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Which streaming service was that on again?

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Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#51

Post by readread »

mrhottakes wrote: post #24

Streaming in 2026 is a disaster, I'm happy to pay but piracy is just easier.

Thanks to Jellyfin + Infuse (on AppleTV), even family and visitors have no trouble using my "streaming service". And I can reach it on the road with TailScale. Takes me laughably little time per year to manage (maybe an hour in a normal year, perhaps two or three relatively "hands on" hours in a year I modify the zfs disk pool in some way)

My main motivation for having it is easy access to several things that can't be had legally at all (the best very-close-to-opening-day Star Wars movies in the 4k77/4k80/4k83 series, or uncut Beavis and Butthead episodes, or Northern Exposure with the original music, to pick a few examples) but once you've got it, adding everything to the server is arguably less effort and lost time than using a half-dozen streaming services.

I'd much rather pay, I dunno, $50/month or something for a service that had everything on it, but that doesn't exist, so I have this instead. It's a ton better than a pile of streaming services that are still missing most stuff, plus force you to play the ridiculous "which one had this, again?" game.

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#52

Post by acheron »

BryantD wrote: post #5

While it shouldn’t be necessary to resort to third party services to resolve these issues, it’s worth noting that JustWatch will tell you where a movie can be found and Letterboxd (among others) will give you a somewhat more clunky unified watchlist.

As far as "third party service shouldn't be necessary", is it that different from getting the TV Guide in the 80s or 90s to find out when a show was going to be on TV?

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#53

Post by pj_mukh »

"It's just that the ecosystem became too fragmented"

Ecosystems are either too fragmented or too monopolistic. Complain, complain, complain. Speaking of monopolistic, just google it guys, google knows where the movies/shows stream, that is your unified interface.

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#54

Post by why_at »

advisedwang wrote: post #7

> The original promise of streaming was simple. Everything would be available whenever you wanted it. You could sit down in the evening and binge an entire season without waiting a week for the next episode. That's not how I remember it. Streaming services never had everything . The promise was: there would be something you would enjoy. There are two reasons why this isn't working for us: 1. They've cut costs and ove…

>2. We've started expecting "must-see" shows and movies. You want to watch The Pitt, and then are mad that you need to get HBO or whatever and can't just watch it on Netflix. Perhaps you could browse Netflix and find something you'd like, but you have your heart set on a specific show.

>(2) is on us a little bit. Cultural monoculture is not good. Following the herd is not good.

I don't think this is it. People just want to be able to watch things without too much hassle and without paying too much money. Some people will enjoy following the latest trend, but there are always many more people not watching any particular show than are watching it.

The fact that torrents make it so much easier to find what you want shows that there's nothing technically difficult about this. It's all caused by stupid profit incentives which make the consumer experience so much worse than it needs to be.

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#55

Post by readread »

pj_mukh wrote: post #53

"It's just that the ecosystem became too fragmented" Ecosystems are either too fragmented or too monopolistic. Complain, complain, complain. Speaking of monopolistic, just google it guys, google knows where the movies/shows stream, that is your unified interface.

> Ecosystems are either too fragmented or too monopolistic.

In this case, it's actually both at the same time! No, for real, that's why it sucks so bad, both of those things are simultaneously problems with the streaming service market.

Another poster in this thread has already posted my personal preferred solution, which is to do the same thing we did to movie studios and movie theater ownership for many decades, ending only a few years ago: ban combined ownership of both production and distribution.

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#58

Post by mbeavitt »

Honestly, I’ve gone back to dvd rentals! CinemaParadiso sends me as many films and boxsets as I can handle by post and it’s the same price as a standard Netflix subscription…

And it’s in blissfully high bitrate 4k! Anyone else notice that even the high quality options of streaming services are compressed to hell?!!

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#59

Post by MattGrommes »

tormeh wrote: post #11

Usually Justwatch should be able to tell you where something is available. However I will note that it's remarkably common for something slightly old to just not be available anywhere. You cannot watch Das Boot in my region on any service so far as I can see. So I guess you loan from the library or buy DVDs off of ebay or something?

Justwatch for me is just showing "Stream this or pirate it?"

Re: Which streaming service was that on again?

#60

Post by blacksmith_tb »

user17847392650 wrote: post #14
advisedwang wrote: post #7

> The original promise of streaming was simple. Everything would be available whenever you wanted it. You could sit down in the evening and binge an entire season without waiting a week for the next episode. That's not how I remember it. Streaming services never had everything . The promise was: there would be something you would enjoy. There are two reasons why this isn't working for us: 1. They've cut costs and ove…

You remember incorrectly. The first real commercial on-demand streaming service to gain traction was Netflix, and it exploded in popularity precisely because it did have "almost everything". One reasonable price, practically everything worth watching. That was the original promise.

But the sense that it had "almost everything" was more a halo effect of the old dvd-by-mail business, I'd say? I do agree with the general idea that streaming is less satisfying than ever, I probably get more mileage out of my completely free (thanks to my local library) Kanopy account than I do Netflix these days, just because it really does have a wider range of stuff to watch.
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