But the sea is rising forcing people to become pirates.
I’ve been on the “nothing a month” plan for years.
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My parents ask me pretty often if I’ve “seen this commercial” and every time I remind them that I haven’t watched TV with commercials since moving out after high school. Tried to tell them about the site I use for streaming but they were put off by the buffering that happens sometimes
One can hope. The best things come when the pirates start showing up. Companies are forced to actually compete in a fair market
It’s not even totally fair, the companies have lots of data on habits, economy of scale, peering, while the pirates have a questionable reputation, risk of law enforcement action, technical hurdles slowing adoption, and delayed access to media. Pirates’ only real advantages are lack of pressure towards unsustainable growth, and lower costs.
The companies fighting against each other are losing an unfair fight tilted in their favor. It’s kind of embarrassing for them.
lmao “innovation”. Fuck big tech.
That article is full of it. I was paying $120-150/month for cable on top of Internet. YoutubeTV is still only $75. I don’t even bother with YoutubeTV anymore. That was way too much money per month and despite 100+ channels, there was almost nothing worth while to watch. I’m not paying $75/month for Saturday Night Live a few times per year and MSNBC on in the background while I work.
I have Netflix and Disney+. When the kids are gone I will also get rid of those. Netflix is a joke now. It takes me so much time scrolling to find a show that I even want to watch, that I usually fall asleep before that can happen. Disney+ filled their service with horrid crap from Star Wars, Marvel, and other formerly beloved intellectual property that they have sullied and ruined.
Bottom line. The Streaming services are just as bad or worse than cable was and is. The quality of the shows is mostly so low that there is nothing worth paying $75, $20, $15, or even $5 per month for. I will happily pay zero because that is what streaming and cable shows are worth, for the most part, right now.
If anyone would please just make some quality shows I would happily pay a reasonable price for it. There has been maybe one show this entire year that thought was good and that was Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Guess what? It isn’t worth paying Paramount+ for a whole year just for one show. Sorry, but they all need to get their act together. Peak TV is long gone. It is Peak Crap TV now.
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In Canada, cable packages are still pretty freaking expensive.
But as streaming prices increase, we’re closing our accounts on an the platforms. I just shut down my Netflix account due to their new policy and pricing. Next is probably going to be Disney who’s going to add commercials soon.
If there are going to be ads, it better be free. I’m not paying to see commercials. I’ll use Tubi and Pluto instead and I’ll use torrents and set up my own shared media server at home.
It’s not like Disney and Netflix and Amazon aren’t making any money. They’re making record profits while the actors and writers are on strike. Fuck em and their greed.
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for a second i thought it said Samsung
Sorry I am not rooting for streaming increases but this is a bunch of baloney. One, few people have all the services listed in the article concurrently. And secondly, they are comparing to the average cable bill which wouldn’t include content like HBO and would likely be well over $100 probably much more for an equivalent amount of content. Hulu alone covers like three quarters of cable content in most markets.
Seems to me like they could still raise another 20% before they are truly on an equitable par.
Piss poor journalism
Less Journalism, more paid cable shill.
would likely be well over $100
In the US, sure. But other countries had much cheaper “cable” and now have the same prices for streaming services
I’m British, the last time I had Sky which is basically our version of cable, it cost me just over £20/month. And now its £30/month
True, I just assumed it was about the US because it was priced in dollars. Is your cable and internet tied together like it is/was in most of the US?
You’re hired
Well, to be fair they are counting streaming ad free versions against cable tvs ad ridden service. Not exactly apples to apples is it. I helped my brother move this weekend and they put Apollo 13 on for my mom to watch (on DIRECTTV Paramount channel). It was still on when we finished. Fucking unwatchable.
But yeah, streaming is starting to not look like such a bargain. And it’s going to get worse no doubt. But I quit cable, and I can quit streaming as well. Not sure I even need to pirate, plenty of other low cost entertainment options.
