6 ms·
With prices of all streaming crawling upwards, and often multiple services being required to cover the catalog of what you want to watch, purchasing† has become
by jjcm 3y ago
With prices of all streaming crawling upwards, and often multiple services being required to cover the catalog of what you want to watch, purchasing† has become a compelling option again. Realistically, if you're paying for Netflix, Prime, and Disney+, you're looking at a $45/mo bill. With seasons of shows costing around $10-15 to buy, are you better off with streaming? I personally don't watch more than a full season of a show in any given month, and I've just started considering this. One notable benefit - most streaming providers have a larger digital catalog for purchasing than for streaming, meaning you can centralize more.
The obvious downside though is at some point the show may just magically disappear from your purchased library, if negotiations between the platform and the creator go south††. I'd love to see some laws in this area where "a purchase is a purchase" to prevent this, but for now it's a risk (albeit one with maritime workarounds).
† or license leasing if you're buying digitally
†† ie https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6449826?sortBy=best https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6449826?sortBy=best
- tedunangst 3y agoI rarely watch shows on all services at the same time, and it's fairly easy to turn them on and off on demand.
- rebeccaskinner 3y agoI’m back to buying physical media for exactly these reasons. It’s unfortunate that a lot of things aren’t getting physical media releases these days, or are still only getting dvd releases, but even for Blu-ray the quality is far superior to streaming in most cases, and 4K is even better. Since we’ve started migrating to physical media we no longer have to worry about streaming ability, losing our license to a show, or even network outages.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoDisney announced they were going to stop selling physical media in Australia. Media companies are salivating at the thought of forever controlling distribution.
- rebeccaskinner 3y agoA bit of consolation may be that It's fairly easy to get ahold of region free players these days. 4k discs aren't even region locked at all. Unfortunately I can imagine shipping might be cost prohibited for individual discs. I hope they reverse course, but as you say, I'm sure the temptation for control is irresistible.
- para_parolu 3y agoPhysical media requires space and prone to damage (not much but still) I prefer having my own digital copy
- rnd0 3y agoWhy not both? Buy the physical copy, rip it to your hd and then keep the original in storage?
- nine_k 3y agoIt seems that it's going to end up as it ended up with music and books. Buy a season of a show (an album, a book) digitally to indicate your support and help keep it running. Then pirate and keep a local copy of the same to ensure against future unavailability, and for more convenience. I bet enough people in the media industry understand this mechanics, and sort of turn a blind eye at it, because it's not affecting their bottom line materially.
- thfuran 3y agoThe media industry is pretty notoriously not chill about piracy.
- naikrovek 3y agoYeah, but they’re focused on the wrong stuff, now, and evading their detection is easier than ever. Pirate all the things. The relationship between publishers and consumers has been almost 100% adversarial for a while, now. It started with payola for radio DJs in the 1950s, and it has only escalated since then. PIRATE ALL THE THINGS! It is almost our duty, at this point. Publishers are closer than ever to being able to take your money and provide nothing in return if they choose. They keep inching closer and closer to that reality. Again, this relationship is adversarial. Fight back or lose the fight forever. Pirate. Everything.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoJust don't forget to support creators! Or there will be less and less available from any source.
- larme 3y agoYou can buy DRM-free music from iTunes store or bandcamp. There's no excuse to pirate music with a valid way to purchase. For ebook the situation is worse but for many technical books there's a way to purchase a DRM version. Movie/TV series is unique in a way that there's no option to buy a DRM-free version.
- 3y ago
- artdigital 3y agoThat’s my thinking as well. Renting a movie or buying it off AppleTV or other store ends up way cheaper than letting a subscription sit no matter if I need it or not I rarely ever watch anything twice so I’m fully ok with renting and be done with it
- nothercastle 3y agoI use apple subscription manager to buy one month at a time once I have enough backlong to justify it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smugma 3y agoHow are you buying seasons? I used to pay $30-40 for a season on DVD/itunes. Or $3/episode for shorter series.
