It's not even surprising anymore platforms do this & act all Pikachu face why piracy is spiking
Netflix & all these streaming platforms have completely lost touch & they will lose more customers in the long run
To quote Gabe Newell on Piracy
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable."
I accidentally pirate crap I have legitimate access to because I can't be bothered to figure out which damn platform its on. I have access to quite a few through work due to my industry at no out of pocket costs.
The times I try to actually search for something, it'll be listed on multiple platforms but 0 to 1 of those platforms will actually have what I'm looking for included with the subscription forcing me to manually check each one.
Your case would apply for the legitimate use of streamio, where you can log into all the services and you can watch whatever through that service's credentials.
Rotten Tomatoes will usually say where it's streaming. Or a quick Google search of "(TV show) where streaming" will get you there. At least it used to, Google is shit these days so who knows.
I'm not arguing it's a good platform, it's not. I'm just saying they never deceived anyone about the centralized nature of the platform. Let's at least make good arguments as to why discord sucks without inventing false ones.
There's not enough of us, but I still don't care. I refuse to pay to watch ads. Also, I had Prime and they wouldn't let me watch high def with firefox on Linux, so even though I paid for it, I had to hit the high seas to watch content in high def.
There’s not enough of us, but I still don’t care. I refuse to pay to watch ads.
i had this conversation with my dad recently about how shitty everything is now with ads etc, and his response boiled down to "i don't care enough". sucks to see people being complacent in being subject to greedy corporate whims. as much as i want people with that mindset to care, i have no idea how to effectively argue against "i don't care".
Mass market subscription services won't offer ad-free precisely because of the mass market exposure available to advertisers. You need to look to niche services instead, where a critical proportion of subscribers (say 30%) won't tolerate ads as opposed to 1%. Maintaining an ad-free option in such a case is basic business sense. Not only that, you'll find the ads-on tiers are more respectful of people's attention and intellect when it comes to ad content and presentation.
very much a convenience factor – Apple broke the MP3 sharing scene with the simplicity (at the time) of iTunes – video streaming started out simple but now it’s turned into cable TV, trying to find out which service is streaming a particular show, if it’s region-locked, or gated behind a premium upgrade, or just been dropped completely, or two services are still arguing over who gets the rights, or find out all the seasons are on one service except one season is on another service …
Was iTunes popular outside of the US? Everyone I know hated they intrusive software and DRM that prevented you from playing the songs elsewhere. Don't think I know a single person who actually purchased music there.
I did, back in... 2005-6? Somewhere around there. I'm from the US, so the first part of your comment applies to me, but at the time iTunes let you put music from the CDs you owned into your collection, and made it very easy to load music onto an iPod. I was 16, with some of my first disposable income from my first job. Couldn't get music easily from anything but CDs or iTunes (Or Kazaa/Limewire, but that's a different story) at the time so it just made sense. Around the time I realized I was locked into the platform by my purchases I stopped buying there and started streaming or buying CDs again.
(Not US).
I was burnt by Sony's Mini disc DRM BS, so when iTunes came along I recognised the slimy DRM and steered well clear so much so I have never owned an apple device much less bought music from them.
Dear Netflix, I've been a loyal customer since 2013. I've been perfectly happy with our arrangement. YOU are the one terminating our contract, not me. It seems you'd prefer to get rid of a happy, paying customer in the hopes you can somehow persuade them to embrace a higher cost or shittier experience (ads). That's a bold move Cotton. Buh-bye dons pirate hat
AOL still has 1.5 million active monthly subscribers. People forget to cancel subscriptions all the time.
Subscriptions are a great way to sell a service to someone who isn't using it, and when they want to cancel it getting the spent money on something never used is generally impossible.
IMO for something like a streaming service... if you don't stream a minute of video in a month you shouldn't have to pay anything.
thing is, most of us should of known, they pulled this same crap back when they tried forcing everyone to drop the physical discs and switch to streaming only …
Guys running the one platform be like "they're pirating our show," other guy hosting a different platform be like "no, in this region it's us hosting that show so it's us they're pirating from," third guy hosting another platform be like "next month it's our platform that'll be hosting it so it'll be us they're pirating from", fourth guy hosting another platform be like "we're the guys authorized to actually be selling that show in this region at this time, so they're also pirating from us", fifth guy also hosting another platform be like "wait, they're also pirating this show only we're authorized to stream but we don't offer our service in that country"
Gabe is right, but what a lot us fail to realize in Lemmyland is that it increasingly doesn't matter. $BigCorp is spending hard to turn it into a technology issue.
They don't even have to go down. Staying stable or even going up at a consistent rate are both considered failure states, or at least unfavorable. If the rate of growth is not itself growing then they start worrying.
The only thing that keeps me with subscriptions is the cartoons my daughter watches, because they are hard to find dubbed in my language (Portuguese). It's still more convenient to subscribe than try to find the dubbed cartoons online. For everything I watch I use my arr stack.
Depending on her age of course... But you can find SRT (subtitle) files for literally almost everything, often in dozens of languages. They're super tiny too since it's basically just a txt file
There are still plenty of good deals in streaming if you have shifted to on-demand. If you want live TV or sports, they're out to gouge the fuck out of you. Luckily my Wife came around to on-demand only and an antenna. Of course, they're trying hard to take away the antenna option from everyone with ATSC 3.0.
