you're making off of them.
This is also a tremendous hassle, which is pushing a lot of folks back to piracy, because piracy is a matter of pricing and convenience. If you provide an option at a reasonable price that's easier than downloading it then people will use your option.
For someone like me, it's literally all about convenience. I would much prefer to be able to get access to what I want to watch when I want to watch it. I'm willing to pay for the convenience, but...
For someone like me, it's literally all about convenience. I would much prefer to be able to get access to what I want to watch when I want to watch it. I'm willing to pay for the convenience, but if you're going to make it more difficult for me to find what I want, I will pirate it. Ask Audible lol.
Right, and the longer it goes the more that my plex server collects which just removes the necessity for the streaming services. So the longer that we go the more service that you need to provide...
Right, and the longer it goes the more that my plex server collects which just removes the necessity for the streaming services. So the longer that we go the more service that you need to provide to be able to keep me on the platform. Many of them have broken already due to their terrible video players.
I used plex very rarely when I shared the account with my older brother. I don't remember if you can set it to play everything automatically or if you have to choose each episode/video to watch....
I used plex very rarely when I shared the account with my older brother. I don't remember if you can set it to play everything automatically or if you have to choose each episode/video to watch. That's a limiting factor for me going back since I like to have something on when I go to bed and just let it run. Hulu gets us Bob's Burgers for most of the night if our shitty smart tv doesn't lose internet.
As long as you group everything together properly Plex will autoplay shows for as long as you keep it going. Basically you just need to have all the episodes for the show in the same folder. Plex...
As long as you group everything together properly Plex will autoplay shows for as long as you keep it going. Basically you just need to have all the episodes for the show in the same folder. Plex will grab metadata from what's there and tag the show with pictures from the web and label the episode names. There's occasionally a few hiccups, but from the 48 tv series that I have on mine currently only 2 needed sprucing up and those were both special cases, on one hand for Firefly it tried to label the episodes in airing order rather than dvd order, which was just a quick settings change as both were available, but it auto-selected the wrong one, and the other was because my version of M*A*S*H doesn't have the laugh track, so it didn't have the proper metadata and I just had to manually search out the show to select it as.
The same works for movies, they tag themselves when you scan them into the server, if you want to bundle movie collections such as all of Marvel, Harry Potter, or James Bond you can put them in a collection so the whole collection will only take up one slot when you're scrolling through and they'll all be in one place rather than hunting around for them. A little bit of organization from the person running it makes for a really clean interface for anyone using it.
Beyond that everything really just works out of the box and I can't really give enough praise for it. I ran it on my personal pc for a long time for myself my siblings, and my parents before moving it to some dedicated equipment that I acquired for it. If something doesn't show up on a streaming service they just let me know and it's there the next day.
Thanks for letting me know how it works. I'll have to talk to my brother about setting up a joint account again. I would love to give up netflix and hulu, and to watch prime movies without having...
Thanks for letting me know how it works. I'll have to talk to my brother about setting up a joint account again. I would love to give up netflix and hulu, and to watch prime movies without having to use the Roku Prime interface because it sucks. Of course, I pay for all of them and share with family so I'll have to teach everyone how to use Plex.
Oh, that's another super useful thing with it. You don't have to share your account. Anyone can create an account with an email, and you can add accounts to be able to access your libraries. You...
Oh, that's another super useful thing with it. You don't have to share your account. Anyone can create an account with an email, and you can add accounts to be able to access your libraries. You can set them up with only specific libraries so say you have a library that you want to be able to stream but don't want other people to know exists because it contains all of your My Little Pony Fan Youtube videos that you've downloaded when you grant access to their account you can just select which libraries that they'll be able to view.
And with the separate accounts it will keep track of their progress through shows and movies individually, that way if you're both watching the same show it won't mess up your last watched episode because they were further ahead or behind you.
I mean, do consumers not watch the material that creatives make? In the end, it's tradeoffs. Things were more splintered, so you had to put some work into google if you wanted to watch a...
I mean, do consumers not watch the material that creatives make?
