Thread

Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits

163 points · 188 comments · Brajeshwar

avgDev · 1790264764 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. mixdup · 1790265009 · focus · HN ↗
  >We are back to cable pricing
  People expecting that the content companies were going to just accept lower revenue forever and not eventually get back to cable pricing were fooling themselves
  In fact, the content companies are planning on making more money than they did under cable because since they're selling direct to the consumer, there's no DirecTV/Comcast/Charter middleman taking a slice anymore
  Of course they'll sell through those intermediaries and take a cut but it will be much less than the cable companies were getting before, and will just go into the marketing cost bucket
  1. Jcampuzano2 · 1790265198 · focus · HN ↗
    Then they're just eventually going to lose out to things like short-form content and services like live streaming that younger generations are moving towards.
    I wouldn't be surprised if they end up basically exactly like cable, where the only people who hang around end up being the older generations in the decade to come.
    HeWhoLurksLate · 1790265982 · focus · HN ↗
    especially as shows keep tending towards up-market
    drob518 · 1790266947 · focus · HN ↗
    All the major streaming providers are also adding live content. Once they have the infrastructure built out and the customers, it’s relatively easy to add the live content.
    dylan604 · 1790267284 · focus · HN ↗
    Relatively easy is doing some heavy lifting. There's plenty of reports about the streamer's live content having piss poor performance. Getting VOD streaming to work correctly is totally different than live coverage streaming correctly. The only thing they have in common is the viewer using the same app to view it.
    rascul · 1790270667 · focus · HN ↗
    Years later, Netflix is still having issues. Maybe it's not as easy as you claim.
    drob518 · 1790471028 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re right. They’ll never be able to use their existing large revenue stream to fix it.
    Teever · 1790269233 · focus · HN ↗
    They’re going to lose out to a choose your own adventure-esque experience that locally generated AI content will produce. Why pay a subscription for terrible content when you can make your own personal terrible content?
    ddj231 · 1790269368 · focus · HN ↗
    as addicting as short form content may be its really lacking when compared to fully fleshed out stories. I think big picture there's no way it wins. it'd be like mcdonalds replacing sit down restaurants.
    Jcampuzano2 · 1790274832 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree, I'm just talking about the trend. I don't like consuming too much of it.
  2. iugtmkbdfil834 · 1790266486 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know about expect companies to accept lower revenue, but I certainly expect value for the money paid and I am personally seeing less and less of it. Surely, it is a dance of what the customer is willing to swallow. At this point, wife's habits are the only thing keeping our household from becoming disney-free. It is a shame, because as a platform, Disney+ did have a decent selection after it acquired hulu.
  3. drob518 · 1790266778 · focus · HN ↗
    Spot on. They discounted to encourage the transition away from cable and DVR (remember TiVo?) to streaming and then they raise prices to the magical “fraction of monthly budget for entertainment” level that everyone (cable, too) works up to. Every company is going to try to get you to give them all of what you’re willing to pay. When cancellations are greater than new subs, they’ll stop and wait for inflation and rising wages to catch up again. That’s the game. That’s always going to be the game.
  4. cogman10 · 1790267017 · focus · HN ↗
    > People expecting that the content companies were going to just accept lower revenue forever and not eventually get back to cable pricing were fooling themselves
    Well that sort of happened for the music industry. I think people thought the video industry would follow a similar path where a few providers offer very large catalogs and then pay the media owners per play.
    Instead these media owners got greedy and every media producing company decided it also needed to be a streaming company. But further, they licensed the media out exclusively to single streaming companies.
    I'm also certain nobody expected that bought digital media would simply evaporate due to licensing.
    Don't get me wrong, if the music industry could get away with the same move they would. But there's simply a lot more music and the ecosystem is too well established.
    mixdup · 1790267957 · focus · HN ↗
    The consumer isn't the side that got screwed in the music industry, the screws got put to the artists in that industry instead
    mgoetzke · 1790332129 · focus · HN ↗
    They even often make extra money for each movie. Eg some movies on Amazon are offered only dubbed for "free", if you want to listen to the original soundtrack you have to buy it.
