# Why did it take so long for video streaming services to catch on **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 27, 2019, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639 "2019-03-27T23:37:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/21 "2019-03-28T14:43:02Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Hear, hear. Yet many videos are still unavailable, and every so often Netflix runs an ad campaign urging you to watch something right away, because they will be removing it soon. What’s up with that? It can’t be the cost of storage! Licensing agreements. They pay to offer the movie for a certain amount of time. Even for a bad movie the content owners can get at least one more licensing agreement out of it. If they can’t make any money they still don’t have any incentive to let anyone see the movie without making more money. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/22 "2019-03-28T15:22:51Z")
> [@Typo\_Knig](#): > > I can always find something to stream that I want to watch, but in my experience it’s almost never the flick I first thought of when I started the streaming app. Brick & mortar stores were better in that way, although not perfect. Mail services were much better, even if it took a couple of days to get the video. > > One of the promises of streaming was you could see any movie ever made. Even if you add the qualifiers that were hidden by marketers, we’ve got a ways to go. > > OTOH, binge watching series is great, and the marketplace of new series makes this TV’s platinum age. > Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk My experience is the exact opposite. Between Netflix and Amazon I can nearly always find exactly what I want to watch, even if it’s not included in Prime and I have to rent it. A good example being the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express on Amazon Prime streaming, which you seemed to think is unavailable. If anything, the problem can be second guessing what to watch because there are too many choices. With brick and mortar they’d usually have two walls filled with multiple copies of 10-20 most recent releases, and a random selection of 1-2 copies of older movies. Going for a specific movie was usually an exercise in disappointment unless you were looking for a recent blockbuster (no pun intended). A typical trip to the video store meant 30-45 minutes browsing the shelves to see what they had and deciding which ones you might want to watch. I can recall many a trip of scouring every shelf and not finding anything that I was in the mood to see. No, not everything is available, but there’s far, far more available than there was during the golden age of Blockbuster. There’s far more available than would even have physically fit in the typical video rental store. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/23 "2019-03-28T16:43:54Z")
Media companies had the notion online streaming = massive copying. It really took a while for them to realize it wasn’t going to be a big problem and they were missing out on an income stream. Although many folk in the business still haven’t caught on, most are so happy with the idea that they think people are going to pay $15 a month for access to _one_ studio or network’s content. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/24 "2019-03-28T20:54:49Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Media companies had the notion online streaming = massive copying. It really took a while for them to realize it wasn’t going to be a big problem and they were missing out on an income stream. > > Although many folk in the business still haven’t caught on, most are so happy with the idea that they think people are going to pay $15 a month for access to _one_ studio or network’s content. Or, worse, for like one show they actually want to watch. No, if it’s one show, they’ll find another way. I have to think that it’s the international stuff with Discovery that made it genuinely profitable, where they release it on existing platforms rather than a CBS-only platform. They don’t seem to get that they are also competing with piracy, and need to make what people get from the service better than the hassle of pirating it. That is what Netflix did. Which is weird, since you are correct in your first paragraph. You’d think that would mean they’d been watching piracy like a hawk, and realized that increasing streaming didn’t increase piracy (as physical media is just as quickly ripped and spread, and it only takes one to do it.) But they still seem to miss out. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/25 "2019-03-29T01:23:07Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Hard drives and data storage was more expensive back then as well. I’m wondering if that plays a role. The videos have to be hosted somewhere, and that isn’t free. That so true, data storage was so expensive that it stopped a lot of cloud services for years. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/26 "2019-03-29T16:37:50Z")
The infrastructure was there in some areas, like where I lived in Plano from 1999-2002, and had 1.5mbps DSL. But we were also like a couple of miles south of the Legacy Drive concentration of corporate headquarters, including EDS, JC Penney, Intuit, Dr. Pepper, etc, so we were basically taking advantage of their internet infrastructure. I also had even faster broadband internet from 2002-2008, but it was deceptive. Broadband is shared, so we only really got the high advertised speeds when we were alone on the circuit in the wee hours of the morning. Times like 7:30 pm on a Tuesday? Our throughput dropped through the floor because everyone in the neighborhood was home from work or school and using their computers. I can also say that in 2003, streaming wasn’t really a thing- we wrote a business school research paper suggesting that Blockbuster and Columbia House merge, and mentioned streaming as a sort of very near-future technology that the new joint company should seriously explore. But we still worked from the perspective that mail-order DVD rental was where it was at in the near term. ---
**Author:** ![jonesj2205](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecc23a/32.png) [@jonesj2205](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jonesj2205)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/27 "2019-03-29T16:54:46Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The infrastructure was there in some areas, like where I lived in Plano from 1999-2002, and had 1.5mbps DSL. But we were also like a couple of miles south of the Legacy Drive concentration of corporate headquarters, including EDS, JC Penney, Intuit, Dr. Pepper, etc, so we were basically taking advantage of their internet infrastructure. DSL is really squeezing most possible out of old infrastructure. And you had to be the exact right distance away from their DSL switch to get 1.5. Guy down the road might have gotten half that. But you may have benefited from the backbone being built out for large corporate headquarters. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639/28 "2019-03-29T18:05:14Z")
> [@jonesj2205](#): > > But you may have benefited from the backbone being built out for large corporate headquarters. We did- the AT&T tech that installed it actually came right out and said that we were lucky we were so close to the corporate headquarters, in that we got about the fastest speed possible where we were. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-video-streaming-services-to-catch-on/831639.md?page=1)