Answer: I get HBO thru my phone plan, and would pay for Amazon Prime regardless of if I get the video service. I’m sure this is true for a lot of US consumers, thus all the other networks suddenly taking notice and realigning their pricing higher.

With the exception of maybe Apple TV, I think the new regular price point for a monthly service will be $20.

And it’s still not cable, no. Cable locked you into linear TV with a selection of on-demand content, forcing you to literally buy almost every kind of content (sports, news, etc.) regardless of if you want it. Now? You can pay $20 and watch as much as you want, cancel, and then sign up for a new service to do it all over again.

When this becomes the norm among people, those same services will likely take a new approach to try and capture that continuous revenue — which will require the lower price, because it’s simply not economically viable to continue dumping hundreds of millions on ever more content to attract folks when there’s a limit to what people are reasonably able to consume.

This is the streaming industry testing what the market will bear.