Streaming Services (business / market / service, not content-focused)

[Zorral]

What will this mean for those who already have HBO Max?    From what it always looked like there was nothing on Discovery that appealed to me in  the least.  But then I didn't look very hard or long, but that bit of probing gave the impression this was a service with cheesy offerings -- really far away from HBO in terms of quality.  But maybe I was wrong?

 

 

Edited November 4, 2021 by Zorral

[Rhom]

43 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What will this mean for those who already have HBO Max?    From what it always looked like there was nothing on Discovery that appealed to me in  the least.  But then I didn't look very hard or long, but that bit of probing gave the impression this was a service with cheesy offerings -- really far away from HBO in terms of quality.  But maybe I was wrong?

 

 

 

Our house has no desire for HBO Max; but we watch D+ more than any other service we have.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

 

Our house has no desire for HBO Max; but we watch D+ more than any other service we have.

What do you watch?  I ask not to pry but to know what Discovery provides.

[Corvinus85]

OTOH Disney hasn't shown an interest, that I know, to merge Disney+ with Hulu. But they do offer bundles of the two and ESPN+. 

[Rhom]

50 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What do you watch?  I ask not to pry but to know what Discovery provides.

My wife and I watch a lot of stuff on HGTV and Food Network.  My son watched a bunch of Pool Kings. My daughter loves their True Crime offerings.

Theres a good line up of Documentaries and some good Animal Planet stuff.  

Just a really big variety.

[Nictarion]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

OTOH Disney hasn't shown an interest, that I know, to merge Disney+ with Hulu. But they do offer bundles of the two and ESPN+. 

I actually just signed up for this bundle tonight. I already had Disney+, so I figured why not. I wanted ESPN+ for the NHL, and Hulu has a couple things I’m interested in (mainly Reservation Dogs - - and I also want to do an X-Files rewatch).

[Zorral]

36 minutes ago, Rhom said:

My wife and I watch a lot of stuff on HGTV and Food Network.  My son watched a bunch of Pool Kings. My daughter loves their True Crime offerings.

Theres a good line up of Documentaries and some good Animal Planet stuff.  

Just a really big variety.

Thank you!  Ya, nothing of this sort is of interest to me particularly, especially HGTV and food, etc.  For Nature stuff, my other services have really gorgeous offerings already.  So I see no value add of this to HBO for my sort of viewer.    I hope then HBO doesn't then want to up the price of my sub.

[Rhom]

My YouTube TV keeps putting up a banner that I may lose all ESPN services tomorrow at midnight.

I get tired of these passing contests.  This one is especially tiresome considering that it’s Google vs Disney.

[Rhom]

Welp... the hour has come and there is no ESPN programming on YouTubeTV now.

I sort of assume that they will sort it out before Monday Night Football.  I am fortunate that Kentucky plays North Carolina on CBS today.  

[Zorral]

Holiday Special from AMC:

https://www.amcplus.com/?  For $1.99 @ month the bundle of AMC, Sundance, Shudder, BBC America and IFC.

 

[Ramsay B.]

5 hours ago, Rhom said:

Welp... the hour has come and there is no ESPN programming on YouTubeTV now.

I sort of assume that they will sort it out before Monday Night Football.  I am fortunate that Kentucky plays North Carolina on CBS today.  

Yup. I’m in the same boat. Was looking at other streaming services because of this crap. Directv stream is the frontrunner now if nothing pans out with Disney and YouTubeTV. 

I do have ESPN+ so I still won’t miss anything I want to watch, but it’s about convenience. 

[Heartofice]

I signed up to Appletv+ so that I could finish Ted Lasso at long last. Just did the free trial assuming I would probably cancel if there was nothing else I liked on there.

And having looked around, wow there is so little on there. Maybe it’s going for quality over quantity but it’s seriously empty in there. Almost anything I had a vague interest in watching wasn’t included in the subscription either. So it felt far more akin to Amazon Prime, which itself grosses me out when I have to use it.

