zlacker

>>meetpa+(OP)
Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).

From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.

>>afavou+Jd
I don't know. I never really had a sensible option to watch Game of Thrones legally, it's a little late for that now but presumably this would mean it's on Netflix which would be significantly better for me. (I guess useful for House of the Dragon now). I don't think I care much about the upcoming Harry Potter show but if I did want to watch that, I'm not sure what my options would be, and Netflix seems better than me having to take out _another_ subscription.

Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.

>>Camouf+Hk
Far better for consumers to be able to binge Game of Thrones/Silicon Valley/whatever and cancel HBO Max than to have to pay twice as much for a subscription to both libraries to get either.

>>Araina+Sk
Which is why it won't happen, what would the revenue benefit of that be?

In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.

If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.