The era of cheap streaming is officially over
(www.cnn.com)
from floofloof@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.ml on 13 Aug 2023 14:36
https://lemmy.ca/post/3246681
from floofloof@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.ml on 13 Aug 2023 14:36
https://lemmy.ca/post/3246681
threaded - newest
To be completely fair, it’s been over for a while. Even if you completely forget about infrastructure, between the endless wars for licenses, endless removals of content from platforms, shitty inconvenient apps, and regional locks, it’s already a dying market.
On top of all of that, they’re implementing the “don’t you have 5 extra dollars” strategy, with skyrocketing monthly prices for each of these. If it was 15$ a month to watch anything, i would still pay. but it’s 15$ for each of them, and they still serve you ads, and sell your data
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.
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?
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. :)
Criterion Collection
Or
Janus Films
Both offer the best films of all time.
Very cool! Thank you!
It’s worth checking whether your local library subscribes to Kanopy.
Will do, thanks.
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
Why? You’re giving the people who ruined streaming more money.
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.
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.
480p. If you have a component, dvi or hdmi connection from the dvd player.
Don’t get me started with the unskippable intro screens.
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.
I have a good DVD collection I’ve amassed by buying them second hand in thrift stores, and for titles I really want to own.
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.
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.
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.
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.
.
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.
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.
We all knew that even before the strike too. Musicians get paid pennies on a dollar, and it’s the same with writers. Actors are probably treated the same way, if you’re not one of the hall of fame elites who get insane cash for garbage roles, after they’ve been in a Marvel movie once
They get paid, they just don’t get residuals for life from every job they were paid to do.
Just read an article stating that the writers of a show were only paid a combined $3000 after the show was streamed over 16 million hours on Netflix. These companies try to crack down on piracy by claiming artists/writers/actors don’t get paid if we pirate but they’re clearly not getting paid anything outside their normal wages when we don’t pirate either.
Pirating went down when paying for streaming was more convenient. Well, you are making it far less convenient.
Arr
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.
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).
Time will tell...
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.
What exactly are you talking about? Google and Microsoft have literally nothing to do with any of this.
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.
piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com Their sidebar can teach you a lot.
Galaxy torrents is a newer, solid option friend
Streaming has become cable with micro transactions.
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.
Both. It’s a semi secret club.
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.
Join lemmy.dbzer0.com the piracy instance and ask around about private trackers and if there are any open signups
Oh, so they defederated and y’all complaining about that now. I see how it is 😋
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.”
TorrentFreak occassionally posts a list of sites, just use a good no logging VPN.
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.
Broadcast tv had different subscriptions for channels? Where? Free to air tv is free with no subscriptions or options.
I may be remembering that wrong, as it was before my time, but I had heard that people moved to cable for the same reasons that people moved from cable to streaming services. You bought one cable package, it gave you access to everything, and there were no ads. Then came the ads, and eventually, the packages you have to buy in addition to your cable subscription for the channels you actually care about.
People went to cable because it had no ads and let you have the opportunity to watch stuff you’d missed because they looped content regularly. Missed an episode of the Simpsons? All good, it’s on again in 12 hours. It also has movies and shows long before free to air because they paid for it. Cable was the start of subscriptions and paying for individual channels.
Cable most definitely had ads though. Special add ons like HBO or Showtime didn’t but basic cable did.
Lol they are definitely wrong about that.
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
As lord Gaben has said, “piracy is a service issue”
It’s not really any less convenient, just more expensive
True as long as they keep an ad-free tier.
Not on my Emby server
Same but jellyfin
🏴☠️
Avast ye
Yarr Harr Harr, fiddly dee doo!
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.
Same shit definitley happens with record labels on streaming, thank goodnes for indie, kinda killed that a bit
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.
Does anyone even use Tidal?
Moded why not
I believe they have a high quality streaming option that some audiophiles prefer.
Ah fair
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.
Look into The Mountain Goats; all their early stuff was recorded on a boombox cassette deck.
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.
I never left the 7 seas matey
Indeed. The era of cheap pirated content... continues much as it always had.
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
It’s not a problem, it’s how subscription services work.
