Streaming about to get very expensive

[Eleazar]

(This article is from the UK, but applies here as well)


Streaming TV is about to get very expensive – here's why

With Disney, Apple and others about to launch their own services, a lot of your favourite shows are likely to vanish behind paywalls. The golden age of streaming is over

Stuart Heritage



The most watched show on US Netflix, by a huge margin, is the US version of The Office. Even though the platform pumps out an absurd amount of original programming – 1,500 hours last year – it turns out that everyone just wants to watch a decade-old sitcom. One report last year said that The Office accounts for 7% all US Netflix viewing.

So, naturally, NBC wants it back. This week, it was announced that Netflix had failed to secure the rights to The Office beyond January 2021. The good news is that it will still be available to watch elsewhere. The bad news is that “elsewhere”, means “the new NBCUniversal streaming platform”.

Is the end of Netflix's golden age in sight?

As a viewer, you are right to feel queasy. The industry-disrupting success of Netflix means that everybody wants a slice of the pie. Right now, things are just about manageable – if you have a TV licence, a Netflix subscription, an Amazon subscription and a Now TV subscription, you are pretty much covered – but things are about to take a turn for the worse.

In November, Disney will launch Disney+, a streaming platform that will not only block off an enormous amount of existing content (Disney films, ABC shows, Marvel and Pixar films, Lucasfilm, The Simpsons and everything else made by 20th Century Fox), but will also offer a range of new scripted Marvel shows that will directly inform the narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Essentially, if you want to understand anything that happens in any Marvel film from this point onwards, you’ll need to splash out on a Disney+ subscription.

Apple will also be entering the streaming market at about the same time, promising new work from Sofia Coppola, Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Brie Larson, Damien Chazelle and Steven Spielberg. In the next three years, Apple will spend $4.2bn on original programming, and you won’t get to see any of it if you don’t pay a monthly premium.

There are so many others. NBCUniversal is pulling its shows from Netflix for its own platform. Before long, Friends is likely to disappear behind a new WarnerMedia streaming service – along with Lord of the Rings films, the Harry Potter films, anything based on a DC comic and everything on HBO – that it is believed will cost about £15 a month. In the UK, the BBC and ITV will amalgamate their archives behind a service called BritBox. The former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg is about to launch a platform called Quibi, releasing “snackable” content from Steven Spielberg and others that is designed to be watched on your phone. YouTube is producing more and more original subscription-only content. Facebook is making shows, for crying out loud.

And this sucks. Watching television is about to get very, very expensive. There will be a point where viewers are going to hit their tolerance for monthly subscriptions – I may be able to manage one more service, but only if I unsubscribe from an existing platform – meaning that TV will become more elitist, tiered and fragmented than it already is. There’s a huge difference between not being able to watch everything because there’s too much choice and not being able to watch everything because you don’t have enough money.

Most importantly, we should all remember that this content war is hinged upon a fundamental misunderstanding of viewing habits. Netflix didn’t become a monster because people wanted to watch a specific show; it became a monster because people wanted to watch everything. When its streaming platform launched, people were spending more than £15 just to watch a single season of a show on DVD. So to be able to watch every season of a show – and every season of hundreds of others of shows – for a fiver a month was revolutionary. The whole point of Netflix was that it was a relatively affordable bucket that contained an awful lot of television. That’s why people liked it. That’s why so many people subscribed and continue to subscribe. To pretend otherwise is to miss the point.

That will be a memory soon. The Netflix model was great for viewers, but it couldn’t last. The content creators got greedy and scared, and now they’re determined to drag things back to the bad old ways. They will force everyone to pay for everything separately, and the subscriber base will split, and the providers will have to recoup the money they are spending to take on Netflix – such as the $500m that NBCUniversal spent to get The Office back, the $250m Amazon is spending on a Lord of the Rings series and the $500m that Warner just spent to win the services of JJ Abrams – which means that subscriptions will rise. Make no mistake: we’re the ones likely to get stiffed here.

The golden age of television may be going strong, but the golden age of streaming is dead.


https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...sive-heres-why

[ShiftyEyedWaterboy]

I can't imagine that this will be terribly profitable for anyone unless they can start pumping out their own HBO quality programs. How many people are gonna shell out for a show or two that they may watch occasionally? Pirating will pick up

[Discuss Thrower]

Hulu was savvy enough to make sporadic subscription untenable be offering the bundle deal with Spotify.

