TLDR:
Current ad free plans for Disney+ and Hulu are now raising $3 more on October 12. Both becoming $13.99 and $17.99.
Yet another example of how the streaming model is a scam. Disney also wants to ban password sharing like Netflix did. The sooner you can get away from services like this the better. Instead of forking over a fortune for all these streaming sites, it makes way more sense to invest in owning the media you consume.
streaming hit the wall the moment every corp wanted to make their own service to cut out netflix. the boom in streaming happend - at least in most parts of europe - because basically everything anyone wanted (even some hbo titles) had been on netflix for 10 eurobucks a month and now you have to sub at least three services for almost thrice the price each. and especially disney+ is complete trash if you’re not a marvel/star wars stockholm syndrome victim. now asking for even more in times of inflation and recession is a slap into the face of subscribers.
now asking for even more in times of inflation and recession is a slap into the face of subscribers.
But not raising prices is a slap in the face for executives and shareholders! How will the
rich people’s yacht moneyeconomy possibly weather that storm?!Eurobucks? I think you mean eddies.
You got it, choom
Preem
People forget families have children who wants cartoons. Which makes it even worse because it’s hard to cut off services.
It’s funny how we managed to survive without streaming services. I distinctly remember teaching my kids how to rewind a vcr tape. They watched the same Barney episode about 400 times per day. Guess kids nowadays can’t handle that.
it’s funny how the “when we were kids, whe didn’t even had a tv at home and we were happy”-routine from our grandparents moved up to “we watched the same episode on vhs on repeat!” now millennials are getting older.
I mean at least my parents had rabbit ears… kinda cruel to force a kid to rewatch Barney when PBS has been accessible over the air to 95% of people for like the last few decades.
I didn’t force them to to anything. Not sure how anyone jumped to that conclusion.
I just don’t understand why you would rewatch something 500 times when you get hot barney straight off the press back then… it was even super easy to watch barney later, you just pressed the red button and recorded over the tape.
And if one even bothered to read the manual, you could usually preset recording times on most devices. Although shows also had this weird habit of being offset by ad hoc commercial inserts or unplanned interruptions. So it wasn’t super uncommon on most channels (PBS was actually a bit of an exception, due to lack of ads) to be off a few minutes from schedule.
The 90s were neat.
Yeah lets have our kids watch Barney 400 times.
Even at a young age they have their own freewill. I forced nothing, merely provided them the tools, which was my point. You don’t have to have a subscription to a streaming service to keep a child entertained.
I think some people have not had much interaction with young kids. Sometimes they only want to watch one. single. thing. over and over and over and over again.
Bingo.
Like baby shark
Current streaming has messed up the popularity of legal cord cutting. There’s no real difference in cable and streaming anymore.
The difference is that you need to subscribe to multiple services now to get everything you want, instead of just one.
That’s essentially the same as the various cable packages. It would take me longer to call and add more cable channels (if I had cable) than it would to sign up for every streaming service available.
And relogin to whatever annoying login process each one makes you do.
That’s all very well, but in some regions like Australia, Disney has or has announced the end of DVD and Blu-ray sales, which sucks.
I canceled all my services and purchased all my content on iTunes. In the long run it’s cheaper especially if you use something like cheap charts to follow sales, and I get all the benefits of streaming model while still owning my media. I’m happy!
That’s smart! Just realise that you don’t actually own anything though, just license it. Which for the most part is the same. However, sometimes things like background music get changed due to licensing fees. So, for example , Scrubs (tv show) dvd is far superior to what you can purchase for streaming.
Not to mention that their is no guarantee ITunes even will exist forever. It’s highly unlikely, but possible that Apple decides in the future to get out of that business entirely…
Last i saw, the physical media version of their recent shows came with a box and a code to get it online, not actual discs, so they’re effectively getting out of the business of letting you own your media
For real??? That’s garbage
They started doing that with discs back in mid-2010 along with videogames. Not surprised that it’s just papers now.
I mean it was awfully silly when you had to insert a disc just to have to download part or all of the game anyway.
It was not a big surprise that Disney will follow Netflix as in prohibiting password sharing. It is better for the corp of each viewer has their own account.
I gave up on streaming services and now using Stremio and justchill.
All in one streaming services in the palm of my hand.
I mean, the Netflix password sharing crackdown was a vote put on the users to decide if it’s a good thing to do or not.
And it appears that the results are good, since they are reporting subscriber growth and more revenue. Now every other service will follow because, otherwise, they’d just be wasting untapped profits.
I don’t like this profit maximization companies are trying to do, but one thing is clear: people prefer to pay more for the extra convenience than to stand their ground in their principals.
