Exactly. Nothing is really preventing a $200/month aggregator beyond paying a bunch of lawyers and people not wanting to pay that. I know I'll live with some service fragmentation in exchange for not paying for a bunch of stuff I'll maybe watch once in a blue moon. And I'll probably buy some discs for things I really want to see.

Ah yes, today where they optimized out the recommendation algo to the point I haven't found something recommended to be watch worthy in years. The only thing worse than the video streaming recommendations is what's become of Amazon/Audible's book recommendations (though Spotify is trying hard to enshitify their algos to catch up).

Sad that we can't have nice things, but capitalism must be fed and I guess good, targeted recommendation algorithms are anti-capital.

Not only movie theaters, but also movie rental and selling of VHS tapes/DVDs etc.

One could go to the favorite department store and get movies from all studios right next to each other, sorted by genre or title or similar.

Strong disagree on being worse off than cable. I now almost never see ads, that is a huge benefit in my book.

Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?

Streaming is infinitely better.

Why is overlapping content an issue? Isn't that good?

Let's say I like Show A and Show B. Show A is available on Provider 1 and Provider 2, Show B is available at Provider 2 and Provider 3. Thanks to overlapping content, I can subscribe to Provider 2 and I can watch both of my favorite shows.

It depends on what you watch and how much you watch.

Cable in its heyday was expensive, even for a low tier package with CNN, TNT, MTV, Nickelodeon and other non-premium channels. Most people did not have premium channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, etc. Even Disney was a paid add-on in the early 90s. Adding or removing those channels at the minimum meant calling customer service and in certain eras of cable technology could even mean waiting on a tech visit to provision physical descrambling equipment. And obviously TV was linear, not on-demand.

If you watch a series or movie here and there, and aren't a big TV viewer, the streaming era is much, much cheaper with greater choice. You can often even access what you want to watch through a free trial, a single-month subscription, or a free service like Tubi or Pluto. Movie rental options are much better, more convenient, and cheaper (often even before adjusting for inflation) than Blockbuster, and you have access to much better information before you pull the trigger on renting a movie you haven't heard of before.

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You mean the "license while they feel like it" kind of purchase?

If I could pay for individual TV shows and actually own them I'd definitely prefer that over the disaster we have today. Buying a blue-ray and ripping it is not very practical and it's by design.

Netflix (notoriously) does not license most of their content this way. You can't rent/buy Stranger Things on Apple TV, no matter how much you're willing to pay. If Netflix acquires Warner Bros, I expect this restriction to extend to that content too over time.

I agree with you that modern streaming service are a hassle, BUT - I'm old enough to remember Blockbuster, too. It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you drove to the video store, found a copy, paid $2 to rent it for 24 hours, tried to remember to rewind it and got it back to the store before it was late. Streaming services are _definitely_ more convenient.

Right now, you can pretty much rent any movie you want through Amazon Prime with not late fee or rewind penalty, but you have to pay a couple of (extra!) dollars to do it. This is, undebatably, a massive improvement over the way it used to be in every way, but it still bothers me even though I can't put my finger on exactly why.

Watching specific stuff you want to see is 1000x easier today than it was in the 1990s, when cable ran this whole industry, and anything you wanted came bundled with 100 things you didn't want.

It still works this way.

Honestly the biggest problem was/is copyright law. Make everything older than 10-14 years public domain and streaming services would have endless amounts of content always available. Independently operated streaming sites would be all over the internet.

If they don't make their content available legally, then it should go into the public domain.

Don't want this to happen to your content? Then don't release it to the public.

We need to bring back explicit copyright registration and renewals.

Wow. That is dysfunctional.

I would be curious how the financial wires got crossed.

I would have assumed residuals were proportional to views, and views valued proportionally as contributing to subscription demand. And it would be a rare viewer to watch one show like that, over & over. I.e. only upside. Something went sideways.

You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean they weren't still in "growth" phase.

Their pricing, and their doubling down on account sharing policies over the last few years have shown that they are no longer in a growth phase.

I cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago because I had gotten the "You're not accessing this from your typical location" blocker. Even though I was trying to watch from my permanent residence and I was the account owner / payee.

The reason that happened was that my wife and I own two properties. We are happily married, not separated, but we just like our space... especially with two adult daughters who still live at home with one of their significant others also living in the house.

We are a single family "unit" but have two locations. Furthermore, my wife has sleeping issues and was using Netflix at night in order to fall asleep. To have to get me to check my email for an access code, was a total deal breaker since I would be fast asleep. So that cut her off from her typical usage of Netflix.

And the reason Netflix thought that I was accessing the service from a different location was that I hardly ever watched it. Every time I'd pull it up, I would spend more time scrolling for something to watch than actually watching anything.. and typically I'd just give up and go watch a 30m YouTube video instead.

So I was paying more, receiving less ... mostly had the account purely for my wife and daughters who watched it the most ... and then the final deal breaker was logistical barriers preventing me from being able to use what I'm paying for.

Fuck Netflix.

These content library contracts are only for a couple of years, and each time one lapses, some terms get negotiated. Nobody in the streaming industry is successful because they have a long term lock on someone else’s content. It’s all about eyeballs and margins.

I think the main reason they aren't competing as much now is that blu ray players / computers with disc drives / consoles with disc drives are getting more scarce?

I don't even know where I would get a good blu ray drive. The videophile subreddits keep suggesting very specific models with flashed firmware, which is not exactly accomodating to the public.

> Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point

An increasing number of shows are never getting released on physical media to prevent this. The only thing streaming services are competing with in any meaningful way is piracy and I'm guessing piracy is going to get more and more popular the more greed/enshittification keeps making streaming platforms worse

This. I loved the DVD service and I don't think I was alone. Younger folks didn't perhaps use it as much as some, but for those who don't have the best internet speed or service, they were great.

How? This only means prices will go up.