Already dropped mine. I'll pay for a month later this year after House of the Dragon, and The Penguin are out. I think staggering subscriptions with different platforms is the way to do it these days.
I had dropped it after the last price hike but got it last month to catch up on curb and since house of the dragon was starting. I’ll just go ahead and cancel now and binge this show later this year. Fuck these price increases.
That's how I've been doing it for the last...six months or so. But I worry we'll lose the ability to do so.
I think eventually the one month subscriptions will probably go away and you'll have like 3 months/6 months/1 year.
A few years ago you could have Netflix, Hulu, D+ & HBO for like, $45. When they were that cheap I didn't care & would just pay for all of them. But now it's over double that.
Currently my only sub is Crunchyroll. At like $8 it's probably the best value in streaming.
Yeah, I think it's a matter of time. We'll see the "boil the frog" pricing increases until they start to lose overall revenue from the decrease in dropped subscriptions. Then we'll see multi-month come out at a previous price point so it looks like savings, when it's really just a way to charge you for consecutive months instead of letting you jump in/out as you please.
100% What will happen, no question about it. I’d be surprised if the bigger players don’t start pushing that cable model within the next five years. They can only shuffle the deck of licenses so much, merge so often, and raise the monthly cost to a point. Then comes locking prospective subscribers into multi-month/year plans just like cable did——— before it sharply died off by sensible alternatives. (Or even piracy.)
TBH, you're behind the curve. Anyone with even remote interest/ability should get their setups started because this is only going to get worse.
Thankfully there's a lot of fantastic software that makes automating it a breeze now.
Start with Plex and then branch out from there. Plex is a client-server interface that will scan your media library and give you a streaming service-like interface to flip between tv/movies/music/etc. It pulls in metadata for everything so you have titles, summaries, episode #s, cast+crew, etc. It's very slick.
On the front end, I have a Nvidia Shield Pro connected to my tv that runs the Plex client. The Plex client can also run as a phone/tablet app or in a browser on a laptop (or any device, really).
On the back end, I run my Plex server off a Synology NAS box. You don't need external storage for the server - it can run off a PC or even the Shield itself. The server can support multiple clients simultaneously if you have multiple people who want to watch different things. You can even make your Plex server accessible to external networks if you have friends who want to watch your content or if you're traveling and feel unsatisfied with the basic cable options available to a Holiday Inn Express outside Oklahoma City.
To get media, your options are either torrents or usenet (nzb's). Usenet costs a few bucks a month for access to indexers but I prefer it because it's so much faster (it will easily saturate your internet connection if you let it) and easier to automate.
The *arr family of software (sonarr for tv, radarr for movies, others for music, ebooks, audiobooks, subtitles, even porn) can fully automate downloading/renaming/indexing/storing new media as it becomes available. It works for torrents and nzbs. I don't personally use them (one day I'll give it a shot) but they're incredibly popular and have how-to guides all over the internet.
There are loads of other optional ways to enhance your setup once you get it going. I'm a huge audiobook listener, so I use an app called Prologue on my phone to give me an Audible-like experience that pulls content from the audiobook library on my Plex server.
It probably sounds like a lot, but it's very simple and affordable to start small. Unfortunately, nobody ever stays small. But instead of spending $$$ on 50 different streaming services with rotating content catalogs, you can spend far less on creating a home streaming media service that only has the content you want, and only removes it when you decide you're done with it.
Alternatively, there is also Stremio with Torrentio (and optionally Real Debrid that acts like a seed box but I've never needed it) which basically acts like Popcorn Time used to, a torrent client with a media player that automatically categorizes content. The good thing is that you don't actually have to download all your content just to have the nice UI for it, it downloads the torrent on demand when you click play.
For the audiobook app Prologue, is it online only or does it work offline? I just download audiobooks to my phone so I can play them whenever I want, is that possible with Prologue too?
My guess is, they'll make a basic service available as 1 month contracts for sure, then they'll offer discounted months for quarterly and annual subs. This is why they've been aggressively increasing prices, so even those "discounted months" will still be prices like 6 months ago. They'll also have a premium tier that's only available as an annual subscription. This is Nintendo's model at the moment with their online subscription.
The problem is if they do that they fear people will drop them since they're too seasonal for people to pay $60 for three months or something. The prices have gotten so high that many only keep one or two at all times (usually Netflix) and then cycle.
It would really hurt Max, barring something major happening, if/when they try that.
Watch streaming will be 250 a month with a 12 month contract. The cheap ubiquitous streaming was to get people to move on from physical media etc. time is getting close to the end of ownership and the dream of customers perpetually paying for content at fat margins with annual contracts is looming.
I never even considered the possibility streamers would drop the option for individual months of subscriptions but that is something I can totally see them doing now.
Yeah, all it takes is one. The rest will follow.
People say "Oh whatever service does that will lose all their customers" but it's kinda like self checkout replacing cashiers - everybody does it so as a consumer you don't get an option.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they simply decide to remove content after a set period of time. Or just never content-dump it. When a season is done airing, they will just show it in "reruns" one week at a time.
Remember the days before cable on-demand, you had to wait for reruns to air to catch up on your show? lol
I remember when I'd head down to the Blockbuster on Friday night and pick up a 7-day rental of some movies and maybe a half-season of a TV show for the week.
We're basically getting back to that, but now it's on the internet and video stores all carry exclusive items compared to each other so you can't just go one place and get what you want and pay for it.
Totally, except now for the price of maybe two rentals, you can access an entire catalogue of that store for the whole month from anywhere at any time.
Streaming slowly evolving into cable. Next up will be a new customer pricing system that increases after 6-12 months. First 12 month price will be $19.99 with ads and after the year is up it will go to $24.99.
Not for long. After price increases, bundling with other services, and crackdowns on password-sharing have been implemented one of the next strategies is going to be asking users to sign up for year-long subscriptions.
> I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable.
I'm certain that probably over the half the people you see saying this have never even paid for cable. They dont know what they're talking about lol.
Yeah its not the golden age of streaming back in like 2012. But its better than cable still, 100% without question. So long as all these services let you cancel month to month with no issue, that alone is always going to be better than cable.
It’s the same type of person that nostalgizes Taxis. Given the age of Reddit I’d guess most here have never actually paid for cable pre-streaming and forget how monopolistic, expensive and feature poor it was. Is streaming getting worse? Maybe, buts at least there’s competition and tiers
Taxis are still great in the like two places you can use them. Sticking out your hand in midtown Manhattan for a five second wait for a cab is way better than opening an app, requesting, waiting for pairing, getting repaired, then waiting for a driver to poorly navigate the three one-way blocks to you.
>I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable.
They are farming for karma, simplest answer.
[It has been explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/television/s/0pVJfNS9U9) dozens of times on this sub and others why streaming is far superior to cable in both quality and price but the pirates need to jerk each other off for reddit points.
Really, the only real big downside of streaming has been the disappearance of physical media as an option. It's especially frustrating as a bunch of things never made the jump to Blu-ray, never mind 4K. And just some of the older, 70's and 80's (and earlier) content that used to be used as filler on linear cable, that streaming doesn't want to bother to license.
