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posted by martyb on Monday January 07 2019, @01:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the Whatever-happened-to-Blockbuster? dept.

If you watch streaming aggregators such as Netflix and Hulu you've likely noticed a decrease in the scope of their catalogs, with items of interest being added less frequently over time, and entire catalogs of content disappearing. New shows come out and don't ever make it to the service, or perhaps are only available through some add on service.

My favorite of all time was the "You need a cable subscription to watch this content, please log in with your cable provider", why even show us those?

This trend has been ramping up as providers try to build and market their own streaming services and restrict competition via content (or via adjustments to bandwidth for their streams)

And it is getting worse - "Netflix and chill no more—streaming is getting complicated" explores the trend.

Disney Plus is set to launch late next year with new Marvel and Star Wars programming, along with its library of animated and live-action movies and shows. It hasn't announced pricing yet, but Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an August call with analysts that it will likely be less than Netflix, which runs $8 to $14 a month, since its library will be smaller.

AT&T plans a three-tier offering from WarnerMedia, with a slate of new and library content centered around the existing HBO streaming app. No word on pricing yet.

Individual channels, such as Fox, ESPN, CBS and Showtime, are also getting into the act. Research group TDG predicts that every major TV network will launch a direct-to-consumer streaming service in the next five years.

Subscribing to service after service will quickly cost more than a cable bill, choice will be limited, finding shows more difficult, and multiple terrible interfaces (instead of one well known crummy interface). Much of the point of cord cutting will be dismantled.

One thing I am sure of, companies that I despise for their past actions (e.g. Disney for copyright terms) are never going to get a direct subscription from me. If their content is not on an aggregator they won't see my money at all. (My little contributions to karma here and there make me happy.)

Families will have to decide between paying more each month or losing access to some of their favorite dramas, comedies, musicals and action flicks.

So fellow cordcutters, will you drop $10/month on half a dozen different subscription services or stick with the aggregators and hope this trend dies out? Maybe add one or two more? Could just dropping them all and picking up shows individually as needed on things like Google and Amazon be the best option soon?

Is the era of binge watch at risk?


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @03:41AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @03:41AM (#783004)

    Disney has a problem with greed and control. They've shown over and over again that when they see somebody else making money they have to try to move in to get some of that lucrative cash. The problem is they often don't understand why somebody else is making money and end up doing a cheap money grab and then wonder why it fails. For example, disney comics and video games. Disney has repeatedly gone between producing their own comics and video games and having someone else produce them. Someone else licenses a disney property, often one disney couldn't care less about, starts producing quality work and starts making money. Disney gets jealous, pulls the license and tries to do it themselves. They end up doing a poor to mediocre job of it and lose money or at the very least not make enough that they realize they would make more by licensing it out instead of doing it themselves and taking all the risk. They go back to licensing things out and then someone starts making quality work and making decent money and Disney gets jealous and pulls the license, repeat over and over again. Disney does not learn.

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday January 07 2019, @03:58AM (4 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday January 07 2019, @03:58AM (#783007) Journal

    My son loves Jigsaw puzzles: Disney consistently has the crappiest made puzzles. More expensive but cheaply made, so we don't buy them for him anymore.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @04:13AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @04:13AM (#783015)

      You can pirate jigsaws too. All you need is a laser cutter and a large format printer.

      • (Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 07 2019, @04:31AM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 07 2019, @04:31AM (#783023) Homepage Journal

        Or, you know, a jigsaw...

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday January 07 2019, @06:13AM (1 child)

          by deimtee (3272) on Monday January 07 2019, @06:13AM (#783058) Journal

          Nah, you need something finer than that. A jigsaw has way too much kerf. I think most of them are forme cut.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 07 2019, @12:02PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 07 2019, @12:02PM (#783124) Homepage Journal

            Depends on your medium and your blade. They make jigsaw blades thin and agile enough to work quite well on quarter or eighth inch thick sheets of wood, plywood, or luan . If you go below that you do probably want a saber saw with one of the blades so thin that it breaks if you look at it wrong though.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 07 2019, @05:20AM (7 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday January 07 2019, @05:20AM (#783049)

    When people will buy up direct-to-video effortless "sequels" to popular franchises; why bother putting effort into anything at all. This has been Disney's m-o for decades.

    I foresee nothing changing in the digital age. Their streaming service will be a shit-show, I guarantee it. But people will still shell out even more than they paid for Netflix alone.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 07 2019, @12:05PM (6 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 07 2019, @12:05PM (#783126) Homepage Journal

      Some will, sure. I don't think they will be enough for the House of Mouse to keep the service's doors open very long though. They produce a niche commodity rather than serving up a more broadly appealing catalog.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 07 2019, @02:09PM (5 children)

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday January 07 2019, @02:09PM (#783168)

        I agree. I assume their goal was to do their normal "lock up their classics in a vault", therefore families would be forced to subscribe so their kids can watch the same dumb Disney movie over and over.

        I think they greatly overestimate their own value. With media more available than ever before, families don't need to keep with a small collection of VHS tapes to entertain kids.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 07 2019, @02:48PM (4 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 07 2019, @02:48PM (#783189) Homepage Journal

          Bingo. As soon as they're allowed on YouTube, television largely loses their attention anyway in my experience. As near as I can tell, it's mostly for us old farts nowadays.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 07 2019, @03:32PM (3 children)

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday January 07 2019, @03:32PM (#783201) Journal

            Most of us old farts have seen everything they have many more times than we cared to, but it was the only thing on at the time.

            Content has changed, and we've changed with it. I don't know if anyone out there has experienced this, but I can barely get through movies I love. The other day I loaded up Brazil, my all-time favorite movie, and stopped watching it after the opening scene.

            When it comes to TV series, as soon as something starts to annoy me in the story arc, I drop it and never go back. I still never finished Lost because they abused the viewers in Season 2 or 3's opening with 45 minutes of commercials in the first hour. There remain six episodes of Breaking Bad I haven't seen because they thought they'd get cute by putting everything on hiatus for a year so they could milk re-runs.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 07 2019, @04:56PM (2 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 07 2019, @04:56PM (#783240) Homepage Journal

              Sounds more like you're getting to be a grouchy old bastard than losing your attention span. Good for you! Personally, the more movies I watch that don't have John Wayne in them, the less I want to watch movies at all. Over the past four years I've also nearly completely lost the ability to watch any television series that I don't already like too. The exception being most of Netflix's Marvel shows, so of course Disney has to fuck that up as well.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.