Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::<em>What should I watch? </em>is now a much easier question than <em>How do I watch it?</em>
The decline of legal streaming, through the dividing up of content onto multiple expensive streaming platforms, has pushed me away from legal options onto the black/grey market where I can get much more content for much less on a more convenient single platform.
They were never competing with cable but with piracy. Of all media sellers it seems Gabe Newell was unique in understanding that
By all accounts Gabe isn’t also a gargantuan piece of shit, which also sets him apart from the other media sellers.
Somehow my mind read over the isn’t and I had to deeply think on Wtf I missed and couldn’t come up with shit
Spotify seems to have done well enough on that front as well.
I think this is true for most people on Lemmy. But I do wonder what the average streaming users will do. What about “free” streaming platforms like Channel 4 in the UK? Content is king, and the path of least resistance will always trump.
Pluto TV is massively popular with my older relatives. Free, plays the shows they like, and they don’t care about the obnoxious ads. Luckily none of them have bought the fake gold coins, Trumpy Bears (don’t even look it up), or Shitty My Pillows yet.
Two days after the Super Mario movie hit theaters I walked into my barber shop and it was playing in 4K on the TV. HDMI streaming sticks loaded with self updating piracy apps with a simple Netflix-like interface can be found easily by most consumers.
Can you link to something? This could be useful for my old man.
Yaaargh mateys, you do be asking the wrong questions.
I don’t even understand what they’re talking about. “Streaming?” Is that some sort of a water sport involving small rivers?
Jellyfin is a great alternative system. You just have to get the shows and movies somewhere which also isn’t that hard cough cough
How does this compare to Plex?
I haven’t used plex in a while, honestly, after they pushed more things I didn’t wanted. But for me it works awesome. I am a Linux user, it just installed straight out of the box, and works. Has a great web interface, and a mobile app that gets better and better. It gets all movie and show info from the internet, its honestly awesome.
Ne’er should one relinquish control of thine own vessel. Back to the seas shall we voyage mateys!
Also, 12ft.io
If I have to google which streaming service a PBS show is on for my kid to watch. Something’s messed
PBS shows are free on its own app/website though…
You’d think that, wouldn’t you?
In actuality, they pull shit like only having the most recent season of things and whatnot. For example, there’s no good reason why the PBS Kids Roku channel wouldn’t have all 4666 episodes of Sesame Street, but it doesn’t.
may i introduce you to the ARD Mediathek where ‘Die Sendung mit der Maus’ (a kind of sciency kids show) can have, by law, only the latest episode available for streaming. some other things may be available for longer, but it’s still pretty stupid…
The old Sesame Street episodes are on Netflix and are tagged as not suitable for children
It could be related to the HBO deal which if I recall bankrolls Sesame Street.
I started to use Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood as an example, but switched to Sesame Street for effect since the former “only” has 922 episodes. The point is, PBS does the same thing with all their shows. It doesn’t matter who makes it; everything from Arthur to Word Girl only has a dozen or so episodes available at any given time.
(Ditto for non-kids PBS stuff like Nova or This Old House, for that matter, I think. Even on Youtube they only make the latest few seasons available and remove access to everything older in hopes you’ll buy DVDs or something.)
It might be a rights issue. Not sure if PBS owns the rights, the Fred Rogers Company, or someone else. A lot of it doesn’t seem available at all. I came across a near complete archive from a twitch stream though if you’re interested: https://archive.org/details/@ipoy143
Yeah, I’ve run across that (it’s surprising how much stuff you can get from archive.org). Unfortunately, I don’t currently have enough disk space for it!
It can’t only be a rights issue though, because, again, PBS restricts access to the back catalog of literally everything regardless of who owns it.
It wouldn’t be uncommon for the rights to be divided up and sold per season given the context of children’s content. They are a nonprofit.
Think of all the extra searches!
Friendly reminder that PLEX is a great, free service, you just have to put in the effort to build up a media collection. High capacity HDDs are very cheap now, so storing a large media collection isn’t particularly expensive.
They also offer a lifetime “Plex pass” which adds some neat, but non-essential features, like auto-skipping intros and credits sequences for instance. It’s not necessary, but it’s a nice way to show support for what they do.
