So, we spent the $6 to rent the movie on Google Play. About 10 minutes into the movie, the quality plummeted and playback stopped with an error code. We called customer support and they talked us through possible solutions for ~35 minutes before we gave up and asked for a refund. It wasn't a problem with our Wifi, since Netflix/Youtube and other services worked just fine, it was a problem with Google Play streaming to the Chromecast.

After searching and trying for over an hour to watch a movie legally using paid services, we went to putlocker, plugged an hdmi cable into my computer and streamed it just fine. We really, really tried to do it the legal way and pay money for the content we wanted to watch, but it was far too complicated to even find a place to watch it, let alone actually successfully watch it. I was reminded a lot of this comic http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones throughout the whole thing. All of this fragmentation is going to become a huge problem again, when piracy is just so easy and convenient.

No but seriously, it is sad that with my setup I can search something and stream it instantly, or have it download and automatically be renamed and organized ready to watch on Plex. TV shows can be grabbed automatically and alert me when they are ready. I can use Plex and stream them anywhere in the world right from my own server, and now they even have beta for streaming from amazon cloud so you don't even need your own server.

I hate that my most convenient option is the illegal one. I'd gladly pay. I have no problem paying the $10 a month for Spotify. I never illegally download music anymore because of it. I used to do so before, but now it is so easy and accessible with Spotify that I see no need to.

The Canadian version of a service like Netflix has even less content than the American versions. We barely would find anything we wanted on it, and ultimately got rid of it pretty fast. Just wasn't worth the cost. We had to resort to no longer searching for things we wanted as they rarely had them, and instead just viewing what they DID have.

Edit: I should also add that I am a student on a fairly tight budget, and despite this I am willing to pay for a service monthly to get access to these things. That is why I pay for Spotify. However, I am definitely not going to spend money at multiple video streaming services, and then have to go on some wild hunt to find the content I'm interested in.

Movies you buy/rent in Google Play Movies are actually available in YouTube as well. There's a section in YouTube called "Purchases." I've used this to stream Google Play Movies purchases on my Fire TV. I would imagine the same would work for an Apple TV since it has the YouTube app.

I know it is a cumbersome workaround, and that a company as big as Google really should have a product that just works, but since you mentioned that YouTube works fine, it is a possible workaround that might save you 35 minutes next time.

If you want to rent the movie or show on Amazon Video but are avoiding using that option just because it doesn't work on chromecast then here is what you can do : 1. Install Amazon video app on phone. Here's link for Android : https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/splash/sd/t/appstore

2. Cast your Android screen (mirror) to chromecast via OS's cast option.

3. Go to Amazon Video app and play show. Do a full screen view.

I have to admit, nice trick with Google Play and Youtube, will check too.

I have really really tried to use Google Play for video because it seems to work on the broadest array of devices, but the service itself is a second rate experience. Too many clicks, laggy unresponsive UI, silly JS driven pages that require reloading in order to start working again...

I too really want to do things the way that supports content producers, but the middlemen are doing such a poor job that it's difficult to get my money to them.

Netflix and Prime are finally acceptable on Linux thanks to Pipelight but that solution's not for everyone.

If you want a single settop box, you might run PI with XBMC/Kodi but you can't get DRM'ed things on there. So you need a Roku or AppleTV for your DRM, a chromecast for things coming from a PC, and you still need a Kodi for your personal needs.

Against Balkanization, Fan.TV and other guide apps combine all your streaming sources and antenna TV into one. And everything can be controlled from your phone.

There's still room for improvement, but we have it pretty good. The biggest problem is figuring out what hardware and software you need with all the options out there. We're just spoiled for choice.

Now they use a accelerator/gyroscope and a dedicated RF channel to provide input. Plus that you can transmit also more data ( Wii remotes send the battery status too, for example ).

What's weird is that Amazon Prime worked fine on Linux in 2010 without any trouble, and now it requires Pipelight.

And Hulu, too, used to work but no longer does.

I often watch it on YouTube under "purchases"

I actually think Apple is still doing OK on the technology front, and the Apple TV UI seems to have the right ideas.

But actually negotiating the content licenses is something calling for the full power of the Reality Distortion Field. Like how Jobs was able to convince the music industry to provide all their content because it would be available "just on Macs", or to get AT&T to give full control of the iPhone to Apple, in exchange for an exclusive over Verizon.

What would be the negotiating play to trick (I mean, convince its in their best interest) video content owners to make all their intellectual property available from a single excellent UI?

