My card had expired when Netflix tried to charge me, and they shut off my access.
Told the family we'll wait til something new and interesting comes out to resub, maybe binge. That was months ago and haven't even thought of it since.
I don't know what the play is here. HBO and Paramount have better movies. Even Tubi has better movies, subjectively. HBO and Hulu and Peacock have better shows. None have the gall to ask for so much money.
Both Hulu and Peacock recently increased their prices by a dollar or something. Then Spotify did it. They’re just squeezing the last little bit of revenue they can before we’re all completely broke.
Unfortunately, a lot of new episodes of shows on Hulu delete after 8 days. We tried to save up a few episodes to watch at once and realized only the latest was still available. Maybe for this reason?
The only where left to go is up (in price). Its cable all over again. One day people will look up and wonder how we got to $100/month bills for streaming services with ads and no binge watching for new content. And then we'll speak fondly of the good ol days like how people talk about cable TV in the 80s.
They’ll agree package deals where in order to get any streaming service you have to pay £100 (but you get to choose what is in your package)
Then because of how shit their content is now and because of the cost of making everything available, they will introduce “guided programming” where their algorithm uses advanced AI modelling to have a static channel playing a set schedule.
The bundling thing is interesting because the only streaming services I have are ones that come bundled with a different service (like HBO Max that comes with my internet plan)
How long before someone cuts a deal with multiple streaming services and offers a streaming bundle for slightly less than paying for them separately? Would have been unthinkable a few years ago but it doesn't seem that outlandish now.
And the bundle provider offers a unified app that aggregates all the content (we're already kind of seeing the beginnings of this) under one login.
If that happens then the future's streaming services start to look a lot like today's cable networks. And the future's "bundle providers" starts to look a lot today's cable companies. In fact, if the "bundle providers" bundle streaming with Internet then they are today's cable companies.
People are accustomed to choosing their content now. If a TikTok video doesn’t capture them in half a second, they move on to the next one. This is not a population that would prefer to pay their service provider to choose their content for them.
I think that's only partially true. There's a reason TikTok (and Instagram reels) is extremely popular - it keeps feeding the user content of its choosing.
If T-mobile didn't include it with the phone plan for "free", we would have cancelled long ago. We just rarely watch anything on Netflix anymore. I think we pay $2/month now, thanks to the last price increase. If it goes up again, buh-bye!
Rapidly getting fed up with them anyway. Their shit DRM errors out about 50% of the time on launching netflix on my desktop. Bog standard win10+edge+nvidia+samsung panel.
I just went the other way and re subscribed. It "just works" compared to my plex solution. If it was just me, fine - but don't want my wife dealing with nonsense after dealing w the kids all day.
Yep, for me Plex is the solution that "just works".
I eventually got annoyed that my 4 subscriptions costing $80/month only having 2-4 of the shows I wanted to watch every month, with the other 1-3 not being available to legally purchase in my country or on yet another service with an even lower hit rate.
Since Plex worked so good for these other shows, even better than my subs (e.g. crunchyroll) I decided to do away with them completely. I kept some like crunchyroll for a bit as a sort of "donation" while I used Plex for the exact same shows available on crunchyroll for the better experience.
Once I found out how little of my "donation" went to the creators of those shows I cancelled that subscription and try to make up for it by buying manga/official merch instead.
I stopped using Netflix when they did the whole password crackdown.
There's probably still a bit of leeway they think they can extract off people I guess. My friends all have pretty much every streaming service out there, for people who can't be bothered to procure things off the internet these are very comfortable.
But also, I think we'll probably start seeing more people going on and off streaming services (do HBO for a couple months, next netflix, etc.)
Pirates were always going to pirate, I've seen it happen even during the good times when Netflix was $5/month. Do you think pirates were doing this to spite Netflix for being... extremely generously priced? Or do you have some other ad-hoc reason that just came into existence 10 seconds ago?
It is a pain in the ass for everyone except pirates. Tell me a show on Netflix and I will find you a torrent uploaded in highest quality on release date.
If I wanted to watch the same show on my desktop via Netflix, they wouldn't even offer that quality because it's not "secure" enough for them.
I pirated GoT as a broke uni student as it was only available on satellite packages and not even the previous seasons.
When NowTV offered same day, he'll even same time access as the Americans (to avoid alliteration them seeing it "early" and tweeting) for a few quid a month?
Jumped at it. Easier to just pay and use the app than faff about on TPB and waiting for downloads...
This is the demographic to watch, the ones who switched away from piracy for convenience that was worth a fee, and if priced out to feed shareholders will shrug and go back to the old ways.
Not really; I stopped pirating 17 years ago when I started getting a good income in tech. But with all these price increases for streaming services, I'm seriously considering re-evaluating that.
