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I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legal

I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.

ews 5y ago
Same. We are back in the TV bundle channel era, unfortunately.
- coding123 5y ago
  True, but the price seems a bit lower (for now). A fully loaded cable account back in the day for me was $180 (including internet). Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc). Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings. And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices). And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out. So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
  - Dig1t 5y ago
    Also, most importantly, there are no more advertisements.
  - speby 5y ago
    I haven't had a cable subscription in years. I think almost 5 or 6 years now. It's been a combination of streaming, movie rentals (streaming), and BitTorrent downloads. And yes, it definitely can be cheaper if you willing to actively manage what subscriptions you need and don't need one month at a time.
- thebigman433 5y ago
  Is it even close to that? You can bundle a ton of services and still come out cheaper, plus you avoid ads. The biggest difference is also that you can mix and match services at will, so if you arent using one, you can just drop it for a few months. Its significantly better than cable TV still. I also dont get people reminiscing about one streaming service dominating, we shouldnt be wishing for monopolies. Everyone coming out with their own platform should drive up competition and give us better quality services
ayyyolo 5y ago
100% It's worse than the old days of only having cable and having to pay a small fortune. I'm not going to pay the same (or more) and then have to jump around between 12 different apps.
- bdcravens 5y ago
  We literally went back to cable because other than the ideology, it wasn't beneficial. For the streaming services I do want, I can actually order then through Xfinity and keep things simple.
  - imoverclocked 5y ago
    I recently stayed somewhere with cable and relatives were watching content for the holidays. I was reminded of just how obnoxious having 30+ minutes of ads for 1.5 hours of content is. I’d rather just not have any content.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Yeah I can't watch anything with unskipable ads anymore. It's just not worth it. The one exception is live sports, but that's not soo bad because there are timeouts anyway. I just hit mute when the ads are running.
      - bdcravens 5y ago
        I watch NFL RedZone, which jumps game to game to follow the action, with no commercials. Obviously that only works when you have that many games going at once. (Also ironically one of the reasons why I switched back to cable, as it really wasn't on the streaming packages that made sense for us)
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      I agree it's not perfect. I was just tired of having to train an ML model and spin up a 24-node Kubernetes cluster just to figure out what services I needed to watch the particular combination of shows my wife and I like.
thot_experiment 5y ago
yeah pretty much, I've even found myself pirating things that are actually on the services I pay for because playing a file is just a better user experience I also find collecting to be satisfying, there's something nice about knowing that Netflix can't just decide to take Arcane away from me
- FridgeSeal 5y ago
  Other advantage of piracy is that you can actually get the quality you want. In Australia I can’t get anything better than 1080 for some unknown reason, it’s not because it doesn’t exist in higher quality - torrent sites often list 4K resolution files. Presumably it’s the potato-quality internet in this country.
missedthecue 5y ago
I remember when a Netflix subscription was like having Blockbuster inside your living room. Now its mostly just Netflix originals which aren't necessarily bad but maybe not worth it's own subscription every month.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  Clint Eastwood did like 90000 movies, why are there only like 3 on Netflix? That but for every actor. Its like on-demand now rather than a catalog you rent.
  - gordon_freeman 5y ago
    For this reason, I do have Netflix DVD subscription along with Netflix streaming. At least until now, I feel that there is still vast catalog of movies available to choose from their DVD service unlike their streaming one. Obviously waiting for DVDs to arrive is a hassle in comparison to watch-at-any-time streaming but that's ok tradeoff for the freedom it gives me to chose a title to watch from its vast DVD and Blue Ray catalog.
    - greedo 5y ago
      I used to be a Netflix DVD customer until last year (so roughly a decade or so?). But between the shrinking catalog and poor quality control (broken or unplayable discs), it became too much. I cancelled my sub and spent the $15/month buying Blu-Ray discs that never get taken out of the catalog. I get them faster (Amazon shipping is far better than NFlix), and since they're new, I rarely have any playback problems.
      - Something1234 5y ago
        You should also check out flea markets usually I find blue rays for between 2 and 3 dollars in the case.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        They're obviously letting their DVD back catalog rot. I resubscribed for a while during early pandemic but so much is just not available. So, yeah, I just buy DVDs from time to time or pay for a la carte rentals.
sgt 5y ago