Why didn't you just stream Amazon or Play Movies from the computer since you plugged it in anyways? How was stealing it more convenient?

Now, there are certainly some out there who would soldier on despite all these inconveniences and still go through the trouble of finding another legal avenue (OP did say he spent another hour searching for it), but if your business plan relies on people taking the legal route just because it's the "right" thing to do, experience be damned, well, you'll have piracy at levels that you do now.

If the blender I bought doesn't work I should be able to take it back to store and get a refund. But just because I spent 30 minutes driving back to store, that doesn't mean I can just take another one from the shelves and walk out without paying.

Even more so, the 99% profit margin isn't the whole story, as torrents are arguably more efficient (by making use of spare bandwidth among the populace). The 1% marginal costs for legally downloaded media primarily exists only because of the company's need to tightly control distribution and charge for access. With torrents, this requirement disappears and the marginal costs drop even closer to zero.

[1] I'm only counting bandwith costs here, which seems to be at most $0.05 per GB. This is what Google charges for their CDN traffic, so their internal costs per GB must be lower: https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/cdn-interconnect#prici...

Do while the legal system does not say he has a legally enforceable claim to watch the movie, the same system will not punish him for doing so.

Now, if we are talking morally, I'm going to guess we have different moral systems and thus not reach the same conclusion.

P.S. for the blender example, it would be more as if his purchased blender didn't work so he used a working one to turn his blender into a working copy, while the second blender continues to sit on the shelf for someone else to buy.

Being the 'chaotic good' person that I am, my family stopped trying to view entertainment content the normal legal way many years ago. I've been using a torrent friendly VPS in eastern Europe for quite a few years now to avoid any complications.

That, plus a little web service that presents youtube videos without commercials, gives us pretty reliable access to most anything we ever want to watch. The downside is that it's not setup to be 'live'. It can take a few hours to torrent it and then securely transfer home. But honestly that's kind of a feature.

To be clear, if there was an always works and reasonably priced way to legally view content, we would jump right on it.

But such a thing has yet to exist.

Why not just use an adblocker like uBlock Origin?

If you don't want to see ads, I assume you use an adblocker anyway, so you might as well use one that doesn't suck.

Believe it or not, I don't use an ad. blocker, I never have.

I cannot recall a recent movie I have streamed simply because most of the time it can be a third to more than half the price of buying a blu-ray.

I think you're playing up an edge case and frankly that seems disingenuous to me. It seems like every pro-pirate person has some shaggy dog story that "validates" their pirating. I also take issue with how 'easy' it is to pirate. Sure, if its for a current hot item and everyone is seeding it, but once the fanboys go away the seeders are mostly gone and now you're waiting hours (or even days!) to pirate something. Worse, you may expect a lawsuit from the copyright holders as torrents expose your real IP address unless you're using an offshore VPN or VPS which also adds a another layer of inconvenience and monthly billing.

Currently, we have two FireTV boxes and two Chromecasts for our two TV's and they're borderline magical. We have so much content on tap that "just works" that the argument of "its better to pirate" is pretty unconvincing to people without a political agenda. I also want to be part of a system that pays investors and producers of said content for moral and practical reasons. We don't need a Sega Dreamcast-like situation where the pirates kill platforms, hurt competition, and create disincentives to innovate, distribute, and create.

When I pay for a service, travel frequently, and cannot use that service because of licensing restrictions due to ads, that is a problem. That tells me these streaming services put more stock into my viewing ads than accessing content I am already paying for. I am not pro-pirate. Nor is your car analogy relevant. You are comparing apples and oranges (the business models aren't remotely the same and the value propositions are completely different, to me, that is disingenuous.

Now, I don't like selective enforcement and think it has many problems, but it does seem to be how our legal system functions these days.

There're probably other services it doesn't support (which limits its usefulness), but I've been using it for years.

Shoplifting is easy and convenient too. Next time you forget your wallet at the corner store. Just sayin.

Allow me to reference a very famous Bill Gates quote on Chinese piracy of software:

"And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

There are more ways to monetize a media property than pay-per-view so to speak. Merchandising is a big one, not to mention word of mouth marketing.

My point is strictly relating to the business end result of the following three alternatives:

1) DO pay for and DO consume digital product.

2) NOT pay for but DO consume digital product.

3) NOT pay for and NOT consume digital product.

Only alternatives #1 and #2 provides a way to monetize the consumer, either via direct monetization of the product (ie pay-per-view) or indirect monetization (ie merchandizing, willingness to pay for new versions of the product in the future, etc), or by leveraging that consumer as a marketing agent to bring in additional consumers (ie that consumer's best friend ended up being monetizable when previously they would have never heard of your media property).