[limested]

tubitv.com is another for free content.

[jjchieffan]

I currently get 90% of my viewing legally. I have Amazon Prime, Hike, Netflix, and CBS All Access subscriptions. But, I also have a VPN and services such as Cinema available as well. My locals come through my antenna and I DVR them on my PC. I am not going to increase my TV spending substantially. I will simply use Cinema behind the VPN more if the legal methods get too expensive. That's the nice part of this so called "golden age of streaming". We have lots of options. I could get all of my TV free if I wanted to go that route. But, I really don't mind spending $10/ month for Hulu and Spotify, $15/ month for Netflix, $6/ month for CBS, and $10/ month for Amazon Prime. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what I was paying DirecTV. And, really, I don't lump the internet bill in with my TV costs. I was already paying for that plus DirecTV.

[Fish]

You don't even need a VPN for Cinema, dummy. All you're doing is slowing your connection.

[BlackHelicopters]

Wow. I get four free channels, and that is too much TV.

[jjchieffan]

Originally Posted by Fish

You don't even need a VPN for Cinema, dummy. All you're doing is slowing your connection.

Maybe I've just been misinformed. But, I was going off of the belief that if you're streaming illegal content from sites like Cinema, that you need a VPN to hide your IP because otherwise, you are able to tracked and slapped with huge fines. Is that incorrect? In what case would I need a VPN then? Also, I use the VPN during football season to stream out of market games by using a server in the market of the game I want.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by jjchieffan

Maybe I've just been misinformed. But, I was going off of the belief that if you're streaming illegal content from sites like Cinema, that you need a VPN to hide your IP because otherwise, you are able to tracked and slapped with huge fines. Is that incorrect? In what case would I need a VPN then? Also, I use the VPN during football season to stream out of market games by using a server in the market of the game I want.

That's incorrect. Zero US citizens have ever been charged for streaming. A VPN connection is totally unnecessary for Cinema. You can only be charged by distributing or sharing illegal content. Streaming doesn't count. Here's a better explanation:

If you share illegal movies online in return for a profit, then your actions will definitely fall into the criminal category.

However, streaming movies is an entirely different activity. You are not distributing anything. You are not sharing files with peers for profit or otherwise.

You are just watching a movie that someone else has uploaded. You are not paying for possibly criminally acquired intellectual property material.

You have no way of knowing how the movie got there. These facts make it quite hard for the authorities to prosecute you.

The law, by far, is still unclear when it comes to streaming free movies online, or for visiting possibly illegal movie websites. When you stream a movie, your computer makes a temporary copy of the file on your computer.

So technically, you are briefly in possession of a possibly illegal copyright material. But for the time being, the law does not consider this a violation.

According to the legal assistance website, FindLaw, “Copyright Office contends there is no violation when ‘a reproduction manifests itself so fleetingly that it cannot be copied, perceived or communicated.’”

You would need a VPN connection if you were downloading/uploading torrents or using a torrent based app like Popcorntime. Or trying to spoof your location. That's definitely recommended in those cases. But you should have no concerns at all about just streaming from Cinema.

[jjchieffan]

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I will quit using the VPN with Cinema.

[007]

Originally Posted by jjchieffan

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I will quit using the VPN with Cinema.

What the hell is cinema

[Fish]

Originally Posted by 007

What the hell is cinema

Cinema is the current best Android solution for streaming pirate movies/TV. Only works on Android though.

[jjchieffan]

Originally Posted by 007

What the hell is cinema

It's a good movie and TV show streaming app. If you ever had Morpheus, it's basically the same thing.

[DaFace]

When I read these articles, I feel like I'm the only one who just subscribes to things for a month or two and watches what I want before moving onto something else. You don't have to commit to everything for years.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

So when can I watch The World's Strongest Man and Gus???

Millennials take note

Internet connection 130.00
Netflix 20.00
Disney 40.00
Hulu 20.00
whatever 30.00

240.00 for cord cutting.

Yeah-you are really saving money.

I don't even know what this is. Are you just randomly making up numbers?

[Chief Pagan]

JJChief,

What is your setup to DVR OTA on the pc? Whenever my old Windows 7 DVR pc dies, I would like to use a Windows 10 to DVR, but I haven't found a very good setup.