Yeah and have you noticed how the industry doesn't really want you to watch old stuff? Obviously they want to keep peddling new movies and series, so it does make sense, but I think it should be easier to find old classic movies. I often have to resort to torrents for this reason alone.
- wombat-man 5y ago
  I think NBC would actually love it if you would please pay every month to watch the office over and over.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Friends and Seinfeld regularly make headlines for having their syndication rights sold to Streaming Service A or Streaming Service B for $100 kajillion or whatever.
  - perryizgr8 5y ago
    Then why did they remove it from Netflix?
    - zingplex 5y ago
      Because they started their own streaming service, NBC Peacock.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  But surely it makes more sense to peddle old movies and TV shows because you've already made them. Isn't that why content creation is so lucrative - you make it once and then sell it for years and years?
  - jaredsohn 5y ago
    But at least for Netflix, they didn't make the old content. If you watch content made by the streaming site, it likely costs them less.
hotpotamus 5y ago
I've been surprised at the number of people who run/have access to Plex servers nowadays, so sounds like what you've seen.
allenu 5y ago
I was taking stock of all the streaming services I have recently (too many now) and realized Netflix is one I can easily do without. I'm not super into their originals and many movies I do want to watch aren't on the service anyway.
- solidangle 5y ago
  Netflix is also the most expensive service that I am subscribed to. Netflix is €14 and Amazon Prime is only €6. I basically only watch Netflix for a few of their originals (which are arguably aren't that great).
iso1210 5y ago
All of that is way cheaper (currently) than cable. The biggest problem is finding what you want. Need a TV Guide for streaming, so I can search for say "The Martian", and it would tell me "This is on netflix in your country", or "this isn't available on subscription, but you can rent it on amazon for x.xx or buy it on apple tv for y.yy"
- grishka 5y ago
  Still you have to go out of your way AND spend money, vs just opening your favorite torrent tracker, searching for whatever you want, and choosing the quality/codec/language. I've honestly never understood the appeal of not pirating.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    Giving money to people creating the stuff you like to watch?
- jeffffff 5y ago
  roku search is exactly this
- janosett 5y ago
  The Apple TV does this, essentially.
  - stouset 5y ago
    It does, but Netflix is the one provider (that I know of) that's decided to entirely opt out of Apple TV integration, so I can't add any of their shows to my universal queue and have to specifically switch to Netflix to see what I'm in the middle of or want I to watch next.
    - 8ytecoder 5y ago
      I have a premium subscription but end up forgetting to watch Netflix because they won't integrate with Up Next. I pick something from my queue - I mean you usually watch TV when your brain is fried and it's not going to remember everything. Don't know why they're so adamant about this.
dwmbt 5y ago
if you choose to go this route, jellyfin is a great privacy-respecting media server. plex is great, but requiring an email or third party account on a self-hosted app is just weird.
- deadbunny 5y ago
  Also Plex logins require their infrastructure to be up. If it's down you can't log into your self hosted app.
thehappypm 5y ago
A show I had one episode left of went off Netflix on 1/1. I tried to find it EVERYWHERE, I even downloaded iTunes on my PC. “Not available in your region” left right and center. I luckily found a torrent and it was legitimately the only way I could find the content beyond buying DVDs on eBay.
- ce4 5y ago
  Perfectly fits this 10 years old comic classic from Matthew Inman: https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
  - PHGamer 5y ago
    that comic is 10 years old? damn im getting old. lol. i remember that one. hilarious then , hilarious now.
    - ce4 5y ago
      I wasnt sure either until I looked it up. There's a funny ad on the torrent site in the comic about winning an iPad 3, which was sold in 2012 :-)
  - drusepth 5y ago
    I was living in Ireland for a little while and wanted to watch Game of Thrones. At the time, piracy was literally the only possible way to watch it; there was no legal avenue whatsoever (including purchasing cable from HBO, etc) that included it. I still haven't seen Game of Thrones.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      That’s crazy. Would a VPN work? I think it would have for me, since my show was available in the UK, but I was not really into buying and setting up a VPN when my wife wanted me to just find the damn show.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I had netflix from 2003 to 2020, and still got DVDs until 2018 when I moved to an area with broadband. It has been a ride: from it's rapid decline from having all sorts of art-house films (Preminger, Castle, Fassbinder) on DVD, to having almost nothing, to it's near 100% self-generated content which is largely meh. But those first years were epic. I must have watched 800 films the first year, limited only by USPS latency.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
My only problem at this point with going back to piracy is that the torrent sites I used to rely on are dead, and if there's a modern replacement for Covenant that actually works then I don't know what it is. Covenant on Kodi was the first and last time I actually felt like TV was in the future.
jagrsw 5y ago
