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Please Pay for a Year of Nothing
- cryptozeus 3y agowhy is this on hackernews !
- candiddevmike 3y agoWonder what the knock-on effects of potentially having no new "traditional entertainment" for a while, especially during an election year, are going to be.
- finite_depth 3y ago[dead]
- hyperhello 3y agoI understand. I had various streaming subscriptions and now none for the same reason: if you get all the TV, candy, liquor, sleep, or gum you can handle, you don’t want it anymore. TV is a place to flip down and turn off your mind, except when you’re young and so sensitive to how you’re perceived that you actually empathize with the actors.
- RajT88 3y agoSome people remain sensitive into adulthood. Very much so. I know 40-somethings like this who are huge film buffs. I wish I could short-term experience the world like them. (Long term, it is horrible)
- ryanisnan 3y agoOne counter point to why I personally pay for Disney+ is that I have kids, and kids love repeat content. I don't think new content particularly matters to them, at least not at their age. I wonder how much Disney+'s numbers will be helped by that tranche of subscribers.
- geph2021 3y agokids love repeat content This is very true, to a certain age. My kids would watch some things over and over again, until they reached a certain age when there was an abrupt change. Once that change happens it's polar opposite, they could not fathom watching something a second time.
- j2kun 3y agoWhat age was that in your case?
- MattGaiser 3y agoNot OP, but until I was about 10 or so, I wanted to watch Lion King 1 and a Half nearly every week.
- geph2021 3y agoyep, around 10 as well
- dunham 3y agoI'd say around 10 also. For the past year, my 3 year old wanted to watch the same episode over and over and my 10 year old tried to talk her into whatever the new episode was.
- cortesoft 3y agoMy roommate in college watched Gladiator every single night for like a full year.
- WXLCKNO 3y agoWere you not entertained?
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
- l0ng1nu5 3y ago"Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" - Disney
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yegle 3y agoLet me just throw some random gibberish words: sonarr radarr lidarr whisparr prowlarr unpackerr overseerr autobrr bazarr.
- duxup 3y agoI don’t really care about “new” content. Similar to video games. I consume if it is new or old. If I can’t find content then I’m done with the service. Unfortunately on all these platforms discovery is horrible unless they want you to find it.
- hotnfresh 3y agoWhen reducing copyright terms or eliminating copyright comes up, there’s always someone posting about how horrible it’ll be if the rate of creation of new media plummets, and I just cannot relate. I’m not even going to get through every video game that’s probably worth playing, that already exists, before I die, and that’s a fairly new medium. Music? TV? Film? Books? LOL. LMFAO. If all publishing magically entirely stops tomorrow, it’s not like I’m going to run out of probably-good media to “consume”. Not even close. Affect on QOL would be basically zero.
- epiccoleman 3y agoFTL already exists, so there's not really any point making new video games anyway.
- philsnow 3y agoI love FTL, but.. are you playing it with mods or something? I get way more replayability out of Slay the Spire. In particular, a lot of events in FTL have very binary outcomes (literal coin flip: gain a crew, or one of your crew dies), whereas events in STS feel like they have more strategic and tactical value.
- epiccoleman 3y agoI think the big "replayability" factor in FTL for me is the knowledge that there are guys out there with win rates over 95% on Hard difficulty. There's definitely some sameness that creeps in over time, and the events are for sure one of the places where that happens. But to me there's something almost mystical about the fact that some guys have managed to "solve" the game to that point - that for almost any problem the game presents you, there's a way to win. Even for the ships that seem shitty, with careful play you can get a run snowballing to the point where victory is assured. It almost feels like chess - if you could just see the solution you almost always have a way to win the game. I don't use mods except a couple little quality of life mods, as most of the mods I've seen (in particular Multiverse) seem to deviate too much from the fairly minimalist design philosophy that I think makes FTL so great. I'd love to see some mods that just add some more events or something that feels like it's thematically in line with that minimalism. Lastly, I think FTL is one of the best games ever made in terms of really putting you into the mindset of the theme. You just feel like a spaceship captain, or like a Culture style ship "Mind", when you are doing little micro moments like quickly pulling the power from oxygen to squeeze a bit more out of the engines. Or venting rooms to move boarders around your ship. Or planning for the worst on Mantis B and pre-venting rooms. There's so much depth in the game waiting to be exploited. Usually I go through kicks with FTL and then lose interest for a while, sometimes years at a time - but I always learn something new when I come back and I've gotten to be quite good on my most recent obsession with the game.
