Well... Cable has real time streams and programming you need to catch (some do offer on-demand as well, and some extra services such as Disney and Netflix) and has tons of channels bundled in such ways you can't get the service without them (I'd pay extra not to have Fox News, for instance, even more for nobody within a 10 mile radius not to have it).
The traditional streaming services? You don't have to subscribe to all of them. I'm very happy with Amazon, Apple TV+ (bundled with iCloud) and Netflix.
> I'd pay extra not to have Fox News, for instance, even more for nobody within a 10 mile radius not to have it)
With old-school analog TV, injecting noise at the right frequency in the cable will blank the channel of your choice for all the people connected to the same cable, up to some distance... of course it's definitely illegal and the cable company can probably find you. Unfortunately with digital TV it's much more complicated as several channels will be modulated on the same stream/carrier frequency...
Every media company decided they wanted to take their own slice instead of having a small number of services cover different types of entertainment.
At this point I’d rather pirate because a) it’s cheap as free b) I’m not at the mercy of my ISP deciding how fast my stream can go, and c) I never have to worry about a show I’m watching getting pulled and locked into another paywalled garden that probably has a shitty app that my HTPC doesn’t support in the middle of me watching it.
it's not even pirating in EU if you use DDL (or torrent without uploading), check question 8 and 11 for instance in Czechia, Slovakia, Spain, too lazy to check other countries, but these are well known for allowing streaming/downloading unauthorized uploads
By the way, point 8 has an important caveat at the beginning:
"It is possible to make a copy of a work for personal use under the exceptions contained in the Czech Copyright Act."
(Emphasis mine)
Point 11 only says that you're not responsible for copyright infringement if your use falls into what's described in art.29 of the copyright act (the "three steps", which according to point 8 are described in that article), which according to google translate says
---
> (1) Exceptions and limitations of copyright can only be applied in
special cases established by law and only if
such use of the work does not conflict with the normal way of using the work and neither does it
the legitimate interests of the author are not unreasonably affected.
> (2) Free use and legal licenses, with the exception of the official license and
news (§ 34), license for school work (§ 35 par. 3), license for
reproductions of works from own collections for archival and conservation needs
[Section 37 paragraph 1 letter a)], license for temporary reproductions (§ 38a),
a license for a photographic likeness (§ 38b) and a license for non-essentials
secondary use of the work (§ 38c), apply only to the published work.
---
Which to me reads like the usual fair use exceptions you find in other countries.
In Italy, at least, downloading copyrighted content without authorization is not a felony, but you can still get fined. I expect much of the EU to have similar provisions.
The cost for streaming is pretty reasonable right now, but HBO splitting their offerings in half and most of them having ads unless you pay more to not have them will push a lot of people back to piracy.
It is really easy these days to set up a media streaming app that automatically downloads new movies and shows, all you need is a VPN. No ads, and you don't need 300 different streaming apps.
The flexibility is a nice option in contrast, at least. Like you can easily subscribe to Apple TV+, watch Severance in a month, cancel, and then use HBO to watch The Rehearsal the next month.
Amazon knows exactly what they're doing with this. Prime Video is a crap service on its own, but it isn't bad for "free" and means when you do buy/rent a movie you do it there.
I ditched Prime altogether and don't miss it. Deliveries from amazon are still free over some threshold and they sometimes arrive early.
I liked a couple of shows a few years ago but like most streaming platforms they don't invest in them or the good actors move on to other projects. There is one coming up that I might like so I might do the signup for a month near xmas shopping season and binge the show, get faster shipping on gifts, then bail.
$79 would not have gotten you any of those premium content providers. That collection of content would have easily hit 120+/month, plus a bunch of bs service charges for devices. They also did not give you the ability to drop the content you didn't want. So much of it came as packages and bundles.
Who is subscribing to all of them really? It is actually mentionned in the article that typical streaming spending is around 20-30$ per house.
Also, despite not being allowed by terms of service most accounts are widely shared accross families and friends which mean most of us pay for only one service.
I wouldn't, but when providers are randomly removing shows and movies it's really annoying. For example Netflix just removed Rick and Morty in 16 countries and a few more pending. Should I just subscribe to another provider because of that, jump between apps or rely on a good old and convenient technology which has everything (torrent)?