It's not illegal to download movies/music from the Internet in most jurisdictions I know of (Europe). It doesn't extend to computer programs though (i.e. using them). It's also usually illegal to make copyrighted (materially) media available for others (outside of group of family/friends), so torrents are tricky. But it was quite a success for RIAA/MPAA to stick a label of criminal to everyone who downloads free audio-visual content even if it's not true. Though, let's not aid them in their quest by throwing sentences like 'illegal content' too frequently around.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Getting prosecuted for downloading material or using it is rather rare. Unless you are a business. But sharing it is really messy which is why I don't really do torrents anymore. Not that I download much anything.
tapoxi 5y ago
My big issue with the Netflix model is that I'm subscribing to a content smorgasbord where the only thing they have in common is the distributor. With Disney+ at least I know I'm getting specific brands (Marvel, Pixar, etc).
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
A streaming subscription is much cheaper than a cable subscription, no? If you're a very heavy consumer of streaming video, doesn't it make sense that you'd pay more? I don't see why anyone should expect to get to stream everything they could want for a minimal monthly fee. Having to switch apps is a trivial inconvenience. Seems to me that price-point is what we should be focusing on, and I'm fairly confident things have improved greatly. More generally, I'm sceptical of any argument that laments the lack of a monopoly.
- jackweirdy 5y ago
  For many this is not wishing for cable again, rather going _back_ to pirating, which was itself better than cable. Certainly myriad streaming services are better than cable- but are they better than pirating? Harder to be confident of that now than a few years ago
  - Loughla 5y ago
    >but are they better than pirating? Absolutely not. I am absolutely confident of that statement. One box of drives, a small machine to act as a Plex server, and VPN is all you need. Pre-made, high quality tools exist to automate everything. It's almost completely friction-less. Pirating is easier, better, and faster now than it has ever been. The push to splinter streaming services is only speeding up its adoption, again. Cable is the old cable, streaming services are the new cable, but with more barriers and more difficult setup.
    - 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
      I'm not sure who downvoted you, but I cannot agree more. For giggles, I just went ahead and priced this out: One-time costs: * Plex Pass: $80 * NZB indexer access: $10 (for 2 or 3) Ongoing monthly costs: * File server (three-year deprecation): $55 * IPTV: $15 * Unlimited Usenet account: $3 This took an afternoon of setup, but has just worked since. Heck, the other day I discovered a new season of a show had apparently been released – because it completed downloading and filled Plex overnight.
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Before, we used piracy because the media wasn't easily accessible (physical media). I now see piracy having an uptick in the future because the media is all paywalled. Five years ago, anything you wanted to watch was on Netflix, Hulu, or TPB. With the success of those platforms, all the IP holders have started their own streaming platforms which is great, but it's lead to a massive fragmentation of the market. No one is going back to paying those cable prices of $120+ a month for content by signing up for all these services, so piracy it is.
physicsguy 5y ago
Most people I know just share accounts, nobody is paying for all of these subscriptions, just one or two.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Getting harder to do. I even have a family plan for YouTube TV and sometimes get the "too many people watching" blocker.
TheDudeMan 5y ago
The thing that bothers me is that the subscription services cannot give full attention to the quality of their apps on all devices. Un-pausing HBO Max on my Roku Plus only works 50% of the time. And don't get me started on Netflix auto-preview (which cannot be disabled on my device).
dhosek 5y ago
There's a site I've come to really appreciate, justwatch.com which is a great way to see who (if anybody) has a particular movie or TV show available. What's nice is that they include the library-based streaming services like Hoopla and Kanopy. I have a 2/month DVD Netflix subscription still the queue for which I use as my master to-watch list, but I'll check the top few movies on the list from time to time to make sure I can't watch them with one of the streaming services I already have.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 5y ago
How many of these people complained about the cable bundle? I dropped cable and have a few streaming services and save $50+ a month. (No, I don't have live TV which would bring it back up to close to my previous rate.)
LilBytes 5y ago
Same, I'm one of them. I now donate to the developers of the *aar web apps instead. I had Netflix and Prime till recently in an effort to promote the defragmentation of streaming services as a show of unity but, its getting worse. And these guys do not need my money while the service they provide gets worse and worse.
MrDresden 5y ago
Yeah, I have completely reverted to piracy, due to those reasons. Also, many of these platforms made the strange decision to not accept subscriptions from locations outside the US in the beginning. I tried to subscribe to Disney+ and HBO max when they started, but was denied due to location. Probably works now, but I don't care. They had their one chance.

