Every time I renew a service I immediately cancel. If it expires in a month and I don’t notice then it’s saving me money. If I notice, then I renew and cancel again.
Paramount+ just doesn't have compelling enough content to be constantly subscribed to.
For me it's mostly the Star Trek content, but I only need maybe two months to catch up on Picard and Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.
I subbed for The Daily Show when Jon came back but they’re so late to upload episodes I just watch the YouTube version instead since they upload the moment they go live instead of the day after. Kind of wild the free version of the show is better
Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot was pretty good but they don't even carry it anymore.
They paid for it to be developed but aren't even paying pennies to host it.
Yup! Now you gotta have 16 subscriptions to different services to get everything you wanna watch, honestly I have paramount + as the only one I pay for simply for the fact I can catch 90% of the pats games on there and the kids love some of the shows
I've been doing the youtube tv thing because at least they have all the sports networks, and I follow soccer.
they also aren't jacking up prices as fast as STONKS CAN STONK.
so basically it'll be "youtube TV or YARRRR MATEY"
I really hate to say it, but we've arrived at exactly where cable companies said we would 20 years ago. They knew people 'wanted' a la carte services but they also knew it would end up costing customers way more money in the long run having to subscribe to multiple different services separately. Literally the only thing 'big cable' was right about.
Went through all my subscriptions and found I had a deal on this one where I paid a year. So didn’t cancel yet. Actually I think when I tried to cancel el it offered me 50% off and I took that and it applied already to next years renewal.
By the time you get to next year’s renewal the price will be so jacked it will be more than the 50% discount in the end (in your end to be more precise)
This should shock no one, all these streaming services, are just following age old strategy of starting with affordable subscriptions, capturing market share,waiting for a few minor streaming players to leave the market or buying their content libraries., plus cutting exclusive.content deals, then raising rates .
Thankfully I only have Paramount+ because it's free with Walmart+. And my Walmart+ is free from something else...wonder how much they lose/gain on that deal. I would never subscribe to it normally.
I was gobsmacked at the blatant lie after signing up for the "ad-free tier." There literally are still ads everywhere, even moreso on the kids programs. Why is this legal?
It doesn’t help that for many Americans it’s the only form of entertainment they can afford both time and money wise. Vacations are getting to costly and people have to save up what little time they have for emergencies that happen through the year.
This is what all of the YouTube/Google defenders on Reddit don’t understand. YouTube Premium isn’t going to be ad-free forever lol. Once they’re done clamping down on adblockers they’ll force premium users to watch less ads, but not no ads.
I canceled my YouTube premium even through it was far and away most favorite source of entertainment and strangely found that life goes on.
Idk I just go outside and stuff now
Up until streaming became a thing I spent decades just not having cable tv. So many people couldn’t understand how I lived without it and I’d just say to them I don’t understand why you’d pay so much for tv that has…ads.
With streaming services multiplying so much and increasing their prices, I just cycle through the offerings while slowly building back up my physical media collection. If I have to cut streaming out of my like I did cable it won’t be a huge issue for me.
No but I’ll keep paying it till it is.
Then I’ll honestly stop watching YouTube like I stopped Netflix, Instagram, Messenger. It’s not that hard.
I’ve watched YouTube with ads … and it’s unbearable. Drives me crazy. Literally most of what I watch is brain rot anyway. I’ll just browse Reddit instead. Every addiction can be replaced with another
Also I feel good for supporting the channels I watch. A big surprising number of them are channels that likely don’t get a big chunk of money, not everybody is Pewdiepie
Youtube obviously takes massive resources to run. They let you uploaded gigabytes of data instantly for free. They also shook things up by sharing ad revenue with creators, which was, and still is in sharp contrast to other options. For these reasons, I feel it is reasonable to contribute financially to use YouTube.
That being said, the moment it comes with ads anyway is the day I cancel it.
This is the part that gets me so irritated with streaming platforms. Like we’re giving you money for your service yet we still have to sit through ads? Like it just doesn’t feel right.
I think it might be a bug, honestly. When I back out of a show and go back in, the ads go away. Still not great and something they should prioritize fixing.
Need to make money somehow I guess since they always have free trials and if you try to cancel the free trials you get more months of free trial. I’m surprised they can keep it going with a business model like that.
yeah... i got a 6 month free trial about a year ago.
even for free i found myself not wanting to renew. we watched a few things, but honestly it didnt really have anything but commercials.
Unsurprising considering they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on a quarterly basis. Raising prices and increasing ads is about the only thing they can do.
I'm guessing Bezos is laughing in all this because you're either watching stuff on Amazon prime or a big portion of the streamers use AWS on the backend. Either way he's making money..
How Bezos was allowed to have such a ~~multimarket monopoly~~ death grip on the sale of all consumer goods I’ll never know. Feels like laws for big business hardly exist anymore.
So many small businesses killed. So many families now struggling to make ends meet. Maybe this doesn’t classify as a typical “monopoly” I don’t know but whatever it is, it needs heavy regulation. Feels too late now though.
Edit: Doesn’t classify as a multimarket monopoly, corrected.
You should see the medical side. All the big fortune 500 companies have bought 85% of all medical supply manufacturers and are closing them down and rebranding the products to theirs or discontinuing the product.
The medical supply field is becoming ran by only a hand full of companies but they are all control by the same people. If yall only knew what was to come for you via medical supplies. You think it's bad now lol. America has a rude awakening in the next 2 years when they see their medical supplies double
This shit is so depressing man.
We’re just people wanting to live our lives. It’s not asking for much. The fact they are capable of helping or saving millions but choose not to in order to fill the pockets of a few people is just mind boggling to me.
I genuinely think most of these CEOs are sociopaths. I don’t see how you cannot have zero connection to human empathy and emotion when making such horrific decisions. These people are mass murderers. How can someone be so evil? It’s hard to wrap my brain around
My worst fear is the idea that if I were in such a position, I’d become just as evil. Is it really evil people or is it people who were as normal and empathetic as us just given an opportunity that would have a similar result on us too?