Jellyfin is an open source alternative without any subscription or fees
Does Jellyfin have the credit and intro skips? Also how does it handle music?
There’s an intro skip plugin that I don’t use. I’ve heard it isn’t quite up to par with Plex yet though.
https://github.com/ConfusedPolarBear/intro-skipper
Music is handled well for me, I use an app called Finamp on my phone to stream remotely or downloady music to microsd.
Don’t use Plex. Used it for a long time until open source jellyfin came by. I never looked back.
I remember having some issue with plex, finding out it was a known issue and had been logged on their issue tracker for YEARS with no progress. They’re one of those companies who prioritise shiny new features over actually maintaining the existing ones.
The basic problem with media is that copyright creates a monopoly for 100 years or so depending on various factors. This means that unless you’re into Arthur Conan Doyle or whatever, the media landscape is fundamentally monopolistic.
I blame Disney in particular. People are just so short-sighted.
I’m back to sailing the high seas and dumping my loot into Plex.
Same here on Jellyfin.
Yeah, this is much less chaotic. It’s not even about the cost so much as the convince now.
BTW I use the plex discovery search to find stuff across streaming services. This deserves a shoutout here. Could be better but I haven’t found a better solution. Google voice search on my nvidia shield used to be good at this but it’s really degraded lately.
Justwatch.com works well for finding the service hosting the show you want to watch.
It’s particularly bad at MAX right now. Several times I’ve been told a title was available and it wasn’t.
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Piracy
/thread
The streaming services have managed to completely forget their business model of being marginally more convenient than piracy.
As for me, though, I’ll start ripping my DVDs. I’ll sail the high seas when I have to, but I’d may as well get hard copies of my favourite films and TV shows.
Until Disney decides it better to quit the physical market (they did it already in one region)
And that’s where the piracy comes in. How do you think I’ve been watching The Owl House?
By subscribing to D+, surrendering your soul, finding out that it’s unavailable in your region, trying to import the BD/DVD, failing because of import tax or shipping not offered to that region and then dusting of the good black hat and saying Arrr matey?
Almost. I tried t’ get it on DVD, but one o’ th’ sellers were bein’ based in China, and th’ other were bein’ a “large retailer” operatin’ out o’ a garage in London, and not th’ nice part. I had already been piratin’, but I thought I’d try t’ get it legitimately t’ support th’ people who worked on th’ show. Aarrr! Few movies and series be good enough t’ earn that, in me book.
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If you paid $500~ for your TV, no probably not. If you’ve got a $2k OLED yes (4k Bluray though)
The sad thing is that people would pay if it just wasn’t so frustrating. I remember coming home from a NYE 10yrs ago or so, and had made up my mind to watch the latest season of Vikings. I was ready to pay for it, and there literally was no legal way for me to get it. So I sailed the high seas.
Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).
Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.
I got 3 months free paramount and I canceled the subscription, and it expired in a week instead of 3 months. Its such bullshit.
Really? Whenever I cancel it usually tells me the renewal date pretty explicitly, and the cancel just stops renewing on that date. Maybe if it’s 3 free months, you need to keep the monthly process in active status since it’s a free renewal?
I guess it depends in what country with which regulation you are in.
Prob but either way, it’s dirty practice by them.
Well, how? I go to my mighty little website and they give it to me for free…
I see an irony in the fact that I can’t read this damn article without paying for yet another media / news subscription service. Stop linking to pay walls Lemmites!
If there just was a way to micro pay for a single article. But no, it always has to be subscription based.
They’d do it if it made them money. Spoiler Alert…
You need a ladder 12ft.io
There’s no real financial model to support good journalism. People should be aware of the food sites out there so they can make a decision to subscribe. Also, I hate the flood of trash articles that just link the pay walled articles and quote 2 sentences from it. At that point I’d rather a lemmy poster link the paywalled article and provide the choice quotes themselves in the comments to save me the ad fest and ad consent pop ups just to read 2 quotes and a bunch of fluff.
To bypass the paywall: https://archive.ph/GO7mu
Yo ho fiddle de dee
Being a pirate is alright with me
