The era of cheap streaming is officially over
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/media/disney-plus-streaming-prices-reliable-sources/index.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca907
Comments232https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/media/disney-plus-streaming-prices-reliable-sources/index.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
Pirating went down when paying for streaming was more convenient. Well, you are making it far less convenient.
Streaming has become cable 2.0.
It was wonderful when everything was on one, maybe two providers. Could watch everything in a very easy, very affordable way.
But everyone saw that, went "I know, I want that money!" and spent billions building their own individual infrastructures so make their own streaming services, and right around we go right back to the absolute worst days of cable and bullshit.
Only thing stopping me from saying fuck it and downloading shit I want to watch, is the fact that I no longer know what the good sites are.. since I havent pirated since the heyday of the bay.
[email protected] Their sidebar can teach you a lot.
Streaming has become cable with micro transactions.
Join lemmy.dbzer0.com the piracy instance and ask around about private trackers and if there are any open signups
And the irony is that people switched to cable for the exact same reason. They got tired of the nonsense that broadcast TV pulled with subscriptions for different channels and all the ads and everything, and went to cable because you paid one bill for every channel. Then, everyone moved to streaming because you had to buy 50 different cable packages for the one channel on each you actually cared about, and there were just too many ads to deal with, etc.
Something something, those who don't listen to history are doomed to lose profit margins or whatever.
TorrentFreak occassionally posts a list of sites, just use a good no logging VPN.
On the usenet side of the house, I think the only big change was NZB Matrix going away.
I can't tell if no one talks about usenet because no one knows about it or because they don't want anyone else to know about it.
I prefer torrents because it's totally free, unlike Usenet. I don't even pay for a VPN since I don't care about a few love letters in my inbox. It's not about the cost; it's a matter of principle that I disagree with commercialized piracy.
But Usenet is a good option for other reasons.
Both. It's a semi secret club.
That and movies just suck nowadays. This is partially old man yelling at cloud stuff but also true since the death of DVD's means studios won't take risks anymore since they can't recoup funds after a poor box office.
This isn't yelling at clouds, it's check l correct.
It's also not quite so much "recoup funds at a poor box office" as it was "count on DVD sales to make up fifty percent of revenue for certain kinds of movies."
Galaxy torrents is a newer, solid option friend
![email protected]
Oh, so they defederated and y'all complaining about that now. I see how it is 😋
Arr
As lord Gaben has said, "piracy is a service issue"
Well, this time they have Google and Microsoft on big brother duty to make sure you don't get crazy ideas. And I'm not seeing enough people jumping away from Chrome and Windows to stop it.
I'm on Windows and it's never hindered me when I needed to go download something that would make a studio exec cry. Granted, I use Firefox, but I'm not sure what Chrome would do differently - it's just a matter of clicking links that get sent off to qBittorrent to handle. What "big brothering" do they do?
Google is implementing a new scheme that verifies your browser (correct DRM, etc.) and sites won’t allow access without it.
Basically you have to have Chrome and without extensions they don’t like.
I'm preeeeetty sure that the Pirate Bay isn't going to implement that scheme.
But so far google and microsoft are incompetent big brothers, to the point that most people will find free streaming sites just by searching "free streaming epx of show". Now we are not talking good streaming, or even safe but if you want an example just look at any place with poor users (like a school or library).
The funny thing is we're rapidly approaching the point where there's more digital content than any single human could consume in a lifetime. Including content from before copyright. So the main thing streaming services offer you is convenience and up-to-date media. But if you're just trying to entertain yourself 30-year-old 40-year-old 50-year-old 60-year-old 70-year-old content can be just as engrossing. You just get emotionally invested in it.
I've found a DVD rental place close to me with quite a collection. Honestly thinking about just unsubscribing from all streaming and going all in on DVD rental. I watched one recently for the first time ... you forget how consistently good the qualilty is compared to streaming (YMMV). But, in true hipster fashion, being more deliberate about what I watch, more openly exploratory, making more of an event of it, all seems attractive. If streaming were actually convenient, fine, but with the way things are now ... they can go to hell.
I'd need Blu-ray at least tbh.
But yeah lately I've been buying 4k Blu-rays for movie night
Plus you get commentary and behind the scenes and such, not sure why most of the streaming services don't offer that.
