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What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription
- ljf 10mo agoWe recently did a stock take of all the subscriptions we've ended up with - versus the ones we actually regualrly use - and it was clear we've been wasting money for some time
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoThis year had me reduce my subs to a grand total of Youtube and Discord. And even then Youtube is on shakey ground. Just sucks because Youtube is prety much an uncontested monopoly serving as that middleground between tiktok shorts and high budget TV shows.
- chillydawg 10mo agoI enjoyed the subtle messaging: drop your Netflix for 20 bux. pick up a seed box for 4 bux.
- Havoc 10mo agoHetzner will kick you to the curb if you torrent from it so don’t think that was an intentional message
- cyrusradfar 10mo agoA few months ago we'd had Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, HBO Max but we've cut back to Netflix and YouTube premium. Switched to purchasing and renting when there's something we want to watch that isn't available and we're finding it to force us to be more conscious of what we're watching. We're considering ditching Spotify and music streaming to return to buying albums so our children can start to be more thoughtful listeners. After falling down a rabbit hole of some insider music vlogs, I recognized how much streaming is harming independent music.
- jraby3 10mo agoYouTube music is really good. I prefer it more than Spotify and if you already pay for YouTube it's free for you.
- plufz 10mo agoInteresting! In which ways is it better than spotify?
- jraby3 10mo agoYouTube does a really good job at making playlists on the fly. Choosing the first song on YouTube will get you a playlist of somewhat similar songs. It took me a while to get used to relative to Spotify but now I much prefer the YT method.
- cons0le 10mo agoThey could also consider making manual youtube playlists and setting up a media computer with something like TubeArchivist. Selfhosting youtube is the only actually useful thing in my "homelab". I'm only mentioning this because for years I've been making music playlists and archiving them. When you come back to them on youtube a few years later a few songs are always gone/ unavailable. Some of my favorite songs don't exist on yt anymore
- Semaphor 10mo agoFor underground artists, spotify is piracy with extra steps, often literally only paying in exposure.
- whstl 10mo agoThanks to special backroom deals with the three majors, Spotify only really pays to a small majority in the Top N. It doesn't matter if you only listen to one artist the whole month, your money is still going to Taylor Swift. There is no point in paying for streaming. Just pirate it and give your money to your favourite artists by buying merchandise or vinyl.
- watwut 10mo agoNetflix is my primary foreign language learning platform. I am not dropping it.
- jraby3 10mo agoOther than watching shows in a foreign language and reading subtitles, is there any specific way you use it to learn a foreign language? I am learning Hebrew but I find that many Hebrew Netflix shows do not offer English subtitles. It's really frustrating.
- littlecranky67 10mo agoI used languagereactor.com for learning spanish for a while (a browser extensions that supplements netflix for language learning). It allows a second subtitle track, shows word translations on hover over the subtitle, and bookmark words to your vocab database with a single click. I exported the vocab after a few days into Anki to learn them. It is a bit finicky to setup and learn the tool, but overall good motivator to keep learning. After about 6 months I became proficient enough to drop the extension and just watch now in plain spanish audio and - depending on the content - spanish subtitles. Hebrew is a very niche language, so it won't fix the core problem that there is no hebrew-native content.
- mft_ 10mo agoForgive the basic questions, but you were using Spanish original videos, with first-order Spanish subtitles already available, then adding second (English?) subtitles via language reactor? I ask because I went down this path a little to help my German learning, but struggled to find the right combination of videos at the right level with the right subtitles available. (I was trying to use free apps/services though).
- littlecranky67 10mo agoYou can have any subtitle track be "blurry" in language reactor and only show it on keypress or mouse hover. Depending on your learning level, listening comprehension etc. you might not need a first or second subtitle, or configure the subtitle to be "blurry" by default. Having 2 subtitles is only helpful in the beginning, where you do not understand entire sentences or sentence constructs sometimes, but you want to understand that entire sentence to continue to follow the storyline (and continue to be engaged). Very quickly I switched to having only the spanish subtitle and lookup individual words. IIRC, Languagereactor also enables all the subtitles (netflix somehow filters the list of available subtitles based on the country you are in). But I should add that I am actually living in spain, so all the content has spanish subtitles available (and english, which I used as a reference instead of german).
