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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

I switched to that model a while ago. I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. So I queue up shows I want to watch on a given platform, buy a month of that platform, and then switch to the next platform in the queue the next month.

It requires more overhead (i.e. manually cancelling and re-enabling services), but it saves probably $200-300+ per year vs. having 4 simultaneous subscriptions.

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Yeah, I switched back to just plain old piracy last year. One button on Sonarr and it's on my NAS and playable on Plex on all my devices a few minutes later. I'm done. They had the right model, but it's gone now. Oh well.

Curiously it seems to be a problem of rent seeking. “I’ll start my own streaming service, with blackjack and hookers” said every rights holder. And why is it so expensive to “rent” a movie from for example Apple? Rent two movies and you’ve paid for a month of Netflix. How did that compute?

Maybe someone with experience in the field and more up to date info will correct me, but I did some research on the subject 10 years ago while entertaining the idea to launch a VOD service in France, and the right holders expected that such a service would:

- pay them a percentage of the price of the rental, which could not go below a certain amount,

- pay a yearly license (~3500€/year just for my country for a popular movie) per language audio track,

- handle on their own sending technicians to rip the masters to then host them on the platform.

I don’t exactly remember the minimum price per rental, but the economics didn’t make sense in terms of what we wanted to attempt, so we gave up. One would have to pay an enormous amount in upfront license costs without being able to generate a big volume of views by undercutting the competition in the case where technical excellence could allow us to cut prices.

> per language audio track

I guess this explains why Netflix will have different audio options for the same movie dependent on region.

Partially. The other reason is simply to remove clutter in UI.

You can get more tracks to appear if you change Netflix UI language in settings, as described here in 2015 by Netflix CPO: https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-all-subtitles-available-in-a...

This is also mentioned in various Netflix help pages, like here, which says 5-7 subtitle languages are shown by default, and you need to change UI language to see the rest: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13245

Did you do the entire setup from scratch, one by one, or you used some script that handles everything? I mean Sonarr etc.

Also, your seedbox is that NAS or it's remote and the NAS just syncs it?

It's extremely easy to set up the entire stack (Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, Lidarr for music, Transmission (or Deluge, or Rtorrent) and Jackett for torrent handling, Plex (or Emby, or Jellyfin) in a docker-compose using the LinuxServer containers, shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to set it all up for complete automation. I have a NUC from... 2016? running all of these and handling a couple of Plex streams at the same time as well, everything works perfectly (but if you're looking for an actual NAS be careful since Plex is a bit on the heavy side, especially if you want transcoding). You can find more info on Reddit, especially /selfhosted /datahoarder /plex and /homelab

as I trust HN more than reddit (perhaps optimistically), what VPN should I use with a seedbox? I've been looking at seedhost, but wondering if I also need a VPN as well, as an american

I am currently using Mullvad VPN.

I followed a guide to set a seedbox up as a media server a year or two ago, and as a professional salesperson not developer it took me like an hour.

I've found that seedbox providers tend to have very helpful irc nerds if you run in to trouble.

Yep. The piracy age is definitely resurfacing.

I pay for one (so i don't feel too guilty), torrent what is exclusive to the others and buy Blu-Ray for the content that is genuinely good.

Currently Netfix gets some cash out of me because i have no interest in giving Amazon or Disney any more money than i have to.

After a bunch of churning I just realized I'm not currently subscribing to any of the services, and I'm okay! There's not really any/much new content now anyway, due to the covid shutdown in Hollywood.

I'm sure the next step will be to require annual subscriptions. Amazon Prime has already normalized it.

>Amazon Prime has already normalized it.

many people might have prime on an annual basis but amazon seems content with offering prime on a monthly basis as well. In fact the only way to get prime video (without prime) is monthly. https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime

Indeed. I historically have gotten Prime for a month around Christmas shopping season each year, and that's been more than enough Prime for me.

In my opinion the next step is going to be what network TV did. Single episodes available for a week, then available in reruns a year later. You can see the beginnings of this in shows like “The Boys” that have a weekly release cycle.

Services have been doing that for a while though... it's to prevent you from joining on a mass drop, binging the season then only staying for a month... with a 10 week run, you're subscribed for 3 months... and you can watch the back catalog any time.

Even Netflix has shifted their drops this way.

To be honest, for some shows, I prefer a weekly release schedule over release of everything at once. It gives you a chance to discuss an episode with friends and speculate about what will happen next.

> I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously.

It could be a great startup idea - buy proxy access to all these content services for you, and in turn, you have to maintain only one account

That sounds...illegal.

They said buy the proxy access

Not sure that will fly. The Supreme Court was not convinced last time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

And yet Locast is a thing: https://www.locast.org/

Locast limits access to users within the geographic broadcast range of the relevant TV stations. Apparently that falls within the same legal framework that allows cable TV operators to rebroadcast TV signals over their cable networks, which are similarly geographically limited.

That was very different.

This could be done as a power of attorney to avoid almost any TOS issue they could draft.

> Even though the United States Supreme Court held Aereo was "performing" the broadcasters copyrighted material because Aereo "looks-like-cable-TV" and was similar to community antenna television (CATV) systems, it was later held Aereo could not continue its service under a compulsory license, the way a cable provider would.

They lost the Supreme Court case because they were considered the same as cable broadcasting companies, but then were denied the same legal rights as cable broadcasting companies by a lower court?

I am not a lawyer but what the fuck happened there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_In....

I think they're proposing that you still pay for your own Netflix account for October, then when you switch to Disney+ in November, you pay for your own Disney+ account again -- the service just handles starting and stopping the monthly contract, for a fee. Maybe this would be illegal too.

let me clarify - Let's call the startup an "Aggregator" - you only pay monthly to this middle man aka "aggregator" but you can watch any of these services during anytime i.e any time in a year as long as you are an active user. The "Aggregator" would buy pool of accounts on their users behalf. Some more breakdown -

For this discussion - let's say there are total of 10m users for these services but they all would never be online at the same time. So, the aggregator can buy 5m Netflix accounts, 1m Apple, 1m hulu, 2m HBO, and so on.

I think it's a very fragile idea. Once Netflix, and the gang would figure out about the "Aggregator", they might start blocking it. There are ways to handle that but how long are you going to play this cat and mouse game?

If a typical potential customer pays for 2 of these streaming services for the unique content and at any given time is only using one of them to its limit after having shared with family and friends then you have the entire extra subscription as surplus value to be captured. $9/mo per household across much of the developed world with minimal infrastructure costs could fund a cat and mouse game for a long time.

That word is overloaded in this context.

The "proxy" could be a network node or a person/service/entity which contractually takes the place of one side of the contract.

Seems to work for GrubHub...

very heterogeneous industry full of mam and pap shops vs biggest companies ever with lawyer armies.

Doesn't sound much worst than libraries for books... some libraries are even digital.

I'm unconvinced that libraries would be viable if the concept was developed now.

There are also mix-tapes which could be used as another example to help your case

Yea was thinking the same, I had an idea as to how can I "lend" my account for service A out to some stranger on the internet and in exchange, can get access to HIS/HER account for service B for say 3 months.

Obviously the privacy and payment details is an issue. I like the NetFlix "guest account feature" reminds me of the "gym membership model" of the 90's bring a friend.

hi, try joinkeyring.com. We're launching a bundle with a 7 services for $35/mo: Disney +, Showtime, CBS, Philo, Starz, HBOMAX, and Peacock on computer only.

Venmo me @chinolex today and I'll give you a months free (I'm the Founder).

This is nice. r/frugal would certainly love this LPT

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