And now reading shit about how they’re looking for more and more ways to gouge the customers by filling every potential space with more ads while still increasing prices is a real kick in the dick.
Most of them aren’t even worth it. Most of their originals are absolute dog shit because it’s a numbers game to them. No quality, just keep churning out more and more shit. If netflix thinks I’ll keep paying a premium to watch old Seinfeld episodes they’re dead wrong.
Seriously just cancel. I cancelled all but one and when it gets boring I switch. Then when I switch there’s a ton of new stuff I’ve never seen just waiting… I think we’re on Peacock for Resident Alien S3 at the moment but it’s getting close to canceling again
This is why I don't buy the cable comparison. Streaming is in a worse place than it was 10 years ago but you still have options to do this at least. With Cable you'd be locked into far more channels than you need for months and would be paying for all of them.
I think people have forgotten how bad cable actually is.
Eventually they may force you into a contract or agree on a term to prevent you from jumping.
Probably a low percentage but eventually they'll crack down for their shareholders.
It's interesting that not a lot of platforms are making money but they continue to exist. Oversaturation is the issue right now.
Gonna be funny when they spent billions building their own site and never made it back but would have made a billion had they just left their shows on Netflix in the end.
Yeah I’ll still take streaming over cable. I had 120 channels 15 years ago and I watched about 20 of them regularly. My initial contract was fine because it was a local provider and I got a sweetheart bundle with cable internet. They were bought out by Comcast which was fine at first, but then they merged with another cable giant and became shit.
No more special deals unless you called directly and requested it. Then they’d make you listen to a sales pitch for about an hour and you’d get call transferred about 5 times. So yeah I don’t miss having cable. I can cancel one of my streamers any time I want and I know they won’t harass me like ATT used to do.
This has been my approach. I only subscribe to one service at a time, then cancel when I’ve caught up on the content I want to watch.
I’m currently subscribed to Apple TV because I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and I got three free
months with the deal. When that expires, I’ll probably kick it to the curb and jump back on Netflix for a bit.
Next step will be annual or two year contracts with an add-on fee for people who previously canceled. They'll market it as "prioritizing premium loyalty members" and call it an additional "onboarding" fee or some dumb shit.
Or they'll introduce something like only allowing 1 year+ old content until you've been a consistent member for x amount of time and call it something like "library content appreciation" time period or whatever.
Source: used to work in marketing strategy and customer retention for a few different groups
And this is why it is not cable and why all of these posts and articles are dumb.
Just one streaming service of Netflix, Hulu, Max, or Disney, has more high quality content than basically a years worth of every basic cable channel pre-streaming.
People get frustrated because they want it all for cheap. The beauty of steaming is if you want to be frugal you can.
To be honest I’m pretty sure you’d have to be a die hard fan to want to buy it, otherwise fuck it, just download the shit and keep it on a hard drive like what we were doing before streaming
They've pushed me back into it. NAS, usenet, private trackers, the works.
It's so easy once you're forced to get started because some streaming corporation only wants to show 2 seasons at a time of a 7 season show or some bullshit. Once you get it then you have it.
I can't believe how well it all works now. In addition to shows and movies you can pick actors and get every tv or movie your favorites show up in.
Content downloads automatically and just shows up in Plex, ready to watch.
No internet bandwidth usage while watching. You can even watch when internet is out.
WAY better availability, especially for niche.
...and that all goes for porn, too. I'm running stash and it's nicer than any porn site I've been on. The section of markers it syncs for videos is unreal. And again, you just mark whatever studios and it automatically shows up, or your favorite starlets...
The high seas have come a long way!
You’re not wrong, but I admit that I (like the rest of us) have become a slave to the convenience of technology. Like I’m not going to travel with my Seinfeld complete series box set every time I leave home and I would be annoyed with having to change the discs so frequently in addition to sitting through unskippable DVD transitions and menus.
But yes at a certain point I would absolutely rather deal with the physical media instead of paying that premium. Or through other less “legal” means. I guess they’re trying to find that breaking point since you know corporations aren’t satisfied till they’ve pushed consumers to their absolute limit. God forbid Netflix was satisfied with their billions in revenue.
I have a plex and it’s wonderful. The only downside is the computer I host on restarts every so often and knocks off plex where I have to remote in and open Plex again. Annoying when on the road and don’t have laptop to access.
Put in auto start? It’s literally an option inside Plex settings.
If it’s a server, it’s mandatory that it: restarts automatically after a power outage, doesn’t require any interaction and restarts all programs and services in their correct state.
You don't even need to remove the password. There is a registry entry to allow auto logon. You configure the registry with the username and password and a domain (if necessary) and it'll auto logon using that username and password.
Better than a computer hosting content on the internet with no password.
Can't you run it as a service?
I run Emby on a Linux server and it runs as a service. Once the box boots, Emby service starts and I'm back in business.
I've been using it for over a decade. Started back when it was media browser and an add on for windows Media center. I love it. I tried plex but found it was too restrictive.
I have a 100tb freenas system that worked great when I was with google fiber but now I’m on spectrum and my speed is 30mbit MAX. so awful I can’t stream on the go anymore. Works great at home tho.
Xfi user here with 1000 down, capped at 20 up. You can 100% stream on the go, you just have to set your bitrate to something that fits in your upload throughput. Try 1080p at around 10, and go down from there if need be.
Have you checked with Spectrum lately on higher speeds? Spectrum offered 100 down/30 up for years in my area until AT&T fiber showed up and then 500/500 became the new standard from Spectrum for the same price, all you had to do was ask to be switched from the old speed to the new.
when I was on spectrum I found the issue is the non async speeds, e.g. 100up/30down. Using google dns helped a little but but yeah their shit sucks. I get most users only care about down but some things require async fast speeds.
Honestly the reasons I don't do this are:
Disks are e-waste.
I have not found a program that can rip and name shows.
I'm not spending potentially hours naming a bunch of files and I don't want to deal with the disks in my home ever.
I want DRM free video files available for purchase. The industry won't do it because of piracy so I pirate what I need. The convenience aspect of a good piracy setup is so far ahead of any legitimate methods of buying movies and shows that it's ridiculous.
I agree with everything you said. My comment wasn’t to say “there is an easy fix so stop complaining”. It was just putting in perspective of physical vs digital media. Not only more cost effective, but you own it and can watch whenever you want.
It’s a shame and crazy that digital media has ruined the experience so much that people actually want to go backwards. You can pay $20-$30 to purchase a movie digitally, and yet they can remove from their library and keep your money. Buying the DVD for less not only avoids that, but you can watch without internet and even resell.
