From my perspective everyone, especially the service providers, are completely missing the problem. Its portability between platforms and user friction.

In the era of VHS-DVD-BluRay one could buy movies, and they play in any player. When I get a new player, it just works.

Now, we need to juggle accounts, billing, subscriptions, and player authorizations. Having a FireTV and Roku plugged into each TV is an absolute pain in the ass.

What needs to happen is the establishment of a standard protocol for providing content and authorization. Each layer of the problem needs to be abstracted and compartmentalized. The Apple App world destroyed the server-client relationship.

First there needs to be a standard protocol for a service provider to deliver content after receiving authorization.

Next there needs to be a standard aggregation protocol. This is the step everyone misses. The best analogy I can think of is the Google Reader to Feedly-Innoreader relationship. I could set up Google Reader with my config, and then sign into ANY other compatible front end that supported Google Reader and use their product without setting it up from scratch. I want a place that combines MoviesAnywhere with billing management. One place to go to subscribe and cancel subscriptions. This place might just be an API with no client front end, the actual interfacing with the service could be handed off to the clients. People might reply Roku or Apple, but they still miss the point that if I set up a Roku, my config isnt portable to Fire or Apple or Google. I can access my same Gmail and Amazon account from Firefox and Chrome without rebuilding my profiles and losing my config. HTTP/HTML is what makes the Web Server/Web Browser relationship so beautiful, anyone can implement it.

Finally there needs to be an open way for anyone to write a client that connects to the aggregation services. Consumers should be able to have a Roku in one room and a FireTV in another, and an LG in another.

As long as each client vendor tries to suck people into their ecosystem, and as long as each service provider wants to handle subscriptions and billing themselves (or the client apps trying to take it over so Amazon/Apple/Roku manage my billing) people will continue to find the friction and lack of portability to be too big a pain in the ass. It sucks to have to commit to being an Apple or Google or Amazon or Roku house. It sucks that each service provider has to write a client side app for Apple, Google, Amazon, and Roku and that upstart services sometimes can only support some of them.

As long as Layers 1-3 are combined into 2 frankenlayers, consumers will continue to grow more frustrated as more services pop up, and become more trapped in ecosystems.

Layer 1: Video Provider - CBS, Netflix, Disney

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - ???

Layer 3: Media Player - anything the consumer wants, never trapped

Piracy Solves this problem.

Layer 1: Video Provider - Usenet, Torrents

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - Plex, Emby, DLNA, media servers

Layer 3: Media Player - Kodi, or any competitor.

Just like how I can sign into the same gmail account from any client, I pray for the day I can walk up to a media center, sign in, and load my lifelong profile, without needing the media player to be proprietary-compatible with each and every service provider, and without needing to sign into 20 services to see what's playing. Going to a friend's house and only seeing what they are signed into is infinitely more inconvenient that carrying a DVD to their house. And these companies wonder why password sharing is such a problem? It's cuz if I want to watch my shows I have to sign into my account on their device under their Amazon or Roku profile, and now that login is cached. At least Cable/sattelite worked in every room of a house, you add an HBO subscription and boom every box is instantly updated.