With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I cancelled Netflix the day they blocked my elderly parents from accessing my account.
I was paying for 4 streams, it shouldn’t matter 1 stream was at my parents house, they were still getting their money.
Don’t worry Netflix, we still get to enjoy your content via torrents and my parents still get a convenient streaming app full media via Plex, so you can eat shit Netflix!
I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren’t getting any of my money any more 🙂
I do have to thank Netflix for motivating my to try Plex and see what my uplink could handle, about 3 1080 streams, so there’s that positive.
Cancelled all subscriptions apart from Usenet and VPN.
Now I just pirate it all and bang it on Plex. All in one place on all devices, easy peasy
I’m not your down vote, but fuck Plex. Resource-intensive code to start, and also fuck their pushy cloud-first posture. I dropped them like a hot potato when they obfuscated requiring a cloud account to watch streaming locally. Shady stuff, especially when you’re self-hosting.
Jellyfin is WAY less intrusive. It just works for local streaming, and for discreet sharing among trusted affiliates. Maybe not as pooshed or feature complete as Plex, bit it’s far less obnoxious on my resources, and my affiliates
Was looking up Plex and I don’t understand it. For example I looked up a Netflix show and it asked me to subscribe to Netflix.
What makes it better? I’m lost
Plex allows you to host your own media and will match filenames to metadata. You point it to the folders for your movies and TV and it’ll start searching through and adding them to your Plex server as streamable media.
There are ways to automate the searching and downloading of your desired movies and TV. Pair it with Plex and you have your own personalized streaming platform with just what you want to see.
Yeah I run Plex with the Arr dockers.
I use an app on my phone and it’s all just done for you.
Someone recommends a show or movie? Open app, search for show and add it.
In the background the setup will automatically search the download providers you’ve setup (Usenet or torrents), filter them for the quality profile, download the files and place them in the correct folder ready to stream on Plex.
It’s so seamless once working.
I have a toddler who doesnt understand the concept of “We cant watch Gabbys Dollhouse anymore because Daddy is sticking it to the man.”
Nope, few more years before I can think about shitcanning any of them.
Yarr Harr?
One day yes but we’re only just now learning how to deal with compromises, sometimes "How about Bluey? works sometimes it doesnt.
If you need some help on where to begin, msg me. I can get you up and running in under an hour, so long as you have a working computer with some hard drive space (or a portable HDD).
Edit: that goes for anyone else who needs help setting up as well.
Gonna piggyback onto this, my DMS are also open. Ask away if ya need help. Fuck this streaming bullshit, steal everything.
Kid can operate a tv remote to find streaming shows. Yoohooing is a little out of their capability and would need a parent to constantly start shows.
Parent can set up Sonarr, add the shows, kid can watch them via Jellyfin.
We are not rich but the streaming services arent stressing us financially. I am however time poor, the streaming services “just work” and my daughter can navigate them well enough to open the app and pick what she wants.
I know its easy enough to do, but setting it all up and teaching my wife and daughter the new way of doing things… not to mention managing the constant requests for fresh content. Pass.
Okay and when they want a different show….?
Then daddy adds a new series to Sonarr? I admit it introduces some latency.
Okay, now you’re doing it every 5 minutes, and by the time you’re done A, they are already asking for K.
Have you considered maybe that’s not a healthy way to consume media in the first place?
Just download Mr Roger’s and sesame street and let them watch them over and over. Kids will watch the same thing ten times in a row. I know, I’ve seen them do it.
This scenario is highly undesirable, have you ever considered that not all people, especially kids want to watch content in English? (depends on the age ofc).
Most torrents offer original language with subtitles, if you say, let’s search for a kids show that is in Latin Spanish not Spain Spanish this will make the task incredible harder… we are talking about searching private trackers with this, heck even I struggle to find cartoons of my time with natal language, it was fairly impossible to do so, at least before HBO MAX and Pluto TV brought back several classics to life again… you can’t beat easiness of streaming media for that scenarios, not even with softwarr.
Most of us dealing with variations of this theme.
I’m in the same damn boat 😅
Do you think your little one could use something like Popcorn time? Those interfaces are as good as netflix, from my experience
There was a point in time where I paid for Netflix because it was simply easier than downloading everything.
That point has long passed, and I no longer pay for streaming.
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I never had subscriptions. Arr!
I cancelled my Netflix account. I keep Disney Plus around for my stepkid, and Prime Video because it comes with Prime, although I’ll probably cancel that soon too. I’m keeping Funimation.
Streaming is becoming worse than cable. At least if I got cable (which I won’t) I could PVR shit and skip the ads. The idea of paying a monthly fee to get advertised at anyway is nauseating.
Keeping Funimation? Aren’t they migrating us all over to Crunchyroll?
Can’t cancel what you never bought
I came here to say almost exactly this, tho I take issue with the use of the term “bought” since you don’t buy a subscription, even if that’s the language they keep pushing.
I pirate everything like a chad. Fuck paying for shit like Spotify, Hulu etc
I used to pay for Netflix because it was easier to have one service to watch everything, than it was to pirate.
I’ve obviously stopped.
Piracy really is a service problem for me.
I have exactly the same story.
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Netflix was the only one I ever really had, since the aughts. I am using Jellyfin now 🏴☠️ There are easier platforms, though, like popcorn time. A good VPN is a much better investment than some random streaming platform that maybe has 1 or 3 shows I actually care about watching.
I never had them. Pirate life for me!
I’d been going halfsies with my best friend for years on Netflix. Now, instead of going halfsies, we both go nonesies and Netflix eats crow.
My wife and I currently use HBO, Disney, and prime, but prime is just a bonus we don’t care about that comes with the free shipping, and her parents pay for Disney and we have one profile for us. I care most about HBO, but significantly less now than when The Last of Us was fresh. I’m trying some of the big shows and they’re pretty good, but if money were tight I wouldn’t hesitate to cut it. Millennials and Gen Z just don’t worship TV like older generations do. I personally love movies, but I’ll use my library card or sail the seas before I bend knee to ridiculous price hikes.
On the off chance that some streaming executive is in here trying to see where the line is, it’s already been crossed for many. Your shit needs to be cheap, intuitive, and reliable, all while offering a library that people give a shit about. People are paying for convenience. Pirating isn’t convenient. Going to the library isn’t convenient. Buying what we wanna see and risking owning something we don’t like isn’t convenient. And your shit no longer being cheap, no longer being intuitive, or no longer being reliable ceases to feel convenient. And your library that you offer is the lions share of what matters to most people because your competitors probably have a platform that’s largely intuitive and reliable. You need to beat them on price or on content, and you’ll be the next Steve Jobs if you can consistently beat them on both. But you need to do that before pirating becomes good enough at reliability and with an intuitive UI and makes it so easy to get good content that your bubble fucking bursts. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
I rotate one subscription at a time and binge everything I want to watch and then cancel. Only subscription I have full time is Paramount+ because of their soccer.
