Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::<em>What should I watch? </em>is now a much easier question than <em>How do I watch it?</em>
The irony is this article requires a subscription to view it…
I don’t know much, but Stremio does a fairly good job listing streaming services for anything searched
torrentio is also really helpful
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If I have to google which streaming service a PBS show is on for my kid to watch. Something’s messed
PBS shows are free on its own app/website though…
You’d think that, wouldn’t you?
In actuality, they pull shit like only having the most recent season of things and whatnot. For example, there’s no good reason why the PBS Kids Roku channel wouldn’t have all 4666 episodes of Sesame Street, but it doesn’t.
It could be related to the HBO deal which if I recall bankrolls Sesame Street.
I started to use Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood as an example, but switched to Sesame Street for effect since the former “only” has 922 episodes. The point is, PBS does the same thing with all their shows. It doesn’t matter who makes it; everything from Arthur to Word Girl only has a dozen or so episodes available at any given time.
(Ditto for non-kids PBS stuff like Nova or This Old House, for that matter, I think. Even on Youtube they only make the latest few seasons available and remove access to everything older in hopes you’ll buy DVDs or something.)
It might be a rights issue. Not sure if PBS owns the rights, the Fred Rogers Company, or someone else. A lot of it doesn’t seem available at all. I came across a near complete archive from a twitch stream though if you’re interested: https://archive.org/details/@ipoy143
Yeah, I’ve run across that (it’s surprising how much stuff you can get from archive.org). Unfortunately, I don’t currently have enough disk space for it!
It can’t only be a rights issue though, because, again, PBS restricts access to the back catalog of literally everything regardless of who owns it.
It wouldn’t be uncommon for the rights to be divided up and sold per season given the context of children’s content. They are a nonprofit.
The old Sesame Street episodes are on Netflix and are tagged as not suitable for children
may i introduce you to the ARD Mediathek where ‘Die Sendung mit der Maus’ (a kind of sciency kids show) can have, by law, only the latest episode available for streaming. some other things may be available for longer, but it’s still pretty stupid…
Think of all the extra searches!
This was a Very inevitable situation due to the fragmentation of Programs that are scattered across multiple Networks.
If only there was a solution to this problem of greed….
Don’t support companies who would try to geoblock you if they could.
Also, using a VPN to circumvent rules is against the TOS on most services. Don’t support that with your wallet.
I’m pretty sure you’ve got it wrong. Their TOSes can get fucked, with a VPN you do not need to even USE those services to watch everything on them.
I’ve heard a lot about setting up a Plex or a Jellyfin server locally, but from what I can tell they are just media storage platforms and in order to watch anything you would have to add your own content. In this age of digital content, it is very unlikely for a simpleton like me to go out and purchase hundreds of movie disks separately and manually load them into my CD drive to even have a fraction of the catalogue these streaming services combined provide. Also torrenting really isn’t a viable option for me as I personally use a free tier Proton VPN which doesn’t allow P2P, and even if I did get a proper one, I would still be limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch, which may or may not exist depending on the popularity of the said movie. I currently use a niche streaming site to watch my movies without any issues. Are self hosted plex/jellyfin servers really for a person like me?
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Jellyfin is the way to go. Yes, you’ll have to download your own content. It’s more work, but I definitely think it’s worth it. Use qBitTorrent as your client, and sites like yts.mx are great for movies.
A lot of movies can be picked up pretty cheaply second hand. In some cases with people looking to unload massive collections all at once.
Ripping them is something you only really need to figure out once, and apps like handbrake make it pretty simple.
I don’t think someone needs to replicate something like the catalog of Netflix, they would just need the movies they actually want to watch, or ones they want to watch more than once or twice.
Another things I often think about is the future. Some of these streaming services have already pulled episodes of shows because of some content that got people upset, which can really hurt the continuity of the show. Plus, as contracts expire and change, the movies/shows may no longer be streamed or the services could shut down. I don’t know about you, but when I’m old I still want a way to watch my favorite movies. The way things are going it’s hard to know if that will be an option unless taking matters into your own hands.
