Just subscribing to Netflix provides more options for movies and television at my immediate fingertips than were possible at any price for the majority of my lifetime.
There’s plenty to watch for $15/month. Sure, there are lots of shows that aren’t included. But Netflix makes shows that I want to see faster than I can watch them, so I don’t think it matters.
Signing up for HBO for one month a year when Game of Thrones comes out is not hard. They still have my credit card on file from last time. I just go to the app on my TV and click a few buttons.
Sure, if you just want to have something to watch, Netflix will always have something you will like. (And so would Amazon, Hulu, Disney+, etc.) The problem comes if you want to watch something in particular. That show is on HBO, this show is on Hulu, another is on Amazon, etc.) And yes, you could subscribe to one of these services for a month, binge-watch a show and then cancel. But that may mean watching a show after it’s aired, so you can’t talk about it with others. For some shows, half the fun is talking about the show.
Streaming is definitely not a perfect solution. For example, some movies will be available on DVD or Bluray before they come to a streaming service, if they ever do. So you might still want to go to Redbox to see a movie you missed in the theater. Other movies will never be released on DVD or Bluray, so the only way to see them will be via a streaming service. (Usually this is true of the ones that are produced or owned by one of the streaming services.)
No. Netflix refuses to play with Apple’s TV App (probably because Apple demands some extra money for it).
Anyways, we are the wild west of streaming. In the early years, no one thought streaming would be worth much, so they sold streaming rights for little to Netflix. And then Netflix became big and Amazon and Hulu started buying streaming rights. And then they got to such a profitable level that the content producers said… hey wait, we can make more money if we started our own service (combined with people dropping cable more and more, with them losing money on those shows).
So here we are. It’ll likely take a few more years of nuttiness before we reach some sort of equilibrium, but there will likely be 5-6 major players in the streaming content aggregator business.
On some level this is always what cord cutting was going to look like (the ‘a la carte’ people were living in a fantasy word) as content producers would be likely to start their own subscription services. It’s still cheaper and ad-free than cable, so that’s a good plus. Perhaps some more content aggregators will do like Apple or Amazon and put a bunch of channels together becoming the new cable - but it’ll require the big guys to jump in (so far Netflix wants nothing to do with them - it’ll be interesting to see if they offer channels themselves).
Right. Which is why I don’t think I could ever fully cut the cable cord. Sometimes I want to channel surf and not have to look across multiple streaming services to find something. Just the simple channel guide of 400 channels is great. Sometimes I want to watch major network series or broadcasts or sports and sometimes I know Netflix has released the new season of OITNB or some other show and that’s where I go. Or Amazon Prime when they finally begin delivering The Expanse. Since my tastes and desires are all over the place, I need them ALL.
Sure, but that’s the same way with cable. There are always shows that are on special channels that you don’t subscribe to, unless you’re paying like ~$200/month for cable.
Which is enough to subscribe to like 15 streaming services.
Unless you want to watch live sports, any number of streaming services seems better what you could get for the same price from traditional cable.
I expect it’s actually because Netflix doesn’t want to become “just another commodity channel” on an Apple device.
If you have to launch the Netflix app, you’re going to see the interface Netflix wants to show you, the promos that Netflix wants to show you, the recommendations that Netflix wants to show you. That’s tremendously valuable to Netflix.
Netflix is betting that it’s big enough that people are still going to go to a specific app to watch Netflix shows, and it’s using that market position to cross-promote.
Absolutely and Netflix tailors the promos and recommendations based on what it knows about what you like, to the extent that the images shown of a movie or TV show are designed to appeal to you. (If you like romcoms, the image will suggest that’s what this movie is but if you like action films, it will suggest that. And that’s for the same movie.) And they pay attention to what people watch, rewind and rewatch, and what they skip through. All of this represents valuable data. (I heard that they developed the American adaption of House of Cards after noting that their DVD-by-mail customers liked the original British House of Cards, Kevin Spacey movies and movies directed by David Fincher.)
One concern (perhaps more important for an investor than a viewer) about Netflix, though, is that they’re spending massively on buying and producing movies and TV shows. ($12 billion in 2018 and $15 billion this year.) Spending that large requires them to go into debt. Can they sustain that?
This reminds me of the film industry: large amounts of funds and pressure to invest them, very expensive flicks (with significant marketing costs) competing with and that resemble each other (e.g., lots of spectacle to capture international markets and even justify high ticket price), and viewers who are now growing more weary of over-saturation and increasing costs.
see to me that’s the same thing as cable just with an extra layer of hassle … why do that when i could have and pay for all of it in one easy system and not have to worry about system requirements and internet bs and all of that?
Streaming is way more convenient. I can watch streaming stuff on my phone and laptop (maybe you can do this with cable now? You certainly couldn’t for a long time). I can download shows to take with me on planes.
I don’t actually subscribe to 15 streaming services (I imagine hardly anyone does?). I subscribe to 2 (Netflix and Amazon), and occasionally a third one when there’s something I want to watch. So I’m paying like $30 or something a month. The cheapest offering from my cable company costs more than that and requires a 1-year contract and various bullshit.