You can do n months on one service, m other months on another. Especially when talking about series with seasons. I don't usually mix series and follow one at a time It can take me a 2 weeks to a month watching a season, why would I be paying for another service at the same time?
Rick and Morty is good for a quick relax for 20 min after dinner, another might be good for thrills for longer time, how about a documentary the next day? It's easy to pick shows that match my interests and fits my taste, but they are scattered across platforms if they are available at all.
Unsubbing for shows feels wrong. What if I just want to watch a pilot? I'm not that calculated to manage my subscriptions based on a schedule.
What if friends come over? Sorry, no Netflix since yesterday :)
I would tend to say that if you watch shows on a daily basis you are probably in an addiction pattern.
You can always use your friend's netflix account if they have it. By showing netflix content to people outside of your household you are already breaching terms of use anyway.
I'm easily annoyed with mild inconveniences, people on HN are already furious for closing an email newsletter modal. I feel managing subscriptions, entering CC details is a lot of hassle.
LOL, watching a 50min show daily is addiction? I highly doubt any therapist would back you with this.
Breaching terms for watching a random movie with a group of friends? Probably there's a bullshit clause for that, but here comes LOL#2. Crap like that was always on rented content since the VHS age, nobody cares and nobody enforces it :)
>. Crap like that was always on rented content since the VHS age, nobody cares and nobody enforces it :)
Which is exactly why I say that you can uae your friend's account if they visit you and you agree on watching something you do not currently have access to.
Add to this, you can also rent/buy through some services (usually big tech). It might seem steep, but if you're paying $10/mo for streaming with barely anything you want to watch, one-time payment of $5-8 for a film maybe once a month isn't bad. TV seasons are overpriced but I think of it the same way, at one episode per week. That used to be the norm before streaming allowed "binging". Occasionally some content is only available through streaming in which case I burn through what I want and cancel.
just checked my situation and i’m subscribed to: netflix 4k, amazon prime, disney+, paramount+, sky/nowtv, apple tv plus, youtube premium and spotify. and this is just entertainment.
This factor pisses me off. I pay for Netflix so my kids can watch shows. They go over to their moms house and log in on a computer so they can continue to watch their shows but now I guess Netflix assumes I shared my password? They have effectively pushed me to the point that just tonight I was looking at going back to piracy. The effort to pirate is low bar these days and I can use it on any device, and house, have access to all shows and movies across all services, don’t have titles go missing, and can watch it all in 4K. I was happy to pay Netflix a fair fee while it was quick and convenient but now the price has crept higher then I like and is not convenient.
They cannot because they are struggling to maintain growth. Imagine they start banning all shared accounts, a wild guess is that 50% of them are at the very least. That would make them lose so many customers at the same time they wouldn't be able to recover from it. This + all the false positive from household members travelling. People would be so pissed of they would turn to other services that do not crack down on shared accounts before going back to netflix.
They were going to not allow you to use Netflix accounts on set top boxes when you are away from home. But they were going to allow you to use mobile.
But some Hiltons have Smart TVs with Netflix built in that let you enter your own Netflix credentials and automatically sign you out when you check out.
Hulu Live TV (not the VOD only service) was very strict about not allowing you to use it on other TVs and forcing you to change your “home” location and only allowing 5 changes a year.
You couldn’t use it on mobile for more than 30 days without going back to your “home”.
I have a vacation property. There solution was to pay for two separate accounts.
Not me. The only steady one has been Netflix (and Amazon Prime I guess, but that's more for package delivery, I've only watched a small handful of shows on there), and I might even take a break from that once I get through Better Call Saul. I sometimes get a month of HBO Max or Hulu/Disney+, but not that often.
Watch the shows on one platform for a couple months. When you've seen them switch to a different platform. Rinse and repeat. Most streamers are still dumping seasons all at once so unless you're watching reality tv this strategy works great.
Streaming services are wising up to this, and are starting to no longer dump entire seasons. They're also testing out expiring episodes before an entire season is finished.
Wasn't it obvious that if you want all shows/services, you will still pay at least the same amount? The cost of producing content is not going down just because there are more content providers. As long as the same amount of content is being produced, consumers still need to pay the same amount of money to see it all. If consumers decide to pay less, there will be less content.
