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- Hacker News
- Bring back DVD rentals!
In the US, you don't even need to pay a licensing fee when you buy a DVD with intent to rent it out to people (this is not the case in the UK), thanks to the "First-sale doctrine" - Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus (1908).
by mbeavitt - Eh, I miss video rental stores in the US, but I don't agree that they would solve this problem. I worked for a large chain of them as a teen, and know first-hand that people were spending just as much on rentals as they do with subscription services, especially when you add in game rentals and late fees.
More importantly, it does not solve the problem of ownership. We don't own a rented disc just as much as we don't own a DRM-controlled digital purchase that can only be accessed via the subscription portal it was purchased on.
by 0xEF - *UHD BluRay rentals but yes, hard agree. Also a great place to socialize and talk about which movie to rent traditionally.by musha68k
- I don't know about in the US, but I live in a fairly small city in Canada and we have DVD rentals. I go to the video store almost every week, and it was on the papers that a second one (which will also rent out VHS!) is opening.
The Library does DVD rentals too, I check it out every couple of months.
It's even better in Toronto, Bay Street Video is an institution.
by footy - I like occasionally watching movies. I will rarely watch a movie twice. Streaming would be the best option for me, but I will not subscribe to more than one service. Get your shit together. Do cross licensing. Split production from distribution. Until then I will not be paying for any streaming service.
- Why would streaming be the best option for you to watch a movie once? You have long been able to rent movies with just a few clicks from many sellers. Maybe Netflix is the only one where you have to subscribe for a month to watch a movie.by lotsofpulp
- Price increases are tolerated if the value increases. Even rent-seeking is tolerated if the value is relatively stable. But what we have here is value proposition decreasing from fragmentation and shallow content and increasingly intrusive targeted ads while the prices keep going up.
We traded one annoying cable company for dozens.
by randusername - Yes the price keeps going up, but every purchase is 100% optional. Please explain to me the reason why anyone needs any of these.
What kind of person has all of these subscriptions? If you have YouTube TV and Spotify that is $22.
- Context matters, because absent it folks will look at these increases and shrug it off as inflation (or let companies shrug it off with that excuse).
To truly contextualize it, we need to understand the total value (library sizes, removed/lost media, household/account sharing costs) relative to its price, and relative to background inflation. We need to understand relative to costs (labor, infrastructure, royalties), to profits, and how industry consolidation has or has not affected these data points.
From my own understanding of the wider context, there’s a significant attribution of costs to naked greed and profit extraction rather than overall value. With job displacement due to AI (despite union contracts), the tearing down of series or films due to CEO preference (looking at you, Zaslav), the overlap of libraries (Hulu and Disney are increasingly the same thing; Hulu/Disney/Peacock are the same thing as Hulu alone was just seven years ago), the punitive measures against account sharing, and with the forcing of advertisements onto previously ad-free platforms or pricing tiers, the overall cost relative to societal value has decreased while value to executives and shareholders has increased, and that’s the real takeaway.
by stego-tech - I find that piracy is the only sane option any moreby monomial
- spot on
- My wife had a free trial of Apple TV and we found we still preferred to use Jellyfin because it was a better experienceby tripleee
- I pay for Prime and still prefer to torrent Amazon shows. The experience is just better.
- Any price comparison over time should include inflation.
Otherwise this is akin to comparing speed of 2 objects in a relativistic setting without stating the frame of reference.
Side note: I don't know why, but the existence of a "cite this" section on this page made me sad.
- I think the point is that inflation numbers are bs. The official number from 2021 to today is 23%. But we didn't see prices only 23%. A restaurant mean didn't go from $20 to $25. It easily went up 50% or more.
Inflation isn't some force of nature that needs to be accounted for like the curvature of the earth.
by bko - Inflation isn't accurate variable because salaries of many people are lagging behind inflation.by Pavilion2095
- This IS inflation.
That's like saying your snow report for skiing should be adjusted for weather.
by CPLX - Agreed, $95.91 a month in 2021-03 is $120.91 in July 2026 dollars. The current cost is $154.41, so it grew $33.50 a month after accounting for inflation.
I am probably an outlier but I don't honestly know how much someone can watch on theses services to be always subscribed, I subscribe to watch something and unsubscribe after a month or two because that's when I'm well and done. My husband had some free three months of Disney+ and I don't think either of us watched a single thing on there in that three months. Tubi has better content than Disney+.
by astura - This site is showing you inflation!