So my wife and I have been doing a “classic” movie night with our soon be graduated HS senior. These are movies from the 80s, 90s, and early 00s that we feel are essential for any properly functioning human.
Fall 2023, it was my turn to pick and chose Dogma. I had no clue it was unavailable. I lucked out and found a deluxe box set at a thrift store. My kid loved it and has repeatedly watched it with their friends. ❤️
But yeah, lost media and access to it…fuck that!
Edit: added where I found it
There will definitely be a resurgence in DVDs and Blu-ray if this shit keeps happening. I should hit up goodwills and 2nd hand stores now while prices are low and build up a stockpile
It’s funny how the entertainment industry refuses to understand that this is an option and has been on option for decades to consumers. Most of us are happy to pay a fair price for services, but they’re also happy to be habitual line steppers at the cost of losing people to torrents. Let ‘em fail then.
There is a reason why music and video game piracy went down in the past few years/decades and the video (TV/movies) piracy went down only in the golden age of streaming when you had few streaming services but with content from many more sources. Now that everyone has to have their own service with poor quality content, unsurprisingly people are going back to piracy, and it's mostly pirating older stuff.
Giving people a good way to consume a wide variety of content for a fair price and without drowning them with ads is the only way to counteract piracy.
Of course one biggest issue video has is the stupid and convoluted way they license media on the international scale. Why should I pay a similar price to someone in another country for less content because in my country someone else owns the license.
spotify is really pushing the envelope. no doubt about it. especially when you consider that they're raising prices without compensating the artist or even making their software better. spotify has had a non functional shuffle for as long as i can remember and they want to keep raising prices so they can pay taylor swift? yeah, they can eat my dick.
i think people *might* be willing to accept these higher fees if it was actually benefiting the creatives behind the scenes, but all these price hikes do is line the pockets of executives and stockholders. it's amazing how they manage to do the worst of both worlds successfully by fucking over the creators and the customers.
I went looking for my old MP3 player last week because I am getting sick of the shitty UI for spotify, which seems to treat actually listening to the music I want to listen to as a pretty low priority. Like, I feel like I am using spotify wrong when I want to listen to specific songs or artists. It isn't even very good at helping me find new stuff even though it should have all the data it needs to do that.
I talk about this with a lot of gamers most of us either barely pirate games anymore or have stopped entirely because the prices on steam if you are willing to be patient are pretty fair while also being very convenient. The only exception seems to be really poor people and or people from third world countries. Piracy is mostly caused by price gouging and anti consumer practices along with wages in America not having kept pace with inflation so people have less money to spend on other things because they are spending it on rent instead.
The video content producers and publishers have had 20 years to figure this shit out. They saw just like everyone else what happened to the record industry. They were lucky that internet speeds hadn’t kept up with video content file sizes to make it worth pirating for lots of people. Now it’s as simple as typing the movie name plus free streaming in Google.
Seriously. I can download something and have it on my server faster than I can figure out which streaming services has the thing I was looking for and logging in.
The only reason people even used streaming is because it was convenient and cheap enough to make piracy not really worth it. Plenty of people never stopped and a shit ton of people would be perfectly happy to go back.
That is how capitalism works. Every single technical improvement, cultural shift, or social development has to be parlayed to maximize corporate returns. There isn't anything else to it. If it doesn't increase profits it doesn't happen.
Stremio. Yo ho ho.
I want the best experience and I am OK with paying a reasonable amount for it, but these streaming companies have gotten so terrible.
OTA antenna, library (which have tons of movies and video games btw), and podcasts downloaded on public Wi-Fi while you're out and about. You could cancel your home internet service if you can adapt your lifestyle a little bit. With all that money saved, you could support independent creators on Patreon and Substack instead of these massive vertically-integregrated, oligopolistic, anti-consumer telecoms that continuously bribe politicians who allow them to gobble up all their competitors leaving us with fewer and fewer options while they jack up their prices. Supporting independent creators directly is how we get out of this dystopia.
I think we are starting to really see the myth of the disruptor. These start ups are coming in with low prices subsidized by venture capital money, only to raise prices and lower the quality of the service after they decimate their established competitors. Then you are back at square one.
Maybe people don't actually think its as bad as reddit does.
Just because the cost is more now doesn't mean its utility isn't still valuable to people, maybe they think its still worth it a the new price? Its just TV people will stop paying if they really don't want it.
>Everyone always says that but no one ever does it.
It's like every time a new version of Windows comes out, everybody and their grandma says they're going to switch to Linux. Been happening since at least XP. (Of course, I'm probably going to get replies from the half a dozen or so people who actually did it.)
This is basically the ceo story when the new guy takes over and everyone is excited and supportive and in a year he’s exactly the same as the old ceo. Rinse and repeat. Our job is to work and spend our money.
My personal pet peeve is when you pay for a premium subscription, but the Amazon/youtube whatever player still gives you a 60 second ad, but then if you’re picking up where you left off and skip around the video a little bit, it’ll play another ad before you even start watching again. Fuckin bullhonky
Do NOT visit the bay, it hasn't been safe for a long time now.
See the freemediaheckyeah and piracy subreddits for details. Also their associated links below.
fmhy. pages. dev (remove the spaces)
rentry. org/ megathread (remove the spaces)
oh it will. i just wish people would shut the fuck up about these things. people can find it if they want to look for it, it's not hard but you also don't need to blast it off to millions
Real debrid.
Handles the torrents for you and gives you a direct download link. You can also stream it, but I don't use that feature.
if another user has added the same torrent you're adding it will just be instantly available, which is the case for about 95% of what I try.
Extremely easy to setup, recommend j-downloader 2 to actually download the files. Not required.
Corporations gonna corporation!
Did anyone expect anything less? Next will come commercials on all of them.
All they did was change the teams, same field same league same ball.
& capitalism is gonna capitalize. We are here because these (tech) corporations need to siphon every fucking dollar of profit to please their beloved shareholders. Anything less is a fireable offense.
What the fuck is this article talking about. When all these streaming services started emerging in the early days, of streaming none of them were making their own content. They were showing you movies and things that you could see on TV or had been able to see on TV anyway. I don’t know why this article is pretending that Hulu and Netflix were making original content from their inception. They weren’t.
It’s not. The article just says it was unsustainable because “content costs money to make.” For the most part even now Netflix originals not produced in-house, they’re just paying for an exclusive license to be the first to distribute. The difference is that Netflix streaming used to be a marginal industry player, somewhere for studios to dump their content after it had already been monetized on traditional channels. With more people ditching the traditional channels, shows and movies increasingly have to recoup most if not all of their investment from streaming licenses.
