alt Hacker NewsI guess you are in the US. For you, WB content was already available. But you see, they never bothered to make that content available for most of the rest of the world. Netflix, on the other hand, is available most anywhere. This is exactly what it says on the can - more choice and greater value for me.
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Your Netflix bill is about to skyrocket and there's no guarantee you'll have access to those titles.
> I guess you are in the US.
I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).
For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.
And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.
I think it's unlikely to change because most likely the content was not available for legal reasons, not technical. That's why for example when they re-release some shows they have to switch out to completely different music – the rights were not cleared in the first place and it'd be a huge hassle to go back and negotiate with every rightholder
Netflix acquiring WB’s content will not necessarily lead to all of it being available for streaming to you in any given country. Content licensing is complicated, to put it mildly.
I don’t know what do you mean by “most of the rest of the world” but it’s widely available in the American continent and Europe coverage will be almost complete in the next month(s):
https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/hbo-max-nears...
> more choice and greater value for me
That will exactly follow Netflix's price hikes.
As in "value for money", they silenced the latter part :D
But Netflix content breadth and quality varies a lot from country to country. There's not one Netflix.
Netflix buying WB doesn't mean that licensing immediately becomes available worldwide.
Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).
What's written on the can reads "please don't sue us, we're not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users".
On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?