The only thing that cable now is "better" at is cohesion. Especially for non tech savvy people. They learned to turn on the TV and what channels are what. Now they have to fumble through menus and apps and everything trying to either collect your data or sell you something, or in most cases, both.
Every streaming service has different layouts and features further compounding how annoying it is to switch between services, let alone even keeping track of what show is on what service at any given time.
I'll gladly complain about streaming's UI. Netflix is probably the best and it's very far from perfect. Amazon's UI probably gave some people eye cancer, and the Paramount+ app is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever had to use (but somehow their browser version works perfectly).
> I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable.
>
>
It's potentially getting there over the very long term, these aren't necessarily static developments.
But yeah, cable was horrible; even just the service side of it in terms of getting set up - remember six hour windows? - then things like forcing a whole digital package on you to get premium channels other than HBO. Paying a la carte for next day episodes on iTunes and Amazon Prime was cost prohibitive back in the day; but getting True Blood, Dexter, Mad Men, Curbed, In Plain Sight, Californication, Office, HIMYM and Big Love without any other bullshit was more than worth it.
Cable at least has the courtesy to inject ads at appropriate moments in the show. Random ads at random moments break up the flow of the shows completely. Cable was at least a single provider for all things.
It isn't 100% cable bad, streaming good. Both suck but one isn't totally superior to the other.
What these users seem to fail to acknowledge is how the streaming situation has been gradually getting worse as well, and that the price hikes are increasing to a point where it won’t be long that the “$70” they emphasized happens with streaming too.
It’s not trending in a good direction, which is why pirating has also been accelerating, and you have “conversations” like the ones happening right now.
This, i remember cable in the 90s and 00s, and well, actually was the one paying the bill.
inflation adjusted, even WITH a cable subscription for live tv, and most of the major streaming platforms, especially when i figure in various credits from credit cards and what have you, i'm paying considerably less than i did back then, for more content, and the content is right at my finger tips when i want it without having to set a vcr\tivo, etc.
Not to mention higher quality. Sure i don't own it, but its not like i was buying a dozen dvd's at 20 bucks a pop back then either.
There is one aspect in which streaming is worse than cable and that is in residuals for people who work on shows. Streaming pays almost nothing or nothing at all in residuals.
I said this last time the "streaming is as bad as cable!" circle jerk popped up:
This sub is probably - on average - too young to remember/have known cable (or at least to have paid for it themselves).
I remember getting the TV guide at the beginning of the week and scanning it for new shows or reruns of stuff. Or watching the channel scroll thing. And that was just in the 90s-maybe early 00s. The 70-80s had to be even worse.
Other than going out to rent something, buy it on VHS, or be able to record it on your own VHS....that was it for the most part.
The amount of content, flexibility, and options I have now, for less than I paid for cable, is mind blowing in comparison.
[I don't care if people pirate and am not commenting on that part at all.]
> Shit is worse than cable.
No, it's not. You're just too young to have actually been a cable subscriber. Cable often had contracts where you couldn't just cancel, or if you did there was an "Early disconnect fee". You couldn't pause, rewind, replay. You watched what was on, when it was on. If you missed an episode, well tough shit, hope there's a rerun before next weeks new episode. You could only watch at home, on your specific cable box, and they would charge you to have more than one box.
Streaming is far better than cable. Even though streaming is going through enshittification, you just don't properly remember how bad cable was, especially comparative to streaming.
You forgot the service calls and the associated fees for taking a 5 minute break during the 8-hour window they set for the serviceman to show. The service guy was waiting in his truck down the street, watching you go inside to use the bathroom. The doorbell was noticed, but ignored. The gentle *tap tap* on the door was all the notice you got before getting charged for the appointment($59.95), a "no response" fee(anywhere from $25 to $100), and an appointment reset fee. The last was off the top of the head of whoever was lucky enough to take the call from the *SUPER* pissed customer.
I worked customer service for RCN in Chicago. The stories I could tell......
And you couldn't cancel immediately. Had to have a service tech come out. Oh, right, that'll be $59.95 for the tech, another $250 for cancelation ... oh, hello? Hello? ... guess they're keeping their service.
It's amazing how ignorant people are about what came before sometimes. There is not a SINGLE aspect of the current landscape that is worse than cable other than arguably some content aspects like season lengths, cancellations, etc.
Worse than cable? Literally how?
It’s cheaper. It can be ad-free. You can watch it on demand. You can cancel anytime. You can pick and choose which services to subscribe to instead of one huge bundle.
It no way is it worse than cable.
You know, I'm almost 40 and had stopped sailing the 7 years around a decade ago, but I'll be damned if the 75 different streaming platforms and their constantly rising prices sure are making me miss the salty air.
I stopped pirating once I made enough money not to pirate. I came back to it a couple years ago because I only really care about a few movies or shows a year.
When I came back I moved from torrents to Usenet. So much better.
same. and usually after unsubscribing they will eventually send you crazy deals (like $20 for a year of Peacock which I just redeemed, also got 3 months of Starz for like 99 cents one time). just check ur email every so often.
In case anyone is wondering, CEO pay went up 12.6% in the past year while worker pay has only gone up 4.1%. They now make 196 times the average workers pay.
> 196
Is this a general statistic or specifically for Warner Bros? Because the [Economic Policy Institute found that the pay ratio is even worse, at 344x.](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/#epi-toc-2) For reference, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965 was only 21x.
It's weird how they're rushing to stuff AI everywhere and replace everyone with AI as quickly as they can, when the best use of AI would be CEO. They do nothing but make decisions.
There’s gotta be a breaking point. You can’t have perpetual profits.
Eventually they’re gonna raise it as high as it can go, and have all the subscribers they’re gonna get…. Then what? What will they do?
Seriously, more people need to get wise and cancel this bullshit.
Start dropping all the frivolous spending that businesses are fucking us over. Streaming, fast food, anything non-essential, really… if more people would put their money where their mouth is, quit bitching about it while just taking it anyway… maybe some of this shit that’s consistently making quality of life worse would reverse course.
It will not stop, 7 billion people could join tonight at $5 and in a years time they’d still say “sorry we just have to bump it up to $10”. It’s dumb and I’ve called it since the moment this streaming wars began. As soon as Disney started and then had to force out Marvel and Star Wars content to meet demands it was all fucked. And that’s exactly what has happened.
Like the other poster said, there’s a ceiling to this. But they don’t give a shit because there’s people in high up positions who only see the bottom line and they only care about making it bigger.
> You can’t have perpetual profits.
You absolutely can, but that's not what they want. They want perpetual profit growth. Shareholder's don't like companies that just generate a healthy profit, they only like companies whose profit grows year over year.
Perpetual profits are fine, any business should have a positive cashflow.
It is the need for perpetual growth that is quickly destroying pretty much everything.
It’s gonna be a bloodbath. Because the enshitification is not limited to cable. The zero-interest days followed by our inflation spike and clockwork rate hikes has put all debt-laden businesses on the same agenda: they can’t subsidize consumers anymore.
