Are you cancelling streaming services?
With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I cancelled Netflix the day they blocked my elderly parents from accessing my account.
I was paying for 4 streams, it shouldn't matter 1 stream was at my parents house, they were still getting their money.
Don't worry Netflix, we still get to enjoy your content via torrents and my parents still get a convenient streaming app full media via Plex, so you can eat shit Netflix!
I canceled Netflix, but I stayed on their mailing list so I know about new shows I might like to watch. My frigate is now a submarine that goes beep, beep. (it has sonarr, I guess would be the main point I'm trying to make here)
Check out Overseerr if you use Plex, or Jellyseerr if you use Jellyfin.
It will show you popular and upcoming movies/tv shows, and you can integrate with with the arr suite to have users able to request and download the shows.
It's fantastic, especially if you're sharing your media server with others
I’m confused. Does this automatically download media?
It will send the request to sonarr or radarr to download it, if you have those set up.
Before ditching Netflix I added all my current shows to a calendar/tracking website, which I check every few days and grab anything new, new new shows, in just rely on word of mouth and/or social media.
Don't use Plex, use Jellyfin. Plex tracks everything you watch and do. Jellyfin is free, open-source and self-hosted.
Are you going come here and setup my system, then install apps on mine and my kids devices and show them how to use it AND then travel to my parents house, install it on their devices and explain to them how to use it?
No? Guess I'll stick with the free self-hosted Plex.
I see this argument a lot, and I’m sure you’re right, but I was curious, why don’t people set up a url for jellyfin that your family can access over the internet, then they just have to go to a website and log in? Would work for TVs or any device that connects to the internet
I have a Smart TV (not Android TV) that can access the internet and it works fine through the web interface.
Tried Jellyfin and it was a pain to get running on my NAS (the only add on in the Synology store is a random community port that doesn’t work well and the apps for the TV are all janky). Will stay with Plex until they sort it all out.
Yes, I believe they have pretty bad documentation, but I after a lot of pain I was able to get it working too.
Jellyfin still has a lot of catching up to do, unfortunately.
I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren't getting any of my money any more 🙂
I do have to thank Netflix for motivating my to try Plex and see what my uplink could handle, about 3 1080 streams, so there's that positive.
Cancelled all subscriptions apart from Usenet and VPN.
Now I just pirate it all and bang it on Plex. All in one place on all devices, easy peasy
In my experience, Jellyfin is better than Plex in every single way.
I don't disagree but it was hard enough getting my dad and grandma to work plex. I'm not changing now.
Plex is working really well for me at the moment.
Solid reason to stick to Plex. A few of my friends just stayed with Plex until they moved / their setup broke, and switched afterwards
My entire family uses Plex and I managed to get them using it years ago. I still occasionally have to help them setup a new device.
I've toyed with the idea of setting up Jellyfin for personal use, but I'm not ready to set aside the time it'd take me to get them on Jellyfin.
What's specifically so much better about it? We've got years of watchlists and customizations to our Plex and it works flawlessly but if there's a compelling reason beyond "it's the new hotness" I'm all ears.
Because it's FOSS. I'm sure there are other reasons but if I am putting my pirated stash somewhere I don't want a proprietary program to have full access.
Fair enough, thanks!
I'm not your down vote, but fuck Plex. Resource-intensive code to start, and also fuck their pushy cloud-first posture. I dropped them like a hot potato when they obfuscated requiring a cloud account to watch streaming locally. Shady stuff, especially when you're self-hosting.
Jellyfin is WAY less intrusive. It just works for local streaming, and for discreet sharing among trusted affiliates. Maybe not as pooshed or feature complete as Plex, bit it's far less obnoxious on my resources, and my affiliates
Was looking up Plex and I don't understand it. For example I looked up a Netflix show and it asked me to subscribe to Netflix.
What makes it better? I'm lost
Plex allows you to host your own media and will match filenames to metadata. You point it to the folders for your movies and TV and it'll start searching through and adding them to your Plex server as streamable media.
There are ways to automate the searching and downloading of your desired movies and TV. Pair it with Plex and you have your own personalized streaming platform with just what you want to see.
Yeah I run Plex with the Arr dockers.
I use an app on my phone and it's all just done for you.
Someone recommends a show or movie? Open app, search for show and add it.
In the background the setup will automatically search the download providers you've setup (Usenet or torrents), filter them for the quality profile, download the files and place them in the correct folder ready to stream on Plex.
It's so seamless once working.
Do you have a guide for this? I have Plex with Plex Pass but I haven't been able to figure out how to get media beyond manually RDPing to my server and downloading a torrent from a private tracker.
I built it up over months.
The simplest setup though I copied from Spaceinvador One on YouTube.
I just did this a month ago on my Synology NAS following this guy's guides:
https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/
It's done via GUI on Synology's OS so the process is different (ie longer, more tedious) than just using Docker compose on Linux.
I'm using Overseerr plus the other *rr apps for ppl to request movies and shows via a self-hosted website, and Requestrr so friends can also request via a Discord bot
Because it's not a streaming service in the sense that it provides the content. The user provides the content; it just provides the streaming functionality.
It's a self hosted Netflix, so you fill it with your own files (however you obtained them) and it handles everything else
You can also look into Jellyfin, which is a popular open source alternative to it
I have a toddler who doesnt understand the concept of "We cant watch Gabbys Dollhouse anymore because Daddy is sticking it to the man."
Nope, few more years before I can think about shitcanning any of them.
Yarr Harr?
One day yes but we're only just now learning how to deal with compromises, sometimes "How about Bluey? works sometimes it doesnt.
If you need some help on where to begin, msg me. I can get you up and running in under an hour, so long as you have a working computer with some hard drive space (or a portable HDD).
Edit: that goes for anyone else who needs help setting up as well.
Might take you up on that offer once I give it an honest try :))
What kind of a setup do you usually go with?
Hardware doesn't matter except for raw disk space, since you'd be storing the files yourself.
