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Tech's broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Tech's broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.

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[–] 108 points 3 years ago (5 children)

Is this surprising? The prices were always going to adjust to the market. Any new cheap thing that undercuts the market will eventually become the market as it becomes mainstream, and prices will be increased to what the market will bear to maximize profits.

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  • [+] 78 points 3 years ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Sure. But torrents are for files which is different from streaming. And Kodi + Trakt is still far beyond Netflix.

    The costs to you with torrents are the relatively small risk you may get sued for a lot of money and/or the cost of covering up your activity with a VPN to make it harder to sue you.

    People who were always going to pirate are still always going to pirate. But companies like Netflix know that people will pay for a convenient, legal service with features they like. But if they start charging too much or make their platform suck, people will be more likely to cancel them and pirate.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    Well that’s the difference, most people will pirate when it’s more convenient to do so. And as long as prices are so exorbitant.

    I pirate hockey games, because watching hockey is ridiculously inconvenient and/or expensive.

    I do not pirate music anymore, or video games because Apple Music is more convenient and not very expensive and steam has all the games I’d ever want to play, and has enough sales that it’s not that expensive either.

    I don’t pirate movies and tv shows because Netflix and Disney really cover anything I want to watch and anything else I share a crave subscription, like for Game of Thrones

    But I do pirate hockey games.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    I use WebTorrent nowadays, since it allows you to stream torrents. But before that, I also used qBittorrent, great application.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    This is surprising from a naive market based perspective. Think about how TVs and computers have gotten cheaper and better. The hope was that this wouldn’t just be the same product with new players. The idea (or the lie if you prefer) was that the new technologies would lead to efficiencies so we can all get more for less.

    It just didn’t make any sense for something like Uber. It costs money to give someone a living wage and their app wasn’t going to change the fact that someone still had to drive the car. The whole idea made no sense, which is why they were racing to autonomous cars. That hasn’t panned out.

    I actually think streaming is a much better value than cable, even at the same price. Shows are higher quality and more plentiful. Many high quality movies are included. You’re also not required to get every package. Skip Paramount if you don’t want it. I still think streaming easily beats cable.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    Exclusive rights to content are the problem here. There is no competition if the consumer has no choice (except not watching at all).

    There is a case here for legal separation between content production and distribution. Not just streaming services, it goes for any content, games, cinema, even patents.

    Uber on the other hand - I have a problem with their employment rights, not paying people or calling them "contractors" instead of employees.

    Otherwise it's a great positive example of free market in practice. Someone had an idea for a new business model, tried it, it appeared to work for a couple of years, and now they will fail because it doesn't have a long term perspective. It shook up existing monopolistic practices in the industry, and then tried to establish their own monopoly. And will fail because of that. It goes in circles.

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