Yep ... I forgot to mention that. Overall, when I watched a DVD for the first time in ages, it was somewhat eye opening ... like we've truly gone backwards on what the home viewing experience can be apart from the somewhat minor convenience of being not needing to store the DVDs at home.
this is a rose tinted glass tbh. maybe if you’re watching a dvd on an iphone screen, but DVDs were limited to 720p, and a bad one too. You need modern bluerays to really get up to par with HD streaming services.
DVDs are 480p, 720p wasn't introduced until the Blu-ray/HD DVD wars
There was also the forgotten format, D-VHS which was a specialized VHS tape tape which the recordings could be at 720p or 1080i resolutions. Or the same resolution as DVD but at a higher bitrate so there are less noticeable digital compression artifacts than DVD. The introduction of HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc formats kept the D-VHS format from ever becoming widely adopted.
One of the many things that drove me away from physical media to streaming. Big companies were always pulling the "you will watch what I want you to see" approach. It's also what killed cable and satellite.
That being said, I've found myself checking out more and more DVDs from the library simply because it's reliable, and I find it enjoyable in a way. I don't really care about HD quality or whatever -- DVD quality is fine.
Yep, Get those for like 2 bucks at goodwill. Hell, even entire box sets.
Almost got the entire collectors edition band of brothers box set for 2 bucks at goodwill once.. only reason I didnt is cause it was missing like 3 of the disks, and I didnt want to spend the rest of my life trying to hunt those 3 down.
480p. If you have a component, dvi or hdmi connection from the dvd player.
The place has plenty of Blu-Rays too ... I'm grouping them in with DVD for convenience ... also you shouldn't presume the quality of my internet and streaming subscriptions or even my TV.
If you can go to a source of older content it often comes pre-filtered for the better stuff too, so you don't have to wade through a ton of rubbish to find the occasional gem like you do with the new stuff.
Can you point out some resources for that?
Criterion Collection
Or
Janus Films
Both offer the best films of all time.
Very cool! Thank you!
Reviews from sites like IMDb and rotten tomatoes. As a movie or series is older, or finished, the general audience has had plenty of time to review it and if it’s fondly remembered, then it might get mentioned on here or other social platforms.
The issue with new content is that it can be amazing at first and then they release the last two episodes and ruin pretty much the entire series, eg. Game of thrones, and more recently, secret invasion.
Secret invasion really shocked me in its brutality in unceremoniously taking out loved characters.
But thanks for elaborating. :)
It's worth checking whether your local library subscribes to Kanopy.
Will do, thanks.
And the writer's strike shows that the artists don't get paid anyway if you pay for content, so they can't even play that card either.
Peacock HBO Max Showtime Disney. Fucking DC Universe was trying to be a thing.
Every media company wanted a streaming service but failed to deliver because of their hubris.
Hulu and Netflix have been my constant subscription services.
Disney is an absolute must if you have a kid, and a great value besides.
Otherwise it makes 0 sense except for maybe star wars sometimes.
We got Disney + for our kids and they couldn't care less. The only thing they were interested in was The Mandolorian (bored after the first season) and the latest live action Spiderman (which was not available in Disney+ !!!). We'll be canceling once our special deal is over. Maybe we're lucky that our kids don't care for it because that will save us some money.
Nah, my kids prefer Netflix. Even then, they prefer to play games instead. So I'll be steering them toward video games instead of TV, and only for a limited time each day.
Disney is an absolute must if you have a kid and aren’t capable of raising them without parking them in front of the TV.
Downvoted for telling the truth. I know people raising kids who don't plant their kids in front of a tablet or TV to watch Disney+ or YT ever. It's possible if you spend some goddamn time with your child and have a creative mind.
Ya'har me matey!
Sad thing is that most people are far too lazy and will just pay the streaming cost
Frear and the illusion of convenience is what makes them pay.
The internet is much faster now too
No worries, I wasn't paying anyway!
🏴☠️ 🏴☠️ 🏴☠️
I jumped ship at price hikes and no account sharing.
That was one of the main reasons I cut cable years ago.
The amount of content worth watching (let alone worth paying for) had become far too low.
Combine that with the constant price increases and worsening of the content-to-commercials ratio, and it was a easy decision to make.
