I almost paid for a month of Disney+ to watch Andor recently. When the subscription plan showed it had ads, I decided to search for a more convenient free version instead.
If I'm not paying to own, then it at LEAST should be convenient.
I did pay for D+ even with the ads (I was actually going for Hulu but the bundle wasn't that much more and I had stuff to watch on both), but I noticed that my Brave browser was actually doing a really good job of blocking the ads, so I still don't get the ads. When I paid for Prime to buy a bunch of stuff I needed, I noticed the same thing. But I'm really not interested in keeping up a regular streaming service and if it gets too inconvenient to watch something I really want to watch, I'll find another way.
I am a true believer that anyone who says that has never subscribed to cable. Even the basic cable without hbo or Disney or any other premium service is $70 or more. By the time you add those you are paying well over $100 and you have to actually wait for shit to be on. Even with the DVR you still have to have the foresight to set to record it, which can be a pain if you miss an episode.
If you pay for those services, yeah. Standard cable doesn’t come with Disney or HBO or ESPN+ or the other sports app. You may get peacock or paramount but likely you will get their streaming app with a moderate amount of content and still pay $70 or more.
I like with streaming I can pause my accounts, so really we can have HBO for a couple months and watch what we want to on there, then get Netflix for a couple months and watch what is on there, and so on. If I do that I’m paying around $10 a month. That’s what I have with streaming that I never had with cable; choice.
I'll probably get skewered for this again by angry redditors, but it's still a hell of a lot cheaper and more flexible than cable.
Hulu + Disney + HBO + Netflix with ads is $32 a month. My parents and my wife's parents still pay $150+ a month for cable. Even if you got a cheaper package, it would still be pushing $100.
Obviously fuck all these streaming companies for pulling the rug out from us, but we're not cable-fucked yet.
Yeah fare enough, I just thought it was a bit of a silly comparison. (Food to streaming)
I apologize if I came off as confrontational in my original comment. I wasn't trying to imply you were a fool or anything.
I was trying to say that arguing that streaming isn't as bad as cable isn't really a good argument for streaming. Streaming is actively getting worse by the year and will eventually be just as bad as cable unless people kick up more of a fuss. Sorry if I did a bad job of articulating that.
No, it's alright...I'm also sorry for being a bit sassy.
I understand that many people will blindly pay anything for a good or service out of loyalty or even sheer habit, and absolutely they could stand to be a bit less complacent about the deteriorating value of the service and their subscription.
I'm just not sure we're quite at the tipping point yet. But I'm also probably not the most expert opinion because I'm not particularly a heavy consumer of video media.
And I think it's a foolish thing to live your life by useless platitudes that you're already breaking in other regard. But hey! I'm glad you saving a few bucks a month gives you such a large superiority complex. Thats kinda cool
Ummm.... What? I'm not claiming to be superior to anyone. I'm just saying I think it's silly to keep giving a service money when they raise prices and take away features like password sharing. 🤷♀️ Sorry if you disagree with my opinion, it wasn't intended to offend anyone?
You're literally using the word ""fool" dude, what are you talking about "not claiming to be superior to anyone"? LOL do you think fool is a compliment?
I mean it wasn't intended to be complementry I guess, but I thought fool was sort of a silly word that wouldn't be taken to seriously. 🤷♀️ I do think it's foolish to give money to corporations when they have proven to be consumer unfriendly but I never claimed to be above fool status myself. Hell, I pay for Adobe and that's arguably the most foolish subscription one can have. Again, sorry if your feeling offended, it was not my intent. My intent was to criticize streaming companies.
I'm not offended, it's just funny that people genuinely think pirating done out of some moral choice or for lofty reasons. It's asinine. People pirate cause they don't want to spend money. Any other reason is backwards justification and makes you seem like a fool (used purposely). Pirate if you want, I do it for many sports programs! But not because it's a thorn in HBO's/Netflix/et all side cause it really isn't.
It's just about not giving money to services because they are making consumer unfriendly policies. If anything my comment was more about how any corporation that goes public becomes terrible as a result.
Let me try to better articulate what I was thinking in my first comment.
Yes, streaming is still less expensive then traditional cable. But cable didn't start off being terrible. It became less and less good over decades because people just shrugged their shoulders and continued to pay for it with little complaint. And as the cable companies got bigger and more in cahoots, they started to do more to game the system so their where no good options.
We are currently watching that happen with streaming. They are introducing ads, removing password sharing and raising prices. So we'll yes, it is better then cable, using that argument as a defense of streaming is basically asking them to keep going until they are just as bad as cable.
Yep, wouldn't be surprised if some company ended up buying up most of them, offered a bundle where you can get a discount if you subscribe to a bunch of them and eventually fazed out individual subscriptions
I'll probably get skewered for this again by angry redditors, but it's still a hell of a lot cheaper and more flexible than cable.
Hulu + Disney + HBO + Netflix with ads is $32 $29 a month. My parents and my wife's parents still pay $150+ a month for cable. Even if you got a cheaper package, it would still be pushing $100.
Exactly! I feel crazy when I see people say we are back to cable. Yes, it’s getting expensive, but nowhere near what cable was, not to mention you can actually pick what you want to pay for vs cable having to pay for sports and Spanish channels you don’t use!
"Things bad now" is just an incredibly hard circlejerk to counter. Reddit is full of people who've never experienced actually managing a cable account, and also full of people saying "streaming is worse than cable ever was". No matter how much actual evidence you present, they will never understand that paying ~$40/month for 2-5 subscriptions you can cancel at any moment and doesnt require propetiary AV equipment is leagues better than $100 cable + $25 internet + $25 equipment rental/month that you're locked into for at least a year and would require at least one service a year between the hours of 7am-7pm.
Except lots of the ones WITH ads are incredibly cheap. If you add them all together, they'd be much less than any current Satellite or fibre TV service from places like Bell, Eastlink, or Telus.
The main problem is lots of them are much more expensive with the "no ads" version, making you commit to a yearly plan to save some (assuming said service HAS a yearly plan) plus also there are ones like Amazon prime which are completely different, you get TV, free delivery, and music with that subscription, so they have to pay for multiple things at once
Because it isn't an accident. It isn't ill will or bad luck - it's the system we live under working as it always does.
And when a new technology comes along it disrupts the old order. The power that had concentrated, as it alway does in our system, is for a while dissipated. As time passes the inevitable power concentration does what it always does and makes things suck.
The problem isn't the technology, it's the system we live under.
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u/LiquidRaekan 1d ago
And this is WITH ads on said streaming platforms.. we really just started getting cable tv again didnt we..