I'm sick of goddamned streaming services

Us cavemen had live streaming in the 80's, it was called pay-per-view.
How does better tech manage to fuck up something as old and dusty as fuggin' pay-per-view?

Refusal to update infrastructure and hardware in an effort to maximize profit.

Nailed it in one.

RIP Red Envelope: After 25 Years, Netflix is Killing Its DVD Rentals

OK, PPV was broadcast on a specific time with your cable box unlocking the signal. In other words one "stream" at a specific time to all customers where the box itself unscrambled the encrypted signal based on permissions sent to that box to do so from the cable company.

An actual stream is a data stream to a specific device that is received like internet data to a specific computer. That means if I order the same movie as you the cable company sets up a specific streaming channel to each because we will watch it at different times and are able to pause it and restart it at different data points.

This is a simplified view of it, but PPV is not actually what streaming is.

You missed the word LIVE.
Once you're LIVE streaming, you have to watch it when everyone else does, and then it becomes PPV no matter what technology is being shoved in front of it.

Yeah, it does not work that way, even if you want it too. There is no IP broadcast stream like there was for analog and digital TV broadcasting.

Again, analog and TV broadcasting is done with channels over a constant broadcast. Simply all info comes to your house, and your cable box unscrambles the channels like PPV for a specific time signalled to it by the cable company. You always got PPV, but you needed a device to decode the broadcast. Netflix and other digital streaming does not broadcast like that. This is because you need to set up an IP connection to have the data sent to your particular node and then received by your MAC. If you do not set up a stream the signals are simply not automatically there, and no one is sending those signals to your address for you to decode.

It is not the same. Yes, I worked for Time Warned cable while they were transitioning from old broadcast things like PPV to your cable box, to the modern digital streaming option for the small computer you call a digital box. Netflix is basically not your cable company broadcasting PPV. Netflix has to be able to operate a streaming channel to each client. It is simply not the same as the cable company broadcasting a PPV event over a channel which every customer receives, but their boxes decode and display on your TV.

If you think broadcast cable over coax operates in any way like a TCP/IP connection for a stream of data you need to GTFO out of the conversation. It is not even close.

They've had thirty years to sort this shit out.

Actually no. digital streaming on your cable network started with VOD. Oh, and VOD was a god damned disaster when they rolled it out. VOD is limited to the number of streams it can create within your local network, aka cable region. To give you an idea when it popped TWC had set up 40 streams for the hudson NY region. Netflix markets to the world, and has to set up streams for it's live broadcasts that go to every cable and HS region, including cell phone and wifi customers. We are just getting to the beginning of live streaming by netflix and other providers. Youtube is probably the longest and best live stream provider right now.

None of this is how PPV was broadcast on your local region's cable or satellite. None of that was broadcast over IP or the satellites to the cable stations. Even if netflix wanted to just spit out the signal in a broadcast style it would not get outside of their internal networks. A broadcast over IP would be filtered at their local gateway. The problem is that you would have to encapsulate the IP level broadcast inside the headers which simply would not work. This is because your local LAN is not going to strip the headers and broadcast to everyone. You still need to establish a virtual connection to strip down the travel routing info from the local IP broadcast info. And that does not even cover the trouble that IP broadcast is only really used for machine level information and not data to be received by the upper levels of the IP stack. It would never make it to the processing levels because it is not meant to get there for info that effects all the addresses on the node. Programs simply do not suck data straight off the stream of data passing your MAC.

Computers just do not work that way because there would be no end to data collisions without the IP headers separating data into packets for each computer so they know what is theirs. If a computer does not know the data is for it because the headers do not show it, then it does not process the information to the program.

Very specifically the internet could not exist if you had this level of broadcast from Netflix because everything would be a garbled mess. The reason why the internet works is because every little bit of data you get is divided up into chunks and encapsulated in between headers sent from netflix to your compute directly across many other networks that simply rout it. It is more analogous to your mail trying to broadcast PPV than channelized cable broadcasts.

To really start getting into how things like this work would require you to read up and understand at least a thousand pages of very specific TCP/IP text along with analog and digital cable broadcasting.

