One thing that bothers me personally is that nowadays everything is a membership, but what bothers me most about the subscription model is the fact that the price goes up and up indefinitely and many people really don't mind paying $2 or more a month.
I mean, let's take for example the case of Netflix (I know the image is old, but I couldn't find anything better), where it went from costing $7.99 in 2014 a month to $15.99 in 2019, literally double, and it will surely keep going up and up, if this trend continues and it surely will soon people will be paying $30 a month without any problem.
I understand that a market like Netflix (to follow the initial example) is an expensive market to maintain, both for equipment, staff and licenses and it is obvious that the economy is not the same in 2014 as it was in 2019, but how are people ok knowing that the price doubled in 5 years? If that continues in 2024 the price would be $30, and if it was people would still be fine paying it.
I don't use Netflix but I understand why people use it, both because of the recommendation algorithm and the simplicity, but damn, if in a year they say they are going to raise the price $5 a month people would be happy to pay it and I don't understand it, much less those who pay several memberships of the same type (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, etc).
I don't think people feel good about it. It does seem like people put up with it, though, which is pretty confusing.
I'm honestly surprised with people paying the extra fee for sharing a Netflix account more than anything.
People are doing that? I know more people that dropped netflix than started paying the fee
What alternative exists for people who aren't tech literate enough to torrent their entertainment?
Wtahcing 10 minute chunks of pixelated messes of incomplete shows on Dailymotion.
I felt the same way before I got into torrenting, but upon taking the time to sit down and actually read a tutorial, I found it was all much easier than I initially thought. All I had to do was install qBittorrent, go to the piratebay website (or RARBG, rest in peace), and click the link to the torrent. qBittorrent will then do the rest for you.
I don't know how much effort you've given to figuring this out already, but if it isn't much I'd give it another try if I were you. If you get stuck somewhere just make a post about it here. I'm sure there are many comrades who would gladly walk you through it.
Oh don't worry lol I'm a pirate. Haven't torrented stuff in a while because I literally have not had the time to watch anything. I was asking the question mostly because I think like 95% of the general population would blow up their computers with viruses if they tried to torrent everything.
Computer viruses aren't that big anymore. The bigger things are ransomware and data breaches, but those tend to be targeted at corporations more than people. Not saying computer viruses don't exist, but they're not a big thing as they were 20 years ago.
theaters at the park, redbox, the library dvd/bluray rentals.
I guess I understand although that doesn't mean I don't think it's dumb either, I mean, if I'm not wrong (please correct me if I am) it's necessary to have one of the most expensive subscriptions to be able to share, it seems silly to me, that means I strictly need to know someone pays those expensive subscriptions to save a little bit.
I just leave the first time I hear about a price jack-up, frankly, and go right back to sailing the seas whatever I was looking for before that streaming service approached a price point I was willing to pay. These ratfuckers don't get to pull with a parabola ploy; if they got their price point to a place where I'd buy in only to hook me and draw the price up for no good increase in quality of content, I'm ghost.
Barbados and Nassau are real nice this time of year; and I def don't have an issue with buying up more SSDs to store that hypothetical plunder now that storage space per dollar's on the rise.
I canceled Netflix when their model shifted to “focus on original tv shows that we cancel after two seasons. I canceled HBO when they became Max. I guess I get Apple TV for free but I hate their programming so idk. Right now I get Disney and Hulu through my phone plan and pay for a Prime membership because Amazon and COVID basically killed B&M shopping where I live.
I only see my subscriptions decreasing in the future and I plan to focus more on reading and physical media.
My fundamental problem with Netflix isn't that it's $20/mo for streaming TV/movies. Its that Netflix has gone from the single bulk distributor of streaming content to one of at least half a dozen "good(ish)" services that also all want to charge $20/mo. When they had the full Disney/Marvel list plus a bunch of self-published anime plus indie dramas plus a huge back catalog, I was fine with it. But now I'm just going to pirate, because over half of what I use Netflix for is gone.
What's really got me in a lather is streaming sports, which has functionally become all subscription services that are even more expensive than Netflix. Fuck you, YouTube. I'm not paying $60/mo for sports. It's practically cheaper to get tickets to the actual games.
And with sports, at least, its much harder to find live streams that aren't scams or walls of ads or abysmally low grade streams. That's the one thing I can't pirate, so I've fallen off watching entirely.
Which really sucks, when your team is in the playoffs.
Edit: Seriously, fuck this shit.
Show
If you’re looking for nfl specifically, nfl+ premium isn’t too bad. Local, primetime, playoffs and redzone for $15/month. Sunday ticket is a price gouge, but not really any other way to legally watch your team if you live out of market and they aren’t on primetime
Came here to post this, Netflix sucks now and if they have a show worth watching they'll probably cancel it within two seasons, plus the TERF apologism too.
