I’m willing to pay for one, maybe two subscriptions, and ain’t nobody got time to dig for which service has what show to find out season 2 is on some other service entirely.
Hell, I even pay for a service that has all the magnet links resolved and ready to stream, no downloading involved. For 30 bucks (a year!) it’s been the most convenient way of enjoying movies & shows.
The best public option is Proton imo. With paid subscriptions you even get access to Secure Core servers where Proton runs their own data centers instead of hiring 3rd-parties like NordVPN, etc.
Case-point: Nord has been hacked before bc of third-party data centers. Proton has no breaches so far and does regular security audits, has plenty of servers outside the 14 Eyes Alliance, and actively fund privacy focused projects.
Mullvad is a close second bc of their anonymous payments.
It really depends on the quantity and sensitivity of the content I’d say.
But Proton has replaced everything I used Google for (Drive/Email). Proton will work for a good 90% of everyone most likely.
For the record, you can use justwatch.com and it will tell you exactly where you can watch it, and which seasons. But I’m still not paying for multiple subscriptions.
I don’t care if there are 10 platforms. Let them compete on features and customer service, but the content should be available on all. A bit like ISPs, give me the content and pay the creator a cut when n I watch.
But fuck this 10 services with fragmented content.
Bold of you to think that they even think of us at all.
I actually mean that seriously: we continue seeing, over and over, that no, quite often they do NOT expect people to NOT do that, they quite simply DGAF. They pirate us, we pirate them, it becomes just another “cost of doing business”, until they are strong enough to eventually crack down further. See ad blocking & Chrome recently, after multiple decades of internet ads pushing the limits.
It’s like a zombie nom noming your brains - after like 2 bites it’ll get bored and wander off, and it literally doesn’t even need to “eat”, it simply is so fucking DUMB that it doesn’t know what else to do with itself. It is truly horrifying b/c while your entrails may be strewn about on the floor, or in the throats of tens of zombies, they in turn… don’t even have the decency to be aware that you’ve died!?
Lower-level managers sell ideas to higher-level managers, and “logic” has little to do with those conversations, compared to the amount of emo-stroking that goes on “oh, you will become so rich, and powerful, and handsome, and brave, and precious” (from here:-P) - and so long as enough people play along, that happens!
Our world is just so fucking STUPID.
That said, what they do is on them, while what we do is on us. Find a way to live - hopefully by finding a way to contribute, if/where you can.
I’m really surprised by this, specially since I cancelled Netflix over a year ago myself…
It’s like renting movies that can be taken away at any time since you don’t own them. And ads can be introduced whenever. Not to mention poor streaming quality on top of all this.
What’s that about only getting 720p though? My TV shows the 4K HDR stuff great from places like Netflix or Prime, has done for years now, and my TV isn’t even new. Surely all modern stuff will show all that high definition stuff just fine.
I think my browser does too, though I only have a 2K screen as of recently on my PC, but I’m certain it’s not playing video in 720p for sure. It’s at least 1080p if not more.
But yeah, these services aren’t giving enough bang for their pound these days, it’s reaching insulting levels, it’s unsurprising people are forced into piracy.
The consumer (or if you prefer, the market) decides what someone is worth, and if it’s being sold for above market value… people won’t buy. Simple as that.
We’ve shown we’re happy to pay a reasonable amount of money for these services, and yet they insist on squeezing exorbitant amounts of money out of us for less and less value. Madness.
I’ve bought a lot of 4K movies/TV shows on Google Movies and they’re all 480 on my browser. Support tell me they understand my frustrations and say I gotta use Safari or Edge or something and they’re like 720P or something. I’m like, oh great, thanks.
As Gabe Newell said: “Piracy isn’t a pricing issue, its a service issue”
As my friend said: "every time a plastic video disc says " operation not permitted " a torrent is born…
As I say: “People will pay when it’s easy, more reliable and more convenient.” As a software product manager, I forbid my product from ever wasting developer cycles with copy protection… It’s expensive to deliver, annoying to real customers and doesn’t make us any more money…
I don’t disagree with anything but I feel like GabeN said that before streaming and subscriptions took over.
Photoshop is an incredibly easy to use and powerful tool for creators - I’d be happy to drop like $200 on, for example, the 2024 version. I’m not happy to spend $10 or $30+ a month for life to use it, especially when they lock you in to a year subscription and charge you a fee if you cancel early so you literally can’t just sub only the month when you need it, it’s the whole year, period. I’ll just pirate or use photopea or whatever.
Similar for streaming. Netflix gave us the option to pay for more screens to watch on. Now suddenly it matters whose house it’s in?? All while you’re constantly removing value from the platform and you cancel anything decent if the production value is too high? Fuck you man I’m not paying like $30 monthly for that.
Please do keep voting with your wallet - its one of the few remaining ways to express our discontent!) That being said, I feel like both of those examples are where the service provided by adobe and then Netflix are terrible.
Adobe is making you buy a whole year and Netflix is hassling you for “letting your pensioner mum watch your account”… To me, both of those are examples of bad service (coupled with cost).
For me, a counter example for me is amazon.com: I hate what they’re doing to the retail landscape but find it hard to resist, as I find them SOOO convenient, and their customer service (for now) is absolutely stunning!!! Now if their prices were too high, I’d personally probably pay for that convenience a bit. (Where there model breaks for me completely is warranty major purchases: I’ve had warranty denied by manufacturers for items purchased through non approved amazon resellers. So now, for me, anything over $100 and I’m looking for direct purchase from the manufacturer as a preference. )
Literally every single time I want to watch any specific movie it’s not on any streaming service without buying or renting, and I don’t mean new or recent movies. So yeah, I’m pirating again.
I bet we’ll reach a point again where normal services are just so shit that piracy is normal again. Then they’ll try and take down even more things. Hopefully then we’ll decide to move operations to I2P.
I can easily say that the amount of my friends and family that have become interested in my Emby setup has expontentially consistently increased every round that these streaming providers have increased their rates.
The experience of launching 7 different streaming apps to find something, content constantly vanishing or moving platforms, and just an overall poor user experience coupled with doubling/tripling of each platforms costs…
The companies have almost successfully re-introduced the very problem that streaming originally solved.
It’s like this dipshits don’t want our money. I’ve always been firm that any content removed from streaming services is a message from that content company that they don’t want the money of the customers subscribed to said service and thus are okay with those people pirating it instead.
If they cared about the money, they’d had left the content there.
But realistically even if pump and dump schemes like this make the customers hate them, it might still make more as a total sum - and if so as a cooperation they’d almost have to take the shitty route (or be surpassed by someone who will).
Lol, you think greed won’t exist under socialism? Greed is why communism fails every time. People are inherently greedy in a world where scarcity exists.
Wrong, there’s a distinct scarcity of logic in your arguments.
“Scarcity is so fundamental to economics that scarce goods are also known as economic goods. In economics, scarce goods are those for which demand would exceed supply at a price of zero.” www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity.asp
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