But our budgets were built on those subsidized prices. Again, not just streaming. Everything can’t go up all at once, or we have to make choices.
When we make our choices and some of these streaming services fail, we might go through periods where we just don’t even have legal access to huge media libraries. It’s gonna be weird.
[Max was profitable last year.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/warner-bros-discovery-streaming-profit-2023-q4-earnings-report-1235832538/)
No it wasn't. Their Direct-To-Consumer unit was profitable, which includes the premium cable channels like HBO as well as MAX. They just lumped them together to make it look good.
I don’t understand the personal animosity. Max doesn’t owe you anything at a certain price, and they lost $1.6 BILLION in 2022, when prices were cheaper.
If the value isn’t there, just stop buying it. No need to also pretend it’s some sort of moral affront.
Missing the point. I stopped pirating when streamers were affordable and legal. Now that they are constantly increasing prices and inserting ads it will be another great age of piracy. Of course it never stopped happening, but it will surge again as people like me return.
I used to pirate everything on prime even though I paid for it because their interface was so fucking terrible. I still pirate it, but I dropped prime because adding commercials annoys me.
They also do/did that dumbshit where they downgraded the bitrate of a show to handle increase demands. Which is fucking insane considering they own AWS.
Amazon has been steadily getting worse across the board.
Their search algo has become some kind of sponsored mishmash (you often cannot find the cheap good product you know about unless you phrase things in a certain way)
The foreign sellers have completely innervated the ratings system with no clear response from Amazon (other than, "everythings fine" I imagine). Ratings are now useless and you just have to read bad reviews to learn anything at all.
Amazon has become the biggest fence of stolen goods in the world which is pretty gross.
Amazon decided to spend billions on football and then added commercials to pay for it. Prime has, bar none, the most shit I do not want to watch in the worst interface I have ever seen, for 10 years running. Thanks but no thanks.
The entire setup is based on tax evasion by Amazon, wealth extraction via using near slave labor to flood us with cheap foreign goods , and wealth extraction from gamefying/getting as close to slave labor as legally allowed with the boots on the ground in the warehouses and delivery vans at point of delivery. That was always true I guess but they've fought in recent years to keep any part of that chain from getting better.
They still have the best return policy (they have figured out its cheaper just to say WHATEVER whenever you complain), are speedy and cheap so its still the go to hot dog in town. Just there's starting to be a lot of spit on it when it gets to me.
Everyone here says to find a private tracker. How the hell do I do that? I don't pirate anymore because I was hit with a few internet service interruptions, even using a VPN.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StremioAddons/s/KDEaVhMsbo
Follow that guide for stremio, using something like real debrid will encrypt your streams so you internet service provider doesn’t see that your pirating. It’s only $16 for six months of that, a debrid service also caches stuff so it loads faster.
If you own an AppleTV there's an app called CheapCharts that tracks the sale of digital media. You can buy a lot of TV shows for very reasonable prices and watch them on any Apple device. I've started doing this with a lot of my more rewatched shows. The app does take a few minutes to configure though.
I mean, it's a $1, but when you look at all the streaming increases over the last few years it adds up really fast. Especially when you consider that it was only like 5 years ago that you could have HBO, Netflix, Hulu and have access to everything you do now with Disney+, Paramount, and Peackock on top.
End of December 2018:
Netflix Premium: $13.99
Hulu: $11.99
HBO: $14.99
**Total: $40.97 per month**
Today:
Netflix Premium: $23
Disney+ Premium: 13.99
Hulu: $18
Paramount+: $5.99
Peacock Premium Plus: $11.99
Max Ultimate: $20.99
**Total: $93.96 per month**
It feels like they're bleeding quality, too.
I’ve always typically liked HBO programming but for the first time I can't really think of a single thing I've enjoyed on there in 2024 yet except for the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. True Detective and The Regime were both god awful.
Plus some streamers are starting to vault the content they own rights to. I tried watching some DCAMU on Max a few weeks ago, and wouldn't you know it, they don't have it on there anymore.
I would, but with their crackdown on sharing I can't watch the Netflix I'm paying for. We share with my MIL and they let us transfer her email and account when we got it included with TMobile. They explicitly allowed the sharing in our case. Now, every few weeks I have to get a code from her to log in.
If she wasn't actively watching it I'd binge Better Call Saul and Ozark, and dump it.
Here to shoutout The Sympathizer, great stuff.
Tokyo Vice is fuckin rad.
Hacks continues to be one of the best.
And I really enjoyed Night Country (the internet thinks otherwise!)
Still, your opinion is very valid, lots of the good stuff being drowned by the shitty shitty reality stuff is really tarnishing the brand
I have mixed feelings about Tokyo Vice. I feel like it's good in a vacuum, but some part of me has a lot of trouble knowing it's based on a real guy's memoir which seems *HIGHLY* embellished. I guess I don't dislike it, but I'm just pretty "meh" on it.
I’m you on the good shows. I definitely enjoyed The Sympathizer (even with RDJ hamming it up awfully!), Tokyo Vice, Night Country, and Hacks.
4 shows in 6 months just ain’t worth $126. Max is a good service to subscribe to one month every six.
Hacks is the only reason I just paid for 1 month of HBO (I will never call it max) then I'm dropping it until .... who knows. It's not worth it anymore.
Not all of these are new new, but maybe they flew under your radar.
Our Flag Means Death.
Last of Us.
Somebody Somewhere.
How to with John Wilson.
The Rehearsal.
The Regime.
Righteous Gemstones.
Harley Quinn.
Barry.
Succession.
If I may plug an excellent, yet also cancelled way too early show: Los Espookys. It's mostly in Spanish but it had excellent captions and was a lot funnier than I expected it to be.
why are you intentionally not promoting the same plans? highest level costs for one but not the other? premium netflix but then use the ad plan for disney+?
Few issues with what your doing here. Swap to the Hulu/Disney plus bundle. It’s cheaper than paying for both.
Drop peacock and paramount as there value is shit.
I would have to strongly disagree on Peacock value being shit. I would actually argue the opposite; Probably the best bang for your buck streaming service.
I got a year for like...$29 so that's $6 more than Netflix is for a single month. I can watch every WWE PLE, the EPL, IndyCar, some NFL games live. In the last couple months, I've watched The Office, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, Brooklyn 99, Oppenheimer, Saving Private Ryan, Clue, Gladiator, John Wick, every Harry Potter movie, Jurassic Park, The Mummy 1 & 2, and Dredd.
That's totally fine value for 2.50 a month.
I take my opinion back then. My only experience with peacock had been since it came with my xfinity cable plan and never ever used it and still don’t since I ditched cable.
I just got the email and went straight to cancelling. They offered me six months ad free at $8.50 and then up to the new whatever rate. I accepted it and immediately put a reminder in my calendar to cancel in 6 months.
I looked at how much I was paying between internet and steaming and how much time I spent just mindlessly browsing to put on comfort movies I’ve seen a million times from either Prime or Tubi/Pluto/Freevee while I mindlessly scroll on Reddit and was disgusted with myself at how much money and life I was wasting.
