I feel this fragmentation of where content can be found is going to cause a new wave of torrenting movies/series.
I pay for 5 different streaming services right now, one is Apple Music. On Apple Music I can find, what I feel, like 90% of all music I want to listen to. On the other video streaming services it's a complete mess. They often show pictures of a movie/series on their front page, and later when I decide to watch it, it's gone. And gone from all of the services I pay for.
This behavior is taking away the convenience and make me feel they are gaming me. I seldom go to iTunes and just buy some several decades old movie/series(you can't even buy series on iTunes in my country) when they do this, I either give up or torrent it(via VPN). Yeah, illegal I know.
I'm not really wanting laws to change, but this behavior from the content owners in combination with their lobbying to make new laws to scan for content they own everywhere, lobbying for removing Internet anonymity, and having regular people pay damages that are more than they will earn in several lifetimes is not very constructive for the society either.
I starting to think it's time for laws that, for example, force content owners to make their content available to 80% of the paying streaming watchers, or lose the right to the content.
I think the issue is that people got used to getting a lot of the content they wanted to watch for around $10/mo. Originally, no one realized that streaming would be such a huge thing. Owners licensed content to Netflix at cheap prices just to see Netflix streaming take over. Now they're wising up to the fact that they can't just give away their content.
Let's say that we did have a law that would force content owners to license their content. Let's say that the royalty rate would be $3 per movie stream. Companies like Netflix would have to hugely increase their monthly fees. 4 movie streams a month and you've blown through their fee considering hardware, electricity, credit card processing fees, etc. Likewise, if TV episodes cost $1 per stream, people would very quickly blow through the $13/mo fee that Netflix charges. Plus, with more content, people would watch a lot more.
Ultimately, what people want is a streaming service with most of what they want to watch at a fraction of the price that people used to pay for content. It used to be that people would pay $75 for cable tv or satellite plus $10-20/mo for one or two premium channels plus $4 every time they wanted to rent a movie from Blockbuster. Now people want that same experience for one $15 fee. I mean, would you sign up for a streaming service that had 80% of the content you wanted for $100+/mo? Do you think most people would?
Netflix and competitors want to encourage you to binge on their service now. How does that change if they have to pay compulsory license fees for every stream? What happens to content if they're getting paid a set fee-per-stream rather than a negotiated rate? We've seen in music that songs have been getting shorter because the royalty rates are per-stream not per-minute and the shorter your songs, the more royalties you'll get. We've seen a lot of clickbait video on YouTube and, frankly, Netflix is putting up more and more cheap-to-make content, knocking off every random baking show and the like. With a compulsory license, Netflix would want to make it hard to watch the shows that they had to pay-per-stream. Would they even want to make them available at all?
I think we had a few year period where content owners didn't realize how much streaming would substitute for other watching modes and made good deals for Netflix. I think any compulsory license would be higher than a service could go for at current rates. You're talking about getting rid of other large revenue streams via this compulsory licensing. Right now, they can give you a bunch of content as all-you-can-eat and then hold on to their premium content and get a lot of people to pay a separate charge. For example, I can stream a lot of Disney content, but it looks like Avengers Endgame will only be available for purchase separately. If you're getting rid of that, they aren't going to want to give up that money.
Heck, even in music, we see that the compulsory licensing rates are high to the point that places like Apple Music want to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements rather than pay the compulsory license. If you're paying $10/mo for a streaming service and they're paying $0.091 per stream and you're listening in the car on a 20-minute commute twice a day, that's 10 songs per day and 300 songs per month costing them $27.3. And that's a short commute and not taking into consideration errands, workouts, listening at work, etc.
So, even in music, the compulsory license isn't what most streaming services are relying on. They've negotiated a cut-of-revenue system to compensate artists rather than paying $0.091/stream.