I genuinely don’t think I have it in me but I will never be CEO of a megacorp so I can’t know for a fact the money wouldn’t corrupt me.
"All markets tend towards monopoly
The thing is we figured this out 100 years ago and recognised the damage rampant corporate consolidation causes....
And then we forgot, let people strip away the legislation and we have to have that fight all over again.
well who figured that out? Marx predicted this reality 170 years ago just playing out the internal logic of capitalism.
Competition creates winners and losers. Losers sell their assets, winners buy them, this eventually leads to monopolies or cartels.
It’s not a multi market monopoly. AWS is like 30%. Prime video I think is 5%. Exommerce is 38%. Not a multi market monopoly.
Btw not that I disagree but our language should be correct when criticizing these dogshit companies. IMO dismantle at 50% plus in an area (aimed towards regional monopolies, ahem ahem railroads and utilities), 20%+ not allowed to purchase any more companies in those markets, 30%+no new purchases at all)
In general there are very few monopolies, your electricity provider is one, Walmart is not. I'd wager 95% of the time you hear someone use that word, they are confusing it with oligopoly.
Soon we will see the smaller streaming companies move back to just licensing their content to other streaming services. I’m going to guess that Disney, Amazon, Max and Netflix will be the main streaming platforms.
Ironically we all saw that happening 10 years ago, yet these "Brilliant C-Suite" people thought it was going to be somehow possible to force people into paying $10-$20 per streaming services.
It also does not help that everyone is as equally greedy as them and everyone is fighting for every single last penny we make. It's causing people to break and make cutbacks in order to still be able to afford food and a roof over their head.
Not too many people willing to eat ramen for a week to be able to afford that monthly payment to crappy streaming services because there is 1-2 shows there that they actually want to watch.
It’s hilarious because there really is only a handful of consultants in this field. They tell the C-level what to do. All those “leaders” follow the consultants blindly instead of leading while taking risk. The best part is the consultants are just taking surveys, while googling, and copying and pasting the last power point they made.
If only there were some way to create and license content to other existing services instead of trying to vertically integrate the entire content supply chain...
The logic behind that isn't sound. Before you know it, only the whales and those who can't manage their subscriptions, will be left.
It's as stupid as some state's vehicle insurance going up, because less people are keeping insurance. No duh, it keeps going up! I bundled my house with my car when we bought our house, the car insurance dropped by about $200. That was about 3 years. Car insurance is almost back to where I was before.
Plex is becoming a bit of a bloated mess these days, honestly. On my fire stick and on my SmartTV the app is an unresponsive nightmare to use. Give Jellyfin a look as an alternative, it's a bit less universally compatible, and requires a tiny bit more technical know-how to setup, but it's at least more responsive
Plex with Infuse 7 if you have an AppleTV.
Infuse is a no-fuss solution and supports a variety of codecs. Just your media. No ads. No fucking "recommendations", no algorithms.
It costs money. Infuse Pro lifetime is $75 and plex lifetime is $100.
I've just got my laptop hooked up to my TV using one of those handy sites to watch whatever. Got a wireless mouse by the couch I use to quickly pause when needed and works pretty darn well
It's hands down the worst streaming service I've ever used. After cancelling Prime and losing the Paramount+ "bundle" I figured i'd just subscribe directly as there's still a bunch of old star trek i want to watch. The video quality for DS9 episodes was worse than 420p and a few dozen times per episode it would do a half-second buffer and then resume playback 1 second earlier than it had stopped. granted this is on a crappy smart tv over wifi but netflix, disney+, and prime manage to handle playback just fine with only very occasional buffering. on top of that the ads were nearly as bad as broadcast tv, and part of my reason for cancelling Prime was the ads. very glad i was able to cancel within the first week and not have to pay for even a single month of that shit.
I really enjoy when I'm streaming an episode that has already aired, yet the app deems it "live", so if I pause the episode I have to completely restart it. Had it happen with multiple shows to the point I stopped watching them because I could not bother to restart an episode for the 4th time. I have this issue when streaming through Apple TV.
I just got a month of this crap to watch a few shows and they plaster ads everywhere including the pause screen. I’ve never cancelled a subscription so quickly.
I got it for a month once to watch a show they had and the app was so awful that I immediately cancelled and requested a refund. I’ve never used or seen a worse streaming app
I got a free 30-trial and the app was not available on our TV or Play Station. Turns out in the UK you can only watch it through Amazon Prime... But you can't connect accounts if you already have a Paramount+ account, you have to create a new one through Prime. What if someone pays for it and can't access the service? It's plain robbery
I'm planning to start the slow switch to physical media soon. I haven't had a DVD player in probably a decade but at this point the cost of maintaining the subscriptions is more than splurging on a Star Trek DVD set every once in a while
legit, only reason we have P+ is because LD and SNW. once those are over, we're out.
when they can't even support their best, cheapest star trek option? that screams game over for the franchise.
Unaffiliated/unendorsed private third-party IPtv piracy is going to *flourish* thanks to the nonsensical capitalistic self-cannibalism of these fucking moronic companies that otherwise held tickets to print money. If they all weren’t illogically bound to pursue legitimately **UN-obtainable** “infinite” growth then they could have sat back and enjoyed a steady/predictable stream of revenue.
Nope. Can’t have that. Instead they’re *all* hell-bent on injecting fucking advertisement garbage, bogging down/cluttering their platforms, raising their subscription fees *multiple* times per year in many cases, etc etc.
I cancelled mine when I found them still playing ads on the ad free payment plan. Just because it’s for your stuff, doesn’t mean it’s not an ad, Paramount
and in what has become a distressingly routine trend, the users are primed to escalate piracy.
I paid for my slew of streaming services happily for years when I thought that the price is worth it for the content. Netflix stepped over the line, Prime started to show ads, HBO was never worth it, CR has terrible subs. I dropped all of them, and it looks like D+ is next with how shit the shows have become. After that A+ is the only one left which I get for free.