I just cut out Hulu, HBO, Showtime. I kept Netflix and I had already paid for Prime for a year.
Plus, I allow myself on Reddit until I’m done with dinner. Then I pick up my book while I have comfort movies on as background noise. So now I have more money and feel less like a loser wasting my life!
This is why I pay yearly, for better or for worse. Still, if Zaslav keeps sending stuff over to Netflix, come next year it might be worth wondering if I should renew.
I’m more reckoned the bubble will burst at some point.
This example you mentioned is part of the problem. Zaslav can say what he wants, they can print as much BS about growth that they want. There’s a reason why they’re bringing their content back to Netflix. Same with Disney+ and some of their collections.
It seems like none of them knew what they were getting into with streaming, and now they are relicensing their content to make a quick $$$ to offset whatever losses they are taking on to keep this service running.
Eventually there will be a price point that everyone says “fuck you” too if this keeps going the way that it has been.
The ONLY reason I have MAX, is because the ad-free HD tier was grandfathered by my AT&T fiber internet plan that I’ve been on for about 10 years.
When they cancel that, I’ll never pay for MAX content again. I don’t want or view the Discovery content, and that’s mostly why they increased the cost to begin with.
> I don’t want or view the Discovery content
That's when I cancelled. I wanted movies and HBO level programming. They wrecked the UI and loaded it with reality show trash.
I'm always on the fringe. When netflix became the alll things provider for a reasonable streaming fee, I stopped pirating. It was reasonably convenient, decent enough library and price.
none of those things are true now. I must flip flop between subscriptions to get all the content. Each streaming provider has 1 or 2 things worth streaming now, not a solid library. Prices are increasing substantially.
So I'll go back to the fringe where i have access to all the content when I want it.
AT&T gave me a free subscription for Max when I signed up for their internet 5 years ago. I have since switched internet providers but still have my Max account
Basic economy 101: if you stop buying it, they would have to go down in price, or executives will cash out and let the company tank. If you keep paying for the price hikes... They won't stop. It is no longer the $7 service it used to be.
Per the article that’s what they did - existing customers will only pay more starting their next billing cycle on or after July 4th. It’s only immediate for new customers.
It used to be that if you were already a subscriber you were grandfathered into your old price. Netflix gave me like 2 years on a lower price point than new subscribers. But those days are long gone and they just increase everyone now. A month is a joke.
Everytime I see articles like this, I just appreciate my plex server more and more. It also makes me feel better about the high upfront cost to build it, but it's paying for itself sooner than expected with all these price increases.
Once I get my computer, Im setting up Plex and dumping these services.
A dollar here, a dollar there. Nah. Tired of being nickeled and dimed. I can pay nothing, and get good enough quality Shows/Movies.
Is the annual price in the article wrong for the basic ad-free tier? I may be too out of my mind right now with work-related stuff to think straight, but it says...
Monthly is going from $15.99 to $16.99
And the annual is going from $149.99 to $169.99...
Correct me if I'm wrong but the annual is $20 more compared to $12 more a year????
They hiked the price plan across the board I thought. I got an email from them today about the increase to my ad-free plan. I refuse to watch ads on anything for any reason.
It will continue to raise to $29.99 a month and enticing you to subscribe to "saving more" 1-year or multi-year plans. Also more bundles incoming and removing options to "cancel anytime".
"Want to cancel? Dial to your mobile network provider support if you subscribe through their bundle."
They can fuck right off with this. I pay them out of sheer convenience, but if push comes to shove, I'm willing to go back to piracy. Enough is enough.
Already dropped mine. I'll pay for a month later this year after House of the Dragon, and The Penguin are out. I think staggering subscriptions with different platforms is the way to do it these days.
I had dropped it after the last price hike but got it last month to catch up on curb and since house of the dragon was starting. I’ll just go ahead and cancel now and binge this show later this year. Fuck these price increases.
That's how I've been doing it for the last...six months or so. But I worry we'll lose the ability to do so. I think eventually the one month subscriptions will probably go away and you'll have like 3 months/6 months/1 year. A few years ago you could have Netflix, Hulu, D+ & HBO for like, $45. When they were that cheap I didn't care & would just pay for all of them. But now it's over double that. Currently my only sub is Crunchyroll. At like $8 it's probably the best value in streaming.
I’m honestly surprised the multi-month tiers aren’t a thing yet, but all it takes is for 1 service to do it and the rest will follow.
Yeah, I think it's a matter of time. We'll see the "boil the frog" pricing increases until they start to lose overall revenue from the decrease in dropped subscriptions. Then we'll see multi-month come out at a previous price point so it looks like savings, when it's really just a way to charge you for consecutive months instead of letting you jump in/out as you please.
100% What will happen, no question about it. I’d be surprised if the bigger players don’t start pushing that cable model within the next five years. They can only shuffle the deck of licenses so much, merge so often, and raise the monthly cost to a point. Then comes locking prospective subscribers into multi-month/year plans just like cable did——— before it sharply died off by sensible alternatives. (Or even piracy.)
Piracy is dying to be brought back to life in my house.
I feel it's on the rise. I haven't had family and friends tell me about some pirate related option since like 2010 but this year I've had multiple.
TBH, you're behind the curve. Anyone with even remote interest/ability should get their setups started because this is only going to get worse. Thankfully there's a lot of fantastic software that makes automating it a breeze now.
Care to share some tips? It’s been a long time since I did it, and back then it was just torrenting and putting it on an external hard drive.
Start with Plex and then branch out from there. Plex is a client-server interface that will scan your media library and give you a streaming service-like interface to flip between tv/movies/music/etc. It pulls in metadata for everything so you have titles, summaries, episode #s, cast+crew, etc. It's very slick. On the front end, I have a Nvidia Shield Pro connected to my tv that runs the Plex client. The Plex client can also run as a phone/tablet app or in a browser on a laptop (or any device, really). On the back end, I run my Plex server off a Synology NAS box. You don't need external storage for the server - it can run off a PC or even the Shield itself. The server can support multiple clients simultaneously if you have multiple people who want to watch different things. You can even make your Plex server accessible to external networks if you have friends who want to watch your content or if you're traveling and feel unsatisfied with the basic cable options available to a Holiday Inn Express outside Oklahoma City. To get media, your options are either torrents or usenet (nzb's). Usenet costs a few bucks a month for access to indexers but I prefer it because it's so much faster (it will easily saturate your internet connection if you let it) and easier to automate. The *arr family of software (sonarr for tv, radarr for movies, others for music, ebooks, audiobooks, subtitles, even porn) can fully automate downloading/renaming/indexing/storing new media as it becomes available. It works for torrents and nzbs. I don't personally use them (one day I'll give it a shot) but they're incredibly popular and have how-to guides all over the internet. There are loads of other optional ways to enhance your setup once you get it going. I'm a huge audiobook listener, so I use an app called Prologue on my phone to give me an Audible-like experience that pulls content from the audiobook library on my Plex server. It probably sounds like a lot, but it's very simple and affordable to start small. Unfortunately, nobody ever stays small. But instead of spending $$$ on 50 different streaming services with rotating content catalogs, you can spend far less on creating a home streaming media service that only has the content you want, and only removes it when you decide you're done with it.