The funny bit to me is how obvious they are about restructuring their business model. Netflix clearly wants a greater proportion of their revenue to come from advertisers, so they're charging exorbitant prices for the 4K and, in particular, standard plan while keeping the "ad-supported" plan fairly low. They were probably seeing waves of short-term subscribers in response to big releases and are trying to bait those people into staying subscribed permanently while also milking then through advertisements. I wouldn't be surprised if the standard plan is removed at some point because it's such bad value now.
Edit: I see now the article is about Australia. And the price is higher, but converting to USD the new price is still less than US $15.49 which I feel is fair. It costs me about $13.50/month in electricity for plex.
How is the standard plan a bad value? It's $15.49 for 1080p no ads. I dropped 4k a while ago because they went stupid on the price, and I will never use ad supported. If they made the ad tier free, I'd still pay the $15.49/month. Standard plan hasn't been hit with the last several price increases, which is why I still think it's a good value, and why I'm still subscribed.
I'm sure with the way things are going Netflix will end up pushing me away eventually, but they haven't yet. Dropping standard would cause me to cancel. I also have the Disney/Hulu bundle for $20 and plex for anything else. I could easily get anything on Netflix on plex.
Because of how it is priced relative to the other tiers. It is significantly closer in price to the highest tier ($7 gap) despite being almost identical to the lowest tier in terms of features ($11 gap). The only meaningful difference is ads. It's very clear that Netflix is trying to price out customers who are unwilling or uninterested in paying for all the features limited to the highest tier (4K, double the simultaneous streams, better audio, etc) and force them on to the cheaper, ad-supported plan instead because they believe they can make more money this way.
Additionally, the middle tier is priced closer to the highest tier to imply that the highest tier is great value (because it has so many extra features for a smaller price increase than between the lowest tier and the middle tier). This is a classic retail strategy designed to trick consumers into spending more money than they originally needed or wanted to because "it's better value". Consumers often conflate "better value" with "saving money", even though they are doing the complete opposite when they pay $7 more for features they didn't initially care about at all.
i dont think they've lost touch, they've never been in touch. this behavior is apparently what produces the biggest profits for the next quarter, so they'll do it until they drive the platform into the ground, then just start another one and repeat
Wow, it's almost like there's a system that enables perpetually siphoning from the lower class in exchange for cheap uninspired junk to distract you from how badly you're getting screwed.
Happens here in Germany too. We were not informed via mail but via a message when we started the app on the TV (not even on a phone). Since there are two other people on that account I decided to not just cancel but talk with both of them. We moved one tier down.. Yet.
The studio cash grab explosion of streaming services is simply too inconvenient.
Subbing to everything you want to watch would still be cheaper than renting it all before streaming.
But Netflix has changed the value proposition and the stuidios are slitting their own throats trying to catch up.
Customers will notice the change on their next bill. Netflix has quietly put up its prices across each subscription tier in Australia.
Why is this even legal, oh who am I kidding lobbying most likely. They began notifying people on May 13. Thanks for the correction @blindsight@beehaw.org.
I highly recommend doing to on a PC or Mac. Doing this initially on a phone is buggy. Essentially Streamio is just a player like VLC, but has the ability to have add-ons. These add-on doesn't need to be resetup on each device you install it on. Just sign in and it's working.
As for real debrid, I would pay the 180 days one because they give you points that you can redeem for another month or so of days.
Good luck.
Stremio Setup Guide
Part 1: Stremio
For Windows/Mac users - Go to https://www.stremio.com/ and download the relevant client for your platform
For Android users - Install Stremio through the Google Play Store: Stremio - Apps on Google Play
Choose a package and subscribe. I found that using Amazon Pay as the payment method is the most convenient (if you have an Amazon account)
Part 3: Torrentio
Go to Torrentio Lite - Stremio Addon
Towards the bottom of the page, select the "Debrid Provider" option and select "Real Debrid" from the drop-down menu. This will cause a new text box to appear underneath.
In the Debrid Options menu: Check the box "Don't show download to debrid links" and leave the other boxes unchecked.
Click "Install" at the bottom. It should open the Stremio app and prompt you with an "Install Addon" window. Click the green install button at the bottom.
Optional but highly Recommended - In Stremio, click the puzzle piece in the top right to view your addons. Click "My Addons" and uninstall the "WatchHub" addon. It's an eyesore and it clutters your streams list.
Now that you have completed the setup, you may install Stremio on any device of your choice (excluding IOS) and log in to your account to start streaming Movies/TV. Refer to the section below for Stremio installation on FireOS devices (Fire Stick, FireTV).
I feel like what I used to be back in 2006-2010, mr. family pirate, although most of my family is glad to pay for one or two services, mostly Amazon prime, which is one of the cheapest. I let my Netflix account cancel from lack of pay some 6 months ago, nobody called me yet.
Earning money in BRL and lots of stuff having a base price in dollars doesn't help us much either.
The pikachu face is capitalism working as intended, instead of the corrupt capitalism they’re used to with regions of the world carved up/tariffs/government buying the product if you’re having a bad year.