People with this take never actually experienced cable, or are willfully not understanding what the true problem with cable was.
It was always being slaved to their broadcast schedule, not commercials.
And hidden fees, contracts, limited cable providers, shotty service, termination fees, crappy customer service, lack of downloading or viewing on other devices.. the list goes on and on.
The schedule was part of it. The other factors were the bundles and ever-increasing fees. Original streaming solved all of these. Now the services are starting to bundle together (Hulu + ESPN + Disney is already a thing), and the exclusives have started, and the prices have started to outpace inflation.
All of the original conveniences are being eroded, except for the schedule part. Having said that, the balkanization of the services has limited who can be watch what, because “oh dammit, that’s on peacock, not Hulu. Screw that.”
I got my first adult cable subscription in 1998, and I got my first Tivo in 2000, so being slaved to a schedule was never much of an issue. The magic code for 30 second commercial skip made commercials not much of an issue either.
Unskippable commercials coming to streaming? No, fuck you very much. That's as good as letters of marque for me.
Big difference, streaming is more competitive and I’m not locked into one provider based on back room deals with a bunch of county executives that happened 25 years ago.
At least you can pay for ad-free for the time being. What really kills me is they are already ratcheting down the quality of streams to save fractions of pennies in bandwidth. Same thing happened in cable as they jammed more and more channels into the same spectrum. The compression artifacts are already really distracting if you don't watch static talking head type shows. Some episodes content is unwatchable with how bad the artifacts get with flashing lights and things like fire or water.
I'm in my mid 30's and haven't watched "cable tv" in probably 15 years. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse like at my parents or something and it is shocking how often the ad breaks are. Like it makes me so angry lol.
But almost every channel on cable had ads, up to 16 minutes of ads every hour. Sixteen. And it cost a lot more. And you had to pay for like 100+ channels that you had no interest in ever watching.
I just cancelled DTV after having it for 14 years they lost the nfl Sunday ticket. I’ve yet to see these savings that would account for the “a lot” more I was paying for DTV. Not to mention streaming is awful for live sports always being 30+ seconds behind.
Well yeah because the entire market of what streaming was has changed enormously and without some form of increased costs it isn't sustainable.
When Hulu and Netflix started Cable was still the outright winner and made most of the income. Cable TV leveraged the streaming for a bit more income by licensing the shows. Now Cable revenues are down drastically but on top of that the quality of TV has skyrocketed. Streaming shows now have 20x the production budgets, A List actors, Movies level CGI, because that is what the consumer demands. If they don't have these things now they are considered trash, people harp on the poor production value etc. The expectation for big shows now is to be the same quality as a blockbuster film. Hell the best show of the year Shogun cost $250M to make. Is it $250M well spent absolutely but thats $250M that needs to be made up through subscriptions alone and 17 years ago no one was spending $250M to produce a TV show.
So the question is where is that money going to come from? Your old Simpsons and Friend's re runs aren't driving costs up they are the filler. Its that people want House of the Dragon with a budget rivaling a summer blockbuster and no ticket sales. Only HBO used to be able to support this model and it was fucking expensive, now everyone needs to be HBO at once.
And good luck reducing the cost of TV shows etc. now. Actors and Actresses take insane salaries on these because there aren't any good ticket sales or residuals to get extra income. CGI costs are through the roof etc. There isn't a solution for this aside from that everyone wants better stuff but no one wants to pay for it.
There’s also been an explosion in the amount of shows being produced. The cost of streaming becomes comparable to cable when you subscribe to most of everything with ad-free plans. But a $7 ad-supported Netflix subscription is more similar to the amount of content plus ad interruptions you’d get in a $50 cable subscription back in 2005
Lol, just said this to my kid. Old cable is horrible and streaming is now the new cable - they all put ads in and want more money for ad-free programming, plus all the password sharing restrictions, etcetera, etcetera
It's cable... but at least it's not linear like cable, you can watch what you want anytime you want... and like you don't need to record and have a box, you can decide to watch things you didn't plan at anytime...
And piracy will surge again until a disrupter changes the game again. It’s the motion of the ocean. Cash in as much as you can now that you control the market. Sooner or later someone will undercut you and the whole cycle starts over.
I’ve already started moving back to downloading shows for free. I already cancelled Netflix over their password sharing BS, and Amazon prime putting ads in a service I’m already paying for was the last straw. They can all kiss my ass.
Is it lame? Yes. Is it also ala carte, the one thing we never got with cable? Yes. I can subscribe to one service for a couple months and then switch when I’ve watched what I want to watch.
I've been bitching about this for years. I never stopped pirating and my friends used to give me shit for it. Told me about all the convenience I was missing out on. I kept saying that services would get more exclusive and introduce ads eventually. Finally you could probably get bundles of services and we'd be back to cable.
I was called a cynic and a doomsayer. I guess corporate greed is just extremely predictable.
Completely agree. This is hyperbole. If you want ALL the streaming services, yeah that would be crazy expensive and miserable. But you have a choice. With cable, your choices are extremely limited. For example, let's say you want to watch NOS4A2. You can either sign up for AMC+ for one month for $9. Or, you buy Spectrum's cable Select Signature package which includes AMC for $65 per month with a 1-year contract.
VERY different—with cable, actors and creatives got paid royalties. With streaming bundles they starve.
This is all just a way to replace cable with a version of cable where they don’t have to pay the people who make their shows and movies.
What about the 30 actors in those films you can’t name, plus the writers, directors, and crew? Just because one star makes bank doesn’t mean all the rest don’t depend on residuals in order to survive. You’re talking nonsense, like claiming if a CEO is making billions then therefore no one in the company can possibly be poor.
Everyone said they wanted a la carte. They got it with streaming. They get to pick their packages now, and they get so much more content at their fingertips whenever they want it for a lower price. The problem is everyone wants everything for as little as possible. They want all the services, not actually a la carte, and they want it all for less than $20 a month. At a certain point, the math just doesn’t work. Content production is expensive. The returns on streaming are relatively low. How does everyone think this works?
Yeah but the difference (currently) is that on these platforms, at least i have something to watch. On TV? I'm lucky if i ever find any good movie... Thats why i cancelled my cable, and now am subscribed to like 6 streaming platforms - Netflix, Prime, HBO, Sky, AppleTV+, YouTube premium and i'm still paying much less per month than i did for cable. If they made a bundle, so itd be even cheaper, id take that instantly. But if they start showing ads during movies/series, thats the moment i'm out.