Cannot imagine using TV subscriptions in 2023. It's the easiest thing in the world to pirate and none of what you would be paying is actually going to the people who made it
Live shows are still annoyingly difficult to get.
Everything else is reasonably simple to download. But there is the occasional niche movie or old-ass anime that I have to scrounge for. The 27 episode "Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight" is a hard find, simply because everyone hosts the 13 episode OVAs instead.
the price increases and crackdown on sharing got me back into piracy.
and it's fan-tastic.
I used to pay for 4 services. now I'm down to 2. the less convenient and cheap they make it, the more I cut.
eventually I'll probably get rid of everything and get one of the cheapo bundles, like PBS Masterpiece Theater, and be a high culture benefactor who pirates all slop.
It's capitalist rent-seeking as usual. Fiduciary responsibility to keep the stock price high requires growth in revenue. For these subscriptions services, that comes in the form of increasing the number of subscribers. In the business press, subscriber numbers are reported above all. When that growth begins to fail due to market saturation and increased competition, the only thing left is to increase prices.
Sunk cost analogue where if you pay 10 bucks, you don't notice them so you renegotiating with yourself 5 bucks increase as a new purchase, not the whole price.
I'm more puzzled by people watching shows on repeat who don't torrent them and stick a usb into telly
Setting up plex is somewhat involved, you need at least nas, big hdd and some juggling around.
There are plex subscriptions (either a plex share or seed box), to avoid that hassle. Bit of a middle ground I suppose.
That's a good point, I guess people don't mind an occasional $1 or $2 increase but if they were told all of a sudden that the price was going to go up a lot they would leave and especially for many people who are already used to a certain service it's very hard to leave.
I just run Plex on my desktop, whenever I want to watch something pirated, I copy it over from an external HDD, start the server and watch on my TV.
You being a teenager when Amazon existed is an infinitely bigger
moment for me
Remembering how gilded age monopolies had their prices absurdly low to corner the market only to jack them up as much as possible once they had no competition afterwards
Anyway I just hope that cable plans don’t get completely phased out anytime soon
There was an interesting development on this front with Disney, who’s also jacking up prices. They had a package dispute with Spectrum, one of the largest cable providers in America. Basically, Disney wants to protect their walled garden of Disney+ so they were asking a ridiculous cut from Spectrum, who didn’t want to pay up that match.
The compromise they came to was that Spectrum customers would only get the basic Holy Rodent Empire channels (Disney Channel, ESPN, maybe a couple others), but Spectrum customers then get access to a discounted rate on a Disney+ subscription. The specifics aren’t out yet, but it looks like it will apply to the ad tier of Disney+.
Which says to me, the trajectory is for these services to become a sort of adjunct to cable, a replacement for on demand. Wouldn’t surprise me if the log-ins and interfaces start getting bundled into the cable boxes or router/modem boxes. Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if the net cost ends up being greater for consumers.
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oh shit, goin to the liquor store, you want anything?
Soon, if this isn't the case already, the cost of a subscription service plus an internet connection will be as high as a cable package was twenty years ago. At that point they will calculate that they can't increase the price any further - and they will increase the commercials instead.
I'm so goddamn sick of everything in this world being a fucking subscription. I want to buy software once and be done with it. Anything these neolib sickos can apply a monthly fee to, they will.
I've started building a 100+Tb media server project and been pirating things in 4k. Also, just discovered repack games. Haven't been enjoying starfield tbh, so I'm pretty happy I didn't buy it.
Yeah same, the pendulum is really swinging back right now... youtube got so goddamned annoying about adverts (boiled the frog too fast trying to push the ridiculously priced subscription) that I just stopped watching for like two months, then finally set up OSMC/Kodi on a raspberry pi and followed a guide to make an API key to watch completely ad-free. I finally started paying for a VPN after avoiding it for a decade because it feels like it is time to spool up the ol torrent program for the forseeable future
Def. I haven't seen YouTube ads in years tho. uBlock Origin extension has never failed me. Cleantube on my phone, simple as.
I haven't seen YouTube ads in years tho. uBlock Origin extension has never failed me.
They just found a way around uBlock Origin in the past couple weeks or so. They finally got me with their bullshit today.
I had two days where an ad tried to play, but it was audio only. Not a thing now.
I only ever watch things on live.hexbear.net, lovingly referred to as hextube.
It is a chat room where people can queue and watch videos together. We watch pirated movies every weekend, the announcements are in /c/movies