I use Docker Desktop, Portainer, and docker-compose stacks to run everything. The whole thing will take maybe 1.5 GB RAM and a little bit of CPU. I ran the whole setup from a raspberry pi for a while.
WARNING: This is a rabbit-hole that will eat your wallet alive, and bring you endless joy.
It can be as simple as running a VPN on your computer, and downloading torrents through a torrent app on the same computer. Then you can just watch the videos you download however you like.
If you want a Netflix-like interface for what you've downloaded, run Plex or Jellyfin and point them to your downloads. Get the plex or jellyfin app on your tv, tablet, phone, etc as well. The app will see plex running on your computer and you're good to go.
You can keep getting more advanced depending on what you want. For example you can use apps like Sonarr and Radarr to automatically send movies and shows to your download app as they come out. You can also use things like Bazarr to automatically get subtitles. Tdarr to encode what you download if you want to do something like make sure everything works on your tv and a specific streaming stick (eg: roku).
And on and on.
I use all of that, and have it set up through docker on a server which has access to a giant NAS for storing the files.
Gonna piggyback onto this, my DMS are also open. Ask away if ya need help. Fuck this streaming bullshit, steal everything.
Kid can operate a tv remote to find streaming shows. Yoohooing is a little out of their capability and would need a parent to constantly start shows.
Parent can set up Sonarr, add the shows, kid can watch them via Jellyfin.
We are not rich but the streaming services arent stressing us financially. I am however time poor, the streaming services "just work" and my daughter can navigate them well enough to open the app and pick what she wants.
I know its easy enough to do, but setting it all up and teaching my wife and daughter the new way of doing things... not to mention managing the constant requests for fresh content. Pass.
Okay and when they want a different show….?
Then daddy adds a new series to Sonarr? I admit it introduces some latency.
Okay, now you’re doing it every 5 minutes, and by the time you’re done A, they are already asking for K.
Have you considered maybe that's not a healthy way to consume media in the first place?
Just download Mr Roger's and sesame street and let them watch them over and over. Kids will watch the same thing ten times in a row. I know, I've seen them do it.
This scenario is highly undesirable, have you ever considered that not all people, especially kids want to watch content in English? (depends on the age ofc).
Most torrents offer original language with subtitles, if you say, let's search for a kids show that is in Latin Spanish not Spain Spanish this will make the task incredible harder... we are talking about searching private trackers with this, heck even I struggle to find cartoons of my time with natal language, it was fairly impossible to do so, at least before HBO MAX and Pluto TV brought back several classics to life again... you can't beat easiness of streaming media for that scenarios, not even with softwarr.
Most of us dealing with variations of this theme.
I'm in the same damn boat 😅
Do you think your little one could use something like Popcorn time? Those interfaces are as good as netflix, from my experience
There was a point in time where I paid for Netflix because it was simply easier than downloading everything.
That point has long passed, and I no longer pay for streaming.
200$ / month is insane, wow. From what I can tell, lots of people seem to start pirating way more. It looks like it’s common to be subbed to your favorite streaming service and put the rest on Plex.
Remember we're a very small circle here, and the groups we run with are also pretty close knit, lots more in our groups may mean something but compared to everyone else it's probably less than a blip.
I think it's more common for people to rotate which service they're subscribed to each month.
But piracy is still increasing in popularity.
I cancelled my Netflix account. I keep Disney Plus around for my stepkid, and Prime Video because it comes with Prime, although I'll probably cancel that soon too. I'm keeping Funimation.
Streaming is becoming worse than cable. At least if I got cable (which I won't) I could PVR shit and skip the ads. The idea of paying a monthly fee to get advertised at anyway is nauseating.
Keeping Funimation? Aren't they migrating us all over to Crunchyroll?
I never had subscriptions. Arr!
I used to pay for Netflix because it was easier to have one service to watch everything, than it was to pirate.
I've obviously stopped.
Piracy really is a service problem for me.
Yeah it used to be it just wasn't worth the effort to pirate stuff. There was always plenty to watch on Netflix and all of the movies got there eventually. Now you'd have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, then search around for which one has the thing you want to watch on it. It's more effort to get stuff on streaming (which you have to pay for) than to simply pirate it.
I have exactly the same story.
🙏 PRAISE GABE LORD OF CONSUMERIST WISDOM 🙏
I'd definitely be interested in a Valve streaming service, not to muddy the waters even further.
Cancelled Prime after about a month because fuck ads in a paid service. Other than that I still have all of them*, though considering cancelling Netflix and Disney+.
* I'm in Europe, so "all of them" means like 5 services, not the 50,000 US folks seem to have.
What ads? Is that something recent?
Amazon announced a couple days ago they're adding ads to all current plans and creating a new, more expensive, plan that will be ad-free.
It's not really any different from other services simply increasing the price and/or adding a cheaper plan with ads.
Already did. Mostly only used Netflix. Then their offering went from shit to "absolutely nothing is ever on there". Then they started pitching a fit over a VPN that I specifically excluded Netflix from. The major streaming services can blow me.
I rotate things around, unsubscribe regularly and resubscribe if there’s something there I want to watch.
I pirate everything like a chad. Fuck paying for shit like Spotify, Hulu etc
At this point its easier to find new movies through pirating platforms. So many different streaming services and they only allow searching through their own platform, and obviously push all their newest and shittiest shows. I just go to a neutral platform that has everything and no agenda and find great movies in a matter of minutes.
Try https://justwatch.com
Select your region in the footer.
Can't cancel what you never bought
I came here to say almost exactly this, tho I take issue with the use of the term "bought" since you don't buy a subscription, even if that's the language they keep pushing.
Already did ages ago, no value to me. I farm and do many other things, mostly outdoors. I watch TV and movies during snowstorms or heat waves. Often I'll be gaming, programming, designing systems, soldering etc. instead when stuck inside.
