No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
After all, there is more "content" now.
Edit: Btw I find Max is like a better quality version of Netflix. But after a while I have the same problem there too. I find myself just watching something on YouTube instead most times
> I find it's incredibly rare when I can actually find something half decent that's new on Netflix.
There was recently some link on HN about Netflix and using “AI” for “content creation”.
Not that Netflix scripts didn’t sound like an “AI” wrote them even before “AI”.
On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?
HBO isn't available at all on it's own. It's exclusively sublicensed (until the end of this year) to Sky which has a terrible terrible user experience and of course is another subscription.
Two days ago there was an announcement that HBO Max is to start in Germany in January. Let's see how that develops after the acquisition.
Now they don't have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.
Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).
This is performative marketing for the regulators to allow the merger. No one (including the regulators) believes this, and it won't come to pass. ("More choice" won't, I mean, the merger will and a lot of regulators and politicians involved will end up with new cars, boats, and kids' college tuitions paid.)
I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).
For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.
And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.
Also, survivor bias. You have to go out of the way to find mentions of crap 3rd rate old movies. We only remember the good ones.
That will exactly follow Netflix's price hikes.
As in "value for money", they silenced the latter part :D
I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It's all dull, empty-calorie background TV.
The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.
DVDs at least keep working.
https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/hbo-max-nears...
If you leave the featured areas and venture into any of the categories, you will see that HBO is also full of junk. HBO -> Browse by Genre -> A-Z -> any of them are full of junk.
The Netflix featured pages are more geared to showing you stuff you haven't seen yet, while HBO is geared toward showing you popular stuff, even if you have watched it on HBO.
I can just store it in my NAS and watch it whenever I like it.
No reawwy this time we double-dog super promise
There was a cinema magazine, and i ran into a 6 page obituary for this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lon_Chaney
Some silent movie star. Never heard of him before. Looks like he was worth 1/8 of the non-ad content 1 year after his death in 1931.