ews 5y ago

Same. We are back in the TV bundle channel era, unfortunately.

coding123 5y ago
True, but the price seems a bit lower (for now). A fully loaded cable account back in the day for me was $180 (including internet). Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc). Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings. And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices). And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out. So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
- Dig1t 5y ago
  Also, most importantly, there are no more advertisements.
- speby 5y ago
  I haven't had a cable subscription in years. I think almost 5 or 6 years now. It's been a combination of streaming, movie rentals (streaming), and BitTorrent downloads. And yes, it definitely can be cheaper if you willing to actively manage what subscriptions you need and don't need one month at a time.
thebigman433 5y ago
Is it even close to that? You can bundle a ton of services and still come out cheaper, plus you avoid ads. The biggest difference is also that you can mix and match services at will, so if you arent using one, you can just drop it for a few months. Its significantly better than cable TV still. I also dont get people reminiscing about one streaming service dominating, we shouldnt be wishing for monopolies. Everyone coming out with their own platform should drive up competition and give us better quality services

ayyyolo 5y ago

100% It's worse than the old days of only having cable and having to pay a small fortune. I'm not going to pay the same (or more) and then have to jump around between 12 different apps.

bdcravens 5y ago
We literally went back to cable because other than the ideology, it wasn't beneficial. For the streaming services I do want, I can actually order then through Xfinity and keep things simple.
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  I recently stayed somewhere with cable and relatives were watching content for the holidays. I was reminded of just how obnoxious having 30+ minutes of ads for 1.5 hours of content is. I’d rather just not have any content.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Yeah I can't watch anything with unskipable ads anymore. It's just not worth it. The one exception is live sports, but that's not soo bad because there are timeouts anyway. I just hit mute when the ads are running.
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      I watch NFL RedZone, which jumps game to game to follow the action, with no commercials. Obviously that only works when you have that many games going at once. (Also ironically one of the reasons why I switched back to cable, as it really wasn't on the streaming packages that made sense for us)
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    I agree it's not perfect. I was just tired of having to train an ML model and spin up a 24-node Kubernetes cluster just to figure out what services I needed to watch the particular combination of shows my wife and I like.

thot_experiment 5y ago

yeah pretty much, I've even found myself pirating things that are actually on the services I pay for because playing a file is just a better user experience I also find collecting to be satisfying, there's something nice about knowing that Netflix can't just decide to take Arcane away from me

FridgeSeal 5y ago
Other advantage of piracy is that you can actually get the quality you want. In Australia I can’t get anything better than 1080 for some unknown reason, it’s not because it doesn’t exist in higher quality - torrent sites often list 4K resolution files. Presumably it’s the potato-quality internet in this country.

missedthecue 5y ago

I remember when a Netflix subscription was like having Blockbuster inside your living room. Now its mostly just Netflix originals which aren't necessarily bad but maybe not worth it's own subscription every month.

calvinmorrison 5y ago
Clint Eastwood did like 90000 movies, why are there only like 3 on Netflix? That but for every actor. Its like on-demand now rather than a catalog you rent.
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
  For this reason, I do have Netflix DVD subscription along with Netflix streaming. At least until now, I feel that there is still vast catalog of movies available to choose from their DVD service unlike their streaming one. Obviously waiting for DVDs to arrive is a hassle in comparison to watch-at-any-time streaming but that's ok tradeoff for the freedom it gives me to chose a title to watch from its vast DVD and Blue Ray catalog.
  - greedo 5y ago
    I used to be a Netflix DVD customer until last year (so roughly a decade or so?). But between the shrinking catalog and poor quality control (broken or unplayable discs), it became too much. I cancelled my sub and spent the $15/month buying Blu-Ray discs that never get taken out of the catalog. I get them faster (Amazon shipping is far better than NFlix), and since they're new, I rarely have any playback problems.
    - Something1234 5y ago
      You should also check out flea markets usually I find blue rays for between 2 and 3 dollars in the case.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      They're obviously letting their DVD back catalog rot. I resubscribed for a while during early pandemic but so much is just not available. So, yeah, I just buy DVDs from time to time or pay for a la carte rentals.

sgt 5y ago

Yeah and have you noticed how the industry doesn't really want you to watch old stuff? Obviously they want to keep peddling new movies and series, so it does make sense, but I think it should be easier to find old classic movies. I often have to resort to torrents for this reason alone.