I think the problem is that we want to pay the same ~$10 fee for our video entertainment, but video entertainment costs a lot more to produce and doesn't have the same re-watch/listen potential as music. A song doesn't cost $350M to write and record and, ultimately, a good song can provide hours of listening enjoyment just like the movie. It's easy to accept a cut of $10/mo when your product is a lot cheaper to produce. The problem we face is that video producers want more than a cut of $15/mo due to the cost of producing their product, but we don't want to pay more. We had the glory days of Netflix having access to cheap content. We don't want that to end.
You're not wrong about the feeling of gaming you. The problem is that people don't want to spend $100/mo, but they want all the content from services that used to cost that. So they're trying to find ways to retain the revenue while offering enough of what people want to a broad audience. They know people will balk at a $100/mo service even if many of them have been paying for cable and HBO and such. So they're trying to figure out what people will accept. Frankly, Netflix is doing that too: they're trying to figure out what content they can produce cheaply to get people to stick around without them having to license content.
I think the ultimate problem is that the video content we want costs more to make than the music content we want.
I think we are going to find out the content we really want is cheaper and more fragmented.
Movies provide some of the most wasteful methods of creating 1 1/2 of content. A movie that costs 100 million needs 100 million people to pay 1 dollar to break even.
For some reason alot of people talk like they have the right to have one 10$ subscription that provides every movie and series in the world, with the reasoning that it's possible with music. That is a utopia. All the movies/series are more expensive than all the songs. Especially production-wise.
I don't think that's what people want, I think people just want reasonable value for a reasonable price and not have to juggle streaming services.
Personally, I'd love a service that provides a good quantity of content at some base price, with more content available for some additional, fixed price. Some ideas:
- add-on services for an extra monthly price (say, $10/month base for Netflix, $10 more each for Disney, HBO, etc)
- access to everything, but limited number of hours/shows/movies per month, with extra purchasable time/shows/movies
- ala carte movies/shows should be reasonably priced (newer shows/movies around $5 down to $1 for older content)
I have having to remember which platform has which content. I don't care if a movie was produced by Disney or DreamWorks, I just know I want to watch it with my kids. Amazon usually has it available for purchase/rent, but finding the proper platform would be significant cheaper since it's available as part of the monthly fee I'm already paying.
I think copyright should be much more limited than it is today. When copyright was introduced, it lasted 14 years, and could be extended an additional 14 years if the content owner was still alive. I think basic idea makes sense, but with corporations owning copyright, perhaps it makes sense for these owners to prove that they need the additional protections to turn a profit in order to get an extension. I think this would encourage content owners to make their content more available while they still have protections instead of hoarding it because they know people have to come to them for their content.
Personally, I only have two streaming services: Netflix (my kids like several shows there) and Amazon (we really like 2 day shipping, the video is just a perk). We've rented a handful of shows, but it's really a turnoff because my kids like to watch something several times in a short period, but I don't want to rent it several times, so we tend to just avoid content that's not available. I would be happy to pay more for more content access, but I don't want yet another platform.
If I were less well-off, I'd consider just giving up on streaming and go back to piracy. Instead, I just deal with mediocre content instead of getting exactly what I want for a bit more money.
$10 for everything that was already produced in history? Sure.
$10 to fund equivalent production of new movies and TV shows? Impossible. Profits in the media industry aren’t that high, so reducing the amount of incoming monthly money to less than a single movie ticket or 1/6 of a cable subscription means that they can’t afford to produce nearly as much content as they do right now.
Acting is a calling. We would lose many pretty faces but the people remaining would be extremely talented perhaps more average looking.
There are a lot of people in community theater now who would love a bigger audience. Tons of youtube creators would gladly make shows for the masses if the networks would have them many would even pay.
I dunno. I really like the change from what we had prior. I do make it a point to subscribe/unsubscribe to different services as I go though. I always hated having to pay for cable to get hbo so I could watch 1 season of 1 show. Now I just sub to hbo for 2 months out of the year. I understand there are concerns about fragmentation but I would rather be giving my money to multiple services at different times than have 1 huge company like Netflix be the gatekeeper to everything.
> force content owners to make their content available to 80% of the paying streaming watchers, or lose the right to the content.
