The central idea that we all have the same tools which now represent an infrastructure baseline, therefore we need to look harder to establish our moats (not just in knowing things although that's one) is sound and well put. Thanks.
Nice, except, first game I clicked is now only pay-to-play on major platforms. I'm not against that, but it doesn't feel like a Show HN game anymore which I kind of expect to be a little rough and ready and certainly free to play. Perhaps this could be noted in the listing? I mean it's a success for the developer, not a downside. Game was Holedown.
Note this digitisation was by a company called Mad Pixel, and supported by Google in 2009. It was the first experiment that later became the Google Art Project in 2011 (now Google Arts & Culture).
I live in a mountain valley in Mallorca where hundreds of tons of perfect Canoneta oranges fall to the floor and rot each year because the cost of picking them outweighs their market value. The valley became wealthy from this fruit in the 19th century but the economics no longer add up. [0]
At the same time the price of orange juice (elsewhere) has skyrocketed [1], yet this rural community seems unable to take advantage.
I tend to avoid projects where the economics are challenging, or where the demand has fallen off. Vidalia is unique because it's a boutique item, not a commodity. Because of it's unique nature, we're able to charge premium pricing, allowing us to stay in business (& even at our premium prices, the margins are razor thin, so we're constantly watching bottom line). While I tremendously enjoy this project, this is not an easy business to operate.
There was a company in Mallorca that tried something similar with lemons about 12 years ago: Pep Lemon. I remember hearing that they noticed huge amounts of lemons lying unused all over the island and wanted to do something worthwhile with them.
They stopped production in 2019, citing a “lack of investors.” During their operation, they were involved in a legal dispute with PepsiCo over the use of the name Pep. I’m not sure whether this was because of their cola product, Pep Cola, or simply due to the similarity of the brand names. Pep is a diminutive of Josep in Catalan and is very common, so it may have been just a coincidence.
They tried to export their products, but this turned out to be expensive, so they instead hoped for strong local support within Mallorca (see point 1 below). In that article they say that they produced 1000 bottles a year in their factory. That sounds very little; I wonder if that is correct?
The story of soft drinks on the island is astonishing. 130 drinks companies at one point. My understanding is that Coca Cola took over distribution for the countless small companies and - once embedded - said we don't need your product any more, adios. Don't know if true but a tale often told here.
I'm sure I've seen video of oranges being harvested mechanically. I'm sure it can be done but probably not economically everywhere especially if the terrain is difficult. For mechanical olive harvesting see: https://ilcircolo.eu/olive-harvesting-by-hand-or-with-machin...
That may be true of modern farms elsewhere but is not the case for historical groves here. They are sometimes spaced appropriately but that's about it. Usually on vehicular-inaccessible mountainside terraces.
You have Mr. Kraus making sorbet and selling that on the internet, don’t you? Though I guess he doesn’t come close to using up all of the supply… and his domain name is a bit more complicated than what Peter usually goes for. I can’t, to this day, remember how to pronounce Sòller. We keep asking the locals every time we visit. Do you own a grove yourself?
Not familiar with Mr Kraus. Shortcut to remembering how to pronounce Sòller is to say 'So yeah'. We're surrounded by scarcely-maintained groves with owners pleading to do something with the fruit and there's only so many marmalades (wrong kind of oranges) or Aperol copycats one can make. Orange blossom ice cream a big success this year.
Fet a Sòller. The guy is a German who noticed the same problem in the 90s and figured to use the surplus for making ice cream & marketing it to the Vitamin C starved people in Germany.
Perhaps an artisanal single-origin soda could work? Use the pulp and the oil from the peels to make some form of syrup or concentrate locally. Mix it with water and label it in Hamburg, London, Stockholm.
Can you ask your neighbors if they’ll sell an all you-can-pick pass in Febrary? I know two families who would buy it in an instant. There's an email address in my bio here.
In fact, I think I haven't met a tourist on the island who wasn't interested when I told them that we visited a grove and picked some oranges. Especially those with kids! Someone could set up a website that allows you to buy such a pass that directly routes you to the appropriate grove. You can spread the word about that website by collaborating with small local businesses like car rentals, hotels, Airbnbs, etc.. I’m sure many of them would be delighted to put such a flyer into their welcome kit.