As such I don't need a steady stream of entertainment and I can wait for everyone else to point out the exceptional content. And once I know what I'm looking for it's ⛵☠️ time
qBittorrent
Netflix was the only one I ever really had, since the aughts. I am using Jellyfin now 🏴☠️ There are easier platforms, though, like popcorn time. A good VPN is a much better investment than some random streaming platform that maybe has 1 or 3 shows I actually care about watching.
Netflix’s crackdown affected me (I was the moocher) and I canned Hulu before some price hikes (I was the provider) and put the money towards a VPN.
I spend the computing power converting some media to play on my PS4 (plus finagling with subtitles) but once it’s done it’s done.
I never had them. Pirate life for me!
I'd been going halfsies with my best friend for years on Netflix. Now, instead of going halfsies, we both go nonesies and Netflix eats crow.
My wife and I currently use HBO, Disney, and prime, but prime is just a bonus we don't care about that comes with the free shipping, and her parents pay for Disney and we have one profile for us. I care most about HBO, but significantly less now than when The Last of Us was fresh. I'm trying some of the big shows and they're pretty good, but if money were tight I wouldn't hesitate to cut it. Millennials and Gen Z just don't worship TV like older generations do. I personally love movies, but I'll use my library card or sail the seas before I bend knee to ridiculous price hikes.
On the off chance that some streaming executive is in here trying to see where the line is, it's already been crossed for many. Your shit needs to be cheap, intuitive, and reliable, all while offering a library that people give a shit about. People are paying for convenience. Pirating isn't convenient. Going to the library isn't convenient. Buying what we wanna see and risking owning something we don't like isn't convenient. And your shit no longer being cheap, no longer being intuitive, or no longer being reliable ceases to feel convenient. And your library that you offer is the lions share of what matters to most people because your competitors probably have a platform that's largely intuitive and reliable. You need to beat them on price or on content, and you'll be the next Steve Jobs if you can consistently beat them on both. But you need to do that before pirating becomes good enough at reliability and with an intuitive UI and makes it so easy to get good content that your bubble fucking bursts. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
When the sharing crackdown on Netflix was announced I decided to cancel it and set up a recurring donation in the same amount to a charity I believe in. It felt pretty great. I'm about to cancel Prime, but I need to switch credit cards, which is kind of a pain. Prime isn't really worth it to me anymore. Otherwise I only pay for the ones that have active shows I'm watching. Haven't sailed the high seas in decades, and probably won't start. Missing TV has been great for my hobby productivity 😆
Honestly I have never paid for cable and found alternate sources for media going back to circa 2000. However, I find my hobbies now keep me busy so that I just don't watch much TV anymore. Like with gaming, I more feel sad I don't have the cultural knowledge than I feel like I am missing anything or really burning to see them. YouTube also keeps me plenty busy, plus podcasts, and I'm getting back into books which I have shelves of to be read to work through.
I am having more time to do interesting things and hang out with people now that I'm not spending any time on reddit, less time on lemmy, and very little time watching TV. It's like a lot of my day back.
I quit them a long time ago. Once we got to the point where I had to think about which service a show was on, I was done and cancelled Netflix. I guess I technically have Prime Video, but I almost never use it. Since then the services have only gotten worse.
The only streaming service I've kept and don't mind paying for is Spotify since you can still get just about everything in one place.
Nothing left. It's not even out of protest or anything, I'm just greedy. Netflix was ok when it was 7$ and had a lot of stuff but not anymore. I just pirate everything, it's centralised, I can watch it how I want. And when my Internet went down a few weeks ago I could still watch shit since it's self hosted.
Edit: Forgot I still have Amazon prime for delivery but I don't really use prime video. Oh and Spotify for discovering new music and creating "together" playlists with friends. This one I would only replace with another platform.
You can use your prime membership for music too, it's pretty bad compared to Spotify but it will save you some coin.
I canceled Netflix for what they did to the witcher and I'm canceling HBO max now because I don't want to watch anything on it.
HBO was my last service but just cancelled too :)
HBO kind of canceled itself. What is it called now? Just "Max" or something ridiculous.
Yeah it's called Max, guess it means Max Bullshit :)
John Oliver, The Wire and Sopranos rewatches are why I keep the max subscription.
I mean, I didn't say there's nothing to watch on it, just that I don't want to watch anything on it.
I've not had any subscriptions for 3 years now. Turning point for me was when I found it easier to sail the high seas rather than to figure out which service the show I had already paid for was on.
That too! I think it was either Prime, D+, or both but I was trying to watch something. The native app only supported up to 480p and thanks to DRM the web version just didn't work.
Did you mark you account as a bot? Some people ignore posts and comments by bots so I wouldn't turn that on if you're not using the account for bot purposes.
My wife and I decided we'll only have one streaming service at a time. Currently it's Disney Plus. We recently stopped Disney Plus in favor of Netflix due to the One Piece live action series. After it was done, we stopped Netflix and took Disney Plus again.
We don't have that much time to watch stuff anyway, so we figured we might be focusing on just a single library.
I'm keeping Spotify because I already split a family account (£18.99 per month I think) between 6 people. I pay for a few other subscription services like something for D&D and my phone bill but they are things that I feel I require.
I haven't paid for any streaming, gaming or other services for at least a year or two. As soon as I started sailing the high seas for specific content not on the big services, I realised that it's so little extra work for infinite free content.
Funnily enough, my partner and I have been considering picking up a £10 Photoshop subscription that's currently about, just because she uses an up to date Photoshop at work and swapping between the 2023 and 2020 versions is a small pain.
I cancelled Netflix a few months ago, I still pay for Disney+ and my bro pays for Paramount+, and we share those with each other
I ended up also installing Plex on my rapsberry pi and going back to pirating.
how do you do storage for your rpi Plex server?
A SATA SSD and a usb adaptor cable
I think this post begs the question: What is everyone's private trackers? Also let me in.
I rotate one subscription at a time and binge everything I want to watch and then cancel. Only subscription I have full time is Paramount+ because of their soccer.
Bro wtf... How do you get to 200$ a month without seriously considering cancelling some? Like don't you have to work for your money?
Daddy made a fortune back in the day and son is spending that on streaming services.
