And yet they’re the one that pulled Prodigy. IDK how popular that was, but if they pulled S1-3 of Discovery for “similar reasons” or whatever Trek you were planning to watch later on… that really kills the whole pay for streaming as a back catalog.
I otherwise agree - you need to make paying you easier than pirating, while actually being affordable - and… they’re not. Outside of NetFlix, everyone else has some streaming problems, UI problems, etc. You know what pretty much doesn’t? Having a mp4 file. You can play that in any of a number of competing players with UI etc that are actually directly competing on the UI and performance.
I just think Netflix is kind of screwed now that they don’t have the licenses from most of the media companies. They now have ever increasing costs (inflation) and yet - demand is down (end of pandemic) and people don’t really like price increases even if they’re even with inflation (not saying theirs is, but they can’t shrinkflate) - but 2009 $7.99 is 2023 $11.36 - but that’s the government CPI / inflation, that many people think is kind of skewed. Shadowstats claim it’s $27.96. But for just one service, that’s more than a cable bill ad-on for HBO was last I checked (the Shadowstats amount). So, assuming 2009ish was actually profitable, which it may not have been, and inflation - even if everything else stayed the same there’d need to be a noticable to LARGE price increase to break even. And everything didn’t stay the same - competition, license pulls, and running their own studios / funding their own shows. And as the price goes up, people see less value, and less people are likely to join to see how it is.
And yet they’re the one that pulled Prodigy. IDK how popular that was, but if they pulled S1-3 of Discovery for “similar reasons” or whatever Trek you were planning to watch later on… that really kills the whole pay for streaming as a back catalog.
I otherwise agree - you need to make paying you easier than pirating, while actually being affordable - and… they’re not. Outside of NetFlix, everyone else has some streaming problems, UI problems, etc. You know what pretty much doesn’t? Having a mp4 file. You can play that in any of a number of competing players with UI etc that are actually directly competing on the UI and performance.
I just think Netflix is kind of screwed now that they don’t have the licenses from most of the media companies. They now have ever increasing costs (inflation) and yet - demand is down (end of pandemic) and people don’t really like price increases even if they’re even with inflation (not saying theirs is, but they can’t shrinkflate) - but 2009 $7.99 is 2023 $11.36 - but that’s the government CPI / inflation, that many people think is kind of skewed. Shadowstats claim it’s $27.96. But for just one service, that’s more than a cable bill ad-on for HBO was last I checked (the Shadowstats amount). So, assuming 2009ish was actually profitable, which it may not have been, and inflation - even if everything else stayed the same there’d need to be a noticable to LARGE price increase to break even. And everything didn’t stay the same - competition, license pulls, and running their own studios / funding their own shows. And as the price goes up, people see less value, and less people are likely to join to see how it is.