- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Piracy isn’t the only alternative to streaming! Please consider putting a side a certain amount of money each month to buy physical disks, making films isn’t free and buying disks is the best way to suport them. Then you can pirate the rest.
It’s the way of all subscription based entertainment. To increase profit eventually the choice comes down higher subscription fees or introduce ads.
And once ads are there, it’s a one-way street. Until adpocalypse.
If it’s in your systems in an open format it’s yours, if it’s outside your systems or wrapped in some kind of locked format that forces you to go through somebody else’s software it’s de facto theirs.
Due to my own experience in software development with 3rd party solutions from way back, I never adhered to Streaming solutions (even though I was tempted) and always stuck to getting my entertainment in a media format I controlled (legitimately for a long as I could, not so much once even physical media started having DRM) because I was aware that it’s risky to outsource so much control over one aspect of what you do (in this case entertainment) to an entity which, frankly, sees you as nothing else that microscopic fraction of their bottomline.
(The funny bit is that if Netflix would sell me their Series in an open file format that I could download and at a reasonable price, I would have sent lots of money their way, same as I spent lots of money on DVDs and even VHS tapes back in the day. In fact all throughout that period I was doing something like that for games: as soon as I discovered GOG with their DRM-free downloadable installers, I started acquiring all my games by buying them from GOG)
In the fullness of time, my caution seems to have been proven right.
I agree and I think games are a good example, especially with the Cloud Gaming trend that is trying to apply the same model from video streaming including both the advantages (to be fair, in particular instantaneous start, in theory) but also huge disadvantages (privacy, connectivity needed, no sovereignty, price increase, etc).
Well, it’s not that difficult to cancel a subscription…
Don’t give them any ideas
Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
I think your argument is so contrary to the ad-free reality I experience every day, I don’t think there’s any point of counter argue you as we will probably never find a common ground to debate our differing viewpoints on.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.
Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
television was designed around the advertising break
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
There are no ads on the CD I bought from the merch table at a concert last week.
What old age are you talking about? Television was not invented in the 2000’s.
And if you don’t like ads, then that is the problem.
Regardless, Netflix has historically been delivered without ads which many seem to like. You do you, take a break and watch some ads every 20 minutes, but I won’t, and will especially not pay to do it.
Just because something always used to be some way doesn’t mean it’s automatically acceptable.
TV might have been designed for the ad break but what if it wasn’t? You give Star Trek as an example, and here in the UK growing up I watched TNG episodes on BBC2, which is a tax-funded station without adverts. Did the lack of adverts make my childhood TNG experience worse? Personally I’d say it made it better.
Even in the cable TV age, to have adverts in something you are paying for is still horrible, and to me it’s unacceptable.
I will do everything in my power to not expose my brain to a barrage of advertising, and that includes not using any service where I have to subject myself to it.
Totally agree.
Broadcast TV shows where designed with advertising in mind because it was the only way to monetize it at the time (except for tax-funded of course).
When cable TV started, one of their selling points was that it didn’t have ads, at least on the “cable-native” channels.
But after a while, they started putting ads everywhere, and that of course lead to the shitty experience that made a lot of people “cut the wire” when streaming services started.I’m wondering what’s the next thing that will replace streaming, and eventually repeat the cycle.
Every major shift in how media is consumed has always come because of evolutions in the technology used to deliver it - going from just a few broadcast channels, to cable, to “on demand” cable and satellite, and finally to Internet delivery.
And it’s just really hard to imagine what delivery technology could provide any new capability beyond the always-on, bidirectional, high capacity data stream in your pocket that is the Internet we now have.
With streaming we’ve already achieved what should in theory be the best way to watch - and with the studios all having their own streaming platform now, there’s not even any middleman to undercut anymore, like there was when the cable companies were cut out by Netflix at the dawn of streaming. This is endgame.
The only thing left now is enshittification.
The one thing that could save us from this fate is if new programs and content are produced that are competitive in quality with what the current giants are putting out, giving people other places to go and forcing competition.
This is what we’ve already seen with indie studios and single developers disrupting the games industry, and perhaps with ever more achievable 3D animation, AI and other accessible production techniques we’ll start seeing this disrupt the film and TV industry too.
Good point about the indie studios. I mostly play indie games, there’s rarely any AAA game that is worth the price.
Seems like the way to go, support services that stream independent media and stop supporting the enshittified ones.
Also, I don’t know how it was in other countries, but I remember that pay-tv services in Italy didn’t have ads during programs and films, but only between the programs. It was a way better experience.
This person seems to think that CSI Miami pioneered the format. So of course it easy to find examples of them being wrong. CSI Miami wasn’t even the first CSI. So I am sure they can’t remember that premium cable channels that don’t have commercials exist. Let alone that public broadcasting doesn’t have commercials.
stremio + torrentio + real debris = W
Is there not a service like Bandcamp, but for movies and TV?
I want to pay for stuff, so the creators are rewarded, and then I own a copy.
Way ahead of you, Mr. Rossmann.
Correction: no one deserves your money. Fuck big business.
Previously, on Best of Netflix: price increases, flip-flopping on their account sharing stance (currently on “don’t do that”), removing shows without warning, iffy show recommendations by their algorithm, inability to watch shows offline etc.
So, if you’re not already pirating at this point I have to ask: what are you waiting for? Seriously, why are you giving these companies money?