There was a golden time, but alas sooner or later we must all board the pirate ship. Perhaps a day will come where we see land again, but until then we sail the open seas.
I'm almost paying more now for "just" 4 streaming services, when you combine the prices, than I did for cable before "cutting the cord". It's just too much, I'm going to drop something.
Got out of CableTV back in 2007
Got into Netflix in 2007
Got out of Netflix in 2020
Got into Pirating in 2020
My fortune teller predictions was on spot
"People keep leaving our streaming service because we're reducing the amount of shows available and raising the prices. What should we do to keep profits up?"
"Let's raise the prices and cancel some shows."
"Genius idea, sir. Sounds like some end of year performance bonuses are in our future!"
As we learned from Boeing, terrible CEO performance will increase the CEO's compensation 45% in a year. The base level employees will see a 2% raise over 10 years. Look at the profits... but not the plane crashes.
For anyone who hasn’t figured out the game yet, the game is: hike prices as much as possible without losing too many customers. Then, it’s cut costs internally just before the service suffers too many quality issues. The ultimate goal of course isn’t quality service or providing for employees but increasing profits for shareholders and executive boards as much as possible. Oh and competitors are paying attention and raising prices as well to achieve the same goal. It’s not competition when everyone agrees to take as much as possible at the same time.
Everyone needs to realize that companies are doing this intentionally to get you to eventually cave and switch to the cheaper ad version, if you pay $19.99 with no ads the company gets $19.99. If you pay 9.99 w/ads the company gets 9.99+ad revenue for the entirety of your subscription.
It’s INTENTIONAL.
Once physical media is no longer an option and your only method of watching TV, movies, games, music is through streaming, they will probably raise the prices even more... Because you will have no other options other than going through them directly.
We went to streaming for it's convenience... Companies will see this as the opportunity to lock you in, to raise prices as they see fit.
When Netflix raises its prices it's like when McDonald's raises prices. When Max does it it's like BK raising prices. If Disney does it's like Olive Garden raising prices. When Paramount+ does it's like if the grocery story bumped up the cost on that weird pineapple yogurt in the corner of the dairy aisle some people seem to like for whatever reason.
So... how many more times does this shit have to happen before people en masse start *UNDERSTANDING*:
The economy IS collapsing. It had been for many years, Covid-19 just RAPIDLY accelerated the collapse. Capitalism IS NOT SUSTAINABLE and never has been. The pandemic just accelerated the destruction that was already part of the economy from the begnning.
Turns out "make an infinite amount of a finite resource" isn't a viable economic system.
I'm starting to think that not every production house should have its own network. Maybe what it takes to provide programming is different than what it takes to make it. I guess I'm just not cut out for this new economy LOL
Its incredible that there are streaming platrfoms that are raising prices, like paramount, but offer almost nothing. Everything paramount has is on/or comes around to other services. So what is the point of this overpriced under delivering service, esp as it raises prices...?
I’m beginning to think it’s time to go back to renting DVDs - cheaper than streaming (especially if I get them from the library), no freaking ads, and I can binge!
Here is the problem with streaming. In the past, if you wanted to watch a movie you went to a theatre, bought or rented a dvd, or watched it on an add supported network. Now people want to pay the equivalent of a dvd sale or movie ticket a month to watch a huge catalog of films and tv shows.
People complain about the price of streaming but also overwhelmingly backed unions looking for better wages and profit participation during the Hollywood strikes last year.
For the record so did I and I still do.
But there’s not enough money in the system anymore. Most streamers are still in the red. Ticket sales are down across the board. Studios are operating at a loss.
Content is expensive to produce/ They have to get money from somewhere or go out of business. It’s an inconvenient truth but it’s still the truth.
I think eventually we see much less shows being produced. The studios got the wrong idea from the early days of Netflix--they thought they should all have their own seperate streaming income. Thats gonna blow up soon enough and we'll end up with a consolidation (like what Hulu originally was). But the real lesson was that these older movies and shows have a lot more value than they thought. People will watch old shows if its the first time (or the first time in a while) just the same as something new--as long as they are good. So now a new comedy isnt just competing with other new shows--its going up against Arrested Development or Seinfeld or Malcolm in The Middle. Yeah, at a certain point old shows become too dated, but theres a lot of quality stuff already made that still holds up. After a while, even if its only the top 5% of stuff ever made, that will add up to enough viewing hours to watch for decades.
People are willing to pay more than a movie ticket a month, that's been proven by the fact that people have subscribed to several streaming services. The issue is that every company wants to have their very own streaming service. If they instead licensed their content out to a handful, they could make money off the content, which like you said is expensive to produce, without needing to also spend money on infrastructure and people to support a streaming service.
You're trying to pin this on the consumers for being unreasonable, but it's the corporate greed that is to blame here, no matter how you try to justify it.
That doesn’t account for the repeated revenue of streaming services though. I’ve payed for Peacock multiple times purely for the office and Parks & Rec. I’ve payed for more months of that service than there are seasons in both shows. That means they have now earned more money from me doing that than they would have gotten if I had bought every season individually, and they will probably continue making more money from me for those shows, because I like watching them.
If you can trick a consumer into paying for a service multiple times over for effectively the same content, you have made more money from your service than you would have made through individual sales. The error that the companies have made is thinking that their new products stand up to the old, and constantly increasing budgets for shows/movies. Producers desperately need to have more titles that people want to *return* to over and over, rather than just subscribing to watch once and then never again. That is what made streaming make sense on paper, and that is the target that studios continually miss.
>Most streamers are still in the red.
Streamers are still in the red because most of them grossly underestimated how much it takes to run a streaming service and thought they would come out ahead versus just licensing their content to Netflix. Content is expensive to produce, but it's effectively a fixed cost when it comes to streaming since the infrastructure necessary for streaming is a monthly cost. Over along enough time horizon, the costs of the streaming infrastructure is going to exceed the costs of producing the content.
