Again, this has gone beyond off-topic for the NANOG list. Please take the discussion elsewhere.
-Mike Bolitho On Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:52 PM Michael Thomas <m...@mtcc.com> wrote: > Back in the old days, we had the ultimate in unbundling: you walked up, > got a ticket, and watched the movie. > > In principle it wouldn't be that hard these days to do something similar > with a tremendous reduction in friction. Basically pay-per-view on > steroids. > > My sense is that it would be tremendous failure though: how would a > consumer know how to value different content? Going to a movie is > comparatively a big commitment with plenty of time to decide if you think > it's worth it. Channel surfing, not so much. So maybe we are doomed to some > sort of bundling. > > The big problem is that I don't want to pay for a month of content to > watch one or two shows. And I definitely don't want to pay a month's worth > of content to three dozen providers of which i may only watch a few of > their programs a couple of times a month. Now if you reduced that to, say, > a day pass I might bite, especially if there was no more friction than the > usual channel surfing. > > Mike > On 11/28/19 2:23 PM, Robert Haylock wrote: > > I agree with Brian, this is not unbundling, it's just removing one layer > of distribution; you no longer need the Cable company to play aggregator to > the content distributors, you now buy from them direct (especially true in > the case of HBO and Disney, except ESPN is not yet included). The next > logical large player to enter the global** direct-to-streamer market would > be NBCUniversal, so I'm sure we will soon be preparing for that one too :) > > Rob > > On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 06:47, Brian J. Murrell <br...@interlinx.bc.ca> > wrote: > >> On Thu, 2019-11-28 at 10:50 -0800, Owen DeLong wrote: >> > While I agree about the likely outcome, I will point out that >> > consumers have been >> > begging for unbundling for years. >> >> This is not the "unbundling" that consumers have been begging for. >> Rather I would submit that it's actually quite the opposite and much >> more like the bundling that they have been railing against. >> >> The "unbundling" that consumers have been begging for is minimally, the >> ability to buy a single channel for a fair price and not have to take >> 14 other channels of *garbage* with it at 15x the cost one of those >> channels. I say minimally because I suspect that the really savvy >> consumers would actually rather even pay (again, at a fair price) per >> show or episode. >> >> But that's not what's happening with this fragmentation. This >> fragmentation is like the cable company splitting up that "once price >> for all" bundle and putting the pieces into other bundles, each at the >> same cost as that original "all in one" bundle that the consumers were >> originally happy with and saw as fair value. Of course now to continue >> to getting those pieces of the original bundle that they were happy >> with, consumers are having to buy multiples of these new bundles and >> their costs are driving up sharply accordingly. >> >> > This fragmentation of streaming services _IS_ the direct result of >> > that request. >> >> I would submit that that is completely untrue. Do you really think >> Disney pulled out of Netflix and started their own service because >> consumers wanted Disney to unbundle from Netflix? I would suggest that >> that is completely not why. Rather, Disney was not happy to have just >> a piece of the Netflix pie, and decided, as greedy as they are, that >> they would sell their own pies and take the fully monthly subscription >> price. >> >> > It’s unbundled service, exactly what they have been asking for. >> >> Again. No. Not at all. Not even close. Quite the opposite in fact. >> >> The problem with suggesting that this is unbundling is that the cost of >> Netflix didn't reduce when Disney pulled out and Disney (I would bet, I >> haven't actually looked at it's cost) isn't charging the faction of the >> Netflix cost that would be commensurate with their percentage of the >> entire Netflix library. >> >> So there has been no "unbundling" of any sort. Rather it's been an >> exercise of actually creating a new bundling. And I still predict that >> once the reality of this sets in with consumers, they are going to >> reject it and head back to that low (zero) cost means of obtaining >> their media that they used when they were unhappy with the previous >> generation of bundling. >> >> b. >> >>