  5. JoshTriplett · 1790267078 · focus · HN ↗
    There was precedent, in the form of music. Music did get wildly better than "buy a CD", and the norm for music purchasing is zero DRM and files you own forever. So it wasn't an unreasonable expectation to hope the same would happen for video.
    mixdup · 1790268101 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it was, because that serves as the cautionary tale that tv/movies are determined not to repeat (illustrated early by their refusal to get into bed with Apple as much as the music labels did)
2. joshstrange · 1790265240 · focus · HN ↗
  We are worse than cable pricing at this point from what I can see.
  It's absurd that piracy is the _best_ user experience. 1 app, 1 place for your content, no licensing deals to worry about, no outrage pulling old episodes, local streaming, the list goes on.
  You literally cannot pay (legally) for a better experience, and that makes me sad.
  1. hypendev · 1790266795 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly this.
    Streaming services have become the worst of all worlds.
    As an EU citizen, even tho I pay for Netflix and Prime, I cannot access most of the content there as even tho it exists on the service because it's not available in my country.
    Amazon prime has 2 good shows and just a bunch of D-tier movies or some 35+ year old ones. It's mostly worthless.
    Netflix region locks a whole lot of content or removes it after some time. I can't watch some great movies and TV shows because "oh we don't have rights for this region".
    Meanwhile, piracy provides a user experience that not just lets me access all of their content - one I'm already paying for - anywhere, but also lets me access movies and shows that would otherwise not be found anywhere else, including regional movies and short movies.
    andrew_lettuce · 1790267165 · focus · HN ↗
    Content rights are micro managed too, unlike ever before so you get things like a streaming service buying a title in one language but not the one you want. This doesn't stop them from returning it in your search results though
    mrguyorama · 1790271485 · focus · HN ↗
    I watched Star Trek TNG on Netflix like four times.
    I have never subscribed to Paramount+ and people who liked TNG are saying things that make me think that was the right choice. I just don't watch TNG anymore. That's fine, it's not like content is scarce. Good content is somewhat scarce, but there's decades of known good history to dig through.
    TheOtherHobbes · 1790267564 · focus · HN ↗
    Prime's local content issue can be fixed with a VPN.
    sgskinner · 1790272519 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah yes, always use a vpn when torrenting.
    hypendev · 1790338873 · focus · HN ↗
    Doesn't seem to work for me, always shows the same
    kyriakos · 1790270539 · focus · HN ↗
    Netflix had an advantage with own productions which is dying now. Shows are cancelled left and right so people don't want to invest time. Also looks like full season dumps is affecting the long term profitability of productions. People watch a season in a couple of days and forget about it, if a new season is planned it takes 2 years to be released by which time viewers forgot the show existed.
  2. dessimus · 1790267229 · focus · HN ↗
    ...and no pre-roll or mid-roll ads, since just about all of the streamers are going to ads in every tier.
    joshstrange · 1790267759 · focus · HN ↗
    It's pure joy to be able to always answer "I haven't seen it" when someone starts with "Have you seen that ad...".
    The disrespect that streaming companies show their customers is insane. I'm sure most of the customer don't even know what they are missing, the hoops they have to jump through, the mental load to switch between all those terrible, hostile UIs, etc...
    dessimus · 1790275923 · focus · HN ↗
    TBF, no ads was the original promise of cable tv too. The same media companies figured they could con younger generations with the same broken promises as their parents and grandparents.
  3. yreg · 1790267283 · focus · HN ↗
    How is that absurd?
    Of course with piracy you can have all the content available everywhere forever.
    How do you expect a law-abiding company to match that with content they don't own? Unless we abolish copyright.
    joshstrange · 1790267550 · focus · HN ↗
    It's absurd because in a sane world we'd have rules similar to playing music on the radio. If all the content providers provided a stream/video to resellers (and couldn't refuse to license/sell) then we could have a company that did the same thing as pirates can build, legally.
    Instead the content is silo'd in a bunch of massive companies that don't care about UI/UX and exist only to force more ads down our throats.
    This isn't about being law abiding or not for the sake of it, it's about the best experience _at any price_ is unobtainable without breaking a law.
    And yes, I'm in favor of abolishing copyright and/or significantly limiting/curtailing it. Some short exclusivity window (<5 years, ideally <1 year) and then anyone can redistribute it paying small royalties for another <5-10 years, then it's public.
