Lots of ways to measure it but when I think about how much I pay and what my experience is like, I’m doing far better than in the cable days. I’m much happier.
I've no problem paying for content (I am "upper class"), but companies, especially Netflix clearly haven't figured things out.
For Netflix, I am mostly referring to the account sharing stuff. I did not share my account with anyone, but false advertising rubbed me the wrong way, so they went from whatever their current top tier pricing is to zero from me. Other huge gripes include streaming quality and number of streams.
Probably saner than my chaotic good approach of having gone back to torrenting but donating a subscription worth of money to the Against Malaria foundation to ease my conscience now that I'm not a broke student any more. I can't be bothered with the obnoxious subscriptions and autplay UIs
Nonsense. Cancelling is easy: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/407
My experience of being able to search the TV app on iOS or tvOS or macOS and then being given the option to play, buy, or rent the media is pretty seamless. And subscriptions are simple to cancel, so starting them is not a concern.
Complete opposite of dealing with cable/satellite TV contracts and advertising breaks when watching stuff.
So currently, sure I can move around and it is better than the cable companies, but the trajectory of where the platforms are headed is not a good one and trending towards behavior more aligned with what the cable companies do.
You see a movie or show and then want to talk about it with your friends and find that they've all either won't be back on the right streaming service for a new months or they've seen it months ago and aren't that interested in talking about it any more.
Since I limit my weekly intake, I also start shows late. A typical conversation for even a new show is as along the lines of “Oh yeah, we binged the entire thing!”
I’ve learned it’s not worth talking about the show to someone who’s seen it since they’re more often than not bursting wanting to talk about something I haven’t seen. Or 2 months later when I’m done, they’ve forgotten a bunch of it anyway, moving on to other stuff I haven’t seen.
It’s not like the old days when there were forums for shows like “Lost” just abuzz with speculation.
I've seen some other services copy this strategy a little bit, releasing 2 to 3 episodes at the start of the season, but then sadly dragging out the season after with single weekly episodes until the end of the season
In seriousness, I think this is actually a neat strategy.