wombat-man 5y ago
I think NBC would actually love it if you would please pay every month to watch the office over and over.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Friends and Seinfeld regularly make headlines for having their syndication rights sold to Streaming Service A or Streaming Service B for $100 kajillion or whatever.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  Then why did they remove it from Netflix?
  - zingplex 5y ago
    Because they started their own streaming service, NBC Peacock.
Hamuko 5y ago
But surely it makes more sense to peddle old movies and TV shows because you've already made them. Isn't that why content creation is so lucrative - you make it once and then sell it for years and years?
- jaredsohn 5y ago
  But at least for Netflix, they didn't make the old content. If you watch content made by the streaming site, it likely costs them less.

hotpotamus 5y ago

I've been surprised at the number of people who run/have access to Plex servers nowadays, so sounds like what you've seen.

allenu 5y ago

I was taking stock of all the streaming services I have recently (too many now) and realized Netflix is one I can easily do without. I'm not super into their originals and many movies I do want to watch aren't on the service anyway.

solidangle 5y ago
Netflix is also the most expensive service that I am subscribed to. Netflix is €14 and Amazon Prime is only €6. I basically only watch Netflix for a few of their originals (which are arguably aren't that great).

iso1210 5y ago

All of that is way cheaper (currently) than cable. The biggest problem is finding what you want. Need a TV Guide for streaming, so I can search for say "The Martian", and it would tell me "This is on netflix in your country", or "this isn't available on subscription, but you can rent it on amazon for x.xx or buy it on apple tv for y.yy"

grishka 5y ago
Still you have to go out of your way AND spend money, vs just opening your favorite torrent tracker, searching for whatever you want, and choosing the quality/codec/language. I've honestly never understood the appeal of not pirating.
- iso1210 5y ago
  Giving money to people creating the stuff you like to watch?
jeffffff 5y ago
roku search is exactly this
janosett 5y ago
The Apple TV does this, essentially.
- stouset 5y ago
  It does, but Netflix is the one provider (that I know of) that's decided to entirely opt out of Apple TV integration, so I can't add any of their shows to my universal queue and have to specifically switch to Netflix to see what I'm in the middle of or want I to watch next.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    I have a premium subscription but end up forgetting to watch Netflix because they won't integrate with Up Next. I pick something from my queue - I mean you usually watch TV when your brain is fried and it's not going to remember everything. Don't know why they're so adamant about this.

dwmbt 5y ago

if you choose to go this route, jellyfin is a great privacy-respecting media server. plex is great, but requiring an email or third party account on a self-hosted app is just weird.

deadbunny 5y ago
Also Plex logins require their infrastructure to be up. If it's down you can't log into your self hosted app.

thehappypm 5y ago

A show I had one episode left of went off Netflix on 1/1. I tried to find it EVERYWHERE, I even downloaded iTunes on my PC. “Not available in your region” left right and center. I luckily found a torrent and it was legitimately the only way I could find the content beyond buying DVDs on eBay.

ce4 5y ago
Perfectly fits this 10 years old comic classic from Matthew Inman: https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
- PHGamer 5y ago
  that comic is 10 years old? damn im getting old. lol. i remember that one. hilarious then , hilarious now.
  - ce4 5y ago
    I wasnt sure either until I looked it up. There's a funny ad on the torrent site in the comic about winning an iPad 3, which was sold in 2012 :-)
- drusepth 5y ago
  I was living in Ireland for a little while and wanted to watch Game of Thrones. At the time, piracy was literally the only possible way to watch it; there was no legal avenue whatsoever (including purchasing cable from HBO, etc) that included it. I still haven't seen Game of Thrones.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    That’s crazy. Would a VPN work? I think it would have for me, since my show was available in the UK, but I was not really into buying and setting up a VPN when my wife wanted me to just find the damn show.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I had netflix from 2003 to 2020, and still got DVDs until 2018 when I moved to an area with broadband. It has been a ride: from it's rapid decline from having all sorts of art-house films (Preminger, Castle, Fassbinder) on DVD, to having almost nothing, to it's near 100% self-generated content which is largely meh. But those first years were epic. I must have watched 800 films the first year, limited only by USPS latency.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

My only problem at this point with going back to piracy is that the torrent sites I used to rely on are dead, and if there's a modern replacement for Covenant that actually works then I don't know what it is. Covenant on Kodi was the first and last time I actually felt like TV was in the future.

jagrsw 5y ago

It's not illegal to download movies/music from the Internet in most jurisdictions I know of (Europe). It doesn't extend to computer programs though (i.e. using them). It's also usually illegal to make copyrighted (materially) media available for others (outside of group of family/friends), so torrents are tricky. But it was quite a success for RIAA/MPAA to stick a label of criminal to everyone who downloads free audio-visual content even if it's not true. Though, let's not aid them in their quest by throwing sentences like 'illegal content' too frequently around.