It's going to be even worse for a while with the writers strike.
I would never pirate anything since it's illegal and immoral.
But I imagine the selfish criminals that do like the fact they can limit their media consumption to the occasional worthwhile thing. They might even assuage their guilt by paying for it when possible after they establish it isn't garbage.
If you could download a car, you bet your ass you would
That's a far worse hypothetical crime than you realize: it harms the profits of billionaires. Why don't you think about all those poor oligarchs you're hurting?
How will they be able to buy politicians and judges if people stopped giving them money?
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling.
Also, "limiting their consumption to the occasional worthwhile thing" can also be written as:
"spend their well-earned time actually watching something worth the investment"
And "they might even assuage their guilt by paying for it..." as:
"if they find content they enjoy, they'd like to show that monetarily and hopefully boost the production of more content of that same caliber"
I just want those large, deep pocketed, sue-happy corporation's legal teams to know I'm a good consumer that never violates DMCA or other intellectual property laws: it's wrong. I mean, that's what they say and obviously we should trust them.
I can't imagine much worse than violating the inalienable rights of amoral multi-billion dollar industries, except maybe bragging online about it afterwards.
Zero guilt, never pay. Bonus: no guilt for dropping something midway through out of disgust at its poor quality, because you just wasted X dollars on it. You can go through hundreds of options without trying to evaluate them indirectly pre-purchase, and read-watch whatever you feel like whenever.
I actually feel more guilt dropping things I downloaded since I wasted bandwidth and storage on it.
If you haven't spent extra money on that bandwidth and storage, what's the problem? Just delete it and download something else?
But I spend more time and stuff on it then I would on a streaming service's series.
For streaming I don't lose anything by dropping a series, it's not like I spent any extra money or time or anything getting the series.
Fair enough, that makes sense for streaming. I was thinking more along the lines of books and videogames, but this thread is about streaming.
In what world is it immoral? Where do your morals stem fom ? A child's book ?.
Especially since these services will drop their original content after awhile...
Is Willow considered lost media yet?
and thus began the second golden age of piracy
The great thing is it's so much easier now. About 2 months ago I cancelled all my streaming subscriptions.
🪢 Heave-ho! Thieves and beggars!
Never shall we die! 🏴☠️
Hoist the colors
Well, hell. I guess I'll go back to watching less and buying DVDs. I'm not watching commercials on a service I pay for. That's a non starter.
Worst comes to worse, I can dust off my eye patch, grab my parrot, and take to the high seas. I don't wanna, I prefer to pay for stuff, but ffs, if they can't be reasonable, I guess it's back to arrr me hearties.
Jellyfin / Plex downloads 📈📈📈
I'm paying for Spotify and Netflix because they are very convenient. I'm not paying for another 5 subscriptions because they maybe have this one show I would like to watch. They worked hard on fragmenting the marked and now they will complain people don't want to pay for 10 different subscriptions
Music services are almost a necessity to me because of the amount of music I listen to, but it's also a different animal. They all have mostly the same library, so you won't typically be subscribing to more than one.
The problem with streaming video services is that most people watch a couple genres, and there's content in every genre on every streaming platform. I watch a lot of scifi, for example. So I would need to subscribe to Apple TV for Silo and Foundation, Paramount+ for Star Trek, etc...
The era of piracy has returned. 🏴☠️
It never really left.. arrrrr.
I'll still take streaming any day over cable.
No contract and you can put everything in rotation. Sign up for a month, binge, cancel, next.
The streaming companies are starting to get wise to that. They've started splitting seasons and releasing them separately so that you have to be subbed for 2 months.
I'd just wait until the second part is out, sub one month.
But you won't see it at the same time as some others, the horror!
That's a real concern if you're at all worried about spoilers. It's so easy just to have shit spoiled even if you try to avoid it. Passively hearing about it from school/workmates, social media, or even radio. The stupid radio spoiled the ending of Breaking Bad for me and I never got over it, I guess.
Might seem stupid, but it's actually much more enjoyable to be watching something at the same time as others because you can sit and discuss it, come up with theories for how things will play out, and avoid having things spoiled for you. Nobody is going to be excited when you tell them you just started Game of Thrones last week because the show ended years ago and many people have already seen it all.
Well I'll subscribe for the second month.
