Hacker News Reader

Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

Netflix is in a weird position. Early on I loved it, but over time it seems down to a few good originals and a lot of bad ones, and third rate third party content. I haven't cancelled yet but probably will, as I rarely use it. I don't blame Netflix for this necessarily, but it has made it's consumer value much weaker. Internationally, there are much cheaper options typically.

As an aside, their taking of a political stance has led to a small but visible American chunk leaving, or at least claiming to.

View on HN

Yes, I’ve also noticed that generally their original content isn’t very great. I can see how this happens when you optimize for binge-watching, but it feels like they just throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.

I’ve recently got an HBO subscription and the difference in quality is staggering.

I don't like how they mark exclusive right properties as "Originals" when they may not have made them. A lot of the quality of those exclusives is not great compared to their actual originals.

Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. That means Netflix has to scramble for content. And when starting out they were careful in selecting projects. But once they got a taste for success they have been green-lighting projects left and right. But, they are not going to select winners every time. Stuff like Bright, the Will Smith movie, relied solely on the star power.

It will be interesting to see if Netflix imposes some kind quality bar to ensure things don't go even worse.

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service.

I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

It's easier to create a streaming service than a content house, apparently. So it's clear that this is the way things will go. Ultimately video streaming is a commodity technology and there are lots of engineers who can build such things. It's not like web search or AI.

The too-many-subscriptions problem could be solved in a variety of commercial ways, like simply offering charging for how much you watch rather than a flat rate.

People are spending just as much time watching TV as they ever did. If they've always paid $70/month for it, why would the entertainment companies settle for people paying less now?

People are paying $70/month for TV in the US!?

In Germany, the basic HD TV package costs €60/year (not per month) if you want it. And also you have to pay €18/month for the public broadcasts (that part is non-negotiable). So that comes out to €23/month if you're watching over satellite. Cable TV sometimes imposes additional fees (€8/month in my apartment building).

There is also Sky, a pay-TV provider, but I don't know any subscribers except for soccer fans and sports bars.

Some people pay even more! I had relatives paying well over 120 dollars per month! The general pricing scheme for both phone and cable, well really most private subscription companies, is to hook people in with a deal with an absurd price after a set time is over, and tack on tons of little gotchas. It's borderline theft IMO. Those who know better then have to decide whether it's worth the hassle of threatening to cancel each year...

Sky has five million subscribers in Germany. That looks like about 12% of your households.

Basic TV in the US is free. Basic cable is about $30/mo. Case bundled with Internet is $50-100. There are some premium equivalents to Sky that top out around $200/mo. About 75% of US households pay for TV in some way. I’d say our mean and median household spending on TV is higher but there is a greater range of pricing, with $0 being quite viable if your tastes are simple.

> If they've always paid $70/month for it, why would the entertainment companies settle for people paying less now?

The usual reason in a normal product market would be efficiencies developed over time reducing costs and competition driving prices down to marginally over cost.

It was the same way in games for a long time. A platform becomes dominant (because it is the best), then others want to emulate it (poorly). Eventually competitors do pop up, but the ones that don't fill a specific niche generally don't become incredibly popular.

The difference with movies/series is that the licensing situation is significantly more retarded. This will probably end up meaning we will end up with a million different streaming services (with different catalogues for different countries, or more accurately a good catalog in the US and a poor one everywhere else). This will drive more people to pirating, with predictable results.

What political stance have they taken?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com