Ad-free streaming is a luxury now
https://www.theverge.com/column/958379/streaming-industry-adsOpen linkView original on lemmy.worldSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.worldhttps://www.theverge.com/column/958379/streaming-industry-adsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
138 replies
The verge: "it started with ads and blabla".
No.
It started when people were pirating and life was good. Then the streaming came with a good product and a fair price -> people agreed with that and people stopped pirating.
Companies started to enshitify the product, we are now at this point.
I am not suggesting you what to do.
But we all know what TO do.
Not even close
I know a bunch of people on lemmy don't constitute a diversified survey, but this is verbatim me.
Lemmy: Arrrr!
Big Tech: take away their PC and give them some completely locked down box fully under our control, to protect the children of course. And no more physical media!
The only answer to that is probably board games and books.
Team Arrrr here. ;-)
Holy shit! Now I got it why they are called Sonarr, Radarr, etc... 🤦♂️
Yeah, took me a while to get that, I had the same holy shit moment about a year ago.. ;-)
or just go to your local library where they have 1000s of dvds/blu rays for you to borrow for free
My library does streaming now, don’t even need to make the trip, it’s pretty awesome.
As much as people love doom mongering about big-tech coming for your PC, I just dont see it. There's a temporary price spike in some components atm yes, but that will end when the AI bubble pops. Further than that I just dont see what people think is going to happen, outlawing linux? Banning the import of PC components? The amount of damage either of those would do to the economy is so huge It just wouldnt happen.
Age verification, id verification, mandatory DRM, only allow certified apps from official app stores, block systems not on the approved list from login onto sites, issues using school and government sites. Then payment processors get involved to refuse cash to those not following the program.
It's a slow squeeze instead of outright ban that leaves Big Tech boxes and Dark Web boxes.
In retrospect, we dodged a bullet when the Internet developed the way that it did, in an open fashion, at Universities, largely by hippies (and, later, furries).
Remember Compuserve? And early AOL? I remember Quantumlink (Steve Case's company that eventually turned into AoL) and how my parents had to pay for it by the hour.
Tech Companies wanted to erect tool booths on computer communication, just like the phone network, but the Internet (and it's open architecture) beat them to the punch. They've been trying to fix that bug ever since. But they figured out that if the interconnect is open, they can still charge a toll if they have root access in the hardware at both sides. Once TVs became computers, it became so much easier.
But they can't force us to buy. Say they managed to fully stop piracy, there is still the solution not to buy stuff. It's not like we need this to live, and we should do more of "vote with your wallet". Money is the only language they get.
None of those exist or, as far I am aware, are being proposed for computers though? Yes there are some restrictions being brought in to block access to some content on the web (DRM, ID and age gating) which are shit, but I've heard nothing about using any of that to block access to general computing.
Apple has always banned you from sideloading anything on an iPhone and now Google is following suit. Soon Google will make sidelong a giant pain in the ass and only available to "developers" with the reason being to scare normal people into thinking doing things how they are done now is "too dangerous" and that they need to nanny us and not give us full control of our devices.
Microsoft is still desperately trying to shove everyone onto their Microsoft store and their "universal" appx bullshit or whatever. Once enough people have been switched over, its game over for traditional executables.
For context the Microsoft Store came out in 2012 and was a big reason why Valve went all-in on Linux because they could see what Microsoft's long term goal was here from a mile away.
It's been 13 years of slow build up to this.
You are the frog in the slowly boiling pot.
I dont really consider Phones to be general purpose computing device because they have always been very locked down, yes google is making android worse but it has pretty much always been a walled garden with a rusty but technically open back door.
I think the fact that microsoft started trying 14 years ago to push people away from standard executables and still has not made significant inroads tells you all you need to know there. Window's fundamental value proposition is its backwards compatibility, Linux has no interest in locking things down even if it did it would be forked to a free version in hours. The only one where there might be a case there is on mac.
No, these are things tested on gaming and phones. If it works and there isn't much resistance it'll come to regular computers too. First you had Steam for games, then came the iphone with an app store and then it became a thing in general computing. That's how things go.
I have the feeling that the AI bubble isn't going to burst as everyone expects, it will, but I don't think it will restore prices to the good old days
Oh it will, but what it will leave behind is the same mess of big megacorps who will retain the technology and use it for evil..
you know, like normal.
Even if prices fall, the economic damage will be severe and nobody will be in the mood for spending much on components. Folks have already probems and jobs are cut at the height of the bubble so that's not going to end well.