You don't have to subsidize digging down another cable for streaming. One could expect streaming to be cheaper than cable since you pay for internet access separately.
...but lots of content providers with their own infrastructure, people sharing accounts and many people are subscribing only to a few content providers.
I don't think it is obvious. The default option is to hang on to your accounts, right? So if you cycle subscriptions, you are in a sense being subsidized by the people who just stick to a service.
Or, if the expectation is that most people subscribe to multiple streaming services, if you just subscribe to one (not a big TV watcher for example) you would expect to pay less I guess.
> As long as the same amount of content is being produced, consumers still need to pay the same amount of money to see it all.
And indeed this isn't the case - a LOT more content is being produced, and a lot more high budget drama is being produced. The reason we have a glut of amazing content is because of the competition between services.
One advantage of streaming over cable is no contracts. This makes it easy for you to cancel/switch services.
Because of this, and the fact that streaming is async, you can alternate services every month to save money while at the same time not missing out on exclusives.
The one big advantage beyond on demand hs scheduled programming is a la carte pricing. Consumers asked cable for a la carte pricing for years and it was never an option because no one would subscribe to a 200 dollar package then. People only really watch 5-10 channels.
With that said this was the perdictable end. These companies are going to want to grow their revenue and they are all peaking in subscriber growth so increasing pricing is the logical step.
I feel like I got into the habit of watching way too much TV during the pandemic, and haven't managed to shake it yet, but still only have like 2-3 shows in the queue at any given time. How are people watching 5-10 channels?
If you are a sports person you might watch just one team but it could be spread across multiple channels. Then you might watch a couple of shows each on a different channel. And then maybe you have one or two other niche channels you like.
And for tennis if you go pure browser, no set-top boxes:
Normal tournaments on tennistv.com for 15€/month.
Australian, French and US Open on Eurosport (online over Eurosportplayer) for 7€/month.
Wimbledon however is only on Sky, that's 35€/month, I skipped that. (That is for Germany).
It's a lot of content, affordable, and you deal with slightly broken websites. Why can't they just show the unspoiled bracket, a notification if a match is complete or ongoing, allow manual unspoilering of individual matches or rounds, and a direct link from the bracket view to the individual match video or stream? /rant
Even without sports, my spouse and I watch a bunch of shows that air at different times of the year, on different services. We watch a bunch of AppleTV+ shows (For All Mankind, Severence, Invasion, Ted Lasso, etc.), a few shows on Netflix (Stranger Things, Umbrella Academy), a few shows on cable channels (Home Town, The Gilded Age, etc.), a few over-the-air shows (The Good Doctor), etc. Like you say, there are only 2 or 3 available at a time, but they're still spread all over the place. I don't mind too much. We actually had a lull so we subscribed to Hulu for Reservation Dogs and Only Murders in the Building. When those end in the next month, we'll cancel and move on to something else.
I've worked in the cable TV industry in the past. For the most part, the cable companies have little control over the channel bundles, they really wouldn't mind offering a la carte options, but they are forced themselves to get channels in bundles from the content owners. Much of this has changed in recent years with NBC/Comcast and Charter owning more of the source content, but a lot of the other channels are sill provided by outside companies, who do not want to unbundle them.
I pay $85/month for my broadband cable alone, via the Comcast Xfinity monopoly I don't really have any other option. but I guess I'd need to pay that even if I watched no streaming TV.
Streaming isn't really competing with cable but with torrents.
If DRM ever gets good enough to block piracy (imagine displays themselves using ml to recognize what are you watching and if you are allowed to) streaming will become worse than cable ever was.
Never left cable, in part because third world problems, but also couldn't justify the extra expense a streaming service meant. Not an avid consumer of TV content anyway, one can get almost as many TVs as they want without extra stuff or extra money and since the signal is through digital the quality is on par with optic fiber.
> … are making price increases a regular occurrence
This was (is? idk) the case with cable. I used to have Xfinity and they would increase the price every year, by non-trivial amounts. My company was paying for internet, so I didn't feel that the cable price was too steep, but in retrospect I should have cancelled it earlier.
