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Max users grandfathered into $15.99 ad-free plan lose 4K, HDR next month::Number of devices you can stream from simultaneously is decreasing, too.
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This is confusing, my plan auto renewed for a year in September, what happens to people like me? It didn’t even give me the option to “upgrade”, it just did it.
Yeah, our plan is paid for a year as well. If they drop our service quality before the year is up, that sure seems like a breach of contract.
Likely we agreed to show them to remove our add features without any breach or reduction in price
Yup. They delayed it a few months so their dumbass “MaX” rebrand wouldn’t catch the flack.
This is a weird move to me. My initial inclination is to cancel whenever my service gets shittier for the same price but the yearly Ultimate plan is cheaper than what we were paying before so I wonder how they came up with this…
If it’s cheaper now they’re just suckering people in until they double the price with 5 days warning.
“Grandfathered in” but they’re changing terms.
Fuckers can’t even be honest about what “grandfathered in” means.
also, my $15.99 plan went up to $18.99 in the last year or so anyway
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Max subscribers who were grandfathered into the streaming company’s cheapest ad-free plan are about to see their service get worse.
To get 4K, HDR10, and Dolby Vision streams, subscribers have to move up to Max’s Ultimate plan, which starts at $19.99/month.
Discovery warned people that the legacy plan would eventually go away when it merged Discovery+ and HBO Max in May.
The move could entice subscribers to pay the extra $4 for 4K and HDR streams.
Max has been better about offering 4K content than HBO had been in the past, though, subscribers may want to peruse the streaming service’s 4K library before deciding to pay more.
Subscribers could also opt to move to Max’s cheaper (starts at $9.99 per month) ad tier.
The original article contains 339 words, the summary contains 123 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
All the mental gymnastics they do just to avoid outright increaseing prices…
Legally i dont think they could get away with charging more without explicit permission from the account holder. As a business move when they want to generally increase prices, this is basically the only correct move.
That’s how it should work, but many services have been increasing pricing with email warnings for the last decade.
My friend has PS+ and it has multiplied in price for 3-month intervals without him ever confirming the new price. He’s had it for a decade without touching it and genuinely wouldn’t know he’s being charged so much more than he agreed to if I didn’t tell him.
This is in Australia which normally has better protections for consumers, but it’s possible we don’t in this case as it’s happened to me with every subscription I’ve ever had they send a n email and then start charging an amount I never agreed to.
The only exception was AEW+ via Fite.tv which was in USD, that was the only time I ever lost my sub when the price changed, which given it went up +40% I was glad they handled it respectfully.
My Disney price went up and I didn’t get the email warning. No message or warning in app. After having their support tell me “too bad” I just cancelled it and Hulu.
Yeah this is the key. Price hikes require notification and time for the user to opt out or cancel. Removing features suffers from minimal legal regulation.
Ways to make profit: charge more or give the customer less 🫠
2023 really has been the year of pushing boundaries
Corporate greed is destroying any illusions of a “middle class”, that’s for sure. It’s just all us poor folks and a few rich assholes at this point.
Never existed to begin with
Cloud-serfdom
They also lowered the number of simultaneous access from 3 to 2. I cancelled my subscription immediately. They can make those profits off someone else.
I’ve been meaning to look into setting up my own home streaming solution like jellyfin or whatever but I’m very lazy. These companies are going to force me off my ass.
For an easier alternative, check out stremio + torrentio + real-debrid.
Once you set it all up its pretty much automated.
It’s real easy. Just like what plex used to be. Do it. Mullvad, jellyfin, arrr,
Is Plex not it anymore? I’m not really privy to details but my wife runs a Plex server that we can access from anywhere. It’s free and we each have our own profiles. Even my parents have a profile.
Plex has made it clear they’re trying to go “legit”, focusing on features like their FAST service for free movies and TV, instead of addressing issues and features for the normal video hoarder user they originally catered to.
If you have Plex already, and especially if you paid for a lifetime membership, it still works fine. But if you’re new, I wouldn’t recommend it. Emby is also ok, but I’d definitely recommend trying Jellyfin first.
Plex is just fine now but it’s closed source and has some features locked behind a paywall. I bought a lifetime license long before Jellyfin ever existed so I’m still using it without any issue for the past couple years.
Imo they’re both really good, and I like running both in parallel because some of my friends still prefer the Plex apps and UX (for example in both you can click on an actor to see other things they are in, but in jellyfin it’s limited to what you have downloaded. Plex’s optional discover feature means it knows about everything you don’t have too, so you can click on an actor and see stuff that’s not downloaded, watchlist something, then let overseerr send it to the *arr apps)
The rest of my setup would be identical if I was just running Plex or jellyfin and when they idle they don’t use any CPU, so I don’t see much of a reason not to run both and let people decide which one they like. They also both use quicksync, though I had to change some settings manually in jellyfin to get it to work. I just point them both to the same media folder and it just works.
My shit won’t stay logged in on my server. No reason for it. I’ve Googled my self to death over it.
Installed jellyfin, works first time, haven’t looked back since.
My phone carrier started giving out HBO with the plan I’ve had for a decade now, otherwise I would have dropped them
I have Max included with my home internet plan. I use it so little that if I was paying $16/month for it, I could probably drop it and just buy Blu-Rays for any movies or shows that I would watch on there and still be ahead at the end of the year. Plus then I’d have media to keep for when they inevitably delist it on the streaming catalog to save syndication fees.
Why don’t we call it grandmother policy? Pthhhh. The matriarchy gets away with a lot these days. Here we are, just innocently minding our own business…
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If these streaming platforms had an “I don’t care about all of this HDR bullshit, 1080p is fine for me” level at a few bucks cheaper, I would take it every time.
HDR isn’t bullshit but it’s a waste if you don’t have a TV that supports it.
But they would find a way to keep doing what they’re doing to keep profits up. They’d start putting ads in before the show started or something. Make other tiers and do just like what they’re doing here and move you into one that will cost more. You can’t pick a service & price without them fucking you over on price or service eventually. .
I’m sure they would, but it was a nice thought.
The craziest part to me is they don’t even offer an option to upgrade plans people got via tmo or their cable provider…whatever, you have to sign up for a new account if you want 4k, so it’s an additional 20$ a month to keep 4k if you pay your ISP for HBO already