Even if people like us stand our ground, most won’t even care (I can see it in my personal relationships as well).
Priority for corporation will always be profit maximization. Users are secondary.
Yeah, and in cases where there is a monopoly or quasi-monopoly of a product it becomes really exploitative.
But in this case in particular, I’m gonna have to say it’s the fault of the users.
They chose to pay more for a worst product that had already been declining in quality steadily, when there are tons of other streaming services with good content.
I guess that is the fault of not being aware of alternatives, or brand royalty.
Average Users just want to be comfortable with watch they already have and don’t want to hassle to learn new habits.
Disney simply chose to skip the voting and went straight to forbid password sharing. They are hoping for gaining new customers like Netflix .
And that is why we need a new corporate contract where the betterment of its employees, communities and it’s services/products is a corporations goal not endless growth for the sake of profit.
Unfortunately they are pushed by the investors to focus on generating profit for them.
If I would give money to someone to make more money. I would expect more and more not less or a fix amount.
If the corporate contract changes then the expectation of investors would have to change as well. Changing the corporate contract is fundamental to changing nearly everything. What’s even better is that no one can argue it’s “evil socialism/communism” because it just isn’t but it still affects sweeping positive changes.
Whit this the company might risk the chance to loose some of their biggest investors, who are keeping the company alive.
The implementation of such change would take years to slowly modify and chisel as much money-loosing-holes as possible.
Plus there would be board meetings where the company have to come up with a short term plan to Convince every money oriented board member that the new corporate contract will shovel money to the business. It is not easy, trust me.
They can’t afford to loose money first to gain money years later.
It’s just still relatively cheap. I don’t know anyone who has more than 4 streaming services (although I am sure there are some) at once concurrently, that’s still cheaper than the average cable bill ($83).
Still, if you were sharing with 3 friends before, it’s a 4x price spike for you.
And I’m still paying less (although the margin is smaller now) than when I had to choose a cable tv package. Even with inflation.
A la carte channels are what we wanted for 50 years and this is pretty close. Don’t get me wrong, I pirate everyday because fuck’em, but it’s better than cable.
I’m about to set sail. Streaming is only convenient and cost effective until it isn’t. They are headed for the isn’t pretty rapidly.
I mean it is better to have them offline at least nothing gets in your way when watching
I love how after Netflix did this, all of the fucking idiots on Reddit were just like “LOL JUST USE ANOTHER STREAMING SERVICE,” as if it wasn’t obvious as shit that all of the rest of these companies would follow suit shortly.
reddit is absolutely full of the dumbest and most gullible idiots on the planet.
That would’ve been true a few months ago, but now it’s even more true because only the dumbest stayed and downloaded the app.
I thought the general consensus has been a return to good old fashioned pirating?
I’d say the Disney+ catalog is quite a bit better than the Netflix catalog.
I mean if you like watching garbage marvel content then I guess?
Well, it does have The Simpsons, Duck Tales, Chip&Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, DarkWing Duck, Gargoyles, Mighty Ducks… that’s about it.
Indiana Jones, Star Wars, some decent documentaries also. There’s a lot on there and I’d say it’s more rewatchable items than Netflix.
Oh look, another one.
YouTube: premium is increasing
Spotify: we’re increasing your sub
Bank: we’re increasing your mortgage
Supermarket: we’re increasing your food spend
Car insurance: we’re increasing your premium
Household bills: we’re increasing water, gas and electricity
Broadband: we’re increasing your fees
Cellphone: your contract renewal is higher than last year
Salary: fuck you, peasant
Bank Of England: Just stop spending
Disney: Hi …
To be fair, Spotify might suck for artists, but for users it’s a good value in my opinion, and the price was $9.99 for like 10 years. I don’t begrudge them a small increase. In fact, I wish all the price increases we’ve seen lately would be so modest.
A Spotify increase is only justified if the entire amount goes to artists.
Oh no, I completely agree and I continue with it because I really like the service. It just so happens that it’s on top of a whole raft of other increases, some of which are absolutely not justified.
Why are you bootlicking? Stop encouraging corporations to milk money from consumers because “it’s not as bad as the others”.
Especially when they’ve a) acknowledged that none of their money is actually going to the artists and b) they’re in a piracy subreddit. People gotta stop shilling for music streaming services here, it’s indefensible on every level.
Some of us old timers remember the bad old days when a CD with two songs you actually liked cost $17.99 (about $35-40 in today’s dollars). As bad as Spotify and others are it sure beats what we had before.
