The future of streaming is the cable bundle? --Vox Article

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Juan Matus, Mar 20, 2019.

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  1. Juan Matus

    Juan Matus Reformed Audiophile Thread Starter

    Ugh I hope not. But with everyone and their mother creating a streaming service and fracturing the market and pulling their content from other services etc. it seems quite plausible.

    The future of streaming is the cable bundle

    As a consumer I just want one portal to get all my content that I pay a reasonable monthly rate for. I can't deal with 5-10 different streaming services and passwords etc.
     
    head_unit, Sean, enro99 and 1 other person like this.
  2. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I know it's obnoxious that I have to spend so much money to escape ESPN.
     
  3. jupiter8

    jupiter8 Forum Resident

    Location:
    NJ, USA
    As someone who has worked in the cable industry for 30 years, I think this article is pretty spot-on. If you want everything your old cable package once had, you'll be paying for Disney+/Hulu, Warner Streaming, NBC/Uni Streaming, and CBS/Viacom Streaming, not to mention paying for sports packages
     
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  4. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    I disagree with the article that 'most of us will pay $200 a month for internet and streaming TV'.

    That cost is way too high based on our TV viewing channels/habits (and millions of others that have cut the cord already) and is what is driving folks to tell their cable provider to pound sand.
     
  5. jupiter8

    jupiter8 Forum Resident

    Location:
    NJ, USA
    That is already exactly what I pay through Verizon FiOS- and there are even more expensive options-I don't have Starz or even the fastest internet option
     
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  6. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I moved my brother over to the hundred megabit Google Fiber package at $50 a month, and YouTube TV for $40. my hope is that there are some consumer pushback against this nonsense and will wind up with the missing channels added to YouTube TV or Sling.
     
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  7. Exit Flagger

    Exit Flagger Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    People were warning back in the late 90s that unbundling would end up costing more money and they were right.

    Although I have my doubts that some of these streaming services - especially the individual network ones like CBS and NBC - are really going to be able to compete in the long run.
     
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  8. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    It really depends on your tastes. For instance I have absolutely no interest in sports at all, and ESPN was the majority of my cable bill, the single most expensive package. So if I can have an ESPN-free package that I build, I should still be able to save money.
     
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  9. Exit Flagger

    Exit Flagger Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Oh me too. I agree that ESPN is a ripoff for non-sports fans who want a decent cable package. But I still think building your own bundle - at least with an on-demand service where I can watch when I want - will come out to be more, especially when each of these networks start to peel off from Hulu and other combined services. I am not interested in paying YouTube or Hulu or Apple the same amount of money I once paid my cable provider.

    Also, I get all the broadcast networks over the air with an antenna so I certainly wouldn't pay another $10 a month for each service to watch the one or two NBC, CBS, ABC or Fox shows I care about.
     
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  10. Juan Matus

    Juan Matus Reformed Audiophile Thread Starter

    Cutting the cord saved us a significant amount per month even after adding Hulu and Netflix (I don't watch sports). But I can't justify adding more streaming services if these things keep splitting up and fragmenting! I was hoping Netflix would end up the big winner but that might not happen, who knows. It's funny Verizon wouldn't negotiate at all. For a small reduction in our cable bill I would have stayed. But now they send me offers every week for a huge new customer discount! :crazy:
     
  11. jupiter8

    jupiter8 Forum Resident

    Location:
    NJ, USA
    They are still 800 pound gorillas- and NBC has content from Universal. They also still control the airwaves and have several digital subchannels that you can watch with no cable/streaming whatsoever. That'll allow them to experiment and play around with formats and programming-
     
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  12. ElevatorSkyMovie

    ElevatorSkyMovie Senior Member

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    Netflix has already lost. They are losing content all the time. That's why they are spending so much to make their own content.

    The big companies are setting up their own services, and in the next year or 2 the door will shut and will lock netflix and everyone else out of that content.
     
