I was a happy Netflix user until 2018, before that I haven't really pirated any movies (with very rare exceptions) for almost a decade but I recently started again. I'm was doing my monthly budgeting and realized I was paying for too many subscription services. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Disney+, Hulu and Crunchyroll.
My family likes to watch different types of content that is distributed on many different platforms.
I was never subscribed to these many services until a couple years ago. I was thinking which service I should cancel when I realized I had the option to cancel all of them this entire time.
I'm torrenting again and I started saving a considerate amount.
The only service I'm paying for is Spotify which I think it's fairly priced and offers all the music my family listens too (and it's convenient). All the competitors pretty much offer the same content and that's how streaming services should be.
I remember back in the day using eMule and BitChe (to look for torrents). Now I'm using Deluge as my torrent client and I I get my torrents from 1337x. What sites are you guys using?
I'd be fine with a minimal streaming service and being able to rent shit I want to watch but rental streaming prices are fucking ridiculous. It is $20 to rent Fast X. It is only $25 to "buy" it. One that is not still in theaters is still $6 to rent. And if it is ancient, it is $4 to rent. When I was a wee lad, in the early 2000s, it was $3 to rent a new release and $1 for old movies. That required a storefront and an employee. Shit should not have gone up in price 100% and 300% respectively. General inflation has not gone up nearly that much and more efficient tech is supposed to make things cheaper.
So fuck all that. I'll pay for Disney because I have a kid. But they are starting to remove shit so it is likely I will be dropping that sometime in the future.
I pay a few bucks a month for access to a giant plex share.
It's worth it to just, watch stuff, basically anything, instead of fiddling around with different apps and subscriptions and all that.
I'd happily pay a lot more for the same legal service, but it doesn't exist.
Studios, if you want my money, make everything available in one spot for a reasonable price. Or, continue your bastardization of everything, and I'll just keep watching your stuff anyway.