I think they make cloud gaming very cheap, so that at one point you just rent a system and can play all the AAA titles with Ultra graphics for like 20€ a month, so it's not worth it anymore for the common gamer to invest into PC components. Then after they got you locked in the service will drastically enshittify. This in combination with locked up OSes due to all the age verification and think of the children surveillance. I am not saying it is likely to happen in the next 5 years, but at one day maybe? I mean the children nowadays are growing up with IPads and stuff, if they want to game they buy a console or a steam machine. When I was a kid it would have never been possible for me to afford a PC for gaming at these prices.
This is what happened to music and tv/cinema. Now that nobody has mp3 players or blu-ray collections, they force you to subscribe and STILL shove ads down your throat.
That's already been tried though (google stadia) and it was a massive flop. There are limitations around latency that are hard physics based ones which wont be easily solved.
So Google Stadia 2.0, this time without a decent, unfixable controller with shit battery life but also one of the best D-pads known to man?
End goal is to make humans idiots at computing so all they know is bezosnet with an ai slopbot to ask what you want. Very idiocracy style.
Then us nerds are the minority and there won't be a market for hardware so it will be dissolved. I give this 10 years.
Hell, we are already the minority. 99% of humans use a phone as a computer and store everything in centralized cloud services. I don't know 1 person who stores stuff on their hard drive anymore (if they know what a hard drive is, its a miracle).
Yeah I’m finding this too, people just opting to save in a cloud.
I do some stuff on iPad or iPhone like the payments, I think their ecosystem is probably the pick for that and I’m degoogling that as well. All that is sent to my PC though, and the records stored in my hard drives.
I use clouds as little as possible and anything that automatically sent to one, if it is, is on my hard drives as well.
Dropbox continually asks me to update my storage. I just don’t use it any more.
They already ban the import of some components. Apple is asking for special permission to buy from a banned manufacturer. This won't hurt big tech, only the consumers.
Yes. Some countries and states have proposed laws for age verification that would make Linux illegal.
Just like temporary gas price hikes... right? Right? Riight?
They don't have to ban imports, just control WHO can import. And as long as those companies are jnder their thumb, they can control which consumers can have what.
On the damage side. Personal purchases of components pales in comparison to commercial. So they could live with damage to the personal sector. And of course it will make a whole new way for the to extract profit via yet another middle man.
The AI bubble isn't going to burst like you think. If it does, sure, component prices may fall, but most of us won't have jobs anyways so we still won't be able to afford them.
Good luck with that. I still have functional PCs that are 20 yrs old and perfectly fine as Jellyfin servers.
"Piracy is a service problem."
We have a service problem.
That's why I subscribe to Jellyfin Plus Pro Premium Ad-Free.
The others had their chance. They chose greed.
Jellyfin Plus Pro Premium Ad-Free truly is the best service available. My favorite part is it's streaming service agnostic, I actually own the media, and it's immune from a corporation taking media away from the particular streaming service because they wanted to make their own streaming service!
just fucking torrent it all you losers. a vpn sub is cheaper than netflix.
Sometimes I make it a challenge. Can my other half access the content the "right" way faster than a torrent can be found?
It really is. I've been using an Nvidia Shield for my living room TV. All of a sudden this week it showed a Lidl ad right there on the homescreen. Those fuckers. Replacement is on its way, fuck Nvidia.
I had no idea, on both counts: that Google weedled its way in there too, and that a different launcher was even an option. I will look into that, thanks!
They didn't weedle they're way in, it's a Google OS haha
oh 🤭
Yeh productivity is so clean after google and amazon etc. Is your interface not theirs.
I mean, yes fuck nvidia for sure, but I think those ads are via the googs. They have ramped up lately for sure.
In either case, I ignore them for now as I click into the jellyfin interface and enjoy my library.
All of a sudden this happened years ago.
What did you end up choosing as your replacement?
I have a TV streaming device that needs replaced and I've struggled to decide what to replace it with.
I was thinking of setting up a NUC, but with the great suggestions here I can hold off on that.
The ideal setup imo would be a steam machine :D
I haven't watched something with ads in it for many years.
Y'all know how.
Only time is when I stay in hotels and watch their cable. It's so weird and insulting after freeing myself from them for so long. It breaks up the pace and basically ruins the entire experience.
Maybe look into getting a GL.inet travel router with WiFi and a Chromecast/Android stick. I use that when I travel. Setup a WiFi network on the travel router and setup the Chromecast on it for when you're at the hotel.
