Recent content by ncted

Whew! Now I don't need to do this.

Yeah, but to a lot of people, not as easy as familiar as a "cable" package. They are paying for that perceived convenience.

I guess I'll be helping my mom sign up for ESPN Unlimited this weekend then.

Well, you might be able to copy them to another drive, but I doubt you could do anything with them once they are there.

Sports and "news." Given the betting scandals, perhaps that should be "sports" and "news." ;)

Well, the problem for the media companies is that piracy becomes a much more attractive option when the prices get too high. Indeed, piracy rates have been steadily increasing after years of low numbers due to affordable streaming options (at the time). I personally don't like the idea of...

Streaming Prices Are Soaring—and Consumers Are Still Paying https://www.wsj.com/business/media/streaming-prices-are-soaringand-consumers-are-still-paying-1bb7dbae?st=UQMvjj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I do not see an option to download any of the content I "own" on Prime. Of course, I don't think it would do you much good if you could find the downloads as they are sure to be DRM-protected.

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/youtube-tv-blackout-costing-disney-lost-revenue-1236574968/

I don't necessarily think that is what really matters to Disney. What matters is whether people (sports fans) will be more willing to pay $30 for ESPN Unlimited than to pay $85 for YTTV if almost everything they watch is sports (most of which is on ESPN/ABC) -- in addition to the Peacock...

The first sentence seems to contradict the last sentence, or at least that is how I read it. In any case, you hit on the bigger issue which is the DTC sports play they have with ESPN Unlimited.

The problem is we do not know what Hulu/Fubo (of which Disney owns 70%) pays. If they are giving themselves a better price, then I would call that self-dealing and say it is monopolistic. If not, then it would at most be self-preferential because Hulu/Fubo aren't going to have a carriage...

My parents are talking about switching to Fubo/Hulu+Live, but they don't want to pay the higher price. Sounds like they are going to pay either way if they want ESPN, which my mom definitely does want.

This would seem to be an example of the self-dealing/self-preferring that anti-trust laws exist to prevent. It probably wouldn't be successful in court these days, but it seems very reminiscent of the kinds of things that Standard Oil did, on the surface anyway. Sadly, I think YTTV is going to...

The TV money is for all sports, but everything I've ever read shows that the football games are what drives TV revenue. This is one of the reasons why the ACC can't match the SEC and Big10 in TV revenue -- their football games just don't bring the same viewership numbers. The other revenue...