Congrats. Patience is a much-neeeded virtue, especially when it comes to TV series you like.
If you look at the world of Gaming, you see plenty if not most people being unable to refrain from instant gratification and just "having to have" the latest installment of some game series NOW at full price instead of waiting 6 months or a year go get it much cheaper.
I think there's still some post floating around in Active in lemmy bitching and moaning about how this year's installment of some (american) football game is $70 and a few about how great Baldur's Gate 3 is (which you can only really know if ypu bought it full price in the first week as it just came out)
It seems to me that effect is even worse for things which are a social phenomenon (essentially, those things that people like to talk about it with each other) and that applies to TV Series and Films, not just games.
I mean, kudos for being able to refrain from Instant Gratification (I do the same too), it's just that nowadays that doesn't seem to be what most people do.
Or they could release one per week, two batches isn't really "starting to get wise to that" imho. Either way, being patient is the best and only paying for one month
I think it's just the beginning. They'll split seasons eventually into 3 or more parts. Or if you wait till all seasons are released, they'll paywall earlier parts. They know people won't wait that long, especially with how easy it is to have things spoiled by social media or among friends/co-workers.
Not if they start to limit you to 3 episodes of a particular series per week
Don't.Give.The.Mouse.Ideas.
That's not going to last. As soon as they run the numbers and decide it's worth it, they'll create ways to lock you in.
The difference between watching something programmers and on demand is big. I still detest the newer prices though coupled with the decline in interesting content.
Oh well, there's plenty of space for all of ya here on the high seas, welcome aboard, mateys!
Seed your torrents folks
We can go start pirating again
You guys stopped pirating?
Yes
I think I'm gonna go sailing the seven seas again.
This is extremely important for them. Netflix's excellent deal for most of its streaming existence was obviously a thorn in the side of many other businesses. Even if streaming services can get you to pay an exorbitant amount of money on an ad-free tier, advertisers are frothing for the chance to advertise to you regardless. They want you to see their ads so badly. And let's not forget all the big tech companies, Netflix included, were riding high during the free money days of 0% interest loans. Those days are over, and the bill is due. Wall Street wants its money. And we are all the ones who have to pay up. Cheap streaming is officially over.
This is why these companies, including Netflix, have all introduced ad tiers. Not only is it a great way for them to juice their revenue streams, but also every other company wants a permanent residence in your brain, and then some. Given the way things have been going since duo-eras of the COVID pandemic and corporate profit-based inflation, they don't even need to collude on prices. All the execs need to do is look at the business press and say, "Hey, they're getting away with increased prices and password sharing crackdowns. We can do the same thing. The pay pigs keep paying!"
I really cannot understand why advertising is such a huge business. Where does all the money spent on advertising really come from?
Is it really unclear? If you had never heard of a product, you would much less likely purchase it. If Coke stopped advertising today, they'd start a very slow but real loss of market to it's competiton, be it Pepsi or whatever. Note that a LOT of advertising is not for you. It's for the corporate buyer at name your favorite restaurant so that they think that they'll get more consumers in the door because they have Coke products, as opposed to some other brand.
I suppose it's not that unclear if you compare the revenue of all other industries combined to the revenue of the advertising industry. The ratio is pretty large and every type of industry buys ads, so it trickles down from everywhere.
I'll be completely unsurprised when streaming companies start enticing or forcing us into term agreements.
You know it's coming. Why would a streaming company want a consumer buying one month, binging a single show they're interested in, then immediately cancelling the subscription after, when you could guarantee a 6- or 12-month revenue stream for them?
Rents work this way; it wouldn't be a surprise if the same playbook was adopted by these neo-feudalists.
Am I the only one that remembers the "cut the cord" and "stop feeding the cable pig" nonsense? What happened to all that? Thankfully, none of this has affected me, then or now. I don't usually bother with "programming" of any kind but, when I do, "arr mateys."
The cable pigs moved into the streaming game, and used licensing to enshitify streaming
Looks around. You guys are still streaming?
finishes downloading latest movie. Naw, what about you?
Around 2010 there was this "pledge" where a website people basically collected a list of things they'd require in order to stop pirating tv shows and movies and I think it came down to:
Provide easy access to large library Provide multi language support, must offer original language Allow downloads/offline viewing Be reasonably priced
Plus some additional stuff I can't remember.
