Help me understand the world of streaming.

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been wanting to watch some old shows recently, in particular Murder, She Wrote. I remember that a few years ago it used to be on Netflix, but now it’s no longer available their. Next I decided to check on CBS’s streaming service, which doesn’t have Murder, She Wrote either. I tried a google search and it appears the first 5 seasons are available on Amazon’s video streaming service, as well as on something called Philo.

While I was exploring these services, I found out a few other interesting things. CBS offers Cheers and Frazier, which I remember watching on NBC back in the day. On the other hand, some CBS shows, like the above mentioned MSW as well as Northern Exposure, seem not to be available. Philo seems to stream shows from various channels, but I thought some of those, like Discovery Life, had their own streaming services.

Needless to say, this is all somewhat confusing, and makes me hesitant to add another service other than Netflix which I already have. Why do these shows seem to jump from one property to another? Why are some shows unavailable, Evelin on their original channels? What’s the deal with services like Philo? I appreciate any answers to help out this newbie to the world of streaming.

2

Part of “why is Cheers on CBS streaming, not NBC” has to do with who actually made the series, not with which network it originally aired. Cheers (and Frazier) was produced by Paramount, which now owns CBS (and, by extension, the CBS All Access streaming service).

And, as companies begin to launch streaming services, in some cases, they pull the programming that they own off of other streaming services which had previously carried it. For example, a lot of Disney properties are no longer on Netflix, and those that still are, are likely to eventually come off of Netflix, as Disney launches Disney+ this fall.

3

Are there any streaming services that show reruns of old TV series (30+ years or older)? For example I started watching Rockford Files on Netflix a few years ago and then suddenly it disappeared. I’d love to find reruns of Rockford, the original Magnum PI, Mission: Impossible, stuff like that. Anywhere I can find stuff like that, more or less in one place?

4

Back when Netflix started and signed contracts to stream content, most of the providers thought they were nuts and happy to get money for nothing. Now they realize the value and everyone and his dog has set up streaming services with exclusive content.

5

If you are not absolutely set on watching it on a streaming service, you can see Murder She Wrote on a channel called Cozi TV. I have it on my cable service (Comcast); not sure where else you can see it.

6

Amazon Prime currently has Magnum, P.I. (original 1980s version) and Mission: Impossible(1960s series). I couldn’t find any streaming services currently carrying The Rockford Files.

If you google “name of a tv series streaming”, for example “magnum pi streaming”, you’ll generally get a box that lists streaming services that carry it. I think Amazon Prime is probably your best bet in general for shows in that range (1960s-1980s), but I’d suggest trying to google several of your favorites, and figuring out which service has the largest selection. You might also need to alter the search terms a bit; when I googled on the three specific ones you asked about, “magnum pi streaming” returned results for the 1980s original, not the current revival, but “mission impossible streaming” returned results for the Tom Cruise movie, and I had to try again with “mission impossible tv series streaming”.

7

Just to make it even a little more confusing, Amazon Prime doesn’t actually have all of Magnum, P.I. Out of 8 seasons, Prime is missing season 6.

The executive summary of why video streaming is such a cluskerfuck is that the entertainment industry is deathly afraid of getting iTunes’d again, to the detriment of the consumer.

8

It’s over the air on the subchannels of many stations. If it’s on an affiliate in your area, it’s likely to be on your cable system, too. Murder, She Wrote is also on WGN America.

9

There are a number of indexing sites for streaming:

A streaming site is going to have a contract with the company which owns the show–and this contract will be for a fixed length of time–2 years, 5 years…whatever and you won’t be able to see the show after that contract is up–unless the contract is renewed.

10

From what I gathered, some have been losing money, and they are trying to come up with their own libraries of TV shows and movies. That means in order to access TV shows across different companies one will have to subscribe to each service.

11

I’m currently watching Perry Mason on Amazon Prime streaming.

12

The current streaming environment is that the companies are trying to figure out how to make the most money. The content owners have deals with certain services, and when those deals are over, they may license the content to a service which pays more money. That’s why you can’t count on any service having any content for any amount of time. Even the content owner may not be allowed to show it’s own content depending on the deal. For example, part of the deal Netflix made for Friends may include that no other service can show Friends, including NBC. If you want to watch a particular show, you’ll need to look on the web to see which service offers it.

As for services like Philo, there are also services which are kind of like cable. Services like Philo (and YouTubeTV, PSVue, etc). have a block of regular channels similar to what you find with cable TV. In addition, they also have some amount of on demand content for those channels.

The whole thing is pretty messy right now.

13

The current streaming market is success (Netflix) drawing competitors and a round of failures will be coming. My prediction is that next we will have aggregators which essentially will get us back to cable-like with a different licensing agreement.