  4. scottyah · 1790267634 · focus · HN ↗
    I really like AppleTV, and find it to be a much better experience than pirating ever was. For one, the resolution is always great, secondly, I don't have to know what I want to watch, and third pretty much everything on there is good. My habits have changed though, I don't spend nearly as much time watching tv compared to the college days.
    joshstrange · 1790267899 · focus · HN ↗
    > I really like AppleTV
    The service? The Hardware? The App on the hardware? (Great job naming Apple...)
    I agree that the Apple TV is the best experience one can have. It can be further enhanced by using a single app (Plex/Plezy/Jellyfin/Infuse/etc). Jumping between streaming services and their hostile, horrible UIs is such a pain. The Apple TV app was meant to improve that situation but without buy-in from all the streaming providers (which they will never get) it's always going to be playing second fiddle to the high seas.
    freeone3000 · 1790268501 · focus · HN ↗
    They do, in fact, have that buy-in. It’s a prerequisite for having an app that does video on Apple TV: the same video stream provider that does listings for search in-app is also used out-of-app, with results lifted and recontextualized. Everything from Netflix to Disney+ to Crunchyroll is listed in app.
    joshstrange · 1790269069 · focus · HN ↗
    > It’s a prerequisite for having an app that does video on Apple TV
    It's not. Netflix is a _very new_ addition (last year) to the Apple TV app (which is ironic seeing how Netflix was highly integrated into ATV before they moved to apps on the ATV).
    All of your services might be represented at this point in time but it can (and has) changed over time.
    scottyah · 1790271616 · focus · HN ↗
    Hah fair point- I'm just talking about the service that provides the content. It's just an app on my TV.
    literallyroy · 1790276779 · focus · HN ↗
    You can’t just watch it through Apple TV though can you? Aren’t lots of shows only through certain services and it just links you there?
  5. f33d5173 · 1790273292 · focus · HN ↗
    Movies are expensive to make, and watching them on streaming gives almost no money back to the studio. The intention is that if you want to watch a movie, you should pay the $5-10 it costs to do so on any of a number of platforms. Then you get the great user experience of putting any movie you like into the search bar and pressing "play", and the studio gets appropriately compensated. Putting a movie on a streaming service is a way for studios to double dip, to get a smaller amount of money from people who don't care which movie exactly they watch. If you have a particular movie in mind to watch, or don't like the fare on whichever service you're subscribed to, you should be paying a la carte for movies instead. If you aren't, don't pretend it's some moral stand and not just you being a cheapskate.
    joshstrange · 1790273925 · focus · HN ↗
    > If you aren't, don't pretend it's some moral stand and not just you being a cheapskate.
    sigh please read what I wrote, I didn’t say piracy is morally justified, I said it’s annoying that paying all the services for access to content (side note: I don’t care about movies, when I watch anything it’s normally TV) you get an objectively worse experience when compared to someone who pirated the same media.
    Spotify was able to crush music piracy because they provided a better experience. I find it annoying that the same is not true for video. There was a small golden era of Netflix then it all went to shit.
    Lastly, the economics of stream vs buy (license or physical media) is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Mostly because there is plenty of media I care about that is near impossible or completely impossible to buy physical media (my preference, then ripped to Plex). If every show I wanted was available on BluRay or similar quality then this wouldn’t be a discussion, or at least not one I cared about. I find it frustrating that there is no legal way to acquire all the content I want and so I’m forced to pay for shitty streaming platforms.
  6. joquarky · 1790286610 · focus · HN ↗
    Also no revising the show due to expired music licenses, change in the director's mood, etc.
  7. windexh8er · 1790306989 · focus · HN ↗
    There's literally no reason to pay anymore. Even if you want to do the right thing they moved the goal posts every year, if not more. Paying for no ads? Have ads anyway!
    Zero options to get the content you want at a fair price. Plus, OpenAI and Anthropic have paved the way for everyone: any content you can find online is fair game! I don't download any content. But, hey, if my agent does? I mean OpenAI and Anthropic can't control their agents. How could I possibly be expected to?
