Not Again.... Sigh.

Amorris

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So...

I have Netflix (Ultra HD Sub), Amazon Prime Video and the full Sky Package (HD, Sports, Movies etc).

Today i decided that i'm in the mood to watch Catch Me If You Can later tonight, it's a 15 year old film so i'm not asking much to expect it to be one of my subscription services. Was it on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Sky? No, of course not...

So then i check how much it would cost me to stream / rent / own digitally. 15 year old movie? Can't be much surely? wrong again..

iTunes (Own): £5.99
Amazon (Rent): £3.49
Sky (Rent): £3.49

Alternatively, i could buy it for £5 on Bluray physically.. I don't want to own the film, i keep my physical collection to a min.

It drives me nuts, it's happened a couple of times on movies i've felt in the mood for. I can just about get over a 15-20 year old movie not being on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Sky On Demand all at the same time... Just about.... But then not to offer it up as a 99p HD rental, just beggars belief.

First world problems i know. Still drives me batty.

:suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide:
 
Never have managed to get my head around the fact that downloads cost more to buy than physical. Crazy.
 
Never have managed to get my head around the fact that downloads cost more to buy than physical. Crazy.

I can kind of understand it with new releases. Ultimately Supermarkets and Shops (While more limited now a days) still provide a service in advertising and selling their products to people in store, so you don't want to under-cut that to much or bricks and mortar stores will stop all together.

With 15/20 year old films though, that impact doesn't really exist. I find it bizarre and no doubt pushes many people who are quite willing to pay for content, to piracy. I'm not paying £3.50 to rent a 15-20 year old mainstream film, not when i pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime and Sky, i doubt many would. 99p though....
 
Yeah, completely understand new stuff, which is often priced lower or on a par with physical.

The older stuff is just sat on the server costing next to nothing and each time someone downloads it, royalties aside, it must be all profit. No costs of warehouse/shop floor space to house the boxes and discs that are waiting to be sold, no cost of picking, packing and shipping the discs. A simplified way of looking at it, but every download is pretty much pure profit, once you've sold enough at the new price to cover your costs.

How many more copies could they sell or rent if they were priced low enough to grab impulse purchases? It's not like you've got to get off your bum and go to the shop and by it or even wait for it to turn up in the post.

As you said in you original post, you suddenly get the urge to watch something, if it had been sensibly priced you would have, but a silly prices you don't bother.

Not saying you did, or would, but it would be ridiculously easy to just download it for free and watch it anyway.
 
Maybe, but surely that's a set cost, whether you have film X sat there doing nothing or if someone downloads it? If nobody downloads it, or if 1000 or 100000 people download it, once it's sat there the costs can't be that different can they?
 
You can buy the DVD used for 20p off amazon, as it's an ol;der movie I doubt the difference between DVD an Blu ray or Netflix would be all that huge?

On a side note about Netflix removing movies and shows, I had been working my way through community until that recently vanished. :mad:
 
Yeah, that's another annoyance!

They should post a clear warning on the title page for shows or films that are within a month or two form expiring.

I see various posts on Facebook at times with various things coming and going from Netflix, but half the time it's only for US anyway.
 
I think you would be surprised at what it cost to run a data centre.

Well, since Netflix migrated to AWS and both Amazon Prime Video and themselves use S3... Neither really use a classic "data centre" anymore, the cost to store and stream media is peanuts. Actually, peanuts cost more.
 
Shouldn't have to rely on unofficial sites though. The information should be readily available on Netflix itself.

If you download something from Sky or iPlayer it tells you "this title is available to download and watch until ...."
 
And this is why I still have a large disc collection. As accessible as streaming sites are they are bloody annoying! BTW just bought Catch Me If You Can on bluray for £3.50 at CEX. Can watch it when I want now.
 
And this is why I still have a large disc collection. As accessible as streaming sites are they are bloody annoying! BTW just bought Catch Me If You Can on bluray for £3.50 at CEX. Can watch it when I want now.

The days of me keeping a large movie collection in physical media is gone.

I've got 40 or so 4K UHDs, that'll only increase slowly and the only Blurays are tent pole things you'd want on physical... Star Wars, LOTR, Hobbits, Batmans, Jurassic Parks, Band of Brothers etc etc.
 
Buy it
Rip it
Watch it

I couldn't be bothered anymore looking through hundreds of discs but a decent media streamer with a nice GUI and a NAS and you have your own content with better audio and video than you'll get streaming.
 
The days of me keeping a large movie collection in physical media is gone.

I've got 40 or so 4K UHDs, that'll only increase slowly and the only Blurays are tent pole things you'd want on physical... Star Wars, LOTR, Hobbits, Batmans, Jurassic Parks, Band of Brothers etc etc.
Then you have chosen to put yourself in the hands of the streaming gods. You have ruled out the alternative.
 
I use JUST WATCH on my non-fruit based device to check if a film/tv is available or not
 
there is always the naughty way....involving Edward Teach....
 
Amazon's pricing plans confuse me, and I suspect that in part, that's because they're tracking your viewing habits. For example, one programme that my wife and I wanted to watch had two series. Series one was priced at £5.49, but by the time that I'd redeemed some Amazon video credits, it was a couple of quid. The second series however, is £18.99, and it's actually nearly 8 years old. At that price, sans any video credits, it will have to wait. I don't mind paying sensible prices, but Amazon does seem to be doing some price gouging. The series Ray Donovan is another case in point. Series one and two were free with Prime, so we watched those, but series there was £18.99, as I recall, so we didn't bite. A while back. series three suddenly got included with Prime, so we watched it, but series four is £25.99. Way over price. In may cases, I can find DVD/BR copies of shows cheaper on Amazon than the Prime streaming service. It really does make no sense to me. If Amazon want me to keep using their service then offer stuff at sensible prices. I can wait for stuff to fall in price.


Clem
 

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