- mholt 3y agoWe have Disney+ but don’t watch it super often. Our price is increasing from $85/yr to $140. I’ll probably cancel here in a few days and maybe in the future just subscribe for a month and binge some shows after they’re out. The almost doubling of the price is absurd.
- cmiller1 3y ago140 a year? You know you can pay for a good VPN for a lot less than that...
- doh 3y agoCan you though? NordVPN for instance comes to $67.5 for the first year and then $120 every year. I know there are cheaper options too, but not that much. Plus they still have to buy the subscription. And then dealing with the hassle of the VPN.
- system33- 3y agoYeah. Mullvad. Actually good too. Something like $5.30/mo (forever). They take literal cash (as one of the options). WireGuard support. They actually do privacy, not just market it. Edited to fix price estimate and clarify it isn’t just for the first year.
- anjel 3y agoI jumped from Nord to Mullvad as soon as my 3 year Nord sub was up. The throughput speed is unquestionably and substantially faster with Mullvad, and they don't force me to change my password every 3 mos like Nord got all righteous about. Mullvad costs a little more, but they're better in every way, including staying out of your way.
- Hbruz0 3y agoDoesn't work quite well for bypassing georestrictions tbh, which is one of the main uses of a VPN
- dclowd9901 3y agoI would be canceling myself but with two young ones who absolutely adore watching the same shows over and over again, my desires take a back seat unfortunately.
- Scubabear68 3y agoDisney did not get that, for Disney+ to work, there needs to be constant new, exciting releases. As TFA says, Disney+ had a few great titles then just fizzled out. Yeah, it’s nice for little kids, but not nice enough for this kind of cost.
- munificent 3y ago> When Disney+ first premiered it was criticized for only having The Mandalorian and WandaVision which were both over in the blink of an eye. Marvel, for me, has had diminishing returns since then, and I would not subscribe to Disney+ to exclusively watch anything from Marvel at this point. > Star Wars, unfortunately, is also on the bubble with several disappointments, including the most recent Star Wars: Ashoka where I watched 50 minutes of space whales doing space whale stuff. Stretching Star Wars: Skeleton Key and Star Wars: The Acolyte out into next year, with both unlikely to be as inspired as Star Wars: Andor doesn’t convince me that $109.99 needs to leave my bank account right this very minute. As far as I can tell, there are roughly two kinds of people: 1. People that just have too much time on their hands. Or, at least, more time than they have executive function and willpower to fill it with actual activities. They are actively looking for any kind of media consumption to make the hands on the clock move faster. 2. People for whom their time has value and products are competing to be the best use of their time. I see so many people who appear to be in the first category and will watch anything, even stuff they admittedly find boring, just to... I don't know... run out the clock on their life.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ecshafer 3y agoI agree with you that there are too many 1s on there. I think the problem is that passively consuming content is too easy, humans just aren't really wired for it. I am certainly not immune to it. In say 1900 if you wanted to entertain yourself you could talk to people, you could listen to someone play music (live), you could play music yourself, you could write, you could tinker, etc. The most passive consumption was basically reading, which is still a rather active thing compared to scroll tik tok or watch netflix (or both). So a lot of people instead of doing the difficult thing (creating) just consume.
- Havoc 3y agoYeah planning on cancelling Netflix too. The value proposition just isn’t there anymore and raising price in that context is insane
- m463 3y agoI gradually moved from netflix streaming to netflix dvd (consistently better movies). Then netflix closed my streaming account because I didn't use it. And just now they closed my dvd account, because... they don't do dvds anymore. sigh.
- wand3r 3y agoBasically there was a finite amount of content and a lot of it appeared on Netflix. Then 4+ services launched and a near fixed amount of content was divided by 4. Then they doubled the price. So now for a worse discovery experience you are effectively paying 8x the price.