- helsinkiandrew 10mo agoI've found we can usually watch what we want on a streaming platform in a month or two then cancel the subscription and move on elsewhere - it also makes us think about what we actually want to watch rather than what's available to watch.
- ugurs 10mo agoMubi can be a slightly cheaper alternative. They now provide one movie-theater ticket per week in some countries, which is a good deal if you enjoy watching films on a slightly bigger screen with slightly louder speakers.
- andrepd 10mo agoThere's one called Filmin, also focused on independent and art cinema. Good value for your money rather than rewarding enshittification, spyware, and slop.
- Mistletoe 10mo agoI really don’t think you need much more than a Criterion streaming subscription. I’m filling my head with quality and art that makes me feel and think now.
- silisili 10mo agoIt's weird. When Netflix came about, I was excited to dump all the bespoke pirating stuff that it replaced. I didn't mind paying for content, in fact, I was glad to. Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, there are things just not available on any of them. And now, more than ever, the high seas seem so enticing again. I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented, but they really soured people on their value proposition.
- mft_ 10mo ago> I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented Greed, “growth”, “shareholder value” —> enshittification?
- gabrielgio 10mo agoAnd in this case, the enshittification of the whole streaming industry. In the same fashion as USA's "publisher can't own a venue", publisher shouldn't be allowed to own a stream service as well.
- chii 10mo ago> how they ruined the opportunity presented netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service. I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective island of monopoly. The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly. An example policy would be to force content production studios from exclusive licensing - only broad and available licensing (so any streaming service can pay a known price and obtain the content). Something similar exists with cinemas and movie producers (of course not quite the same). Why couldn't the same or similar be for streaming?
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- zkmon 10mo agoThe only time I had a Netflix subscription was in 1999, for a couple of years, when they were mailing DVDs. Can't remember how much it costed. Never got any streaming subscriptions. I get annoyed with the Netflix button on my TV remote. It wastes a minute when press it by mistake.
- qmr 10mo agoIt would take you all of five minutes to modify your remote so it can never be pressed again.
- bogdan 10mo agoWithout destroying the button? and consistently on every type of remote out there that has a netflix button? How?
- account42 10mo agoWhy would you care about destroying the button if you never need it? But placing a piece of tape or something else non-conductive between the rubber cap and contacts should do the trick fairly non-destructively.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago>Why would you care about destroying the button if you never need it? I'm more worried about breaking the rest of the remote in the process.
- loco5niner 10mo agoI was able to take the little rubber piece out of the remote. just left 4 little openings.
- user34283 10mo agoIn the past I used to pay for Netflix, Spotify, and even YT Premium. However, they keep raising prices every year. In the past Netflix 4K cost like $22 and with family sharing it was about $5 - totally acceptable. Now they cracked down on family sharing in different households and charge $37. No way. Spotify: they increased prices again last month to $20 USD for the individual subscription. I bought a 12 month Colombian gift card for $40 USD and activated via VPN. Should this stop working, I will unsubscribe entirely. YT Premium: it's at $23 per month now. Considering they aren't producing movies themselves, I consider that one the most egregious pricing out of all three. They can absolutely forget it - I am unwilling to pay any more than $10 for it.
- bambax 10mo agoI unsubscribed from Spotify six months ago and didn't look back. Navidrome works extremely well.
- sidrag22 10mo agoalmost 4 years for me now, feels good to not feel like im having my music held hostage unless i pay them every month for the rest of my life.
- yason 10mo agoYouTube has the best content that you absolutely can't and won't find in commercial productions, and exactly because they aren't producing anything, they're just a platform. I think the sub-$10 premium without music was in the right price range but even at $20+ it proposes much, much more value than your random streaming service. However, what they're not clear about is how the Premium fees actually land on the YT channels which is an irksome point. Premium views generate more income than unpaid views, that much I know. But I don't know if my subscription fees will benefit only the channels I watch or whether I my subscription is helping the big, popular shows that I never watch.