Maybe in the future it might be a viable streaming service but not right  now

[Iskaral Pust]

On 12/19/2021 at 5:04 PM, Heartofice said:

I signed up to Appletv+ so that I could finish Ted Lasso at long last. Just did the free trial assuming I would probably cancel if there was nothing else I liked on there.

And having looked around, wow there is so little on there. Maybe it’s going for quality over quantity but it’s seriously empty in there. Almost anything I had a vague interest in watching wasn’t included in the subscription either. So it felt far more akin to Amazon Prime, which itself grosses me out when I have to use it.

Maybe in the future it might be a viable streaming service but not right  now

That was my experience with AppleTV too.  We dropped it as soon as we had finished Ted Lasso.

I’ve been pretty disciplined about canceling/churning subscriptions when they don’t have much to offer: AppleTV, Disney+, BritBox, Acorn.  But I have noticed that HBO Max and Peacock have now become permanent subscriptions like Netflix and Prime rather than occasional churn.  

Peacock has Premier League soccer and a good amount of rugby (Six Nations, Heineken Cup, English PL), and I can stream past matches as I exercise.  I don’t watch anything else on there, so I guess it’s worth it just for those.

HBO Max must have expanded their library just enough to be worth keeping.  Their original programming has fallen a long way since their peak era, but they do offer higher quality movie options than Netflix or Prime.

I know Netflix is struggling with market saturation and the eventual consequences of prioritizing quantity over quality, but I still couldn’t imagine canceling that yet.  Not when I’ve canceled cable.  Netflix replaces cable as the starting point for low brow viewing.  But I do notice that my wife I spend more and more time browsing for any watchable options across all of our subscriptions for our joint viewing — like cable and BlockBuster in the past.  The golden age of TV is gone.

[aceluby]

I've gotten about 9 months of apple for free.  6 months from Target and then another 3 months when I got my new work computer.  We started with Ted Lasso, but there's actually quite a bit of good TV on it.  Enough that I don't really have a problem with the $4 a month they are now charging.  We watched Mythic Quest, The Shrink Next Door, Severance, and have just started WeCrashed - all of which have been good to fantastic.  For how cheap it is, it definitely feels worth it since we haven't really been disappointed in anything we've started. 

[Myrddin]

Speaking of services with little content, we got a free month of Paramount+ with our Xbox Game Pass. There is really not much there. 1883 limit series was phenomenal, but Yellowstone is not on the channel (which I've yet to watch). There's the new Star Trek shows, but I've never really cared for that universe. Otherwise, P+ has bunch of movies that I watched only because they were there and free. Movies like Transformers and TMNT (I'm an 80's kid. Sue me). 

Oh, and The Stand is on there. Starting that tonight. 

Already canceled the subscription. Once we finish The Stand, we'll spin up HBO Max again for a month or two. 

[Heartofice]

On 12/19/2021 at 10:04 PM, Heartofice said:

I signed up to Appletv+ so that I could finish Ted Lasso at long last. Just did the free trial assuming I would probably cancel if there was nothing else I liked on there.

And having looked around, wow there is so little on there. Maybe it’s going for quality over quantity but it’s seriously empty in there. Almost anything I had a vague interest in watching wasn’t included in the subscription either. So it felt far more akin to Amazon Prime, which itself grosses me out when I have to use it.

Maybe in the future it might be a viable streaming service but not right  now

So I posted that in December, and I cancelled my subscription then, restarting it recently to watch Severance. Looking around at the app things look even worse than before. I'm confronted by a bunch of content that I'd have to pay for, as well as a ton of content from the BBC.. something I already get for free. Then also some links to Baseball?! Really?

I like the visual look of the platform, but it needs a lot more content to keep me interested. The plus points are that there are 1 or 2 good movies on there like Macbeth or Coda that I could watch nowhere else. But that's it. 