3. rjh29 · 1790265340 · focus · HN ↗
  It's funny because everyone predicted this would happen back when Netflix had everything and was $5. "Eventually other companies are going to make their own apps, put in ads, increase prices and we'll be back to $80 a month"
  1. tpmoney · 1790266511 · focus · HN ↗
    For now we’re still better than cable because you don’t need to stay subscribed to everything just because you want to watch something. Especially in this modern age of “dump a whole season at once and then spend 2 years making the next season”. You can subscribe to something for a month to watch the latest season and then drop the subscription.
    joshstrange · 1790266651 · focus · HN ↗
    That is worse than cable if you had something like TiVo. Back with a cable subscription you were "locked in" but it was cheaper than buying all the subscriptions. We have taken a massive step backwards in UI/UX when it comes to TV, piracy is the only thing that beats TiVO but TiVo (old TiVo, before Cable Card was killed) beats pretty much everything else today.
    ddj231 · 1790268285 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah its also interesting seeing the niche apps that pop up that basically pick what to watch for you and where everyone watches the same thing at the same time. Seems like converging on old school television.
    joquarky · 1790286541 · focus · HN ↗
    The next season usually sucks anyway. It's like they hire decent writers for first season and then hand it off to the B team for the rest of the show.
    overfeed · 1790288535 · focus · HN ↗
    It's usually the same team. In addition to the sophomore slump, the team will also be squeezed for time as they have a tight deadline to deliver a finished product after they learn whether they have been renewed or not.
    xethos · 1790309156 · focus · HN ↗
    Coupled with the required ambiguity. Every first season has to both stand on its own, in case Netflix doesn't renew, while also leading smoothly into plot lines for the next season if they do get picked up
    Landing that ambiguity, and having the second season be as good as the first, doesn't look like an easy job
    ghaff · 1790315729 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of (good) series are also just fresh and different when they land. They're not as fresh in Year 2 much less any subsequent years. Yes, sometimes they can build on a serial story but, personally, I lose interest in most TV series after a bit. I realize others have a different mindset where they hate not being able to live with their favorite characters for more or less forever.
  2. triceratops · 1790266764 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok but we've saved thousands of dollars until it finally happened.
    toomuchtodo · 1790267233 · focus · HN ↗
    It's fine to extract from the subsidies as long as you have an exit ramp. Always have an exit ramp planned for when the gravy train ends (because that's always the goal, achieve market share or dominance and then crank on profitability as hard as possible). The defense against enshittification is a stack you can own and operate end to end.
    <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48835392">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48835392
    (Jellyfin + Soundcloud + Bandcamp + sonarr/radarr/lidarr in this context; if you have Plex, that is also an option; you can also stick web content into this system with yt-dlp)
    bee_rider · 1790268930 · focus · HN ↗
    On the bright side, it’s just TV. I watch it like everyone else, but with the awareness that literally any hobby that replaced it would be a better use of my time.
  3. kyriakos · 1790270285 · focus · HN ↗
    In the meantime Netflix content is getting worse, possibly they reached the threshold which customers can't excuse the expenditure.
    ghaff · 1790315847 · focus · HN ↗
    Netflix is definitely the service that's closest to my bubble. Sometimes I then see something I'm interested in but I don't watch a huge amount of video and Netflix has gotten really pricey.
  4. p0w3n3d · 1790276700 · focus · HN ↗
    1. Destroy the competition 2. You're finally a monopoly 3. Profit!
4. afavour · 1790265491 · focus · HN ↗
  On the other hand, we're back to cable pricing except everything is on demand and there's no need to match any channel timetable when you want to watch a show. So it's not all bad.
  In a way I feel today's environment is less conducive to pirating than it used to be. So many fewer people have any kind of "always on" computer these days, they're using phones and tablets instead. Not to mention locked down App Stores, etc.
  1. reactordev · 1790265609 · focus · HN ↗
    Solving the linear scheduling problem is welcome. Allowing each MSO/Content maker to profit is also welcome. Creating islands of content exclusive to that platform and then raise prices after record breaking profits and mergers to create a monopoly? Not welcome.
    Cable companies purposefully enacted legislation more than a decade ago to prevent innovation until they could provide these streaming platforms for their oligarchs. Cable companies then sell to them and now are board members of the new platform.
