Read more.Service priced at £5pcm. A North American version is already live with half a million subs.
Read more.Service priced at £5pcm. A North American version is already live with half a million subs.
So pay for a license to fund series they can sell to America, allowing them to increase their bonuses and give them seleves a pat on the back.
Then we are allowed to pay a monthly subscription to get the content / service we find for others? Great
When I see a single British production to the standard of True Detective, Game Of Thrones, Narcos,
Altered Carbon, Breaking Bad..etc,etc Then I might consider it.
But not while its stuffed full of parochial British period costume drama crap.
Iota (27-02-2019)
Pleiades (28-02-2019)
The concept of an online streaming service, when Netflix was in charge and pretty much the only operator, was a fantastic idea, it offered something we hadn't really seen before, from the comfort of your sofa, with minimal effort, and was incredibly inexpensive when compared to the likes of Sky TV. Now, however, we've got multiple services, in the form of Netflix, Amazon Prime, NowTV and things like Disney, Apple, and Google Play all set to kick up their own store in the very near future, what was once a great idea now becomes much less so.
What Netflix offered was a genuine alternative to piracy, offering the convenience of whatever you fancy for relatively little money, but with all of these content providers now wanting a share of the pie, instead of just being happy to sell their content to one, two, or possibly even three big streaming services, we're now going to end up either missing out, spending a lot of money to pay for all of the streaming services or..
Go back to piracy.
Greed is what ruins things, not anything else, just sheer greed from companies wanting more and more and more.
Also, as a side note, how on Earth can the BBC possibly justify trying to charge £5 a month for a streaming service that will run alongside the BBC iPlayer, showing content that we've already paid for, when all it's going to do is offer an archive and boxsets for longer than the iPlayer does.
This, to me, is madness. Don't want it. Want nothing to do with it. I hope it fails, quickly.
Tabbykatze (27-02-2019),watercooled (27-02-2019)
If it has BBC content then it'll probably require a TV license, so count me out!
Everyone who pays for a TV license better get this for free or its nothing short of disgusting.
If one of my employees was running their own business on my dime then rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish would hit the fan and, as far as I see, the BBC are the peoples employees!
Yes, all we need is yet ANOTHER streaming provider carving up the market trying to muscle in on the action. It wouldn't be such an issue if there weren't so many greedy exclusivity deals like you say. I agree about the convenience thing too, it's getting ridiculous. As much as I'm for smaller companies entering the market to avoid monopolistic practices, this is entirely the wrong way to go about it and just anti-consumer. Making content available through multiple other providers e.g. through cross-licensing deals like we've had for years with live TV packages would make too much sense, apparently.
And yeah, past a point, I expect many people are going to scoff at the idea of paying 10 subscription fees for what started out as one, and turn to piracy for convenience, while the content providers bury their heads in the sand and whine about lost revenue... Maybe if they weren't so greedy and co-operated to share content across platforms? Even subscribing to two platforms for a wider variety of content isn't such a big deal IMO given current pricing, but beyond that it starts getting silly both in terms of cost (especially when lots of the content is duplicated) and convenience as you need multiple apps or even devices because of childish spats between companies meaning you can't use the app from company X on the streaming stick from company Y.
IIRC there was a bit of a spat between Microsoft and BBC because MS wanted to put iPlayer behind a paywall (XBL Gold) and the BBC insisted it must be available freely because the content had already been paid for, or something along those lines. Seems a tad hypocritical now.
On the subject of the content, it would be nice to see some good existing BBC content available somewhere for longer than a few days on iPlayer then gone seemingly forever, to the point that there's literally no legitimate way of watching it, not even DVD releases. But that's another matter to the point of asking for yet more money for another 'exclusive' streaming service.
Edit: I even 'purchased' some content on the BBC store when that was a thing, but that went kaput after not long at all. At least I got a refund...
aidanjt (28-02-2019)
This right here.
So essentially everyone who pays a license fee should be getting free access to the older content they've already funded by virtue of paying the license fee? I could understand if the new content is funded by subscriptions only, otherwise again, that's being paid for by license fees and should be provided to fee payers as well as subscribers in other countries.permanent, comprehensive home where anyone in Britain can get all of our library content - both the ITV and BBC library - in one place and they can watch it anytime, anywhere
Monetise other countries using subscriptions, but not license fee payers.
Your licence fee does not currently entitle you to on-demand access to their back-catalog or archives, any more than the licence fee is the BBC's only source of income, so isn't entirely responsible for funding BBC content.
It seems pretty simple to me. Those that think this service isn't worth £x/month aren't obliged to subscribe. So don't.
Last edited by Saracen999; 28-02-2019 at 11:14 AM. Reason: Typo
cheesemp (28-02-2019)
Basically its a way for the BBC to circumvent no large increase in the license tax.
You pay the £150.50 for the yearly license tax and while your at it heres a bonus offer to watch all old stuff and exclusive new offerings for only £5.00 a month.
The old BBC charter was to "Inform, Educate and Entertain". With the plethora of "Entertainment" now available on multiple channels on multiple platforms perhaps its time that the BBC just "Informs and Educates" and does away with expensive costume dramas rubbish such as Eastenders and reality crap such as Strictly and run as a subscription service only.
The problem with that is the old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" problem. Or putting it another way, one man's rubbish is another man's income. Eastenders and Strictly might be "crap" to you, but they are extremely popular shows, and at least as far as Strictly is concerned, quite a moneyí ½í¸§-spinner, too.
And there's part of the issue. The BBC gets it's funds in large part from licences, sure, but it also has extensive licensing operations bring in revenue ftom overseas markets and a commercial arm selling some back content.
If they don't make that back content in the first place, they won't have those revenue streams and the licence fee would have to go up. Just because you (and I) think a given program is crap doesn't mean it's not hugely popular with others, or profitable. As, I'm given to understand, are those large-scale costume dramas that I also don't like. And I'd leave the room if Esstendets came kn and I couldn't change channel. In my view, it's drivel .... but very popular drivel.
If I had my way, the first thing to be cut would be football. Which would intensely annoy football fans, including my brothers. But the BBC's remit is also to cater for all tastes, whether some think it crap or not, especially if it's commercially successful crap.
I agree broadly with both the above comments, but also factor in that linear tv (the new phrase) income is declining rapidly they would have to have an inflation busting licence fee rise, something that with current legislation is very difficult. Back in the days when the BBC was formed it was a great idea to give most people a way to decent ad free content. But that's not how it works now and the BBC has to and must evolve or it will wither. Now if the bbc disappears, the amount of content you can watch would decline - possibly hugely and that is a big issue. The licence fee has been around for years, to scrap it would also cause massive issues because the price to watch tv would massively rise - ie. you would receive NO free to air content at all unless sustained by ad income - and it would be like the US for example where there is an ad break every 3-4 mins unless you pay for that to go away
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Saracen999 (28-02-2019)
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