Yes, let’s just pretend digital downloads haven’t existed for longer than streaming services and solve this problem completely.
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I go to live shows and buy merch literally every week. I generally support artists directly whenever possible. I don’t need to give these giant corpos money while pretending more than pennies go to the artists.
Imo paying a monthly fee and not getting something in return you can still use if you fall on bad times in such uncertain times as today makes zero sense. Rent more than doubled in the past 3 years and my wage actually went down, there is zero oppertunity to build a better life and now every silly business wants me to increase my monthly expenses by another 5/20 bucks per service per month, compared to an era where we just bought shit for cheap from the discount bin when we didn’t make a lot of money.
I’ll “ARRRR!” the whole way until they behave and life becomes affordable again.
I stopped working out because i can’t afford the food needed to properly benefit from a workout. Whey used to be a cheap way to get protëine and it went up 350% in the past 2 years. Eggs, chicken, peanuts, vegetables all doubled in price. I’m left eating a roll of cheap cookies just to get some food in me half the time.
To be fair my fiber ISP recently got actual competition and lowered my price from 95/mo to 65/mo. So SOMETIMES the system works. When its not rigged.
Bank: we’re increasing your mortgage
Supermarket: we’re increasing your food spend
Car insurance: we’re increasing your premium
Household bills: we’re increasing water, gas and electricity
Broadband: we’re increasing your fees
Cellphone: your contract renewal is higher than last year
Salary: fuck you, peasant
Bank Of England: Just stop spending
When in the last 120 years was this NOT a case? Sure, few last years have been fucked more than usual, but we are still living pretty comfortable lives. Inflation is natural.
I’ll have what he’s smoking.
What happens when spendings are bigger than income, genius?
Of course it’s been happening for a hundred years that’s why it got so bad. At some point water boills, sur prize
Jokes aside, we’ll see our first generation of homeless labourers.
It’s already happened in Hong Kong for decades with the coffin apartments. It’s just now more prominently occurring in the west.
All businesses must move to a circular economy. This infinite growth nonsense is what’s causing this and it’s impossible to have infinite growth.
A YoY inflation rate of ~10% is most assuredly not natural in most of the developed world. I fully understand why it happened, but that serves no justification for the negative impact on the lives of the majority of the population.
And the increase in the price of goods that I’ve seen around me has been more like 30%, not 10. It’s blatant price gouging, but the government refuses to act to stop it.
If someone deserves to be pirated into oblivion it’s Disney, for fucking up the copyright after making a fortune of public domain material.
But they don’t have any content I would like to watch :(
Just do it out of principle!
Ok, I will torrent something and let it seed for couple of days.
At this point these services are asking us to pirate. We aren’t getting our money from trees.
Yup, this + crackdown on password sharing made me cancel all of my 3 subscription plans and move back to pirating.
The reason for pirating for me isn’t about getting stuff for free, it is about paying a reasonable total sum for the amount I use these streaming platforms.
This is why I pirate. Disney buys exclusive rights to kdramas that would otherwise be on multiple streaming services just so we have the privilege to overpay for their shitty subscriptions.
Disney can go fuck themselves.
How do I learn how to do this and not get caught?
Piracy community on the dbzero lemmy server is quite helpful. Run by the piracy subreddit former head admin.
Awesome. I’ll check it out
If you live in a country that hunt pirates you will probably just need to get a VPN (I’m not from a fancy country but I believe it is cheaper than Disney there) and download stremio.
I’m in the US, so I will need a VPN. Any VPN recommendations? And is stremio like a streaming service but not for money?
Don’t know if they’re free but Mullvad VPN is great. Proton VPN is also good.
I looked into both and they are both affordable for me. Do you prefer one over the other?
Yes, but I’m not telling which one.
I prefer mullvad but I had to stop using it on my personal devices due to it getting blocked on certain networks. For my server it’s perfectly fine. They don’t offer a way to do auto pay and buying credits can be a bit weird but that’s the only thing I’d say is a minor downside.
Mozilla vpn is actually mullvad but is also about twice the price.
Hm. I like autopay. I’ll probably look into other options.
Mullvad. The just had a security audit and came out 💯.
Mullvad doesn’t allow port forwarding anymore which makes it less useful if you want to actually seed and not just leech.
But mullvad is great otherwise and doesn’t even require any personal data to buy. They just give you an account number.
What is seed and leech?
I’ve used Private Internet Access for years.
I’ll check it out
I’d avoid PIA. They were bought out by a “former” spyware company. Wouldn’t trust them.