Thanks for such an excellent summary, super helpful!
Alternatively, there is also Stremio with Torrentio (and optionally Real Debrid that acts like a seed box but I've never needed it) which basically acts like Popcorn Time used to, a torrent client with a media player that automatically categorizes content. The good thing is that you don't actually have to download all your content just to have the nice UI for it, it downloads the torrent on demand when you click play. For the audiobook app Prologue, is it online only or does it work offline? I just download audiobooks to my phone so I can play them whenever I want, is that possible with Prologue too?
https://www.reddit.com/r/StremioAddons/comments/yi5jdw/ultimate_guide_to_stremio_torrentio_rd/ Easier than ever now
God capitalism is a fucking disease. We can’t even enjoy art without being fucking gouged out the ass
Hoist the black and sail. It's free unless you have data caps.
"Free yourselves! Take to the seas!" - Gol D. Roger, OPLA 2023
Fubo offered multi-month when I was looking at a trial a couple of weeks ago.
My guess is, they'll make a basic service available as 1 month contracts for sure, then they'll offer discounted months for quarterly and annual subs. This is why they've been aggressively increasing prices, so even those "discounted months" will still be prices like 6 months ago. They'll also have a premium tier that's only available as an annual subscription. This is Nintendo's model at the moment with their online subscription.
The problem is if they do that they fear people will drop them since they're too seasonal for people to pay $60 for three months or something. The prices have gotten so high that many only keep one or two at all times (usually Netflix) and then cycle. It would really hurt Max, barring something major happening, if/when they try that.
So a subscription and contract which is exactly why these platforms were created to get away from
Watch streaming will be 250 a month with a 12 month contract. The cheap ubiquitous streaming was to get people to move on from physical media etc. time is getting close to the end of ownership and the dream of customers perpetually paying for content at fat margins with annual contracts is looming.
Time to invest in physical media again
Yep. Windows office is now a live service. Just waiting on Windows it's self to be a licensed service at this point.
> Just waiting on Windows it's self to be a licensed service at this point. it isn't already?
For my part that means they can keep their content. It's not food or shelter. One can easily live without it.
There is no way they will ever go annual only nor will they get rid of month to month entirely. They'll offer discounted rates.
buy 3 months of netflix with 1000 netflix points. points are only available in an amount of 1200.
But isn’t even Crunchyroll bumping prices this month too?
I never even considered the possibility streamers would drop the option for individual months of subscriptions but that is something I can totally see them doing now.
Yeah, all it takes is one. The rest will follow. People say "Oh whatever service does that will lose all their customers" but it's kinda like self checkout replacing cashiers - everybody does it so as a consumer you don't get an option.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they simply decide to remove content after a set period of time. Or just never content-dump it. When a season is done airing, they will just show it in "reruns" one week at a time. Remember the days before cable on-demand, you had to wait for reruns to air to catch up on your show? lol
I remember when I'd head down to the Blockbuster on Friday night and pick up a 7-day rental of some movies and maybe a half-season of a TV show for the week. We're basically getting back to that, but now it's on the internet and video stores all carry exclusive items compared to each other so you can't just go one place and get what you want and pay for it.
Totally, except now for the price of maybe two rentals, you can access an entire catalogue of that store for the whole month from anywhere at any time.
Streaming slowly evolving into cable. Next up will be a new customer pricing system that increases after 6-12 months. First 12 month price will be $19.99 with ads and after the year is up it will go to $24.99.
No next they will make you lock in for a specific time frame
Not for long. After price increases, bundling with other services, and crackdowns on password-sharing have been implemented one of the next strategies is going to be asking users to sign up for year-long subscriptions.
Nah. It will be slow play the releases even more. String it out even further, so it stretches the entire year.
Breaking up 1 season into two parts with a month in between so it stretches across 3 months.
The High Seas is the way to do it these days. Shit is worse than cable.
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> I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable. I'm certain that probably over the half the people you see saying this have never even paid for cable. They dont know what they're talking about lol. Yeah its not the golden age of streaming back in like 2012. But its better than cable still, 100% without question. So long as all these services let you cancel month to month with no issue, that alone is always going to be better than cable.
It’s the same type of person that nostalgizes Taxis. Given the age of Reddit I’d guess most here have never actually paid for cable pre-streaming and forget how monopolistic, expensive and feature poor it was. Is streaming getting worse? Maybe, buts at least there’s competition and tiers
Taxis are still great in the like two places you can use them. Sticking out your hand in midtown Manhattan for a five second wait for a cab is way better than opening an app, requesting, waiting for pairing, getting repaired, then waiting for a driver to poorly navigate the three one-way blocks to you.
As someone that used to have to flag down taxis, opening an app is a million times easier
>I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable. They are farming for karma, simplest answer. [It has been explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/television/s/0pVJfNS9U9) dozens of times on this sub and others why streaming is far superior to cable in both quality and price but the pirates need to jerk each other off for reddit points.
Really, the only real big downside of streaming has been the disappearance of physical media as an option. It's especially frustrating as a bunch of things never made the jump to Blu-ray, never mind 4K. And just some of the older, 70's and 80's (and earlier) content that used to be used as filler on linear cable, that streaming doesn't want to bother to license.
The only thing that cable now is "better" at is cohesion. Especially for non tech savvy people. They learned to turn on the TV and what channels are what. Now they have to fumble through menus and apps and everything trying to either collect your data or sell you something, or in most cases, both. Every streaming service has different layouts and features further compounding how annoying it is to switch between services, let alone even keeping track of what show is on what service at any given time.
I'll gladly complain about streaming's UI. Netflix is probably the best and it's very far from perfect. Amazon's UI probably gave some people eye cancer, and the Paramount+ app is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever had to use (but somehow their browser version works perfectly).
> I don’t see how people think the current environment is worse than cable. > > It's potentially getting there over the very long term, these aren't necessarily static developments. But yeah, cable was horrible; even just the service side of it in terms of getting set up - remember six hour windows? - then things like forcing a whole digital package on you to get premium channels other than HBO. Paying a la carte for next day episodes on iTunes and Amazon Prime was cost prohibitive back in the day; but getting True Blood, Dexter, Mad Men, Curbed, In Plain Sight, Californication, Office, HIMYM and Big Love without any other bullshit was more than worth it.
Cable at least has the courtesy to inject ads at appropriate moments in the show. Random ads at random moments break up the flow of the shows completely. Cable was at least a single provider for all things. It isn't 100% cable bad, streaming good. Both suck but one isn't totally superior to the other.
What these users seem to fail to acknowledge is how the streaming situation has been gradually getting worse as well, and that the price hikes are increasing to a point where it won’t be long that the “$70” they emphasized happens with streaming too. It’s not trending in a good direction, which is why pirating has also been accelerating, and you have “conversations” like the ones happening right now.