If there’s a system for doing something, there’s always a way to make it do things it isn’t supposed to do. I can’t imagine that I’m the first person to think that there must be a way to save those files in a nicer format. Surely someone has already made a program that either saves the files or converts them into mp4 or whatever.
Is there a way to “steal” the content? Yes, that’s how it appears on torrent sites.
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.
You don’t get to keep anything you download from them……
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
It was over the day the studios wanted to have their own services instead of licensing content to Netflix and competitors.
Here in Australia I remember when we were told that every free to air station was working together to make a single streaming app, was very excited and it would have made me actually watch more free to air stuff.
Then those talks broke down and Insta we got 6 different streaming apps all requiring their own accounts and with differing levels of quality in their apps.
I did not end up watching more free to air tv.
Again? How many times has it ended now?
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
No worries, I wasn’t paying anyway!
🏴☠️ 🏴☠️ 🏴☠️
I jumped ship at price hikes and no account sharing.
Same, the only streaming services I have now are paid for by my phone provider for free. Besides that, I sail the high seas proudly
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.
Write your own stories. I have an entire canon that I can draw from and more ideas for novels than I can publish in a lifetime. It’s one of the few practices I’ve ever engaged in that I’m proud of.
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.
who the fuck pays to watch ads. what a ludicrous proposition. that’s the part that makes no sense to me.
No one pays to watch ads. They pay to watch movies and shows, which are (optionally) supplemented in cost by ads.
But you can watch those movies and shows for free. The only part you’re paying for are the ads.
…what are you talking about? No it’s not.
I assure you all movies and TV shows are absolutely free to the end user should they so choose
You mean should they choose to steal them? No shit, everything is free if you steal it. Not everyone wants to be a thief.
It’s not theft, because it doesn’t deprive the original owner of anything.
But if it did, theft from billionaire hollywood studio owners is cool and good.
You’re not paying the wages of the hollywood workers, you’re just increasing the funds the studios have to break the worker’s strikes and further depress their conditions.
It’s legally theft. You can try as much mental gymnastics as you want to try and convince yourself you’re not breaking the law, but you are.
It’s probably the most victimless theft that there is, but it’s still theft.
I’m quite aware there’s some silly laws written by those same billionaire’s lobbies and passed by their politicians.
Copying something is quite obviously not stealing from someone.
But again, stealing back some of the wealth the billionaires have stolen from us is morally good. If you’re not stealing from them, you’re stealing from your family to support your family’s further deprivation.
It absolutely is stealing. You’re taking something that is not yours, something that someone else owns and charges money for.
Mental gymnastics.
And did you at any point ask yourself why they own these things? Why Netflix the corporate entity owns media it did not produce while stiffing the people that did out of just compensation? Or how that information slightly complicates the otherwise simple nature of property and theft?
The only mental gymnast here is you bud. The simple fact is, labor creates value, and Netflix has no part in that. I doubt they even put up any of their own capital in producing these shows.
Why they own these things? Because they paid for it.
How are Netflix stiffing people out of compensation? Netflix pays the rights holders for the right to stream the content.
On your last part you could not be more wrong. Netflix spent over $6 billion in 2021 on original content. Content they created. They pay for the streaming rights to everything that’s on Netflix up front - in 2021 they paid $11 billion to the rights holders of the content in order to stream it on their platform.
You’re trying to justify theft. You’re the one doing the mental gymnastics.
I think I see the confusion, you believe in private and intellectual property.
I cant believe I’m seeing anyone here defending a corporation. What the hell??
I can’t believe I’m seeing anyone here straight up justifying theft. What the hell!?
.
God liberals are such losers. Lick those boots harder, weirdo
Scratch that, boot licking is pathetic. What a loser
What’s legal is not necessarily what’s moral, and there’s nothing immoral about freely procuring an infinitely replicable digital product. If anything, it’s immoral to enclose upon them and charge rents for them. No better than landlords, the big streaming companies, save for the fact that entertainment isn’t vital for living.
There’s absolutely something immoral about stealing. If you don’t think there is then it just means your morals are out of whack.
You think people renting out their property is immoral? Yeah nah, your opinion on this is wrong.