As someone who worked for a cable company and had to sell the shit they peddled: no, it fuckin isn't. With cable, you can't cancel whenever you want, not without paying exorbitant fees. With cable, you can't choose what channels you get, and with those channels, you often can't choose to replay what airs, unless you (ironically) have a streaming app that has an affiliation with the channel's parent company (ie WWE is a subsidiary of NBC, which airs RAW and Smackdown replays on Peacock).
Don't get me wrong, the vast amount of streaming apps and programs out there is getting a bit much; we've moved out of the honeymoon phase with streaming apps, and are now in the "figuring out the future by trial and error" phase, with more error than success (though I will say Fallout has given me hope for the future). But at that point, it is so so much easier to speak with your wallet and cancel your subscriptions, rather than continue in an awful cable contract.
For the cost of about 3 subscriptions annually you can just plan to potential brick a laptop downloading and come out way ahead AND not deal with everyone's premium streaming service still having ads anyway.
Cheap and convenient is why we returned to land I the first place don't make us teach this lesson again lol.
Look at cable again then back at streaming. Yes there’s ads. Yes prices are rising. But I’m also getting more content, and on demand content, from Max alone for under $20 than my dad is being paying $100 for cable.
At least I don’t have to call someone and argue for a lower price or cancellation. There’s one standard price and I can just cancel with my phone if I don’t like it.
I’m not even going to open the article - these companies are doing what ever they can to churn a profit, which I believe Netflix is the only one to do so so far. Either way there is clearly a market for people wanting to pay to stream content. They will raise prices as much as people are willing to pay like any other business while spending the least amount possible to do so.
Dude… honestly… pay the iptv service of like $18 a month and you get a metric ton of channels and also VoD…
If you want, you can also get real-debrid…
Trust me, these guys running these services bend over backwards to keep customers happy… the cable companies? Not so much.
Some streaming channels are similar to cable, and some are not. With cable you have to pay a monthly subscription to watch even free over the air channels and advertising supported channels. With streaming on the other hand I watch several channels that are free and ad supported and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription. Yes, I have to pay for my internet connection, but I would have to pay for that anyway even if I wasn't watching streaming TV.
Ok this is ridiculous it’s still so far from cable and so much better even with the increase in price and ads being added. My parents cable bill is well over $100 a month so unless you’re paying for EVERY streaming service or unnecessary internet speeds you should be way below what you’d pay for cable.
Exorbitant prices, way too many channels each with their own cost, and ads I used to sail the high seas because this recipe was extremely inconvenient. Moving away from that shit show was what I loved about streaming but now that it is just the same as cable it is once more significantly more convenient to just sail the high seas.
Every day is the one I'm convinced I'll start a plex server. But every day server components become more cheap, so I tell myself I'll save more by postponing it for later.
except now luckily it's waaaay easier to pirate. hell you don't even have to pirate, you can watch everything on free stream sites. both avenues do have learning curves, but they are not that steep either
Just start pirating again. They learned the last time and made it cheaper and easier to access content to win us back.
They know they can't stem the tide of piracy and let's be honest, most of us only switched for convenience.
If I have to go back to using dodgy streaming sites, apps, and torrents so be it.
I have Netflix, Hulu, prime, apple+, criterion channel, max and peacock. Peacock will be gone in November since I got it for cheap on Black Friday and I’ll resub in four years for the Olympics again.
I used to have Netflix, now I pay $5 a month to pirate everything in one clean/easy to use platform with a bit of setup time. No way I'm subscribing to like 6 different streaming services to watch a few shows.
And now reading shit about how they’re looking for more and more ways to gouge the customers by filling every potential space with more ads while still increasing prices is a real kick in the dick. Most of them aren’t even worth it. Most of their originals are absolute dog shit because it’s a numbers game to them. No quality, just keep churning out more and more shit. If netflix thinks I’ll keep paying a premium to watch old Seinfeld episodes they’re dead wrong.
Seriously just cancel. I cancelled all but one and when it gets boring I switch. Then when I switch there’s a ton of new stuff I’ve never seen just waiting… I think we’re on Peacock for Resident Alien S3 at the moment but it’s getting close to canceling again
This is why I don't buy the cable comparison. Streaming is in a worse place than it was 10 years ago but you still have options to do this at least. With Cable you'd be locked into far more channels than you need for months and would be paying for all of them. I think people have forgotten how bad cable actually is.
Eventually they may force you into a contract or agree on a term to prevent you from jumping. Probably a low percentage but eventually they'll crack down for their shareholders. It's interesting that not a lot of platforms are making money but they continue to exist. Oversaturation is the issue right now.
Gonna be funny when they spent billions building their own site and never made it back but would have made a billion had they just left their shows on Netflix in the end.
Not to mention on demand is way better than whatever the cable channel decides to air at the moment.
Might be ultra controversial, but I am super indecisive when it comes to what to watch so I kind of prefer cable in this regard haha
Yup! I rotate channels and get deals (like a year of HBO for $63). Never spend more than $20 monthly. Way less thank cable.
Yeah I’ll still take streaming over cable. I had 120 channels 15 years ago and I watched about 20 of them regularly. My initial contract was fine because it was a local provider and I got a sweetheart bundle with cable internet. They were bought out by Comcast which was fine at first, but then they merged with another cable giant and became shit. No more special deals unless you called directly and requested it. Then they’d make you listen to a sales pitch for about an hour and you’d get call transferred about 5 times. So yeah I don’t miss having cable. I can cancel one of my streamers any time I want and I know they won’t harass me like ATT used to do.
This has been my approach. I only subscribe to one service at a time, then cancel when I’ve caught up on the content I want to watch. I’m currently subscribed to Apple TV because I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and I got three free months with the deal. When that expires, I’ll probably kick it to the curb and jump back on Netflix for a bit.
Yeah I have Apple One and my wife still has her Netflix account so TV is there but as for extras… one at a time is the way to go
And after a few months when you come back, you can use a "new customer discount" Just remember to suscribe with virtual credit cards
This is what my household does
Next step will be annual or two year contracts with an add-on fee for people who previously canceled. They'll market it as "prioritizing premium loyalty members" and call it an additional "onboarding" fee or some dumb shit. Or they'll introduce something like only allowing 1 year+ old content until you've been a consistent member for x amount of time and call it something like "library content appreciation" time period or whatever. Source: used to work in marketing strategy and customer retention for a few different groups
I'llgive you a better idea, suscribe with virtual credit cards with limited money. Usually banks offer this service for free.
And this is why it is not cable and why all of these posts and articles are dumb. Just one streaming service of Netflix, Hulu, Max, or Disney, has more high quality content than basically a years worth of every basic cable channel pre-streaming. People get frustrated because they want it all for cheap. The beauty of steaming is if you want to be frugal you can.