Because there is no expense to the business when a digital product is pirated, then intelligent business management would always prefer option 2 to option 3. That said, business management cannot publicly endorse this preference without the threat of converting #1 consumers into #2 consumers (which are still more valuable than #3 but arguably less than #1).

There's a clear correlation between ease of access and reduced piracy in music and games. TV and movies are in a funny place right now where in some ways the situation is arguably worse than it was 10 years ago - back then you could be reasonably assured that you could find whatever you wanted at Blockbuster and it would work in your DVD player. Nowadays finding which providers have the rights to the content you want to watch, and whether they can be watched on your proprietary devices can be a nightmare.

Meanwhile, the piracy route for the most part works completely seamlessly. Using Popcorn Time for me is a better experience than the legal route - that's indicative of major problems.

To be clear, I am not promoting piracy, it does pose ethical problems. The metaphor to stealing simply fails to illuminate any of them.

So in a very real sense, stealing the soda and stealing the movie are hardly any different?

The corner store lost nothing.

But again, stealing a soda voids the ability for someone else to obtain the good. "Stealing" a movie via piracy doesn't neglect someone else from obtain the good. This is the GP's point - stealing implies there is something of loss.

One more time, boys and girls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

It's all too easy to make such a claim - particularly if you are the one benefiting from piracy.

If the couple chose not to watch the movie, they aren't going to sit and stare at a blank wall for two hours. Maybe they would have watched a movie on regular TV with ads - thereby benefiting the businesses who placed the ads. Maybe they would have watched a movie on Netflix who therefore gave a small percentage of the Netflix subscription fee to the movie studio. And maybe a month later Google fix the technical problems and the couple decide to pay to watch the original movie.

The point is that if the couple hadn't downloaded the movie illegally, somebody somewhere would probably have been financially better off.

I think it illuminates that you got to have/experience something without paying for it, despite the fact that the distributor wanted you to.

If I hire a programmer I get software from the programmer's time. The programmer's time is an expended resource.

If I buy a Coke I get a bottle full of liquid. There was a loss of resources to get it me.

Once that programmer has already written the software there is no cost to duplicate it infinitely. Same with movies.

Since it requires no resources why is there a distributor? A middleman has to work hard to provide his value. Netflix does with impeccable service and high reliability. In this case Google failed. Torrents use otherwise unused bandwidth (ie no resource) and are the baseline for value that these middlemen must compete with.

Imagine I really want your car, so I take it. Or imagine I really want your car, so I use a magic wand to make an exact duplicate of it. Are those two scenarios at all comparable?

This argument fall apart in many of the examples cited in this thread because most of the time, those movies are available digitally for a price. The fact is that most people just don't want to pay that price so they use other means to watch the movie.

The issue, of course, is whether or not you're correctly estimating whether you would end up buying it if you didn't pirate it. But if you take it as given that you wouldn't buy it, then there's no loss.

One is robbery of scarce resources, one is a legal framework around imposing scarcity on something that is not naturally scarce.

You can steal a movie - in the traditional sense of the word - by breaking into MGM / Disney / Universal's internal network and copying the movie out from their own internal servers. This does happen, where scene releases of unreleased movies happen, often done by employees with access to get access to these films prematurely. That is the only situation remotely comparable to the shoplifting scenario, because in the normal piracy scenario nobody is not voluntarily participating (the original buyer of the movie who then shared it did a voluntary transaction, then violated the distribution terms given them when distributing it to others voluntarily).

Violating a contract and violence are on entirely different planes of ethics.

While we might disagree on the moral shading of copyright infringement can we agree that piracy and theft are different things?

I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers. Like a 12-year-old deciding their older brother's belongings really belong to everybody, because socialism or whatever.

If you consider yourself a pragmatist, you should also consider that you have under analyzed the issue at hand and that trying to generalize digital media with anecdotes of exchange for goods or services in meat space is inappropriate.

Your position sounds more rooted in laziness than pragmatism, at this rate.

I can understand (though not agree with) the point of view that people are selfish and just make up excuses to justify to themselves and others that they are in the right whenever they take some action that benefits themselves.

But I don't understand why you would attribute those selfish, self-justifying motives only to those that make copies of digital media but not to those who proclaim to "own" them or who decry copying as theft?

Wouldn't your view also have to apply to the whole concept of ownership, which you'd have to dismiss as a pretension to "theoretical philosophy"?

Pirates don't deprive distributors or content producers of anything. No harm has been done.