Have you considered going without media altogether?
Eventually this will settle out to three streaming platforms, call them ‘ABC, CBS, NBC’', with shitty ad-filled shitcoms, fake reality dramadies, and tru-crime idiocy, all generated by ai. Your screen will provide the necessary data back to the ai models to keep your gaze fixated and your credit maxed out. You will be consumed. You are the commodity.
In other news Taylor Swift will sell her 2023 tour as data for the TS2023 Virtual Experience, which will play globally for all eternity everywhere.
Personally I prefer to just not pay for anything exept internet and torrent and stream everything for free, much cheaper, no restrictions
Money is made up and value is whatever we make it.
If anyone is old enough to remember when cable first showed up, it followed a similar path. They had to complete against “free” over the air TV, so cable had to be a good deal at first to get subscribers.
Once they got the frog in the pot, they slowly turned up the heat.
The next stop for streaming will be the prominent platforms jockeying to be the next “cable” monopolies.
The sales pitch will be “buy a package of channels at a discount” over individual.
It has already begun. Amazon, Apple, Hulu all resell other channels. HBO re-branded their entire channel just to start carrying non-HBO content.
Bigger platforms will leverage subscriber base to lock in content deals so the smaller ones won’t be able to compete.
Consumers will get some deals until smaller players are choked out, but as soon as they can companies will start the dry anal rape that only a near monopoly can deliver.
Well, Netflix was becoming that but then all the companies wanted a bigger cut of those sweet, sweet profits.
Now we’ve got 45 different streaming services. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out especially with the anti-sharing movement.
Not to worry, us consumers will get the worst deal they can come up with that maximizes the shareholders profit above the creators and consumers. It’s the American way!
What are the odds it’s the cable or isp companies that offer this bundle? Comcast STB already try to be a single search across all services and point you to the app of required. ISP is the big and requires subscriber base for streaming.
Start using torrents. The good old ways are better. Don’t feed the corporate motherfuckers undeserved money. I even cheated disney+ for a subscription. I was getting disney+ subscription for one year (with ads) in my credit card if I spent a certain amount. I spent that amount and got the subscription for free and cancelled the order and got my money back. Now I have one year of disney+ which I will watch in the browser with ublock origin. No ads with all content unlocked. Do I care or regret?. No fucking way.
But to use torrents you have to use a VPN on top (preferably a paid one that is as anonymous as possible), or you get bent over and railed by either your ISP or the copyright holders.
Instead of paying for a VPN I can just pay for the legit service (in better quality and on demand).
The only other option I can somewhat safely use are direct downloads and streams (no seeding), but even without a VPN they are shoddy performance wise.
A VPN is $5. That’s half a streaming service, and most use more than one.
Uh no. Any streaming service for $10+ will have limitations on what is on there. Piracy does not have those limitations.
It has the limitation of terrible quality 99% of the time.
Just shows you’ve been going to the wrong places.
Streaming through apps has terrible quality most of the time based on their server loads etc. Even with fastest internet steaming from Disney+ quality is shit most of the time. When I am torrenting, i can get a high quality print and can watch it without any issue or buffering. It takes a few minutes to download a few gb’s. I am from a third world country and the internet here is so fast to download movies in 5 minutes max.
It has other limitations, like worse quality for example. But actually the biggest limitation is shoddy subtitles. Yes, you can add subtitles, but they are often off (timing wise).
I do like to watch movies and series in OV, but then switch on English subtitles when I’m watching alone, or German ones when I watch with family back home. Not an (easy) option with pirated movies :-/
If you complain about quality of pirated content its clear you haven’t actually pirated much. 1080 or 4K is easy to get. I am not even torrenting.
Subtitles, ok I give you that. You can always find a fitting one or just have to adjust timing but that is sometimes a bit of pain to find if it doesn’t come with the file.
better don’t start using torrents in germany though.
VPN regelt.