Correct. All wealth is the product of labor, therefore rent and profit are theft, and workers taking back a bit of the wealth stolen from them is good.
Landlords are parasites that prey on the vulnerable and produce nothing of value. Corporations who own and profit from ”intellectual property” are no different.
And what precisely is the moral issue with stealing? Depriving someone of their personal property, which piracy is not.
That’s not how theft works. It’s called intellectual property. You are depriving the creator of compensation for the work they have dedicated resources to producing.
If it wasn’t, no one would ever develop any kind of software or scientific research or write a book or produce any kind of intangible work whatsoever.
This is complete nonsense fabricated by entitled children and it is exhausting.
You can justify it however you want. That’s what any criminal does. It doesn’t make it not theft.
Not so. The people who actually produce media (actors, writers, production crew) rarely if ever see fair compensation or residuals for their work. The only people you’re stealing from are the people who already stole the value that the actual creators generated, i.e. the studio. And in my opinion, you can’t rob a thief anyway.
This logic doesn’t hold with smaller and/or independent projects, which even the saltiest pirates acknowledge should be payed for in the usual manner.
Edit: Your point about compensation doesn’t even have a completely factual basis. Numerous scientific and medical advancements throughout history have been produced without compensation, often because their creators intentionally declined to profit from them. Sir Banting is a favored example around here; he was one of the first to synthesize insulin, and he and his colleagues opted not to patent it so that it would be as widely available as possible.
And in your utopia there would be zero compensation because the project would never be started in the first place.
What? How does a studio steal the value that they created…?
No one mentioned anything about “small projects”. Tell me which of these small projects are not allowed to be pirated?
Because they have fucking day jobs that allow them the freedom to do that. Day jobs where they’re paid to do the same kind of work professionally and are able to dedicate the time to develop the skills and experience necessary to develop these side projects…
Open source software developers, fan translators, emulation developers, etc.: lol.
What about them? roflmao
They make things without getting compensated for it. Same goes for everyone whose hobbies are drawing, painting, making music or any creative endeavor. I’m sure you also have hobbies, are you paid to do them?
The overwhelming majority of software developers and researchers are paid a salary and don’t get own the IP of their inventions.
Who said anything about who owns the IP? Software developers get paid because people pay for their software. If no one paid for it, it would never be made. Why is this so hard to understand?
lol I clicked your name to see if you were doing a bit, and apparently you don’t tip servers.
People who deserve money, according to Huge Anus:
[❌]Food service workers
[❌]Hollywood workers
[❌]Tech workers
[✅]Landlords, Shareholders, copyright trolls, and IP rights giants
Okay so now you’re just going to make up random lies about me. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton.
nope, pretty sure they have you dead to rights
You did when you said you’re depriving the creator of compensation when you pirate something.
There are many things that are free if you just ignore the law. Cars are free. Groceries are free. People’s wallets are free!
I’m downloading a car right now
People used to do it with cable TV. It cost a fortune and was full of ads.
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.
it’s got some weird bugs but I generally haven’t noticed audio issues. casting doesn’t work perfectly, though.
to be fair its running on Arch
Jellyfin / Plex downloads 📈📈📈
Arrrrrrr mateys sail on in the water of the high seas is fine!
Oh well, there’s plenty of space for all of ya here on the high seas, welcome aboard, mateys!
Seed your torrents folks
Time to dust off the old pirate hat…
🏴☠️⛵💪
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).
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.
All hail the new golden age of piracy!
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
There’s no way the model is sustainable once everyone starts their streaming platform.
That’s because it’s not a sudtainable buisness model, I bet for the few actually good productions even donations would be better!
It’s definitely sustainable, which is why every movie studio now is doing their own streaming service instead of putting their content on someone else’s.
Why do you think it’s not sustainable?
You kind of answered your own question, because every movie studio will want a own streaming service and as soon as the total cost is too high people start to pirate in masses again.
How do you figure? I believe Netflix is the only service to actually make a profit off streaming and they have something like 250 million users. The rest of these companies are just dumping money into a bottomless pit and trying to outlast their competitors in the hopes of gaining enough marketshare.
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.”
