Hacker News Reader

Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

Because you can't go anywhere else to see the same content so why spend money on the quality of the software? There's no market competition there so you'll suffer the cheapest product to see their content.

It really, truly just boils down to that. You're not going to switch to Netflix. Or Hulu. Or Apple. Or buy BluRays. Or watch it on YouTube. You can't - they have monopoly. Every dollar they put into the quality of the app is eating into the margin. There's no pressure to increase quality. It needs to just (barely) work so you suffer it enough to watch.

The software engineer can throw out the laziest, fastest turd, the UX designer can do the bare minimum and the product manager can sleep on his job and money will keep coming in.

View on HN

This attitude needs to die in the business world. Particularly in entertainment offerings and cloud subscriptions.

There is always an alternative, and it is likely worse than your customers going to a competitor. Disney et al are going to bring back piracy at the rate they are going.

I too agree, piracy is the only valid approach against media-mononopolies.

Small cluster servers serving local friend networks content will be the future.

Plex is going to come under fire from other streaming services if the above ever happen...

jellyfin to the rescue!

I actually think NN dreaming up movies, depending on noise, the realtime reactions and the heroes journey will be the future. Just add a consistency layer on top (keep same face on the cast and name-consistent(place, enemy, protagonists, mc guffins) , the rest can be made up).

NN generated art convinced me that the death of hollywood is just around the corner.

> media-mononopolies

How can you have more than one media monopoly?

Monopoly on the content.

By "the content" I assume you mean specific IP such as Star Wars, because nobody has monopoly on "content" at large. Anybody can create content, new stories, new characters. People do it all the time!

Yes. Content that they own IP of.

Piracy IS the competition in UX.

D+ needs to have a UX that's close enough behind the convenience of watching through a pirated channel that it doesn't push users over the hump. Once users go over it's very hard to lure them back.

fmovies et al are pretty hard to beat. They have an extremely large selection that goes across all services and in my experience often have better image quality. I was comparing Netflix to fmovies recently and Netflix was looking like hot garbage. Also no need to log in, just enter the website into the URL and you're good to go. Very straightforward and fast user interface, even comments.

I mean, we had that with having DVD/BR players being separate from the media they play. But meanwhile I daily see people on this very site demand and applaud this kind of vertical consolidation and death of choice on every level.

Unfortunately, they don’t have to do anything because content is king.

Netflix has it backwards, great UX, shit content.

This, Paramount+ is another 08’ era Netflix-like turd.

Chromecast iOS support is pathetic, sometimes it flops and I have to disconnect and restart the app.

Absolutely no user data whatsoever, won’t tell you the last time of the video you watched, doesn’t even tell you if something has been watched, no favorite list, no recommendations.

There’s like 20 major genre’s, you click one and it’s the Viacom backlog in alphabetical order. Stuff from the 40s clumped with stuff from the 80s clumped with stuff from now, it feels like grandpas basement vhs collection.

Idk exactly what’s wrong with it, people can say what they want about Netflix but the UI/UX is vastly superior to these newcomers. This is the Viacom heap.

> they have monopoly

They have a monopoly over Disney content but they don’t have a monopoly over content. Most people, even kids, aren’t constantly watching Disney and if they debase the product by ruining the experience and continually opening up UX advantages for competitors they will erode their consumer base over time. I assume they know this and so the picture isn’t so bleak as you make out (pun not intended.) The reality is they’ve been shoveling money into Disney+ for several years and I’m guessing the quality issues are mainly down to how fast they moved rather than some Dickensian motives. AFAICT the UX quality has improved over time.

Disney isn't just cartoons. They also bought (together with copyright and IP rights) 20th Century Fox, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Pixar and many others.

They pretty much own most of what younger americans now consider as culture.

And with their capital, they can easily just buy more without you having a say in it.

You're missing the point. Sure, they have monopoly content (so does Netflix, etc.). But they don't have a monopoly on entertainment, and most (or many) people can easily be satisfied by competing content or even forms on entertainment.

> 20th Century Fox, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Pixar and many others.

They’re a big player for sure and I’m not dismissing the risk from their bulbous size just that no matter how big they get there’s going to be an alternative so there should persist a pressure to compete on UX quality to some degree. The monopoly power I’m far more worried about is how terrible the content becomes when they buy and fully digest an IP.

This. Sure, they have a monopoly on particular content, but I can certainly find other forms of entertainment. A small fraction of the audience may absolutely require Disney properties, but many people don't. Substitution is a real thing, and the force of the monopoly is thus limited.

> Most people, even kids, aren’t constantly watching Disney

May I present to you, the kids of America.

>Because you can't go anywhere else to see the same content

TPB still exists and that's where I went because the current streaming options suck and are not worth paying for

>There's no market competition

Good thing there's non-market competition like thepiratebay.org or rarbg.to ;D

That competition has been massively curtailed by move to walled garden devices running iOS and Android. It's starting to be harder and harder for those alternatives to exist.

There have been several public calls for Apple/Google to ban and block VLC because it allows playback of pirated media. This pressure is just going to increase in the future as more people move away from desktop platforms.

Lol, torrents or finding DVDs are always the alternative for me. I want to support these companies but it’s so infuriating the way they treat users, even implicitly with the user experience. I have HBO which has been great. Criterion too.

Disney+, Zee5, ESPN+ were atrocious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com