Should there be more laws requiring that others get access things you paid for? If you don’t use a corner of your back yard should you be forced to lease it to someone? If you haven’t used your workout equipment for 90 days should you be forced to let members of the public come in and make better use of it?
There was never a time where you could get all of your steaming video from one place. Netflix has had a dismal collection of top movies since the beginning. They had a pretty good selection when they had partnership with STARZ, then Epyx.
I’m more bearish on Netflix’s long term sustainability lately.
How many big show cancellations have recently resulted in massive blowback from huge swaths of fans? As much as those might seem like petty complaining from overly enthusiastic watchers, I think that Netflix should be more cautious.
It’s caused me to get MUCH more skeptical about ever starting watching a show on their service, because I’ve see lots of times where the story never gets to see a conclusion. Netflix used to be a “no way I’m canceling this ever” thing for me. It’s not even close to that anymore. My intuition is that lots of people are the same. That should be concerning for Netflix investors.
They also just recently spent $200M to hire the two people behind the catastrophic final season of Game Of Thrones. Game of thrones fans are numerous, and lots of them HATE that duo right now. That’s another huge group of people now actively looking for a reason to cancel.
It feels like for a long time Netflix didn’t really have to care about customer experience or PR. They could do universally hated things like force auto playing previews on their interfaces, and basically nobody would leave because they had nowhere to go.
Now: users are forced to use an interface which seems to actively make them upset while using it, to navigate through a bunch of options which might never actually have conclusions. That doesn’t sound like a good long term customer retention strategy.
And then here comes Disney, with their MASSIVE catalog of shows with conclusions, for cheap. It’s not just Hulu vs Netflix anymore.
Netflix: fix the interface and stop canceling shows without at least giving them conclusions. This stuff matters a lot!
> They also just recently spent $200M to hire the two people behind the catastrophic final season of Game Of Thrones.
That's a pretty ridiculous way of putting it, given that those same two people are also responsible for creating one of the most successful shows in TV history.
What will determine the success of this decision is the quality of what they produce. The number of people who will cancel their subscription simply due to D&D's involvement seems like a completely insignificant risk.
I think you're missing the point I'm making. Sure that team has a lot of experience running one of the biggest shows of all time, but they're toxic to lots of people who watch TV right now.
It was a bad PR move, and it makes it easier for spiteful fans to cancel their subscriptions. Normally just one of these things wouldn't be a big deal, but it seems like netflix has had a bunch of these "a bunch of your customers are so mad that they're leaving" events back to back.
No, I think you are the one who is missing the point. This deal a bet on D&D's ability to produce a hit show. Whatever "bad PR" you think this is getting is completely insignificant compared to what Netflix stands to gain from this.
Other than that, I think you are vastly overestimating the number of people who respond negatively to this, their actual responses, and their overall impact on Netflix' bottom line. The main risk here for Netflix is that D&D will produce a bad show, not that a bunch of teenagers from r/gameofthrones will cancel their subscription.
RE: fix the interface and stop canceling shows without at least giving them conclusions.
In your view, how can they improve the interface - other than improving the recommendation algorithm. I find myself browsing their catalog for 20 minutes or so and then end up not watching anything.
And totally agree with you on not cancelling shows. For example one of their better, more creative and daring shows was the OA. Cancelled. One of Netflix's USP could be that they are a place where people go to watch non lowest common denominator shows. But of course this takes time to get up the viewership numbers up and doesn't help them in the short term, hence why they have to cancel shows I guess.
And we are one step closer to being back to cabel and likely a swing back toward pirating shows instead of working out what combo of 12.99 subscriptions are needed to watch some subset of shows and movies.
I found the selection of digitally rentable movies on iTunes and Amazon (not the streaming services, the pay per rental one’s) to be pretty good. If you are willing to pay to rent (ie the blockbuster model), I think either has a much larger and better selection than blockbusters ever had.
Blockbuster used to cost a Euro per day. 1.50 for new releases. Renting something from Amazon costs 3.99, about as much as buying a used DVD. I don't think that's a fair price.