I mean it was nonsense to think it would solve your costs, but streaming is superior to cable TV from a tech standpoint for sure.
People should expect that yeah, new software is cheap when it’s rolled out, but it’s gonna get more expensive as time goes on, but I can understand why that wasn’t quite as apparent to people 10 years ago as it will be 10 years from now
That’s literally the opposite of how it’s supposed to be, new tech is expensive and only early adopters can buy in, then when the EA’s money comes in, it is spent to improve and make the tech cheaper, which allows it to be adopted by the masses. With streaming, all of the fat cats decided to start it cheap to get everyone hooked and moved over, then jacked up the prices because the shareholders aren’t satisfied with their draconic gold hoards.
I think the model that you’re referring to is generally more applicable to hardware, but since you can make free copies of an app, Uber for instance can keep things low cost till they eat the competition
The cable pigs moved into the streaming game, and used licensing to enshitify streaming
I mean people spent $100/mo. on cable for decades with no option to opt out of ads. And they had to just like jump into the middle of whatever happened to be on at the time.
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.
OTA TV is shit quality and chock full of ads. No thank you. You enjoy, though.
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.
It is inevitable, every industry grows to destroy itself through contradictions. It is just annoying how fast this business model took to do it.
Have to keep the profits increasing every quarter, otherwise shareholders will sell and buy your competitors and line go down. The article talks a little about how a lot of the streaming platforms have raised prices this year since right now shareholders want to see more profit instead of growth with interest rates up.
We have the best system, folks. Truly the greatest. <img alt="trump-dapper" src="https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/cfe23826-a3a0-4955-bf7f-f1d35cb78a1f.png">
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
I need a cheap VPN, it’s the only thing I didn’t have to worry about before I (apparently temporarily) retired. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Mullvad is good
Oh damn, that is the right price. Thank you
Private internet access is fantastic.
Mullvad.
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.
The era of cheap streaming is over, now begins the era of free streaming
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Bettle Juicing at its finest
Long live 1337x and Stremio.
Didn’t 1337x just get caught injecting bit coin mining software into their stuff?
You’re gonna get a bitcoin mining infection from a video file? lmao
ah yes! the good old video.mp4.exe
The rumor was it was put in a cracked game not a video lol
They didn’t
All you need is some popcorn and some time
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.
era of torrenting unaffected
Is that true? Most of the best public trackers got shut down. Anything left has bots recording your IP and you’re getting a letter from your ISP.
If you’re not on a private ratio tracker or paid tracker it’s basically a non starter. So I’m not sure about unaffected era the last 10 years have been brutal for pirates via torrent.
VPN has been necessary for pirating for a long time. And fortunately a VPN is cheaper then any streaming service, and has other benefits besides.
If you’re torrenting without a VPN you’re doing it wrong. Also you should look at Usenet instead.
And Soulseek.
What’s the situation with usenet these days ? I preferred nzbs over torrents for several years but it just became impossible at around the time nzbmatrix chucked it in.
Better than ever! Seriously.
Indexers like NZBGeek, Drunkenslug, and NZBFinder have resulted in me getting almost anything I want, short of some obscure Australia series from the 80s. Providers are doing 2000+ days retention and I’m only using 1 myself, never even needed to get a backup on a different backbone.
Well that’s good to hear. Tormenting sucks in Australia.
You just need a VPN. Public trackers are generally fine.
Honestly people should probably be thinking about future-proofing things and putting as much media as physically possible on to drives in anticipation of whatever the next wave of bullshit. At some point Samizdat2.0 will probably be the only way to preserve and share media under the capitalist censorship regime. They’re just going to keep cracking down and cracking down and cracking down until no one can move without bleeding for the privilege.
As they said in the bad old days: Keep circulating the tapes.
Until we can pull this whole bullshit edifice down, kick it in the kidneys a few times, and set it on fire the only way to protect media from the companies that “own” it is going to be little people with really big RAID arrays.
It certainly feels like we’re on the precipice of something breaking what with computers rapidly getting more locked down, these secure enclaves and/or TPM chips verifying that you’re watching on an approved OS and web browser before allowing you to stream, and then the video is encrypted until it gets to your actual TV. Crazy what they’re getting away with.