Some people are loaded?
Not even loaded that's just what middle class is supposed to look like.
I make somewhat decent money and there's no way in hell I'd spend $200/mo on streaming.
Jellyfin > plex
Is jellyfin that much better? I've seen people throw it around a lot and I've yet to try it. The big thing I like about Plex is Plexamp as a music app and it seems like Jellyfin lacks that for the time being.
The experience is pretty similar.
The main selling point for me is that jellyfin is free open source software and completely self-hosted.
I don't remember the tipping point even I left Plex, but I recall them injecting some live channels I had no interest in on the default screen. They do track everything you watch, so at the end of the day you and your data is the real product that they're dealing with
Edit: I think the tipping point was even their password database leaked. Also, I was frustrated that I couldn't watch content on my local network just because my internet was down.
Interesting. I might have to get Jellyfin set up and run them simultaneously for a bit. Like I said my favorite Plex thing is Plexamp because it's so clean and simple and I'd rather use a dedicated app for music instead of the main app.
I do like that it's FOSS though, so that's pretty great.
If I'm reading that correctly, you basically have 100gb worth of streaming?
If the ads come to Prime, then I might cancel that. It’s already our least watched service and it’s been getting a free pass because of the next day delivery.
I don’t want to watch ads, I don’t want to pay an extra £30 per year to not see ads and I don’t need next day delivery often enough to keep it for that.
Not only have I cancelled them almost a decade ago - I don't even watch series or movies anymore, and barely listen to music outside of the radio. I'm disgusted with the many crimes committed by Big Media and want to have as little as possible to do with it.
I really want to cancel Youtube, and I watch a LOT of it. But Lemmy users have got me on that NewPipe / Piped / Invidious train. So... Maybe soon I will be able to watch youtube for free and without ads on all of my devices.
I also have local TV for the Sunday news, and Netflix for like one show a month. So much for a la carte, the value for my money has gone down the drain compared to live TV and those early cord cutting years.
I'm very happy with Piped and Newpipe because I watch so much. The official site and app have been such a nuisance to me, at this point I don't even remember how they looked like.
I'm cancelling mine because my job lied and never gave me a raise and my other debts are also piling up. Pirating and eating rice for the next few months maybe longer.
I almost never watch stuff outside of YouTube and the like. If I really did wanted to watch something, its likely an older show that I can just torrent.
I’m a pirate, always will be.
Real debrid. Kodi. Fen add on. Nvidia shield. Done.
My man
Ive said it before
You dont need all streaming services running all the time
You dont need to pay for netflix 12 times per year
Here, we pay 1 or 2 months in a row, cancel. Then a few months later we get another streaming service for a month or two.
I think we may have a streaming service for about 2 months per year on avg. MOSTLY during the winter months
https://media.tenor.com/18peQO6upVwAAAAM/pirate-laughing.gif
🏴☠️🫡
The only streaming service I use is my own homeserver running plex, so no.
Hoist the black flag!
Already cancelled mine. Netflix, prime, hbogo. Now I'm back sailing the high seas.
I cancelled the last of mine years ago. Been watching a lot of free stuff like Pluto.tv, Roku, Tubi, YouTube, etc.
I've reduced as much as I can. I really just keep Spotify for entertainment. I watch YouTube with my AdBlock most of the time. Haven't been kicked off of my parent's Netflix yet but I barely use it in the first place unless a popular show drops. The rest I just pirate.
I got tired of all this B's long time ago and just resorted to torrenting. I missed the series management and resume feature so I coded a app to do it.
PS: in case anybody wants to use it... It's open source. https://github.com/Dr-42/offflix
Good sir you are a gentleman and a scholar
Thank you so much
Just use fmovies.to and up your antivirus. Much cheaper
https://fmoviesz.to/
I just have Spotify and, if it counts, YT Premium. Spotify is on the family plan where my dad has his own account tied to mine, and he can just pull up basically any music he feels like listening to instead of asking me to find it for him.
As for YT, I'm just too lazy to set up blocking the ads on my TV.
We are down to Netflix in my household. That was from having prime, crave and Disney at one point. Even Netflix is close to getting the chop, but my wife enjoys it enough. That said, I'm an audiophile and listen to more Spotify and traditional radio (I know I'm a loser, listening to a.m. talk radio and public broadcasting). I just rather listen to stuff while also getting stuff done than sitting on a couch these days.
I'm down to:
All others hammered the last nails in their coffins through a combination of greed and apathy.
Piracy is good.
Only Tidal for me.. cancelled Netflix when they hiked the prices at the beginning of the year I believe
Yup same. I was with Qobuz until it started having issues (kept buffering even if there's no problem with my connection). Apple music is buggy on Win 10 and sounded worse than Qobuz so i skipped it. I'm now on Tidal (fuck MQA still) but still looking for goodbetter music streaming services. Netflix can rot.
I have quite a few of them, and some I'd like to get rid of. Netflix is probably first on the chopping block.
I've never subscribed to more than two - Netflix and Prime. Whenever exclusive stuff is somewhere else, I get it on Bluray or sth and add it to my Jellyfin. Since the first two get shittier every day, I'm thinking about cancelling them, but haven't done yet
I had someone recently canceled everything except for Amazon prime since I am still shop there but I don't pay for any other services other than my seedbox and emby
Can't cancel what I didn't have.
taps_head.jpg
I had netflix for a month, because my nephew wanted to watch something. I bought one of these one month cards. At some point i thought: wait, isn't my month over already? Why is netflix still working. They charged me through my internet provider. I had no idea that was even possible
Never signed one to begin with 🦜🏴☠️
I cancelled netflix cause i was barely watching and the only reason i kept it was because we were 3 friends sharing it. We pay for 4 screens so we expect that to keep working which it didn't. So we cancelled cause we spoke about it and nobody really watched a lot.
In the end unfortunately for Netflix it is worth it, just look at their stock which is going up again, which means more people bought the extra subscription rather than cancelling.
