The dark streaming future is upon us, and it sure seems like we should’ve wished for something other than an alternative to pricey and oppressive cable packages when we had that monkey’s paw. Under that model, you had access to pretty much everything for one large fee, whether you wanted it or not. Now, with every major media company putting together their own Netflix competitors, you have to pay lots of small fees in order to get access to anything—let alone everything. We already have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, premium cable channels like HBO (and their related streaming platforms), and specific niche sites like Shudder and DC Universe, and by this time next year we can pad out that list with Apple TV Plus, Disney+, HBO Max, and—as announced today—whatever the ad-driven NBCUniversal streaming service will be called (smart money’s on Something Plus or Something Max).
This comes from Variety, which says NBC+/NBC Max will launch in April of 2020 and is built on “the same digital infrastructure” of Sky’s Now platform in Europe (which obviously doesn’t mean much to us Americans, but it’s presumably a good thing if they’re listing it as a feature). Unfortunately, NBC PlusMax will have to launch without what will surely be its most high-profile offering, as The Office is still stuck on Netflix’s dusty, old shelves until 2021. In fact, we don’t really know what NBC GoPlusMaxNow will have when it launches, but promoting A.P. Bio as its first flagship title would be a nice way to boost awareness of that show—hint hint.
70 Comments
The more things change…
The streaming world is about to get peacocked.
I’ll just buy The Office blu ray set and not subscribe to your stupid pointless service. Phew! Almost broke a sweat solving this problem.
The DVD set is $50 at Amazon. The Blu Rays are $11 – $28/season. Unless this service costs about 5 times what the others do (not an impossibility from NBC/Universal/COMCAST) you can probably get a LOT of streaming for that money.
That’s pretty short-sighted. It’s an upfront cost I will never have to pay again. Over time it will be cheaper than paying a monthly streaming service just to have access to The Office.It’s also good insurance for those times when you slice through the comcast cable in your yard while planting raspberry bushes, but also really want to enjoy The Office. Not that I did that two weeks ago.
How many times are you going to watch it? I own a few blu rays that we watch about once a year so if you do that, OK. But we also got rid of about 90% of our disks in the last 6 months because we don;t watch them all that often.One of the few nice things about Comcast is that they will fix that wire free of charge no matter how often it gets cut or who cuts it, and give you a credit for the time without service if you ask. Of course in typical Comcast fashion, it is a different people who runs it than who buries it and they don’t come out together. So, for instance, if they lay it on Monday and plan on burying it on Wednesday, but the grass gets cut on Tuesday, they usually end up issuing two credits in one week, even though I warn them of the schedule.
Oh yes, I’m in the middle of that whole song and dance right now. The new cable has been laying across my lawn for quite some time. I was pleasantly surprised when they told me they would do it for free, though.And I definitely watch The Office multiple times a year, depending on what’s going on in my life. It’s a great show to throw on when you are working on a project and want to be entertained just enough to keep going, but not too much to take steal your focus and slow you down.I’ve probably been through seasons 2-5 about 5 times
If you watch it several times a year, I cheerfully withdraw my initial comment.
I’m glad we could conclude this matter amicably, sir. Now if you could lend me a backhoe or something, so I can solve my cable problem, you’ll have really made my day.
Will you FedEx me some raspberries?
I’ll just look up a clip of Dwight’s hotel in hell and call it a day. Also, Office DVDs seem like they should be lining the $1 bin at a used media store. It was popular right at the end of the peak DVD market.
They don’t have an Office Blu Ray set. I tried to find one. They have some seasons released on Blu Ray, but not all. And some on DVD. There’s a full DVD set but I wanted me some Blu Ray 🙁
No. Get. The. Fuck. Off. My. Lawn.I will add Disney+ to my Netflix/Hulu/Prime collection, but nothing the fuck else. Jesus.
A line has been drawn in the sand!
No further!!
.
Criterion Channel is really good. It’s actually surprising how much variety they have beyond their own collection. I’m tempted to skip Disney+. I already own the DisneyMarvelPixar movies that I enjoy, and my kids can/do find plenty of tiresome shit on other streaming services.
