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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#21

Post by rkomorn »

kotaKat wrote: post #5
kjkjadksj wrote: post #4

All of these streaming services have started cracking down on family and friend account sharing to game their stock price. Turns out kicking off the broke college students doesn’t lead to them signing up for ~$80/mo. smattering of streaming services.

It’s also getting tiring of this massive fragmentation of streaming services as a whole combined with a weird game of rebundling various providers in either deals direct from the streaming platforms/their overlords, or rebundling all of these streaming services into “free” offers with other service providers and THEIR offerings. Even my goddamn cable company does this now offering me one of the streaming services? wi…

There are services I already pay for that I'd likely save a handful of dollars on per month if I bundled them with my other services... but I can't bring myself to do it out of stubborn principle.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#22

Post by nickthegreek »

jbirer wrote: post #2

My 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.

they are done testing the waters. its standard practice for the majority.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#23

Post by jihadjihad »

My thing is that we are expected to pay in perpetuity for the privilege of accessing content. It's rent, and it is just tiresome.

Yes I understand that we have content available on far more devices than 30 years ago, when all we had was the TV in the living room. But should I have to pay in perpetuity to show my kids Moana?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#24

Post by sunrunner »

"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?)

- Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any other media accessibility options

[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#25

Post by sunrunner »

platevoltage wrote: post #7
jbirer wrote: post #2

My 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 really doesn't seem like it has to be that complicated, yet somehow we've gone from channels with markedly anti-consumer fixed bundles to a massively fragmented ecosystem where it genuinely seems like the streaming services _don't_ actually want you to subscribe by the amount of the effort that goes into making things hard to watch or doing everything that could make the streaming experience worse (region availability, paid tier ads, lower bitrate stream quality, and so on).

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#27

Post by duxup »

vhanda wrote: post #6

All 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.

I think they know how many dead / inactive subscriptions they have.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#28

Post by massysett »

jihadjihad wrote: post #23

My thing is that we are expected to pay in perpetuity for the privilege of accessing content. It's rent, and it is just tiresome. Yes I understand that we have content available on far more devices than 30 years ago, when all we had was the TV in the living room. But should I have to pay in perpetuity to show my kids Moana?

No. Go buy a Moana DVD. USD 9.99.

https://www.amazon.com/Moana-Ron-Clements/dp/B01MAZGH7Z/ref=...

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#30

Post by hungmung »

sunrunner wrote: post #24

"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…

It's almost like the corporate culture of being a bunch of greedy control freaks will push customers away when they have an alternative.
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