Higher fees, more ads: streaming cashes in by using the old tactics of cable TV
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I also canceled my Hulu because of the price hike, as well as how difficult their interface is. They put things I have never watched up top, the show I would like to continue watching is several rows off screen. Very predatory.
I have moved to Plex, but will probably move off of that as they continue to poison the product.
In the end, those with physical media, and pirates win.
Check out Emby. Very similar to Plex (it's either an early fork or another XBMC offspring or both). I moved away from Plex because of there being persistent bugs and QoL issues that remained unfixed, but they started doing bullshit like VR apps etc. Emby seems to be laser focused on being a very good self-hosted media server + client, and nothing more. I'm a happy paying customer.
I wasn't overly pleased with the seeking either, but I could definitely live with that if subs worked, as the rest was quite nice indeed.
I might give Jellyfin a go at some point. Since they all are children of XBMC, I assume that the metadata format is the same, meaning all my thumbnails, posters, trailers, subtitles and so on can stay in the filesystem next to the media and it'll "just work" with Jellyfin.
Automatically injected ads are also prone to failure and either a bug in the system or a misconfiguration by the producer of a podcast can result in some broken audio including skipping forward, backwards, creating a long tail of dead air, or (most egregiously) cut it many minutes short often enough to miss a significant chunk of the ending.
Automatic advertisement injection is a huge scourge on podcast listening, not because of the ads, but how broken it ends up being in practice.
I don't think it's too big of an issue to be honest. Unlike in the 80s, streaming services now compete with bittorrent.
Gotta now fork up $3/mo in addition to your Prime subscription to get rid of ads.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/media/amazon-prime-video-ads/...
I pay for Prime... and get ads. Sucks.
I expect that given a choice between (a) having lots of Prime users or (b) running a successor to a cable network with ads, Amazon would very much prefer being a cable network to everyone.
But what sort of a pie-rat would I be without a recommendation?
https://github.com/AdrienPoupa/docker-compose-nas
This sets up all the Arrs, VPN for torrenting and sends qbittorrent through VPN, and Jellyfin (media server), and loads more. Gotta configure the docker compose and paths, but it's not that bad.
I also got it to work with ProtonVPN, killswitch and all:
protonvpn:
container_name: protonvpn
image: ghcr.io/tprasadtp/protonwire:latest
init: true
restart: always
environment:
PROTONVPN_SERVER: "SERVER IDENTIFIER"
WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY: "ITS PRIVATE :)"
IPCHECK_URL: https://protonwire-api.vercel.app/v1/client/ip
IPCHECK_INTERVAL: 60
SKIP_DNS_CONFIG: false
DEBUG: "0"
KILL_SWITCH: "1"
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
sysctls:
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter: 2
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6: 1
volumes:
- type: tmpfs
target: /tmp
ports:
- (fill these with ports you need to VPN so you can access the admin, like Qbittorent)
healthcheck:
test: ping -c 1 www.google.com || exit 1
interval: 30s
timeout: 10s
retries: 3Mind sharing how (tools/setup/etc)?
I have many shows purchased there and would like to have them on disc instead.
Looks like they have recently gone subscription only. I wouldn’t recommend them anymore.
The irony…
As opposed to actively consuming indie media on Youtube/Tiktok/Instagram?
What's the angle here? a quip on personal productivity, or a slight against corporations for being creatively bankrupt?
I just like to remind people that you don't actually have to spend your mental energy on any of this stuff!
What's Plex doing? I thought the whole point was to just be a dumb way to host your own server, and then maybe charge for curation or other convenience that you can do yourself.
I have Emby because of availability (no idea why, but Emby was on my Samsung TV app store but not Plex), but its odd to hear of such a service also trying to be greedy.
The best part is they made an update that by defaults sends e-mails your friends telling them your watch history. A feature I am sure is very well liked by all porn aficionados.
https://www.pcgamer.com/plex-says-controversial-service-that...