How tough is it juice them and make orange juice that can be sold (to Spanish or EU standards)? I would think you could start small and grow over time.
Mallorca is a mountainous island in the middle of the med.
Exporting something from Mallorca seems like a logistical challenge to me.
Exporting something refrigerated or frozen, even more so...
Maybe store-shelf product such as gummies or something?
Fresh juice takes 2kg of oranges per ~1l/~1kg. Plus electricity and handling costs...
Still, you'll need a large multiplier on the transformation process: organic EU orange are 1.7€/kg, standard are 1€ wholesale market price (meaning its origin is continental spain or italy I guess).
Frozen orange juice is 3.93€ (Brazil)
I think the best bet for juice would be to export frozen concentrate.
And despite the logistical challenges you cite, lemons imported from places like Argentina are now cheaper to buy at Palma's wholesale market than the average wholesale price paid for local fruit, which has subsequently plummeted even further.
Except that lemons are picked for "cheap" in Argentina (and oranges in Morrocco or Valencia), industrially packaged to ports (most likely to BCN or VLC ports) and then shipped in containers to Palma.
Pick the oranges in the middle of the island: not cheap, as stated. Squeeze & freeze the juice (likely around Palma): not cheap, not even including transportation. Ship them back to the continent: probably not cheap either.
Transshipment is extremely costly and even more so at a smaller scale, and that's what we're comtemplating here.
I got a result using coins but could find no link to the hexagram so had to look it up on another site. While I was clicking around your site trying to find the hexagram then I lost my reading and back button didn't work, so changing lines etc were lost. I would love to use this more but not in current state.
You are raising a critical UX issue. Currently, I haven't implemented user accounts or a database because I wanted to keep the app simple and login-free.
However, that shouldn't mean losing your data on a refresh! I will prioritize a fix using Local Storage so your current reading persists even if you hit the back button.
I'll also make the result link much more obvious so you don't have to hunt for it. Really appreciate you trying it out despite the rough edges!
Osmo Polyx is what I already had around from other wooden furniture projects, that's all. I try to not store too many cans of unused finishes around my house so I try to use what I already have first.
Top Oil indeed seems very similar to what I did (hardwax, drying oils, driers) but half of it is still white spirit solvent, which I'm guessing will give it the same smell as Polyx.
They won't be American. The balance of power has already shifted east. There are now more productions, more money and more facilities east of Madrid than west of it.
Look I get how Ne Zha 2 was a big success and showed signs of good production quality, but lets be honest: The movie was boring. I'm sure the mostly Chinese audience that sat with me in the theater enjoyed it but I fell asleep halfway in.
The "east" has more work to do to capture that magic that the western imperial order (Hollywood) has wrought upon the world.
I will continue to watch and observe how things play out.
So the companies in charge of distributing the content are American-based multinationals; production leaks out of the US toward prettier places and more amicable laborers; if you’re American and want to tag along—in or behind the scenes—you’re going to need a passport or a visa.
You might be referring to the remnants of broadcast television. I'm referring to the screen-based productions capturing the eyeballs of tomorrow.
One serious strand of America's whip of many thongs is the inability or refusal to acknowledge the rise in power and influence elsewhere.
As Gandalf - the last remaining talkshow host - gets pulled off the bridge into the abyss, he looks up to see a motley brigade of multi-cultural hobbits dashing for the surface with their wits and wallets thankfully intact.
Please excuse my excruciating reimagining of your wild fantasy metaphor.
The things China does strictly within the walls of its own insular society is a very far cry from representative of "global media culture and business".
It is very much dominated by American media companies at every level. Funding, development, production, distribution.
Something doesn't happen until it happens. And even when it happens, it might fail.
So far China hasn't broken down many walls, for example I'm fairly sure they can't do what TSMC does.
And for media... guess what, they need to open a lot of things up. There's a lot more freedom of speech in the US, so US media can be about a lot of things interesting to the rest of the world. The US even has a lot media catering to other countries (for example media targetting Chinese audiences).
I mean, China could try that, we have the examples of Japanese and South Korean media, but both of those are democratic, and even then, it took them a long time to develop. Plus neither of them are near the levels of influence US media has.
Ne Zha 2 comes to mind. One of the largest box offices ever and it came out this year. In my opinion: Good attempt but I dont see them supplanting Western media yet.