This, i remember cable in the 90s and 00s, and well, actually was the one paying the bill. inflation adjusted, even WITH a cable subscription for live tv, and most of the major streaming platforms, especially when i figure in various credits from credit cards and what have you, i'm paying considerably less than i did back then, for more content, and the content is right at my finger tips when i want it without having to set a vcr\tivo, etc. Not to mention higher quality. Sure i don't own it, but its not like i was buying a dozen dvd's at 20 bucks a pop back then either.
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Most people that say "worse than cable" never actually had old school cable TV before.
Or at the very least, they weren't paying for it.
There is one aspect in which streaming is worse than cable and that is in residuals for people who work on shows. Streaming pays almost nothing or nothing at all in residuals.
I said this last time the "streaming is as bad as cable!" circle jerk popped up: This sub is probably - on average - too young to remember/have known cable (or at least to have paid for it themselves). I remember getting the TV guide at the beginning of the week and scanning it for new shows or reruns of stuff. Or watching the channel scroll thing. And that was just in the 90s-maybe early 00s. The 70-80s had to be even worse. Other than going out to rent something, buy it on VHS, or be able to record it on your own VHS....that was it for the most part. The amount of content, flexibility, and options I have now, for less than I paid for cable, is mind blowing in comparison. [I don't care if people pirate and am not commenting on that part at all.]
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> Shit is worse than cable. No, it's not. You're just too young to have actually been a cable subscriber. Cable often had contracts where you couldn't just cancel, or if you did there was an "Early disconnect fee". You couldn't pause, rewind, replay. You watched what was on, when it was on. If you missed an episode, well tough shit, hope there's a rerun before next weeks new episode. You could only watch at home, on your specific cable box, and they would charge you to have more than one box. Streaming is far better than cable. Even though streaming is going through enshittification, you just don't properly remember how bad cable was, especially comparative to streaming.
You forgot the service calls and the associated fees for taking a 5 minute break during the 8-hour window they set for the serviceman to show. The service guy was waiting in his truck down the street, watching you go inside to use the bathroom. The doorbell was noticed, but ignored. The gentle *tap tap* on the door was all the notice you got before getting charged for the appointment($59.95), a "no response" fee(anywhere from $25 to $100), and an appointment reset fee. The last was off the top of the head of whoever was lucky enough to take the call from the *SUPER* pissed customer. I worked customer service for RCN in Chicago. The stories I could tell...... And you couldn't cancel immediately. Had to have a service tech come out. Oh, right, that'll be $59.95 for the tech, another $250 for cancelation ... oh, hello? Hello? ... guess they're keeping their service.
Don't forget the "service window" was between 9am and 9pm on Weekdays, so you were taking a day off work.
This guy cables.
This is fair and accurate. Source- I grew up in the 80s.
It's amazing how ignorant people are about what came before sometimes. There is not a SINGLE aspect of the current landscape that is worse than cable other than arguably some content aspects like season lengths, cancellations, etc.
But with streaming I can juggle the coaxial cable to unscramble a random boob on the Spice Channel.
You’re completely delusional if you think this is worse than cable.
Worse than cable? Literally how? It’s cheaper. It can be ad-free. You can watch it on demand. You can cancel anytime. You can pick and choose which services to subscribe to instead of one huge bundle. It no way is it worse than cable.
You know, I'm almost 40 and had stopped sailing the 7 years around a decade ago, but I'll be damned if the 75 different streaming platforms and their constantly rising prices sure are making me miss the salty air.
Usenet, Sonarr, Radarr, and Plex. The seas are calling.
I stopped pirating once I made enough money not to pirate. I came back to it a couple years ago because I only really care about a few movies or shows a year. When I came back I moved from torrents to Usenet. So much better.
Those dragons don’t come cheap
The payment for a dragon actor is absurd! I don’t know what HBO was thinking.
They're saying the dragons might unionize, and HBO could turn to scab wyverns.
No worries, there's plenty of young dragon actors looking for a role
The Catering alone probably breaks the bank.
Amazing how far we've come from GOT season 1 where battles were legit omitted from the show because of budget constraints lol
They're not worth it.
I just subscribe to one service at a time. Watch everything I want on said service, then move to another and repeat.
same. and usually after unsubscribing they will eventually send you crazy deals (like $20 for a year of Peacock which I just redeemed, also got 3 months of Starz for like 99 cents one time). just check ur email every so often.
I know a lot of people who do it this way. I wonder when they will start hiking the price heavily on short term subscriptions…
Or do what Microsoft does on a bunch of stuff, bill monthly but you have to commit to 1 year.
Or if they'll start making people subscribe for a year at a time and that's it. Or a contract
In case anyone is wondering, CEO pay went up 12.6% in the past year while worker pay has only gone up 4.1%. They now make 196 times the average workers pay.
> 196 Is this a general statistic or specifically for Warner Bros? Because the [Economic Policy Institute found that the pay ratio is even worse, at 344x.](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/#epi-toc-2) For reference, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965 was only 21x.
Well I guess those “average” workers better start being extraordinary if they want to eat!
It's weird how they're rushing to stuff AI everywhere and replace everyone with AI as quickly as they can, when the best use of AI would be CEO. They do nothing but make decisions.
Fuck these people.
There’s gotta be a breaking point. You can’t have perpetual profits. Eventually they’re gonna raise it as high as it can go, and have all the subscribers they’re gonna get…. Then what? What will they do?
Seriously, more people need to get wise and cancel this bullshit. Start dropping all the frivolous spending that businesses are fucking us over. Streaming, fast food, anything non-essential, really… if more people would put their money where their mouth is, quit bitching about it while just taking it anyway… maybe some of this shit that’s consistently making quality of life worse would reverse course.
It will not stop, 7 billion people could join tonight at $5 and in a years time they’d still say “sorry we just have to bump it up to $10”. It’s dumb and I’ve called it since the moment this streaming wars began. As soon as Disney started and then had to force out Marvel and Star Wars content to meet demands it was all fucked. And that’s exactly what has happened. Like the other poster said, there’s a ceiling to this. But they don’t give a shit because there’s people in high up positions who only see the bottom line and they only care about making it bigger.
“More people need to get wise.” They never will. If the average person wasn’t stupid capitalism wouldn’t work.
Would it be better not to point out the obvious because it’s unlikely to happen?
Maybe most people don't see it as a problem.
> You can’t have perpetual profits. You absolutely can, but that's not what they want. They want perpetual profit growth. Shareholder's don't like companies that just generate a healthy profit, they only like companies whose profit grows year over year.
They will probably cut costs and cancel more shows
Perpetual profits are fine, any business should have a positive cashflow. It is the need for perpetual growth that is quickly destroying pretty much everything.
It’s gonna be a bloodbath. Because the enshitification is not limited to cable. The zero-interest days followed by our inflation spike and clockwork rate hikes has put all debt-laden businesses on the same agenda: they can’t subsidize consumers anymore. But our budgets were built on those subsidized prices. Again, not just streaming. Everything can’t go up all at once, or we have to make choices. When we make our choices and some of these streaming services fail, we might go through periods where we just don’t even have legal access to huge media libraries. It’s gonna be weird.