I don’t subscribe to sky hell I don’t watch ITV but at least that’s only adverts, they don’t try to double dip.
"Plans are changing. But don't worry, you won't be paying any more!"
... but you will get less.
On my plan they reduced the screen count, removed 4K, removed Dolby Atmos.
but for some strange reason they didn't say "... unless you want to keep the same features, that is."
In the 1980's, I recall the local Stop and Shop supermarket morphing into a "Super" Stop and Shop. It had an in-store florist.
Apparently SS&S kept the prices below those of local, independent florists until they went out of business. Then SS&S raised the prices once they'd killed the independents.
It's hard to tell if it is an attempt to gain market share early¹ or the second part of predatory pricing²
Ask your dad if he remembers the in-band signals on ESPN and CNN. Those tones were to trip automation for commercials.
Most cable TV channels are lazily running re-runs anyway (e.g. Comedy Central running reruns of South Park and "The Office" Non-Stop), which have already earned massive amounts of profits. Channels also aren't producing anywhere near as many quality shows and movies as the 1990s had, despite having much lower overhead with advancement of home editing and CGI. There are tons of individuals producing better content for TikTok than most TV & Streaming channels, but the industry is not giving them a shot because of cost cutting and lazy profit control as well.
Subscription Models are making a bad name of software as a whole, where features are slowly taken away at the whim of a company's decisions to undermine value and up-sell different tiers of service in secret, and where ads and bugs are carefully added and tweaked into software to undermine the very value a service is based on to encourage upgrades. The prices of each of these service tiers, and the their features are also constantly complicated to create class-ism that becomes a wallet-draining total barrier to success and functionality for people that can't afford to keep up with ballooning costs of subscriptions as prices get raised unreasonably to please company investors... Just take a look at Adobe Photoshop, which shuts out new artists (with high pricing) who haven't even made a dime off of their work before they can even begin to properly use the app to make a name for themselves.
I've even seen monthly subscriptions creeping into the silliest things like coffee shops and fairly essential car functional features.... Big business is waging a war on customers that has a horrible end result, and we need to be more vocal in stopping this trend of monthly subscriptions. It's a hostile move to distract us all from the real fact that customer service is being slowly killed, and companies are trying to transition us into a place where they profit no matter what the reliability of their products and services are... Worse yet, when a customer cannot cancel a subscription, this subscription model completely does not work properly, and many will end up paying for services they forget or don't even use.
When a subscriber dies, they can go on for ages still being billed on automatic payments, with no one to protest the charges and payments, which should be considered a crime...
The subscription model is based on corporate opportunism, and we shouldn't allow it to be normalized, otherwise every aspect of our lives will become a utility bill that locks us in to low value and limited services that unexpectedly zap our ability to budget.
Err, subscription is a step up from skinner boxes and micro transactions. Lets all be thankful nobody has worked out how to bring them to TV.
In a way most media are already like Skinner boxes to begin with. They want to leave you hanging and begging for the next episode, or entry, or whatnot.
I mean, we had and still have a la carte purchases available. Physically and digitally. People chose subscription models because they don't value paying $2/episode, nor $20 per season box. They want to borrow, consume, and return.
This is why Blockbuster was pushed out instead of Walmart/Best Buy's physical sections (althrough, that is slowly becoming the case too). There's enough profits off of "ownership" to keep producing cheap discs to put them on. Or to provide some file to "download".
Subscriptons can cost $100/month and it'd be a better value for people who consume dozens of hours of media a month. There's not really much to fight unless societal mindsets on how we consume media changes.
Seeing prime announce ads broke the camels back for me.
It runs on damn near everything, and is a DNS level adblocker for the whole network.
So, why complain if you're not going to do something about it?
No, that doesn't replace streaming. On the other hand, most NFL games are still broadcast. PBS is still broadcast. The old sitcoms are still on.
Similar products exist, but this was literally plug it in and you’re done levels of setup.
They discontinued it, likely cause it was a one time purchase and they don’t make money off what you watch or have an opportunity to present ads.