At the hotel, either jack the travel router into a network port then use your phone to sign in to the hotel's network, or configure Repeater/WISP to get the travel router to connect to and re-broadcast the hotel WiFi (again using your phone or PC to sign in). Going Repeater/WISP brings a sizeable performance hit due to the lack of radios but it's definitely do-able.
If you're hosting Jellyfin externally, job done. If not, you can configure OpenVPN/Wireguard on the travel router and your home router and connect privately that way.
Source: Tech worker who had a requirement to be overseas 80% of the year in different hotels :)
https://www.gl-inet.com/collections/travel-routers
https://wifirepeater.org/openwrt-wisp-repeater-mode-configuration/
Maybe I should start running ads on my jellyfin server. Something like "want unlimited bluey for a weekend? Clear and load the dishwasher twice this week"
Or "want +16 content? Start being an adult and use the toilet brush"
You may have just become your parents
some time ago I saw an homeassistant customizatoin where the smartplug for TV would turn on only after the child confirmed they completed a bunch of tasks (homework, putting away toys etc). Sure they could "cheat" but that would just trigger a total ban for a month.
Borrowing this idea.
Ngl that might work on me, gating Bluey behind the dishwasher. At least until the obsession ran out.
Yet one more thing pushing people to Piracy...
There is nothing more maddening than advertising during a show that wasn't written for commercial breaks.
Piracy is the poor doing what the rich do all the time.
I must be living a very luxurious life then. Jellyfin has kept the same price for ad-free 'streaming', as has Stremio (so far).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/luxury
Not on my media server it ain't.
I love jellyfin streaming 😀
Same, works great, it's my media, no ads, no issues. And no I don't have to pay some $750 for a 'PlexPass' either.
This. Domain and static IP cheaper than streaming services.
Since when does a static IP address cost less than a streaming service? Domains sure. But a static is like $20-30 a month. I use dynamic DNS for any services that need to access the WAN side of my firewall (very very few) and I use tailscale for all things on my local network I need to access from outside. I would never let my media server or NAS touch the WAN.
Mine is free.
You lucky MoFo
With my ISP a static IP costs like 3€ a month
🏴☠️
.... Ublock origin, Jellyfin.
Never seen adds in the last 2 decades.
On high seas there are no ads arr... 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I:m so used to block ads on every platform I use. That everytime I'm forced to use an infected version of said platform I'm shocked by the amount of ads that are being shuved down your throat.
I saw great potential in streaming. Then physical media started to evaporate. Then everyone started to have their own streaming platform. Then came the ads.
By the time I could have afforded them, it got enshittified. Back to swashbuckling I guess.
Was the plan all along. You gotta pay the same price, but now also watch ads and have it all gone once you stop paying for subscriptions.
I appreciate the article points out AppleTV as being the only one without ads at this point. They also have great shows and the fidelity of the video is good.
Tim Cook sucks at this point, but who ever is running the TV business is doing a good job.
They just added ads to their Maps app, I am 100% expecting them to add ads to AppleTV
I have hated Apple since Jobs was alive and being a dickhead to his employees. With that being said, Widow's Bay was pretty damn awesome. I sure as shit didn't pay for it though.
Indeed, i despide apple in almost everything, but apple TV, its shows, the color pallets picked for many shows, their quality, etc is just amazing
Good thing uBO exists, and uBOL for Chromium.
layers and layers. secure dns, UBO*, not paying streaming services... you know, the holy trinity.
Good thing Pirate Bay exists.
and qbittorrent :3
I am hoarding all the Linux ISOs.
Smart move. You'll still be able to use them when the government tries to ban them for lack of age verification spyware.
Stremio your way out of it. I see so few ads in my life that it triggers me whenever I do.
Preach it, brother.
Stremio is enshitifying.
https://blog.stremio.com/stremio-supporters-a-way-to-sustain-our-development/
IDK it says it will always be free and all the current features will always remain free. Sounds hood enough for me. But I agree this is something to keep an eye on.
I mean... I wouldn't say that the 3€ I pay for my torbox monthly are so much money as to be considered a luxury but I guess not everyone can afford that much for a sub...
This was the plan the entire time
its really funny how this is so much the way cable went.
It became the thing it sought to destroy: cable
🏴☠️
Thom Yorke has literally tried everything for selling music. Though it all he's seen the music industry eventually consume it.
You can't invent something new without it eventually turning into what was the old. We can always keep moving the tech, we can always keep inventing some new platform, but we never get to keep to ourselves forever.