In the end, it's tradeoffs. Things were more splintered, so you had to put some work into google if you wanted to watch a particular show.
But in return, prices were lower than they would've been. Yes, lower. The subscription prices absolutely would be higher with less competition as time, and interest rates, went on. Especially if you picked and chose. I subscribed to services to watch particular shows; when they're over, I stopped subscribing. If you had an omni-service, it would've inevitably drifted towards cable bundle prices, and you would have the cable bundle consumer headache of paying for things you didn't watch.
In the competitive market, you had the optionality of picking what you wanted to pay for. If you didn't watch any of the Netflix shows currently releasing, then you can simply choose not to subscribe.
And as I said, the other benefit was the deluge of great things for you to watch. What's the point of a subscription if there's nothing to watch on it?
It's fair if you prefer the convenience of a single or a couple of streaming sites with all the content to having choice and better content, but people too often forget the benefits of competition.
Right, but that’s fallacious in the end. You can’t compare what Netflix cost 10 years ago and what Netflix cost now, you have to compare what Netflix would’ve cost in an alternate universe where...
Right, but that’s fallacious in the end. You can’t compare what Netflix cost 10 years ago and what Netflix cost now, you have to compare what Netflix would’ve cost in an alternate universe where they’re still a monopoly over streaming and what they would have cost now.
Back then, Netflix was not only loss leading but had an information advantage. Producers were selling licenses for dimes on the dollar because they thought streaming was an afterthought. As it eats more into TV revenue, this would inevitably change.
The problem is that the clients to view the content and the content providers are the same thing. I wish I could have ONE client that can use the content providers I pay for. A consistent...
The problem is that the clients to view the content and the content providers are the same thing. I wish I could have ONE client that can use the content providers I pay for. A consistent experience and watch history regardless of the media source.
I unsubscribed from HBO Max when they started pulling some of their original shows (particularly Westworld) from it, with the knowledge that it was also about to get combined with a bunch of...
I unsubscribed from HBO Max when they started pulling some of their original shows (particularly Westworld) from it, with the knowledge that it was also about to get combined with a bunch of reality trash from Discovery. I have no regrets.
When current Netflix streaming rivals didn't have their own streaming platform, the only thing they could do is license their content to Netflix. As they competed against it other for the...
When current Netflix streaming rivals didn't have their own streaming platform, the only thing they could do is license their content to Netflix. As they competed against it other for the privilege, Netflix got a lot of good content for cheap.
Now that everyone has their own streaming app, they have some leverage in price negotiations. If they can't license it out, they can at least keep it in-house to strengthen their app. And now that some shows are being pulled simply to avoid paying royalties to the content creators, that's another factor they have to consider in the formula for profitability.
All of the streamers' content is going all over the place. I can't keep up. Last I heard Westworld is no longer available on HBO (or was it Max?) but will soon be available on free-with-ads streamers like Tubi and FreeVee. Making it a little less enticing to pay for HBO when the content will show up for free in a couple of years.
It seems like they've pulled a bunch of content, presumably to license. It is hard to tell here from Canada because here they already licensed it to different places - mostly Crave, but as an example I believe Close Enough (animated show) was an HBO Max joint and here in Canada it was on Netflix.
WarnerBros in specific is doing this as the new CEO had a goal of making Max profitable. And licensing content, that maybe people like but generally gets low viewership, to other streamers is part of that.
Warner Bros, has to be the worse run media company of them all.
I’m unsubscribe from max if I can get all the HBO shows on Netflix. Which is good for me, forget what I said this a great plan WB!
It’s well known that the new CEO of Warners Discovery has no love for streaming. This seems like a sign of off boarding from the industry, or at least transitioning Max to be more for cheaper TV serials than the prestige shows HBO makes.
In the end, you can’t entirely say it’s a bad decision - streaming has been a money pit for every company but Netflix. It is what it is. Maybe going back to selling content to distributors will be better for Warners Discovery than being a distributor.
Maybe this is a sign of good things for consumers? If everyone realizes how awful a moneypit streaming is, they can go back to one or two platforms again.
