One of my favorite past times is reading people freaking out about the rising costs, while I sit completely unaffected thanks to the high seas.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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When all the big cable players started making their own streaming services, most of us knew they weren't going to let their gravy train go. We know they want us to use the ad-tiers because Iger flat out said so because it makes them more money, and I'm still expecting contracts to be their next big idea, sign up for 2 years, get 1-year half-price. Meet new cable, same as the old cable. It's following a similar playbook too with no ads to some ads and ever-increasing prices.
This. I was fine with streaming when it started. It's literally what most people were asking for - a la carte pricing for specific channels you want, rather than having to pay a bloated fee for a bundle that you want less than a tenth of.
I've enjoyed streaming over the last few years.
But over the pandemic and now beyond, they've decided to start conglomerating, bundling up a bunch of content I don't want, and charging me extra for the privilege. Which was the complaint about cable.
Yeah to me the obvious end days was when the "half priced but with ads" plans came out. It's going the route of cable. the patern is so predictable.
Year 1: Ad free - 5-10,
Year 2: Ad free 10-15
Year 3: ad free 10-15, low price ad tier 5-10
Year 4: ad free 20-30, ad tier 10-15
Year 5: ad tier 25-30, ad free 75
Year 6: Due to low demand, ad free tier is removed. ad tier 40-50.
That's of course counting the shitification of their being 20 services, which are equally sharing shows of every genre so that no matter what type of shows you like, you'll need to use 3-4 services to get the main shows you want.
I mean anyone who didn't see this coming is naive as fuck.
No infrastructure overhead, server cost to be sure but the brunt of the delivery being born by the end consumer and the possibility of tracking and metrics in real time?
The only reason it's taken this long is the suits are luddites.
Contracts will definitely come. What's the equipment going to be though? Pay for an app? Maybe USB sticks for each service?
I feel dirty typing that.
6 months half price if you sign up for 2 years.
I never stopped torenting what I wanted to watch, so doesn't effect me at all.
That’s nice, dear
Nothing a month is still affordable and always has been.
I'm happy with my $5 pm for Usenet + Indexer, on top of hard drive costs.
Aside from the fact that your favorite shows/movies get deleted whenever licenses expire, or at the whim of Netflix's profitability algorithm, for a hot minute, streaming was everything people wanted back in the 90s. No commercials, a total MSF of about half of what you might have spent on cable if you have every major streaming service, and a trove of shows and movies to watch. Now, they're about to raise prices and shit out a bunch of bland mid content for dumb dumbs to watch. Forget the era of cheap streaming, I fear this is the beginning of the era of no more quality TV and movies.
I genuinely think that the best remedy to this is to give SAG and the WGA everything they want in negotiations. It would fundamentally alter the economics of streaming if they are subject to the same sort of residuals and writer's room requirements as traditional media.
If the media corporations have their way, they're gonna break the strike by outlasting them until they "start losing their homes" from being out of work for so long that they're forced to acquiesce. Then we're gonna really get awful content as no one will be able to take any significant risks to write a weird TV pilot or make a unique movie.
I thought that we were already there.
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.
When Iger launched Disney+ in 2019, the chief executive said he had intentionally set the price of the service well below competitors “to reach as many people as possible with it.”
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.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It's all about ads to them, and I will do anything in my power not to see ads of products I am not interested in.. which is pretty much anything being advertised to me.
Canada has advertising restrictions, notably drug commercials and until recently: sports betting. I wish they hadn't allowed those, they're the worst and since we're a new market every single site is advertising up here.
Ads, and the fucking invasive data farming that follows it, are the bane of modern existence.
Be thankful you don't have the drug ads. They're an infestation down here. The companies advertise the crap out of a drug that costs the patient 3-4k+/mo, it enters the doctors subconscious so they're more likely to recommend to the patients, pharma company makes bank, the lawsuits roll in right around the time the copyright on the brand name ends (they're all shit drugs and barely more effective than placebo, yet with knarly side effects), they close it down and let the generic manufacturers fight it out while they pump the next shit pill or shot. Rinse and repeat.
Sports betting needs to go too, but I bet they'll just move those into shows like big tobacco did.
We have them, but they're not allowed to say what the drug is. So only certain drugs bother, like Ozempic, but entire commercial is just everyone asking "Have you heard about Ozempic?" "Talk to your doctor about Ozempic"
They can't say what it treats or side effects etc. I like old game shows from the 70s so I'll sometimes pick up an IPTV sub so I can watch the US gameshow channel, and then cancel shortly after because all the commercials are either drug commercials on repeat or mesicaid commercials on repeat. Its terrible.
I watched an over the air TV show recently, and they rolled an ozempic ad every single break. I would rather watch an hour of the save the children or ASPCA ads to be honest.
I'm infuriated by this as it progresses. However, I don't usually have time to stream anything, so I'm infuriated in spirit.
That’s crazy because my plex content is still free…
That's the deal for this kind of corporations, they make it cheap until you're addicted than they try to steal your money "legally"...
Sometimes that's a tactic, sometimes it's wild optimism, and sometimes they seem content to make a loss every year and prop it up with investment.
I don't know about stealing, they stopped taking money when I unsubbed, now I'm watching shit that somebody else paid to make, while not giving them a penny back!
I was worried for some time that piracy would wither in face of cheap streaming options. Luckily I was wrong, or at least the streaming companies didn't have the stamina to win this war. Arr! 🏴☠️
Never paid for a streaming service, never will (we'll see if that changes when I get married)
(we’ll see if that changes when I get married)
The spouse test is a bitch. As an old nerd I can navigate highly technical and finicky systems very easily, my spouse on the other hand needs a ROKU style interface in order to successfully use things. Almost all of us end up creating a home system that works for the least tech savvy in the home.
With that said I've been told that Streamio + Real Debrid works quite well.
Almost all of us end up creating a home system that works for the least tech-savvy in the home.
That's where I started, as a kid still at home in the 2010s. I used plex, I've been getting progressively more frustrated with it, but not sure how I'd switch to something else.
Watch new/untested content on debrid. Hoard content you love (physical or digital).
Laughs in onstream.to and bflix.gg
I just use Cloudstream on my phone. I wish there was some way to use it on TV as well.
pretty sure you can just install the apk if you have android tv
Streaming will become like tv eventually, if it isn't already: only old and/or simple people are interested in it. Almost all people I know don't watch tv anymore. And let's be honest: 99.99% of the streaming crap is the same boring assembly line writing that didn't work in the 90s and doesn't work now. And to search for the 0.01% - nah, I'll rather be in my workshop.