Sad times but if the majority of people don't go against enshittification they will keep squeezing as much money out of everyone as long as it is profitable
I cancelled Netflix back when they put the restrictions on, what, six months ago? Longer?
I try to have one subscription at a time, anyhow.
I have only Spotify and Youtube Premium. Spotify because YTMusic sucks (and I have two other family members on it) and Youtube because I spend more than 12 hours/day streaming Youtube. Both of those are super justified. Rest is high seas with Jellyfin, with some exceptions. Right now I'm on a 3Euro Prime Video tier, which I will cancel after Star Trek Lower Decks is over.
Already did earlier this month, specifically because of password issues. Canceled everything except our family music plan. Stremio with debrid works just fine for us
Stremio and a debrid service is incredible. I feel like something has to go bad for debrid services soon. How they operate seems pretty unclear to me. Is it all in ram or something? I think that would pass the fixed ina tangible medium situation. Still have my audio service too. Because convenience is easier than the yo ho! Although spotube is pretty good! Just no podcasts or audiobooks.
Canceled Netflix because they finally kicked my friends off, might get it again for 1 month at a time, here and there. I get Disney for a few months for my brother's bday, we catch up on whatever came out in the past year. My mom shares her Peacock with me. I got a year sub to Dropout, and share it with 2-3 friends. We stay subbed to Hulu and HBO pretty much all the time, and we get Paramount a couple months a year. We have Prime, but I'm probably going to cancel it soon.
I cancelled all of my streaming subscriptions years ago to save money. I figured I'd subscribe again when there was anything I wanted to watch that I couldn't find and it turns out there wasn't really anything I wanted to watch.
I’ve been using Stremio with Real-Debrid for about 6 months now and I don’t see myself going back. It’s too perfect.
Ok, you got me. Do I need to have a VPN active while streaming via Debrid (or any third party add-on) to stay safe? Also, I can't find "Real-Debrid" among the addons of stremio, only "Debrid Search", is that the same? Anyway, thanks for making me aware!
Only if you have torrenting enabled in the Real-Debrid add-on for Stremio. I disable torrenting, since I only want to use Debrid cache files.
Torrentio is the add-on where you add your Debrid connection and disable torrenting and narrow down your quality selections. Enjoy!
Awesome, thanks!
You install the third party add on "torrentio". There are guides out there
Could you elaborate? I looked up both services and it seems to just be a media front end and a downloading tool. How does that get you the actual files to watch.
Debris services (Real-Debrid, AllDebris) basically cache most popular torrents and give you direct https links to the video streams. Frontends for these services include Stremio, Syncler, etc. I adore both, but Stremio is much more lightweight which works better on my GoogleTV / FireStick. You select what you want to watch (the apps sync with Trakt, fwiw) and it immediately shows you the versions it has available that are cached. I choose 4K Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos whenever it’s available.
Thanks so much!! Seems like a cool service. Reminds me of popcorn time, which I don’t think works anymore. Are you still routing all your traffic through a VPN when using that? Seems like a privacy nightmare should any action be taken against those companies.
Naw, I don’t bother with a VPN since I’m not torrenting anything. I just set my router’s DNS to something other than the ISP’s default.
For the main streaming services, I had Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+.
I cancelled Netflix back when they announced a price hike in early 2021? I'd been a customer since 2006.
Disney+ I cancelled a few months ago, but the plan goes through November, so we still have it technically. Not planning to renew.
Prime will get renewed, but I don't subscribe to it specifically for streaming, it's just included in the package.
For non-traditional streaming services, I still have a number of subscriptions on Twitch and with Subtember, I've gotten a bunch of 6 month subs to my favorite creators. Also given out gift subs to my favorite creators.
I also subscribe to Dropout and while my subscription is expiring in the next few months, I'll certainly renew it for another year when I have time to binge Dimension 20 again.
I really don't have any interest in streaming services that give traditional options anymore. Even before I cancelled Netflix, I could look in my recent connection history where it shows the five most recent logins and see timestamps going back 2+ years. I transitioned away from that kind of content a long time ago.
Cancelled Netflix today, Hulu comes with my internet plan so I guess that stays. Might keep prime since I have an Amazon credits card but that’s really not worth it anymore. Disney plus probably getting cancelled after Ahsoka ends
My husband and I canceled them all 3 days ago. We had Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Max, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, and Disney+. We're moving back to Europe in November, so they all had to go. But even if we were to stay in the US, I'd probably just keep Prime, so I could just rent what I wanted to see and nothing else. Instead, I've stocked up with a few classic sci-fi Blu-rays to take with us in Europe, and we will have 2 US-coded BD players to keep us playing them until old age.
All I have is Spotify and Netflix and Netflix is going after next month. The quality is shit and the suggestions are worse. I don't want to big actors in big budget bad movies on Netflix. Give me decent thrillers, dramas and comedies. I'll go to the movies for blockbusters.
About 3 months back I cancelled Netflix (after being in it for many years) and moved to free Tubi.
I have never got into Netflix, or any other subscription services. KissAnime, and pirating is what I use to watch shows, even then I don't watch much shows
Don't know how, but my shared Netflix account is still working without issues. That said, once it stops working, I probably won't subscribe again any time soon. I'm currently only using it to watch TNG a couple times a week anyway. I also have Spotify, found no reason to cancel that so far.
I didn't know they had TNG. Wouldn't that be in Paramount?
On German Netflix, they have all the Star Trek shows except for Picard, SNW and Lower Decks. I think they bought the rights before Paramount+ was launched in Germany, which was only a couple months ago.
No because I never subscribed to any. I mooched off my father's subscriptions :U
I did switch away and have been trying to convince him to use my Emby homeserver though.
With gusto
Cancelled netflix when they started the restrictions and switched to Disney+, have prime as well but don't use the movie stuff much, so I won't upgrade to the add free version. Otherwise Spotify and Xbox gamepass. Spotify is a family shared account that makes it much cheaper and gamepass is such a money saver for me, cause I stopped buying games I couldn't play (motion sickness) or didn't like in the end.