Is that a good thing? Everyone wants monopolies in streaming which I think is slightly weird.
You may be able to get content on less platforms but less competitors means both that subscription prices can increase and that less content will be made. The streaming wars led to the green lighting of so many excellent, experimental TV and movies. Things that would never get funding before for being risky were easily approved by companies more than willing to lose money to get metrics.
Well, it is what it is. Consolidation is a natural part of market evolution. But I think people look at a consolidated market with overly rosey lenses. The age of streaming competition was great in a lot of ways.
During the long period of time that Netflix was basically the only game in town, people tend to have fonder memories because Netflix was cheaper and they got the license to a lot of content from other companies.
Nowadays, the Netflix that we have is the one that rises prices, forbids password sharing, cancel their series after 1-2 seasons without a satisfying conclusion, etc. On every aspect, the multiplication of streaming services offered no obvious advantages to the consumer.
That Netflix was also a monopoly and not profitable. It wasn't something that was sustainable.
And to say there was no obvious advantage is just not how it works. For one, prices absolutely would have gone up higher than they are now, if there were less competitors. You can't just compare now and the past, you have to compare now and the counterfactual now.
Secondly, we got so much great content. Netflix canceling shows? Netflix didn't make shows before the streaming wars! Making shows is an expensive, risky business - they would've never bothered. And then we wouldn't have so much excellent prestige TV. Things like Squid Games, that traditional korean media refused to fund until Netflix swooped in, looking to dig deep in their content game. The Boys? Extremely violent satirization of super heroes? Never would've be funded, way too risky. Apple pouring money into masterpieces like Severance. The original House of Cards was industry defining - people were amazed at the production value and star power it had for a TV show, which only HBO grazed at before.
I think people take the media world we have now for granted. You use to have to argue your case to a bunch of penny pinching TV suits terrified of risk. The streaming wars was a huge boom in high production television especially, but also feature films.
The competition was great for creatives, but it is terrible for consumers. There is no reasonable pricing or easy ways to get everything, even if you subscribe to every service. there is always something locked away and impossible to find. I would love one (or a few services) where EVERYTHING is available to everyone (no region-locking either) so anyone can watch from anywhere in the world. I'm willing to pay for content as long as it's easy to access.
The way it has moved to consumers is that the best practice is to subscribe to the platform that has the show that you want to watch, binge all of the content on the platform in a month, cancel the subscription, and move to the next platform that has something you want to watch. This is also extremely costly to the platforms because you're essentially just making everyone power users for the time that they are subscribed which makes them more likely to cost you more than you're making off of them.
This is also a tremendous hassle, which is pushing a lot of folks back to piracy, because piracy is a matter of pricing and convenience. If you provide an option at a reasonable price that's easier than downloading it then people will use your option.
For someone like me, it's literally all about convenience. I would much prefer to be able to get access to what I want to watch when I want to watch it. I'm willing to pay for the convenience, but if you're going to make it more difficult for me to find what I want, I will pirate it. Ask Audible lol.
Right, and the longer it goes the more that my plex server collects which just removes the necessity for the streaming services. So the longer that we go the more service that you need to provide to be able to keep me on the platform. Many of them have broken already due to their terrible video players.
I used plex very rarely when I shared the account with my older brother. I don't remember if you can set it to play everything automatically or if you have to choose each episode/video to watch. That's a limiting factor for me going back since I like to have something on when I go to bed and just let it run. Hulu gets us Bob's Burgers for most of the night if our shitty smart tv doesn't lose internet.
As long as you group everything together properly Plex will autoplay shows for as long as you keep it going. Basically you just need to have all the episodes for the show in the same folder. Plex will grab metadata from what's there and tag the show with pictures from the web and label the episode names. There's occasionally a few hiccups, but from the 48 tv series that I have on mine currently only 2 needed sprucing up and those were both special cases, on one hand for Firefly it tried to label the episodes in airing order rather than dvd order, which was just a quick settings change as both were available, but it auto-selected the wrong one, and the other was because my version of M*A*S*H doesn't have the laugh track, so it didn't have the proper metadata and I just had to manually search out the show to select it as.
