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
Maybe there are licensing restrictions or other things that prevent it, but wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app? Or at least make all HBO Max content also available in Netflix (and then eventually sunset HBO Max). That would make a Netflix subscription a much more compelling purchase for a ton of people.

>>meowfa+um
They might make less money with one super subscription than two separate ones.

>>Comput+8o
Yeah, I can easily see something like 2 separate at $20/month vs 1 super at $35/month (make-believe figures).

Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).

And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.

Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.

>>alista+up
We're reinventing cable!

>>philis+Ls
Yup. All of them combined would probably be ~$100-120/mo. which is, lo and behold, the price of a cable package

>>butlik+Ev
With inflation, it's much cheaper.

Still, the real issue is one that both cable and streaming services don't solve.

People don't want to pay for what they don't watch. Both streaming and cable have the price of everything they own and produce built into the price. When you subscribe to either, you're subsidizing a bunch of stuff you don't care about.

People don't want to pay $20 a month to watch stranger things in oreer to subsidize a bunch of stuff they don't watch. It was the same with cable. Netflix is just one giant cable bundle, it always has been.