My three Funklets will watch the hell out of it, but I’d probably get it anyways for the original Marvel and Star Wars shows.I’d love to have Shudder. I’d love to have CBS All Access, just for Star Trek and Twilight Zone. But come on, it’s death by a thousand cuts. Pretty soon the previously free networks are only going to air reality singing/mating competitions and old people shows like NCIS and you’ll have to buy their services for anything else. Rabble rabble fuck.
Criterion added Chromecast support yet? That’s what kept me from getting it
I’m right with you. Netflix/Hulu/Prime and then Disney+ and that’s it. That should be enough. Although, that new Picard show looks pretty good. Fine, Netflix/Hulu/Prime/Disney+/CBSAllAccess. Now I’m good. Oh, shit. But the best shows on TV are from HBO. Okay, Netflix/Hulu/Prime/Disney+/CBSAllAccess/HBONOW. There’s really no reason to add anything else. Although, I am something of a cinephile, and I can’t just sit around all weekend bingewatching dreck. Fuck it. Netflix/Hulu/Prime/Disney+/CBSAllAccess/HBONOW/CriterionChannel.
But NBC’s streaming service? No way.
Don’t forget Shudder. Shudder is awesome. The reality of this sucks so bad.
Not an Anglophile, huh? Acorn and Britbox would be a necessity. Yeah, NBC, no way!
I just found a streaming service called Tubi. It’s completely free. You don’t even have to register for it. It has ads, but it has hundreds of movies. Since I downloaded the app on my Roku TV I’ve watched more movies on it than any other service. It’s especially good for obscure horror films, but it has a pretty wide selection of everything. I highly recommend it since you mentioned being a cinefile.
Oh come on. Don’t you want to see how “B.J. and the Bear” ended?
I thought they closed that part of Craigslist?
With a BJ, I’m assuming.
Strangely enough it wasn’t a happy ending.
I don’t think I can bear to watch it.
I’m only signed up for Shudder, the whole year package because Joe Bob Briggs – and the service is dirt cheap. 3 bucks a month, give or take. That and Disney is all I’m buying, thank you very much.
There’s a new horror con starting in my neck of the woods, and Joe Bob Briggs is enough to make me consider getting a pass
I mean Disney + is gonna be a hulu add on so I feel like it’s a lil’ baby upgrade but this is where I put my foot down
I’m actually starting to see Netflix as the least essential at this point. That’s something I never would have thought was possible 5 years ago.
Shit, I drew the line even shorter than you. No Hulu or Disney+ for this guy. I’m kind of disappointed in missing out on the Mandalorian, but I’ve already passed up on Twilight Zone and Star Trek (both shows I grew up watching and am a prime target for) because fuck CBS All Access.There’s already more good content on Netflix, Prime, and HBO (which I get free with my phone plan) than I can reasonably watch while maintaining a job and some semblance of a social life.
Shows like the Mandalorian aren’t going anywhere. so you won’t be missing out. Now, you may end up watching it three to five years later and find yourself wandering through the AV recap comment wasteland posting responses to users that were vanished during the great Kinjapocalypse…
Right there with you, except I have no use for Disney.
Netflix and Prime I already had. When I finally got a tv (a Roku one) I picked up Hulu and HBO.
NBC is a broadcast tv provider, I will watch their shit for free or not at all. Same goes for CBS and whoever else tries to muscle in on this racket.
I can finally binge-watch BOTH episodes of The Paul Reiser Show!
Warner Bros. actually owns that, so off to HBO Max with you.
If they really want my money they’ll bring back Manimal.
I’d settle for maybe Riptide and Automan, but I’ll ride with you.
If I remember correctly, Automan was ABC.
Dammit – you’re right. That’s ANOTHER service.
NBC: Did you say you wanted an Alf reboot?
Hold out for the package deal for Manimal and Street Hawk.