Maybe that is what rentals at Blockbuster cost at the end of their run (or before they were super popular). I used to go to a wonderful local movie store for $0.99 - $1.99 rentals because blockbuster was $3.99+ a rental. Granted, that was for 5 days, but Blockbuster was definitely pricey in it's prime. Disclaimer: pricing is just based on one suburban area in the United States.
Alita: Battle Angel is $5.99 to rent in HD right now on Amazon.
Redbox is charging $2.12 for all Blu-ray releases on disc, including Alita. Their streaming version is also $5.99 in HD.
Hard to imagine running those kiosks 24/7, maintaining them and stocking them is cheaper than serving up a stream version. They're no doubt charging $5.99 because they're confident that they can command it based on convenience (laziness factor). $3-$3.50 for a new release in HD is around the edge of reasonable in my opinion; and $1 to $2 for everything else.
I'd have to assume they make a nice kicker from it. They add an identical rental fee each day. So if you roll it over past the return time, they re-rent it to you basically.
I know someone that owned a rental chain (the old style physical stores) in the 1980s and early 1990s. At any given time 15-20% of their sales came from late fees. Also interesting is that VHS tapes once cost $70-$100 ($40-$60 wholesale; $55 in 1984 is $140 today), so there was a serious investment and risk in renting them out to customers at the time. Stores typically purchased the tapes outright from the studios back then (so you can imagine the VHS tape inventory costs); more recently many independent stores switched to a shared revenue model, where they didn't have to front cash for inventory.
Since Blockbuster went bankrupt charging €1 and €1.50 it should be pretty obvious that's not a fair price either. Blockbuster was losing $1 billion a year charging those prices.
> Blockbuster was losing $1 billion a year charging those prices.
Blockbuster was also running bricks-and-mortar stores, and buying physical DVDs, and replacing them when they broke/wore out/weren't returned. A digital "rental", on the other hand, has basically zero marginal cost.
OTOH Blockbuster paid for the DVD once and got to rent it out as long as it lasted. How much do itunes/Amazon have to pay to the studio every time they rent out a movie?
It has to be close to the price they are a charging since every VOD store charges the same. I would think of that weren’t the case, someone would charge less.
Scarecrow Video in Seattle had a huge selection, more than any other video rental place. A small, independent video store was able to compete in a local market with the giant chain, and they did pretty well for themselves. I wonder how feasible it would be for a small, independent streaming service to even exist these days.
What value would they provide in a world where it only costs $5 to instantly stream almost any movie ever created directly to your TV?
Location and inventory are now irrelevant, and recommendations are instantly accessible on the web. Viewing devices typically have multiple rental provider options.
The only things left to compete on are be bitrate and price.
> a world where it only costs $5 to instantly stream almost any movie ever created directly to your TV
Wait, where is this world you speak of?
I have a Netflix streaming subscription and it's way inferior in terms of selection to when I used their DVD mailing service ten years ago.
But it sounds like you're renting individual titles. I am a bit of a movie buff into old and slightly obscure titles so I went to Google Play and tried three of my old favorites from the 1990s off the top of my head. None of them were available. (I didn't even try the truly obscure stuff.)
On the other side of the market, Avengers: Infinity War is $10 to rent on Google Play!
Where is this place I can go where they have everything and it's all $5?
I’ve never heard of a $10 rental though sometimes new releases are only available for purchase for an initial period.
For the three movies that aren’t listed I’m guessing they haven’t been digitized, which is usually a decision by the content owners who don’t see the ROI of paying for film scanning yet. It’s true there could be a niche streaming service that pays this upfront cost for an agreement to be the exclusive provider for a while but the economics of that would be rough.
I actually still have the DVD mailing service from Netflix (in addition to their streaming). But their back catalog is really rotting away. I'll probably drop it. It's one of way too many services I have that I don't really get my money's worth from.
It’s probably the tenth comment that I read about Netflix DVD mailing service, but I hope that’s just the name of the service and you aren’t really watching DVDs in 2019. Can you please confirm that you are indeed receiving blu-rays? Or I’m missing something here?
