I think its more reflective that the price of streaming services continues to rise, while the value proposition does not. So why subscribe to all services at one time? You can only watch one at a time.
(Also, piracy is just so piss-easy for $5/mo)
Stremio & torrentio are free. Not sure if it works on googleTV. It doesn’t on roku
Referring to a VPN with my price, not private trackers. Sorry for the confusion.
Which VPN are you using atm? I am also looking for one as I am behind cgnat and can’t open ports.
ProtonVPN.
I recently discovered I can just have Kodi on my Fire TV use SFTP to login to my seedbox and download my shows from there.
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Exactly. I finally cancelled Netflix a few weeks ago. It’s too expensive and there’s very little I want to watch on there any more. The shitty way they were trying to push you into more expensive plans was just the shit icing on the turd pie.
I’m now looking at Disney+ and Prime Video because there’s hardly anything on those too that I like.
I ditched Disney+ when they added 50% onto the price. The exit questionnaire was annoying as it had one answer that lumped in “can’t afford it” with “too expensive” which implies it’s a “me” problem when it was definitely a “them” problem.
I would have ditched Amazon Prime when they added adverts with an optional 50% price hike to remove them but my wife didn’t want to lose the prime delivery.
The intention is that we subscribe to Disney+ for a few months a year and catch up on what we missed.
Kids make it complicated for sure, but we managed to drop Disney. Honestly I’d prefer they were on screens less anyway.
and on top of that inflation everywhere else is causing people to have less discretionary funds.
This will only increase until there is sufficient backlash or, god forbid, Government oversight. These CEOs are getting hooked on the concept of being paid continuously for the same widget. Not only will these services get more predatory, but subscription models will continue to proliferate even into unlikely and surprising places.
That’s my official end of year, forward looking, very lukewarm take for 2024.
Was it BMW that was trying to charge a subscription for seat warmers and automatic car starters that were built into the car already? They got serious push back and rolled back fast. Haven’t followed in a while wouldn’t be surprised if they were back to that model already.
Yep. BMW.
Wait till you see the subscription pricing on the turn signals; it’s no wonder their drivers never use them!
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It’s just cable with extra steps at this point. More effort, more costly. Not worth it.
I think it’s cable with fewer steps, but of course not as convenient as it used to be.
things we tried:
- jacking up prices
- adding ads to paid services
- canceling the better shows
- not adding anything meaningful
- making specifically terrible shows that are obviously terrible from the get go
- making the algorithm noticeably worse to cover up for the worse output
- platforming has-been comedians so they can cry about how they aren’t platformed anymore on our platform in a distinctly unfunny and joke-free manner
We’re out of ideas… maybe we should utilize AI?
You forgot limiting quality on web browsers
platforming has-been comedians so they can cry about how they aren’t platformed anymore on our platform in a distinctly unfunny and joke-free manner
No no, I’m sure if they get Dave Chapelle to talk about how much he hates transpeople and sees no parallels between the on-going struggles of the African American and literally ANY other Rights Movement, then I’ll magically start giving a shit about what’s on Netflix!
Tough break big N, maybe I’ll check you out when Steel Ball Run finally gets animated… Or not because I could probably get an uncensored version on a pirate streaming site as long as I use my VPN
Hmm… Yeah this is why they’re going after pirate sites because people pushing back.
If green line for streaming does not continue to go up, I expect the propaganda with VPNs will be targeted as “used by criminals” Or “exclusive to CSAM” with talks of senate or house about “banning” or “restricting” them “for the children” in 2025
This is more or less implied in project 2025 with all the age verification shit they want to implement at a national level to keep kids from learning that gay people are humans.
A depressingly prescient comment
I’m done with streaming it only really worked when there was one, now they’ve saturated it to the degree it’s pointless. Not only that but they keep raising prices for a worse service and now they have all went ad crazy on top of it.
I see no benifit to subscribing to any of them I’d rather watch free to air stuff if I have to see ads, and for anything else I’ll hoist the black flag since I’d likely need about 10 subscriptions otherwise.
Plex has a surprisingly decent selection on the live tv/movies tab.
I want to watch Stargate SG1. I hear people say it’s on Prime Video, so I subscribe. It’s not there. I guess being a filthy European makes me unworthy. So I bite the bullet and get a VPN. Now I’m paying what amounts to twice the price of the usual subscription. I start watching the series and guess what? It’s leaving Prime in a few days. Motherf…
Never better served than with Piracy™!
Could have just bought it on dvd, much less stress
Check out your local library. Mine has physical disks of a lot of shows. With MakeMKV and Handbrake, and about an hour per disc (computer time- my time is maybe 5 minutes per), I can return the discs and watch the show at my leisure. If you have a ton of disk space, you can skip Handbrake and just keep the .mkv files…
I think what would save the streaming industry would be anti-exclusionary legislation. Prevent contracts where shows are exclusively produced for one streaming company. Then streaming platforms compete on cost, curation, and interface, not on exclusive content.
What would be smart is for them to develop a unified platform where they get a percentage of your subscription fee based on the media you watch.
I mean, shit on the music industry for all of their crappy practices, but 100% this. I pay for one music streaming service and have access to any music I want without having to think about which record label released which album. Why is it still illegal for studios to own movie theaters, but not streaming platforms?
Decouple the content creators from the content distributors.
Bit that would only benefit consumers and we all live in plutocracies masquerading as “democracy”?
It’s not illegal for studios to own movie theaters. Paramount Decree was struck down a couple of years ago.
Expect it to get worse over the next four years.
no they started pirating because of the ridiculous number of
screamingstreaming servicesthanks autocomplete :(
I mean, Scream Box is a streaming service (ish), so one could say it’s a screaming service.
Too many services with too low quality content.
Once Upon a Time Netflix premiered a handful of huge shows and movies a season. Then they got addicted to watch metrics and decided everything should be “second screen content” from a firehose.
Now I don’t watch any Netflix original until it’s concluded or has rave reviews, because it’s likely to get canceled in season 1 or just not be worth watching at all. And in the rare case it is great, gets picked up, and have rave reviews, they can still fuck it up like The Witcher.
Every other network is pretty much guilty of this too. I’m so, so over it. They have made me actually long for the option of a singular cable-like license I could get, because they are so shitty at maintaining their services and their catalogs are so poor now.
I just roll my own now and host a Plex server, because fuck em.
I don’t even pirate Netflix shows because there’s a good chance it will get canceled after one season. Why bother, knawmean
Put ads in a service I pay for?
*****cancelled!****"I hadn’t noticed, but the consolidation has happened. The cycle completes as the phone and cable companies all have streaming bundles now. It’s cable TV again in another form. Still horseshit, but that’s going to be their collective play I guess
I wonder if 2+ years between seasons is also having an impact.
I pick up new shows way less than I did in the past because of this with the ones I do being more tied to whether it is a miniseries or source material I plan to read after the season ends to finish it out on my own.
So many service raised their price and so many people cancelled their subscription in response, in summary: FAFO
Yar harr fiddly dee dee
We are cancelling some services. The value isn’t there, and we need the money. /shrug
