As an old movie kind of guy: I don't get why nobody wants me to have a big economical catalogue of all the movies. If you want to watch stuff from before about 1990 your best bet is pirating it off Youtube, oddly. Or hoping it's part of the 20th Century Fox that ended up on Disney+.
The most generous film studio is .. Mosfilm. I suppose it's fitting that the Communist movies are available for free.
(Criterion looks promising but is a long way from all movies and US/CA only)
That's the paradox: everybody wants to build and operate that since it's obvious everyone would subscribe to such a service, it'd be a cash cow, a golden goose, etc. But nobody wants to share their slice of the copyright and licensing pie with anybody else for revenue reasons, brand reasons, whatever, so we're slowly moving back toward the cable model with 200 subscriptions and nothing to watch. Torrents will be back, big time, since they actually provide the service everybody wants.
This is essentially the ridiculous copyright laws backfiring.
The entertainment market is stagnating (if not quantity, at least quality-wise) because the copyright laws stiffle innovation instead of fostering it. Early-comers (Hollywood & co) are comfortably sitting on their stash of content, content with rehashing the same franchises. New-comers are forced to low-risk - low-quality content, sprinkled with anything they can get their hands on from other sources.
What part of that is about "ridiculous copyright laws backfiring", though?
It seems like it's copyright laws working as intended. (I may not love that I have to pay to access a 25 year old movie legally, but it hardly feels objectively unfair or ridiculous that I have to do that.)
The unfairness comes from the fact that society is paying to enforce those copyrights via expenses on judges, lawyers, police etc, but society is not getting a commensurate return on investment.
The purpose of copyright is to incentivize creativity, but society does not need to pay for 180 years of monopoly protection to incentivize creativity.
I'm quite sure that the tax receipts from the sale, rental, and performance of the copyrighted material more than adequately covers the portion of those costs borne by society. (In fact, that's probably a fair part of the reason that government is willing to support lengthy and obstructive copyright protections: because it adds government revenue far in excess of the cost.)
I don’t know how one would tease that out of any tax receipt date, compared to economic loss due to suboptimal allocation of society’s resources.
Suppose copyright law was 15 years instead of 100 years or whatever. Society still gets the tax receipts and benefits from creation of the media, but the shareholders who own the media do not get to collect a price premium from the extra 85 years. That money can now be spent by consumers elsewhere as opposed to supporting media owners who already had sufficient incentive to create the media.
The question at the end of the day is, does a 100 year copyright term incentivize the creation of media with so much utility compared to copyright term of 15 years such that it makes sense for society to transfer extra resources to the media owners for an additional 85 years? Amongst other externalities to consider.
The real question is why do people feel like they deserve to have access to absolutely everything? The home entertainment landscape has continually moved towards more options, better technology, and more access, and always at a cheaper rate per hour of programming than before. Of course, if you want to maintain access to absolutely everything, then your cost is always going to go up, because the pool of absolutely everything continues to get larger and larger, not just from new content, but from the inclusion of old content that wasn't available in any form before. There is a disconnect that comes from the fact that people can't/don't actually watch that much.
The only thing keeping cable alive today is live sports, but that eventually will be folded into existing streaming services or they will have their own services. Which brings me to my next point. There will very likely be 200 subscription services (if there aren't already), but the more there are, the more niche and specialized they will be. But importantly, you will be able to choose what you want (a la carte). This is a far cry from cable because cable has never been a la carte. They've always required you to purchase at least a basic package with 30-50 + channels, and each channel getting a couple bucks each month. The consumer's total cost is at least $50 / mo, probably more
Compare that to one of the typical big streamers which are $10 - $15 per month. Netflix, Max, Hulu, Disney - each of these alone has more content than you could ever watch. As long as they are all around to stay in competition, then prices will remain low. The absolute worst thing that could happen for consumers is for streamers to combine and form a conglomerate. Now that would be like cable - they'd have a monopoly and they'd end up charging you more overall than you were paying before, and then singling out "premium" content for even more money.
If you feel like you have to subscribe to all of them, that is simply a marker of their success in marketing to you. There is enough content (good content that you WILL enjoy) on any one of them. Or hell - even on Youtube which you can watch for free, there will be enough content to keep you from getting bored.
I don't know if I'd use words like 'feel like they deserve'. I'd rather use 'feel like it isn't possible because somebody said so'. It evidently is possible technically and people (IMHO correctly) are fed up with studios not being able politically to work together to provide a good service - IOW they vote with their wallets.
From another old movie kind of guy: it's full of beautiful 1080p Bluray x265 torrents out there. Teams like VXT or RARBG release more old movies than one can watch.
I host a weekly 80s/90s obscure movie night (mostly Hong Kong action Z-movies, Godfrey Ho and the like) and RARBG has come in surprisingly clutch. If the movie got a HK theatrical release it's the first place I look. Japanese stuff too.
Other surprising sources: Tubi which often has better quality video processing for the stuff where the VHS/DVD master is all that exists (protip: yt-dlp works), and Internet Archive where people upload all kinds of stuff, including Blu-Ray rips.
A ton of stuff is also on YouTube but it's often a low-quality master and/or edited for content so it's usually a last resort.
Mubi (https://mubi.com/) is nice. You don’t get a huge catalogue but they cycle it very regularly with varying thematic focus and showcase a mix of old movies and new art releases. It feels a bit like a cinema club. I recommend.
Sadly people focus as definitely shifted toward serial shows rather than films so movie streaming is not really an interesting market to address. I’m really confused by that because the feeling I get from 90% of the show I try to watch and always fail to finish is that there is a good movie hiding in the indulgent editing. Even prestige TV shows are full of padding.
Mubi's catalogue is tiny, and I find their marketing and interface (which strongly imply all the shows that have ever been been on the platform are currently on the platform, misleading). Criterion Channel (https://www.criterionchannel.com/) is a similar art film / critically acclaimed film network, which an enormously larger and more diverse catalogue. Officially it's only available in the US but if you sign up through a VPN it works everywhere.
I’ve been subscribed to Criterion since the beginning and it’s the only service I’ve kept without cancelling, or desiring to cancel, since. If the catalog is up your alley, highly recommend.
That said, I also buy their Blu-Rays during the sales, so I might just be a fanboy.
The most generous film studio is .. Mosfilm. I suppose it's fitting that the Communist movies are available for free.
(Criterion looks promising but is a long way from all movies and US/CA only)