- user34283 10mo ago45% of your subscription benefits Google as far as I know. I'm not willing to pay $20 a month for watching like an hour or two of mediocre homemade content Google did not even produce.
- blackdivine 10mo agoCan anyone give me an honest review of Kagi? When AI can summarize the web results and search for me, I have stopped using Google.
- azuanrb 10mo agoIt varies from person to person because everyone uses search differently. Someone I know swears by it and loves it. I tried it for three months using only Kagi and it didn’t feel worth it to me, so I went back to Google. Your experience might be different so my suggestion is to try it yourself if you can.
- elliotec 10mo agoMy honest review - Kagi is really, really great. Been using it almost a year now. The search results are much more relevant, there are no ads or hallucinated BS AI summaries at the top, and you're not giving Google your data (and money) to further enshittify the world. There are features I haven't tried yet so can't speak to them, but that's my very general take on the default kagi experience.
- benrutter 10mo agoI used Kagi for a few months, it was the best search experiemce I've seen, but in the end I decided I didn't value that enough. I use Ecosia now, it's fine- worse, but free. I guess it's down to you how much you value web search. Kagi does have an AI tool as well, but I didn't use this and don't use AI search anyway, so can't comment on how it compares.
- bambax 10mo agoI still don't understand why Google gets such a bad rep. I think it's fine. And about AI "summarizing" web results: while sometimes useful, you absolutely need to check the source. AI can make stuff up, and it can also summarize wrong (when the source does exist).
- xioxox 10mo agoWith google I can't find things I know exist. For example, it doesn't find several of my github repositories with unique names that have been there for years. With old google you could drill down a couple of pages of results, but they're not there now. It also prefers worse sources for materials, for example some blog which poorly explains some API, rather than the original documentation.
- DeathArrow 10mo agoStremio is free. Real Debrid costs about $3 per month, though.
- dustypotato 10mo agoSwitched to this and never been so satisfied. Hard to get old and not streamed shows though. And stremio has plugins that support some streaming sites as well.
- 867-5309 10mo agoRD started honouring DMCA around a year ago and I jumped ship to Premiumize. have RD since reverted their stance?
- rho4 10mo agoI like the AI-disclaimer :). This might become a thing for blog and news articles: (c) all words written by <editor> on <date> without AI. And then there will be a robots.txt directive that allows collection of this self-declared human material for AI training. And a google search option: "ai:no" :)
- sieve 10mo agoThe issues with subscriptions to streaming services are manifold (if you ignore the gargantuan waste of time that mindless TV-watching is): - the UI is deliberately crap - the library is deliberately incomplete - accessing content is deliberately complicated I had an experience recently where my phone provider bundles 20+ OTT services in a single plan within a single app that runs on your TV/phone/browser. The kicker: you can add stuff to a watch list, but the watch list is never exposed anywhere. While they want you to pay for stuff, they do not want you to be choosy about it. YT has, to my mind, the best user interface of all the services I have tried.
- bambax 10mo agoJellyfin is quite good.
- glimshe 10mo agoI only have a single service at any given time and keep rotating them over the year. Even bad services have one or two interesting series you can watch and then dump the service after a month. It's a lot cheaper than cable still...
- nathsav 10mo ago"just get the thing that will get you excited to get your hands on the keyboard" love that
- tosh 10mo agoor an iPad instead of a yearly subscription
- alex-moon 10mo agoIt's funny, I have never thought of it this way, but, reflecting, I realise the way I do think about it is very similar. Whenever I have to justify a subscription on JetBrains or hosting or what have you, I always just ask myself: will this bring me joy? Specifically will it bring me as much joy as e.g. a Netflix subscription? Very easy to justify then. To be fair, I used to smoke cigs, and drink heavily, which are both very expensive habits. I've since quit those (they weren't bringing me joy) but the benchmark is the same.