In the near future I foresee pirates pointing cameras at TV screens then using AI to clean up the video, then media companies responding by creating randomized slightly different versions of videos so they can trace them back to the account holder who shared it (move some tree branches around, slightly different colored hat on background actors, etc) and perhaps getting legislation passed to stop cameras from being allowed to record IP protected material, and so on.
With streaming services you have to pay and you don’t own it, with torrents you only have to pay for internet fee and you’ll own it forever.
With the small caveat that you’re breaking the law, of course.
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 medium.com/…/self-host-media-stack-jellyfin-radar…
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 😆
Get Kodi, and look up instructions to get ‘the crew’ Plug in added to it, and then grab a month subscription to real-debrid and check it out. Bit of an effort to get set up, but once it is, it works arguably better than streaming. 4k, better bit rate, sports and all the TV shows and Movies, language and sub options, the lot.
I have it all set up on my TV box, and while browsing can be a bit wonkier, my watching experience is unmatched.
Watching content without paying is one thing. Actually paying the wrong person is actually quite malicious. You deserve to have all your favourite shows cancelled.
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.
Sure until they start adding game mechanics like daily login rewards and episode “loot boxes” that give you a chance to increment your streaming battle pass so you finally have a shot at rolling for the show you actually want.
I got a holographic original extended Daenerys sex scene!
<img alt="awooga" src="https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/12dc28f7-b63c-4d62-a1ff-6e3cd6e73c28.png">
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
.
I realized a year or so ago (after a letter from my isp) that I didn’t actually need to torrent anymore. There are websites like bflix.io (and I’m sure many others) that have basically everything streaming for free. Fuck subscriptions. Would maybe go back to torrenting if I got a vpn sorted out, but you’re not gonna get in trouble for streaming shit on a pirate website, so for now it’s the best solution I’ve found. Certainly not paying any of these assholes. Lol. Fuck outta here with that.
Proton mail has a free VPN that works really well. Switzerland is part of world coverage tier, but Netherlands is just as good at hiding torrenting from ISP’s. And it can even use a ‘stealth mode’ that works fairly well to get around VPN blockers by using unusual protocols for the traffic.
Does proton’s VPN free tier not block p2p file sharing usage?
It should but I never tested it. I don’t torrent much. I’ll need a torrent that is almost guaranteed to get an email from an isp to test it.
It will just refuse to download anything in your client, plus there are sites that let you check your IP when you torrent.
Is there something like that that works on an nVidia Shield (Android TV)?
Rather not have the Uberspreadsheetboxen running just to watch Village of the Damned again…
Hell, I dunno. I just plug my laptop into a regular old tv via hdmi.
Is there a good way to watch on a proper TV? I find that all such sites are browser based, and I'm not keen on typing in urls with the remote control.
🪢 Heave-ho! Thieves and beggars!
Never shall we die! 🏴☠️
Popcorn time :D
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?
Big advertising budgets that are funded from the value alienated from exploited workers and consumers. Information asymmetry in the marketplace means that even if you make a superior product at a lower price, you could still be outcompeted by an expensive inferior product if more people know about that worse product and don’t know about your product.
That’s for most basic products anyway. Luxury products like bags and clothes are almost all marketing since the cost to create them is so low compared to their sales price. People buy them because of perceptions created by marketing and not any inherent value in the product itself.
As far as I know internet advertising is an economy destroying sunk cost fallacy. No one makes money off of it, but if they stop basically everything collapses catastrophically, so they just keep pouring more money in to it in hopes that someone will find a way to make it profitable before the bill comes due.
Ehhh, not really. If showing 10,000 people an ad costs you $10 and even one person made a purchase off that, you’ve paid for the ad buy. Internet ad conversions are considered unbelievably excellent if 1% of viewers click on the ad and 1% of those people make a purchase.
Also, if you don’t advertise, then your competition that do advertise are going to eat your lunch.
Good too know. I guess i need to do more reading.
Is it really unclear? If you had never heard of a product, you would much less likely purchase it. If Coke stopped advertising today, they’d start a very slow but real loss of market to it’s competiton, be it Pepsi or whatever. Note that a LOT of advertising is not for you. It’s for the corporate buyer at name your favorite restaurant so that they think that they’ll get more consumers in the door because they have Coke products, as opposed to some other brand.