> Because really we can split into three or more. US on one side, EU, middle and far east on the other. East of Madrid is booming, West is in decline.
But the EU is "the west". Europe is where "the West" started. It's bizarre you would group EU with the middle east and far east rather than with the US.
Your comments make no sense. India, China, Nigeria, etc may have their own film productions, but they all watch american films. But that's not true of indian, chinese, nigerian films which are consumed locally. Beyond film production, what is india, china or nigeria's equivalent to netflix or hulu or amazon prime?
Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.
This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic.
But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content.
It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the steam locomotive.
55” TV’s have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement especially when put in a normal living space.
The issue IMO is so few movies are worth any extra effort to see. Steam a new marvel movie and you can pause half way through when you’re a little bored and do something else.
55” TVs have been available for decades but not affordable. I purchased a 60” plasma TV about 2 decades ago but it cost about $2500 dollars. Now I can pick up a 55” 4K TV from Best Buy for $220.
The widespread affordability of large screen TVs has absolutely eroded the value of a movie theater.
A 55” Rear-projection television was way less than a 60” plasma TV back then. Like you I went a little upmarket but from what I recall budget 1080i options were well under a grand.
What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts. Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Rear projection TVs always looked like garbage. They were just the best option at the time. There’s a reason no one sells them anymore.
> What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts.
I think what matters for this conversation is how close the experience is to a theater. Rear projection 1080i is pretty far.
> Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.
Do you have some stats for how many were sold? Because I have hunch that sales of large screen TVs had absolutely skyrocketed over the past 20 years.
I had an awesome 1080p rear projection DLP TV in a dark room. A brighter screen works better in a bright room, but you really want a dark room for an optimal experience anyway.
The technology got quite good but inherently took up more space and eventually couldn’t compete on price. Though that also means you’re sitting closer to the screen which made replacement flatscreens in the same space look smaller.
Probably many underestimate the importance of the sound.
A home theater arguably is as much about the subwoofer and surround speakers as it is about the screen.
Especially the subwoofer has a big impact. When you feel the sound it's literally impactful. At other times, it really helps immerse yourself in the scene, even if it's not a typical bass sound, but like background noise in a busy city street.
The properly configured subwoofer makes you feel like you're there, while it just falls flat on a regular speaker.
That said, the fewest people have a home theater setup, so it's probably irrelevant to why people stopped going to the cinema.
> Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer
This is silly. Most people don’t want to sit in a chair 3 feet from their TV to make it fill more of their visual area. A large number of people are also not watching movies individually. I watch TV with my family far more than I watch alone.
Tell that to every streaming on their tablets sitting on their stomachs. People even watch movies on their phones but they aren’t holding them 15’ away.
No one says the experience of watching on their tablet matches the experience of watching a movie in the theater.
But this isn’t the point. TVs are furniture. People generally have a spot where the TV naturally fits in the room regardless of its size. No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience. I’ve seen plenty of people do this to say it’s common behavior.
> No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.
It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
> People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience.
It’s a more private/personal experience. Turning on the TV means everyone watches.
> It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.
You’re essentially arguing that people can arrange their furniture for the best viewing experience. Which is true, but also not what people actually do.
The set of people willing to arrange their furniture for the best movie watching experience in their home are the least likely to buy a small TV.
People still do this while home alone, you’re attacking a straw man.
> least likely to buy a small TV.
People can only buy what actually exists. My point was large TV’s “have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement” people owning them still went to the moves.
> People still do this while home alone, you’re attacking a straw man.
Maybe? You’re making blind assertions with no data. I have no idea how frequently the average person sits in front of their 60” TV by themselves and watches a movie on their tablet. My guess is not very often but again, I have no data on this.
> My point was large TV’s “have been out for decades they really aren’t a replacement” people owning them still went to the moves.
And we come back to the beginning where your assertion is true but also misleading.
Most people have a large tv in their homes today. Most people did not have this two decades ago, despite then being available.
The stats agree. TV sizes have grown significantly.
> Maybe? You’re making blind assertions with no data.
I’ve seen or talked to more than five people doing it (IE called them, showed up at their house, etc) and even more people mentioned doing the same when I asked. That’s plenty of examples to say it’s fairly common behavior even if I can’t give you exact percentages.