But amazingly, folks accept whatever argument gives them free entertainment. Objections are suddenly 'irrelevant' when watching their favorite TV show is at stake.

Folks who wouldn't go in the back window of a bar to avoid the cover charge, will gladly go in the back way online to hear their favorite band. And they rely on the (pretty indirect) argument about how the source is generated to rationalize it.

Pardon me for my cynicism.

Stop using physical examples, they don't correlate to a digital good that can be duplicated digitally, with no physical presence.

The word "took" when applied to physical objects implies that only one person (the one who took it) has that object, and the one it was taken from no longer has it.

In the digital world that can only happen if the original is deleted or destroyed, which does not happen in the case of a copy or a "pirating". The original is still in the possession of the "owner", but now also in the possession of the copier. The "owner" does not lose his own copy, so nothing is "taken" from him.

It's analogous, in the physical world, to making a photograph of a photograph. The original photograph still exists, and the "owner" of the original photograph does not have anything "taken" from them by the existence of a copy in the possession of someone else (except perhaps in the legal or potential sense -- depending on the laws, the jurisdiction, and the interpretation of those laws -- but certainly not in any kind of physical sense).

What does the time and effort required matter in anyway in this case? If something is copied, it is copied. They can't lose something they didn't have. If I could clone a car and then I took that cloned car is it still the same as stealing the original car? No, if a friend cloned me their car I don't see how you could even come close to saying it was the same as stealing the car.

Are they entitled to the entertainment? Sure, why not? If they tried to get it already why not. Not to mention in this day in age there is a lot more social pressure to be up to date with current hit tv shows and movies. And sure, you could be "that guy" who doesn't watch these things, but most don't want to be in that group.

So yes, if they tried to get it legally, and the legal system failed and wasted their time, I do see them entitled to try another avenue even if it may not be legal. I would not say the same about a physical item.

If you, unauthorized, print out a photo and hang it in your apartment to enjoy you've probably committed IP infringement of some kind.

Have you committed theft though? Is it the same severity as pickpocketing someone's wallet/purse?

It's important to distinguish because it informs how we should treat these things, legally.

Rents are completely inherent in entertainment product - it's just that we have a faux facade of competition between services for the charging of rents. This is confusing.

How many more works does the author create in the +70 years after death ? If the answer (I suspect) is zero, what possible:

".. promotion of the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

can there be in that time ?

There's a lot of reasons that analogies between mom and pop face-to-face businesses and massively-middleman'd intermediary transactions break down; this is just one of them.

So you're still going to pay for it. That's not the same as the story here, where they paid for it, got a refund, then got it for "free". They aren't intending to go to the content creators and hand them $5 for it later.

You might argue that publishers and distributors will hold their portion of the $5 for the next piece of content.

I, like you, am disturbed by the "if it's easy to steal then it's ok to steal" argument. It really hurts people who make a living as creatives.

You may be OK losing the provider's portion to assure the creator is paid.

1) they actually did pay to rent it.

2) the content owners don't lose more money weather it's "stollen" or just not watched at all. (In fact, it's better in some ways since these people will tell their friends about it now who may also watch it)

p.s. If you read it again, you'll see that the person asked for a refund. It's somewhat unclear at this point whether that refund was granted, but my interpretation is that they did.

Shoplifting is when someone buys something, then has it withheld from them, then get a refund, then access that product from someone else offering to share it with them?

I guess I was trying to move the conversation away from what I see as a flawed analogy to what I think is technically interesting, and that I have first hand experience with, in that the companies offering paid services fail to support them to the same standard as their free services

For the record the phone time seeking the refund, for me, lacked an appropriate roi so i am out the money and was stunted from exposing myself to the media.. media which the creator and distributor trusted goog with making available to me

There are so many interesting subtleties it's frustrating to bury the conversation in a flawed analogy

To be an issue of entitlement the person would have to say something that sets them apart, akin to: it's ok for me to pirate but for everyone else its bad;

Whereas the gp was just describing their process without applying any opinion on the ethics of others doing the same

an excuse is just an excuse, the special treatment is what makes it entitled

Have you ever pirated anything? If you have then your position would make you the entitled one because you are claiming it is wrong for this person to pirate though you have done so yourself

Why offer your opinion with lazy pithy statements and attempts to compartmentalise complex ideas into a single word?

It reads so demonstrative and finite as if these issues lack any capacity for dialogue

I think your perspective is important to this conversation but I'm unable to access it due to how you are presenting it

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cast/boadge...

