Are Streaming Services No Longer Convenient ?

When Netflix went from mail order DVD’s to streaming television shows and movies, the world went crazy for it. Suddenly, you could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted with no commercials as long as you paid their subscription fee. Once it’s popularity took off, other services like it started coming out but there were still only about three or four.

However, we’re slowly getting to the point that there are far too many streaming services that it’s no longer convenient. When major networks began to realize people were going to start moving on from cable and only pay for these streaming services, they decided that instead of letting their content play on these services, they’d start streaming them themselves.

Now you may say, it’s only fair they do that considering it’s their property but for the consumer, it may end up being a problem. Soon, in order to watch all the shows you want, you’ll have to be subscribed to so many different streaming services that you’ll probably end up paying the same if more than you did for cable.

This all started with Disney. They were one of the first to decide they’d take the streaming of their content into their own hands. This made sense to extent because they didn’t really have much on the other streaming services yet and this would finally mean the elimination of the “Disney Vault”. But like usual, other companies were quick to catch on to what Disney was doing and followed suit.

Now studios like NBC and Warner Bros are coming out with their own streaming services as well. This unfortunately means that some of Netflix’s more popular content like The Office and F.R.I.E.N.D.S will no longer be available there.

But this doesn’t mean you just get rid of Netflix so that you can subscribe to something else because you also like Netflix’s original content too now. And not to mention Hulu’s and Amazon Prime’s. Also, you know Apple is going to get in on this. Oh and you like sports too? ESPN has a streaming service now too.

Suddenly, you could be paying for five or more streaming services for each channel that you used to just watch all together on cable. And if each of these services is $10 to $15 a month, eventually it all adds up to the price of cable. You’ll also still need to pay the cable company for it’s internet services so that you can actually stream these things.

So are these streaming services still more convenient? Or will the shear amount of different ones turn them into merely another form of cable?

~Mary Evers (@For_Evers_Young)