The only one I have is Netflix and that is only because it comes with my cell service for like $3/mo extra.
I only have Dropout. Everything else is...externally sourced.
I already canceled Netflix. They rarely have anything good anymore. If there's something that I want to watch, I'll get it for a month and then cancel it.
I used to have Netflix and Disney+ but canceled each after the announcement of the account sharing changes
My sister is in a different city as me and my dad is in a different country. We all like to watch movies
Right? That's actually supposed to be three accounts.
Built a small NAS for contingency since they remove shit but with a family and wanting to support the artists, it's hard to pull the plug. I know they only get fractions off a penny.. give me a better idea.
For music, buy merch. For tv/movies.... Idk support the writers strike I guess. Patreon for writers you like?
Yup, cleaned out some of my subscriptions, will buy physical copies of seasons, pirate, or worst case only sign up month at a time
When I start a free trial I immediately set a reminder in Google calendar. And when I am looking for a specific movie I buy it used online. That way I have all my favorite movies on my NAS and can cancel my subscriptions when there is nothing especially interesting.
I'm deciding what to keep and what to cancel based on what kind of holiday deals I can get over the next few months.
Yup. We use to have Netflix and another service depending on what was coming out I.e. Disney plus when Mandi was releasing.
Now we just do the other service,
Please ignore the iPad usb c dock with the hdmi splitter connected to it.
I'm definitely cancelling Hulu and Disney+ this month to avoid their pending increases.
I'm probably making moves to cancel Amazon prime before the add thing. I've been feeding that beast for far too long. : /
Yhup, cancelled all of them recently.
I'll probably keep two at most, though I'm pretty close to dropping one in favor of an eyepatch and a peg leg
We have a budget for streaming services. ATM Netflix, HBO max and Showtime. About 20€ a month. Me and my wife like a good classic flick every now and then, so the two latter stay. The kids eat up crap Netflix series like candy. Everytime they ask to get prime or Disney they have the choice to give up Netflix to change.. but they don't.
If ads come, or the price goes up too much will consider canceling. Until then, it suits our wants.
I canceled everything apart from my internet service. They either just weren’t being used except once every 6 months or they were putting out subpar content on a regular basis. I’ll wait a year or so, see how things are then, maybe reevaluate if I care enough.
Only service I have is prime video, but its because I order frequently from Amazon. I use YouTube primarily and only my Plex server on movie nights with family
Kodi with a Real Debrid subscription for me.
I dont watch too many series/movies. Never payed for streaming, planning on never doing so because of all that bullshit. I prefer my media on stamped and metallized plastic discs that work offline, or plain DRM-free video/audio files on my HDD.
Canceled everything and now I use smarttube to watch youtube on my tv, soon will pay for vpn to start torrenting again. 👍
I was going to cancel my Max and Peacock account but my niece was still using it. I pay for Nebula, YouTube, and Spotify but I use them enough to feel that it's worth it.
I recently cut most of mine. Don’t miss them as much as I thought.
The only subscription that I have left is Spotify. I used to have Netflix as well before the explosion of streaming services started, when it made sense because it was convenient to have immediate access to almost all content. Now that every show is in a different service, I decided to go back to torrents with Stremio.
We cancelled Netflix recently. With the quality ever going down there was nothing new left to watch and just rewatching old series out of habit can be replaced with browsing random youtube videos or so. And those end up often having some curiosity or educational value.
i use free streaming website
I’ve been cutting down and only keep the ones I actually watch. I had a constant Netflix subscription since 2014 but a month ago I cancelled it. Will resubscribe temporary once enough shows pile up that I’m interested in (which might take a while).
Since Futurama is done, I’ll probably cancel Disney now.
Youtube Premium is the one I will keep for longer because I watch it all the time and I’m splitting the costs with family.
I'm trying to get better about canceling services we don't actively watch and only having two at a time. We already have Prime so I don't count it but we have Max and Hulu right now. We swapped Disney+ for Hulu when What We Do In The Shadows released and my wife is an Our Flag Means Death stan so we will probably permanently have Max (but the new season comes out soon anyways).
Partner has Netflix which we all use (in same house), I have Deezer. We get good usage from both, not cancelling either one
Nope, we pay for Netflix and Disney+. Our friends pay for Hulu and HBO so we swap passwords so we all benefit.
What are you going to do when Netflix stops the account sharing?
They cracked down on me so I canceled my 20 year old account. I has a premium plan with multiple streams for my college kids. But if they cant use it, I don't need #Netflix.
So much crap to watch on all the other services, I don't even miss Netflix' crap.
Cancelled my Netflix account when they announced the password sharing crackdown (even though I wasn't password sharing), and recently cancelled my Spotify family account when they increased the price.
I get a lot of value out of Netflix, I watch tons of their shows every month.
I use Prime quite a bit also obviously for Amazon shopping and try to watch Prime Video a few times each month, and now they've expanded the music I'll try that too.
I will be canceling Disney and just pirate what I want to see, which isn't much, literally just one show.
E: I canceled Spotify ages ago and use their free version but for my favorite bands I downloaded their MP3 discographies. I buy their music on CD because it pays them better than streaming their songs thousands of times, plus I buy merch and go to the concerts so I'm OK with that.
E2: someone mentioned Patreon, I cancelled most of those as well because my gaming group broke up and all my patreons are for gaming 3D files. I have years worth of stuff to print and will never reach the end.
Canceled my Netflix subscription a few months ago and I'm now using Kodi + Real Debrid. As of yet, I'm really happy with my decision.
I stopped subscribing in my own country and started subbing in other countries to take advantage of regional pricing. Now for the cost of less than a month of Crunchyroll in my country, I'm getting a full year. For Netflix, what would normally cost a month in my country, I get about 3 months worth of service.
I have tidal for music and I really want to drop it since their price hike. The only thing still blocking me is that I don't have a decent way to listen to music in my car without a subscription service. It sucks.