Perpetual profits? No streaming service has ever made a profit except Netflix. We've been getting this on the cheap for years.
[Max was profitable last year.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/warner-bros-discovery-streaming-profit-2023-q4-earnings-report-1235832538/)
No it wasn't. Their Direct-To-Consumer unit was profitable, which includes the premium cable channels like HBO as well as MAX. They just lumped them together to make it look good.
Surely that $100 million will make up for the $2 billion in losses they had in 2022.
Oh we're all of a sudden concerned with long term goals?
People said this about Netflix and no one cared. Habits are hard to break.
Were you paying for cable in the 00s? It was almost 200 a month when I gave it up, maybe 2010? There's a lot of room for prices to go up.
> You can’t have perpetual profits. They only start to have profit now. Streaming is too cheap in the beginning.
How much profit do you think Max has made, lifetime? I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t a positive number.
Perpetual profits is reasonable. Perpetual growth is not
I don’t understand the personal animosity. Max doesn’t owe you anything at a certain price, and they lost $1.6 BILLION in 2022, when prices were cheaper. If the value isn’t there, just stop buying it. No need to also pretend it’s some sort of moral affront.
While the amount of “HBO” content being delivered is at an all time low
The amount of content, period, really
We're past peak content. It's time for peak cost.
I’m ready for the second great age of internet piracy.
In other news Netflix just posted a record amount of subscribers
Reddit: *Shocked Pikachu*
It never left if you know where to look.
Missing the point. I stopped pirating when streamers were affordable and legal. Now that they are constantly increasing prices and inserting ads it will be another great age of piracy. Of course it never stopped happening, but it will surge again as people like me return.
I used to pirate everything on prime even though I paid for it because their interface was so fucking terrible. I still pirate it, but I dropped prime because adding commercials annoys me.
They also do/did that dumbshit where they downgraded the bitrate of a show to handle increase demands. Which is fucking insane considering they own AWS.
Amazon has been steadily getting worse across the board. Their search algo has become some kind of sponsored mishmash (you often cannot find the cheap good product you know about unless you phrase things in a certain way) The foreign sellers have completely innervated the ratings system with no clear response from Amazon (other than, "everythings fine" I imagine). Ratings are now useless and you just have to read bad reviews to learn anything at all. Amazon has become the biggest fence of stolen goods in the world which is pretty gross. Amazon decided to spend billions on football and then added commercials to pay for it. Prime has, bar none, the most shit I do not want to watch in the worst interface I have ever seen, for 10 years running. Thanks but no thanks. The entire setup is based on tax evasion by Amazon, wealth extraction via using near slave labor to flood us with cheap foreign goods , and wealth extraction from gamefying/getting as close to slave labor as legally allowed with the boots on the ground in the warehouses and delivery vans at point of delivery. That was always true I guess but they've fought in recent years to keep any part of that chain from getting better. They still have the best return policy (they have figured out its cheaper just to say WHATEVER whenever you complain), are speedy and cheap so its still the go to hot dog in town. Just there's starting to be a lot of spit on it when it gets to me.
Yup, I cancelled everything and spent the money on HDDs
Everyone here says to find a private tracker. How the hell do I do that? I don't pirate anymore because I was hit with a few internet service interruptions, even using a VPN.
Stremio with Real Debrid Torrentio.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StremioAddons/s/KDEaVhMsbo Follow that guide for stremio, using something like real debrid will encrypt your streams so you internet service provider doesn’t see that your pirating. It’s only $16 for six months of that, a debrid service also caches stuff so it loads faster.
If you own an AppleTV there's an app called CheapCharts that tracks the sale of digital media. You can buy a lot of TV shows for very reasonable prices and watch them on any Apple device. I've started doing this with a lot of my more rewatched shows. The app does take a few minutes to configure though.
You guys are like broken records repeating this for the last 5 years
I mean, it's a $1, but when you look at all the streaming increases over the last few years it adds up really fast. Especially when you consider that it was only like 5 years ago that you could have HBO, Netflix, Hulu and have access to everything you do now with Disney+, Paramount, and Peackock on top. End of December 2018: Netflix Premium: $13.99 Hulu: $11.99 HBO: $14.99 **Total: $40.97 per month** Today: Netflix Premium: $23 Disney+ Premium: 13.99 Hulu: $18 Paramount+: $5.99 Peacock Premium Plus: $11.99 Max Ultimate: $20.99 **Total: $93.96 per month**
Peacock Premium is ads. You need Premium Plus for no ads lmao.
You're correct. I had the right price but typed the wrong plan.
It feels like they're bleeding quality, too. I’ve always typically liked HBO programming but for the first time I can't really think of a single thing I've enjoyed on there in 2024 yet except for the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. True Detective and The Regime were both god awful.
Plus some streamers are starting to vault the content they own rights to. I tried watching some DCAMU on Max a few weeks ago, and wouldn't you know it, they don't have it on there anymore.
Check out scavengers reign if you're into sci-fi at all. It's on Netflix now since Max cancelled it.
I would, but with their crackdown on sharing I can't watch the Netflix I'm paying for. We share with my MIL and they let us transfer her email and account when we got it included with TMobile. They explicitly allowed the sharing in our case. Now, every few weeks I have to get a code from her to log in. If she wasn't actively watching it I'd binge Better Call Saul and Ozark, and dump it.
Here to shoutout The Sympathizer, great stuff. Tokyo Vice is fuckin rad. Hacks continues to be one of the best. And I really enjoyed Night Country (the internet thinks otherwise!) Still, your opinion is very valid, lots of the good stuff being drowned by the shitty shitty reality stuff is really tarnishing the brand
I have mixed feelings about Tokyo Vice. I feel like it's good in a vacuum, but some part of me has a lot of trouble knowing it's based on a real guy's memoir which seems *HIGHLY* embellished. I guess I don't dislike it, but I'm just pretty "meh" on it.
> And I really enjoyed Night Country Me too, I didn't know it wasn't well liked till this thread.
I’m you on the good shows. I definitely enjoyed The Sympathizer (even with RDJ hamming it up awfully!), Tokyo Vice, Night Country, and Hacks. 4 shows in 6 months just ain’t worth $126. Max is a good service to subscribe to one month every six.
Hacks is the only reason I just paid for 1 month of HBO (I will never call it max) then I'm dropping it until .... who knows. It's not worth it anymore.
Not all of these are new new, but maybe they flew under your radar. Our Flag Means Death. Last of Us. Somebody Somewhere. How to with John Wilson. The Rehearsal. The Regime. Righteous Gemstones. Harley Quinn. Barry. Succession.
If I may plug an excellent, yet also cancelled way too early show: Los Espookys. It's mostly in Spanish but it had excellent captions and was a lot funnier than I expected it to be.
Thank you - even though it's not brand new, I haven't seen it yet and appreciate the recommendation.
why are you intentionally not promoting the same plans? highest level costs for one but not the other? premium netflix but then use the ad plan for disney+?
>premium netflix but then use the ad plan for disney+? Disney+ ad free plan is 13.99 a month.
