I think people forgot how bad it was. It was much more fragmented before but instead of services it was fragmented by time. Sure you have access to Seinfeld, but you can watch one or two Seinfelds a night at 8pm and 11pm.

I also remember base cable without any movies was around $60 or something and with some movie channels is >$100. And that's not inflation adjusted. You can easily get 3 or 4 of the top services for $100 today.

Finally claiming there are more ads on these services is a joke. There was ~20m for every 30m of programming, meaning 1/3 of the time you're watching commercials. And not just any commercials, the same commercials over and over. There was even a case of shows being sped up on cable to show more commercials.

I get it, everyone wants everything seamlessly and for next to nothing, but claiming that 90s cable was even comparable is absurd.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-networks-spee...

Not that it is particularly relevant to agentic coding but how can anyone truly argue streaming costs more? Average cable packages were exceeding 125-150 USD a month (in 2000 dollars). Under no circumstances would I be sympathetic to the argument that streaming costs more.

You can get all 7 of the major streaming subs for less without even shopping out deals. That is 100s of times the volume and quality of content that was delivered on cable for far less. It is so much content realistically that no one I have ever met has subscribed to all of them at once.

The argument really is empty. The fragmentized experience is annoying, but it isn't more expensive...And it DEFINITELY has fewer ads.

You can't seriously claim points 2) and 3) if you've ever actually paid for and watched cable

Its just amazing how people on HN can say the most absurd things with total conviction. No wonder LLMs do the same, it's in the training data.

I literally see no ads on my streaming subscription for close to a tenth of the price of cable.