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
lol at the idea that Netflix would ever produce something as high-quality as GoT or HotD. Those days will soon be over.

>>skywho+Dl
> produce something as high-quality as GoT

Netflix is a different creature because of streaming and time shifting.

They don't care about people watching a pilot episode or people binge watching last 3 seasons when a show takes off.

The quality metric therefore is all over the place, it is a mildly moderated popularity contest.

If people watch "Love is Blind", you'll get more of those.

On the other hand, this means they can take a slightly bigger risk than a TV network with ADs, because you're likely to switch to a different Netflix show that you like and continue to pay for it, than switch to a different channel which pays a different TV network.

As long as something sticks the revenue numbers stay, the ROI can be shaky.

Black Mirror Bandersnatch for example was impossible to do on TV, but Netflix could do it.

Also if GoT was Netflix, they'd have cancelled it on Season 6 & we'd be lamenting the loss of what wonders it'd have gotten to by Season 9.