- readthenotes1 3y agoThere is a finite but for viewing purposes infinite amount of content. Goodness, there are 13 seasons of Gunsmoke on paramount+.
- jayd16 3y agoWhy do you say it's a fixed amount of content? Finite, sure, but it's not fixed.
- kiba 3y agoOnce you see a detective show, you basically seen 80% of all detective shows. That's why it seems that there can be nothing to watch, because 80% is basically a rehash, just with different characters and slightly different plots.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoYeah, you're right, I watched one season of Law and Order and thought "Great, I've seen 80% of all detective shows, no need to watch any more." /s
- codetrotter 3y agoI think it comes down to personal taste. I could likewise see someone say that 80% of all soccer matches are the same. That once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And then on the opposite end you have people enjoying soccer who will be happy to tell you about the nuances between different matches, different players, different teams, etc.
- turtlebits 3y agoThat was a long wall of text for stating that a subscription isn't worth it. That said, expecting 12 months worth of new content seems a bit much (almost entitled). Not everyone has consumed everything worth watching.
- cdubzzz 3y agoOn every service we have ever subscribed I’d say we’ve streamed all that we want to stream within about six months at most. After that there needs to be basically a constant stream of new (good) content or it does not feel worth it.
- simpaticoder 3y ago>That was a long wall of text for stating that a subscription isn't worth it That was an industry insider's view about WHY it's not worth it, especially right now. He sounds like a VFX guy in LA/Hollywood, and his perspective is valuable especially with regards to "who's fault is this situation".
- anjel 3y agoTurner Classic Movies streaming app is quietly full of win. Approx 100 curated sometimes thematic movie classics that change every few weeks, View it or lose it.
- unethical_ban 3y agoCriterion is good too. I just wish tcm app streamed its life channel.
- fullshark 3y agoKanopy is great if you have a library card and like TCM/Criterion content.
- simpaticoder 3y agoUnfortunately you need to have a cable subscription with TCM to use the TCM app. They have a fantastic catalog that I cannot pay them directly to watch. I have to pay Comcast first. Not cool. BTW cool angular animation on https://noiralley.tcm.com/?icid=espnav8-noir-alley https://noiralley.tcm.com/?icid=espnav8-noir-alley
- lotsofpulp 3y agoSame problem with sports. Asking me to pay a middleman is an instant dealbreaker, especially the cable/satellite tv company.
- anjel 3y agoTCM is bundled or absorbed but not featured into HBOMax, which does offer direct subscription
- RockRobotRock 3y agoIf all the actors are dead you should just pirate it.
- causality0 3y agoIt's a dangerous game producers are playing. Hollywood could burn to the ground right now and I'd be set for years with the content that's already on my hard drive, let alone what's out there on the internet. Keep not producing new content long enough and people are going to start noticing they don't need you to.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoTL;DR: Adult whose TC is probably $300k+ makes time to write a whole ass blog post indignantly complaining about a $30 price hike for an annual subscription to a children's content channel
- crooked-v 3y agohttps://i.imgur.com/OmLPVzB.png https://i.imgur.com/OmLPVzB.png
- r00fus 3y agoPersonally seeing a doubling of price while studios aren't releasing anything because of the stupid war against the actors guild is just an affront to my sense of decency. I was going to say Disney+ was going to stay because my kids love the content but I posed it to them and they agree - let's cancel and if the need arises we can binge for a month. Or borrow DVDs from the library. Or play their switch or watch YouTube etc etc.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoAbsolutely true. But they brought about an interesting discussion on HN, so I’ll upvote it.
- 3y ago
- keithnz 3y agoI always cancel disney until there is starwars
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoWhy? New Star Wars is godawful.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoAndor was pretty good.
- cortesoft 3y agoI honestly can never understand people who say there is not enough good content on streamers. Every single service I have subscribed to has way more content that I want to watch than time I have to watch it. I watch maybe an hour a night, and I have a huge backlog of shows I’d like to watch that I slowly work through. Even my current list will take me years, and I have new shows to add all the time. Are these people who complain about not enough content watching 10 hours a day? Or just have very narrow desires about what they want to watch?