Convince vs using the TV remove was mentioned, but if it’s not worth using the remote it’s definitely not worth going to the moves.
I do. I’ve researched the optimal distance for a smallish tv screen (which fits between the studio monitor stand). I move the tv closer when watching a film, it stands on hacked together wooden box like thing which has some yoga tools and film magazines in it - it has wheels. Crazy stuff.
There is a flipchart like drawing of my daughter covering the tv normally which we flip when watching films.
Living rooms are not that big to start with. I don't think you actually asked anyone's opinion on this! :D
Small TVs are not comfortable to watch. No one I know is okay with getting a smaller TV and moving their sofa closer. That sounds ridiculous. If there's any comfort to this capatilistic economy, it is the availability of technology at throw away prices. Most people would rather spend on a TV than save the money.
As for the theatre being obsolete, I do agree with you, atleast to some extent. I think everyone is right here. All factors combined is what makes going to the theatre not worth the effort for most of the movies. It's just another nice thing, not what it used to be.
Also, the generational difference too. I think teen and adolescents have a lot of ways to entertain themselves. The craze for movies isn't the same as it used to be. And we grew old(er). With age, I've grown to be very picky with movies.
Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts, but not by enough to overcome the downsides like the “person behind you chewing popcorn with their mouth open” factor. Also, movies are getting long enough to really need an intermission or two. Legs need stretching, bladders need emptying. If Hollywood and the theaters won’t provide that, at least at home I can use the pause button. I’m looking for a pleasant evening, not a simulation of what it’s like to be on a three hour flight.
It’s saying something that your post lists all the negative aspects of movie theaters and positive aspects of watching at home without actually specifying why “Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts”.
I went to see Avatar on a Imax screen. It was already about a month after the release so it was pretty quiet.
But those kinds of movies are rare- and it is expensive. You have to drive and park for half an hour, pay 30 euro for two tickets and ofcourse the drinks. Not something I want to do every week.
One way theaters win is that you can meet your friends / S.O. there without bringing them home; some people don't have living accommodations that are suited to hosting guests.
Yeah, these things take a long time to shake out. We still have cable subscriptions because older people watch TV that way, but no one would tell you that linear television is thriving. We're only now seeing sports start to somewhat move to streaming services, when the writing's on the wall for a while.
And would you entertain the idea that few movies are worth seeing because going to the movie theatre is a hard sell for audiences, and studios produce movies that try and adapt to that reality?
My wife and I used to be avid theater goers. We used to watch at least five movies a year in the theaters; more if you count the times we went individually. Almost all of the theaters we visited were high-end lounge-style movie houses. Think "Alamo Drafthouse," which is a poster child for the downfall of theaters I'm about to describe.
We're the perfect demo for the movie theaters: free time and disposable income. Yet, we've only seen two movies in the theaters this year, and not for lack of trying.
Theaters are in a kind-of death spiral. they're losing revenue to streaming, so they can't invest in making an experience that attracts people to the theater, which leads to them losing more revenue to streaming, etc. Companies circling the drain are perfect targets for M&A and enshittification in the name of growth.
This is exactly what's happening to high-end theaters: Moviehouse and Eatery (a small chain of high-end theaters) selling to Cinépolis, Alamo Drafthouse selling to Private Equity, IPIC starting to raise red flags, and probably more.
The end result is always the same: endless ads appear where mostly-ad-free prerolls used to be, food and drink prices go up while quality goes down, service gets worse as staff are asked to do more for effectively-less pay, and previously-super comfortable lie-flat lounge seating gets more and more decrepit, all while increasing ticket prices!
All of this is even more insulting when the movies you pay to see are distributed by Netflix or Apple and are all but guaranteed to end up on their platforms in mere weeks, sometimes with better post-production.
We used to happily pay $100+ for a night out at the movies seven years ago. Our experiences have gotten costlier and more disappointing, however. Families deciding to drop $1500 on a 100" TV with an Atmos soundbar and relegating the theaters to the past makes total sense to me. It's sad --- theaters are a social experience and have given me so many great memories --- but it was all but an eventuality the minute streaming on Netflix went live.