- 1920musicman 3y agoThe price range really varies. But just for the sake of giving an example: Mad Men season 1 is just $4.99 on Apple TV. Some newer shows on Prime can easily cost $4-5 per episode.
- rdl 3y agoOr piracy.
- tzs 3y agoI just noticed that complete series of shows can be fairly cheap. I was in Best Buy and happened to walk by the DVD section for example and saw the complete "How I Met Your Mother" in a 28 disc boxed set for $32.99. Unfortunately the world of DVD and Blu-ray seems to be overrun with too many editions. For example besides that particular HIMYM set (here it is at Amazon [1]), there is also this one [2] which is $49.99. The pictures for the two look identical. But the release date listed for the $32.99 is about 9 months later, and the media format descriptions differ between the two. The $32.99 one says Subtitled, NTSC. The $49.99 one says NTSC, Widescreen, Box set, Subtitles, AC-3, Dolby. The $32.99 lists language as "English (Dolby Surround)" so does apparently have Dolby. The $49.99 one doesn't list language. The $32.99 one says it has English, French, and Spanish subtitles. The $49.99 just says French and Spanish subtitles. Does one of them have better sound? Do either of them have commentary, deleted scenes, or other special features. Does only the $49.99 have widescreen? Some comments mention that there is commentary, but (1) Amazon considers these two sets to be variations on the same set and so they share comments, so there is no way to tell which set the comment is talking about, and (2) some of those comments are from several years before either set was released--they were definitely commenting about HIMYM so my guess is that they were for early releases of specific seasons or something like that. If I were interested in buying that complete HIMYM I'd have no idea from those Amazon listings and comments which set to buy. I've also seen similar things when considering buying movies. There will often be one or more of a DVD, a DVD + digital code, a Blu-ray + DVD + digital code, a 4K UHD Blu-ray, a 4K UHD Blu-ray + digital code, a 4K UHD Blu-ray + DVD + digital code, and probably some that I've forgotten. Online listings often don't say if the digital code is for 4K, and often don't say much about special features. It is confusing enough that my impulse to buy the movie does not last long enough for me to figure out which to buy. [1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B07GJJ1R6R/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B07GJ... [2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B0747GRCDR/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B0747...
- antonf 3y agoPersonally, I cancelled all my subscriptions (Netflix, Prime, Apple TV+, Hulu, HIDIVE, AMC+) this christmas and reverted to piracy. Modern piracy (the so called *ARR stack) provide UX that is pretty close to what you get from streaming services. In some cases even better - now I will use just one app on my TV to watch everything, will not be affected by Netflix/Prime/Apple/Hulu or internet provider outages when I am watching a movie or TV show, and will not have to go through 4 or 5 apps when I am searching for something specific to watch. The UX is slightly worse when I find a movie or TV show via Plex Discovery and want to watch it immediately, since I will have to wait for *ARR to pick it up and download it, but for now I have quite a few TV shows to finish watching before it will become an inconvenience for me, especially given the fact that this stack can subscribe to upcoming shows - I can tell it that I am interested in Fallout for example, and it will monitor releases and download the show once it will become available.
- mlrtime 3y agoThe quality difference doesn't bother you? Meaning you can't get UHD versions of a lot of shows, only 1080p and non HDR/DV.
- wenebego 3y agoI frequently grab 720p and hardly notice
- antonf 3y agoI already had cheaper HD Netflix subscription, and didn't notice difference between it and UHD Prime/Apple TV/Hulu. I only noticed that I didn't have UHD when I was cancelling it, to be honest. Maybe my TV is not big enough or I am too far from the screen for this to be noticeable (65" Sony OLED TV about 3 to 4 meters from my coouch). Regarding the pirated content - I just started, so my experience have pretty low sample size. Still, majority of shows I downloaded so far are in 4K. The only one in 1080p is older show, for which I think there's no 4K source material.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoI predict a resurgence in torrenting. The internet interprets rent-seeking profit-price spirals as bullshit greed and routes around them.