The big question is what is the solution to all this that doesn't involve 3 big players buying out all the rest? Is it even possible to get these guys to all play together in some kind of shared space.
Like you know... how your local store was allowed to sell you VHSs of the Terminator and you didn't have to pay subscription to Warner Bros store (which only existed in swamps of Florida) to get it? And how you could then give it to another person without restriction or tax to the said corporate lord?
Monopolization and integration of multiple markets into single corporate entities always hurts the consumers. Maybe it's time for US government to pull thumbs out of their bums and take out their cartel breaking hammers?
It's remarkable how there are still industries that don't know how to take advantage of the internet to give a great user experience, and whose greed only hurts their bottom line.
It's very simple: I want to watch any content from wherever, whenever, and however I like. Make it cheap and high quality, and I'll pay you for it. Screw this up, and I'll get it from somewhere that offers this experience instead.
Yeah. There should only be a few distributors. They should be something like a common carrier. Why should AMC, et al. duplicate streaming infrastructure? Focus on content and let someone else deliver it.
These companies would have a lot more of my money if they let me pay them for *.mkvs a la carte. I still pay the subs for a couple of them but my default is to just pirate the file, even if it's on a service I pay for. I'm not claiming this is a solution, but it would definitely earn them more money from my end.
Piracy is generally really quick and frictionless, but even so I do have to wait a couple minutes sometimes before I've found enough peers to start streaming something. If I could pay a couple bucks to just get the file off a fast CDN I absolutely would.
Yep, if I could buy the highest quality in one click without having to search through crap on torrent indexes I would. Then after transcoding if I ever want the highest quality I just go back to the site where I bought it. Nope, they aren't gonna offer that.
And I'm not wasting my time storing and ripping Blu-Rays, I'm just gonna acquire it through Sonarr/Radarr. I know it's probably not important to 99% of users, but it would be so convenient to be able to just buy and download the movie/tv at it's highest quality in a few seconds. The closest I have found to that is the *-arr stack I am using with Jellyfin which is super automated and really great.
Regulation might be able to fix it: Prevent streaming companies from owning content production. Split up companies that already exist like this (e.g. Comcast, Netflix, Disney, et al) then the content creating entities will be forced to pick the highest bidder for exclusive access or try to maximize profit by syndicating their content across as many platforms as possible.
I would go further and require content producers to sell to all buyers at the same price. Or even that content producers must sell to all buyers at the same reasonable price. Since the dawn of mass media, media has formed part of our shared shared culture. And that means that the consumers have some claim of ownership over it too.
Why would adding a middleman make anything better?
If society wants more people to be able to watch more TV, then society should just give people cash so they can buy access to more streaming services. Or reduce copyright terms to something reasonable like 10 years.
> Why would adding a middleman make anything better?
Because market competition is what makes capitalism a liveable social order for most people. Adding market competition makes everything better. Command economies (corporate or socialist) don't.
This isn't middlemen providing no value. If any streaming service can pay Disney to serve Disney content, that means two might start doing it, and then people who want Disney can go with the one that manages lower prices and/or better service—more reliable, fewer compression artifacts, apps on more platforms, plays nicer with aggregators, et c, lots of ways one might be better than another. Lots more room for competition on business models and service quality.
Right now, if you want Disney content through a streaming service, you have one option. If it sucks, well, that's too bad for you, take it or leave it. And same for HBO, for Paramount, for all of them. Splitting up distribution and production creates a better competitive environment, given the existence of copyright.
I guess I never saw any difference between streaming service quality, at least using Apple TV. Though I’m not a TV aficionado either, all I is I press play and things usually start playing in sufficiently high quality.
The video quality is generally fine, but the quality of the apps is vast.
Anything that doesn't use system-provided UI elements is simply constitutionally bad. It's incredible that things that can't scroll smoothly pass basic QC.
And as far as I can tell, the only people fighting to keep car dealerships separate from car manufacturers are car dealership owners. I would like to be able to just order a new car online and have it be delivered directly from the manufacturer.
The TV app on iOS and macOS already has a unified search and discovery mechanism. The only content seller missing is Netflix, because Netflix chooses not to participate.
I'm not sure there is one. There are some potential wrinkles like the way Amazon Prime offers add-ons like Starz. But even that is analogous to the cable world where you had premium channels like HBO. There's also the potential for some content to just go a la carte only sales through a purely distribution platform but I have to believe that ship has mostly sailed.
ADDED: But per another comment, things are better than the cable world, much less the pre-cable world that I actually grew up in. So some combination of fragmentation and consolidation is fine for me.
One can have a service which buys up a bunch of subscriptions to these streaming services and then licenses to customers for an appropriate cost. Everyone doesn't have to watch everything at the same time. Still, they get access to all the content. Things can be queued like in the library or submitting sw jobs.
You couldn't do this with tv on cable since it was not on demand but if one can schedule properly, more customers can be supported with fewer licenses.
Netflix started producing content for two main reasons. The first was that Disney and others decided to start their own streaming platforms and make their content exclusive. Second, it's an asset that Netflix can syndicate.
In countries where Disney+ doesn't exist you can watch it on Netflix.
When Netflix streaming was just starting they had a lot of great content from Starz, HBO, and their Anime selection was extensive. Gradually all that content was removed and locked behind different paywalls.
