Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

A poor footballer always blamesthemoving goalposts....

---------- Post added at 19:09 ---------- Previous post was at 19:01 ----------

Of course things change, and successful companies adapt, just as Netflix adapted from its DVD rental beginnings.

The problem I see with your arguments is you only ever see things going one way - down the proverbial shute. You appear to have little regard to the power of innovation to meet what you deduce are immovable obstacles to progress.

It is fair enough to point to the huge debt that Netflix has, and continues to accrue. But to be so cock sure that they will never come out of the other side shows a lack of flexibility of thought on your part.

Whilst I cannot rule out that Netflix could fail in the end, nor can you rule out that they may well succeed.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

You don't sound as confident as you did a mere half a dozen posts ago.

On the contrary Old Boy it is you who consistently only sees things one way. Streaming is the future. Death to linear television. The date slides, as with every generation of Nostradamus books but the core message is the same.

I on the other hand see a rich and diverse future, with more ways than ever before for people to enjoy television. Linear. PVR. On Demand. Streaming. These are truly the halcyon days of television - you should sit back and enjoy it more rather than offer us doom and gloom about how our TV packages will become worthless and we will need to subscribe to half a dozen streamers at greater cost just to enjoy the content we get now!

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

A good read and l too agree with many of his points.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

I am confident that Netflix will succeed. I am just acknowledging that failure is a remote possibility.

If the range of TV choices is what you and others want, then I hope for your sakes that it comes about. I don't have anything against that. I am simply pointing out that rationalisation is far more likely as demand for traditional TV continues to decline.

You're the economics guy. You tell me why content providers should continue to provide all these channels in the longer term. It's all very well you saying they can be run on a shoestring, but you can't do that with decent content. Whilst it's true that content providers need to pay anyway for their VOD content, they have to pay separately to screen that content on live TV. I just cannot see how that would be worthwhile. In the end, only the most efficient providers with quality content will survive. Why would they want to saddle themselves with unnecessary cost and effort?

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

According to viewing figures shown some hundreds of posts ago, there are many channels that exist on very low numbers so what makes you think they will all suddenly disappear?

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

I've been over this a million times.

Literally nobody buys anything other than exclusive rights to content - live, on demand, streaming, etc. It'd leave a huge gaping hole in business plans all around the industry if a streamer didn't pick up all forms of TV rights to ensure nobody else (ITV for example) started beaming your non-exclusive content into 26 million homes.

So it's a total red herring to claim there's any additional rights cost at all.

Which brings us to the genuine additional cost and effort. Which is demonstrably virtually nothing given the channels all over the EPG running on shoestring budgets with virtually zero viewers.

Why continue? If you are ITV, Channel 4 or Five you get prominence on Freeview. If you are Sky you get prominence in 9 million homes on your own platform. None of these companies are going to walk away from that lightly to become apps on a Samsung TV leaving prominence (and software updates) up to the manufacturer. Of course they will have a streaming presence, but why rely on that alone and give up your golden goose that is the fact people switch on their sets and find you right there at the top of the EPG.

If you don't think that this prominence has any significance at all can you explain to me why an Andy Murray match at Wimbledon will rate higher on BBC1 than BBC2? Why would the FA Cup rate higher on the BBC than ITV?

You are simply applying your own views to the entire population - and as I've said before anything other than state intervention makes it extremely difficult to get 100% of a population to do anything.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

One of the most perennially amusing things about all the streaming threads on Cable Forum is your tendency to see inflexibility in people who simply challenge your own, famously inflexible opinions.

Nobody else here is ruling anything out - they are, however, making a better fist of weighing probable outcomes than you appear to be.

I tend to agree with those who believe that ultimately Netflix’s debt pile will be too great to sustain. Its market cap at the moment is around $140 billion which is ludicrous, and more than a little reminiscent of the dotcom bubble, with its tendency to value companies on their future earnings potential rather than their track record. Its debt, at $12 billion, may be only a fraction of its market cap at the moment but if there’s a sudden correction in the share price that could change quickly.

