Netflix raises prices for every subscription tier by up to 12.5 percent

Now, if I want to pirate, I just go to my browser, search for a movie/TV show, tell it to download, and it ensures it shows up seamlessly in Plex.

The benefits:

- Searching is easier

- One interface (Plex) vs many streaming interfaces, each with its own quirks.

- You don't have to worry that they'll take the show away while you're in the middle of Season 3.

Plex is pretty easy to set up. The arr services, though, were a royal pain. If there's some automation that sets it all up for you on your machine, though, then it would be a game changer.

I'm fairly pro-streaming services. I want the content producers to get paid when I watch. However, Apple TV's royal screwups[1] drove me to the edge and I decided to go through the painful process of figuring out all the *arr services.

If the streaming services don't make it a pain, I won't even think about pirating.

(I'll add that there was one time I pirated a Netflix show - even though I had Netflix - and the audio in the pirated version was much better than if I watched directly with Netflix. Not sure why).

[1] Locked out because I couldn't confirm the CVV of a card that I had reported lost almost a year prior. All the attempts to change the card/account failed. Even with a new account, once you'd enter an updated CC, it would tie it to my old account because it would realize I'm the same person.

I didn't just get locked out of Apple TV. I got locked out of all Apple services until that CC expired. I could not even apply for a job at Apple unless I confirmed the CVV. Thank God I don't use Apple devices!

They're, at worst, equal.

If I have a show/movie I want to watch, I first have to go to an indexing site like JustWatch to figure out which streaming service it's on. If it's not on any, or not on one I'm subbed to, I'm already having to go pirate.

Whereas when pirating, I typically just search my tracker for the show I want to watch, sort the results by most seeders, then download the highest one. I just save the .torrent on the shared network folder on my Raspberry Pi (Which literally just shows up as Z:\torrentfiles), and Transmission starts downloading it. A couple minutes later, it's ready and I sit on my couch and watch it.

I will grant you that the initial setup takes a little more effort. I signed up for a private tracker where torrents are vetted. I had to configure Transmission to auto-download. I had to install Kodi. But...meh? That's it? All that takes less than 10 minutes and only has to be done once.

If you're still using pirate software akin to LimeWire where you have to wade through results like "Pluribus-S01E01.mpg.exe" and deal with results where for some reason people renamed files (Back in the KaZaA days, I downloaded "JackAss.avi" expecting it to be the Jackass movie and it was actually Fight Club. WHY!?), then yeah, pirating is a pain in the ass. But otherwise, nah, it's really easy.

EDIT: As others have mentioned, pirated content is simply easier to consume. I can watch offline and have full control over playback. Never any ads or unskippable content.

I know a lot of people liked it and maybe I'm just cynical, but to me it seems like every "serious" streaming show eventually falls victim to the "stretch a 2 hour movie's plot across a 12 - 16 hour season" strategy. They know it works because enough people binge watch or feel compelled to finish a series they've started.

At this point, if I'm watching a show then it's something where the episodes are sufficiently satisfying self-contained stories (e.g. something like Star Trek, X-Files, sitcoms). If I want something with a more involved plot, then I'll watch a movie. These formats are better because the limited runtime requires the creators to be intentional about what they dedicate screen time to. Meanwhile in a modern "story-driven" streamslop show it's painfully obvious when they're just padding out the runtime with fluff to make it to 8 episodes.

Of course there are exceptions to this, and there are stories for which a miniseries or a long-form series is the ideal video medium to convey them. But what happens so often is that you get 1-2 seasons of compelling storytelling followed by N more mediocre seasons that keep getting made because enough people keep watching. And the latter are just not worth the time investment.