They (well, Tim League and friends) sold to Altamont first [^0]. Altamont sold them to Sony last year. [^1]
And the enshittification is already happening. That one of the Drafthouse theaters IN THEIR HOME TURF (Slaughter, outside of Austin) unionized with the UAW and names Sony in their formation letter speaks volumes. [^2]
Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.
The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.
Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.
Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.
Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.
Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.
If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.
Eh, the current 10-hour seasons are the worst of both worlds.
Telling a story in a "tight 90" means making very deliberate choices about what to include, what not to, and how to make scenes do double duty. Having 23 episodes a season lets you slow down, spend time with the characters that's not all focused on the season plot, it lets you have B-stories in every episode. A 10-hour season doesn't get to do that, but it doesn't enforce the same discipline as 90-120 minutes.
Compare Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I greatly enjoy SNW, but the characters and their relationships with each other are in no way as substantial as in DS9 (or even TNG, which was much less character-focused than DS9).
For many of the families I know it's less about the quality of movies than the cost and effort of going to the movies.
Going to the movies costs an extra hour for the round-trip to the theater, ~$40 for adult tickets, ~$60 for the kids (2h babysitter or movie tickets), ~$20 for concessions. Whereas watching at home on our 75" TV with homemade popcorn costs a tiny fraction of that, even including electricity and popcorn kernels and the amortized cost of the TV.
As nice as it can be to see a good movie in a theater, it's typically not so much better than watching at home that it's worth an extra hour and more than a hundred dollars.
Depends where you are. In Berlin we have around 20 movie theaters nearby. It costs 14 euros per ticket and the nearest theater is in a walking distance.
Yes we watch a lot of movies home, but there are multiple festivals every year curating interesting content.
Disagree, I'd gladly go and watch movies in a cinema, the experience cannot be replicated at home, at least not unless you're very rich.. a 55" tv and a soundbar just doesn't do it.
For me, the price is killing it (80% of the reason) and bad movies (20%)... two tickets, drinks, popcorn/nachos/candy/something, and we're in the 50eur+ range. Then add the messy audiences, ads, trailer#1, more ads, trailer #2, another ad for some reason, and it's been 20 mintues of technially all ads for something that i paid money for. Then the movie is a total disappoint. I'm not into superheroes nor into pedro pascal, so most of the movies are out before i even buy the ticket and the rest are somehow... just 'bad'. Watching a bad movie at home is ok... you fall asleep, press stop, it doesn't matter... whatching a bad movie at an artsy film festival is also ok.. it was low budget, the ticket was 4 euros, no popcorn, had beer before you enter, so you can fall asleep in the cinema and hope not to snore. But 50 euros and all the ads for a bad movie is just too much.
I don't know about very rich — our spare room is set up as an office for WFH, along with a sofa bed, and I put a 100" projector screen on the wall opposite the sofa. A second hand projector, new (but not all that expensive) Denon surround sound system with speakers from an otherwise-junk 5.1 PC speaker set, and the experience is better than regular cinema. The best bit? I can turn the volume down as much as I want to.
I would argue not good enough but better. A home cinema depending on viewing distance can have superb visual qualify. Comfort is going to be impossible to beat to being at home. A lot of theater projectors top out at 4k just like home TVs and they’re not as bright. Also information density is lower (it’s 4k spread over a huge wall).
The only shortcoming now really is if you want to view with several people and socialize after, it may be difficult for someone to accommodate a large party with good viewing in their home without a theater setup. And of course audio, audio is where theaters can still stand out. It’s a pain in the ass for most homes to setup a good sound system, you really often do want a dedicated theater area which most aren’t going to have. A soundbar helps. You can Jerry rig some surround speakers into any space but it’s often a pain. So that’s really the last barrier: cheap low latency sound that can beat a theater.
For me comfort trumps the slightly degraded sound. Plus some baby crying or random person chatting during the movie can break that as well.
Not only the movie theater, Netflix killed social life. Well, streaming, feeds and their algorithms in general, but Netflix is very much the ones that really owned the narrative of what to do on a weekend night.
This is very anecdatal, certainly, but I've spoken/overheard a few neighborhood hospitality business owners that had to forclose or cut down due to the constant decline of people leaving the house to just meet in a bar or coffee shop. Only sport nights keeps them going, because sports online remain expensive in most places.
