TV/Movies Megathread

[garbon]

2 day shipping is negated when they won't leave tge packages and you have to go to the UPS hub.

I have them shipped to work.

[The Minsky Moment]

The stock is down 17% this year and drops every time there is a whiff of further negative profits.  Investors are wising up and realizing Amazon is not the place to park their money if none of these bug ideas turn into profit.  If they have a lackluster holiday season earnings-wise I think they are going to be in a world of hurt.  Over three years they have more than doubled revenue while seeing their EPS drop by almost 80%.  They currently sit at a $0.98/share loss on the year, meaning they need to double their holiday performance from last year just to break even.

Bezos doesn't really care about short run stock price movements.  If he did the company would still be a minnow.  Amazon isn't some hypothetical venture concept, they are profitable by whatever measure you choose.  And on what is probably the most important measure - free cash flow from operations - they pretty consistently generate over 2 billion/year.  That leaves some room for bug ideas.

[Ideologue]

2 day shipping is negated when they won't leave tge packages and you have to go to the UPS hub.

I have them shipped to work.

I think I could do this, but I work far from parking and behind a keycode. I dunno.

[Syt]

Wherever Netflix lands, Amazon Prime is sure to follow. 

I had a look at their collection.

First reaction: 2339 movies, 934 seasons of series? Yay!

Second reaction: ok, for 18+ movies and series I need to give a German passport ID? Fair enough for me, but what about Austrians in Austria (Austria, btw, is more relaxed about those things - Netflix, for example, shows movies/series that might be cut on their German offering uncut in Austria).

Third reaction: so how do I switch to original language for movies/TV shows? *Googles* Oh. I should search for entries with the tag "OV" for original version. Result: 41 movies, 186 seasons of series. Meh.

Gonna cancel my trial month - not worth it.

At least Netflix, despite significantly smaller selection, offers everything in dual audio by default, and they let you pick a preferred language so that you don't have to fiddle with it every time.

[Habbaku]

2 day shipping is negated when they won't leave tge packages and you have to go to the UPS hub.

Is that based on the local office's policy or something?  My UPS deliveries are always left on my doorstep.

[celedhring]

Wherever Netflix lands, Amazon Prime is sure to follow. 

I had a look at their collection.

First reaction: 2339 movies, 934 seasons of series? Yay!

Second reaction: ok, for 18+ movies and series I need to give a German passport ID? Fair enough for me, but what about Austrians in Austria (Austria, btw, is more relaxed about those things - Netflix, for example, shows movies/series that might be cut on their German offering uncut in Austria).

Third reaction: so how do I switch to original language for movies/TV shows? *Googles* Oh. I should search for entries with the tag "OV" for original version. Result: 41 movies, 186 seasons of series. Meh.

Gonna cancel my trial month - not worth it.

At least Netflix, despite significantly smaller selection, offers everything in dual audio by default, and they let you pick a preferred language so that you don't have to fiddle with it every time.

Distribution rights for European territories are a nightmare; there's a bunch of legacy deals from the times when people didn't take into account digital distribution, and lots of middlemen. It wouldn't surprise me one bit that in a lot of instances the original language track rights and the dubbed track rights are controlled by different companies.

[Syt]

Might very well be, and I agree that it's nice to have a common market for goods and services within the EU, but once you go online all kinds of customs barriers are back and in full force and we're back to the 1980s.

OTOH, disks almost always include original and dubbed track. I can't recall the last time I saw a disk that didn't offer that (when they were new it might occasionally happen, but it was rare even then).

And other streaming portals offer dual audio for all their titles - esp. Netflix and Sky Snap. It feels Amazon opening their streaming for Austria feels like an afterthought (and they cooperate with Lovefilm here, as well): As said, they require an 18+ verification for certain movies/series, like Walking Dead or Spartacus in English version. This is usually handled different in Austria, and Austrians couldn't even fulfill it on Amazon, because it requires a German ID card or passport.

[lustindarkness]

https://tv.yahoo.com/news/walking-deads-daryl-prepare-yourself-171100392.html

I wonder who they will kill off. 

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Bezos doesn't really care about short run stock price movements.  If he did the company would still be a minnow.  Amazon isn't some hypothetical venture concept, they are profitable by whatever measure you choose.  And on what is probably the most important measure - free cash flow from operations - they pretty consistently generate over 2 billion/year.  That leaves some room for bug ideas.

Well, it was GF asserting that Bezos cares about the stock price.  That said, they are going to have trouble funding big ideas if they need to cut the R&D budget to cover corporate losses.  Plus, they are running so lean already that much of the talent they need to execute those big ideas is not interested in working for them anymore because they get better perks and working environments from other companies.

[11B4V]

2 day shipping is negated when they won't leave tge packages and you have to go to the UPS hub.

Is that based on the local office's policy or something?  My UPS deliveries are always left on my doorstep.

Same here.

I use Az Prime a lot. Not a problem.

What did you do to piss your UPS guy off, Ide???????

[celedhring]

Might very well be, and I agree that it's nice to have a common market for goods and services within the EU, but once you go online all kinds of customs barriers are back and in full force and we're back to the 1980s.

OTOH, disks almost always include original and dubbed track. I can't recall the last time I saw a disk that didn't offer that (when they were new it might occasionally happen, but it was rare even then).

Yeah, but that was already in the contract. What's happening - and it's something that will eventually get better the more we are into the digital age - is that a lot of rights contracts weren't written with digital in mind. So, for example, there's a deal for providing dual language soundtracks for a DVD or TV broadcast, but there isn't a deal for doing the same through a streaming portal. So companies like Amazon have to get separate deals with dozens of parties to stuff their library. It will get better with time.

In practice we don't have a common market for cultural goods; they are so tied to language that we still operate as before the 1990s.

[MadImmortalMan]

What did you do to piss your UPS guy off, Ide???????

Some of them are just jerks. On two different occasions I saw the UPS driver going up my street with the door tags already made out and stuck across the dashboard. She was just running to the doors and sticking them on without even knocking or pulling packages out of the truck.

That hasn't happened in a while though. I think it's a different driver now. The last time I got a package it was a dude.

[garbon]

2 day shipping is negated when they won't leave tge packages and you have to go to the UPS hub.

Is that based on the local office's policy or something?  My UPS deliveries are always left on my doorstep.

I think it is an option where I live (they put it in our lobby) but I think that would just be an opportunity for me to have my package stolen.

[Malthus]

UPS is left on my doorstep, too. Seems to work so far - haven't lost a package yet.

[Syt]

For larger packages, the postal service has started installing large lockboxes in apartment buildings - when there's something too big for the mailbox, they'll stuff it in there and drop the key in your mailbox. And there's an increasing amount of self-service pick ups from the post offices.

Additionally, the Austrian mail starts offering the option to reroute a package (within limits - can't send it to a town over) that's in delivery if you're not at the designated address that day.