- soco 3y agoI'm probably in the narrow desires bunch and although with a sizeable backlog, most of it is not on Netflix/Prime/Disney and damn if I will subscribe another one. The current plan is to drop Netflix as it kinda dried out on my interests, and work on those others in parallel with pirated streaming or torrents. And still I only get one hour every second day or even less.
- CivBase 3y agoThere's plenty to watch. Just not much I consider worth my time. I can count on my fingers the number of movies and TV shows from the last couple years I was interested in. So why should I pay an arm and a leg for it? I could own physical copies of the material I care about for as much as they want me to pay in streaming subscriptions.
- cortesoft 3y agoThis seems different than the other takes, though. It sounds like you just don’t want to watch much tv, so it makes sense that you don’t want to pay for a streaming service. My main issue is with people who seem to imply there is a ton of great content out there but it just isn’t on streaming services. That had not been my experience.
- eadmund 3y ago> I honestly can never understand people who say there is not enough good content on streamers. What is there that is worth watching? They don’t make anything good anymore: no Seinfeld, no Office, no Parks & Rec, no Castle, no Bones, no House. Everything new is terrible, often embarrassingly so. It’s as though sometime in the last decade all the talent and skill left media, and now we have corporations and people going through the motions but not actually producing anything worth watching.
- xrd 3y agoIs anyone here paying for any of the smaller indie streaming services? And feeling like that's a better value? If I didn't have kids I would skip Netflix, Disney and HBO. Quality has really taken a dive.
- simpaticoder 3y agoIf you have kids, try PBS Kids. They have good stuff and it's free. Also, try telling your kids you can't afford streaming services anymore. They will be surprisingly understanding because, especially if they're small, they don't have money and know what that's like.
- vlmutolo 3y ago(This isn't really for kids, but for anyone else who has a similar question.) Dropout.tv is by far the best value of any streaming service. If you can get into their kind of content (it's only Dropout originals), it's endless entertainment for $5/month. Examples of what they make: GameChanger ("the only game show that changes every show") is a cool concept where they come up with a new game show for every episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsDyNOB1hZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsDyNOB1hZs Dimension 20 is a D&D actual play show with high production value and an insanely creative premise for every season. (Candy Land but Game of Thrones, Manhattan: firefighter is a paladin, ER nurse is a cleric, etc.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zZxCVBi7-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zZxCVBi7-k They have tons of great shows.
- jetti 3y agoI subscribe to Night Flight+ (https://www.nightflightplus.com/ https://www.nightflightplus.com/). It is very niche and I basically subscribed just for the music documentaries. It is on the cheaper end (~ $40/year) but it doesn’t seem like there is much content added and the app is lacking (at least on the Amazon Fire TV )
- alisson_dover 3y agoKanopy. Get a library card and register at Kanopy for free.
- jrflowers 3y agoI love paying for streaming services that make original shows like HBO Max so I can watch Infinity Train, or Hulu so I can watch Marvels’s Runaways
- twayt 3y agoWe need to bring back Kazaa
- bbstats 3y agosomeone doesn't have kids...
- alisson_dover 3y agoPSA: in the US you can get a free account at https://www.kanopy.com/ https://www.kanopy.com/ by just joining a local library. Kanopy is my preferred streaming service, it has a big collection of quality movies (not Netflix-type trash).
- ct0 3y agoIts free but limited use per person over the month. great service. Libby is also free if you have a library card and want to use it for more than streaming.
- alisson_dover 3y agoLibby and Hoopla: free books, audio books, movies. Just to add: Kanopy gives you 15 free movies per month. Not enough for binging TV shows but certainly enough for 15 quality movie watching sessions per month.