Hey @Google, @Amazon, @etc., you have UX designers (tons of them). If this problem isn't fixed soon, more will do the same.

The technical problem is relatively easily fixed and probably just an isolated local issue. The licensing problem is a bigger one. For rentals, you have the problem of having to create accounts for all the places it may be, assuming you've even got the searching chops to do it (presumably one gets tired of just trying all of them by hand), and for subscription services you have the even larger problem of accumulating a $10/month service here, $10/month service there until you're talking about real money.

That reminds me, I need to turn off my Hulu service. (Seriously, not just for rhetorical point. Literally gonna go do that next thing. Edit: Yup, just did it.) We're not using it in the current season.

(Edit: Incidentally, Hulu really cut itself off here. Because so many of the shows, even with the paid subscription, only have the last 5 episodes of the most recent season, and then aggressively disappear once the season is over, I have no reason to stick around if I'm not watching anything that's on right now. There's actually two shows that I did not watch as they came out, but might have left on my subscription for if they were still available, but now they're gone from the service like they never existed, so.... cancelled. See ya next season, maybe.)

It really is bizarre to me how protective the entertainment industry can get of its content, in a context that I am paying for it (in fact I buy the Hulu non-commercial plan, upon which they make much more than they ever could dream of with commercials, especially given I tend to watch at most two shows per season on them, so I'm really paying for it). I assume Hulu has some sort of arrangement where payment is based on viewership. Why would a TV show not want all of its episodes from at least the last season up on Hulu, prior to its distribution in some other format?

I'll be specific. I enjoy Penn and Teller's Fool Us; not necessarily my favorite show ever (and yes, I'm aware of the at-least modest amounts of kayfabe going on) but a fine late-night relax-before-bed show. A quick search suggests that it is not currently legally available in any format, though I welcome corrections. What's the motivation for taking it off Hulu? Now they certainly aren't making any money from it.

I mean, I understand greed in the general sense. I understand the principles of differential pricing for different markets and the way the entertainment complex uses time to do that with movies and such. (i.e., it's why movies come out in theatres, then on expensive pay-per-view, then DVDs, then streaming services) What I don't understand is the motivation for taking down content that is not legally available anywhere and making it impossible to make money off of, especially in light of content not likely to be available in any other way in the future (there does not even seem to be DVD sets or anything, there does not seem to be a "downstream" for this to go in the differential pricing). A similar trajectory has been followed with Good Eats, which is only very spottily available legally. (A quick search to make sure I'm not shooting my mouth off shows that seasons 1 and 2 were available but are now $100+ to buy used, because they're out of print.)

Oh, and while this may be perhaps neither here nor there, huge, huge chunks of the show are readily available on Youtube. (Not the paid part, just normal free Youtube.)

Hulu or the network are likely not making any more money off of you watching Penn & Teller's show. Penn & Teller's show is probably less-profitable per-viewer to the network, because Penn & Teller are stars with great agency who can demand a large cut of the pie. Hulu's and the network's incentives are largely to get away with offering you the properties from their portfolio with the lowest market value, without you deciding to cancel entirely. While you and many other readers here are willing to re-evaluate and cancel your streaming subscriptions on a regular basis, I suspect their average consumer does not behave that way.

1.) Really? Would love for you to elaborate more. If you don't have a team trying to improve the user experience (i.e. user experience designers) then who will? Will you just wait for you users to tell you there is a problem? If so, then you aren't actively meeting the needs of your users insofar as you are not meeting their goals.

2.) If you are going to downvote me based on an opinion that you have about UX that defeats the primary purpose of downvoting. What I say is true, I work in HCI and UX. You very much need a team who is meeting / understanding the needs of the user. If not, the result is a disconnect between what the user actually needs and what you provide (you being Netflix).

3.) > nor can UX designers fix it. This is just not true. It is the job of UX designers to work closely with the engineering team to meet the needs of the users. I am not sure what experience you have with UX designers, but they should and often do work actively with engineers to "fix it."

So my question for you is: If you don't need UX designers (forgot about the term UX designers as it seems you clearly have a problem with how we are defining a group of people who are actively attempting to design experiences around meeting the needs of the user), then who will you rely on to ensure that the user's needs are being met? The engineers?

1.) I never said you don't need UX designers, I said you don't need UX designers to tell you that your video shouldn't stutter in the middle of playback.

2.) I didn't downvote you, nor did I respond to you.