The relevant comparison would be your individual wages.
by jbs789 - $702 more is relative and tells nothing without the basis. It's 61% increase in 5 years.by ivanjermakov
- So in real terms it's up 26%. Which of course is to be expected, people have a set amount they are willing to spend on entertainment, in the past it was cable -- in 2015 the average US cable TV subscription was about $100, that's about $140 today in real terms, or $1700 a year.
Seems that streamers have a long way to go before they extract all that money.
by iso1631 - The title kind of buries important details about the distribution of these costs and their changes.
For example, Apple TV+ went from $4.99 per month to $14.99 per month, a +200% change, while YouTube Premium went from $11.99 to $15.99, a +33% change.
So services like Apple TV+ are skewing this increase a lot while services like YouTube Premium have remained relatively low. Similarly, Apple TV+ starting at $4.99 per month was clearly a very low price to start (which can probably be mostly attributed to the service's lack of content at that point). It's now at a "normal" price.
Just the same, saying something like something "costs $702/year more" without a point of reference is bad data presentation. The 2021 cost for all of these services was $1,150.92, for a +61% change. I'm not saying that's not substantial, but this kind of information is necessary for these figures to not just be rage bait.
And, of course, if you're simultaneously paying for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Peacock, YouTube Premium, and Spotify every month, then you're either (a) really into consuming this kind of content and are a "premium subscriber" in the sense that these costs ought to be justified or (b) very bad with managing your time and finances. I suspect normal users subscribe to one or two of these at a time and are probably willing to switch around as prices change, content gets released/pulled, etc. A better analysis would try to do some investigation into this dynamic, since it will probably reveal that people are able to navigate dynamic service subscriptions well enough that they aren't actually experiencing a straight-up +61% increase in costs since 2021.
All of this is to say that this "analysis" barely even qualifies as a valid first-pass at understanding this kind of data. It's literally something that Claude probably churned out in 20 minutes. Everyone can be dissatisfied with the value they get from these streaming services, but this kind of post only helps to muddy the conversation.
by nater5000 - Apple TV and YT Premium are also bundled with other Apple/Google products and the marginal cost maybe be nothing or deeply discounted.by jeffbee
- Same happened to Disney Plus. The newer players skewed it a lotby chaostheory
- I think the point is that we are no longer in the world of Netflix in 2015, where all shows are available.
Even if you watch « only » 5 shows, if they are on five different services then that means 5 subscriptions.
Or you spend time planning and organizing subscriptions.
.. or you just download them.
by ArnoVW - > And, of course, if you're simultaneously paying for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Peacock, YouTube Premium, and Spotify every month, then you're either (a) really into consuming this kind of content and are a "premium subscriber" in the sense that these costs ought to be justified or (b) very bad with managing your time and finances. I suspect normal users subscribe to one or two of these at a time and are probably willing to switch around as prices change, content gets released/pulled, etc.
Or you're the type of person that watches one or two shows on each of these services that in the days of yesteryear would have all been on Netflix, but since every company that owns a production studio decided to launch their own streaming service now means you need 25 subscriptions to keep up with the handful of decent shows with reasonable production budgets so you aren't stuck otherwise just consuming slop. Given the consolidation in industry, it's even more insult to injury as there's now only a handful of companies that collectively have /multiple/ streaming services per company each with a different fee because our current timeline is one of absolutely egregious extractive behavior and rent-seeking with no compensating controls.
by tristor - Or c) family bundled consumption. Mom likes netflix, dad needs live tv, kids are into youtube, and everyone likes hbo.
Its hard to cancel a subscription when you know it brings joy to an infirmed parent. Youre effectively locked into paying whatever, like $350/mo for xfinity tv simply because thats the only UI they can handle on an old remote.
by tmpz22 - There’s also c) you just aren’t price sensitive to the changes and find it overall rather immaterial d) can recall how expensive and crappy cable/satellite tv was, still see this as a good deal e) have many people in your household with different media preferences and cost per capita is pretty low
Also you should consider the base period timing is when many of the big movers were in a rollout of their application and thus the price was either artificially low and/or represented a severely limited offering compared to their current offering.
by conductr - > All of this is to say that this "analysis" barely even qualifies as a valid first-pass at understanding this kind of data.
Another example: Disney+ and Hulu are available bundled together for $19.99 a month, something the site's own sources state:
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/23/disney-plus-price-incre...
But because it's just looking at the data in the most literal way possible it doesn't factor that in and instead says buying Disney+ and Hulu Premium would be $18.99 each.
by afavour - The title means exactly what it says and the expanded details are nearly as close to the top of the article and as clearly presented as possible. Why does every article on HN need to find some excuse to make a complaint about the title?by xboxnolifes