Oh jeez okay
airvpn has been good after mullvad removed port forwarding. Proton looks like another good option. If you setup a torrent client, make sure you bind it to the VPN interface. Search how to do this, there’s lots of good documentation. And also run an IP leak test in a browser.
Okay. I think I got this. Hopefully my ISP doesn’t catch on somehow lol
An alternative to a VPN is to use I2P, which is free but requires some technical setup.
How technical?
It’s been a while, but I just had a look at the Download page and it looks fairly straightforward. It’s essentially install and start a package, then configure your browser to use the proxy. There’s even an ‘easy install’ package for Windows now.
Oh that’s awesome
Stremio is an APP that downloads movies and series from torrents while you watch, actually it just shows you things from addons you add to it, technically you can add addons from paid services like apple, and amazon video, but you can also add addons like torrentio that aggregate a lot of torrent sources.
It integrates with IMDB and download subtitles automatically from open subtitles, it is very feature complete, you would probably just have problems with too old or niche movies that have a low number of seeders but you can always right click on the moving while running, copy magnet link and put in an torrent downloader like qbittorrent.
Just take care with your vpn, make sure you check the option of your VPN to shutdown the internet in case the VPN disconnect automatically (usually is default) so you don’t have the risk to accidentally download part of your torrent out of the VPN. As long I know US is crazy when talk about piracy.If you use real debrid with stremio you won’t need to use a VPN
Real debrid is that service that stores torrents to download directly? If so, there is an integration with stremio?
Yes, Stremio integrates with real-debrid and stores torrents. This allows for easy streaming.
But they don’t seed longer than they download, so they aren’t exactly great for the network (but many people don’t upload enough anyway).
Jellyfin did not raise their prices. So I’m not worried. 😏
Drives aren’t going down in price :(
Predicted that flash storage will become cheaper per TB somewhere around 2025. Hopefully that happens because hdd prices have been really flat.
Hopefully. I’m gonna a buy a large HDD to fonally be able to store those remuxes and not having to delete them. Maybe it’ll be my last hard drive.
Sounds like they’re removing 4K from the standard plan and moving it to the new premium plan. Fuck you Disney!
There’s a premium plan? Here in Australia, we still just have the one monthly plan, which they recently increased by $3 per month.
If they jump onto the “premium” plan bandwagon like the others, and move 4K to that, this will literally be the final streaming service for me to drop. I’ve already dropped all the others. Only reason I kept this is because the sheer volume of content for my wife and daughter makes the $14 worthwhile - I just don’t have enough storage space (yet) to deliver all that via my Plex setup.
They’re introducing it in Europe from November 2023, not sure about other regions. The press release here explains what’s in each plan - unfortunately the premium plan is listed here and it sounds just like Netflix.
Sonovabitch. This is why I cancelled the others in the first place - forcing me to pay for additional devices, just to get 4K streaming. That, and Netflix wanted to charge me for password sharing because my stepkids use our account when they’re at their dad’s. Netflix’s answer was they should have a profile at each house. Losers.
Use stremio instead
I’ve seen a few people mention Stremio lately. What’s the tldr; in terms of benefits?
I went through a fair amount of “adjustment”, getting my family to use Plex and Overseerr (replacing Kodi and “ask Dad to get it”), so I’d want to have some compelling reasons to change things on them again.
I actually started using Stremio today because of what this guy said. I never heard of it. It’s definitely easy to use, but requires some setting up with plugins. Without the right plugin (torrentio) you won’t be able to stream anything without being told to use a subscription service. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get the plugin. I just watched Evil Dead: Rise and I had plenty of options for streaming it. Considering how I canceled my Netflix subscription a little while ago it’s nice to have a reliable replacement. I mean, it’s even better than Netflix. Lots of new movies and shows to watch. I hope this thing lasts a long time because it’s just what I was looking for.
Nice dude you can install the plugin “cyberflix” so you get streaming catalogs that you can scroll through in discovery.
stremio has gotten a lot worse quality wise since rarbg went down. it doesnt seem to scrape torrentgalaxy correctly and i have no idea how to fix it
I recently learned that you could integrate real-debrid with Plex though and stream instead of storing locally if you like so that may be worth looking into for your (and my) use case.
I don’t remember seeing Overseerr mentioned before although I do remember someone describing a request system like that for Plex a while back.
It’s interesting… I have never really tried to get my family using anything like that but I have had the lifetime Plex Pass for years now.
I think it’s about time for me to finally start expanding my local media collection again so maybe I’ll give adding it to the mix a shot.
Honestly, it’s been a game changer for my family and I. To go with Overseerr, I setup multiple Radarr and Sonarr instances, to cover 4K and anime. That way, anything they request in regular 1080p is auto-approved and downloaded, whereas 4K content requires I approve it first, mainly so I can manage free storage effectively.