Your cablke reception works on two distinct systems. One is chanelized broadcast of hundreds of channels that is your TV, and the others is the TCP/IP system and SNMP systems of data and networking transportation. Both systems are completely separate coming into your house.

So what I'm hearing is we need to regress back to analog.

Don't worry. Because of psychology inj a few years people will be more impressed with the new levels and will have something new to bitch about than will remember this. All those people who said they were quitting TWC because none of them could keep up a VOD stream because we only had 40 for millions of subscribers now watch VOD and are annoyed for some other reason.

It would say Netflix had better worry more about whether or not they can get sports livestreaming. Those are the livestreamers they need. No one really cares as much about a live feed as those who watch sports. If netflix does not get sports, then who cares about some dating show livestreaming? Maybe if they started doing live stream podcasting for real time interaction with the podcasters. Their entire business model was created by people who can wait and do not have to see it now.

My reaction is the same as when I heard of Blockbuster closing...People were still using that service?
Redbox will be the next to go.

Redbox is accessible and far cheaper than $15 for a movie ticket or $15/month for a streaming service. Unless you have some information about the company's finances or about studios pulling future releases from Redbox, I expect it to be around for a while.

Keep your physical media.

This podcast has some surprising info on the various streaming services even if the focus of the episode is on Netflix.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...-netflix-working/id1612131897?i=1000610010465

In short, Netflix's revenue has been going up (they make more money off of an ad-supported customer than they do one's who pay full price) and even though they've said that they're canceling projects, they haven't said that they're going to be spending less money on projects. Apparently, they're doing better than all of the other streaming services.

Paramount Plus just took a nose dive and analysts are calling for putting it down.

More
https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/paramount-plus-quit-streaming-analyst-1234859135/

They should sell their streaming service to Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment? Man, you think Trek is lame now, wait until those whitebread Christians get their filthy mitts on it.

One of the dumbest things Paramount did was to assign streaming rights for Yellowstone to Peacock. I know lots of people who don't have cable (or don't have the Paramount channel on their cable) and signed up for Paramount+ so they could stream Yellowstone only to find out that they need another service to watch it.

You can see the Yellowstone spinoffs on Paramount+ but not the original, which is stupid.

The morning radio show I listen to on the way to work Thursday morning was talking about the writer’s strike in Hollywood. One of the biggest issues is streaming services.

Way back in the day, actors didn’t get paid for reruns or shows in syndication. Certainly not the writers, but there have been writers strikes over the years. And now, both actors and writers want residuals for shows that continue to be popular long after the show has stopped creating new episodes (reruns and syndication). As long as the studio is making money, then so should the actors and writers.

The studios, I gathered, are not making a lot of money from streaming. The only way they can make any money from streaming is to sell it to another streaming service.

It’s always about money, never the art.

Disney to merge Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN apps. Speculation is that they’re going to buy out Comcast.

https://www.engadget.com/disney-and-hulu-will-merge-into-a-single-app-later-this-year-083536664.html

ok, that may get me to go with disney+ if they are reasonable.

I already use Hulu and Disney Plus, ESPN would be utterly useless to me.

I can watch Vic Mackey and Sofia the First on the same platform? Yes!

D&D to get its own channel.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/11/dungeons-dragons-gets-its-very-own-streaming-channel/

Disney yanks a bunch of stuff from streaming services.

https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/disney-plus-hulu-content-removed-willow-dollface-1235618280/

I wonder if they’re not trying to hurt people who are on strike by doing this.

I mean just get Dropout for like $5/month and you can watch countless hours of Dimension20, the platform's D&D show. There is other great content on there as well.

Netflix cracked down on password sharing today.

I predict millions will go to jail.
And since the amount of people who get outright murdered in prison isn't zero, go ahead and round that off to 100 thousand jailed password sharers soon to be dead.

100 thousand dead.
It's as if they're already dead right now, and Netflix killed them with their bare hands.

That's how angry you should be from now until you die, never knowing joy ever again.

Oh, what? It's cute when Fox does it but I can't?