When Netflix got big, they basically covered it all. Then everyone wanted a piece of the pie.
Back to piracy then. 15$ for put.io ✨🙏
I may have lowered the skull and crossbones, and folded it up, and stored it away, but I never got rid of it. I'm building my Plex server, and sailing the seas again
What’s put.io do exactly?
It's basically a Torrent tracker as a service with a web interface to directly stream your torrents in your browser or to a Chromecast, Apple TV and whatever.
Oh damn. Nice. But I assume that also means I don’t download or ‘have’ any of them right? I’d be paying put.io to store and stream them?
How’s the library?
You pay for the amount of storage you want, then you select whatever torrents you want to download, either via a browser extension or services like chill.institute that look through common torrent search engines for you and give the opportunity to download instantly to your put.io account. You're completely in charge of your library and put.io won't show you anything you didn't download yourself.
Huh. Cool.
Thanks!
I don't know, perhaps I'm not getting the question.
It's basically a streaming service with a library that you fill yourself. It doesn't matter if you use a laptop, app or streaming dongle to watch the content. I'd say that it's easier to watch content if you already own a dongle like a Chromecast though.
Yeah, unless your computer is permanently hooked up to the TV, then it's probably irrelevant. :)
We came back to another cycle of big corporations forgetting they have to be more convenient than pirating.
Can't speak for anyone else, but just having an actual no logs VPN for less than the cost of one streaming service while also using qbittorrent with the torrent site search function is so much more convenient than spending probably hundreds at this point for streaming services I might only watch anything on once a blue moon.
Money issues aside, it is absolutely maddening to have to navigate through six or eight different streaming services to find the show you want to watch
I pay for spotify. If I want to listen to a song, it's on spotify. I don't need a different music streaming service for every single record company. As a result, I don't pirate music anymore.
To be fair this is also not good though. It's convenient, sure, but it creates a monopoly that can dictate what they pay to the artists - which is often close to nothing.
Itunes, Amazon music, tidal, YouTube music. It's not a monopoly yet. Hopefully we can get a few more services, but I don't see anything competing with this group.
Internet quality lies in "monopoly". On Internet, the best service has everything and satisfy customers. That's why piracy is such a strong contender. If a service has less than another, it's not worth the other. If it has as much but miss features, it's useless. Price is the final determinator, but if it's too expensive, people can't afford it.
Copyrights make the problem worse, because then any copyrighted content exclusive to a platform makes this platform a monopoly, because it's the only place were you can find this content.
Well that kinda works in general, but the issue is that it's a never-ending cycle of "cool thing appears", "cool thing grows and takes over the market", "cool thing wants to make more money so it becomes less cool", "it becomes so shitty that people look for alternatives and there are none because it created a monopoly", "it becomes actually unbearable and folds because people flock to a new cool thing".
Decentralized stuff kinda helps, but you can still see with e.g. email that there are a handful of giant "instances" and they have a huge control over the space, standards, etc. that others have to follow whether they like them or not. But it's still possibly to at least compete in that space (see for example ProtonMail) and it rarely becomes a true monopoly.
Mail is not community based, which means it works as a decentralised service. Most other services are better centralised.
As long as we put that "exclusive content" crap aside, every one of them can potentially offer every song if they agree with the artist. That's where the video streaming services are different. Disney+ and Netflix had many overlapping shows until the shittification started.
Or even more convenient, the arr suite + Plex/jellyfish + Overseer. A docker compose is easy enough to write and get running in minutes
I would definitely love to set up a server for something like Plex if I had enough content to justify it. To me it seems excessive to have a server for just a very small handful of shows, in my case.
It's incredible to watch them kill their own golden goose
Apparently it wasn't so much a "golden" goose.
They were all happy to let them run at below cost just gathering up market share.
Now they're trying to re-position to be profitable. Their subscriber numbers will definitely take a hit but they will have done the math.
Do you have any stats/resources that show that these streaming services are inherently unprofitable?
Sure, it's a fundamental concept of strategic management.
But hey, at least we also get connection issues when compared to cable.
Yeah, you used to have to get satellite for that to be an issue.
Mullvad.