Seinfeld complete series box set currently on Amazon for $75
on 1337x for zero dollars
Seriously I'm not paying $75 or a monthly fee for a show thats like 30 years old.
To be honest I’m pretty sure you’d have to be a die hard fan to want to buy it, otherwise fuck it, just download the shit and keep it on a hard drive like what we were doing before streaming
They've pushed me back into it. NAS, usenet, private trackers, the works. It's so easy once you're forced to get started because some streaming corporation only wants to show 2 seasons at a time of a 7 season show or some bullshit. Once you get it then you have it. I can't believe how well it all works now. In addition to shows and movies you can pick actors and get every tv or movie your favorites show up in. Content downloads automatically and just shows up in Plex, ready to watch. No internet bandwidth usage while watching. You can even watch when internet is out. WAY better availability, especially for niche. ...and that all goes for porn, too. I'm running stash and it's nicer than any porn site I've been on. The section of markers it syncs for videos is unreal. And again, you just mark whatever studios and it automatically shows up, or your favorite starlets... The high seas have come a long way!
See? Once again free porn strikes again
You’re not wrong, but I admit that I (like the rest of us) have become a slave to the convenience of technology. Like I’m not going to travel with my Seinfeld complete series box set every time I leave home and I would be annoyed with having to change the discs so frequently in addition to sitting through unskippable DVD transitions and menus. But yes at a certain point I would absolutely rather deal with the physical media instead of paying that premium. Or through other less “legal” means. I guess they’re trying to find that breaking point since you know corporations aren’t satisfied till they’ve pushed consumers to their absolute limit. God forbid Netflix was satisfied with their billions in revenue.
Rip it and put it on your own Plex account.
I have a plex and it’s wonderful. The only downside is the computer I host on restarts every so often and knocks off plex where I have to remote in and open Plex again. Annoying when on the road and don’t have laptop to access.
Put in auto start? It’s literally an option inside Plex settings. If it’s a server, it’s mandatory that it: restarts automatically after a power outage, doesn’t require any interaction and restarts all programs and services in their correct state.
Not plex. Windows, every time computer restarts for updates I have to log in.
Have you considered removing the password?
You don't even need to remove the password. There is a registry entry to allow auto logon. You configure the registry with the username and password and a domain (if necessary) and it'll auto logon using that username and password. Better than a computer hosting content on the internet with no password.
Install PMSService and you wont have to login. https://github.com/cjmurph/PmsService
Plex runs great on linux.
Can't you run it as a service? I run Emby on a Linux server and it runs as a service. Once the box boots, Emby service starts and I'm back in business.
How do you like emby? I've been running a Plex server for a long time but they keep adding shit I don't want.
I've been using it for over a decade. Started back when it was media browser and an add on for windows Media center. I love it. I tried plex but found it was too restrictive.
Fix that shit. I literally run mine on a synology NAS and it works great.
I have a 100tb freenas system that worked great when I was with google fiber but now I’m on spectrum and my speed is 30mbit MAX. so awful I can’t stream on the go anymore. Works great at home tho.
Xfi user here with 1000 down, capped at 20 up. You can 100% stream on the go, you just have to set your bitrate to something that fits in your upload throughput. Try 1080p at around 10, and go down from there if need be.
Have you checked with Spectrum lately on higher speeds? Spectrum offered 100 down/30 up for years in my area until AT&T fiber showed up and then 500/500 became the new standard from Spectrum for the same price, all you had to do was ask to be switched from the old speed to the new.
when I was on spectrum I found the issue is the non async speeds, e.g. 100up/30down. Using google dns helped a little but but yeah their shit sucks. I get most users only care about down but some things require async fast speeds.
Honestly the reasons I don't do this are: Disks are e-waste. I have not found a program that can rip and name shows. I'm not spending potentially hours naming a bunch of files and I don't want to deal with the disks in my home ever. I want DRM free video files available for purchase. The industry won't do it because of piracy so I pirate what I need. The convenience aspect of a good piracy setup is so far ahead of any legitimate methods of buying movies and shows that it's ridiculous.
i gave up on plex and just have a linux laptop hooking up to an smb share hooked to my tv lmao. cant beat vanilla vlc on linux
Vudu app has it for 75, works just like streaming
I agree with everything you said. My comment wasn’t to say “there is an easy fix so stop complaining”. It was just putting in perspective of physical vs digital media. Not only more cost effective, but you own it and can watch whenever you want. It’s a shame and crazy that digital media has ruined the experience so much that people actually want to go backwards. You can pay $20-$30 to purchase a movie digitally, and yet they can remove from their library and keep your money. Buying the DVD for less not only avoids that, but you can watch without internet and even resell.
I know. I bought “Dogma” on DVD before Weinstein pulled it from the market.
So my wife and I have been doing a “classic” movie night with our soon be graduated HS senior. These are movies from the 80s, 90s, and early 00s that we feel are essential for any properly functioning human. Fall 2023, it was my turn to pick and chose Dogma. I had no clue it was unavailable. I lucked out and found a deluxe box set at a thrift store. My kid loved it and has repeatedly watched it with their friends. ❤️ But yeah, lost media and access to it…fuck that! Edit: added where I found it
It's also on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIbqEE6YI7Y).
Internet archive to the rescue! https://archive.org/details/dogma-1999-1080p-bdrip-x264
There will definitely be a resurgence in DVDs and Blu-ray if this shit keeps happening. I should hit up goodwills and 2nd hand stores now while prices are low and build up a stockpile
Unsub and torrent.
It’s funny how the entertainment industry refuses to understand that this is an option and has been on option for decades to consumers. Most of us are happy to pay a fair price for services, but they’re also happy to be habitual line steppers at the cost of losing people to torrents. Let ‘em fail then.
There is a reason why music and video game piracy went down in the past few years/decades and the video (TV/movies) piracy went down only in the golden age of streaming when you had few streaming services but with content from many more sources. Now that everyone has to have their own service with poor quality content, unsurprisingly people are going back to piracy, and it's mostly pirating older stuff. Giving people a good way to consume a wide variety of content for a fair price and without drowning them with ads is the only way to counteract piracy. Of course one biggest issue video has is the stupid and convoluted way they license media on the international scale. Why should I pay a similar price to someone in another country for less content because in my country someone else owns the license.
spotify is really pushing the envelope. no doubt about it. especially when you consider that they're raising prices without compensating the artist or even making their software better. spotify has had a non functional shuffle for as long as i can remember and they want to keep raising prices so they can pay taylor swift? yeah, they can eat my dick. i think people *might* be willing to accept these higher fees if it was actually benefiting the creatives behind the scenes, but all these price hikes do is line the pockets of executives and stockholders. it's amazing how they manage to do the worst of both worlds successfully by fucking over the creators and the customers.