Once I’ve managed to save up enough to deploy a much bigger storage solution, I’ll just let 4K be auto-approved too.
Makes sense to me… Might still be worth looking into Plex Debrid though to stream anything not worth keeping.
That’s an excellent point - there’s no reason for a one or other approach. There’s plenty of content we only watch the once, then I delete later on when doing a cleanup.
Yeah that could be a good idea personally i don’t save a’lot of stuff so a flash drive is enough for me
Yaaar! There be no price increases on the seven seas, me hearties. Hoist the sails, raise the flag, no quarter given 🏴☠️
i love my magic hard drive
I’m so close to deciding to sail the high seas again.
I’ve been a lifetime Plex pass subscriber for years now… Just need to get a VPN again, get back on Usenet or real-debrid, and maybe setup Sonarr and Radarr.
I’ll almost certainly save money and have access to more content than I currently do.
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I’d never heard of Bazarr before but I also don’t usually bother with downloading subtitles so I guess that makes sense.
Thanks for the suggestions though!
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Get Windscribe for $3 a month and setup gluetun and you’re golden
I’ve not heard of gluetun before but I’ve been a free level windscribe subscriber for several years now and have considered maybe using them when I switch to paid… I think there may be better options though really.
I guess I need to read up more in what the hell gluetun actually even is or if it would benefit me at all…
I’ve got over 25 years in I.T. and, while I’ve worked on and with teams where some folks dealt with docker containers, I personally never have as of yet.
My yearly cost for Usenet is cheaper than one month of Netflix. Granted I already have 60TB of NAS set-up, which wasn’t cheap, but it has more than paid for itself.
Docker and the *arr programs have made setting it all up an absolute breeze too for anyone looking to get started.
If it has been mentioned already. Plex_Debrid is the perfect mix without needing a VPN. Yes a VPN is always suggested but this streams directly to your plex server from real debrid.
Yes… I understand that.
I also understand that real-debrid does keep logs so that’s why I still plan to VPN it if I go with this solution.
Might as well do it as safely as possible to begin with I think.
Every day i become more 🏴☠️
Looks like I’m going to finally cut my subscriptions and move my family into using selfhosted sources that I supply from the high seas. This shit is ridiculous.
It’s funny how every year these services get worse and worse and the prices keep going up. Netflix previously encouraging password sharing and then deciding it’s not ok. Did the price drop? ofc not. Did they replace it with a better feature? No. At least getting better content? Fuck no. Repeat for literally any of them.
another big increase is coming if/when the hollywood strike ends
I am out of touch with piracy. I was never a media hoarder but I can’t stand ads and the quality of local tv has always been shocking. I used to have a media centre with a tuner and timeshift/ad skip in the mid-2000s but was increasingly getting my tv shows from ezrv. Then I had a login with a cool nzb site but they shut down. I was accessing Netflix over my own vpn long before it was offered outside north america. Streaming was awesome for awhile and I have been happily subscribing to multiple services for years. As the number of services increased and the cost got higher I started putting them in rotation much to the annoyance of the rest of the family. Not looking forward to piracy to be honest. Going to have to relearn where best to find stuff. It was nice having content just there for the family whenever they wanted it and not having to do anything but make some payments.
Profits are down. Cough up, plebs!
Disney is the one I’ll shed in a heartbeat. Nothing ever seems to get added. People shit on Netflix, but at least I can go their for comfort food like Jaws or The Truman Show.
I remember when you only had to pay once to add a video to your collection…
My secret hope, unrelated to streaming services, is that people start releasing some sort of analogue tape format like VHS or Betamax, or even one of those, paired with a high quality digital download for movies.
I envision it working similar to the vinyl resurgence. A digital download for modern devices and streaming, paired with a fundamentally different form of media for a different experience.
Of course I know that it won’t happen. I just like analogue tech.
The worst thing is I’ve got most of these from the DVD era, but I’m just too lazy to get up and put them in.
Those of you with kids that want to stream some quality content shouldn’t overlook PBS Kids. The app on Roku and Apple TV is decent quality. Lots of free commercial free shows, and you can live stream the PBS Kids channel.
Forgetting where we are for a minute, if you’re willing to throw your local PBS station a fiver every month, you’ll help keep these programs available for those who can’t afford to pay (or can’t even afford a computer) and get online access to all the adult PBS shows through their app.
So true, $5/mo is the minimum donation amount to give you access to PBS Passport which unlocks all content of the regular PBS app.