I have legal access to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon because a relative subscribes to them, but while he gets lots of use out of them they haven’t been especially useful to me because I’m focused on movies, not shows (the key exception being MST3K). Frankly I get a lot more out of the Tubi and Pluto TV apps just because they have so many little oddities/Shout Factory goodies. I am considering subscribing to the Criterion Channel and am wondering about Disney+ (the latter primarily for “The World According to Jeff Goldblum”) but otherwise I’m content pining for ye goode old days when the same shows and movies weren’t on every cable channel and there weren’t a zillion streaming services, leaving no one happy.
Methinks NBC is soon going to find out how little people really care about their shows. Nobody’s going to pay $10 a month just to watch The Office.
I think it’s safe to assume Universal’s film library and a few other goodies will be involved as well.
I’ll subscribe when AP Bio comes out, binge it, and then cancel the service.
I can see it now… this all ends up with Piratebay getting a moon base and satellites.
“It’s like SkyNet meets the real world outside the Matrix meets a Brandon Tartikoff fever dream.”
I guess one advantage of the fragmentation is that, unlike with cable, you can drop and pick up the streaming services at will. There’s no reason to maintain subscriptions to all of them – you can just focus on the content of one at a time.
That is a good point, and re-activating a streaming service is a lot easier than dealing with a cable provider’s bureaucracy every time we change our minds about HBO. However, my newfound freedom would then have me devoting brainspace to monitoring and managing a monthly streaming budget, activating and/or deactivating the 4 or 5 (or whatever) that fit within how much I’m willing to spend, based on what movies/programs are coming and going, etc. — and it’s already a mild pain in the ass to get a reliable picture of what’s being added to Netflix.And then on the OTHER other hand, our cable bill is ridiculous, so I could probably keep a lot of these services active and still come in under budget.
In terms of managing the streaming services, I cancel them immediately after signing up. So, at the end of a month, it’s gone unless I take steps to re-up it. That avoids having to remember to cancel the service and getting stuck with three that you’re not watching.
Dear generic poster, I heartily applaud your streaming services activation/cancellation management judo. Thanks for the strategy!
My mastery comes from the simple fact that I’m cheap as shit.I fear that the services will eventually get wise to this and try to lock you in for longer periods, though.
This is how we handle it. Starz gets turned on for American Gods. HBO got turned on for Game of Thrones. Hulu will get my money for Veronica Mars and Amazon will get activated for Good Omens.
We keep Netflix on always and, depending on how much Disney+ is really offering when it launches, might get that. Everything else is based on content.
Yup. And you never have to pay for tons of sport channels of Fox Noise. Any way you cut it, streaming is a win.
(Well, except maybe for the part about requiring a lot more energy, and thus more pollution, than simple cable..)
I wasn’t aware of that. I mean, it makes some sense that it would take more energy than old-school cable. But is today’s cable with on demand features, etc., really a lot less energy intensive than streaming?Plus, it seems like eliminating the energy-hog cable box/DVR would give the edge to streaming.
I did indeed mean old-school cable when I wrote “simple cable”; my bad. 🙂
All these fractured streaming services are still 1000x better than cable. If you don’t think so, you haven’t had cable for a long time.Eventually these services will just license their old shows back out when they realize that no one is going to sub for shows that are 10-30 years old.
Why not build on the success of NBCUniversal’s last streaming platform with SeeSo 2?
Finally, I will be able to binge Caroline in the City!
If you have Comcast internet, they may offer this to you for a lower price. What’s going to happen is Comcast or something is going to offer a premium internet and streaming bundle that includes Netflix, Hulu, and NBCwhatever, and then you can add premium services like HBO on top of it through them. So we’re back at cable again.
Seeing as I’m stuck with Comcast as my ISP, I wouldn’t hate this provided I don’t have to rent a frickin’ box from them to get it.
The real question is will this service play reruns of “Manimal?”
some one should start a company or service that collects all these different tv services into one and bill you just one bill a month and for reliability purposes bring it to your house through something like a cable or something.
And the only streaming service I’m subscribed to is Pluto TV. 😛