31–40 of 83 posts
Cue up people shouting about how this is horrible and that they're totally going to cancel, only to be followed by Netflix making even more money next quarter.
What would be great is if the EU makes some kind of regulation (it worked for usb-c?) about some kind of interoperable streaming platform pricing that forces a kind of standardization across platforms and allows at least a little bit of customization. Let me opt into or out of ads, and let me "switch channels" across multiple different streaming services on a standardized interface with predictable pricing. Is that s…
Why do we need to regulate how companies make their products if people are not forced to use them or are not a basic necessity? Don’t like Netflix? Too expensive? Don’t buy it. Vote with your wallet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been out of that scene for a long time, hasn't Netflix implemented a bunch of anti-piracy methods, or are people just recording HDMI/DisplayPort output and saving it?
Reading around a bit, yes to Netflix adding anti-piracy measures, maybe to folks recording HDMI/DisplayPort. Apparently, Netflix is using steganography/content watermarks in their 4k content itself to trace users who are pirating. This is from a totally unsourced Reddit thread[0] but they do reference a real company which claims to do this watermarking[1]. The claim is that in addition to Netflix requiring 4k content…
But the only real world impact is that the device that was used to stream that 4K content gets blacklisted at the hardware level.
To workaround this, piracy groups try to batch 4K rips because they know that the device will be burned soon after they upload the content. They then acquire another device, and the game of whack-a-mole continues.
There are some interesting discussions in this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46803451
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. I recently started watching a series, and I figured I'd check if it's on any streaming services I have access to. I found it on Prime Video, but when I clicked into it, it needed some other separate subscription to a service I'd never heard of to watch it. And even then, it had like, seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 of the 9 total seasons. If ther…
> Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. No it's not. It's just the cheapest. Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.
No ads or previews to skip before each episode. Skip button seems to appear at different times.
No waiting for the skip button for recaps or intros. Sometimes they decide not to appear. If you jump 10s, sometimes they don't appear. Most pirated shows are appropriately bookmarked.
No waiting for the "next episode" button to appear. Sometimes they decide not to appear. If you jump 10s, sometimes they don't appear.
Some services make it harder than it should be to get to the episode/season list.
Must use their player. Usually means controls and subtitles appear on top of video. Screen dimmed on pause. Wack-a-mole controls.
That's not even counting the "few outliers" that I seem to encounter frustratingly often.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been out of that scene for a long time, hasn't Netflix implemented a bunch of anti-piracy methods, or are people just recording HDMI/DisplayPort output and saving it?
Reading around a bit, yes to Netflix adding anti-piracy measures, maybe to folks recording HDMI/DisplayPort. Apparently, Netflix is using steganography/content watermarks in their 4k content itself to trace users who are pirating. This is from a totally unsourced Reddit thread[0] but they do reference a real company which claims to do this watermarking[1]. The claim is that in addition to Netflix requiring 4k content…
What are they gonna do? Ban your account? You don't need to go through KYC to get a netflix account, so what's preventing you from using a prepaid card to sign up for another account?
I remember signing up to Netflix to watch house of cards back in the early 2010s and being absolutely blown away. I don’t think there’s been a single show on Netflix I’ve genuinely looked forward to in the past couple of years. It’s like they completely gave up on quality content and just shovel out the most mediocre slop. I’m amazed people still pay these ever increasing prices.
It's kinda like how IBM didn't see the value in software and that let Microsoft become Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. I recently started watching a series, and I figured I'd check if it's on any streaming services I have access to. I found it on Prime Video, but when I clicked into it, it needed some other separate subscription to a service I'd never heard of to watch it. And even then, it had like, seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 of the 9 total seasons. If ther…
> Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. No it's not. It's just the cheapest. Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.
There are "shitty" ways to do piracy (usually the sketchy streaming alternatives). But the media management and playback tooling is genuinely great right now.
I still buy most of my media, but I pick up cheap physical copies of things and put them on a NAS for playback through jellyfin.
It's... MILES better than netflix/amazon/hulu/etc. No ads, no bullshit, no marketing, no "self-promotion that's totally not an ad, wink wink". Just your media.
Playback is per-user, it keeps all your stuff just fine, you can resume later from wherever you left off, I can shuffle series (great for kids shows like Arthur or magic school bus), and it's never offline, down, or unavailable.
---
Basically - you're very confused. I have "streaming" it just comes out of my own equipment, playing my own content. All the affordances are there and it has none of the bullshit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. I recently started watching a series, and I figured I'd check if it's on any streaming services I have access to. I found it on Prime Video, but when I clicked into it, it needed some other separate subscription to a service I'd never heard of to watch it. And even then, it had like, seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 of the 9 total seasons. If ther…
> Pirating is honestly, by-far the least painful experience to watch things. No it's not. It's just the cheapest. Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.
Cue up people shouting about how this is horrible and that they're totally going to cancel, only to be followed by Netflix making even more money next quarter.
And with what seems to now be an unavoidable economic storm as in-transit tankers dock and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz starts to be felt, there might be a larger than normal amount of people looking to cut costs in the coming year.
Or maybe not, people seem to have stopped responding to economic pressure by cutting costs in the US! When vacations got super expensive, people still spent, and increased their complaining. We will see what happens in 2026.