alt Hacker NewsDisney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
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I'm seeing "average" people adopt piracy at astonishing levels because of these decisions. I went over to a friend's house the other day and his relative sent him one of those Android TV devices with access to all the pirated content you could ever want. I would never have imagined him to be ok with it. This has been happening in my social circle at an accelerating rate. People that would have scolded me for doing the same 10 years ago are now doing it.
What's a reasonable setup for sailing the seas safely?
It's not only the price hikes and the atomization/fragmentation of content, what made me cut the wire was that I couldn't get high quality in my computer unless I used X browser for Y service.
Same company that also announced that their supposedly "ad-free" plans will now be allowed to include ads and promotional content before and after content.
These streaming services learned nothing from cable are just pushing people back to pirating
If you live in the DMV, you can get a free DC library card. You then get free access to Kanopy - a good streaming service with no ads. That could scratch the streaming itch without having to pay for these expensive services.
I already cancelled Netflix and HBO, I guess Hulu is next. It feels almost like a yearly 10-20% increase across streaming services and the content hasn’t improved. There’s just more crap to filter out. I think I may just be happy with Criterion only once I’m done with a couple of shows on Apple TV.
I use the language immersion for learning languages. And with the streaming platforms you can't get cc captions in the original language. There is many foreign media thay is on the platform but not on your country, there is extension that are useful for making flashcards or small clips, but for some reason you can't watch whatever you want to watch in the original resolution if you're on the browser and if you use linux they dare to limit you to 720p. Compare this to just downloading anything you want and using mpv with any extension you want that does whatever you want it to do.
The *arr family of software (sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, bazarr) are so convenient that I sometimes feel bad for these content companies. I'm traveling for a few weeks now and my server is just updating all of the shows I subscribed too and movies I may have added months ago that are just coming out now. I don't watch much tv (few hours a week) but over the years I've had so many friends and relatives that have wanted to get on my server and have requested shows/movies to be added. There's software that can automate that step as well but I haven't installed it because I'm worried about how quickly the drives would fill up - currently at about 40TB.
It makes sense from the point of view of a giant corporation. If people are paying despite of recent price increases and declining quality, why not try to increase profits even further?
Maybe I’ll be skewered for saying this. It $22 a month for combined Disney and Hulu isn’t bad value for my family (we have small kids so Disney is more worth it for us).
What really surprises me is how little value I get from Netflix by comparison. It used to be the streamer but when I think of the prestige dramas I’ve enjoyed recently I’d place Apple TV and Hulu above Netflix. Their catalog is getting overrun with cheap reality TV.
Media is so expensive now that it inspired me to take up sailing instead. It’s nice to get outside.
Streaming markets have really felt like price fixing scenarios over the past few years. I can't think of any exceptions that haven't been regularly and aggressively raising their prices like every 6 months at this point as if they are all coordinating.
Why the hell can't we have streaming businesses that reach some equilibrium threshold for how much content they want to produce, the quality of said content, and then focus on optimizing production and tech to both reduce prices and increase profits over time accompanied with scaling subscriber growth.
I still pay less than when I had a cable bundle with the caveat that, then, I didn't have premium channels and, now, don't have live TV. In my personal book, I'm still ahead in the game.
I didn’t realize Disney+ had twice as many subscribers as Hulu. Hulu has been around a lot longer than Disney+. Goes to show the value of the content mix.
Not what everyone wants to hear, but I think there’s more headroom for price increases than the HN crowd likes to admit. Compared to how much people spent on cable or satellite TV, these prices feel like peanuts.
Several times I got a free or discounted Disney+ subscription. Every time I watch a few shows on it, then let it go once those promotions ended. It's just not worth the money no matter the price tier, even at older prices (that considering in my country it's already cheaper than in the US), and even less so with any kind of ad thrown with it.
Disney+ and Hulu is probably the best value I get out of all the streaming services I subscribe to. Easily worth it for me.
I'm looking now to cancel my Netflix/Apple TV/Disney+/Prime subscriptions and have 1 at a given time for a few weeks/months while watching some particular series.
Compound doubling make inversors golden, so this is a hard but worthy sacrifice CEOs are willing to impose on consumers.
Does this mean Blockbuster-like video stores are going to make a comeback?
They are daring us to make choices instead of having everything. Zero sum thinking.
My family has been assembling a DVD collection for the past couple years and it's really starting to pay off. Wow, I own this media and can play it whenever I want without ads, and fear of it randomly disappearing or having scenes cut out of it? It really feels like magic.
I've got a record player coming tomorrow. My song streaming service of choice keeps jacking up prices and now feeds me AI slop; it's time for a change.
I suspect kids growing up right now will experience a renaissance of physical media from fed-up parents.
And you still get what you pay for in your subscription - ads you can't skip. ;-)
LOL do they not realize they push more and more towards piracy?
BTW here's the Disney 1937-2008 megatorrent, including lots of movies they "hold in the vault" (aka wont republish)
https: SLASH SLASH thepiratebay DOT org SLASH description.php?id=5657801
So price of the service goes up, revenue goes up... quality goes down and service is worst... and this is kind of recurrint theme with other companies... what's the option here?
And remember same will happen with healthcare, education, products like cars or phones...
I think people who buy disney aren't going anywhere. Where else are they going to get their fix? They can charge whatever they want and disney adults will pay for it. Lighter load on their servers too lol.
I do think interesting dynamics come into play when the customer base ages though. You saw this happen with kids and cartoons, kids do not even watch normal tv shows anymore. It's all youtube or streamers.
what moves if any has disney done to capture the youth group there
I cancelled Disney+ years ago, am grandfathered into a Spotify/Hulu combo package, and I cancelled ESPN+ after they stopped their Bundesliga coverage. I haven't seen a Disney film in ages, part of me wonders how this company survives outside of nostalgia and college football.
Canceling my hulu
Surprisingly, increasing user hostility is a filter of users' tech savviness and IQ. I doubt most HN dwellers will tolerate price increases or ads or anything like that. They can pirate shit, and they can block ads. They're better off compared to the rest of the population who is not tech-savvy enough or smart enough to bypass these user-hostilities. These companies basically extract revenue out of people who are relatively poor.
Would be interesting to see a chart with the reviews of their original content relative to their reported profits, I suspect they do not align at all.
I mean they can do this to people who have you children who live on disney+, but this will make others think twice about the subscription
I canceled almost all streaming services this year and kept YouTube Premium, and honestly it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Watching costs spiral out of control of just absolutely garbage is insane to witness. I cannot imagine spending hundreds of dollars a year to watch __any__ of the what is largely low effort, low budget trash barely a step beyond the crappiest reality TV. And for the rare diamond in the rough I can almost buy those separately, à la carte, and not have to give a crap when it canceled after a singe season.
I used to sort of scoff at the idea of streaming services being a bad deal, now I can’t even imagine paying for them. They’re so awful. They make me wish we had cable still!
That's how you double profits, indeed.
At some point the customer base is going to shrink, especially when the AI slop hits the market, right?
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Oof. I guess sailing the high sees is back on the table.
We are back to cable pricing, but shows and movies are all over the place and now we need multiple apps to track us.