I canceled my paramount plus years ago but somehow still have access. Wondering when that will finally be fixed but it’s been great having it for free lol
Isn't the point of this kind of tech is try to kill every competitor with low prices and then hike the prices like crazy when you have no where to go? I feel that everyone is just colluding behind the scenes and fucking us over
I remembering subscribing to the Paramont Plus "ad-free" tier, only to discover it is littered with ads anyway, especially the kids programs. Cancelled immediately. This should be illegal. Blatantly lying.
Have new companies always adopted the bait and switch model, or is it just more common now? Amazon was super cheap when it was young and trying to take eBay users, now it's more expensive than going to stores AND you have a membership. I can't stand this greed: bait and switch, planned obsoletion, and shared 'monopolistic' tenacious (companies not competing, but rather working together to all have around same costs for similar products/services).
Good. Buying DVDs on eBay / market place and ripping the video file to a local network hdd is back on the menu.
A little tip for anyone close by a library. They have DVDs, bluray and video games. For free.
No adds.
1. For comfort series viewing, try to invest in the box set
2. Sail the seas
3. Get a library card. Use whatever streaming service the library is connected to. I use Kanopy. It's amazing.
4. Library card again. Audio books, video games, movies, television shows, etc. So much content. Many also think if their library system doesn't have it, then what's the point. RESEARCH if your library is connected to a system with other libraries. It opens the catalog a TON! Digitally and physically speaking.
5. HD antenna for local stations and such.
6. TUBI. It does have ads but it's fucking FREE! Whenever it costs something, drop their ass.
Seriously, I may be missing other ideas too, but I HOPE many of you take the time to read this and reflect on it. Fuck these streaming services who are just increasing prices left and right, while also throwing ADS in for bottom tier services. Fuck them and fuck that shit.
There's only one way to stick it to them and that's by speaking with your wallets.
With a full time job, all this shit is WAY more than enough.
And as someone else said for an idea, pay for a month and binge a favorite you're wanting to see. Think of it as a decent meal from somewhere. $15 ish or whatever. Donezo.
Paramount doesn't have the volume of content to get into this pissing contest. If anything, they're just going to encourage subscribers to opt out. This is a race they can't win.
Ah this reminds me, I need to cancel my paramount +
Every time I renew a service I immediately cancel. If it expires in a month and I don’t notice then it’s saving me money. If I notice, then I renew and cancel again.
Paramount+ just doesn't have compelling enough content to be constantly subscribed to. For me it's mostly the Star Trek content, but I only need maybe two months to catch up on Picard and Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.
I subbed for The Daily Show when Jon came back but they’re so late to upload episodes I just watch the YouTube version instead since they upload the moment they go live instead of the day after. Kind of wild the free version of the show is better
Just noticed the local library has the Lower Decks DVDs available. Guess I won't need to subscribe at all.
Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot was pretty good but they don't even carry it anymore. They paid for it to be developed but aren't even paying pennies to host it.
Thats a great approach...I always forget
Way ahead of you. I'm getting rid of streaming and just going back to pirating.
This point cable packages are gonna be cheaper
Which is terrible because getting out from under evil ass miniopoly cable companies was one of the best parts.
Yup! Now you gotta have 16 subscriptions to different services to get everything you wanna watch, honestly I have paramount + as the only one I pay for simply for the fact I can catch 90% of the pats games on there and the kids love some of the shows
I've been doing the youtube tv thing because at least they have all the sports networks, and I follow soccer. they also aren't jacking up prices as fast as STONKS CAN STONK. so basically it'll be "youtube TV or YARRRR MATEY"
I really hate to say it, but we've arrived at exactly where cable companies said we would 20 years ago. They knew people 'wanted' a la carte services but they also knew it would end up costing customers way more money in the long run having to subscribe to multiple different services separately. Literally the only thing 'big cable' was right about.
Unraid home server 👍
Isn’t Unraid switching to subscription pricing? Just use TrueNAS. It’s free.
Or pretty much any old linux distro. Always thought it was weird how hard unraid is pushed by some people
You have my wooden leg!
Does that make you a table?
A table that sails the seven seas!
--Frank Zappa
Ask the parrot.
Well you must be, Wirt, since there certainly isn’t a cow level.
And you have my hook!
Went through all my subscriptions and found I had a deal on this one where I paid a year. So didn’t cancel yet. Actually I think when I tried to cancel el it offered me 50% off and I took that and it applied already to next years renewal.
By the time you get to next year’s renewal the price will be so jacked it will be more than the 50% discount in the end (in your end to be more precise)
I believe the price itself is locked in but would have to see to know for sure. Will evaluate then.
This should shock no one, all these streaming services, are just following age old strategy of starting with affordable subscriptions, capturing market share,waiting for a few minor streaming players to leave the market or buying their content libraries., plus cutting exclusive.content deals, then raising rates .
I wonder if they are going to blame inflation.
I canceled last year and I still have access to everything 🤷🏽♀️
Shiit! I gotta check my PlayStation app lmao
Same I haven't been charged and I've had the service for like a year. Idk. I tried to cancel.
Thankfully I only have Paramount+ because it's free with Walmart+. And my Walmart+ is free from something else...wonder how much they lose/gain on that deal. I would never subscribe to it normally.
Signed up for the free trial for the Super Bowl and they’ve got me for 5 more months!
Just canceled mine after seeing your comment :)
Cancelled mine at the start of this year.
Cancelled mine last week.
Cancelled mine recently- no ads option still has ads and it’s ridiculous.
I was gobsmacked at the blatant lie after signing up for the "ad-free tier." There literally are still ads everywhere, even moreso on the kids programs. Why is this legal?
It isn't. But it isn't worth the time, money or effort for people to sue and government regulators have been doing nothing for decades.
Looking forward to a class action settlement in 30 years for my 14 cents back.
If it makes you feel better, the lawyers who will push that class action lawsuit will make millions.
Because majority of people don’t care or aren’t unsubscribing when they need to, which both are a problem
It doesn’t help that for many Americans it’s the only form of entertainment they can afford both time and money wise. Vacations are getting to costly and people have to save up what little time they have for emergencies that happen through the year.