The same works for movies, they tag themselves when you scan them into the server, if you want to bundle movie collections such as all of Marvel, Harry Potter, or James Bond you can put them in a collection so the whole collection will only take up one slot when you're scrolling through and they'll all be in one place rather than hunting around for them. A little bit of organization from the person running it makes for a really clean interface for anyone using it.
Beyond that everything really just works out of the box and I can't really give enough praise for it. I ran it on my personal pc for a long time for myself my siblings, and my parents before moving it to some dedicated equipment that I acquired for it. If something doesn't show up on a streaming service they just let me know and it's there the next day.
Thanks for letting me know how it works. I'll have to talk to my brother about setting up a joint account again. I would love to give up netflix and hulu, and to watch prime movies without having to use the Roku Prime interface because it sucks. Of course, I pay for all of them and share with family so I'll have to teach everyone how to use Plex.
Oh, that's another super useful thing with it. You don't have to share your account. Anyone can create an account with an email, and you can add accounts to be able to access your libraries. You can set them up with only specific libraries so say you have a library that you want to be able to stream but don't want other people to know exists because it contains all of your My Little Pony Fan Youtube videos that you've downloaded when you grant access to their account you can just select which libraries that they'll be able to view.
And with the separate accounts it will keep track of their progress through shows and movies individually, that way if you're both watching the same show it won't mess up your last watched episode because they were further ahead or behind you.
You've more than sold me on having my own plex account lol. I'm off to start learning how to do it all. Thank you!!!
I mean, do consumers not watch the material that creatives make?
In the end, it's tradeoffs. Things were more splintered, so you had to put some work into google if you wanted to watch a particular show.
But in return, prices were lower than they would've been. Yes, lower. The subscription prices absolutely would be higher with less competition as time, and interest rates, went on. Especially if you picked and chose. I subscribed to services to watch particular shows; when they're over, I stopped subscribing. If you had an omni-service, it would've inevitably drifted towards cable bundle prices, and you would have the cable bundle consumer headache of paying for things you didn't watch.
In the competitive market, you had the optionality of picking what you wanted to pay for. If you didn't watch any of the Netflix shows currently releasing, then you can simply choose not to subscribe.
And as I said, the other benefit was the deluge of great things for you to watch. What's the point of a subscription if there's nothing to watch on it?
It's fair if you prefer the convenience of a single or a couple of streaming sites with all the content to having choice and better content, but people too often forget the benefits of competition.
Competition is wonderful, I agree with you! In my experience, the prices didn't seem that much lower and I think that's the disconnect.
Right, but that’s fallacious in the end. You can’t compare what Netflix cost 10 years ago and what Netflix cost now, you have to compare what Netflix would’ve cost in an alternate universe where they’re still a monopoly over streaming and what they would have cost now.
Back then, Netflix was not only loss leading but had an information advantage. Producers were selling licenses for dimes on the dollar because they thought streaming was an afterthought. As it eats more into TV revenue, this would inevitably change.
The problem is that the clients to view the content and the content providers are the same thing. I wish I could have ONE client that can use the content providers I pay for. A consistent experience and watch history regardless of the media source.
Everyone wants monopolies
in streaming which I think is slightly weird.Fixed.
I unsubscribed from HBO Max when they started pulling some of their original shows (particularly Westworld) from it, with the knowledge that it was also about to get combined with a bunch of reality trash from Discovery. I have no regrets.
When current Netflix streaming rivals didn't have their own streaming platform, the only thing they could do is license their content to Netflix. As they competed against it other for the privilege, Netflix got a lot of good content for cheap.
Now that everyone has their own streaming app, they have some leverage in price negotiations. If they can't license it out, they can at least keep it in-house to strengthen their app. And now that some shows are being pulled simply to avoid paying royalties to the content creators, that's another factor they have to consider in the formula for profitability.
Poorly managed company