And since they're now media files, you can also skip over commercials and ilk.
And if you look up on this post. I have a complete automated Arrs suite with Jellyfin, VPN, and bt downloader to populate whatever you want.
This is the only way to challenge the media wonks going down enshittification on services. Cancel, and pie-rat. Do so until they start behaving.
(It's so easy to make a great starting service, and degrade it step by step and rake in money.)
You can also use something like threadfin / xteve to stream free live feeds (things like public channels, depending on where live you may have many or few options) to Plex, which you can then also record.
On the other hand, ads are a problem and I refuse to watch them. There are too many other sources of content to ever sit through an ad.
Now content quantity is enormous, but that just makes separating the wheat from the chaff even harder.
This may or may not be true, but looking at the past few years I have to say it’s subpar. That was probably exacerbated by the pandemic.
This one is next in my watch list:
https://archive.org/details/Gattaca
I've also "discovered" their software tab recently.
Nonsense.
You know what actually had a staggering amount of content? Disc-based Netflix.
They had and made available damned near everything.
I’d happily go back to slower (legal) access to damned near everything rather than stay with the status quo of heavily fragmented fiefdoms, each ever more enshittified and with comparatively narrow selections of stale low-value crap available on-demand.
Also, it's all about the delivery.
>Love the downvotes for bringing facts.
just comes off as snark. If you really want to invite more nuanced responses to the clique, say so
>I am open to rebuttals or corrections if I'm incorrect on something.
replies matter so much more than points. That's why the points aren't public to begin with. So invite that instead of pseudo-begging for upvotes.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/444870/scripted-primetim...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/str...
Total media industry content cash spend rose 14 percent to $134.6 billion in 2022 after a 25 percent jump to $118.4 billion in 2021, he noted, citing company reports and his firm’s estimates and analysis. For 2023, he forecast a 1 percent gain to $136.4 billion. Content spend in the coming years was likely to be “relatively flat or even decline,” he argued.
And the enshittified, ‘content-rich’ era is what you get when these same entities then proceed to churn out endless, mostly low-value and low-effort, variations on the existing themes. Oh boy, another reality show. Hey, look, yet another low budget third-rate superhero spinoff.
Who cares if there’s ’more content than ever’ if 99% of it is unwatchable drek?
I got the impression all the major streaming players made significant profits and grew substantially over the past decade.
Does "unsustainable" just mean they weren't making as much cash as they wanted to?
Netflix is o ly really problematic because the studios all had $$$ signs in their eyes and pulled their stuff to make their own streaming service. I was perfectly happy paying Netflix every month. But I'm not paying Amazon, Disney, Apple, Hulu and whoknowsehatelse on top of Netflix.
It'd be Youtube all over again. Ask Youtube content creators how they are treated by Google. We have a story here today of someone uploading public domain content, being struck by copyright claims, reinstated, and then hit by a different company within 24 hours.
It's better than the "studios" controlling everything. Think Paramount ruling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
Basically we need a paramount ruling for streaming. Instead of what they are actually currently doing which is to revert it.
1. https://old.reddit.com/r/blockbustervideo/comments/gum716/ho...
I do wish Netflix still had a good DVD by mail service but when many people, especially younger ones, look at you oddly if you suggest popping a DVD into a player, you know that’s a lost cause.
On 2/ can you do that with cable? Inside your own country, could you take your laptop and watch your cable subscriptions on the road? DVDs are region locked too. I've have also watch some Netflix content in Europe with my US Netflix account when I was traveling so it's not a 100% block.
> FilmRise became .. content provider on numerous ad-supported streaming services including NBCUniversal's Peacock, Amazon's Freevee, ViacomCBS' Pluto TV, Fox Corporation's Tubi, Redbox, Vudu, Crackle, STIRR and others ... the FilmRise Streaming Network has reported more than 31.5 million downloads in the U.S. and can be seen on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Comcast, iOS, Android and Apple, among other platforms.
