Having multiple streaming accounts just to watch a couple of shows I like is such an unnecessary hassle. It's much more easier just to pirate.
Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
41–50 of 960 posts
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#42Yeah, because you pay for the thing and you still can't watch it! Last year they brought Andor to Hulu and every time I played it on my brand new LG TV, the video would be completely green while I could hear the audio underneath. It only happened to Andor because apparently they had some super special DRM, which ostensibly would restrict people who weren't authorized from viewing it, but had the effect of also preven…
Fwiw the LG operating system kind of sucks. I got an Apple TV and it's been infinitely better. Paramount Plus was wholly unusable on the TV
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#43For me worse than the can't pay is the lack of options. In the VHS time I had more good movie options than in the current streaming services. I remember when I bing watched Kurozawa or Mario Monicelli's movies. Now it's very hard to find non American cinema. The tech is there, but the System fail us.
Yep. I swear I liked the old Netflix with DVDs better. I could rent pretty much any movie I wanted.
Netflix found that while it was a nice advertising tool to boast about the broadness of its catalogue, most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff so it wasn't particularly profitable.
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#44My main issue is that they're now slowly testing the waters to see if they can make you watch ads while still paying for the subscription, and at that point, might as well take advantage of Romania's lack of law enforcement and hit the torrent websites.
It's amazing how blurred the line is getting between streaming and cable TV.
It already came full circle some years ago when we started seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies pulling their content from other platforms to put on their own. Then you had to start thinking about what servces you need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like cable!
Absurd.
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#45I started buying Blu-ray discs and ripping them to my computer, where I run Plex. Why? I had a long-time subscription to HBO Max, but a few years ago, I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO. I ended up buying a season on Apple for the price of a monthly subscription to HBO. I cancelled my HBO subscription. I realized that second-hand Blu-ray discs of shows were selling for dirt cheap. I spent $40 to buy the rest of the seasons of Westworld on Blu-ray.
Clearly, new shows aren't getting Blu-ray releases, so this won't work for you if you care about new shows. My wife and I are so over the dystopian view from modern science fiction that we started focusing on shows from the late 1900s (80s/90s) to get more of a positive outlook from our entertainment. We are now going through Stargate SG-1.
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#46All streaming services should have a pay per minute system as an alternative to the fixed monthly subscription. That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it would be convenient, instead of piracy. And it would be a reason for them to really improve their recommendation systems.
> pay per minute system And/or pay-per-episode, pay-per-season or pay-per-show. So I don't have to start thinking ahead too much about the _length_ of something and can just enjoy the thing itself based on some pre-determined price.
Pay per episode could be an ok granularity. Anything above that I'm not ok, there is too much garbage
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#47"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" -- Gabe Newell [1] And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_ seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now encompasses: - Availability by Company - Availability by Global Region - Stream Quality - Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?) - Qu…
> service problem and not a pricing problem
Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#48[deleted]
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#49My main issue is that they're now slowly testing the waters to see if they can make you watch ads while still paying for the subscription, and at that point, might as well take advantage of Romania's lack of law enforcement and hit the torrent websites.
Thats what they said about cable too, pay for it so no ads. Then the ads came.
Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
#50A useful distinction is that upload is piracy and download is not.