There is undoubtedly value in the business but that just makes it a takeover target once it is valued appropriately. Don’t imagine for a second that a larger, well established media company wouldn’t snap it up should the price be right. I think the chances of the Netflix brand surviving to 2035 are very slim. Its content, and its subscriber base - which at the end of the day is all that stands behind the logo - will in time be merged into something bigger.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

Because now is not the future. Those figures will go down and with it, the quality programmes, which will lead to even more audience losses. That cannot continue forever. If you run a channel on a shoestring, do you honestly think there will be much on there worth seeing?

---------- Post added at 09:48 ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 ----------

I get that prominence on the EPG has great significance, because at the moment, if you want to record a programme, that's where you go to record it. If you don't use VOD, that's how you select your programmes.

However, once the majority of people get more used to VOD, and assuming that programmes remain on there for longer (particularly the 'catch-up' programmes) their method of selecting programmes to watch will become different.

By the way, I have never said that the population will just voluntarily stop watching scheduled channels to achieve your 100% figure. I have said they will reduce to the extent that these channels will no longer be viable.

The transmitter switch-off is the most likely time that this change will be made. There really is no point in just shifting existing broadcasting methods to IPTV when programmes can be accessed in a more modern and convenient way.

---------- Post added at 09:53 ---------- Previous post was at 09:48 ----------

Of course, all of that assumes that Netflix do not have any plans to accommodate different scenarios. Although it may not be the preferred option, I am sure that Netflix must have strategies for the better monetisation of their assets if necessary.

You say I am inflexible in my views when I am simply challenging the fixed beliefs that keep coming through on these threads that nothing will ever change. I am only pointing out the logical outcome to existing trends.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

Cable operators have been doing VOD for twenty years. Even if “the majority” of homes stop naturally going to the EPG, that’s still millions of homes who do.

To the extent broadcast television ceases to be viable requires the vast, vast majority to do so voluntarily (90%+) without state intervention.

See the thing is Old Boy, what you aren’t grasping, is that for millions of people sitting down, pressing the “power on” button and checking the EPG is convenient. Or at least, convenient enough to satisfy them for whatever time they plan on watching TV.

If we are really going to boil this down to maintaining the transmitter network (something that’s relatively cheap aggregated across all the channels who use it) then you are really clutching at straws.

You aren’t considering the cost to ISPs of shoving all this data through their networks or the cost in troubleshooting service issues for the end user. Is it their hardware (TV, iPad, router, the ISP), a wider issues with the streaming provider). That’s all fine if you’re dealing with someone who wants the technology - it’s a whole different ball game if you are dealing with someone who doesn’t want it, doesn’t need it and who is fundamentally going to ask if they are getting a better experience than before.

Not a single country in the world at present has any plans to switch off terrestrial broadcasting.

I’m sure 20 years ago someone similarly naive would have been in the bowels of the internet telling us how AOL must have strategies for world domination and how they couldn’t possibly fail.

You’re the only person in these threads who keeps posting the same message ad infinitum that the world will turn out the way you want to see it and that’s that.

Your application of existing trends is not logical - simple use of the word doesn’t legitimise your analysis. Consumer behaviour doesn’t work in the way you believe it does and actually once the low hanging fruit have moved over it can be far more resistant to change than you believe it to be.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

OB both Comcast and Disney already have many ways to monetise its content such as theme parks , retail stores , hotels , cruise lines etc.

Netflix has none of the above it's a one trick pony.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

And one trick pony's usually get found out as time goes on..

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

Switzerland and Belgium already have switched off their DTT broadcasting - keep up! The UK is expected to do so as well by the 2030s.

Clearly, no argument in the world will stop you from arguing that black is white. So, whatever.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

Haha, context Old Boy. Please provide context!

https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018...d-switzerland/

The reality is neither country really used DTT at all. Indeed, SRG are recommending people switch to Eutelsat's satellite broadcasts. So it isn't the end of traditional television as we know it, not by a long shot.

There's no plan in place for the UK to cease DTT transmissions by any such date. Considering it took 14 years to move from analogue to digital, announced years in advance of launch in 1998, I think you are somewhat aspirational.

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

Hello.

You may not believe this but I've discovered the secret of time travel and jumped forward from the year 2013 to see what the 2020s are like....I'm a little early but...

Is this thread still going on...???

Re: Netflix/Streaming Services
 

I suspect we will still be here in 2034 with Old Boy clutching at the end of a very narrow straw.