US prices are/were crazy. In my EU country we payed like 20-30 for hundreds of channels
Plug for OTA TV and HDHomeRun or Tablo. $3/mo for TV guide data, and a surprising amount of decent content and sports if you’re in a good area.
Well to its credit, PBS is free, excellent programming in 1080i, and ad-free.
And when you record stuff, you can skip the ads. Tablo used to offer auto-commercial skip for an additional fee, but they shut down that service. Not sure if HDHomeRun has something similar.
@ch00f @HughJanus
...but you can't do anything about the pop-ups, esp vexing when the cover the sub-titles.
They don't cover subtitles. Closed captioning is sent on a separate data layer and displayed over the image by whatever app you're using to watch.
If you run your HDHR through Plex (with the Plex Pass) you can get DVR, guide data, and auto-skip commercials from recorded shows
I might have to switch to HDHR. I have a Plex server too. We kind of went all in on Tablo and bought a lifetime pass for TV listing data, so it makes it hard to switch.
It's especially frustrating as an AppleTV user because their app glitches out hard when you try to pause or rewind live TV. It'll keep jumping back to when you first started watching like hours before. I've messaged their support about it, but they blame Apple. iPhone app works fine though...
The Plex version can sometimes be frustrating too when trying to view live TV (freezing or buffering). I've heard the app called Channels is supposed to be the best of the best for this but I've never used it personally and also like everything integrated into one interface even if it causes the occasional grief.
If you decide to try the Plex route maybe just do a month of the Plex Pass so you're not dropping $100+ on the lifetime pass when it may not improve your situation.
🏴☠️
Yarr Harr Harr, fiddly dee doo!
Haven't sailed in a while, DM me tips on how to get my vessel sea-worthy again! 🏴☠️🦜
I've not done this, and I prefer anyone see as opposed to DMs, but there's a suite of open source apps https://medium.com/linux-shots/self-host-media-stack-jellyfin-radarr-sonarr-jackett-transmission-3e6a0adf716e
stremio + real-debrid + orion
Basically, orion finds the torrents, a debrid service cache's torrents and streams them to you, stremio renders the stream.
No need for a VPN, no need to seed, no need for the *arr family, nice UI with high wife-approval-factor to browse content.
What benefits does Orion have over torrentio for Real Debrid?
Tried the trial and it found higher quality releases more often. I just don't understand how it works with the credit system.
probably none! I'm new to stremio and orion was the only way I could find to link stremio to real debrid. Thanks for mentioning this one I'll look into it!
orion is non-free btw. I assume torrentio is also paid ?
edit: just installed, I see it's free. Looks great. I may have been turned off previously by the utorrent logo 😆
A little off topic, but I'd like to nominate the Paramount+ marketing team for some sort of award.
Their adverts are everywhere, I don't have Paramount+, yet every ad I see somehow makes me want it less.
That is called reactance bias. Being advertised or pressured to do something leads to want said thing less.
I mean, there is that. But it's also their choice of things they advertise. Like, there'll be a billboard with five or six diverse shows, and they're all the sort of absolute drek I'd scroll past in the subscriptions I already pay for.
I see them and just think "I'm glad I don't subscribe to Paramount+"
It's definitely a terrible streaming service all around. If I want a trekkie they be dropped.
Strange New Worlds is pretty good. I'll probably cancel when I'm done watching it though.
It's on Apple TV+, no need for PM+
Lol wut. My streaming torrents have never been better!
And that's why I use the questionably legal streaming sites... at this point I have been radicalized enough to find copyright an offensive premise
I got there about 10 years ago, a little after I graduated High School. I realized copyright was stupid before I ever really learned what capitalism is.
arrr, matey
Arr, Sonarr, Radarr, Readarr,....
Is it just me, or have tpb & mirrors gotten EXTRA cancer-y lately
And that's me done with Disney+ - big price hikes and the removal of password sharing have killed the value in it.
Plus, I have such a massive backlog of things to watch, I wouldn't even notice.
There's no way the model is sustainable once everyone starts their streaming platform.
Cool, looks like it's time to revisit my streaming services again. We're on Disney+ legacy, which is great because we get like $8/month off with my credit card (Amex Everyday), but if they end that deal, I'll probably leave too.