-There is no option to pick a few channels you want for cheaper than the package of channels. I would love to pick a dozen channels (which are otherwise are only available with the more expensive bundles that come with hundred+ other channels I have no interest in).
-Lack of availability of international channels. These often cost 30+ for each small separate package offered in cable, while better channel bundles are much more affordable through streaming providers- not to mention individual programs available in different platforms and news streams free online.
I don't spend a lot of free time watching things, and I have specific things I enjoy (documentaries, foreign films/TV, educational content) so paying more for cable doesn't make any sense when I can get a better variety through streaming and/or through resources freely available online or through the library. Not to mention paying high prices and still having to contend with advertisements taking up ~20% of the time and interrupting what you're watching.
Fox news has been beating out the other networks in ratings for a while now though. I have no love for fox news, but it doesn't seem true that they wouldn't last. Even more far right news networks, that have been cut out of the normal media distribution channels seem to be doing fine with organic viewer support.
If Fox news ratings fall, it's because they are bleeding viewers as they attempt to move back to the center and ditch Trump. Notice that Carlson consistently has the highest ratings of any fox news show...
I just pay for 2-3 streaming services BUT I haven't stopped paying for TV. They don't compete at all to me. Streaming is pretty bad for news and other live non-sports TV.
Patreon is a middle man. But that aside, there's a limit to the type of content you can get via Patreon, and TV shows / movies are largely on the other side of that line.
And it makes sense, film requires up-front funding and takes a fair bit of time to produce. Even one-creator studios like Adi Shankar only put out one video every year or two.
The only "feature" I would introduce to streaming services like Netflix/Disney+/etc. is make possible to "constantly stream content". When I had cable, I liked to just turn on the TV, and bang! I got content on the screen. Switch channel, and bang! we are now in the middle of a classic movie! Next channel, and bang! in the middle of a great song from the 90s!
Now, of course, I could just use "normal TV" for that. The difference is that "normal TV" doesn't offer a great catalogue like Netflix/Disney+ (to some extent).
More often than not, when I want to sit down and watch something on Netflix/etc. (e.g., some weekends), I do this:
- sit on the sofa
- turn on TV, switch to Netflix (HDMI channel)
- spend 30 to 40 minutes browsing the catalogue to find something decent to watch
- I cannot find anything decent, so I give up and turn off the TV
I like to have "background noise" from time to time, and I would prefer to have background noise coming from the Netflix/Disney+/etc. catalog than the one coming from the "normal TV" (mainly because I live in a country where I'm not fluent in the local language).
“ - I cannot find anything decent, so I give up and turn off the TV”
This is me about 50% of the time. I always hear that there is just so much content. But I would never watch most of it. I’d rather watch YouTube wood working videos all day.
That's why my wife will never move over to streaming. She has a few channels she likes to watch, and knows when her favorite shows are on. She just wants to sit down at that time, switch to the right channel, and watch her show. None of the streamers offer this, from what I can tell.
My wife and I have started traveling again, and when we visit AirBNBs, we've noticed that fewer and fewer offer basic cable with their homes anymore, so we played around with streaming and hate it. Instead of "turn on HGTV at 8PM" it's now:
1. Do some research on the Internet about which streaming service offers HGTV.
2. Sign up for it.
3. Figure out how to log into that streaming service in the AirBNB.
4. Scroll through the streaming's terrible UI to find the name of the show.
5. Decide which episode to watch ("I don't care--I just want to watch whatever is on right now!")
In some AirBNBs you can skip 2 and 3 if the host left the previous occupants logged in. But either way, it's a terrible user experience compared to "sit down and turn on the TV". So, cable still wins in our household even though it's expensive.
Youtube TV and the Hulu TV option both offer exactly that. You go to the Live tab and scroll down to your channel. You can also use an internet-only DVR if you want.
Interesting. Didn't know that. Looked it up and both Youtube's and Hulu's "Live TV" plans cost more than the incremental cost of Cable TV, so we're still back where we started.
Once upon a time I consumed content by keeping video files in folders and watching them with VLC. Then I subscribed to Netflix. Now I'm back to keeping files in folders, except now I have Plex to give me the convenience.
