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Comment by michaelscott | Hacker News Reader

I wonder at what point integrators' target market becomes too broad. Both Disney and Netflix have this problem: some of their content appeals to me, maybe enough for me to purchase a subscription to the platform, but a lot of it doesn't. People who sign up for free trials to access one show aside, this will lead to a point where multiple integrators (let's say streaming services to continue the example) each have one or two offerings I'm interested in but each is asking a $5-10 a month fee for it.

The decision then becomes whether I'm willing to pay $5-10 for one or two shows (and not for everything a service offers, since their offering has become too broad) or whether I will choose to not watch at all/pirate.

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Disney attacks this problem by partitioning its production infrastructure.

Good idea that has mature themes that won't look right under the Disney logo? There's Fox 2000 pictures or Lucasfilm or Searchlight. It's all the same company, but with different labels to make it easier for the consumer to guess at the "flavor" of product they'll get.

The "pirate" option is interesting. 10 years ago it used to be a matter of ease of use. Torrents and Plex offered something that no other company at the time did. Since Netflix and others came on the scene now its just because people don't want to pay.

I signed up to NowTV in the UK to watch Game of Thrones for 2-3 months and cancelled. The great thing about many of these services is the come and go subscription. Why not sign up for a few months, watch all the content you like and then cancel when you're done?

Disney offers 7 separate username/passwords for one paid account. Not counting that people can share a username.

There's 7 profiles per account, but only one email/password. They also allow "only" 4 active streams at a time.

Why does it matter if there is stuff you don't like, as long as there is enough stuff you do?

I believe GP is saying that they aren't willing to pay $5/10 a month for one or two shows. Especially not in a world where their ideal preference is one or two shows from integrator A, one or two from integrator B, from integrator C, etc... It can get very expensive very quickly.

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