 

[Heartofice]

On the same topic, Captain Midnight put out a good video on why Netflix isn't that good. His basic argument seems to be that Netflix has moved away from being the place where people find shows they like to being the place that has the shows people watch. Essentially it's all about the algorithm.

On top of that, there seems to be very little support for a lot of shows, which are often just thrown on the platform with little marketing or attempt to build up anticipation, or just cancelled after a couple of seasons because thats what the algorithm says.. or it's just policy.



 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

On the same topic, Captain Midnight put out a good video on why Netflix isn't that good. His basic argument seems to be that Netflix has moved away from being the place where people find shows they like to being the place that has the shows people watch. Essentially it's all about the algorithm.

On top of that, there seems to be very little support for a lot of shows, which are often just thrown on the platform with little marketing or attempt to build up anticipation, or just cancelled after a couple of seasons because thats what the algorithm says.. or it's just policy.
 

"the exact kind of show that Netflix has failed to replicate in any meaningful way..."

The Crown... Bridgerton... Derry Girls... Peaky Blinders... The Witcher... Love, Death + Robots...

...not to mention really outstanding first seasons of Squid Game and Arcane. 

And Friends isn't just a popular show; it's one of the most popular shows of all time. As near as makes no difference, no one replicates that. 

Historically there have been plenty of shows that don't make it past a 4th season, as he mentions. Rome, Deadwood, American Gods, and (if David Simon hadn't successfully fought for it), The Wire. Not to mention hundreds of network TV shows and movies that disappear into the ether. Netflix is doing nothing unique in that respect; they're just doing it on a slightly compressed timeline. And just because a show goes past 4 seasons doesn't mean it captures the imagination either. The Arrowverse has about 45 seasons of television and it doesn't seem to generate much discussion on these boards. 

The comparison with The Mandalorian is also a bit unfair. That benefits from being part of one of the biggest existing franchise IP's in history. The floor beneath which a SW property becomes a failure is pretty low. Basically, as long as it isn't as bad as the prequels, people will tune in just because it's Star Wars. The sequel trilogy was shit and it still made over $4 billion at the box office. But don't worry, if they keep pumping out duds like the Book of Boba Fett, they can still screw it up.

The Russian Doll - Succession comparison is also a bit unfair. Succession benefitted from not having a 2 year hiatus between the 1st and 2nd season. Blame Covid. I dunno. 

This is piling on IMO. Let's put this in perspective: The loss of 200k subs represents 10% of the new subscriptions from the previous financial quarter and less than 0.1% of their total subscriber base. Last year they added 18 million subscribers vs HBO Max' 13 million and D+'s sub growth has slowed. It's a bit early to say the sky is falling. 

He's right about one thing, Netflix needs to do a better job of promoting it's shows. I commented in the watching thread that most people wouldn't mind a short ad break at the beginning of a TV show or movie. Maybe they should try inserting trailers (for their own shows) as well. If the algorithm can put stuff in my suggestion box based on my watch history, it can also insert a trailer at the beginning of whatever I decide to watch. 

They should have done the low cost tier with ads a long time ago. Or maybe its better that they haven't played that card yet. I dunno.

 

[dbunting]

On 11/4/2021 at 9:39 PM, Zorral said:

Thank you!  Ya, nothing of this sort is of interest to me particularly, especially HGTV and food, etc.  For Nature stuff, my other services have really gorgeous offerings already.  So I see no value add of this to HBO for my sort of viewer.    I hope then HBO doesn't then want to up the price of my sub.

Really late to this post but Discovery has a very large tv library, which is where HBO max is lacking so the merge makes sense in those terms. Personally I watch some of the reality shows on there like Deadliest Catch, Gold Rush and Alone. On it's own I wouldn't pay for it though, currently I still have cable but those days seem numbered.

[felice]

6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I commented in the watching thread that most people wouldn't mind a short ad break at the beginning of a TV show or movie.

I certainly would!