Join a good IRC network - I use Abjects. Subscribe to the shows and movies you want to automatically download, one of their bots sends you files as they are posted. Write a script to copy them to the appropriate folder that Plex monitors.
I have a PLEX server/torrent box behind a VPN. I then wrote a fairly simple Apple Shortcut that grabs the magnet link off whatever page I’m on, then shoots the magnet link over the torrent API.
It took some work to set up, but I shared the Apple shortcut with my wife and she now uses it and it’s super easy and convenient. So much so that I need to buy a new hard drive as she’s filled up our 8TB drive with TV shows.
I feel this year around the holidays (US) will see good deals on HDDs. Prices have held steady for a rather long time e.g. 4TB still around 80-120 for consumer and nas based drives.
Drive shucking is still viable depending on the external drive, for anyone who wants cheap(er) drives but with some work.
Sure as long as the player you buy continues to operate, the regional keys don't get borked, and the market continues to support that blu-ray player, and doesn't deprecate with a "newer", "better", "smart" version that is incompatible with previous discs.
For now. The comic OP linked to pointed out that (when it was written) GoT wasn't available on DVD anywhere. Disney is particularly bad about making their stuff unavailable in any form - expect DVD distribution to slowly go away as the content owners push you to their streaming sites.
I've been really disappointed with Reservation Dogs' arrangement. Brilliant little bite-size show, but their network means they only stream on Hulu or Disney+ (not sure if it's even on Disney+ in the US?) and they don't sell episodes á la carte at all, right now, in Canada. Even if you are okay subscribing to a new streaming service just for that show, you need to spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out which one it is for the country you are in. So I'm sure the show will soon be cancelled due to "weak viewership", probably oblivious to how difficult they've made it to actually watch the thing legally.
I feel like there was a very nice short-lived window where networks were just trying to distribute stuff profitably instead of using everything as a vehicle to increase subscriber counts, but that moment has clearly passed.
My parents used to pay $110~ a month for a cable package, decent number of channels, and HBO back in the late 90s. This is significantly more expensive than it is today.
381 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadThe traditional streaming services? You don't have to subscribe to all of them. I'm very happy with Amazon, Apple TV+ (bundled with iCloud) and Netflix.
With old-school analog TV, injecting noise at the right frequency in the cable will blank the channel of your choice for all the people connected to the same cable, up to some distance... of course it's definitely illegal and the cable company can probably find you. Unfortunately with digital TV it's much more complicated as several channels will be modulated on the same stream/carrier frequency...
nobody stops you from buying big land
I am happy with my subscription to these streaming services:
Every media company decided they wanted to take their own slice instead of having a small number of services cover different types of entertainment.
At this point I’d rather pirate because a) it’s cheap as free b) I’m not at the mercy of my ISP deciding how fast my stream can go, and c) I never have to worry about a show I’m watching getting pulled and locked into another paywalled garden that probably has a shitty app that my HTPC doesn’t support in the middle of me watching it.
https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/web/observatory/faq-cs...
By the way, point 8 has an important caveat at the beginning:
"It is possible to make a copy of a work for personal use under the exceptions contained in the Czech Copyright Act."
(Emphasis mine)
Point 11 only says that you're not responsible for copyright infringement if your use falls into what's described in art.29 of the copyright act (the "three steps", which according to point 8 are described in that article), which according to google translate says
---
> (1) Exceptions and limitations of copyright can only be applied in special cases established by law and only if such use of the work does not conflict with the normal way of using the work and neither does it the legitimate interests of the author are not unreasonably affected.
> (2) Free use and legal licenses, with the exception of the official license and news (§ 34), license for school work (§ 35 par. 3), license for reproductions of works from own collections for archival and conservation needs [Section 37 paragraph 1 letter a)], license for temporary reproductions (§ 38a), a license for a photographic likeness (§ 38b) and a license for non-essentials secondary use of the work (§ 38c), apply only to the published work.
---
Which to me reads like the usual fair use exceptions you find in other countries.
In Italy, at least, downloading copyrighted content without authorization is not a felony, but you can still get fined. I expect much of the EU to have similar provisions.
It is really easy these days to set up a media streaming app that automatically downloads new movies and shows, all you need is a VPN. No ads, and you don't need 300 different streaming apps.
