this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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That article is full of it. I was paying $120-150/month for cable on top of Internet. YoutubeTV is still only $75. I don't even bother with YoutubeTV anymore. That was way too much money per month and despite 100+ channels, there was almost nothing worth while to watch. I'm not paying $75/month for Saturday Night Live a few times per year and MSNBC on in the background while I work.
I have Netflix and Disney+. When the kids are gone I will also get rid of those. Netflix is a joke now. It takes me so much time scrolling to find a show that I even want to watch, that I usually fall asleep before that can happen. Disney+ filled their service with horrid crap from Star Wars, Marvel, and other formerly beloved intellectual property that they have sullied and ruined.
Bottom line. The Streaming services are just as bad or worse than cable was and is. The quality of the shows is mostly so low that there is nothing worth paying $75, $20, $15, or even $5 per month for. I will happily pay zero because that is what streaming and cable shows are worth, for the most part, right now.
If anyone would please just make some quality shows I would happily pay a reasonable price for it. There has been maybe one show this entire year that thought was good and that was Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Guess what? It isn't worth paying Paramount+ for a whole year just for one show. Sorry, but they all need to get their act together. Peak TV is long gone. It is Peak Crap TV now.
Severance on Apple was outstanding!
The Expanse on Amazon is good.
DS9 on Paramount.
Seinfeld on Netflix.
The thing is that I'm not interested in paying for a different service for every single show. Star Trek used to be on Netflix until Paramount got greedy and decided to spin up their own shitty service. You used to be able to get almost everything with 1-2 subscriptions. We used to pirate until Netflix and Amazon made good enough products that people decided they were worth the money.
These media companies fought tooth and nail against streaming, but Netflix made it possible. Netflix proved the business model. Now everyone wants to pull their content and put up their own shitty service with barely functional controls. They fought against progress until progress proved profitable, and now they want the whole pie. Fuck them. We're going back to piracy.
I dislike Apple so I probably won't ever watch Severance there.
I watched the Expanse.
I watched DS9 and Seinfeld when they originally aired.
Totally agree with the whole service per 1 good show thing. It is exhausting to figure out what service to get to watch a specific show. I play Star Citizen for entertainment mostly now and I probably watch Youtube 10x more than any other streaming site. I like certain podcasts, news, camping/bushcraft, tech reviews, movie reviews, and Dungeons & Dragons play streams.
I'm not sure I agree that Netflix showed that it was a viable business model. HBO was the real success with a subscription model. Its just that they weren't streaming and just on cable. I wish Netflix were HBO from 10 years ago. Heck. I wish HBO was HBO from 10 years ago now. The purchase by Discovery has screwed them up even worse than they were before. Netflix is heavily in debt and has no useful content to show for it. They only care about new subscribers and don't care about the existing ones. They seem to cancel every show that might have potential after a 8-10 episode season. It was already really difficult to even find a good show on Netflix, and then when you do, it is all but certain they will cancel it if it was good.
There is a reckoning coming. People don't have the extra income to pay for useless crap.
The irony of you complaining about streaming prices lmao
We know where his budget went tho
Also...
You guys know you can stop subscribing when you're done with your shows, right?
I'm already there.
As someone who basically hasn't since limewire... Where do I begin?
Start by reading about the torrent network. That's the easiest and most popular method now. If you want to get more technical then you can look into newsgroups, but it's a lot to ingest. For torrents 1337... Idk if I can link here, but there's the leetspeak numbers for leet, then an x, then a dot then a tw. Feel free to ask if you need more information.
Thanks for sharing! Do you recommend a VPN?
If you think your ISP will hasle you, then yes, but it's not mandatory. Do use a peer blocker to block common anti-torrent groups (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, etc) so they can't log you seeding. Most torrent clients have Blocklist features built right into them now. You used to have to configure firmware level blockers like Protowall, but it's super simple now. Some of the clients even have lists for you to choose from to populate the Blocklist. I recommend the Transmission client since it's simple, while still being full-featured.
Pay for a seedbox and install Plex on it (something like whatbox.ca). You'll have your own streaming service that you can add anything you want to, and it only costs as much as the seedbox. It will give you insularity so you don't get ISP notices, you can access it from anywhere, it's great.
From there it's just finding where you want to get your torrents from and getting used to adding them to the torrent client on your seedbox.
Fascinating! Never heard of this. Thank you.
Plex is truly great! I forgot to mention it streams music in addition to movies and tv. The Plex web app is not particularly fantastic for streaming music, but they have a separate app called Plexamp that is really great. So all in all you can use this setup to eliminate all your streaming subscriptions.
I'm pretty sure they were happy with the cable arrangement - you wanted one channel but you had to pay for everyone because it was bundled together. Now they all have to compete to get paid. They're forced into the streaming business because streaming is killing cable and they don't want to let the streaming service hold the money. If they price reasonably it would still be acceptable.
I have 5 different streaming packages and pay less than I did for cable/satellite while having a vastly superior experience.
It's not even remotely comparable.
For me it's High Seas and Tubi, Amazon Prime, but that has uses outside of watching stuff, so it's really more a side benefit
Yeah I guess I have Amazon Prime as well. I watched a few shows that were OK on Prime. I enjoyed The Legend of Vox Machina a ton. The Boys, The Expanse, and Reacher were also good. So what is that like two series per year? It is still pretty low for an entertainment value. Lucky for them it has other uses. The Wheel of Time and The Rings of Power were ambitious, but disappointing.