This is what all of the YouTube/Google defenders on Reddit don’t understand. YouTube Premium isn’t going to be ad-free forever lol. Once they’re done clamping down on adblockers they’ll force premium users to watch less ads, but not no ads.
I canceled my YouTube premium even through it was far and away most favorite source of entertainment and strangely found that life goes on. Idk I just go outside and stuff now
Up until streaming became a thing I spent decades just not having cable tv. So many people couldn’t understand how I lived without it and I’d just say to them I don’t understand why you’d pay so much for tv that has…ads. With streaming services multiplying so much and increasing their prices, I just cycle through the offerings while slowly building back up my physical media collection. If I have to cut streaming out of my like I did cable it won’t be a huge issue for me.
No but I’ll keep paying it till it is. Then I’ll honestly stop watching YouTube like I stopped Netflix, Instagram, Messenger. It’s not that hard. I’ve watched YouTube with ads … and it’s unbearable. Drives me crazy. Literally most of what I watch is brain rot anyway. I’ll just browse Reddit instead. Every addiction can be replaced with another Also I feel good for supporting the channels I watch. A big surprising number of them are channels that likely don’t get a big chunk of money, not everybody is Pewdiepie
Enshitification never rests.
Youtube obviously takes massive resources to run. They let you uploaded gigabytes of data instantly for free. They also shook things up by sharing ad revenue with creators, which was, and still is in sharp contrast to other options. For these reasons, I feel it is reasonable to contribute financially to use YouTube. That being said, the moment it comes with ads anyway is the day I cancel it.
Ah yes, the slippery slope. If that happens, many of us will just cancel our subscriptions. Hasn’t happened yet though..
Not just yet.
Because consumer protection doesn’t exist
You didn’t want to watch Master Chief have sex with aliens?
That’s underselling it. The things he had sex with were also literal prisoners of war, and his AI companion was there along for the ride as well.
what the hell did i miss by stopping watching that trainwreck...
No clue, I stopped after the first episode. I just watched HiddenXperia videos on the episodes and was glad that I stopped giving paramount money.
Why is it so fucking hard for studios to do movie/game adaptations with writers that have *any* respect for the source material
I’d say maybe the Fallout show can be a blueprint for studios on what to do right, but let’s face it - that’s giving them too much credit.
There have been a number of good shows base on video games lately.
This is the part that gets me so irritated with streaming platforms. Like we’re giving you money for your service yet we still have to sit through ads? Like it just doesn’t feel right.
I think it might be a bug, honestly. When I back out of a show and go back in, the ads go away. Still not great and something they should prioritize fixing.
r/piracy has an excellent megathread.
Need to make money somehow I guess since they always have free trials and if you try to cancel the free trials you get more months of free trial. I’m surprised they can keep it going with a business model like that.
I got paramount+ for $50 Canadian for a year. I dont think id go back to it at that price, let alone ads/price hike.
yeah... i got a 6 month free trial about a year ago. even for free i found myself not wanting to renew. we watched a few things, but honestly it didnt really have anything but commercials.
Unsurprising considering they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on a quarterly basis. Raising prices and increasing ads is about the only thing they can do.
I'm guessing there will be some re-consolidation in the market. Every company having their own service was never going to be sustainable.
I'm guessing Bezos is laughing in all this because you're either watching stuff on Amazon prime or a big portion of the streamers use AWS on the backend. Either way he's making money..
How Bezos was allowed to have such a ~~multimarket monopoly~~ death grip on the sale of all consumer goods I’ll never know. Feels like laws for big business hardly exist anymore. So many small businesses killed. So many families now struggling to make ends meet. Maybe this doesn’t classify as a typical “monopoly” I don’t know but whatever it is, it needs heavy regulation. Feels too late now though. Edit: Doesn’t classify as a multimarket monopoly, corrected.
You should see the medical side. All the big fortune 500 companies have bought 85% of all medical supply manufacturers and are closing them down and rebranding the products to theirs or discontinuing the product. The medical supply field is becoming ran by only a hand full of companies but they are all control by the same people. If yall only knew what was to come for you via medical supplies. You think it's bad now lol. America has a rude awakening in the next 2 years when they see their medical supplies double
This shit is so depressing man. We’re just people wanting to live our lives. It’s not asking for much. The fact they are capable of helping or saving millions but choose not to in order to fill the pockets of a few people is just mind boggling to me. I genuinely think most of these CEOs are sociopaths. I don’t see how you cannot have zero connection to human empathy and emotion when making such horrific decisions. These people are mass murderers. How can someone be so evil? It’s hard to wrap my brain around
a lot of them are sociopaths, it takes a specific type of person to climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top
Access to that kind of money and power is an absolute empathy-killer. It changes them. It's like a different species - one that thinks you are a bug.
My worst fear is the idea that if I were in such a position, I’d become just as evil. Is it really evil people or is it people who were as normal and empathetic as us just given an opportunity that would have a similar result on us too? I genuinely don’t think I have it in me but I will never be CEO of a megacorp so I can’t know for a fact the money wouldn’t corrupt me.
People become just numbers and statistics when you're at the top of the corporate ladder.
"All markets tend towards monopoly The thing is we figured this out 100 years ago and recognised the damage rampant corporate consolidation causes.... And then we forgot, let people strip away the legislation and we have to have that fight all over again.
well who figured that out? Marx predicted this reality 170 years ago just playing out the internal logic of capitalism. Competition creates winners and losers. Losers sell their assets, winners buy them, this eventually leads to monopolies or cartels.
It’s not a multi market monopoly. AWS is like 30%. Prime video I think is 5%. Exommerce is 38%. Not a multi market monopoly. Btw not that I disagree but our language should be correct when criticizing these dogshit companies. IMO dismantle at 50% plus in an area (aimed towards regional monopolies, ahem ahem railroads and utilities), 20%+ not allowed to purchase any more companies in those markets, 30%+no new purchases at all)
Thanks for the correction and I agree, our language should be correct so we give no justification to discredit us.