14

Actually an alternative is switching the streaming services you use regularly:
This month subscribe to Netflix
Next month cancel Netflix and subscribe to Hulu
Month after than cancel Hulu and subscribe to HBO
…
This should work for movie/TV services–but not for sports services.

15

If you have a smartphone, there are apps which have tons of old TV shows. There are apps from Pluto TV, MeTV, and Tubi TV, as well as from the major broadcast networks. They carry the shows you’re looking for, such as Magnum, P. I., the A-Team, Cheers, Taxi, and the Incredible Hulk. If you have a Chromecast, you can send the shows to your TV.

16

A-fucking-men.

Perhaps I’m simply entering the “get-off-my-lawn!” stage of life and channeling my inner Abe Simpson, but the current state of streaming has me majorly pissed off. As a consumer I hate it with a passion.

Several years ago I was ecstatic that King of the Hill would finally be released in its entirety on DVD. For many years only seasons 1-6 (out of 13) were available. I was so happy, in fact, that I announced my glee here on the Dope. Someone responded with, essentially, “durr… yer dumb for buying those because it’s available on Amazon Prime.”

Well, I just checked today and KotH is no longer on Amazon Prime, indeed it’s not available on Amazon at all: you can purchase the DVD’s, but not the individual seasons via streaming. It is available to stream on Hulu. So if I want to watch KotH I have to pony up for a streaming service I don’t have or buy the DVD’s.

And therein lies the problem: nothing stays in one place, and premium content tends to float around from one service provider to another based on the contracts each provider has with the production companies. This means that, as a consumer, if I subscribe to a specific streaming service chances are that the content I want will not stay on that service long-term and if I want to keep watching it I’ll have to subscribe to yet another service.

Additionally, the fact that many new shows that have been hyped seem to be on platforms I don’t subscribe to. I’ve had several people tell me how good Cobra Kai is, but of course I don’t subscribe to YouTube Premium. Same for Hulu’s Shrill: I’d like to watch it but have no desire to subscribe to yet another streaming service. Obviously this is delibrate; Google can produce a show that a lot of people are clearly going to be interested in and put on a platform that not a lot of people were otherwise willing to pay for and rake in some serious bucks from new subscriptions.

I suppose all of this can be likened to non-streaming TV consumption. To use the above-mentioned Northern Exposure as an example, it was originally broadcast on CBS, then reruns were picked up by A&E. It was available on a streaming service (I forget which one, I want to say it was Hulu) for a short while then dumped, now the only way to watch it at all is on DVD. But the DVD’s are incredibly sub-par and don’t have much of the original music from the show—which was a big part of the magic of the show. So basically, if you wanted to watch that one show you originally had to pony up for basic cable (if you didn’t have it already), then after that add a streaming service, and now you’re out of luck.

Such is life I guess. But it frustrates me. My kids are obsessed with both Star Wars and anything Marvel, and my wife loves both old and new Disney productions. So guess what we’re likely subscribing to in November?

:mad: :mad: :mad:

17

I hate how many different user interfaces there are for watching video in general, with each individual streaming provider creating their own from scratch the same way DVDs all have their own unique interface. Why were no standards ever reached?

I’d love to come up with a shell that could serve content from any of your streaming services but have its own interface. A physical box that works like a roku, except it has no apps/channels to install. After signing into your streaming services all the shows and movies from all the services would just be available in a single unified interface.

I don’t need any fancy “play in background when highlighted” crap like netflix does; just a list of titles, a user friendly way to navigate episodes of a series – hulu’s sucks ass, amazon prime is much better – and the ability to play either the thing or the trailer for the thing.

Seriously, how shit is the user interface for CBS All Access? Yikes. And that (presumably) has a lot of money backing it.

How come nobody except amazon prime will let me easily see the names of the actors in the show I’m watching? Prime tells you the names of the actors on screen in the current scene! That’s the greatest thing ever.

18

If only there were more stores that sell King of the Hill streaming and King of the Hill streaming accessories.

19

The Apple TV box/app pretty much does all that if you subscribe from within the app to the various channels it offers (HBO, CBS All Access, Smithsonian, etc). So if you want to watch Star Trek: Picard, for example, you won’t get punted out to the CBS All Access app, you’d just watch it from within the Apple TV app using its own interface. A big drawback — among others — is that there aren’t too many channels available currently. It’s nice that they have signed up some big name content at the beginning (it seems possible Disney+ might be a channel soon), but it’s still far from a perfect solution. Early days, though I guess.

20

So if I have Netflix and Hulu through Apple TV, will there be a single list of shows that includes both Stranger Things and Handmaid’s Tale?

EDIT: Assuming you can’t get those through Apple TV, imagine if you could. Would there be a single list anywhere that included both shows, and you could start watching either of them through choosing them from that list?