The reason why this keeps happening is because people keep trying to apply a solution that doesn't apply to the problem. We don't need some NEW method of delivery. We just need to get rid of the OLD system of industry.
For that we need a culture that abhors greed, not one that celebrates, respects and elects it
No streaming then.
Stremio + Real-Debrid = adfree streaming.
JellyFin + your own media = ad free streaming. I detest ads and general streaming services. Whenever you want to talk about a show, you have to preface it with 'what streaming service is it on'?
And you can watch it when your internet is down.
This will be the way for me going forward building storage and library. I'd rather don't watch something than watch with ads.
Sure but that requires infrastructure. Have you seen the price of storage these days?
It's still not bad if you're buying old SAS drives. At this point, anything 4TB or less is fine, and for most people that's plenty to start with.
If you're ripping DVD and BluRay content, you probably will gobble up space quickly without re-encoding it, but otherwise you can store content from streaming services with ease.
My point was more that Stremio with debrid costs maybe $50/yr and requires minimal knowledge/maintenance, as well as having other benefits (depending on the debrid service.)
If you have zero care in the world about storing the media, Stremio makes much more sense imho.
I can only speak for myself, but any such service can only be looked at as a temporary solution. How long before that goes away? With your own media (be it ripped from disks you own or obtained elsewhere), it's not temporary.
I built my 32tb server a couple of years ago when drive prices were reasonable, but many of the rips on it are strait remuxes. Now that another drive or two is not likely affordable anytime soon, I'm re-encoding them to x265 to reclaim a bunch of space.
That is the unfortunate thing, hosting your own media does take storage, but I still think overall it would be cheaper depending on the amount of storage and how much you are spending on Streaming services. A quick look says people are spending $100 or so on services each month. So $1,200 a year. You can easily build a 30tb array and the NAS for under that, even with today's outrageous prices, as as you find more storage, expand upon it. 30tb is going to host a whole lot of media. Let's say the average 30 minute TV show is 0.5 gb and a movie is 2gb, you can store something like 20,000 TV episodes and 10,000 movies. I think you'd be just fine, and that's a payback of one year. And you can easily share that with your friends and family without paying additional fees.
Stremio is piracy so has no cost.
Paying for a debrid service is optional, you can use a VPN instead, but debrid just makes it cleaner since that is built into many of the addon options.
For me at least, I like owning my media, at least that way you don't have to worry about it disappearing in the future.
firefox and ublock~
Is IPTV piracy just a European thing then?
My friend here in the States has it. He let me use it for a while. It's really cool, but finding an IPTV service that's reliable is a real challenge.
Go to Chinese amazon, search for android boxes and ask for a test they will give you a code. Use tivimax premium as your app, said to be the best.
Tivimate is THE app for IPTV on Android. But it seems providers are scarce in the US so regardless of software that is a problem.
Yeah, follow the instructions and get direct access you dont need a reseller. I pay 35 a year for everything available direct to a seller on one of the chinese marketplace sites
The end result is that advertisers dictate content, like they have done with traditional broadcast.
Ad free streaming is a myth now.
-there I corrected it
I prefer minuses too.
Yeah. When I heard about cable (as a kid because I heard you paid for it), I imagined it was ad free. And then when I became an adult and experienced cable, I was super disappointed and it made me mildly upset.
In the golden age of television, advertisers paid for the production of content and used the content to sell their wares by placing "commercials" within. Now they no longer produce content but have made deals with the content creators to insert their ads, while the end user, the consumer of content, suffers for it.
Guess I'm living the high life!
or sailing the high seas?
They are the same thing.
aye aye captain
It’s kinda ironic that verge is also paywalled. I guess at least is not ad-walled.
When was it not?
When nearly everything was on Netflix for less than $10 a month and you could share it. So for a year or two.
And how was that not a luxury?
Cheap and readily available things are not luxuries.
So your risk is not that it's a "luxury", it's that it's too expensive? Who decides what is "cheap"? Are you aware that they were running at a loss that whole time?
Is it? I've never seen my VPN serving me any ads, and it's pretty cheap.
I just subscribe to max 2 services at a time.
And there are a few things I just didn't watch because not worth it.
Paywall
Sorry, pure capitalism fails just like pure communism fails. You're expecting good things for free. -Sorry you're stuck with below mid garbage. Incentives make the world turn. Communism makes slackers work (at gunpoint).
That's not how any of that works.
I can't argue your brilliantly articulated rebuttal. -Go out and keep on winning!
checks the votes on our respective comments
Thanks, I will!