3.) Yes, exactly. They can tell you there's a problem and monitor whether it's being solved but it's up to the engineers to fix it. Furthermore, I reject your implication that engineers nor anyone who isn't a UX designer (e.g. a PM) is sticking up for the customer. I wasn't belittling UX designers, but you're sure as hell belittling others.

Sorry you have had such a bad experience that you need to attack a strawman to stick up for UX designers. I know the value of UX designers. I stand by my opinion that they don't need to have ANYTHING to do with fixing a video buffering problem, or recognizing that it is a problem.

(Probably not Amazon, either.)

It works on a phone or tablet if you cast the whole screen. Might work on a laptop the same way.

Also, fuck amazon for changing from digital credit to pantry credit for selecting slow shipping instead of 2-day. Google rewards money makes up for it.

Funny how so many people screamed for al la care programming and now that it's happening everyone is realizing it's actually worse.

I know people hated it, but there is something to be said about traditional TV and how it's consumed. Having a centralized menu/guide of all the content you can view makes it much easier to consume (at least for me). Jumping in and out of services can be kind of annoying, and often times has lead me to forget about content on these services.

My hope is Vue and SlingTV pick up more momentum and we begin to decouple broadcast TV from it's hardware. I don't want to rely on the FCC to do this, as we've seen it fail with CableCard and Tru2Way, so maybe more providers jump on this. I doubt we'd see Comcast doing this, but even if they did and locked it to AppleTV or Roku it'd be a huge step forward.

The issue has never been the cost of the bundle, it's always been the cost of the sub-par hardware.

I wouldn't equate balkanization with a la carte. To stretch the restaurant metaphor, the current situation is akin to taking 5 cab rides between restaurants to cobble together a meal, there's a lot of overhead and waste. Traditional cable television is the restaurant with everything available, but you're required to purchase dessert and coffee to get access to soup and salad.

Let's not forget that we need healthy competition in this space. We can't, and shouldn't, expect Netflix to just have everything, as good as their product is.

What you're describing is essentially PPV/VOD, and that exists now in iTunes, Amazon and Vudu.

I live abroad and cannot use virtually any of my Amazon Prime since virtually every non-amazon original is blocked in the country I live in. When I was in the US, I could legally copy the file to my Kindle and view it anywhere (with the ticking timebomb that is the download expiry). While I understand the "technical" difference between this and streaming it while I'm abroad, I feel that it's splitting hairs - ultimate I'm using the same service to watch the same content, just instead of a browser cache it's temporarily loaded on my Kindle.

I understand we got here because of distribution rights,but what I don't understand is how it's still so consumer anti-friendly. I have no means of knowing whether or not I can view a video except to open it and check. With other streaming services, I have no idea whether or not their library is available in my country prior to purchase. It surprises me that this is not a function offered to let you browse the library and get an accurate idea of what you can and cannot watch. It may be a fringe case, but I would imagine for many countries, the idea of constantly moving back and forth between countries with different distirbution deals would be common enough that the support cases alone would justify such a feature.

My son used to watch Thomas the Tank engine occasionally. Guess what recently got removed...

How is this irrelevant? Everything about making the product costs money and if there is no ad revenue they have to charge for it elsewhere.

For digital goods, marginal cost of production is so near to zero that the only thing you can really sell profitably is an artificial legal right to distribute the copies.

Pay per view (multiple sources ok)

Or

All-you-can-x from one place like Spotify

What I don't like is paying monthly to a number of services.

Also (honest question, I might send money Apples way if the answer is yes:)

Do iTunes work standaloneon Windows (and preferably Linux) and can I legally watch stuff there even if I sit somewhere in Europe?

However, iTunes is only pay-per-view for some films, and hasn't been pay-per-view for TV episodes for some time. TV episodes you must buy (either one at a time for typically ~$3 or you can buy a whole season, or you can pay the remainder of the season cost if you've already bought episodes from it). Some films are rentable ($3-$6, once you've rented I believe you have 30 days to start watching and then 24 hours to finish/watch as many times as you want), but most are for sale rather than rent. It's not unusual for me to run across a film I'd like to watch, but ends up not being rentable so I have to decide if I want to full-on buy it (which is closer to $15-$20).

Not the greatest solution, but usually better than other solutions for me.

I, like many others really want to buy. For me pirating is last option (after "let's just do something else, I don't need to see that movie after all")

Sorry, but according to content right owners (Sony being named among the chief ones), that's not legal or acceptable. If they say you're not allowed to watch a movie in EU, it's copyright infrigement for you to pay for it in EU via US iTunes account.

Welcome to 21st century.

That seems unlikely to me, though. More likely there is more subtlety to it than that.