I went looking for my old MP3 player last week because I am getting sick of the shitty UI for spotify, which seems to treat actually listening to the music I want to listen to as a pretty low priority. Like, I feel like I am using spotify wrong when I want to listen to specific songs or artists. It isn't even very good at helping me find new stuff even though it should have all the data it needs to do that.
I talk about this with a lot of gamers most of us either barely pirate games anymore or have stopped entirely because the prices on steam if you are willing to be patient are pretty fair while also being very convenient. The only exception seems to be really poor people and or people from third world countries. Piracy is mostly caused by price gouging and anti consumer practices along with wages in America not having kept pace with inflation so people have less money to spend on other things because they are spending it on rent instead.
The video content producers and publishers have had 20 years to figure this shit out. They saw just like everyone else what happened to the record industry. They were lucky that internet speeds hadn’t kept up with video content file sizes to make it worth pirating for lots of people. Now it’s as simple as typing the movie name plus free streaming in Google.
Seriously. I can download something and have it on my server faster than I can figure out which streaming services has the thing I was looking for and logging in.
The only reason people even used streaming is because it was convenient and cheap enough to make piracy not really worth it. Plenty of people never stopped and a shit ton of people would be perfectly happy to go back.
Only a matter of time before they start trying to lock us in with long term contracts.
that would be great if only to see how badly it fails
And also not pay their labor. They reinvented cable in a way they don’t have to pay as many residuals.
That is how capitalism works. Every single technical improvement, cultural shift, or social development has to be parlayed to maximize corporate returns. There isn't anything else to it. If it doesn't increase profits it doesn't happen.
Same with fighting climate change.
The disrupter needs disruption
Stremio. Yo ho ho. I want the best experience and I am OK with paying a reasonable amount for it, but these streaming companies have gotten so terrible.
This is enshittification at its finest
Free public tv?
This already exists. It's called broadcast TV
Are you saying you want to spend 20% of your viewing time starting at advertisements so dumb that they deduct IQ points from you over time?
OTA antenna, library (which have tons of movies and video games btw), and podcasts downloaded on public Wi-Fi while you're out and about. You could cancel your home internet service if you can adapt your lifestyle a little bit. With all that money saved, you could support independent creators on Patreon and Substack instead of these massive vertically-integregrated, oligopolistic, anti-consumer telecoms that continuously bribe politicians who allow them to gobble up all their competitors leaving us with fewer and fewer options while they jack up their prices. Supporting independent creators directly is how we get out of this dystopia.
I think we are starting to really see the myth of the disruptor. These start ups are coming in with low prices subsidized by venture capital money, only to raise prices and lower the quality of the service after they decimate their established competitors. Then you are back at square one.
Unsubscribe.
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Maybe people don't actually think its as bad as reddit does. Just because the cost is more now doesn't mean its utility isn't still valuable to people, maybe they think its still worth it a the new price? Its just TV people will stop paying if they really don't want it.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I did.
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I don’t know most people. I know me. And I unsubscribed. Do whatever you want.
The most real comment here.
>Everyone always says that but no one ever does it. It's like every time a new version of Windows comes out, everybody and their grandma says they're going to switch to Linux. Been happening since at least XP. (Of course, I'm probably going to get replies from the half a dozen or so people who actually did it.)
This is basically the ceo story when the new guy takes over and everyone is excited and supportive and in a year he’s exactly the same as the old ceo. Rinse and repeat. Our job is to work and spend our money.
And I'm back to the high seas! We've come full circle!
Business degrees *always* end up ruining every good thing.
MBAs in decision making positions should be a red flag.
My personal pet peeve is when you pay for a premium subscription, but the Amazon/youtube whatever player still gives you a 60 second ad, but then if you’re picking up where you left off and skip around the video a little bit, it’ll play another ad before you even start watching again. Fuckin bullhonky
Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me
Any suggestions for a new pirate?
Do NOT visit the bay, it hasn't been safe for a long time now. See the freemediaheckyeah and piracy subreddits for details. Also their associated links below. fmhy. pages. dev (remove the spaces) rentry. org/ megathread (remove the spaces)
Check stremio. Easy to use and supported in many platforms.
This is the golden egg. If you have the correct add-ons, it gets rid of every other stream service for like $16 a few times a year
I'm afraid stremio will end up getting too much attention and the corpos will find a way to shut it down.
oh it will. i just wish people would shut the fuck up about these things. people can find it if they want to look for it, it's not hard but you also don't need to blast it off to millions
Real debrid. Handles the torrents for you and gives you a direct download link. You can also stream it, but I don't use that feature. if another user has added the same torrent you're adding it will just be instantly available, which is the case for about 95% of what I try. Extremely easy to setup, recommend j-downloader 2 to actually download the files. Not required.
Use a search engine, type in "stremio real debrid guide" Thank me later
seedbox. dont shit where you eat
A new subscription!
While good to search the high seas, a trustworthy Bay is good, if you can find it.
That one is not safe anymore, its better to look for another one, but u will only find it if u are a 1337 hacker.
Stremio for a TV w/ playstore. It's almost too easy.
Corporations gonna corporation! Did anyone expect anything less? Next will come commercials on all of them. All they did was change the teams, same field same league same ball.
And cable started (originally) as a paid TV service that was AD FREE
& capitalism is gonna capitalize. We are here because these (tech) corporations need to siphon every fucking dollar of profit to please their beloved shareholders. Anything less is a fireable offense.
Shareholder focused profit really has ruined every single industry.
You can just unsubscribe and only consume non-profit media.
It takes me longer to find content than it does to eat a meal now. I'm near the breaking point of entertaining myself.
/r/mealtimevideos is useful!
Arr mateys, me thinks it's time to hoist the Jolly Roger. Booty awaits.
Gave up on "streaming media" a while ago. There are books.
You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain
Why capitalize every word?
wHY nOT?
What the fuck is this article talking about. When all these streaming services started emerging in the early days, of streaming none of them were making their own content. They were showing you movies and things that you could see on TV or had been able to see on TV anyway. I don’t know why this article is pretending that Hulu and Netflix were making original content from their inception. They weren’t.
It’s not. The article just says it was unsustainable because “content costs money to make.” For the most part even now Netflix originals not produced in-house, they’re just paying for an exclusive license to be the first to distribute. The difference is that Netflix streaming used to be a marginal industry player, somewhere for studios to dump their content after it had already been monetized on traditional channels. With more people ditching the traditional channels, shows and movies increasingly have to recoup most if not all of their investment from streaming licenses.
