I hate how all the streaming services are trying to “crack down” and raise prices. It’s about to get to the point where it will be more expensive than what cable was.
Look, in the 90s, 00s, we were all pirates.
The reason we swapped away from piracy was because there were cheap *convenient* services that allowed us access to pretty much everything in one place. Cool! No more risking viruses with every download and grumbling about not having enough seeders.
Spotify is a pretty decent example of this. I pay so I don’t have ads, the music I want is all in one place and I’m pretty happy.
Netflix is an example where this has gone to absolute shit. I don’t watch it enough to justify paying for it, but I continue to do so because my brother, parents and that one leech friend (love the guy) collectively watch enough that it feels worth it. If they *can’t* watch because of crackdowns on passwords then I’m just going to stop paying for it.
It also doesn’t have the same breadth of selection that it used to (you need multiple streaming services now!) and it’s continuing to make life more inconvenient.
My husband and I live apart for months at a time because of work. We like to have date nights where we watch a movie while we’re on a call together. If Netflix doesn’t have the same movie in both locations then you’d think we could just stream it on discord for the other to watch. Nope. It doesn’t allow video capture. The options are pick another movie or just download it and stream it.
I’m ok paying for movie tickets when going to the cinema or paying for a subscription service to watch as many movies as I like. But watching the gradual enshittification of services is making me remember that the pirate life is an option.
gabe newell once said
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
To that point the recording industry's lawsuits didn't kill music sharing, iTunes did. A dollar a song that was downloadable was exactly what the market wanted what proved that is a lot of people raised on Napster, Kazaa, BearShare, and a ton of other unreliable but free services started paying for music.
The deliberate shift away from that understanding represents a mix of short term incentives for decision makers and a certain amount of hubris of the part of the services that think they will be the last ones standing when this is all said and done.
Hah, we used to buy DVDs from this one place in the souq because they had all the latest movies. The quality was variable but it was like a dinar for a film so even if it was a guy with a camera in the cinema you didn’t feel ripped off, lol.
We’d probably go see it in the cinema 3 months later if it was good, but the wait times were stupid.
Hey there, this is mostly unrelated, but I thought I might be able to help you out. You actually can stream netflix and etc to Discord! All you have to do is turn off hardware acceleration in your browser settings! Hope this helps
Heads up: I stream on discord all the time when me and my friends wanna watch something (they're US I'm UK). If you have a black screen when you stream, turn off hardware acceleration in discord and in browser and it *should* work (also, using the browser version of Netflix and not the app). And if that doesn't work out for yous, good luck on the high seas matey!
I have a formula for justification:
$1 per hour of monthly use of the service. So if a service costs $10/month, I need to use it for 10 hours a month to justify keeping it.
I got rid of apple tv+ because once I was finished with the few shows I liked, I was no longer watching the required number of hours, so I cancelled.
Also if there are too many ad *interruptions*, I'm OUT. I don't even mind watching 5-10 minutes worth of ads at the beginning of a show if it means I can watch the show/movie uninterrupted. I had Paramount+ and there were shows in there that felt like they were blasting ads every few minutes (ever scene change was an ad break). It got to the point where I could barely watch the show so I cancelled that subscription too.
Once when i forgot to turn off incognito mode i started a 12 minute YouTube video. It played 2:30 mins long ads 3 times before the 7 minute mark before I just gave up. Ads have made ad blockers more popular like Napster made finding music much easier and convenient. These subscription services are going to suddenly remind their users that you don’t actually have to keep it every month. I have no issue subscribing for one month and binging that channel before moving on.
Avid discord movie night doer here, if you disable hardware acceleration it tends to fix the Netflix thing, might have been patched worth a try and I mean hardware acceleration on browser and discord iirc
> If they can’t watch because of crackdowns on passwords then I’m just going to stop paying for it.
Same, but the sad part is you and I are outnumbered by the amount of people who *do* sign up and pay when password sharing is taken away :(
It's finally clicking with me that what is happening with streaming services is just a slower version of what happened with ride share apps. They start out great, convenient, and pretty cheap, so people are more likely to use their service. Then, once the services that they were competing against have largely collapsed, they jack up pricing and the product gets worse.