Maybe just my observation or my neck of the woods, but seems to fit the general sentiment of a reduced social environment on the streets in certain parts of the world.
I remember being amazed when the Michael Keaton’s Batman movie was released on VHS in the same year as the theatrical release. I had never seen a movie come out for home use that fast.
I don't know, that metaphors doesn't hold. I still like going to a local theaters (not multiplexes!) few times a year, the screen is much better than any TV, and the whole experience is overall nicer (beer on tap, etc.). TV can be good enough, but it can't replace larger screen. Few weeks ago I saw Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid for the first time and I'm glad I could see it in a cinema.
I was flabbergasted to find that there are 100" TVs available for sub-$1500. Only a few years ago, they were five figures, minimum. Combined with a decent audio set-up, you really can have 90% of the theater experience at home.
As you say, Walmart now sells 100" 4k TV's with HDR for less than the average persons tax return. They often have them in-stock in the store.
Meanwhile most theaters are 2k, lack dolby vision or other HDR, have worse audio (many can't do Dolby Atmos with proper height channels), and are filled with people using their cell phones through the entire film.
Movie theaters can compete by installing LED screens. My company has a movie screen sized LED screen and it looks so much better than modern digital projectors.
Great home theater sound systems with subwoofers are cheap and readily available now. They make the home movie-watching experience dramatically better than it used to be.
Home theater sound is often/usually better than the theater, if you actually put any effort in. Many theaters can't do proper Dolby Atmos with height channels. You can install a setup at home for ~$1500.
Adds complexity, cost, and clutter. Meanwhile, the living situations of many (most?) people forbid it; no big-kicking subwoofers in apartments and condos, and you're probably keeping the volume at polite levels.
And for all that, it's likely still not up to par with a theater, unless you geeked out on a dedicated theater room.
Same stone, different people trying to squeeze it. But every time we go around the loop it does seem to improve. What we have now with "home theater" is instant, on-demand, portable, and super cheap both compared to cable tv and movie theaters.
The only thing that hasn't seen the price drop is live sports but it also hasn't gotten worse.
I believe the Academy Awards and a few other things too also influence this. The rules to be eligible still very much favor legacy studios IIRC. But, with this that may change? Hard to say. I know that quite a few Netflix movies have had theatrical runs at random mom and pop theaters in Cali so they could meet eligibility requirements for the various awards.
This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production.
Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.
Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.
Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.
In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.
The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
Heard of one production needing to do a one day reshoot on something. Something that could easily have been done in LA. It was cheaper to fly everyone out to some European country for 3 days and do the pickups.
The business side of Hollywood has been imploding for the past few years. It just costs too much to film there vs other places. Tariffs will not change that. The tax incentives are gone and the must have on set is too high.
Not sure how netflix is going to digest that pill they just swallowed. 83 billion is a lot. Is is about 3x their total gross per year. I do not think they can raise prices too much with out shedding subscribers. WB has already taken out AOL, ATT (recovering), and Discovery. Netflix could be next.
The deal also spins out the linear TV into a different company. Can that company survive? Its going to be tough going. Havent looked but I would bet a good portion of the debt they took on to do the divestiture from AT&T is being pumped into that company.
You know that meme of Jack Sparrow riding a sinking ship to shore?
That's how I imagined WBD. David Zaslav gets to transition from the leader of a reality show slophouse to one of the biggest power players in Hollywood, and all be has to do is let the slophouse sink and declare himself captain of the next ship.
The value of the back catalog is still substantial for years to come. But you are right about the landscape changing dramatically for new productions.
Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money).
That's being disrupted by several things:
- LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that's where the money is. It's not necessarily where the money is being spent.
- Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows.
- AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it's probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long.
All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That's a critical distinction. There's a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don't really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value.
But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI.
Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn't strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they've had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn't enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I'm probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.
Even NYC is having a soundstage boom. It's not just about cutting costs, it's also about being free to go where the talent and resources are, instead of being chained to LA.
If we start with admitting some level of consolidation is inevitable, I don't see much of an alternative to what is happening. I would think a merger with another similar studio could be similar to KMart merging with Sears, two companies with the same downsides. While Netflix will be the biggest game in town for streaming, that landscape will still have plenty of competition if you compare it to say, telecom providers or ISPs.
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