You mean “boycott all privative culture and start learning how to not depend on entertainment to have a fulfilling life” right?
Soon they’ll just tap into your partner and make them speak ads throughout the day.
You may want to watch the newest season of Black Mirror
Eh I wasn’t that impressed. The episodes seem so predictable now where I can basically guess it within the first couple minutes as soon as you realize what the episode’s gimmick is.
Is that a bad thing?
I think this season was the best one yet. Sure, some episodes have been better in the earlier seasons, but this one as a whole had a much better baseline quality than the rest.
Except the fucking star trek episode. Can’t get myself to give half a shit about that.
Unfortunately I dont have a subscription to StreamBerry
You know, you and Black Mirror are laughing, But my wife sends me links to products off TikTok all the fucking time and I’m not even on TikTok.
Divorce time
I would, but they’d probably recommend her a good lawyer.
edit: even worse, I look at the fucking stuff and go ohh fuck that’s nice! Wait, I don’t want that… but wow, and it’s cheap too…
It doesn’t matter how much you loose financially. It’s not worth it to be tied down to someone who makes you so miserable.
And its better to do it sooner than later. Or you’ll regret it later.
lol
Smarttube
Wrong community?
Fair enough question. I don’t think it deserves the downvotes - the answer is informative.
Only if you don’t watch the video where it’s discussed how these AI ads would work and the implication on privacy.
Already doing it
Stremio is everything I could ever want and more.
I love Stremio it is so simple to use and relatively easy to set up, I like the set it and forget it format it has (and your settings and setup are synced across all the devices you like).
With that said, geek me can’t leave aside Kodi for good, I have a Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 and that is where I use it, even when the setup I’ve for it is somewhat heavy (it makes my Shield struggle sometimes) I love thinkering with it, because… there is fun thinkering right?
My gf does Stremio almost always though.
I used Stremio for a while and then I discovered it doesn’t seed and it is just a leech. Since then we have a Jellyfin server at home and we are able to watch everything in 4K without having to worry if the movie will play smoothly.
If I could, I would stop seeding to all the Stremio clients out there. Whenever someone brings up the seed issue most of the people say they don’t care.
Well, hopefully people will install the plugin, right?
Most won’t but that’s just reality.
My only criticism is that they have the big bang theory as the main thing shown right when you go to the website. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few people just left as soon as they saw that.
Why would that be an issue? It’s a tv show like any other one.
I agree it’s full of stereotypes and bad jokes, but it’s a show that’s easy to watch and that doesn’t require concentration. I am a Physicist and an Engineer myself, very much a geek and generally considered to have a very twisted sense of humor, but I still enjoy watching this show, generally while doing other things on the side.
Stremio is great.
Yep, link it with real debrid As you are, sailing the seas in style… Great UI. Evan has a calendar to keep track of your series.
Trakt too 🫡
Yeah… Trakt also started in the enshitification path though (for some it has been there for a while).
idk its free and it lets me subscribe to lists so I can find stuff easily. Until they break that I won’t notice.
I am an old pirate and I cringe when people bash debrid services for their pirate pride, honestly it is a life changer if you are willing to switch to fully stream (I still seed the content I gather with the Arr stack for my Plex).
It just seems silly to be like “I’m not going to pay for streaming, so I’m going to pirate” and then paying someone to do the piracy for you.
Isn’t the problem that legal streaming services don’t provide a good enough service/content? Even if you put the cash out to subscribe to all services, searching each one, one at a time, they still might not have the video content you want. The market failed us, and culture is locked away.
It’s basically a seedbox, people have been using those for piracy for years. It’s a convenient way to have access to an Internet connection that has several times more throughput than your home connection. You can configure Stremio to just grab torrents directly if you don’t want to use a debrid service.
It might be silly, but do you know what else is silly? The price of the service, honestly 3 bucks per month should save you a ton of headaches that you would get if you want to stream torrents.
It’s because paying isn’t the issue. I’m not rejecting streaming on the basis of price (though, the current price of paying for even a couple at once doesn’t help), I’m rejecting it on the basis of it being a fractured, inconsistent and lacking service that fundamentally acts against the interest of its users. If a streaming service offered the same things stremio+debrid does I’d happily pay 10x the price.
People used to pay others for burnt DVDs and CDs back in the day if they didn’t have a pc with a burner themselves. Same thing really.
I love it, but I wish there was a way to still seed while using it.
When using Stremio you are seeding. There’s a cache size that holds a specific size that you will be uploading back. As long as Stremio is running in the background you will be seeding.
While using Stremio alone without a debrid service?
I think you do… perhaps not in the healthiest way, but it is something.
Is this how everyone used to say “use plex. It’s easy!” But plex was actually a piece of crap that most people couldn’t run properly?
Plex is a solid meh/10 back end wise, provided you have the knowledge to run the docker container it’s not that bad.
Running it standalone is potentially effort.
My main issue with plex is it’s transition into enshittification as a service.
No it’s like Netflix for torrents /real Debrid and really very simple to set up.
Download stremio.
Optionally pay for a Debrid service such as real Debrid (this will basically give you a smoother experience for a couple dollars a month)
Search torrentio
Choose the options (very self explanatory) and install the addon.
You’re literally done. Start playing any show/movie you like. It’ll work.