I suppose it’s not that unclear if you compare the revenue of all other industries combined to the revenue of the advertising industry. The ratio is pretty large and every type of industry buys ads, so it trickles down from everywhere.
I’ll be completely unsurprised when streaming companies start enticing or forcing us into term agreements.
You know it’s coming. Why would a streaming company want a consumer buying one month, binging a single show they’re interested in, then immediately cancelling the subscription after, when you could guarantee a 6- or 12-month revenue stream for them?
Rents work this way; it wouldn’t be a surprise if the same playbook was adopted by these neo-feudalists.
Might fuck around and start invoicing companies for attention time, comprehension time, storage capacity, and of course the 500$ per instance recall fee.
sings Farewell and adieu to you greedy streamers.
Farewell and adieu, to you subscription pains
For we’re now returning to the torrents of the pirates
and we may ner see you curs’d streamers again
We’ll post and we’ll flame like true software pirates
we’ll post and we’ll flame, all over the net
Until we can find us an FTP server
And get all the slop that we’re ach’n to get
We really have a moral duty to make piracy as easy, one button, even grandpa can do it as possible.
Not for any, like, good of humanity reason.
But as part of my revenge against The Mouse.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Discovery too. It’s an empire built off the spectacle of sociopathic greedy assholes (both on the shows and in the boardroom).
The era of free streaming is still going strong. <img alt="anarchista-chad" src="https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/1ac282fd-ab35-40c8-a708-e96cc10b54e5.png">
My use of Kodi and debrid says otherwise.
We can go start pirating again
Yes
You guys stopped pirating?
When did we stop?
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.
It’s definitely a terrible streaming service all around. If I want a trekkie they be dropped.
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+”
I subscribed during a promotion for $2 and the only thing on the entire service I watched was Yellowjackets (and that’s a Showtime series, so don’t know why it was on there).
I don’t understand why so many companies want their own streaming service when they don’t have the content to carry one.
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+
I don’t know, my stremio app and torrent client is still working. The era of cheap streaming may be over, but the era of free streaming never ended!
I mean this is basically inevitable. We know that capitalism doesn't actually seek the lowest price as its evangelists usually preach, but the highest - and so there is no way that streaming will not balloon over time to a price comparable to the cable TV plans of the past.
🏴☠️ yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me 🏴☠️
Capitalism seeks the highest profit, but what that means depends on the customers.
With the Netflix password sharing crackdown risky bet, customers answered loud and clear: they are more than willing to pay more money to access the same content instead of standing their ground on the decision.
When there is actual competition and customers are demanding of what the offering should be, that’s when we see prices go down.
There are an increasing number of markets where monopolies and deals between companies leave people without any choice to make at all, but I don’t think the market of streaming services is an example of this.
I stepped away from having any home infrastructure other than a proper firewall about a decade ago when streaming was so affordable and content was so bountiful on the few streaming platforms that existed. Now I finds myself considering diving straight back into setting up a NAS and hosting locally at home again. Is Plex still a decent choice to stream from your collection while traveling?
Plex is still a good choice. I find that Jellyfin has better performance, recognizes and organized my media better, but it’s more complicated to set up remote access on jellyfin.
I would prefer to move to Jellyfin long-term but I need to get access to port forwarding from my landlord first.
Tailscale is going to be much easier to setup. No permission from your landlord needed.
Thanks for the recommendation, I had not heard of that but it looks like a common solution so I may try that later! Here is a helpful looking guide I found in case anyone else is curious too. www.ethanmad.com/post/jellyfin_remote_access/
note that you can run your own headscale server rather than paying tailscale for the privilege.
you could set it up on a non standard port like 99. you have to manually add “:99” at the end of your domain name, but it works.
This is where I’m at.
I suggest also setting up Radarr and Sonarr for automatic downloads.
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.
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…
I just jump from service to service to watch the shows I’m interested in. No way in hell I’m paying for them all at once.
Time to get the old torrent box going agaian
Lol wut. My streaming torrents have never been better!