Lord knows I was part of the 3% who had not canceled the DVD portion of the subscription until this Spring. Had 4 DVDs just collecting dust for way to many months.
Anyhow... was one of the folks who actually still did DVDs. I've got one gadget that can read a blu-ray, and the rest are either computer systems or have an up-scalar built into them. The newer format is crisper... but man, the endless unstoppable previews really took away the luster. With streaming... the DVD quality is about the same all things considered. I use to fly frequently, so ripping the movies to a tablet or laptop on the weekend, hop on a plane Monday, back Friday, and swap out for the next set was really easy to do with DVD.
I don't subscribe for Blu-Rays but I do indeed watch DVDs from Netflix. I also occasionally get new releases from Redbox. And I buy DVDs from time to time and I also get them out of the library.
Literally bit rot. Not restocking discs that have to go out of service. I'm not sure apathy is quite fair. Netflix has been pretty clear their disc business isn't strategic.
Unfortunately, having pretty much put other DVD rental out of business, it means that you're pretty much stuck with buying discs if something isn't available digitally.
DVDs can rot. But, yes, the problem is likely more scratched/broken/lost.
I assume that the vast bulk of Netflix' DVD rentals are new releases just as they were with Blockbuster. So they're essentially a Redbox competitor.
Netflix simply has no interest is servicing a long tail of DVD rentals. And no one else has figured out how to make that long tail profitable either. You're welcome to give it a shot.
I have been annoyed that on several occasions I wanted to rent a movie and iTunes only had it for purchase. I agree that iTunes has a decent selection, but I have basically zero interest in "owning" (renting for my lifetime, or the lifetime of the iTunes store, whichever is shorter) movie downloads from iTunes.
I am not interested in giving money to Amazon due to how they treat their warehouse workers, and I'm not interested in trying to get itunes to run on linux.
I mean, you can just get Disney+ by itself for $7/month?
It's pretty easy these days to go, "Is this on Netflix? No. Is this on Prime? No." Adding "Is this on Disney+?" isn't a huge burden and it's still miles cheaper than cable and ad free...
I don’t know about other devices, but on the AppleTV app on iOS devices, you can search for a title and it will show you all of the places where it is available.
I was referring to making the part “How many services do these people realistically expect me to check” easier. Fully agree on the fragmentation issue.
Nope, you are wrong. Many people I know are switching subscriptions on monthly bases. So if you know GOT is on , get 2 month hbo and cancel netflix. You see stranger things trending, get 1 month netflix and pause other subs. People are combining shows to watch and then watch it in one month. Not like cable at all.
I imagine it's very much a demographic thing. Most people subscribe to things and stick with them. But, especially younger people with less money and more time, are probably more likely to optimize around viewing specific shows.
I did that for a while but its not worth the hassle because often I Want to watch something that isn't on any of the services i have and dont want to wait.
Piracy will make a comeback and thats a logical conclusion from this fragmentation.
But cable is actual trash. It has ads despite already paying and you can't chose the show you want to watch. This is miles better even if it's more expensive (and it's not).
Yeah, people are finding creative ways to share videos like they used to share tapes, I've noticed. Kinda fun coming across curated mini-collections, even just out on the web.
We’ve gone back to buying DVDs/Blurays and renting movies. My most recent purchase was all seasons of x-files in a single box for $15. Usually it’s a tad more expensive to pick up an entire season of something though, so there is some front load to pay, but in 10 years not having had 3-5 subscriptions will have saved us money. And we will still have access to our library of things.
That being said, if Disney+ makes it to Denmark, that might actually be the one streaming service we want because of our children.
It probably should be noted that the Danish national public service tv station has streaming apps for all their channels, as well as a Netflix style selection for their own content. So that gives us 6 commercial free BBC quality channels.
I recently bought a turntable and some records. Maybe its the tactile feel of the record or maybe it's the lack of a skip button, but it really does feel better listening to physical media.
I predict we will see the backlash against digital media become mainstream soon.