- deeviant 3y agoI'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I have very little sympathy for writers. The work today is on average horrible, derivative and opposite of inspired. I'm at the point where I'm almost ready for AI to take over. It's just that rare gem that hits now and then that gives me pause, but frankly, I can't remember the last time I watched a movie that actually moved me.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoIt's not that unpopular - I see it a lot on FB and Twitter. People really dislike modern media. Zoomers in particular watch and listen to a ton of older stuff. With a few exceptions, movies are terribly written these days. A lot of people think the issue is "wokeness", but that's just part of it - everything is slapped together poorly. The quips, the one liners, the new archetypes, all pales to how fucking horrible dialog has become. Shoehorning in an Indian and a Chinese guy to appeal to those markets? Fuckit, add a talking dog. Watch TV from the 90s and aughts. It's much funnier, dialog is tighter, there's subplots and overarching plots and character growth. You know what is good? You know what doesn't have a writers room? Low-end YouTube channels, which have completely replaced TV for the actual working class. Watch TFL Truck - it's funny, human, they mess up a lot, and it's a good time. Then watch a Marvel shitfest. Repeat with streamers, with review channels, etc.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoToo true. I love so many YouTubers under 1m subs. Keep using ad block and please support your favs on Patreon!
- BizarroLand 3y agoI've had a lot of misses with more recent shows. Writers can put out amazing things, but I frequently have the sensation of "waiting for the movie to start" 25-50 minutes into the movie, kind of like watching Napoleon Dynamite but with no dance scene. Every movie script doesn't have to follow Campbell's Hero's Journey, but studios and writers need to make sure that not only are we, the viewers, along for the ride but that we are invested in the characters. We don't invest in characters because they happen to match physical traits with us. We don't invest in characters because their living conditions are similar to our own. We don't invest in characters for anything visible on the movie screen. We invest in characters because they have a compelling narrative. I don't care if the overweight kid with a good sense of humor is accepted by his classmates and seamlessly integrated into his peer group. I care if he is a good person that does good things and that he overcomes adversity to get the girl despite others being against him. I don't care if the non-white girl shows how bad ass and fearless she is with impeccable style while she moves to her own beat. I care that she has a goal that makes sense and what steps she takes to achieve it. To make us care about the characters, make us care about what they are doing with the circumstances they find themselves in. You're the granddaughter of a dead ghostbuster. Great. Wonderful. Whatever. Why am I watching a movie about you?
- rcarr 3y ago> I’m not sure what’s going to get me to reactivate Disney+, maybe it’ll be whenever the second season of Andor comes out towards the end of 2024 or early 2025, but it’ll just be the two months the show runs, and then I’m out again like the Falcon leaving the Death Star. I don't get why you'd even pay for two months if it's just one show you want to watch. Wait until it's all aired, subscribe for one month, watch it all over a few nights and then cancel the subscription.
- dmoy 3y ago> watch it all over a few nights I don't have time for that, maybe the author doesn't either
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jrm4 3y agoYeah, they seem to all be forgetting the power of rampant copyright infringement, if people so choose. Love or hate it, there's no denying the strong possibility of it just happening spontaneously and then no one being able to do much about it.
- igetspam 3y agoWith all the price creeping and content being spread out everywhere, piracy and a storage array are the cheaper option. My MIL bought a piracy streaming stick at a naval base (I had to stop that because it didn't use a VPN). Before the sharing crackdowns, you could load balance costs but now it's just bad spending.
- antifa 3y ago> Please Pay for a Year of Nothing TBH sounds like most $20/seat/month SaaSs that would be slightly useful to me if they had a lower $20/year personal use tier or a practical "barely getting started" free tier.
- GuB-42 3y agoI wonder if that effect has a name in economics. But streaming services essentially killed themselves. When it was only Netflix, is was great, they had a lot of content at an affordable price, consumers liked that, and plenty of people were ready to pay for it. They almost accomplished the impossible: they beat piracy without a single lawsuit, simply because they offered something worth paying the price they asked for. As a result Netflix made a lot of money, and another company (call it B) thought: why sell our work for a low price to Netflix, we can do it ourselves and get the full benefits. So they launch their service, some people leave Netflix for the new service, so Netflix makes a little less money, and the new company a little more. Now a third player comes in with the same reasoning, and now the third company makes a little more money, and the other two, a little less, repeat as many times as you want. Now, let's focus on company B. They made more money by launching their streaming service at the time they did it, but now, with all the other players (including piracy that made a comeback), their benefits drop, possibly below what they did when it was only Netflix. Everyone lost money. So, by a series of seemingly rational decisions: each new streaming service made more money for the company at the time they launched it, in the end, everyone lost. There is some game theory here.