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A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

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Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#31

Post by vladvasiliu »

hotpotamus wrote: post #11
alexfromapex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew this day would come and have been preparing. Every company I thought was trustworthy has proven me wrong. So now I’ve decided to provide my own services. I have a NAS and have digitized my movie and music collection and can stream it to any TV in my house. Netflix, Disney, etc can go pound sand. It has to be this way, as long as advertising remains legal, life will slowly approach a Black Mirror episode where…

I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay for the content they consume - it's something I've observed everywhere I go, and I don't think it's one of our more attractive qualities (I'm in there too). I also agree that advertising is an insidious force that corrupts nearly everything it touches. The funny part to me is that my parents do a fire safety puppet show for children and can keep them enrapture…

> I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay for the content they consume

That may cover many people, but GP's post seems different. They went out of their way to "digitize their [presumably bought] collection" just to be able to avoid ads.

This doesn't sound at all like "not paying for the content", they're actually paying above the content: I don't think the NAS comes from the pirate bay.

We've actually seen this in practice: when Netflix was the only game in town and carried everything ad-free, piracy cratered. Now that all the paid providers are beginning to show ads, and you have to have 50 different subscriptions to watch what you want, piracy looks better again.

I don't watch many movies / series / videos, so I'm happy with what I get with my Prime subscription, which I'd have either way.

But now that more and more of my Spotify tracks are "not available in my region" anymore, I'm seriously starting to investigate alternatives. Spoiler: it's not another streaming provider. Rather, looking to buy a bunch of hard drives and dusting off my old cd player, so I can rip whatever CDs I can get my hands on at second-hand stores around me.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#32

Post by brasic »

fein wrote: post #8
neea wrote: post #2

Paywall

Ironic that a site posting an article critical of the end of consumer convenience is sitting behind a paywall.

Why is it ironic?

One reason all these services are introducing ads is consumers’ learned unwillingness to bear the full costs of the services they enjoy.

I might argue that the true irony is grumbling about a news provider very reasonably limiting their product to those who have paid them.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#33

Post by vladvasiliu »

fein wrote: post #23
gniv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When casting to the TV you get ads, even though you don't in the browser! I just tried it, since I had the same idea.

Perhaps too inconvenient for some, but use an hdmi cable for a direct hookup instead of (I'm assuming) a chromecast. Maybe I'm just old fashioned at this point, but my "TV" is just used as a monitor to a dedicated media tower running windows.

I have an Amazon FireTV and one day, when I had my work Windows PC at home, it could stream via Bluetooth (like an external screen). There was lag when starting / changing videos, but otherwise it seemed to work well enough.

Don't most smart TVs have Bluetooth today? In my case, the FireTV is plugged into my (dumb) PC monitor.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#34

Post by geraldwhen »

kderbyma wrote: post #5
Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

If I am paying for something I am not watching ads. I will cancel the service and find something else to do with my time, but I will never willingly watch ads.

agree. Or of I must....it will pirated site ads....on banners around my pirated stream without video ads...

ffmpeg -i http://source.m3u8 -c copy out.mp4

Ads defeated.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#35

Post by fein »

brasic wrote: post #32
fein wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic that a site posting an article critical of the end of consumer convenience is sitting behind a paywall.

Why is it ironic? One reason all these services are introducing ads is consumers’ learned unwillingness to bear the full costs of the services they enjoy. I might argue that the true irony is grumbling about a news provider very reasonably limiting their product to those who have paid them.

It's ironic because it's an upfront inconvenience to read what is ostensibly an article critical of how consumers are being inconvenienced.

I'm not reading your site if you paywall it. There are too many other free resources that are just as good if not better.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#36

Post by hotpotamus »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #31
hotpotamus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay for the content they consume - it's something I've observed everywhere I go, and I don't think it's one of our more attractive qualities (I'm in there too). I also agree that advertising is an insidious force that corrupts nearly everything it touches. The funny part to me is that my parents do a fire safety puppet show for children and can keep them enrapture…

> I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay for the content they consume That may cover many people, but GP's post seems different. They went out of their way to "digitize their [presumably bought] collection" just to be able to avoid ads. This doesn't sound at all like "not paying for the content", they're actually paying above the content: I don't think the NAS comes from the pirate bay. We've actua…

I doubt the media company lawyers would see it that way. And while they're ghouls, they'd have a point too. What counts as paying? I've got a colleague who would never download a movie illegally; he simply has a constant stream of Netflix DVDs (they're still doing that in case you thought that business was totally dead) that he rips and then sends back. He's paying someone for content, right?