Ekaros 5y ago
Getting prosecuted for downloading material or using it is rather rare. Unless you are a business. But sharing it is really messy which is why I don't really do torrents anymore. Not that I download much anything.

tapoxi 5y ago

My big issue with the Netflix model is that I'm subscribing to a content smorgasbord where the only thing they have in common is the distributor. With Disney+ at least I know I'm getting specific brands (Marvel, Pixar, etc).

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

A streaming subscription is much cheaper than a cable subscription, no? If you're a very heavy consumer of streaming video, doesn't it make sense that you'd pay more? I don't see why anyone should expect to get to stream everything they could want for a minimal monthly fee. Having to switch apps is a trivial inconvenience. Seems to me that price-point is what we should be focusing on, and I'm fairly confident things have improved greatly. More generally, I'm sceptical of any argument that laments the lack of a monopoly.

jackweirdy 5y ago
For many this is not wishing for cable again, rather going _back_ to pirating, which was itself better than cable. Certainly myriad streaming services are better than cable- but are they better than pirating? Harder to be confident of that now than a few years ago
- Loughla 5y ago
  >but are they better than pirating? Absolutely not. I am absolutely confident of that statement. One box of drives, a small machine to act as a Plex server, and VPN is all you need. Pre-made, high quality tools exist to automate everything. It's almost completely friction-less. Pirating is easier, better, and faster now than it has ever been. The push to splinter streaming services is only speeding up its adoption, again. Cable is the old cable, streaming services are the new cable, but with more barriers and more difficult setup.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
    I'm not sure who downvoted you, but I cannot agree more. For giggles, I just went ahead and priced this out: One-time costs: * Plex Pass: $80 * NZB indexer access: $10 (for 2 or 3) Ongoing monthly costs: * File server (three-year deprecation): $55 * IPTV: $15 * Unlimited Usenet account: $3 This took an afternoon of setup, but has just worked since. Heck, the other day I discovered a new season of a show had apparently been released – because it completed downloading and filled Plex overnight.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

Before, we used piracy because the media wasn't easily accessible (physical media). I now see piracy having an uptick in the future because the media is all paywalled. Five years ago, anything you wanted to watch was on Netflix, Hulu, or TPB. With the success of those platforms, all the IP holders have started their own streaming platforms which is great, but it's lead to a massive fragmentation of the market. No one is going back to paying those cable prices of $120+ a month for content by signing up for all these services, so piracy it is.

physicsguy 5y ago

Most people I know just share accounts, nobody is paying for all of these subscriptions, just one or two.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Getting harder to do. I even have a family plan for YouTube TV and sometimes get the "too many people watching" blocker.

TheDudeMan 5y ago

The thing that bothers me is that the subscription services cannot give full attention to the quality of their apps on all devices. Un-pausing HBO Max on my Roku Plus only works 50% of the time. And don't get me started on Netflix auto-preview (which cannot be disabled on my device).

dhosek 5y ago

There's a site I've come to really appreciate, justwatch.com which is a great way to see who (if anybody) has a particular movie or TV show available. What's nice is that they include the library-based streaming services like Hoopla and Kanopy. I have a 2/month DVD Netflix subscription still the queue for which I use as my master to-watch list, but I'll check the top few movies on the list from time to time to make sure I can't watch them with one of the streaming services I already have.

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ghaff 5y ago

How many of these people complained about the cable bundle? I dropped cable and have a few streaming services and save $50+ a month. (No, I don't have live TV which would bring it back up to close to my previous rate.)

LilBytes 5y ago

Same, I'm one of them. I now donate to the developers of the *aar web apps instead. I had Netflix and Prime till recently in an effort to promote the defragmentation of streaming services as a show of unity but, its getting worse. And these guys do not need my money while the service they provide gets worse and worse.

MrDresden 5y ago

Yeah, I have completely reverted to piracy, due to those reasons. Also, many of these platforms made the strange decision to not accept subscriptions from locations outside the US in the beginning. I tried to subscribe to Disney+ and HBO max when they started, but was denied due to location. Probably works now, but I don't care. They had their one chance.