Thought about the car music problem today as well. I've tried a lot of the streaming services for music but they all suck and tie you into their shitty playlist/UI system. I imagined a better world where the cd's-mp3 compatibility continued to the point where you just have a thumb drive you can install new music with on your car stereo with it's dedicated storage built in. Now it's all about just slapping your phone cord in but even the phone seems to be less favorable as a media storage & player in favor of the cloud method.
I just want to have the songs and playlists from the past. If I still had all of my data and could still currently use old playlists I would be thrilled, just think of having decades worth of custom built musical experiences you could relive and expand on.
Yeah, I wanted to go the usb route but I only have one usb port which is often used to display Waze on the screen. I thought of using Spotify with an Adblock but that's not ideal as it could stop working anytime and basically revert to being a radio. Can't wait to find a way to ditch tidal.
If you set up Jellyfin plus Tailscale VPN, you can access your media server on your phone while you’re on the go. It’s a little confusing to set up, but once you figure it out, it’s amazing. Happy to offer some guidance if you get stuck
I only have 1 (youtube) but on occasion i will subscribe to a service if there's a tv show i want to watch.
Currently watching pottery throw down on channel 4 but i can't purchase a subscription without a British card, so I'm watching with ads...
I never use these. My wife does though, so keeping them is her call.
I cancelled Netflix about 8 months ago after realising that my wife and I weren’t enjoying it and my kids were just watching the same 2-3 shows on repeat. Cancelled Netflix and bought the shows my kids like via AppleTV.
Europix for me above anything else. Netflix and Disney can go and self-serve their backsides...
I cancelled Netflix because I kept realizing I hadn't used it since the last time I had my kid. Disney is cheaper and has a huge library, and I keep Prime because I like the shipping and music perks as well.
Yes, I cancelled Netflix and Max this month. I'll probably cancel Paramount+ once I'm done rewatching Star Trek. That will leave me with Hulu with ads and I only have it because it's part of my Spotify subscription.
Pretty much just have Spotify+Hulu, YouTube premium (should cancel Spotify maybe but I like seeing what songs get removed from my playlists rather than them just disappearing), Amazon prime, and Disney+. Thinking about cancelling Disney+ soon but I want to see Loki s2 still.
I can't really cancel Putlocker and it's free and has every movie and show that are on the other streaming services.
So no.
Cancelled long ago. Now only subscriptions I still pay for are Spotify and Proton Plus. The rest I just get it from the high season.
Installed smarttubenext , streamio and kodi on my android TV.
Never had a streaming plan 😆
My husband and I occasionally talk about canceling some of the services, but I want to cancel the services I don't use and which he uses and he wants to cancel the services he doesn't use and which I use. So it's never going to happen.
We'll be keeping Spotify, and Prime AFAIK hasn't announced anything crazy so that will stay as well. We'll most likely - if we get the "don't share accounts" screen - will subscribe to Disney+ as we enjoy the Star Wars content and regularly watch movies using this together (Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar are our go tos). Netflix may be on the chopping block but my wife enjoys it more than I do so we'll have to see.
We don't subscribe to anything else, partly because the content isn't appealing and partly because - as Canadians - they don't even have it up here anyway!
Prime will have ads
And it will be £2.99 a month on top of the prime cost to watch without them.
Yeah it's insane how expensive everything gets. I'm subscribed to a bunch of streaming services (like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, etc) and sometimes I use them a lot but HBO, for instance, I've only used a few times and it's just sitting there on our smart TV taking up space and draining our bank account. But I got it when there was a really good deal and if I cancel and resubscribe I have to pay the full amount. Then again, I'm probably wasting more money with it now than I would've if I'd just cancelled and then resubscribed when I actually used it. Oops.
But yeah, I'm definitely not going to pay more for those services than I am now, so if the pricing gets even more ridiculous I'm out.
I'm usually subscribed to at most 2 at a time. Over a year or so I cycle through 4 or 5 of them.
I will not accept ads in my paid subscriptions.
I'm on a pirate subscription. I use Premiumize with Stremio for movies and TV shows on demand and paying for an iptv service for live sports and ppv.
I still have youtube premium, but using turkish price, which is dirt cheap (1eur/mon)
I've only ever subscribed to Bilibili. I think it's still fine so I'll keep my subscription for now.
Spotify with spotube and SoundCloud for music hulu, disney+ and Nebula (mabye even Netflix) for movies
The error message "this account cannot be used in this location," finally hit my account after I've been subscribed to Netflix for over 10 years. I've cancelled permanently and will be emailing their privacy dept for immediate account deletion as I will never subscribe to them again. I don't need 10 months. I've described some of my experience in another recent comment on an older Netflix crackdown in Australia post. My account was North American however.
Netflix was the only streaming service I kept up consistently month to month. I did fall into the same trap you did after allegedly "cord cutting" several years ago. Too many "Gos" and "Nows" and a "Sling." Stupidity really. I realized my mistake and corrected it then, only subscribing to streaming services when there was a season I wanted to binge and then cancel after a month.
But Netflix was flexible in that I could travel and use it unlike a Hulu or HBO Now etc. It was annoying when movies and series disappeared but there was always something else to watch.
Now I'm done. Companies like Netflix and Reddit (and other social media sites), and even Playstation with their insane Playstation Plus hike, count on and thrive off of the addict mentalities of their customers. Just like McDonald's and credit card companies. Recognizing that allows people to stop feeding these greedy corporations if they have the willpower to do so (some people would rather be addicts and serve as money cows).
Any program I haven't finished watching on Netflix, I have the means to do so without subscription and once that's done, I won't know or be aware of what programming they have because I'm not a subscriber any longer.
Netflix is heading for a death spiral if they aren't already there. Their revenues are dropping. It's just a matter of watching the fall until they hit 0% and then negative. They are intent on this change regardless of if it will destroy the very thing they're trying to maximize. Money. They really have the wrong of it by increasing subscription price and taking away the features that made them attractive as a service to begin with. They've waved subscription numbers around for the ignorant as a smokescreen while they continue to lose money and the subscribers who were paying $16 - $20 versus markets where they sell Netflix subscriptions for as low as $10 or lower.