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#37

Post by idbehold »

ramesh31 wrote: post #9

I finally broke down and paid for YouTube Premium. There is literally no other option to watch YouTube on a TV nowadays. It is absolutely mindblowing the level of nonstop ads they shove down your throat in-between (and during) every single video now. Completely unwatchable otherwise. And it's impossible to buy a dumb TV in 2022, so you're stuck with the official Android/Roku YouTube apps that have no ad-blocking capa…

I recently did the same. I swear they dialed up the ads to 11 in the last year. I was going to start tracking the ads:content ratio. I recall once for a 5 minute video I got: two 15sec un-skippable ads before any content, then a 15sec un-skippable ad followed by a skippable ad (7sec) at 1:15, then another two 15sec un-skippable ads at 3:10. I decided two things: the cost of premium was less than how much I value my time (watching ads), and that I enjoy the content available on YouTube more than similarly priced media subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc.).

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#38

Post by pdimitar »

I have YouTube premium and download everything that I like. A home NAS is extremely handy like that. Mine is not even 10TB and I still have more than a year worth of watching. Also it's not illegal because I don't distribute anything.

I use a local website run by volunteers that ask permission of publishing houses before putting every scanned & OCR'd & spell-checked book in their online library. Again, not illegal, there's a clause for distribution when you work in something like a library capacity.

I use a Twitch client to watch stuff ad-free because I don't use it so often so as to get premium. Or I just download the stream after it ends. Tough luck, Amazon, no money from me. YouTube's service is better anyway.

---

The "Black Mirror"-ization of our economy has a very predictable ending but the execs are trapped in a bubble of yes-people and have no clue how the world out there works -- thus everything will continue going exactly as predicted by many. One part of the populace will remain in the bubble but there will be a lot of others -- like you and me -- that will do their own media collection and consumption, grow part of our own food, repair our own tech, craft items to use around the house etc.

Corporations know no mercy and they will not stop however. They will keep changing the narrative ad infinitum until everyone is dependent on them at birth. But they won't ever get to that point in the first place and will inevitably fail. Normal people can be swayed only so far. That's the part that they are missing -- which is quite puzzling to me, not like it's hard to figure it out.

But I made my peace with the coming events. It's like watching an avalanche: you have a pretty good idea what it does and how far it will go and the damage it will inflict but physics doesn't care that you watch and know what will happen -- the event will happen regardless.

The future is this: extreme segregation. Kind of like the big COVID-19 divide that happened even between people in the same family. That will keep happening in other areas of life. It's how people are.

C'est la vie.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#39

Post by Fezzik »

gonehome wrote: post #28
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

Media embedded advertising has already been a thing for years, but companies hate leaving money on the table so they cannot resist the temptation of showing more ads. I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media have struggled to keep up. You're competing with piracy, but you throw ads in my face. I can download any show or movie I wan…

> “ I can download any show or movie I want and have it playing in minutes without having to deal with multi platform bullshit.” Is this as true as it once was? It seems most of the old trackers are offline or dead now. I’d guess because of the success of streaming services finally meeting the market demand. It’s also possible I’m just old and out of the loop now.

TPB is still going strong. Older content is sometimes difficult to find but anything new or even slightly popular from the last 50 years is more-often-than-not obtainable.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#40

Post by AstralStorm »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

Media embedded advertising has already been a thing for years, but companies hate leaving money on the table so they cannot resist the temptation of showing more ads. I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media have struggled to keep up. You're competing with piracy, but you throw ads in my face. I can download any show or movie I wan…

Steam is successful because its advertising is rather low key, showing a popup with offers, and providing a search, directory plus suggestions. Their gain is from consumer analytics too. (They also take a cut for using their platform from the game developers or publishers.

It also provides some added value like achievements, basic social media in forms of forums and chat, some (somewhat broken at times) controller handling, some bug reporting, cloud save handling, voice communication handling, even some space to host game related content. On the whole, more value added than taken by paltry ads. The bigger value minus is the "Steam DRM" - requirement for an online connection to use the downloaded application. And providence help you if you post inflammatory comments under an account that owns game access licenses. You will lose that.

The other ones don't do it quite as effectively, esp. the suggestions part. Being a game library and download service is not what makes Steam in particular good, though it is an essential part.

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