Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 225 points – Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It
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Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It::Warner Bros. Discovery's latest earnings call reveals Max shed 700,000 subscribers in the past three months, even as it made money. That might work for Wall Street, but what about viewers?

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I just for the life of me cannot understand why all these companies thought it was a good idea to invest the time, money, resources, infrastructure, maintenance, and so many other things into developing their own service. Instead of just pawning off their content to some other sap who has to do all that shit for you. And making them pay you a pretty penny because you know they want your content. It's just such incredible short-sightedness from companies that are constantly just chasing the biggest dollar. Like if anyone thought about it for a minute, all these companies would see that it wasn't worth it to develop these services. They got scared cuz Netflix made some of its own good content. But realistically, if they just calm down they would have realized that Netflix can't make bangers forever. And they're still going to be invested in buying content from you. These big company should have gotten together and figured out how to reduce the price of cable so people fucking sign up for it and keep watching the mass amount of fucking ads.

"Man, selling books online is so much hassle, we'll let Amazon do it for us..."

Borders Books, 2001.

The difference is, Borders wasn't creating books. They were just the middleman. It would be more like if individual publishers decided to all start their own book stores to compete with Amazon.

To be fair, they also did a Borders Rewards program that didn't cost anything. They didn't change the prices of the books, but they gave them huge discounts. Which meant the 40-50% of can't from Borders cut. And they pushed them HARD. Everyone had coupons. It was thought that this would get them loyalty over Barnes and Noble. It took maybe a full quarter for them to realize and backtrack the huge discounts, but it was too late. People used them for the coupons, and then bought everything else online or at Barnes and Noble. It was a fast track to profit loss.

Source: I worked there before the Amazon partnership, and after the board admitted they needed to walk back the rewards.

Amateurs making key decisions.

They saw Netflix was making a lot more money from their content and wanted s piecd of that pie. Now they’re slowly realizing it takes quite a while to get there.

Yeah but Netflix paid them for that content so it their fault they didn't ask for a "fair price" or something. Also I guess they wanted to fuck over the artists by fudging with streaming numbers and pay them nothing.

Yep. Costs a bunch of money upfront and ongoing to operate a streaming service, and even more to make even just an alright one. Plus you split consumers which will naturally give you and competitors fewer subscribers over all. All of that just to get paid directly instead of just getting free money, even if less per-view.

much less per view. They tried this initially. Studios had stuff on Netflix remember? Back when netflix was worth subscribing to.

This was because netflix was just some free extra money on the side, kind of like selling a tv show to a foreign network. But then netflix ate into their actual money from network broadcast. So now they need to get serious and charge netflix a license fee for the show that reflects that.

They upped the license fees for the show and netflix just didn't pick them up. All your favourite shows dropped from netflix and the studios had to build their own services.

The studios did not have to build their own services. And a lot of them willingly pulled their shows from places like Netflix to build their own services. And there was enough players in the game at the time when Netflix began dropping a shows that someone else like prime or hulu was willing to spend a lot of money to pick them up.

From my point of view, even if overall it was potentially less money. That doesn't factor in just the cost of operating your own content. They have to hire a whole new division to develop the website and app and streaming service and pay all those people. Or they could have just sold it to someone else to do all that work. And said we know what we have. We know you want friends on your service. Lol.

And even on top of that studios had no idea how lucrative streaming services were going to be. So they should have just renegotiated better contracts for the content they were selling. A lot of them ended as it was which is when they got pulled from places like Netflix. And I absolutely guarantee you Netflix would have been able to pay way more for something like Parks and rec or the office if they wanted to. Because Netflix knows just a sheer numbers game on those types of shows.

Or they could have just sold it to someone else to do all that work

they tried to, netflix chose not to take the deals. Netflix chose to invest their money in netflix content production instead of relying on third parties.