For someone who only watches a couple movies per month, it would be cheaper/easier to do digital rentals from Apple or whomever, for $4/movie. Those selections are usually a lot better than the streaming selections. It’s only when you start taking about watching multiple movies per week, or getting into TV shows, that streaming services, or investing your own time and money into a self-hosted option, make sense.
limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch,
Unless you’re into SUPER niche stuff, that’s not an issue. If you ARE into super niche stuff, it wouldn’t be on streaming services anyway. Anything on streaming services is mainstream and easily downloadable.
Friendly reminder that PLEX is a great, free service, you just have to put in the effort to build up a media collection. High capacity HDDs are very cheap now, so storing a large media collection isn’t particularly expensive.
They also offer a lifetime “Plex pass” which adds some neat, but non-essential features, like auto-skipping intros and credits sequences for instance. It’s not necessary, but it’s a nice way to show support for what they do.
I remember having some issue with plex, finding out it was a known issue and had been logged on their issue tracker for YEARS with no progress. They’re one of those companies who prioritise shiny new features over actually maintaining the existing ones.
Don’t use Plex. Used it for a long time until open source jellyfin came by. I never looked back.
Jellyfin is an open source alternative without any subscription or fees
Does Jellyfin have the credit and intro skips? Also how does it handle music?
There’s an intro skip plugin that I don’t use. I’ve heard it isn’t quite up to par with Plex yet though.
https://github.com/ConfusedPolarBear/intro-skipper
Music is handled well for me, I use an app called Finamp on my phone to stream remotely or downloady music to microsd.
Yo ho fiddle de dee
Being a pirate is alright with me
YOU ARE A PIRATE
YARG!
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Scissor me timbers! 🏴☠️🦜🏴☠️
You got a typo there… let me help you out.
I think you mean;
Scissor me tinders
Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).
Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.
I got 3 months free paramount and I canceled the subscription, and it expired in a week instead of 3 months. Its such bullshit.
Really? Whenever I cancel it usually tells me the renewal date pretty explicitly, and the cancel just stops renewing on that date. Maybe if it’s 3 free months, you need to keep the monthly process in active status since it’s a free renewal?
Prob but either way, it’s dirty practice by them.
I guess it depends in what country with which regulation you are in.
Streaming services need to be federated, so there is a central search for content, and services are paid seamlessly for what’s watched on their platforms. The customer barely needs to know who delivers the content.
Are you asking for usage based billing?
I use JustWatch, I like it well enough.
My Samsung TV kind of let’s you do that by searching though the TVs UI and it telling you if and where it’s available. I rarely use it.
Doesn’t Roku, Comcast STB, and other OTT devices do just that? You speak into the remote or search. It spits out all possible streaming options to choose from, preferencing the services you have accounts or subscriptions for?
Comcast does it for sure. It’s the only way I can get my parents to use streaming services. When they don’t know they are doing it. It’s expensive as hell, but it does work well.
The basic problem with media is that copyright creates a monopoly for 100 years or so depending on various factors. This means that unless you’re into Arthur Conan Doyle or whatever, the media landscape is fundamentally monopolistic.
Ne’er should one relinquish control of thine own vessel. Back to the seas shall we voyage mateys!
Also, 12ft.io
Personally, that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t bothered to watch a TV series for almost a decade now. Between this, the constant crackdown on piracy, the outrageous prices for original media, and the constant moral issues from popular culture icons and media CEOs, I’d rather sleep in my free time
Just get yourself a VPN. You can torrent safely that way
Yaaargh mateys, you do be asking the wrong questions.
I don’t even understand what they’re talking about. “Streaming?” Is that some sort of a water sport involving small rivers?
“what do I want to watch” is stupid hard, cmon. I spend most of my time watching the roku screen saver.
How? If it’s not on my plex it’s probably on a friends.
I’m tired of this expensive fragmented bullshit.
