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Comment by 0xTJ | Hacker News Reader

The entire TV/movie streaming industry is pushing the world back to a cable-like one, and that's already pushing people back to pirating. There are a lot of people who were content to pay for a couple services, but even without any sports, you can easily be paying for 3 streaming services for ~$60, just to get content that used to be on Netflix (plus whatever's been released since). Once you add one or two sports, you can be looking at prices above $100 per month.

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> you can easily be paying for 3 streaming services for ~$60

You can easily buy and cancel what you want when you want, so that is the not cable-like development.

I do not see why people should fee they are owed all the content in the world for $x.

The important part is the creator/curator/seller of the content and the purchaser of the content are not held hostage by a monopoly/monopsony distributor.

> I do not see why people should fee they are owed all the content in the world for $x.

Why do actors and movie studios, producers, and glorified CDNs/streaming services think they are entitled to tens of millions of dollars for producing a TV show? They create mindless entertainment for society and yet they are so highly compensated. Yeah, I don't feel like I owe them anything.

> Why do actors and movie studios, producers, and glorified CDNs/streaming services think they are entitled to tens of millions of dollars for producing a TV show?

Because that is the agreement they made for selling their labor/services/content to the buyers of the labor/services/content.

> I don't feel like I owe them anything.

Correct, you do not owe them anything.

They aren't entitled to it. They get it because that's what most people are willing to pay.

"Mindless" is a subjective term. Millions of people enjoy the entertainment you refer to, as judged by the fact that they go to the cinema and pay for admission. That's why they're so highly-compensated.

If you don't see the value in the entertainment those companies provide, you're probably not the target audience.

> I do not see why people should fee they are owed all the content in the world for $x.

People just want to pay for what they want. What is so hard about that?

I don't want cable with 500 channels of no interest. I also don't want to deal with subscribe/cancel 20 services as shows come and go.

Just make it simple ffs.

> What is so hard about that?

Media companies have been using the value of "content you want to watch" to subsidize "content you don't know you want to watch" for about a century now, the back catalogs are what will keep you paying but that only retains value so long as new content can be added to it.

A lot of content can be purchased outright on several different platforms.

It's $40/season, but it's available.

While I myself have purchased many seasons of TV, I should caution you that none of it can be "purchased outright" on these platforms. Your account can be cancelled at any time, and you then lose access with no recourse. "Purchasing outright" requires buying physical media, and even then, disc players are becoming dangerously niche.

If people really start doing that en-masse, then the next thing the streaming services will implement is that cancellation means you lose access immediately.

Then I will set a reminder on my phone to cancel before next renewal. Or if too troublesome, I will just pay for the specific episode or show or movie.

Or if the price is too high, I will find something better to do with my time. Same as every other entertainment option in life.

Why not just have one streaming service at a time? Each has an absurd amount of content so just switch it up every few months. You get to watch everything and it’s super inexpensive.

Sports are trickier of course.

This is what I do. When the "to watch" list of shows I got recommended or am otherwise interested in watching on one of the services gets a few items on it, I buy a month of subscription and immediately cancel. Then watch the stuff during the month, and some time later get another month of a different service. This has been working great for the past couple years.

All these services are going for the strategy of a couple big releases and hope people forget to cancel. But now with a dozen different services consumers are being forced to learn to swap in and out.

Once they swap into a good pirate solution, it'll be very hard to get them to swap out.

We're being nickeled and dimed to death.

Where I live now there is an insane number of carwashes — and more being built. Apparently they're a "subscription service" like 24-hour gyms, etc...

> The entire TV/movie streaming industry is pushing the world back to a cable-like one, and that's already pushing people back to pirating.

Downloading video content for your own consumption is not technically pirating in many EU countries and it's perfectly legal (not so much uploading/hosting it). While in same EU countries would be already torrenting (distributing) it illegal, so you are safe only with DDL.

But yeah, fragmentation of market killed it for end consumer.

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