- internet_points 10mo agoOr Qobuz, which they say pays creators more than the alternatives
- aboardRat4 10mo ago[flagged]
- mlrtime 10mo agoI read your comment as Simpson's Comic Book Guy.
- DiskoHexyl 10mo agoFinally jumped ship to a Jellyfin based home server and couldn't be happier. The ui is surprisingly good and polished (especially for the users who don't have to manage the library), video quality is amazing (with bd source files, who would have thought, but even DVD is often better than what modern streaming provides), and I can cache the movies on my phone when needed. It works in ANY browser under ANY os, doesn't have ads, doesn't track me, and has all the content that I could ever desire (and wouldn't be able to find in any one service. In some cases, IN ANY service). I can have any combination of a subtitle language and a voiceover. Overall cost was only 500 for a used m1 air and a 16TB external storage.
- dotancohen 10mo agoJellyfin is how you're serving it. Where is the content coming from?
- EliteGadget 10mo agoThey said Bluray and DVD. Some of us have quite a few DVD/Blurays that we could rip. A lot of good stuff can be found in bargain bins and closing down sales (I got all the 9 series of the X-files for next to nothing). I am personally not bothering to rip them and download them instead, but I am not paying like 5 times for the same movie/tv series that I have already paid for. A lot of films have been re-released now like on different media formats, with several different "cuts" which normally have maybe a few extra minutes of dialogue.
- whitehexagon 10mo agoI have to investigate this further. I bought a bunch of bluray UHD documentaries that I cant watch because my 4K TV is a 'monitor'. Which I only found out was a problem after also having to buy some expensive 4K HDMI cable which was supposed to fix the problem. Since I couldn't work out how to backup the discs, I now also just buy 2nd hand DVDs for when I need my pacifier box. Anyway, for this old man it turns out that the old movies are the best; no shaky camera and clear audible dialog. Plus some of the modern discs are now also polluted with adverts, horrible. If we lived in a sensible world, buying the item once should give me rights to every format available. I might even consider digital purchases again if that was the case, especially since we have seen too many of these services fold and take our purchases with them.
- Hetzner_OL 10mo agoHi @nmil - Thanks for the awesome shout out! It's great to see that you've been enjoying the server. You mentioned reddit in your text. If you're active on reddit, and if you haven't done so already, maybe stop by the unofficial r/hetzner subreddit. There are a lot of long-time users there. --Katie
- alecco 10mo agoYou guys should invest in comms/PR and mostly in reliability. Fly your 9s. AWS/GCP/Azure outages are getting more frequent and it seems like they don't even care.
- jdprgm 10mo agoI wonder if it would be in the governments interest to heavily subsidize streaming services. Considering virtually everything seems to be getting hopelessly more expensive and no real progress on economic inequality seems likely outside a slim AI path - dollar for dollar free or cheap entertainment provides a lot of utility and can help keep the poor masses complacent. $30 a month makes a hell of a lot more of a dent in entertainment affordability than it does in healthcare. No clue on how accurate these estimates are but it seems like the combined budget of most shows and movies in a given year is somewhere around the 40-50 Billion range which in the context of all the other shit in the federal budget is kind of nothing.
- jcattle 10mo agoDo you think the entertainment value you get if you are required to pay 30$ would be better than what you can get right now for 30$?
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoLast thing I want is more billionaire handouts, with all due respect. As much as the rising costs suck, it is still better than the cable lock-in contracts and bundling deals. Netflix didn't lead to the cost of living crisis we arrived in today.
- wink 10mo agoTotally missing the amount of bananas one could buy every month. Oh wait, it was apples and oranges, not bananas.
- commiepatrol 10mo agoI get why the general non-tech crowd pays for Netflix but why people who hang out on here do it is beyond me. Most shows/movies on Netflix are garbage, there are plenty of free services that you can stream anything you want from. Why the hell would I pay for Netflix or any other paid service?
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoConvinience and budget. If you're making 300k a year, then he $300/yr for Netflix premium is barely a budget item. Also, family. I can understand not wanting to be the IT for all your non-tech family media needs.