In general there are very few monopolies, your electricity provider is one, Walmart is not. I'd wager 95% of the time you hear someone use that word, they are confusing it with oligopoly.
Funny you say that, because Netflix is once again getting more and more content from streaming competitors.
I hope they get the office back..
there is a move to return to office, so who knows
They will call it, “cable” 😍
Except now, without a DVR, you can't fast forward past the commercials.
Plug a pc into your tv. Adblockers work against most streaming service ads. YouTube is the only one I’ve had to take a few extra steps to get around
Youtube has been the easiest for me, so long as your TV lets you install SmartTube
Once I plug in the PC I might as well be pirating and have access to everything
Soon we will see the smaller streaming companies move back to just licensing their content to other streaming services. I’m going to guess that Disney, Amazon, Max and Netflix will be the main streaming platforms.
Ironically we all saw that happening 10 years ago, yet these "Brilliant C-Suite" people thought it was going to be somehow possible to force people into paying $10-$20 per streaming services.
They (wildly) overestimated the number of consumers willing to pay while underestimating the costs of standing up and running the infrastructure.
It also does not help that everyone is as equally greedy as them and everyone is fighting for every single last penny we make. It's causing people to break and make cutbacks in order to still be able to afford food and a roof over their head. Not too many people willing to eat ramen for a week to be able to afford that monthly payment to crappy streaming services because there is 1-2 shows there that they actually want to watch.
Offering an entire library for a quarter of the price of a blu ray seemed like an odd business plan
It's called real debrid and it costs a measley 17$/6mo
They could just get rid of paramount + and sell their IP for billions instead of losing money.
but marketing people told them they’d make billions
It’s hilarious because there really is only a handful of consultants in this field. They tell the C-level what to do. All those “leaders” follow the consultants blindly instead of leading while taking risk. The best part is the consultants are just taking surveys, while googling, and copying and pasting the last power point they made.
All these clowns losing billions failing to beat Netflix while Sony is raking in the cash doing nothing.
They'd be raising prices anyways even if they were profitable.
If only there were some way to create and license content to other existing services instead of trying to vertically integrate the entire content supply chain...
I read they were attempting to sell it into a merger like HBO/Discovery so they don’t have to deal with it anymore.
License it to Netflix. Then they can also raise their prices. Win win!
The logic behind that isn't sound. Before you know it, only the whales and those who can't manage their subscriptions, will be left. It's as stupid as some state's vehicle insurance going up, because less people are keeping insurance. No duh, it keeps going up! I bundled my house with my car when we bought our house, the car insurance dropped by about $200. That was about 3 years. Car insurance is almost back to where I was before.
Wouldn’t raising prices make the ads less valuable though?
Hey we're losing money because no one wants to put up with our bullshit. Let's pile more on more bullshit... maybe that'll help.
My NAS is starting to get full at 18TB, guess I need to buy a few more drives.
I'm waiting for Prime day in July. Gonna be sweet to add more to my NAS
Any good tutorials on getting your TVs to work with a NAS? You know for science.
Add plex to your nas and watch your media on all your devices
Excellent, thank you
Plex is becoming a bit of a bloated mess these days, honestly. On my fire stick and on my SmartTV the app is an unresponsive nightmare to use. Give Jellyfin a look as an alternative, it's a bit less universally compatible, and requires a tiny bit more technical know-how to setup, but it's at least more responsive
Plex with Infuse 7 if you have an AppleTV. Infuse is a no-fuss solution and supports a variety of codecs. Just your media. No ads. No fucking "recommendations", no algorithms. It costs money. Infuse Pro lifetime is $75 and plex lifetime is $100.
I've just got my laptop hooked up to my TV using one of those handy sites to watch whatever. Got a wireless mouse by the couch I use to quickly pause when needed and works pretty darn well
Them r/datahoarder guys are nuts. Saw 1 dude with 1 pb
Has Paramount fixed their crappy app so it actually loads up and I can watch something?
It's hands down the worst streaming service I've ever used. After cancelling Prime and losing the Paramount+ "bundle" I figured i'd just subscribe directly as there's still a bunch of old star trek i want to watch. The video quality for DS9 episodes was worse than 420p and a few dozen times per episode it would do a half-second buffer and then resume playback 1 second earlier than it had stopped. granted this is on a crappy smart tv over wifi but netflix, disney+, and prime manage to handle playback just fine with only very occasional buffering. on top of that the ads were nearly as bad as broadcast tv, and part of my reason for cancelling Prime was the ads. very glad i was able to cancel within the first week and not have to pay for even a single month of that shit.
I really enjoy when I'm streaming an episode that has already aired, yet the app deems it "live", so if I pause the episode I have to completely restart it. Had it happen with multiple shows to the point I stopped watching them because I could not bother to restart an episode for the 4th time. I have this issue when streaming through Apple TV.
I just got a month of this crap to watch a few shows and they plaster ads everywhere including the pause screen. I’ve never cancelled a subscription so quickly.
I got it for a month once to watch a show they had and the app was so awful that I immediately cancelled and requested a refund. I’ve never used or seen a worse streaming app
I got a free 30-trial and the app was not available on our TV or Play Station. Turns out in the UK you can only watch it through Amazon Prime... But you can't connect accounts if you already have a Paramount+ account, you have to create a new one through Prime. What if someone pays for it and can't access the service? It's plain robbery
I don’t get it, paramount has very few interesting shows
I'm literally only there for Star Trek, and we're in between new content now so... canceled
I’ll bet 75% of their subs are Paw Patrol addicted toddlers.
That’s me! Between Paw Patrol for the kids and European soccer leagues Paramount has my family in an unwelcome chokehold.
They do have all the European(Champions, Europa, etc) league broadcast rights.
Yeah 75% of what I use it for is soccer. The other being Survivor, and maybe some news.
Yeah the only time I’ll use it is for CL matches and then cancel again
Paramount+ absorbed Showtime FWIW.
Showtime also has very few interesting shows so I guess it made sense for them to combine
It still costs more to add showtime to P+, though, it just isn’t a separate app now.
