Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

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I'm about to cancel my Netflix (Canada) I find myself going to it scrolling around and leaving finding nothing interesting. On top of that like most streaming services shows I like take nearly 2 years for the next episode to be made. And it's only eight shows for a "season". By that time I've lost interest in any of the shows.

I have been watching more Amazon Prime lately. It seems to have older shows that I find more interesting plus some new ones I like too, but the same thing of 18 to 24 months for season 2 of eight shows. But this paying to rent inside a streaming service you are already paying for is incredibly stupid.

Disney+ was so easy, I accidentally signed up it! For one month at $1.99 then jumps to $11.99. Worth it I watched Free Guy which Amazon wanted $25 to rent while paying for Amazon Prime already. now I'm going through all the Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows.

I tried to sign up for Apple TV holy what a mess. I have an Apple ID, I had a Mac but it died. Try to sign into my AppleID and my password is rejected. Try to recover my password "check your Mac" no, it died. Use your new Apple device, nope. Use someone's iPhone, no again. Make a new apple ID, nope my gmail is already in use. Recover? Text is sent (Samsung phone) but the recovery page kicked me off when I read the text. Finally got it to work and was told 7 days to recover. Got an email and was told 14 it's days to recover my AppleID password. So Nov 27 I may make some progress.

> And it's only eight shows for a "season". By that time I've lost interest in any of the shows.

That's a good thing, tbh.

Too many good show concepts get ruined by the legacy (and very outmoded) American TV syndication business-model which forces producers to make 20+ episodes per year which really compromises the quality of a show. Netflix's business model was/is fantastic for original showrunners because if they want to make a miniseries or 8-10 episode season then that's more than fine with Netflix, because the better the overall quality the more people will be willing to pay for Netflix (also, why Netflix is fine with showing ample non-US content licensed from other countries' media industries which would never get TV air-time in the US because they (rightfully) don't want to compromise their shows by padding them out to 20+ episodes a year.

That said, I stopped watching Netflix like... 4-5 years ago and I'm still paying for it, argh.

There is so little quality on Netflix it's laughable. Anything that gets a slight following has a mediocre at best season 2 followed by 2-4 seasons of garbage. Very little is critically watched on the network because an entire 8-12 hour season is dumped on one day.

20+ episodes per year

Only the big 4 networks do this. And the people that watch them are usually too stupid/lazy to find better quality shows.

I’m a nightmare customer for streaming services. I rotate my subscriptions to watch just what I want, then churn. I’m a Netflix customer for max 2-3 months each year to catch up on the latest installments of my favorite shows.

I do exactly this - I budget for 2 simultaneous streaming subs and then just cancel one and resub another when I get bored or want to watch something on a diff service.

Tangentially, I still prefer Netflix solely based on viewing experience for web and mobile. The other services all have super awkward tradeoffs or issues.

I wish there was a way to have access to all streaming services but only pay a micro-transaction for the shows you want to watch. An a-la-carte video streaming service.

I’m considering canceling my Netflix as well. There’s a ton of stuff but I find most of it unappealing. Much of the stuff I had previously put in my watch list has over time disappeared from their catalog. I think on average I find about one thing a month to watch there.

I’ve also been going to Prime to watch and often even rent movies. There definitely seems to be a more stuff from other decades there.

On the whole, there’s such choice paralysis with all the streaming services I have now that I waste a ton of time just bouncing around looking for something to watch.

> I'm about to cancel my Netflix (Canada) I find myself going to it scrolling around and leaving finding nothing interesting.

Same, except I don't pay for Netflix, my partner does.

Anytime I have a moment of weakness and try browsing Netflix I end up wasting 20 minutes and feeling worse than before. Frustrated, drained, and annoyed.

The worst part of it is I strongly suspect they do have some content I would like to watch somewhere in there. They just make it impossible to find.

I cancelled Netflix almost 2 years ago and now watch mostly independent content creators. Most of the time I don't feel like I'm missing much.

Originally, my intention was to join friends to watch Netflix together and spend the money on snacks to share, but Covid...

How is having the option to rent stuff not available for streaming a bad thing?

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