  2. o_m · 1790265711 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't give them any ideas. Dynamic viewing might be next.
    CuriouslyC · 1790268013 · focus · HN ↗
    They already started slow rolling episodes that are already done, no doubt they'll create periodic view windows for things that you'll miss, then make that same content "extra charge" outside those windows, to try and extract extra payments or make you wait until after the next billing date to watch something.
  3. add-sub-mul-div · 1790265740 · focus · HN ↗
    We've had DVRs since 1999 so scheduling hasn't been an issue for a long time. And the commercials with a real TV DVR are skippable, unlike with streaming.
  4. ajsnigrutin · 1790266234 · focus · HN ↗
    That's today... give them time.
    In slovenia, one of the media houses demanded from telcos (iptv providers) to disable skipping ads when timehshifting shows (for the first 3 days), so even if you're watching a show that was on yesterday, you can skip forwards/backwards all over the show, but you can't skip over the ads (currently you can skip forwards over the ads only "a lot" (like 10 minutes), then slowly skip backwards until you reach the end of the ads, but it's a pain).
    So yeah... cameras tracking your eyes (that you're not turning away or going to pee during ads) are next, and then the "drink the verification cam".
    ( <a href="https://siol-net.translate.goog/novice/slovenija/nova-pravila-na-pop-tv-razburila-gledalce-zakaj-placujem-ogled-za-nazaj-ce-moram-gledati-oglase-700518?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https://siol-net.translate.goog/novice/slovenija/nova-pravil... )
  5. andrew_lettuce · 1790267522 · focus · HN ↗
    We've had dvrs for forever though, we just used to record a lifetime's with of content and then view it when we wanted, and slip the commercials!
  6. LgWoodenBadger · 1790268154 · focus · HN ↗
    On the other other side, a lot of content is unavailable in more permanent forms, so if you want to watch something again, you're entirely at the mercy of the content provider. e.g. The Norsemen on Netflix. If I ever want to watch that in the future, I need to subscribe to Netflix and hope they still have it in their catalog. I can't find a blu-ray or dvd.
5. bityard · 1790266581 · focus · HN ↗
  Don't forget: Cable pricing but also with ads.
  1. moate · 1790266940 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean that's just "cable pricing" as, unless I'm missing something, cable has ads.
    PopePompus · 1790269734 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm old enough to remember that the original pitch to get people to pay for cable TV (which was a big barrier in the 1960s/70s) was "Yes, there's a monthly fee - but no ads!). The only time I see cable TV is when I'm staying in a motel, and I'm just astonished by the ad load.
    bityard · 1790283247 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that cable didn't have ads.
  2. falcojr · 1790267147 · focus · HN ↗
    Cable had ads too, and you couldn't pay more for ad-free.
6. brcmthrowaway · 1790267104 · focus · HN ↗
  What's the best "Apple-like" solution here?
7. 6thbit · 1790267626 · focus · HN ↗
  There must be Pro Sailing kits already under the price of a few of these things.
  Any good starting point for a fisherman not interested in stashing fish but just capturing and releasing?
8. bs7280 · 1790267748 · focus · HN ↗
  I would argue we have a duty to do so, as a counter incentive to the network and streaming execs for making it so annoying and inconvenient to watch anything. I do not pay for YT TV w/ NFL Sunday Ticket, but there was one weekend last year where ESPN and Google were fighting, and no NFL games were shown on YT TV.
  There have been times where I will pay to "own" instead of rent a tv show I really like, and then a year later that streaming service loses the rights to it, and so do I.
9. torben-friis · 1790267750 · focus · HN ↗
  Funnily enough, the high seas remain unsailed around here because content got so formulaic I rarely see the point.
  I can't remember the last time that talk about a show in my inner circle made me check it. Season 1 severance maybe? It feels forever ago, it used to be an almost weekly thing.
10. tiznow · 1790312079 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't know how to tell younger people (if you are going the legal route) that we live in a worse that is notably worse than broadcast + cable in many ways.
  Every other show is on a different streaming service, which has no incentive to keep it around for more than two seasons unless it's a blockbuster. Oh and content will get vaulted for no good reason.

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