Not a single word about the proliferation of official services recently that makes it harder to access content because unless you're signed on with all of them (which gets expensive fast) you're missing out on _something_ while still paying dearly for the privilege.
DVDs don't require a monthly payment to remain accessible, and there's no executive who can decide on a whim to deny access even when paying. Nobody cares that the season 1 DVDs come from studio A, while season 2-4 DVDs are from studio B. They can be shared or swapped with friends. Some DVDs are even available to loan at the public library for a modest annual membership fee (and we're members anyway because they also have gasp books!)
Yep, this is the primary reason I've considered it again.
So I have Prime (which is kinda/sorta effectively free to me because I pay for it for the delivery service), Netflix, Disney (I like Star Wars and Marvel), we sometimes subscribe to Apple. Then over here in Aus there's also Stan and Binge, who have some of the tv content we want.
This is already a far cry from what Netflix used to be - the place to go to for most stuff. It's also a far cry from the music situation, where I can pick my streaming service (I use Deezer) and more or less have the same catalogue available whichever one I pick. (I know, none of them pay artists very well, I also buy CDs and t-shirts.)
And now on top of this, the various studios are trying to get me to subscribe to their offerings, either as standalones or as add-ons to Prime - AMC, Paramount etc, so I can get their one flagship show on there. How about no?
This is getting more expensive than the old cable and satellite packages that streaming was supposed to replace, and they're putting prices up at the moment.
And that's before we get into stuff that's not available on any service legally here. That show you like? Yeah we're only going to give you access to the first few seasons, even though there have been five more seasons made.
Why won't you let me pay?
So yeah, piracy is quite appealing, especially when I can go to yandex.com, type "Stream <movie>" or "Stream <show>" and I'll be taken to a site where I can watch it immediately. Maybe it's not always the best quality stream, but the pirate bay still seems to be up too.
>This is getting more expensive than the old cable and satellite packages that streaming was supposed to replace, and they're putting prices up at the moment.
Definitely not in the US. People were paying minimum $100 per month for a fraction of the content, not inflation adjusted, not on demand, not on nearly any device anywhere, 15 years ago.
Not to mention you can simply cancel and resubscribe so you only pay for one or two services per month, an option that was never available before.
The only one missing is Sony, but I don’t think they offer streaming. $106/month gets an individual on demand access to almost everything except sports, without advertising breaks. Family sharing would make it much cheaper. Either way, I would take this situation over having to pay Comcast/DirecTV/Dish Network/Verizon to be a middleman any day.
In France, the baseline was about 15-20€/month, if my memory serves. I'm sure that I was missing something at that price, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what. Probably some porn and sport channels?
You can get to that by subscribing to a few services fairly easily now (if we're talking AUD, I have no idea about USD or the US market), especially if you go for the studio-specific services/add-ons too.
I don't give a crap about 'any device', and 99% of the content is not interesting, we tend to watch a handful of things on each one. We're back to paying a premium for a few things we want and a load of shit we don't want.
We occasionally do that, where available. Movies can work that way too.
Honestly I'm not all that price sensitive, I just don't want to subscribe to 15 different things when I usually only want to access a couple of shows on each. And the interface fragmentation bothers me as well.
I should probably get something with an interface like Roku used to offer, with a unified search across services. It's a shame there isn't one subscription service I can access here that will do that automatically behoind the scenes. But rights are complex.
I thought that is Apple TV app and Google Play app (if it’s still called that?). I have not used Google Play, but Apple TV app can find pretty much every non Netflix thing I have asked it to find. And since Netflix does not make their media searchable in Apple TV, I just skip watching it.
The great thing about the Apple TV app is if you have to sign up for a monthly fee to watch something, I can subscribe and immediately cancel and still continue watching without having to remember to cancel the subscription.
The launcher on our google tv does that to some extent, but it doesn't always seem to know the right answer and quite often we run into "Not available in your country" issues.
I haven't tried using the Apple TV app that way, perhaps I should give it a go.
> almost everything except sports, without advertising breaks.
And local news which is important to a sizeable demographic. And advertising is now coming to a number of platforms - not yet within shows but give it time!
DVDs don't require a monthly payment to remain accessible, and there's no executive who can decide on a whim to deny access even when paying. Nobody cares that the season 1 DVDs come from studio A, while season 2-4 DVDs are from studio B. They can be shared or swapped with friends. Some DVDs are even available to loan at the public library for a modest annual membership fee (and we're members anyway because they also have gasp books!)