I know you want to frame this as netflix could be a provider and everything else just produce content for it - you need to understand that netflix chose not to invest in paying for third party content, favouring it's own shows. that was a netflix choice.

the prices that netflix used to pay for things like the office and parks and rec were not "can actually fund development" levels, it was "make some extra money after the costs were already paid by cable" levels

I'm pretty sure that's how Hulu started. A joint venture through several companies to stream all their shows. Problem is once Disney got in everyone else tried to spin up their own and cash out of Hulu.

It'll be investing to see what alternatives crop up one piracy makes it's comeback.

why all these companies thought it was a good idea to...developing their own service.

Because they make more money?

4 more...

Once they fired the old CEO that partnered with Warner Brothers and had a streaming-first mindset, the service has gone way down hill. Most of the new content is dumb shit like syndicated reality shows.

I may tune back in for the occasional series releases like Rightous Gemstones, but then I'm out.

It seems like the interface took a nose dive too. It’s a lot more sluggish and harder to find new things to watch.

The interface absolutely became way worse overnight. You're right about that.

Geez. I'm glad I cancelled right after the new CEO took over. Fuck that greedy bastard

There are difficulties with pirating. I had friends over to watch the Singles Inferno 2 finale, but didn't have Netflix so I torrented it. The download made it to 95% before stalling. The video player on my roku tv would move on to the next episode whenever it encountered a glitch, so it was unwatchable.

I'm sure it works better for good shows, but if you want to watch trash, pirating isn't as easy as it used to be.

Pirating is way easier than it used to be, you just can't expect torrents to be grabbed immediately. Modern setups like an *arr stack with a bunch of configured trackers (or even better, usenet) will find basically anything you want, trash included, with enough seeds to avoid stalls. The niche stuff might need to run for a day or two, but it'll finish.

I’m kinda over paying for it. I really only got it for Jon Oliver and it’s basically free on YouTube so idk. Also on my computer I click on my Max bookmark and it’s like “hey we’re not HBO max anymore! Now it’s just Max! Redirecting you now…”

What? Am I going crazy? What is even the point of that.

Rebranding is a way of indicating that they’ve done something (hopefully worth paying more for) without really doing anything at all. Great way for a new executive to make a non-decision.

They did do something though, dropped a lot of content and added in shitty reality shows. I didn't renew a few months ago when the price went up and the quality of content went down.

You forgot the large price increase they paired witht he drop in quality content.

It never was. I canceled after the end of Game of Thrones and never saw a point in paying their extremely high prices. Just like my house never had HBO growing up, I saw no need to get it now

Honestly I stopped playing video games a few years back and picked it back up during the writes strike. Dropped like $4,000 on a 7800x3d/4090 build. Cancelled all my steaming services , HBO Netflix, all of em, and signed up for game pass instead. I'm done watching stuff on them, if a series comes out I really want to see I'll grab my wooden leg and eye patch from the back of th closet.

I commend you on taking your own entertainment in your hands, but I also find it ironic that you cancelled your streaming services which cost nowhere near 4 grand. If you drop 50 a month on subscriptions, it would take about 6.6 years to spend 4 grand, but it's much more complex than that and I totally think that a gaming setup is worth so much more than streaming so I get it.

After 6.6 years of streaming, you will also own absolutely nothing.

Kinda like Game Pass?

I mean do you really own your steam games either? I have 600 of em so game pass is more for the games I don't care about "owning" but at the end of the day steam could shut down on 5 years an poof there goes your games. Lol

after 6.6 years the hardware will be almost worthless too, if you plan to resell it to someone else

That machine he built will not be anything close to worthless after 6.6 years. I literally just last week moved my spare 1080 ti into a second gaming computer. It came out in 2017.

I'm getting a strong vibe that people are just jealous so they have to convince themselves it's not worth it or stupid so they can feel better about not having it themselves.

