Kindle Vella

[Quoth]

Sony had an ebook and others had touch before Amazon. The Fire tablet is just a crippled Android tablet and the Fire phone was nothing special. The Echo, echo dot and Alexa are not innovations (and creepy). Ring is bought in (and creepy).
Amazon are a marketing company and have bought in a huge number of companies. I don't see them as technologically innovative at all. But they are successful.

[DiapDealer]

Soooooo much "Chicken Little"-ing around here.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yeah, I hope Prime Video doesn't get too carried away. I appreciate that Prime Video has lots of Spaghetti Westerns and old schlocky horror movies and old films.

Netflix doesn't really have any of this any longer.

Yep, for me Prime Video fills the space that Netflix use to, i.e. older movies that use to be re-run staples on TV. Generally movies that I might not buy, but that I want to watch every so often. Of course, once they finally start showing the new Tolkien series, that might become must watch TV, much like the Mandalorian has been for Disney+, or it might set the record for major busts, who knows?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The cost is very high for anything other than very low volume niche shorts.
Any mass market offering needs a MASSIVE amount of distributed VOD servers and cooperation of all the main ISPs in target markets. Literally tens of thousands of times more expensive than a Satellite TV channel for a mass market. It's massively more expensive than broadcast cable.

Then there is the cost of decent content.

IBM's Watson was maybe right about the world only needing five computers, if you substitute the so called Cloud (just multi-processor servers).

Where are all the encyclopedias? Wikipedia. Even MS cited Wikipedia as the reason to stop.
Social Media is down to Twitter, Linkedin and Faceborg empire in the West.
Amazon has 90% of online english ebook sales.
eBay and Amazon have most of online classified and small business in the West.
We are down to a handful of real search engines.
Translations?
Maps?
User Videos?

The Internet doesn't bring the democracy and diversity imagined in 1980s, (though web sites are from roughly 1992). It has positive feedback. There is one winner per category.

Streaming video is the most expensive thing since 16mm video and VHS to deliver. DVDs are cheaper. But the dreamed of things by capitalists are:
1) Franchises. The sucker managers all over the world pay the capital costs and are locked into the Franchise for supplies.
2) Subscriptions. Eventually people pay more* than simply buying the content they want.

* In 2006 approx surveys in UK and Ireland showed that 92% of viewing time of Satellite and Cable Pay TV subscribers was watching content either free on the aerial or Free to Air Satellite. Back then I worked on a hybrid broadcast and VOD pay TV proposal for an Irish ISP.

I could also write how Pay TV sport and eventually the creation of the Premier League in England and similar in other European countries aided pay TV, especially Sky and destroyed the finances of top clubs with too much money and pressure. The ESL debacle was inevitable. Of COURSE you had to take out the basic sub and add the sport.
Attempts to stop Sky having a monopoly meant simply fans had to take out 2 to 4 subs with different companies at the same price each as before.

Moore's Law can be applied to things other than the number of transistors on microchips. Internet speeds and hardware costs tend to be less expensive over time. I think that VOD for live events verses VOD for a library of movies and TV shows are two very different use models. Here in the States, there are a number of companies who are successfully doing live sports VOD and apparently are successful at it - ESPN and MLB just to name a couple of obvious examples. It's a very different internet world than when Netflix first started.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Disney may destroy Netflex. Massive catalogue. Bought up lots of other studios. Running since 1920s. Produced for TV from the 1950s and bought a TV channel years ago (ABC, though it didn't do well). Netflex was never very profitable and has relied deals with ISPs and getting ISPs to host server nodes.
Every toy shop has Disney branded products.

Unlike Netflix, Amazon has AWS, a serious player, one of top five data hosting and makes so much profit that Prime is like a lemonade stand.

There will only be Disney and Amazon left streaming video.

I have to disagree. Amazon Prime Video is a serious player in the streaming game.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have to disagree. Amazon Prime Video is a serious player in the streaming game.

Yeah, IDK. We have almost all the streaming options, as Mr. Hitch suffers egregiously with tinnitus, so going out, for almost anything, like a meal in a noisy restaurant, movies, etc. is out of the question, so...we use streaming for entertainment in addition to books and other hobbies.

I don't see Amazon as a heavy-hitter. Sure, they slap up some "original" content, like Bosch (which they've now cancelled, sadly), but most of it is pretty lightweight and/or not executed well. Much of it is what I call message content, rather than simply seeking to entertain. The "rerun" stuff is pretty damned old. If you want to look for the largest cache of B- and C-movies, Amazon has them. While Netflix surely has a lotta cruft, they have such a large catalogue that it's easy to forget the Cruft Factor.