Amazon apparently thinks Prime Video is worth $9/mo as you can subscribe to that alone (not that anyone does).
I liked a couple of shows a few years ago but like most streaming platforms they don't invest in them or the good actors move on to other projects. There is one coming up that I might like so I might do the signup for a month near xmas shopping season and binge the show, get faster shipping on gifts, then bail.
If you wanted a la carte offerings then you'd pay a premium for going outside the packages they offered.
While I'm not in love with the current situation, it's much better than where we were in the 2000s. At least I can say I don't want X and cancel it.
Instead of the normal couple new movies you'd watched 4 times by the end of the month.
Also, despite not being allowed by terms of service most accounts are widely shared accross families and friends which mean most of us pay for only one service.
Unsubbing for shows feels wrong. What if I just want to watch a pilot? I'm not that calculated to manage my subscriptions based on a schedule.
What if friends come over? Sorry, no Netflix since yesterday :)
I would tend to say that if you watch shows on a daily basis you are probably in an addiction pattern.
You can always use your friend's netflix account if they have it. By showing netflix content to people outside of your household you are already breaching terms of use anyway.
LOL, watching a 50min show daily is addiction? I highly doubt any therapist would back you with this.
Breaching terms for watching a random movie with a group of friends? Probably there's a bullshit clause for that, but here comes LOL#2. Crap like that was always on rented content since the VHS age, nobody cares and nobody enforces it :)
Which is exactly why I say that you can uae your friend's account if they visit you and you agree on watching something you do not currently have access to.
But some Hiltons have Smart TVs with Netflix built in that let you enter your own Netflix credentials and automatically sign you out when you check out.
Hulu Live TV (not the VOD only service) was very strict about not allowing you to use it on other TVs and forcing you to change your “home” location and only allowing 5 changes a year.
You couldn’t use it on mobile for more than 30 days without going back to your “home”.
I have a vacation property. There solution was to pay for two separate accounts.
Still a lot cheaper than cable.
My wife. Because the shows she enjoys are spread unevenly across the various streaming platforms.
It feels very much like the bad old days with cable.
Also no satellites to rocket into space.
You don't have to, but your streaming content is usually being delivered over the same cable that provides TV anyway.
Or, if the expectation is that most people subscribe to multiple streaming services, if you just subscribe to one (not a big TV watcher for example) you would expect to pay less I guess.
If you do not subscribe to all services simultaneously, but only a select few, it's still cheaper. At least as long as most people don't do this.
If you do not subscribe to all services simultaneously, but only a select few, it's still cheaper. At least as long as most people don't do this.
And indeed this isn't the case - a LOT more content is being produced, and a lot more high budget drama is being produced. The reason we have a glut of amazing content is because of the competition between services.
Because of this, and the fact that streaming is async, you can alternate services every month to save money while at the same time not missing out on exclusives.
The deal will soon change from $10/mo to $10/mo (with annual subscription) or $20/mo (month to month)
With that said this was the perdictable end. These companies are going to want to grow their revenue and they are all peaking in subscriber growth so increasing pricing is the logical step.
LSU has games on CBS and ESPN.
The Saints have games on Amazon, ESPN, CBS, NBC, and ABC.
The Pelicans have games on NBC and TNT.
And when I say ESPN, that could be ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN-U, The SEC Network, etc.
Normal tournaments on tennistv.com for 15€/month.
Australian, French and US Open on Eurosport (online over Eurosportplayer) for 7€/month.
Wimbledon however is only on Sky, that's 35€/month, I skipped that. (That is for Germany).
It's a lot of content, affordable, and you deal with slightly broken websites. Why can't they just show the unspoiled bracket, a notification if a match is complete or ongoing, allow manual unspoilering of individual matches or rounds, and a direct link from the bracket view to the individual match video or stream? /rant
If DRM ever gets good enough to block piracy (imagine displays themselves using ml to recognize what are you watching and if you are allowed to) streaming will become worse than cable ever was.
> … are making price increases a regular occurrence
This was (is? idk) the case with cable. I used to have Xfinity and they would increase the price every year, by non-trivial amounts. My company was paying for internet, so I didn't feel that the cable price was too steep, but in retrospect I should have cancelled it earlier.