  13. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I agree that the traditional studios will pull much of their content from Netflix sooner rather than later, but Netflix has created a lot of popular original series, from The Crown to Glow to Stranger Things to Queer Eye. Will that be enough to keep Netflix going strong? I think so.
     
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  14. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I think so too. The way I see it, now that Netflix has trailblazed a new content delivery model, every man and his dog wants a piece of the action, leading to the splintering we're seeing now. However, I don't think this will be sustainable in the long run.

    As people have already said here, no one wants to juggle a dozen streaming services, not only because it's unwieldy but because it's expensive - the very thing that caused people to cut the cord in the first place. So I think the smaller players won't be able to gain enough market share to continue and will be forced to offer their content to more established players (like Netflix). This consolidation will continue until you have maybe a handful of big mainstream players that will dominate the streaming space.

    It might take a while for this rationalization to work itself out, but I'm pretty sure it will happen.
     
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  15. Juan Matus

    Juan Matus Reformed Audiophile Thread Starter

    I'm of this opinion as well. I think at some point they will be begging for Netflix to take their content back after their services have failed to gain any sizable subscriber base.

    But I do worry we might have to go through a very dark period before that happens.
     
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  16. CBS already does this along with Acorn and a couple of other smaller services on Amazon.
     
  17. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    Yeah, I stream through Apple TV, and subscribe to CBS All Access, Netflix, HBO Now, Amazon Prime (which is basically free, because I’d pay for Prime anyway), and the Criterion Channel (which used to be Filmstruck). That’s it for me. I have no interest in Disney+, and any other new service would have to be really, really special for me to add it.
     
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  18. Juan Matus

    Juan Matus Reformed Audiophile Thread Starter

    How do you like Criterion, do they have a large selection? That's one I might be interested in.
     
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  19. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    I'm the opposite, sort of.

    I'd gladly pay for football (soccer), and ONLY football. I don't want anything else. In the UK this is virtually impossible. Sky do have a Day pass type thing, but it's horrendously priced. I have no interest in other broadcast TV.
     
  20. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    It hasn’t launched yet. It was previously called Filmstruck, which was a partnership between Criterion and Turner Classic Movies, and I loved it then. The new Criterion channel launches in a few weeks.
     
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  21. If cable had done this years ago, they wouldn’t see people cutting the cord quite so much. I get frustrated with the pricing and the lack of ala cart choices. The sad part is that streaming will cost about as much when all is said and done when all of these streaming companies come online.
     
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  22. Brenald79

    Brenald79 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Cable companies have the blackout restrictions for sports that will prevent sports fans from cord cutting despite most leagues having a very affordable league pass streaming channel - but is unfortunately not 100% useful unless you live on another continent since 40-60% of the games will be blacked out.
     
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  23. ClassicalCD

    ClassicalCD Make audio great again

    Location:
    Bogotá, Colombia
    There will come a time when streamers bitterly regret not having taken the advice of us curmudgeons to support tangible, permanent formats and buy as many CDs as you could while resisting the siren call of relinquishing all control and ownership of music to digital services that can disappear or dramatically morph into something very nasty overnight.
     
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  24. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    my takeaway......people still watch Friends??????? really???
     
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  25. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Yes, but common sense must fall in the face of convenience. :)

    I also wonder where all the bandwidth is going to come from. Sure you can get a fast line to your home, but when everyone has a 4K streaming package, are they really going to be able maintain that over time? Can you imagine when everyone is streaming the Superbowl at 4K?

    Still, streaming all this stuff feels a lot like what I do now on Youtube - only with a bill due at the end of the month. I imagine all these families sitting in bare rooms with whitewashed walls, no "stuff" all staring at a big screen.

    Think about it - a family of three - Dad, Mom, and a couple kids wanting to stream whatever they want to stream at 4K, and replicated down a street in house after house. We really are a ways off making that happen, imo.
     
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