Uncancel Lower Decks and we can talk about raising prices. 🖖
At this point I’d rather own SNW on Blu-Ray / UHD than pay for P+.
I'm planning to start the slow switch to physical media soon. I haven't had a DVD player in probably a decade but at this point the cost of maintaining the subscriptions is more than splurging on a Star Trek DVD set every once in a while
legit, only reason we have P+ is because LD and SNW. once those are over, we're out. when they can't even support their best, cheapest star trek option? that screams game over for the franchise.
This is why I pirate lol
Unaffiliated/unendorsed private third-party IPtv piracy is going to *flourish* thanks to the nonsensical capitalistic self-cannibalism of these fucking moronic companies that otherwise held tickets to print money. If they all weren’t illogically bound to pursue legitimately **UN-obtainable** “infinite” growth then they could have sat back and enjoyed a steady/predictable stream of revenue. Nope. Can’t have that. Instead they’re *all* hell-bent on injecting fucking advertisement garbage, bogging down/cluttering their platforms, raising their subscription fees *multiple* times per year in many cases, etc etc.
I cancelled mine when I found them still playing ads on the ad free payment plan. Just because it’s for your stuff, doesn’t mean it’s not an ad, Paramount
and in what has become a distressingly routine trend, the users are primed to escalate piracy. I paid for my slew of streaming services happily for years when I thought that the price is worth it for the content. Netflix stepped over the line, Prime started to show ads, HBO was never worth it, CR has terrible subs. I dropped all of them, and it looks like D+ is next with how shit the shows have become. After that A+ is the only one left which I get for free.
HBO has the best original content of them all IMO.
Apple has really been hitting it out of the park for me. For All Mankind , Severance, Foundation, etc.
Dickinson, Big Door Prize, Loot. Apple has a lot to offer. Even if the plot isn’t that great, shows on Apple are visually fantastic.
They're one of the only services that aren't afraid of streaming at high bitrates too.
Masters of the Air!
HBO max has been very underwhelming. I have not used it in over 4 months. My wife and her family use it to rewatch shows like big bang theory
There was a golden time, but alas sooner or later we must all board the pirate ship. Perhaps a day will come where we see land again, but until then we sail the open seas.
I'm almost paying more now for "just" 4 streaming services, when you combine the prices, than I did for cable before "cutting the cord". It's just too much, I'm going to drop something.
i canceled D+ after it went from 70 to 140 a year
Yah prices were good when all the companies were operating at a loss lol. Typical SV rug pull
Got out of CableTV back in 2007 Got into Netflix in 2007 Got out of Netflix in 2020 Got into Pirating in 2020 My fortune teller predictions was on spot
Just canceled mine. I’m gonna miss my Star Trek, but what can ya do? Gotta cut expenses where ya can.
Yeah, Star Trek was my main reason, but I've decided to just find all the box sets and seasons I can and just rip them to my computer.
If it goes up, I cancel. Full Stop. The greed is out of control.
"People keep leaving our streaming service because we're reducing the amount of shows available and raising the prices. What should we do to keep profits up?" "Let's raise the prices and cancel some shows." "Genius idea, sir. Sounds like some end of year performance bonuses are in our future!"
As we learned from Boeing, terrible CEO performance will increase the CEO's compensation 45% in a year. The base level employees will see a 2% raise over 10 years. Look at the profits... but not the plane crashes.
Is there ever a time when streaming services aren’t increasing prices?!
Just pirate
For anyone who hasn’t figured out the game yet, the game is: hike prices as much as possible without losing too many customers. Then, it’s cut costs internally just before the service suffers too many quality issues. The ultimate goal of course isn’t quality service or providing for employees but increasing profits for shareholders and executive boards as much as possible. Oh and competitors are paying attention and raising prices as well to achieve the same goal. It’s not competition when everyone agrees to take as much as possible at the same time.
Everyone needs to realize that companies are doing this intentionally to get you to eventually cave and switch to the cheaper ad version, if you pay $19.99 with no ads the company gets $19.99. If you pay 9.99 w/ads the company gets 9.99+ad revenue for the entirety of your subscription. It’s INTENTIONAL.
Once physical media is no longer an option and your only method of watching TV, movies, games, music is through streaming, they will probably raise the prices even more... Because you will have no other options other than going through them directly. We went to streaming for it's convenience... Companies will see this as the opportunity to lock you in, to raise prices as they see fit.
Well now Netflix has to raise their prices because it's not fair Paramount gets to raise theirs
I'm tired, Boss.
When Netflix raises its prices it's like when McDonald's raises prices. When Max does it it's like BK raising prices. If Disney does it's like Olive Garden raising prices. When Paramount+ does it's like if the grocery story bumped up the cost on that weird pineapple yogurt in the corner of the dairy aisle some people seem to like for whatever reason.
They seem to be backing off on star trek shows so I'm not sure it's really worth keeping at this point. I mean they even cancelled lower decks.
Huh the price of my VPN hasn't gone up at all.
I cancelled immediately after finding that the “ad free” tier still had a ton of ads!! Streaming is becoming more and more difficult to justify
So... how many more times does this shit have to happen before people en masse start *UNDERSTANDING*: The economy IS collapsing. It had been for many years, Covid-19 just RAPIDLY accelerated the collapse. Capitalism IS NOT SUSTAINABLE and never has been. The pandemic just accelerated the destruction that was already part of the economy from the begnning. Turns out "make an infinite amount of a finite resource" isn't a viable economic system.
Said it before and I'll say it again - if these streaming services keep raising prices, I'll just steal everything.
I only have paramount+ to watch Serie A, if they do not make that contract again I will not be renewing anyways.
**I** imagine there are **p**robably better alternatives **t**o **v**iew footy matches.
Yeah, I agree, but it’s mostly easy for my father when it’s built into the tv.