Then you have niche entities, like Acorn and Britbox, sucking up dollars from people like me that will cheerfully pay $5-6/month, so that I can watch oldies but goodies and the occasional newer streamed stuff from NZ and Oz, etc.

I don't know if but the day of the Biggest Player isn't done. I think that niche entertainment might be the way this ends up going. While Hulu is network-owned, it actually has a small, but relatively decent catalogue in the B-C-movie arena and it manages to get some shows (Harrow, for example) that you can't find elsewhere.

The giants like Netflix might be headed toward the Virtual Dumpster. (I honestly wouldn't mind if Netflix did go that way. Much of what they've developed, over the last 3 years, as Netflix original entertainment seems to be ruined. I dread the next season of The Witcher! And don't get me started about some of the others.)

Not that this has s**t to do with Amazon and KindleVella. As with all things, though....I suspect that for those writers whose style leans more toward Dan Brown than Jane Austen, KindleVella might be a real money-maker for them. And more power to 'em, I say!

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have to disagree. Amazon Prime Video is a serious player in the streaming game.

I didn't say they weren't I was suggesting that they have deeper pockets and real infrastructure than netflix. I may have expressed it poorly. Netflex has always looked fragile.

[DiapDealer]

I'm thinking there might be another demographic disconnect with regard to Netflix's predicted decline. It's still the streaming service I use most, with Hulu a close second. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there. But yes, people looking for older movies they've already seen several times should probably look elsewhere. My Amazon Prime usage is pretty much limited to intermittent use of their addon "channels". Disney+ gets cancelled until a new season of The Mandalorian comes out. Most everything else there I've already seen way too many times--long before there was a Disney+--to pay for it year round.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Disney+ gets cancelled until a new season of The Mandalorian comes out. Most everything else there I've already seen way too many times--long before there was a Disney+--to pay for it year round.

No interest in the Marvel stuff, like WandaVision?

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm thinking there might be another demographic disconnect with regard to Netflix's predicted decline.

Another possible demographic disconnect with regard to prophecies at MR of NF's decline is the massive push NF is making in South and East Asia, India and Korea especially. Those markets may well compensate for any decline in the West.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ApK

No interest in the Marvel stuff, like WandaVision?

Sure. But there's still not enough to warrant a year round subscription for me. I can tune in for a couple of months out of the year and binge those. There was only 6 episodes of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. A new Agents of Shield could tempt me, but only if there's something else new and original going on at the same time. Disney's old catalog and/or animated stuff just doesn't interest me at all. Not even as filler. And there's not enough year round new stuff to keep me paying.

[JSWolf]

What about the programs/movies on Hulu or Star (depending on where you live)

[pwalker8]

This is getting pretty far afield from the original topic, but what the hey, it's an internet webboard, topic drift is what happens.

Consumers of streaming material are a lot like readers, there are a number of different groups that use things totally different. Some video consumers want new generic stuff, and don't re-watch shows or movies. They want new and original over quality. Some video consumers are looking for specific content, such as classic movies or tv show and aren't really interested in new content unless it's a hit show like The Mandalorian. Some binge watch on one service, cancel then move to the next, rotating as new shows appear. Some families want something like Disney+ for the kids and will keep it until the kids are no longer interested in Disney+. As I recall, the price tag for Amazon's new Tolkien series, which hopefully will make an appearance this fall, is over a billion dollars. That's going to be a huge bust if it doesn't pan out.

While I think there is room for all, the question is what's the break even point for spending billions of dollars on new content plus infrastructure? A high degree of churn is rarely a successful business model, yet there is a segment out there who are going to churn between services as long as there is no penalty for doing so. Binge watchers will exhaust a services catalogue of new shows pretty quickly.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Some video consumers want new generic stuff, and don't re-watch shows or movies. They want new and original over quality.

No. No one wants generic stuff. New or old. It's more that quality is simply not the objective thing many want to pretend it is. Preferring new over old says precisely nothing about the quality or genericism of the "stuff" being preferred.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

No. No one wants generic stuff. New or old. It's more that quality is simply not the objective thing many want to pretend it is. Preferring new over old says precisely nothing about the quality or genericism of the "stuff" being preferred.

Yes, some people want generic stuff, that's why it gets produced. Even the lowest rated programs on TV have someone watching them.