YARRRR - it's easier than ever to get linux ISOs. It was tricky back in the day with irc bots, and dc++, emule. Now there's magnet links and the linux ISOs are just flooded right there. Oh you want ganoo loonix remuxes? There's a usenet for that.
I would like blockbuster to come back too, it was a fun family moment every saturday evening.
> That does seem like a much better deal than Netflix.
It depends what the Disney+ catalog is like and whether they infest it with ads, too; ESPN+ has ads, and the Hulu tier in the bundle of the ad-heavy tier. So, it's looking a lot like paying for a package of basic cable channels compared to paying for a premium package with Netflix or HBO. There might be more total content, but it's offset by advertising: what your ad tolerance is will be a big factor in which is better.
Of course, as with basic cable and premium channels, there's no reason one has to win over the other—plenty of people could end up paying for both.
Worryingly so. To my mind, the price looks intended to kill off other independent services, especially netflix. I can't see these deals lasting at all, but even three or four years could be enough to cripple Netflix so long as they are generous with their back catalogue and new releases.
Hulu brings in a ton of ad money already, if this is an ad-supported bundle for all of it, they probably have way more pricing flexibility than Netflix.
This seems factually wrong. I haven't checked the data, but Netflix has been streaming for like a decade, and while they've increased the price from time to time it's hardly been annually.
I think what I've paid has gone from $8 to $13 in 10 years?
I would expect Disney to be willing to operate at a loss for years on Disney+, in order to catch up some on subscribers. Investors will want to see sales & subscriber growth more than profit at this point, from that service. They're not expecting profit anytime soon. A failure on gaining subscribers will be a big hit to the stock however, it'll indicate a permanent subservience to Netflix in streaming. If they generate large subscriber gains, the market will reward them for it considerably and forward bet on eventual profits.
Disney has $13.x billion in operating income, they can easily afford to try to tip over Netflix's money burning machine and try to hurt them financially. The $12.99 figure puts a further cap on the pricing power that Netflix has at this point, which is also a cap on their ability to fix their severe cash burn problem. Disney can play a long game and watch Netflix continue to drown in debt interest costs.
If you're not a sports fan, it seems about equal to Netflix. From my experience, Hulu is flat out worse than Netflix, then adding in Disney raises the value. That being said, I'm much rather just have Disney movies on Netflix.
Its easy when you don't need to make money from it. Netflix makes all its money from subscription, so has to actually cover their costs. Disney makes most of its money from parks, merch and movies.
We will enter an era where you make a bundle subscription to all these services (Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) And then your monthly payment gets distributed by the streaming services based on the ratio of watching content from each one of them. This is technically doable now, so seems like the best subscriber/subscription-provider option possible.
I've seen claims that Disney movies (including Pixar and Marvel) are only going to be on Disney+.
What I've not seen is if that means that they will no longer show up on the Disney-owned cable channels like Disney XD and FXX, or it just means that they won't show up on non-Disney streaming services.
I don't have kids, so it is not imperative that I stay current with Pixar and Disney animation, so I've just been waiting until they show up on cable. They are currently up to their 2016 releases (same for their Marvel and Star Wars movies).
Why would they cannibalize their TV network for some online play by significantly making their Disney channels worse? I can’t see any strategy in doing that...especially after they spent so much time resisting the idea (aka economics) of internet streaming.
There could be much higher margins in the digital distributed content. Could also drive user signups if they run ads for "watch this movie you want to see for free for the first month".
I was excited about ESPN+ when it launched, since I was hoping to watch Monday night football, and ACC college basketball. However, neither of those seems to be present. Reading reviews, they say things like: "The list of ESPN+ live content reads like a group of castoffs: programming not valuable enough to appear on one of ESPN’s eight cable networks.... There will be no Monday Night Football, and neither of ESPN’s two weekly NBA games will appear on the platform. Plus, no live event that is on one of ESPN’s eight cable networks will be on ESPN+." (from https://www.theringer.com/sports/2018/4/2/17190026/espn-plus...)
Honestly, account sharing seems to be wave of the future. Eg, my buddy keeps his cable, I give him my Netflix and Amazon logins, and I get his HBO and ESPN logins.