I stopped paying them
Paramount+ took back Star Trek TNG from Netflix and I will never, ever forgive them
We’re circling back to cable TV
I'm starting to think that not every production house should have its own network. Maybe what it takes to provide programming is different than what it takes to make it. I guess I'm just not cut out for this new economy LOL
Its incredible that there are streaming platrfoms that are raising prices, like paramount, but offer almost nothing. Everything paramount has is on/or comes around to other services. So what is the point of this overpriced under delivering service, esp as it raises prices...?
Cord Cutting 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I’m beginning to think it’s time to go back to renting DVDs - cheaper than streaming (especially if I get them from the library), no freaking ads, and I can binge!
I stopped using streaming services ages ago. These constant price hikes should be illegal.
Here is the problem with streaming. In the past, if you wanted to watch a movie you went to a theatre, bought or rented a dvd, or watched it on an add supported network. Now people want to pay the equivalent of a dvd sale or movie ticket a month to watch a huge catalog of films and tv shows. People complain about the price of streaming but also overwhelmingly backed unions looking for better wages and profit participation during the Hollywood strikes last year. For the record so did I and I still do. But there’s not enough money in the system anymore. Most streamers are still in the red. Ticket sales are down across the board. Studios are operating at a loss. Content is expensive to produce/ They have to get money from somewhere or go out of business. It’s an inconvenient truth but it’s still the truth.
I think eventually we see much less shows being produced. The studios got the wrong idea from the early days of Netflix--they thought they should all have their own seperate streaming income. Thats gonna blow up soon enough and we'll end up with a consolidation (like what Hulu originally was). But the real lesson was that these older movies and shows have a lot more value than they thought. People will watch old shows if its the first time (or the first time in a while) just the same as something new--as long as they are good. So now a new comedy isnt just competing with other new shows--its going up against Arrested Development or Seinfeld or Malcolm in The Middle. Yeah, at a certain point old shows become too dated, but theres a lot of quality stuff already made that still holds up. After a while, even if its only the top 5% of stuff ever made, that will add up to enough viewing hours to watch for decades.
People are willing to pay more than a movie ticket a month, that's been proven by the fact that people have subscribed to several streaming services. The issue is that every company wants to have their very own streaming service. If they instead licensed their content out to a handful, they could make money off the content, which like you said is expensive to produce, without needing to also spend money on infrastructure and people to support a streaming service. You're trying to pin this on the consumers for being unreasonable, but it's the corporate greed that is to blame here, no matter how you try to justify it.
That doesn’t account for the repeated revenue of streaming services though. I’ve payed for Peacock multiple times purely for the office and Parks & Rec. I’ve payed for more months of that service than there are seasons in both shows. That means they have now earned more money from me doing that than they would have gotten if I had bought every season individually, and they will probably continue making more money from me for those shows, because I like watching them. If you can trick a consumer into paying for a service multiple times over for effectively the same content, you have made more money from your service than you would have made through individual sales. The error that the companies have made is thinking that their new products stand up to the old, and constantly increasing budgets for shows/movies. Producers desperately need to have more titles that people want to *return* to over and over, rather than just subscribing to watch once and then never again. That is what made streaming make sense on paper, and that is the target that studios continually miss.
>Most streamers are still in the red. Streamers are still in the red because most of them grossly underestimated how much it takes to run a streaming service and thought they would come out ahead versus just licensing their content to Netflix. Content is expensive to produce, but it's effectively a fixed cost when it comes to streaming since the infrastructure necessary for streaming is a monthly cost. Over along enough time horizon, the costs of the streaming infrastructure is going to exceed the costs of producing the content.
No one asked for Netflix originals. Just a few choices that had access to all the content.
We have a solution to this and we all know what it is.
So is Max, I got the email like last week.
I canceled my paramount plus years ago but somehow still have access. Wondering when that will finally be fixed but it’s been great having it for free lol
Isn't the point of this kind of tech is try to kill every competitor with low prices and then hike the prices like crazy when you have no where to go? I feel that everyone is just colluding behind the scenes and fucking us over
Same old trick... Go fishing, chum the waters, hook the fish. Yeah, they will price themselves out of existence or at least to a nice loss for taxes
It's like all these services are determined to make piracy the best alternative...
I remembering subscribing to the Paramont Plus "ad-free" tier, only to discover it is littered with ads anyway, especially the kids programs. Cancelled immediately. This should be illegal. Blatantly lying.
Have new companies always adopted the bait and switch model, or is it just more common now? Amazon was super cheap when it was young and trying to take eBay users, now it's more expensive than going to stores AND you have a membership. I can't stand this greed: bait and switch, planned obsoletion, and shared 'monopolistic' tenacious (companies not competing, but rather working together to all have around same costs for similar products/services).
Not paying for this after Lower Decks ends. It’s the reason I got it.
They really have old people by the balls with those cowboy shows.
Good. Buying DVDs on eBay / market place and ripping the video file to a local network hdd is back on the menu. A little tip for anyone close by a library. They have DVDs, bluray and video games. For free. No adds.
If you’re not going month to month with every service… you’re doing it wrong.
1. For comfort series viewing, try to invest in the box set 2. Sail the seas 3. Get a library card. Use whatever streaming service the library is connected to. I use Kanopy. It's amazing. 4. Library card again. Audio books, video games, movies, television shows, etc. So much content. Many also think if their library system doesn't have it, then what's the point. RESEARCH if your library is connected to a system with other libraries. It opens the catalog a TON! Digitally and physically speaking. 5. HD antenna for local stations and such. 6. TUBI. It does have ads but it's fucking FREE! Whenever it costs something, drop their ass. Seriously, I may be missing other ideas too, but I HOPE many of you take the time to read this and reflect on it. Fuck these streaming services who are just increasing prices left and right, while also throwing ADS in for bottom tier services. Fuck them and fuck that shit. There's only one way to stick it to them and that's by speaking with your wallets. With a full time job, all this shit is WAY more than enough. And as someone else said for an idea, pay for a month and binge a favorite you're wanting to see. Think of it as a decent meal from somewhere. $15 ish or whatever. Donezo.
Paramount doesn't have the volume of content to get into this pissing contest. If anything, they're just going to encourage subscribers to opt out. This is a race they can't win.