Even if streaming prices were just as bad as cable TV, you have to admit that the lock-in effects are minimal and that's pretty great on its own: no hardware, no-contracts, no brick-and-mortar, no service appointments or technicians, etc.
With that in mind, I don't mind at all if companies are implementing these tactics. The barriers to compete are now way lower and the situation is much better for consumers (compared to ISP entertainment).
It has ads and what stuns me is how un-targeted they are. You know what I've bought and browsed recently, why are you showing me HIV meds!?*
* No, I don't have HIV and don't think I've ever searched anything remotely related to it.
Like, honestly, why? I know about human greed, but is greed so stupid as to destroy itself?
Sure, but with every artistic medium except video games you are making very little or even losing money on the medmium itself. The average episode of a TV show costs 1m dollars per episode (and I'm unfortunately being very conservative here. feel free to look up how much your favorite show costs) and it's being offered on a streaming service that people pay $5-15 a month for. BUT it is also offered alongside hundreds of other shows and payout is based on views. Even if you were the only show here, were talking about needing 100k-200k views per episode to be sustainable. But no one is paying $5/episode to begin with.
Video games only succeed because they charge these sorts of premiums (or because of various f2p monetiztions, but that's another rabbit hole). People will pay $60-70 per new release. But of course, your average AAA video game is much more expensive to produce as well, so it still has issues.
For the scale of presentation desired and the amount of money people are willing to pay, you really can't have a profitable service from the service itself. And unfortunately that mentality is part of why companies are jumping so hard into AI. pay less people, make more content faster. It's a win-win-win if you only care about money and not artistic quality and integrity.
- obviously, it wasn't on demand. You catch a show at that timeslot running at its own pace with no ability to pause. You take it or wait for the next airing, which is probably a different episode anyway. 20 years later we get recording hardware, but it's still a similar dance of remembering or programming such devices to record.
- Subscriptions to streams are monthly. Subscription to cable tended to be yearly, with monthly payments and penalties for cancelling early.
- basic cable was just that. you got maybe 10 channels, half of which were news and maybe 1 kid's network for the young ones. you'd typically get something more like a 50-60 channel package just to get some variety. As it is now, streaming still includes 99% of its catalog under the most basic package, with the only instability being if licencing or public outrage (perceived or actual) gets shows taken off.
- Ads suck all the same, but we are still far from the nearly 33% ratio of ad to content, and ads almost never disrupt your program.
- Not that they existed, but content is much more widely available. mobile devices, game consoles, Tv's that don't have to be in a specific room that your ISP ran wire through to, and computers. They have clamped down on the number of devices, but you still have much more freedom of where you want to watch content. some services even let you view content offline (not a download, just a cached copy on your device memory).
- And of course, there is curation and library organization built-in. Tailoring your viewing to you instead of whatever channel/airing slots the network and studios pitched for.
Among various other small and large factors I can list. It always sucks having stuff get worse or taken away, but we should keep in mind that this is still a far better medium for consumers.
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The main interesting point the author made was one of congress stepping in to regulate such behavior. But I'm not quite sure where and how they could. Cable TV was laid out in landlines and over airwaves that the governments took responsibility for. Streaming works over the internet which is not regulated as much. They can intervene with ISPs (and so far have done negative progress on that, between net neutrality and the ISP monopolies. But that's a whole other rabbit hole), but otherwise this is just companies doing business. Landlines were limited and it was nearly impossible for other airing stations to push themselves in.
With the internet it's a matter of hosting your own site. Which also is reassuring on why it'd be difficult for the medium to suddenly become Cable TV again. It's easier for a new competitor to rise and undercut existing companies. And on top of that, TV is no longer only competing with itself and radio: social media as well as video hosting sites means attention is harder to get than ever. If it becomes too expensive, people will just move to youtube or be satisfied with Tiktok/Instagram or whatnot. Still ad-ridden, but "free" for now (and I dont' really see those sites charging for subscriptions exclusively anytime soon)
Go read a book! Play a video game!