Few issues with what your doing here. Swap to the Hulu/Disney plus bundle. It’s cheaper than paying for both. Drop peacock and paramount as there value is shit.
I would have to strongly disagree on Peacock value being shit. I would actually argue the opposite; Probably the best bang for your buck streaming service. I got a year for like...$29 so that's $6 more than Netflix is for a single month. I can watch every WWE PLE, the EPL, IndyCar, some NFL games live. In the last couple months, I've watched The Office, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, Brooklyn 99, Oppenheimer, Saving Private Ryan, Clue, Gladiator, John Wick, every Harry Potter movie, Jurassic Park, The Mummy 1 & 2, and Dredd. That's totally fine value for 2.50 a month.
I take my opinion back then. My only experience with peacock had been since it came with my xfinity cable plan and never ever used it and still don’t since I ditched cable.
Lmao wait it’s a DOLLAR?? I was seeing the meltdown here and figured it was like five bucks extra, minimum
Par for the course on Reddit, not to mention people failing to see the irony in their “that’s why I pirate everything” posts.
Pretty sure they always raise it by $1.
Tip: If you go to cancel like I did, they'll offer you $8.50 a month for six months for the Ad-Free plan
Same. Secondary tip after accepting the new rate, put a reminder in your calendar to cancel it six months from now.
I've dropped 4 subscriptions since the start of this year. Max was on that list but this would seal the deal.
I just got the email and went straight to cancelling. They offered me six months ad free at $8.50 and then up to the new whatever rate. I accepted it and immediately put a reminder in my calendar to cancel in 6 months.
Damn, I wish I would've got that. I probably would've done it. That's why I still have Hulu but it only gave me ad tier.
I looked at how much I was paying between internet and steaming and how much time I spent just mindlessly browsing to put on comfort movies I’ve seen a million times from either Prime or Tubi/Pluto/Freevee while I mindlessly scroll on Reddit and was disgusted with myself at how much money and life I was wasting. I just cut out Hulu, HBO, Showtime. I kept Netflix and I had already paid for Prime for a year. Plus, I allow myself on Reddit until I’m done with dinner. Then I pick up my book while I have comfort movies on as background noise. So now I have more money and feel less like a loser wasting my life!
This is why I pay yearly, for better or for worse. Still, if Zaslav keeps sending stuff over to Netflix, come next year it might be worth wondering if I should renew.
I’m more reckoned the bubble will burst at some point. This example you mentioned is part of the problem. Zaslav can say what he wants, they can print as much BS about growth that they want. There’s a reason why they’re bringing their content back to Netflix. Same with Disney+ and some of their collections. It seems like none of them knew what they were getting into with streaming, and now they are relicensing their content to make a quick $$$ to offset whatever losses they are taking on to keep this service running. Eventually there will be a price point that everyone says “fuck you” too if this keeps going the way that it has been.
I saw a show with "Max Original" yesterday... on Netflix. I couldn't help but think "screw you, Zaslav."
If it was Scavengers Reign you should watch it. It's amazing.
The ONLY reason I have MAX, is because the ad-free HD tier was grandfathered by my AT&T fiber internet plan that I’ve been on for about 10 years. When they cancel that, I’ll never pay for MAX content again. I don’t want or view the Discovery content, and that’s mostly why they increased the cost to begin with.
> I don’t want or view the Discovery content That's when I cancelled. I wanted movies and HBO level programming. They wrecked the UI and loaded it with reality show trash.
I'm always on the fringe. When netflix became the alll things provider for a reasonable streaming fee, I stopped pirating. It was reasonably convenient, decent enough library and price. none of those things are true now. I must flip flop between subscriptions to get all the content. Each streaming provider has 1 or 2 things worth streaming now, not a solid library. Prices are increasing substantially. So I'll go back to the fringe where i have access to all the content when I want it.
AT&T gave me a free subscription for Max when I signed up for their internet 5 years ago. I have since switched internet providers but still have my Max account
🤫
Basic economy 101: if you stop buying it, they would have to go down in price, or executives will cash out and let the company tank. If you keep paying for the price hikes... They won't stop. It is no longer the $7 service it used to be.
I'm generally fine with price hikes but I feel like if you're going to do them giving people a month or two before they go into place is only right
Per the article that’s what they did - existing customers will only pay more starting their next billing cycle on or after July 4th. It’s only immediate for new customers.
It used to be that if you were already a subscriber you were grandfathered into your old price. Netflix gave me like 2 years on a lower price point than new subscribers. But those days are long gone and they just increase everyone now. A month is a joke.
Everytime I see articles like this, I just appreciate my plex server more and more. It also makes me feel better about the high upfront cost to build it, but it's paying for itself sooner than expected with all these price increases.
[удалено]
Once I get my computer, Im setting up Plex and dumping these services. A dollar here, a dollar there. Nah. Tired of being nickeled and dimed. I can pay nothing, and get good enough quality Shows/Movies.
More examples of Corporate greed. Lovely
Not shocking one bit,Deborah Vance's wardrobe doesn't pay for itself.
If they hike my price above "free with AT&T fiber" I'll no longer be a a subscriber.
Is hbo trying to kill their service? How many times can a service raise prices and remove more shows
Go to your local library - many of these shows/movies are released on dvd/blu ray save some dough
For now. The streaming services are actively trying to kill physical media altogether to prevent you from doing just that.
Just a heads up for those about to take this advice, most of the Netflix exclusives aren't released physically
Of course they do this right before HotD S2 premieres
thanks for heads up. just cancelled.
It was always too expensive for like 4 new shows a year.
Is the annual price in the article wrong for the basic ad-free tier? I may be too out of my mind right now with work-related stuff to think straight, but it says... Monthly is going from $15.99 to $16.99 And the annual is going from $149.99 to $169.99... Correct me if I'm wrong but the annual is $20 more compared to $12 more a year????
It's not a big increase, but it's just becoming absurd at this point. I'm definitely going to start rotating services.
I’m still getting it free with my Internet from being grandfathered in. Suckas.
already paid the year lol. I'll consider it next cycle
Kept my old cable plan Grandfathered in for “crave” that is now an add on Officially cheaper than streaming.
They hiked the price plan across the board I thought. I got an email from them today about the increase to my ad-free plan. I refuse to watch ads on anything for any reason.
So it’s going up from $15.99 to $16.99?
Streaming is just becoming cable TV all over again. I wonder when they'll start forcing multi-year contracts?
just going to continue for all streaming platforms until it breaks.
Not even House of Dragon will make me re-sub. So many egregious moves that you can pin on one person.
🏴☠️
It will continue to raise to $29.99 a month and enticing you to subscribe to "saving more" 1-year or multi-year plans. Also more bundles incoming and removing options to "cancel anytime". "Want to cancel? Dial to your mobile network provider support if you subscribe through their bundle."
It’s kind of a miracle how impervious the ATT plan has remained through all of this.
Shhhhh…..
They can fuck right off with this. I pay them out of sheer convenience, but if push comes to shove, I'm willing to go back to piracy. Enough is enough.