> Wonder if they will unbundle Disney+ or if this will be the only offering.
Other reporting has indicated they plan to offer Disney+ separately as a standalone, and also as an add-on through Amazon Prime and some other services, the same way HBO Now and some other services are offered.
It also looks to be no mention of streaming Premier League games.
Does anyone know if NBC owns those rights to stream stateside? IIRC, NBC Sports is the Premier League hub while Fox Sports tends to host more Bundesliga (German football club) matches.
NBC owns the Premier League rights and they split the games across NBCSN (primary channel), Premier League Gold extra (3 games a weekend, this dumb online service that's just a cash grab), MSNBC (1? game week), and another channel I can't remember (1 game week?).
TNT has some of the champions league games, and the rest are on Bleacher Report Live -- some new paid online service.
FS1/FS2 has Bundesliga and some MLS games.
ESPN has Serie A, some MLS games. They also seem to have FA Cup, the Championship, and the Carabao Cup on ESPN+.
This is pretty terrible compared to a few years ago. You could see all PL matches via NBCSN or their extra NBCSN extra channels. Some big games would be on NBC proper. Fox/FS1/FS2 had the champions league. Now things are more splintered and you have to pay extra to see everything. In addition to getting the channels, to watch the Champions League + Premier League you have to buy TWO online only services that are both $9.99/mo or $65 and $80 a year.
For this season, the cheapest way to get NBCSN seems to be to use Sling Blue for $25/mo. FuboTV used to be really good, but it looks like they've basically been raising prices each year. Of course, SlingBlue doesn't come with ESPN/ESPN+ but it certainly covers most the PL games and part of the CL games.
I don’t understand your point? I need to have a bunch of extra commercial relationships with companies that I previously didn’t for the same services I previously had. Just to watch maybe 5 more games that I care about.
It's not really more options if they took their offerings off of a service you already had (Netflix) so they can make you pay for it on a service you don't have yet. More options would be if they left it on both platforms so you could pick your fave.
Is there a bundle without espn? Bundling the sports channels on cable was one of the main factors driving costs. Also, not really interested in espn's politicization of sports.
If Disney (DIS) keeps paying average dividend 1.25%, you can make them pay for the subscription if you buy DIS stock for $12,500. (more if you want to account for taxes, costs and their future price increases).
I bought DIS few months ago when I realized how big the Disney+ launch will be. The price seems to be good without too much expectations.
I'd like Xfinity unlimited 1 Gbps ISP/unlimited landline/260 channels + Hulu + HBO + Netflix + Amazon Prime + Youtube Red + Spotify for one order of magnitude more. That I could get behind.
You should probably provide a link with that. I don't know if it's fair to say that everyone here is going to pay for this, or even was considering it. Perhaps a less blaming tone might help your case?
"Now that Fox Corp. has sold off most of its entertainment properties, it has become a standalone company that will retain ownership of its broadcast network, owned-and-operated network affiliates, the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and Fox Sports." [0]
No. Fox News, Sports, and Television are what's left of Fox Corporation. The sports situation is especially complicated, with international rights coming into play.
I pay for 5 different streaming services right now, one is Apple Music. On Apple Music I can find, what I feel, like 90% of all music I want to listen to. On the other video streaming services it's a complete mess. They often show pictures of a movie/series on their front page, and later when I decide to watch it, it's gone. And gone from all of the services I pay for.
This behavior is taking away the convenience and make me feel they are gaming me. I seldom go to iTunes and just buy some several decades old movie/series(you can't even buy series on iTunes in my country) when they do this, I either give up or torrent it(via VPN). Yeah, illegal I know.
I'm not really wanting laws to change, but this behavior from the content owners in combination with their lobbying to make new laws to scan for content they own everywhere, lobbying for removing Internet anonymity, and having regular people pay damages that are more than they will earn in several lifetimes is not very constructive for the society either.
I starting to think it's time for laws that, for example, force content owners to make their content available to 80% of the paying streaming watchers, or lose the right to the content.