Yeah. Back in the day you used to wait for your movies to download before you watch them. Now I have Stremio or at least sequential downloads.
Even then, you can just wait around 10-40 minutes in most cases for a 3-5 GB movie to download.
I usually just start a download and search for a torrent on my phone that’s connected to Radarr/Sonarr on my PC.
Huh. That’s not my experience. I usually watch like 8 gb rips of movies and I can watch them right away even though I pay for the cheapest speed my provider has which in practice is like 30 Mbit/s.
I have gigabit and I only download movies via Radarr and movies are automatically moved using a hard link from the download folder to the Plex folder on completion. And I’m never in a hurry anyways to watch a movie so I don’t care.
Looking into building my own little box of *arrs but have nothing for it yet what’s your setup? (or I could just be not lazy, I guess?)
I can’t even image getting 5GB downloaded in 40 minutes. That’s so fast
Back to piracy …
I’m not even going to bother with that, all the shows are shit.
Steaming and gaming companies are so bad these day motherfuckers are actually going outside and enjoying life.
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.
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.
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?
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 ?.
That is an alternative I´m not going to argue against, you wholesome motherfucker 🌻 🌼 🌷
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.
Especially since these services will drop their original content after awhile…
Is Willow considered lost media yet?
Looks around. You guys are still streaming?
finishes downloading latest movie. Naw, what about you?
I just use stremio and I can stream while I torrent, for free.
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.
I think I’m gonna go sailing the seven seas again.
What an unusually comedic yet depressing final comments in the article:
It’s an ironic end to the streaming wars. After pouring billions and billions of dollars into constructing supposedly revolutionary streaming platforms, and decimating the business models that had offered the industry stability for decades, the ultimate product looks awfully similar to what companies and consumers were trying to break free from in the first place.Im just gonna parrot what the other person remarked because what they said is pretty on point: I mean this is basically inevitable. We know that capitalism doesn’t actually seek the lowest price as its evangelists usually preach, but the highest - and so there is no way that streaming will not balloon over time to a price comparable to the cable TV plans of the past.
Yarrr
To be fair, capitalism seeks the lowest market clearance price. Until price hikes start showing a lower net return, prices will go up.
Not that I care, me cap’n’s hat never left the boat.
and thus began the second golden age of piracy
“I left everything I own in one torrent…”
The great thing is it’s so much easier now. About 2 months ago I cancelled all my streaming subscriptions.
ThePirateBay… Is REAL!
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.
Small for now.
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?
I did not do a deep dive but it looks like it might be a way to access usenet.
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!
So when it comes to watching on my TV is there a reason why put.io is better than just plugging and HDMI cord from my computer to my TV and watching it via that?
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.
Ah, so it’s like for the ease of watching it versus a cable from your Pc?
Yeah, unless your computer is permanently hooked up to the TV, then it’s probably irrelevant. :)
I mean I can hook up my laptop to an hdmi cable to the TV and it is quite easy
Thanks for explaining
I am currently getting my pirating machine back online. To many shows that are not availible on my usual streaming services.
The era of Free Streaming has just begun
The renaissance of free streaming.
🎶do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!🎶
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.
<img alt="sicko-hexbear" src="https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/8001b11e-977f-4714-8afc-1c715c487d44.png">
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.
Rising prices is just the first stage of enshittification
arrr, matey
Arr, Sonarr, Radarr, Readarr,…
Is it just me, or have tpb & mirrors gotten EXTRA cancer-y lately
The era of piracy has returned. 🏴☠️
It never really left… arrrrr.
.
.
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
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?
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.
Just use seriesguide, simple solution.
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
This site used to be pretty good for tracking shows. No idea if it still is any good tho. www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/
They want >$100 a month to come out with maybe one movie and maybe two TV shows worth watching each year? No thanks, piracy for me has become more of a means to assuage my fear of missing out and keeping in touch with the cultural moment than actual enjoyment of the media they’re putting out right now.
I do not believe the quality would go down if their budgets were cut significantly.
They pushed the boundaries people paid up so here we go keep paying
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.
Nah, streaming is still completely free
yaaaaarrr tis cheaper than eva matey