You realize I didn't build my PC because I stopped watching streaming I built my PC because I wanted to build a new one and get back into gaming. You realize this computer will last years before I need any sort of upgrade? Lmao I swear some people are just so insufferable with their "insights". I stopped paying for streaming because it's expensive and there was nothing to watch, now that the writers strike is over I don't care because I spend my time gaming instead which I actually enjoy more.

It's an insight because many people can't drop thousands on top of the line gear. Yes streaming is expensive, but if a family has disposable income, odds are they're going to go for the lower hanging fruit and just get the streaming package, because the alternative is saving for X months/years for parts that are going to be useful, yes, but also completely wipe out savings.

If you're wondering why your comment is downvoted despite being a reasonable insight, it's because any remark in this community that even remotely contradicts a comment endorsing piracy is immediately treated to this hivemind behavior.

It's anything that challenges an attack on a corporation, imo. If you just point out that a fact they claim is incorrect, even if you ultimately agree, you'll be attacked as a shill and down voted.

I didn't downvote it, but I disagree with the overall sentiment that just streaming for 6.6 years has the same value as getting a high end computer. Granted, OP could have saved a lot of money by getting parts a bit less close to the top, but a PC is a tool that can do so much more than 6.6 years of streaming (including that 6.6 years of streaming).

That may be so, but then we are comparing apples and oranges: for $4000, OP can still not stream any content unless they pay more for the services, which sort of defeats the entire argument. After all, they haven't bought any games yet.

Which brings us to the essence: this comment thread was never here to actually discuss gaming or streaming content. OP didn't even attempt to shroud the fact that they will continue to enjoy everything as they please by pirating it all.

I mean I might pirate somethi g once a year but you know me better than me

Just shut the fuck up, stupid motherfuckers thinking they understand someone else's situation is hilarous.

There is no need to be rude. I was simply referring to your own declaration of your intents.

At the end of all those years, you still have a pc.

Correct, a nearly seven year old PC that you never actually played a game on. Except maybe Fortnite.

Lol I have like 600 games on my steam account and I've played the majority of them.... Idiots just jealous of someone having the money to drop 4k on a computer lol

My point here is that there are ongoing costs for purchasing more entertainment value and it's not a one-off expense. I am not jealous about how much you have spent on your computer—in fact I think it's great and hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of it. You have unfortunately completely misinterpreted the essence of what I have written in my comments.

I waited for the service to be available in my country for a very long time, now I don't care 🏴‍☠️

Well yeah, I've watched the new season of Harley Quinn, what else am I waiting around for?

I don't know, because all I do is pirate. I used to use Netflix five or six years ago, but it went to shit enough where pirating just became easier again.

Where does one find a decent eBook torrent server. Asking for a friend who reads. He speaks Canadian, you wouldn't know him.

Most public libraries have OverDrive. While not torrented, you can get lots of ebooks for free! (if there's a way to "keep" them from overdrive I'm not aware of it)

I am looking for a specific series that has about 40 books, spent about $35 so far at $5 each. Its pulp sci fi from the 60s. They take a couple days to read. I'll keep paying but noone involved in the original work is seeing a cent of this.

I can't find them at my library other than three audiobooks.

When I saw that Blue Beetle was out on physical before streaming, I just went ahead and pulled the plug.

I prefer physical anyway, and if they aren't streaming the newest content, what's even the point?

Because it's a lot cheaper and more convenient?

In the east EU I am paying 4,66EUR monthly for HBO Max service, which we share in 5 households. That is under 1EUR for each household. I will gladly pay that instead of downloading whatever already is on HBO Max.

They're still fairly cheap in Europe and I really looked forward on getting to see their content a couple of years back, but now it looks like most of it could just as easily be shown on another platform like Disney or Netflix. There's no real depth in most of it. I'll keep hanging on watching shows like Insecure, but I wonder whether I'll keep the account in future.

I’ve subscribed to them once a month each year these past three years, literally only to catch His Dark Materials. Now that that’s over I don’t see what else they have to offer.