I have Netflix and iTunes. I nearly always end up using iTunes. It's more expensive but iTunes UK has a great selection and I only pay when I use it. Also it streams to my Apple TV. For me the additional cost is worth the control and selection.

Lookin' at you Mr. Robot.

edit: But some are included at no extra cost. Amazon Prime customers got AMC's Humans the day after it aired for free.

I'd be happy with a service that charge me 1$ per show but with real choice.

That is, I've already proven to Xfinity that I'm willing to pay my monthly cable bill for those 5 channels, so if they offer them a la carte, those 5 will cost about what my monthly cable bill costs.

Economically: Many channels will die, which would lower production costs, which in a competitive market lowers consumer costs.

More importantly, channels will actually need to fight for consumers. Which means they are not going to soft ball ultra cheap reality TV that most of their core demographic hate. cough syfy

Really, it's just a question of what they get from all their channels (X + Y + ...). If Y = 0billion and X = 10billion that's the same as Y=1billion and X = 9billion.

PS: Ok, their might be some accounting magic so it's useful for channel Y not to be profitable.

PS: Cheap TV can be compelling. Personally I really liked the primitive technology youtube channel which has 788,764 subscribers and is really cheap to produce 1 guy without any spoken lines. Twitch can also be extremely compelling. However, that's not paying subscribers.

That means that cable operators are sort of duty-bound to offer local stations. I will bet that those local stations are much less likely to be in your list of 5.

So what's mainly driving up your cost is local stations charging for carrying them. You'll see the odd game of chicken between local stations and cable operators when the local stations want to raise prices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry#United_States

It pretty much works this way for music, why not movies and TV shows?

Having to deal with several different content delivery services, each with their own sign-in, is much more complicated than that.

Lawyers are the primary reason why Netflix is becoming less convenient, and by pure coincidence, lawyers will benefit from an increase in piracy.

Money talks.

It could also be that people are more willing to make platform purchasing decisions when it comes to video and game exclusivity but not music. This would lead to lower interest to buy exclusivity by the platforms, and thus having full market coverage is more economical for publisher.

For movies, you have to negotiate separately with every movie producer for every title.

In other words, to start a music service, you need money. To start a movie service, you need money and connections to every Hollywood studio.

Sure, there are three major music companies and six major film studios plus a bunch of major tv networks / distributors but it's still a long set of negotiations.

I think the difference is that the music companies understand the value of each service having ubiquitous access to every piece of music. UMG's decision to stop their artists agreeing exclusives with single platforms demonstrates this to some extent.

I wish the TV / movie would learn a thing or two from the music industry.

As long as they are unbundled and easy to subscribe and unsubscribe from, I don't really mind. The bundling is the real thing I hate about cable. Now sub-subscriptions like Amazon Prime has with Showtime and such really suck, and I wouldn't want those, but if registration is as simple as setting up or cancelling a recurring subscription, I'm fine with subscribing to 10 different services. I can also see the market for a free or one-time paid app that will maintain a queue of what you want to watch, and automatically subscribe to the correct channel for that month so you can watch the maximum content for the minimum money.

[Also, this is a personal opinion, but to me, Netflix's original content + their reduced catalog is definitely worth $10/month. Much better than the $100+ "special offer price" that Comcast offers if I want to watch non-stupid channels from their lineup.]

In the end we just watched the Twitch stream, which meant I didn't get to access the service I pay for just ten miles from home, and TBS didn't get our eyeballs on their advertisements. Seems like a bad policy on their part.

A service like Netflix that would augment real, current TV with a library of older shows/movies would have been worth a separate bill. (Had that library not shrunk.)

But one more channel of original shows? It's not worth subscribing to a new service and not enough for me to replace cable. And I'm not going to sign up for 4-5 of them. Even if their total cost is a little less than cable, the convenience lost is significant.

Despite groans to the contrary, I don't think consolidation is the reason services like Netflix/etc. are so popular and why cable service is starting to become considered gauche.

I posit that it's entirely about:

1) The on-demand content that services like Netflix/etc. provide 2) To a lesser extent, the discoverability of content

I don't want to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday evening. I want to watch it now. I want to re-watch Ocean's Eleven tonight, not Thursday during the day. Netflix (in theory) helps me with that. Cable service doesn't.

I want to watch an action movie, and one that I can actually watch right now. Netflix helps me with that. Cable service doesn't, unless I just put on whatever the "action movie" channel is showing.