I just have one or two at any given time. At the moment I just have Disney+ (which over in the UK is more than enough cause we get the hulu/fox stuff) and Amazon because I pay for prime.
When Scott pilgrim comes out, we'll either cancel Disney+ while we get Netflix for that, or just get Netflix for a month without renewal.
I've been meaning to. It's just that I got my current Netflix subscription as part of a bundle with my ISP. I have to phone them to cancel it. I don't really have the energy to do so.
Though, I'm in the process of being kicked out of my home. If I'm able to find somewhere to go, I'll likely cancel it once I change my address with the ISP.
Other than that. I use YouTube with an adblock on both my PC and FireStick.
I cycle between them from month to month.
We have YouTube family premium, mostly because pf the youtube ads bit also 3 ppl use music regularly.
We have netflix but it's bundled with the fiance's phone contract which is payed by her company.
I just installed Sponsorblock on the TV and phone in addition to PC because I hate advertisement.
If there is thia one movie which is not on netflix then I sail the high seas to get it, but that' like once a year or so.
I've cancelled them all and started sailing the high seas since the beginning of the year. I'm considering picking up Crunchyroll, though. It's just easier to pay for One Piece than pirate it.
I'm only on Crunchyroll since other services are through family accounts, I am considering dropping some of my Patreon subs because of belt tightening I might have to do though.
It's pisseasy to download the highest quality movies imaginable at any point in time, anywhere, totally free of charge. Makes no sense to ever even think about paying for any of the "streaming services".
Not currently but I'm sure one of them will push me over the edge soon.
Yes I cancelled almost all of them. Had quite a few also but did a proper cleanup. :)
I still use my family plan for Spotify but Netflix isn't even worth it these days.
There's a bunch of services I feel I would have happily paid for years ago, but most "features" they offer nowadays are just fixes for problems they introduced (looking at you Youtube).
I never subscribed to the scam of streaming services to begin with and no one should.
Curious how they're a "scam"?
Media rights, exclusive content and pricing are often ridiculous, but the end users gets what they're paying for.
People don't know what words mean anymore. Everything is hyperbole
Copyright/IP should exist for no more then 7 years then it should be public domain.
But the scam comes when Netflix mislead consumers about what was available on the service. Netflix for a long time marketed itself as a place where you had access to most every movie you wanted. But the streaming service quickly became inferior to the physical media service (rip). So for 15+ years, there were tens of thousands of titles available on the DVD service, that were not available on the digital service. And there was no indication that there was a difference between the two. So if you wanted to watch "Heat" on Netflix, you could. But only via the the physical media, not on-demand. Now you can't actually watch Heat at all. Same with basically every movie from before the 90's.
Additionally the "scam" comes from the disjunction between the consumer expectation from the marketing and the reality. You can of course watch a movie on Netflix on one day, but the next day you have to "explore title related to the move you were looking for." Which I see as a scam. If i'm going to pay for a streaming service, every movie I want, should be available forever if it's ever available at all.
Not really.
My parents use Netflix and I'm in the same house as them so the whole account sharing crackdown is moot. I wouldn't want to share my account with them otherwise.
Spotify I'm keeping for lack of a better service. It has improved by leaps and bounds.
I really don't like this argument that the TV streaming market is too pricey, too complicated and is starting to turn back into cable. Maybe if you're too fucking lazy to go through a cycle of cancelling and reinstating subscriptions based on what new shows are on or whatever old show you feel like watching.
Cable is multitudes more expensive than your typical streaming service, while giving you little to no video-on-demand catalog. Streaming is nowhere near as bad.
Oh and another thing, have you ever tried to cancel a cable service and spent hours on the phone to reps whose job it is to ensure you don't cancel and waste your time upselling you shit you don't want? You don't get that with a streaming service, and cancelling is as easy as going to a menu, disabling auto-renew and waiting for expiry, so not setting yourself a reminder to cancel the service is honestly on you.
It's like everybody is fucking entitled and think it's their God given right to steal TV shows when it's not available on a singular $9.99/month service.
there's only one way for me to live
https://whiteninjacomicsarchive.github.io/#160
Account sharing is theft. Sorry, but you agreed to a ToS rider and they're clear about that. "B-b-but it's my mom's who lives in another state" isn't a valid objection. The services have real costs for licensing they need to protect.
Now, before you down vote I agree with pretty much the rest. Introducing ads into paid tiers is utter bullshit, and capping quality for paid subscribers amounts to theft the other way. I'm paying for a product and I agreed to Terms.
We just carry Hulu here. We don't use the free Netflix we get though perks programs because They Suck, and I am canceling Huiu upon seeing the first ad I'm forced to sit through. We also have free AppleTV, bit haven't activated because its Apple and we are an Android household.
Does any of this contribute to the discussion? No, probably not but I feel better for having ranted about it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Honestly I laugh at the people whining about password sharing getting shut down. It was never really intended to be used that way, everyone just saw an easy loophole and just thought they were the coolest shit.
Really surprised that people got used to a cheap loophole and when it got shut down, instead of the expected "it was fun while it lasted", people got really butthurt about it.
It was always going to happen, it took way longer than I ever expected.
The ones who had it for family and not being able to include college kids I understand. But in my experience almost everyone seems like they knew at least one person with access to each and a massive group would share the cost that way.
If it's not a family group issue, stop whining about having to pay a fair share.
Yes, the amount of them that are all separate costs is totally obscene now. There really should be some kind of "build your own" combination for a lower cost than the total of the parts thing happening.
But being mad about an unintended hack no longer working is dumb.
But to the actual question being posed here, I've only ever had one at a time. I don't watch much of what's out there anyway. I had Netflix while it was free with phone bill (who I worked for, so I got it included along with half off the bill. But these days I just have Paramount, but all I really use it for is Star Trek.
Although I'm still mad about Prodigy. Everything I wanted was in one door and now I'm gonna have to figure out how to get that.