-There is no option to pick a few channels you want for cheaper than the package of channels. I would love to pick a dozen channels (which are otherwise are only available with the more expensive bundles that come with hundred+ other channels I have no interest in).
-Lack of availability of international channels. These often cost 30+ for each small separate package offered in cable, while better channel bundles are much more affordable through streaming providers- not to mention individual programs available in different platforms and news streams free online.
I don't spend a lot of free time watching things, and I have specific things I enjoy (documentaries, foreign films/TV, educational content) so paying more for cable doesn't make any sense when I can get a better variety through streaming and/or through resources freely available online or through the library. Not to mention paying high prices and still having to contend with advertisements taking up ~20% of the time and interrupting what you're watching.
Also, a cable bundle forces you to pay for Fox News, which is primarily funded by carriage fees. They wouldn’t last long on robot insurance ads.
If Fox news ratings fall, it's because they are bleeding viewers as they attempt to move back to the center and ditch Trump. Notice that Carlson consistently has the highest ratings of any fox news show...
Food Network did that with Alton Brown's Good Eats Reloaded in 2018. You could watch it for free if you had a cablevision subscription.
Or you could go to the Food Network site and watch the 1st season like renting a movie.
And it makes sense, film requires up-front funding and takes a fair bit of time to produce. Even one-creator studios like Adi Shankar only put out one video every year or two.
Now, of course, I could just use "normal TV" for that. The difference is that "normal TV" doesn't offer a great catalogue like Netflix/Disney+ (to some extent).
More often than not, when I want to sit down and watch something on Netflix/etc. (e.g., some weekends), I do this:
- sit on the sofa
- turn on TV, switch to Netflix (HDMI channel)
- spend 30 to 40 minutes browsing the catalogue to find something decent to watch
- I cannot find anything decent, so I give up and turn off the TV
I like to have "background noise" from time to time, and I would prefer to have background noise coming from the Netflix/Disney+/etc. catalog than the one coming from the "normal TV" (mainly because I live in a country where I'm not fluent in the local language).
This is me about 50% of the time. I always hear that there is just so much content. But I would never watch most of it. I’d rather watch YouTube wood working videos all day.
Netflix gets this, and random content is one button press from the first screen. Kinda neat, even if it's not something I use.
My wife and I have started traveling again, and when we visit AirBNBs, we've noticed that fewer and fewer offer basic cable with their homes anymore, so we played around with streaming and hate it. Instead of "turn on HGTV at 8PM" it's now:
1. Do some research on the Internet about which streaming service offers HGTV.
2. Sign up for it.
3. Figure out how to log into that streaming service in the AirBNB.
4. Scroll through the streaming's terrible UI to find the name of the show.
5. Decide which episode to watch ("I don't care--I just want to watch whatever is on right now!")
In some AirBNBs you can skip 2 and 3 if the host left the previous occupants logged in. But either way, it's a terrible user experience compared to "sit down and turn on the TV". So, cable still wins in our household even though it's expensive.
I still have Netflix (free with my mobile provider), Disney+ (free with my Internet provider) and Hulu (got Black Friday deal for $1 per month).
Don’t really watch anything on any of those streaming services though.
https://autodl-community.github.io/autodl-irssi/
Join a good IRC network - I use Abjects. Subscribe to the shows and movies you want to automatically download, one of their bots sends you files as they are posted. Write a script to copy them to the appropriate folder that Plex monitors.
It took some work to set up, but I shared the Apple shortcut with my wife and she now uses it and it’s super easy and convenient. So much so that I need to buy a new hard drive as she’s filled up our 8TB drive with TV shows.
Drive shucking is still viable depending on the external drive, for anyone who wants cheap(er) drives but with some work.
Just curious because I tend not to (except for Equilibrium, of course).
I've heard most things worth watching are still out there later on, maybe just keep the links.
Other than the gigantic number of blu-ray and 4K discs available for movies and shows, which you can purchase to own.
I feel like there was a very nice short-lived window where networks were just trying to distribute stuff profitably instead of using everything as a vehicle to increase subscriber counts, but that moment has clearly passed.