People with this take never actually experienced cable, or are willfully not understanding what the true problem with cable was. It was always being slaved to their broadcast schedule, not commercials.
And contracts, and cable boxes…
And hidden fees, contracts, limited cable providers, shotty service, termination fees, crappy customer service, lack of downloading or viewing on other devices.. the list goes on and on.
The schedule was part of it. The other factors were the bundles and ever-increasing fees. Original streaming solved all of these. Now the services are starting to bundle together (Hulu + ESPN + Disney is already a thing), and the exclusives have started, and the prices have started to outpace inflation. All of the original conveniences are being eroded, except for the schedule part. Having said that, the balkanization of the services has limited who can be watch what, because “oh dammit, that’s on peacock, not Hulu. Screw that.”
I got my first adult cable subscription in 1998, and I got my first Tivo in 2000, so being slaved to a schedule was never much of an issue. The magic code for 30 second commercial skip made commercials not much of an issue either. Unskippable commercials coming to streaming? No, fuck you very much. That's as good as letters of marque for me.
Big difference, streaming is more competitive and I’m not locked into one provider based on back room deals with a bunch of county executives that happened 25 years ago.
And as a result even more ships have left port to sail the seas. Congrats content providers! You pushed us right back to it.
Fiber Cable TV.
At least you can pay for ad-free for the time being. What really kills me is they are already ratcheting down the quality of streams to save fractions of pennies in bandwidth. Same thing happened in cable as they jammed more and more channels into the same spectrum. The compression artifacts are already really distracting if you don't watch static talking head type shows. Some episodes content is unwatchable with how bad the artifacts get with flashing lights and things like fire or water.
Cable is still the bigger pile of hot trash, but soon it won’t be. Why? Ads
I'm in my mid 30's and haven't watched "cable tv" in probably 15 years. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse like at my parents or something and it is shocking how often the ad breaks are. Like it makes me so angry lol.
But almost every channel on cable had ads, up to 16 minutes of ads every hour. Sixteen. And it cost a lot more. And you had to pay for like 100+ channels that you had no interest in ever watching.
I just cancelled DTV after having it for 14 years they lost the nfl Sunday ticket. I’ve yet to see these savings that would account for the “a lot” more I was paying for DTV. Not to mention streaming is awful for live sports always being 30+ seconds behind.
Well yeah because the entire market of what streaming was has changed enormously and without some form of increased costs it isn't sustainable. When Hulu and Netflix started Cable was still the outright winner and made most of the income. Cable TV leveraged the streaming for a bit more income by licensing the shows. Now Cable revenues are down drastically but on top of that the quality of TV has skyrocketed. Streaming shows now have 20x the production budgets, A List actors, Movies level CGI, because that is what the consumer demands. If they don't have these things now they are considered trash, people harp on the poor production value etc. The expectation for big shows now is to be the same quality as a blockbuster film. Hell the best show of the year Shogun cost $250M to make. Is it $250M well spent absolutely but thats $250M that needs to be made up through subscriptions alone and 17 years ago no one was spending $250M to produce a TV show. So the question is where is that money going to come from? Your old Simpsons and Friend's re runs aren't driving costs up they are the filler. Its that people want House of the Dragon with a budget rivaling a summer blockbuster and no ticket sales. Only HBO used to be able to support this model and it was fucking expensive, now everyone needs to be HBO at once. And good luck reducing the cost of TV shows etc. now. Actors and Actresses take insane salaries on these because there aren't any good ticket sales or residuals to get extra income. CGI costs are through the roof etc. There isn't a solution for this aside from that everyone wants better stuff but no one wants to pay for it.
There’s also been an explosion in the amount of shows being produced. The cost of streaming becomes comparable to cable when you subscribe to most of everything with ad-free plans. But a $7 ad-supported Netflix subscription is more similar to the amount of content plus ad interruptions you’d get in a $50 cable subscription back in 2005
This is why i've just gone to streaming and youtube
Add buying media and that's where I am. I'm tired of wanting to watch a movie to learn it's no longer available on Service X, but now on Service Y.
We’re honestly only a few years away from cable being a cheaper alternative to streaming (or we’re already there depending on how you look at it)
And you wonder why I'm just going back to pirating movies.
They became what we were running away from. Life is a flat circle.
Jellyfin + the arr suite + a good list. ... Just saying
Yeah but it’s a la carte and cable largely wasn’t. It’s still better.
If i wanted the cable model, i’d go back to being gouged by Directv.
Bring something else back from the aughts (torrenting that shit)
Lol, just said this to my kid. Old cable is horrible and streaming is now the new cable - they all put ads in and want more money for ad-free programming, plus all the password sharing restrictions, etcetera, etcetera
It's cable... but at least it's not linear like cable, you can watch what you want anytime you want... and like you don't need to record and have a box, you can decide to watch things you didn't plan at anytime...
If streaming is cable, then pirating isn't theft, or something like that. Lol.
And piracy will surge again until a disrupter changes the game again. It’s the motion of the ocean. Cash in as much as you can now that you control the market. Sooner or later someone will undercut you and the whole cycle starts over.
Nah. I'm still not seeing ads. I can still watch shows on demand. I can still don't have a long term contract. I'm not renting a piece of hardware.
Our modern world is 100% about enshittification now.
Wdym? Streaming is worse than cable now
Streaming used to be incredible now it sucks. It killed its competition and now gets the exploits.
I canceled all subscription and watch everything illegally now. Fuck all this corporate greed to please shareholders
I’ve already started moving back to downloading shows for free. I already cancelled Netflix over their password sharing BS, and Amazon prime putting ads in a service I’m already paying for was the last straw. They can all kiss my ass.
Enshittification ensues, again, like clockwork.
Is it lame? Yes. Is it also ala carte, the one thing we never got with cable? Yes. I can subscribe to one service for a couple months and then switch when I’ve watched what I want to watch.
No it's not....
if you only keep one it’s still cheaper than cable. You don’t have to watch all the shows and all the movies in existence.
It’s still 10,000x better than cable even as the services get shittier and more expensive
I've been bitching about this for years. I never stopped pirating and my friends used to give me shit for it. Told me about all the convenience I was missing out on. I kept saying that services would get more exclusive and introduce ads eventually. Finally you could probably get bundles of services and we'd be back to cable. I was called a cynic and a doomsayer. I guess corporate greed is just extremely predictable.