Hell, cable service providers try to offer some of this already - it's just that their selection sucks. It's either incredibly old movies, or movies that no one wanted to see the first time around. Or it's just the latest episode of a popular television show, or the first season and we're on season 12 now.

Again, despite what people might say I don't think they really want a la carte programming: They want a Spotify subscription for television and film.

Yeah, for you (and me), as a customer. But what advantage is there for the content creator? You're not going to not watch Game of Thrones because it isn't on Netflix. You'll find a way. The content creators have (and in my opinion, rightfully so) the leverage.

The alternative is not paying for it at all. That may mean not watching it, but it doesn't have to because the owner doesn't have complete control of everything.

So the advantage to the creator is they can get some money instead of none. The have chosen to go the all or nothing route when giving nothing is really easy for people.

which would be a shame because I stopped pirating once things started to become convenient and affordable.

But the studios all want you to subscribe to their store. And they don't want to let iTunes have everything, because they want you to go to them first. Or their friends with Ultraviolet.

Studios don't like giving up their iron grip, which is what Apple was doing a good job of doing. :/

I'm also on the list of people that don't want 10 different monthly subscriptions to streaming services, and piracy really does look way more convenient. Especially with things like Popcorn Time.

I don't think it's Netflix's choice that they're getting rid of their broader range of content, more to do with licensing agreements. I assume they had so many films in the past because they had old licensing deals, when the production companies were more willing to go "Yeah, sure, let's give that small company a cheap deal to stream our movies online. What does it matter, no one watches movies on their computer, they'll still buy our DVDs or subscribe to our cable packages"

Now they recognise Netflix as a major competitor, and people are actually ditching their cable packages, and watching Netflix rather than buying DVDs. They can't compete with their old business model, so their only option is to demand extortionate prices or simply refuse to do business with Netflix, Amazon, etc.

It's the frustrating reason why companies like Fox, Universal, etc are able to be so successful, because they own the studios, the distribution, and the cable channels. They don't have to worry about getting someone else to give them content, or to distribute theirs. It's frustrating that Netflix is going to same way and being forced to rely on producing their own content, with less opportunity to show others.

Netflix are increasingly becoming like just another cable channel, with it's own set of content, and that's before you even get into all the regional differences. It's still an improvement over the alternative of bundled cable TV packages in terms of pricing and convenience, but I wonder how long that will be the case.

I've been looking into film and TV production for years as an outsider and come across several mentions that Netflix pays extremely well and is incredibly picky about their productions. So they're in the game to play for keeps it seems. "Come for the Netflix originals, but stay for some binge TV or the occasional random flick like a big on-demand shifting library!" as a tag-line sort of works.

Why, for instance, should I pay as much for a season of X-Files reruns as for the production of an entirely new series of Stranger Things? Why would I pay as much for episodes of The Sopranos, that I have already seen, and have on DVD, instead of another new series of Lillyhammer? I wouldn't, and neither would Netflix. The original content is a reminder to the owners of distribution rights that Netflix is the one who owns the ball, and they're the ones that will be taking it with them if they decide to go home and play alone.

And Netflix originals are getting nominated for Emmy Awards, in competition with AMC and HBO shows. Producing exclusive original content was absolutely the correct play for Netflix at the time they decided to do it, and remains so for the present.

What choice do you have when you don't own the infrastructure or content?

Let's face it, the barrier to entry to creating streaming app is low. Granted, Netflix is awesome in this department (they have to be), but I don't see how the future isn't in creating and distributing the content you own yourself.

The engine driving all of this that no one ever discusses is our current copyright regime. This cycle is going to continue to repeat itself as long as copyright remains unchanged. If our copyright laws were more sane, the whole thing would look a lot different.

We pay $20/month or so for Netflix and Hulu, plus Amazon comes with prime which I pay for more for the shipping than the streaming. This isn't a lot - compare that to what cable costs. The situation today is better than ever - a bunch of cheap ala cart services that together still add up to way less than cable.

Anyone trying to watch a specific film will care. Netflix is basically useless in a scrnario where you're looking to watch specific content. I maintain a to-watch list with about 20-30 films at any given time - Netflix offers none of them. Not their fault, I know, but the situation is far from acceptable.

Netflix's problem with movies is intractable because you'd have to pay much more than they're willing to charge to make the studios happy. The studios make more money they way they're doing it (they have accountants too).

It just isn't financially possible. I'm sure Netflix could have a lot bigger permanent catalog, but you are going to be paying much more than what they charge now.

Netflix (and Amazon) would love to have all the content licenses they used to have. The content companies are the ones making it impossible to have one service where you can get all of the content you want.