Sonarr and Radarr just work. They can take lists for top shows and movies, or from people whose taste you like.
Sonarr and Radarr look for the show, look for options like language and resolution, then grab and optionally notify me of success.
I try to pass off my rampant piracy as ok by subscribing to a few services, but the reality is that streaming doesn’t come close to the usability and quality I get from pirating. If streaming was free, I wouldn’t go back at this time.
You seem to get downvoted but this is true, I've only ever had a trial sub once, after which it's been pure pirating. I have a friend who is very wealthy by most standards, he's still too cheap to get a subscription and instead just pirates...
As an alternative to your anecdote I pirated media heavily from my teens into my mid 20s. Then I graduated college, got a job, and streaming came out.
I basically stopped piracy entirely because it was pointless at that point. It was reasonably priced and easy. The only time I pirated things was when I wanted something niche that wasn’t available on platforms. Like an art house film with weird distribution rights or an mtv cartoon from the early 2000s with the original soundtrack that still can’t be released that way because the song clearances aren’t happening
But now it’s like $60+ a month for Netflix/hulu/disney+/peacock. A lot of the time they don’t have what I want, that’s on paramount plus, appletv, max, crunchy roll, etc and I’m not spending another $20+ a month to add yet another. They almost all have intrusive advertisements that get longer and longer. The ads are somehow worse than cable because they can’t seem to sell the ad space. I only seem to get the same 4-5 ads over and over which is torture. The apps are all ugly with awful ui/ux and the library organization is completely arbitrary. There is rarely an ability to filter or sort the library and they are always loaded with filler content to pad the numbers.
So a decade or so later I’m strongly considering a media server. It was plex last time but I think jellyfin now. Better ui/ux than streaming apps, better video quality, better library sorting, no ads, and all I need is relatively cheap hardware and a Usenet subscription. This wasn’t worth the bother when the alternative was $20/mo for Netflix/hulu.
Consider music piracy too. I can’t ever see myself pirating music again even though I grew up in the Napster era where downloading mp3s was entirely normalized and the thing to do. But the idea of downloading albums, ensuring I get the correct quality, they have correct album art/id3 tags, etc for the amount of music I listen to is a goddamn chore. I would much rather just pay Apple Music. They don’t have these issues. They don’t have fragmented libraries. They don’t force ads even though I already pay them. They don’t hide half the library behind “curated content”. Its not 100% perfect by any means. Sometimes I get censored songs, sometimes I can’t find remixes, alt takes, or live versions I want, etc. but 99% of the time it does what I want and it’s just easier than managing my own library. Unless they fuck this up I will never pirate music again. Tv/movie companies don’t seem to get this.
Today video content is the opposite of easy to stream. Even though I have an Amazon prime subscription, I pirate the show (telegram) and watch it on VLC full 1080p, because prime doesn't let me screenshare with my friends.
Same way, I had Hotstar premium(in india) for live Premier League football. In the middle they started disallowing watching two PL games at the same time as only one premium video could be watched at the same time. And they also increased the price. Well, I am not subscribed anymore;)
Sometimes streaming is ...just too easy. Maybe people want the challenge and sailing their own pirate ship? My 12.5 month old child can squeeze the remote a few times and a series on netflix will start, rather quickly. It might be an older show, but he doesn't know that.
For me, pirating is also incredibly easy though, I don't even need to care which streaming platform it's on, just find the right torrent on a few clicks and voila. But I kinda live in the stone age where I don't use much my smart TV.. so who knows maybe I'm missing out.
People have been saying that for a year but I think the new Gen of internet users are simply broken, too dumb and scared. Your average tictok users cant figure how to save a mirror link.
You need to hang out with some younger people, actually talk to them.
Your comment is chalk full of ageism and "generational" bias.
They are facing a lot of adversity, that's true, but humans can adapt to a lot.
If you pay attention you'll find that every "generation" looks down on the next.
I refuse that, it's narcissistic and lacking in empathy, and in my experience largely from a lack of direct interaction with the young.
Compared to cable? Worth every cent. They can go up to $50 for their basic plan and still come out winning in my opinion. The only real obstacle is prime and others keeping a lower price. I predict other platforms will slowly raise their prices too and then Netflix will keep jacking it up.
No ads! Binge any time, as much as you want, any content they have! People still pay hundreds of dollars to xfinity, dish and directtv. I wouldn't be too shocked if netflix merged or got bought out by someone else.
Told the family we'll wait til something new and interesting comes out to resub, maybe binge. That was months ago and haven't even thought of it since.
I don't know what the play is here. HBO and Paramount have better movies. Even Tubi has better movies, subjectively. HBO and Hulu and Peacock have better shows. None have the gall to ask for so much money.