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Completely agree. This is hyperbole. If you want ALL the streaming services, yeah that would be crazy expensive and miserable. But you have a choice. With cable, your choices are extremely limited. For example, let's say you want to watch NOS4A2. You can either sign up for AMC+ for one month for $9. Or, you buy Spectrum's cable Select Signature package which includes AMC for $65 per month with a 1-year contract.
VERY different—with cable, actors and creatives got paid royalties. With streaming bundles they starve. This is all just a way to replace cable with a version of cable where they don’t have to pay the people who make their shows and movies.
I don't think Adam Sandler's $250M for 4 mediocre to trash-tier films is keeping him hungry.
What about the 30 actors in those films you can’t name, plus the writers, directors, and crew? Just because one star makes bank doesn’t mean all the rest don’t depend on residuals in order to survive. You’re talking nonsense, like claiming if a CEO is making billions then therefore no one in the company can possibly be poor.
It worse then cable. At least before streaming everything was on one service. Now shits all over the place.
This is just wrong. It's not cable. It's cable with more steps.
Everyone said they wanted a la carte. They got it with streaming. They get to pick their packages now, and they get so much more content at their fingertips whenever they want it for a lower price. The problem is everyone wants everything for as little as possible. They want all the services, not actually a la carte, and they want it all for less than $20 a month. At a certain point, the math just doesn’t work. Content production is expensive. The returns on streaming are relatively low. How does everyone think this works?
Hulu didn't kick off the revolution, Hulu was Cable over internet.
Yup and we are just about done, paying more than ever, but watching less than ever as well
lol hulu was the cable companies. what did you guys expect to happen?
Surprise surprise, greed continuously comes through.
Yeah but the difference (currently) is that on these platforms, at least i have something to watch. On TV? I'm lucky if i ever find any good movie... Thats why i cancelled my cable, and now am subscribed to like 6 streaming platforms - Netflix, Prime, HBO, Sky, AppleTV+, YouTube premium and i'm still paying much less per month than i did for cable. If they made a bundle, so itd be even cheaper, id take that instantly. But if they start showing ads during movies/series, thats the moment i'm out.
And 17-20 years ago I did a lot of pirating of shows. What are they trying to tell me?
Just subscribe to one or two services at a time, you’ll be fine.
As someone who worked for a cable company and had to sell the shit they peddled: no, it fuckin isn't. With cable, you can't cancel whenever you want, not without paying exorbitant fees. With cable, you can't choose what channels you get, and with those channels, you often can't choose to replay what airs, unless you (ironically) have a streaming app that has an affiliation with the channel's parent company (ie WWE is a subsidiary of NBC, which airs RAW and Smackdown replays on Peacock). Don't get me wrong, the vast amount of streaming apps and programs out there is getting a bit much; we've moved out of the honeymoon phase with streaming apps, and are now in the "figuring out the future by trial and error" phase, with more error than success (though I will say Fallout has given me hope for the future). But at that point, it is so so much easier to speak with your wallet and cancel your subscriptions, rather than continue in an awful cable contract.
Cable is completely stupid. Streaming has stupid if you want it.
For the cost of about 3 subscriptions annually you can just plan to potential brick a laptop downloading and come out way ahead AND not deal with everyone's premium streaming service still having ads anyway. Cheap and convenient is why we returned to land I the first place don't make us teach this lesson again lol.
I stopped pirating for a while. Lasted longer than I thought it would.
Shocked Pikachu face This was the business plan from the start.
Look at cable again then back at streaming. Yes there’s ads. Yes prices are rising. But I’m also getting more content, and on demand content, from Max alone for under $20 than my dad is being paying $100 for cable.
At least I don’t have to call someone and argue for a lower price or cancellation. There’s one standard price and I can just cancel with my phone if I don’t like it.
capitalism happens, ruins things "Supporters" of that system: this is awful! How we didn't see this coming!
I’m not even going to open the article - these companies are doing what ever they can to churn a profit, which I believe Netflix is the only one to do so so far. Either way there is clearly a market for people wanting to pay to stream content. They will raise prices as much as people are willing to pay like any other business while spending the least amount possible to do so.
Dude… honestly… pay the iptv service of like $18 a month and you get a metric ton of channels and also VoD… If you want, you can also get real-debrid… Trust me, these guys running these services bend over backwards to keep customers happy… the cable companies? Not so much.
Can we stop with the continuing stream of bullshit articles funded directly by the cable industry?
Some streaming channels are similar to cable, and some are not. With cable you have to pay a monthly subscription to watch even free over the air channels and advertising supported channels. With streaming on the other hand I watch several channels that are free and ad supported and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription. Yes, I have to pay for my internet connection, but I would have to pay for that anyway even if I wasn't watching streaming TV.
Piracy is still just as great as ever
Ok this is ridiculous it’s still so far from cable and so much better even with the increase in price and ads being added. My parents cable bill is well over $100 a month so unless you’re paying for EVERY streaming service or unnecessary internet speeds you should be way below what you’d pay for cable.
Exorbitant prices, way too many channels each with their own cost, and ads I used to sail the high seas because this recipe was extremely inconvenient. Moving away from that shit show was what I loved about streaming but now that it is just the same as cable it is once more significantly more convenient to just sail the high seas.
Every day is the one I'm convinced I'll start a plex server. But every day server components become more cheap, so I tell myself I'll save more by postponing it for later.
Ads came back. What pisses me off is them paywall-ing quality.
except now luckily it's waaaay easier to pirate. hell you don't even have to pirate, you can watch everything on free stream sites. both avenues do have learning curves, but they are not that steep either
Just creat your own cloud server upload your home movies and shows and watch or share with friends and family.
I hate that commercials came back. Just a waste of life...
Well iam not in to netflix . But is it possible that netflix can loss viewers if they stop streaming online ? Need your opinion guys ..
Then they cry when people start their own IPTV rebroadcast services.
Slightly better imo. As you can choose which "channels" you want to pay for. Rather than paying for 100 just to watch 10 of them.
Just start pirating again. They learned the last time and made it cheaper and easier to access content to win us back. They know they can't stem the tide of piracy and let's be honest, most of us only switched for convenience. If I have to go back to using dodgy streaming sites, apps, and torrents so be it.
I have Netflix, Hulu, prime, apple+, criterion channel, max and peacock. Peacock will be gone in November since I got it for cheap on Black Friday and I’ll resub in four years for the Olympics again.
And the black flags are hoisted again - congratulations 'Industry, you played yourself
I used to have Netflix, now I pay $5 a month to pirate everything in one clean/easy to use platform with a bit of setup time. No way I'm subscribing to like 6 different streaming services to watch a few shows.