Netflix is getting to be not worth it, so I'll probably go order some DVDs of TV shows my kids like, then cancel and see how that goes. We really don't watch all that much.
Just recently bought a stack of used DVDs. This is the way.
After seeing this many "arr"s here, I just letting y'all in the comments know that 1) you're my peeps 2) you're feckin beautiful 3) I stay seeding for you <3
I don't think the era of cheap streaming is over, on the contrary, it's greater than it's ever been.
My selfhosted Plex and Jellyfin are booming, and services like Netflix and Disney+ just made my family and friends to adopt the streaming services faster.
I stop paying two years ago and I've noticed no difference in quality or content.
Thanks Netflix for rekindling my love for the seven seas.
How do you like Jellyfin? I picked up the Plex lifetime membership waaay back in the day and have been using it consistently for the past 5-ish years, but audio (at least in the web player) is so hit and miss - 5.1 down mixing to stereo is always way too quiet no matter what settings I mess with.
I’m back on the high seas, but I’m worried about my ability to discover new shit or when stuff comes back. I’ve relied on my Apple TV to let me know when new seasons start for so long that I no longer have tools to keep track of shit. I literally forget the things I watch between seasons.
I use a notion database to track all the shows I'm watching. Mainly because I have ADHD but it might be useful
Also ADHD, but in the way that systems like that don’t work for me. I’m wholly incapable of keeping up with them and they sap me of all my energy.
This site used to be pretty good for tracking shows. No idea if it still is any good tho. https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/
Look up guides for radarr and sonarr and associated rr's. They can do the heavy lifting for you.
Yep. They just pull things you monitor as they show up in your feeds (in my case Usenet newsgroup indexes)
For example. My wife like Billions, new episode/season came out and it jus popped up in my plex server the other day
Just use seriesguide, simple solution.
No, thanks.. As long as I can download whatever I want whenever I want (add it to nas and watch through Kodi having like Netflix experience), there is no way that those people will get my money. Most of it is just bullshit anyway. And if I like or want to support some quality release I'll go to cinema.
Music is next.
The shitshow will continue. I think it has just begun.
It’s a little different as Spotify/apple/etc don’t produce music and are not trying to out license each other. Really good thing you don’t have to sub to half a dozen music services.
Grateful that they don’t. But they have tried to do it with podcasts.
Spotify “pulled an Apple”, bought Gimlet and moved all their podcasts onto Spotify exclusively. I don’t use Spotify and chose to find alternatives. I’m happy I did.
Isn’t that interesting? Maybe if the studios weren’t allowed to own the TV channels, we’d have more competition and the prices would go down.
Tidal seemed to try going down this road with exclusives but thankfully none of the others followed.
Same shit definitley happens with record labels on streaming, thank goodnes for indie, kinda killed that a bit
Thank God I listen to DIY punk subgenres
DIY? That must not mean what I think it does.
ETA: It does mean do it yourself. Interesting.
I never left the 7 seas matey
Indeed. The era of cheap pirated content... continues much as it always had.
Rising prices is just the first stage of enshittification
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The disruptive streaming model birthed by Netflix that dangled all-you-can-eat menus of films, shows, and endless entertainment without pesky advertisements for extraordinarily low prices came to an official close on Wednesday.
Disney boss Bob Iger announced during the company’s quarterly earnings report that the Magic Kingdom will once again hike Disney+ prices for the second time in less than a year, increasing the monthly cost of its ad-free plan $3 to $13.99 in October.
But Wednesday’s move to significantly bump prices, marked an acknowledgment by Iger of the media giant’s intent to squeeze more revenue out of streaming by pushing consumers to the advertising-supported plans, which have proven to be more profitable.
When Netflix first offered its pioneering service for only $8 a month, millions of people signed up, eager to have access to the company’s expansive catalog for just a fraction of the cost of the traditional cable bundle.
That served as the genesis of the streaming era, with legacy entertainment companies such as Disney racing to launch their own direct-to-consumer products at unsustainably low costs.
Couple that reality with the introduction of ads into streaming and the end product eerily resembles on-demand cable.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot
Popcorn time :D
these numbers are nearly reaching the point where buying seasons of shows on iTunes, which always seemed insanely expensive, becomes the better option for people who watch specific stuff. never thought I’d see the day
Everyone is willing to stop paying for the content, but very few are willing to boycott it instead.
And actually talk to my family? What are you insane?
/s
The era of Free Streaming has just begun
The renaissance of free streaming.
This makes me wonder what else I can do with my free time. Besides saving money, if I stopped paying for all of these services, I would probably be more active and healthier. A part of me hopes that they increase prices again, and motivate people to be more active.
Yup, you probably will be.
When I dropped Amazon Prime, I found myself ordering less crap, reusing more, and buying higher quality from different vendors. I also watched Twitch less because I no longer had a free sub (though I still use an ad blocker, it just feels more wrong so I just watch less).
Sometimes we just need to give ourselves a little push.
It was over the day the studios wanted to have their own services instead of licensing content to Netflix and competitors.
Time to get the old torrent box going agaian
Well, I've canceled everything. Even amazon prime. All I had left was youtube premium and prime. Canceled both this month. Premium stops in a few days and prime will finish out the year. I canceled Netflix something kike 2 years now. I'm back to being a pirate at this point.
My use of Kodi and debrid says otherwise.
I am currently getting my pirating machine back online. To many shows that are not availible on my usual streaming services.
yaaaaarrr tis cheaper than eva matey
Cancelled Netflix last month. Still have Amazon Prime, but mostly for the delivery. The only video streaming subscription worth keeping is MUBI for now (and Nebula, but that hardly counts).
I'm the opposite. I ditched Amazon Prime because I realized I don't really need the faster shipping and I wasn't using their video platform much anyway.
I still have Netflix and Disney+, mostly because my kids watch them, but I might get away with dropping one off them if I buy a few series on DVD or whatever.
I've been thinking of dropping Amazon Prime as well. I don't really use it that much. Disney+ looks like a good deal rn, but I don't wanna give any money to those evil fucks.
Yup, if Disney+ doesn't keep my legacy plan going (I don't see why they would), I'll just have to cancel and deal with a frustrated 3yo for a little while (the only one that regularly watches).
That's because it's not a sudtainable buisness model, I bet for the few actually good productions even donations would be better!
Not sure what the angle of the article is (commenting before reading), but before we even get to the cost of individual services, I became disillusioned with streaming after Final Space was obliterated from existence for a tax write-off, and then hearing about what Disney pulled with Willow, and most recently the un-ordering of a whole second season of Star Trek Prodigy.
What happened with Willow?
Cancelled the series after one season. Damn shame because it showed promise and it was fun to return to the world of Willow.
It probably didn't have the huge ratings investors were hoping for, so it got the axe before it even had a chance.
They pushed the boundaries people paid up so here we go keep paying
Paid Plex shares are the way to go
Plex shares (I actually use an Emby share) are what streaming should have been after cable.
It's the perfect service, everything all in one spot for a reasonable fee.
I'd pay up to $100 a month for that legally, but instead the studios want to bleed me dry.
So they get nothing.
I use emby too and love it. All content played though emby was downloaded. Is this how you are using emby or so you subscribe to some service for streaming?
🎶do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!🎶
Again? How many times has it ended now?
Hotstar disney+ is still $20 a year here in se Asia. Netflix starts at $5/month ($3 for mobile only). Im super curious if these prices ever hit us. I have a feeling they'd just kill the services if they did.
In India those prices are still "expensive" for the average person. India and SE Asia are a huge cash cow so I doubt they'll increase prices right away since they're still trying to bring more users in, but eventually I'm sure prices go up there too.
Time to dust off the old pirate hat...
Couldn’t you just subscribe for a month, download the videos and cancel the subscription? Just slap a new 2 TB hard disk on your computer and start downloading 24/7 until the disk is full. Surely that’s enough stuff to watch for several months.
The normal use case for these apps is you download, then you only have access while you're paying for the service. If you put your plane in airplane mode for Netflix, I believe you have a few days to reconnect or you won't have access to your downloads.
Yeah, they all download files in a proprietary format so you can only watch using their app, it's not just a .mp4 that you can use whenever
Well, that’s obviously a problem. Hasn’t anyone made a program that allows you to download the videos in a more compatible format?
Yes its called Qbittorrent
Thats the same as regular pirating with extra steps.
Also that 2TB is going to fill up quick so it's more "downloading 24/1" until it's full.