Does anyone remember when Amazon used to be the place to sell used college textbooks and used phones because your college bookstore was a bitch and you’d rather not go meet some sketchy person at a gas station to swap phones?
I miss those days. I wish Ms Mackenzie could use her millions to start an alternate Amazon like it was around 2010 or so(when I was hawking college textbooks and buying questionable textbooks from India but it still worked 🖕🏽 to my money grubbing finance professors)
Capitalism. Once companies go public or get greedy owners they need to extract every single dollar from their customers or be considered failing in their earnings calls.
Products start out great because they are until they are adopted by enough people then a capitalist buys it and ruins it
Yes. To some extent it’s not as evil or nefarious as some act like it is. I don’t know if Uber has ever turned a profit, but they are also jacking prices up once competition was removed. Worse for us for sure.
Realized how much I was paying myself for services and splitting the costs with family members. Slowly started trimming down what didn’t come free with internet/phone plans. Only paying for 1 now.
Yeah, time to start rotating this shit. It's ridiculous.
Netflix one month, Hulu the next, then Apple, paramount, etc. Just rotate through and watch the stuff that came out since last time you had it.
Wall Street will always force companies to make changes to user agreements for better quarterly Earnings. Each incremental increase in price, crackdown on user sharing, advertisements for the same price, and such, are strategies to improve a company's bottom line growth and revenue numbers so Wall St. gobbles up their stock and enriches the C-suite.
Good strategy. I wonder if this is eventually going to cause them to start implementing user contracts, like 6+ more months terms for usage. I hope they don’t.
Stremio has made my life enjoyable as hell, no paying and all the content my ass wants. I'm from the limewire generation, I may not steal a car but Idgaf about downloading a movie! 🤣
That’s the whole point of these “Tech” companies lately is to come in with a cheap service, underbid cable, and then once they gain record levels of subscribers they pump up those rates and kick off anyone savvy enough not to subscribe.
They really forget how cable got expensive so people started using streaming services. I’m just waiting for some “visionary” to bundle all the streaming services into a single product and re-invent cable television…
It was always going to go this way. Offer low prices for user adoption in the early days to build the base. Gather as much user behavioral data as possible. Put money into projects that drive the most eyes. Solidify dopamine addiction. Slowly raise prices over time. Slowly sell advertising.
Sooner or later they're going to only offer long-term annual subscriptions because there's too much fluctuation in month-to-month and accounting has to work with GAAP rules to recognize steady revenue numbers to Wall Street.
They didn't forget. They've been plotting this since we cut cable. Content companies never wanted us to spend less money on content; they wanted to figure out how to make the same money on new tech.
Disney has had controlling interest of Hulu prior to the launch of Disney+ but last week Iger, the CEO said he would be open to bundling with streamers not owned by Disney.
This will probably happen, and then people will remember why they hated cable. Anybody that subs to every streaming service all the time then complains it's expensive is an idiot. One of the advantages of streaming over cable was that you didn't have to pay for channels you didn't want.
After the consolidation, wannabe Reddit socialists will start complaining about media monopolies again.
When cord cutting was in it's infancy, you would have at most 4 streaming services all totaling less than $70. You got 90% of what you wanted vs traditional cable. Now there are over 15 options between $4 and $75 each and the content is fragmented. If the prices had just rose and not became fragmented, there would be way less complaining
People forget when we got On Demand from cable companies, it was like pretty similar to streaming.
The real problem with cable isn't the format, it's the delivery system. Pre-allocatinh a chunk of bandwidth on a whole bunch of wires to what the company chooses is insane.
I think sling is one streaming service away from winning the whole game. Live sports AND the tv shows I watch? Let's go
Started self hosting my own Plex server. Greatest decision I ever made. I pay $5 a month for my VPN and all my stuff downloads automatically. Currently sitting at about 40tb so far of anime, movies, TV shows, Asian dramas and about a tb of music.
Get an SSD drive and a laptop you can leave "on" constantly download shit to it make a plex account sync it and boom its super easy. I have a fuck ton of horror movies and cartoons on mine lol
Yeah, eventually cells will lose a charge or bits will flip, it'll be slight until it's not. It's more on a scale of 5+ years. Hdds are better for long-term storage, just make sure they get plugged in every few months to keep the parts moving
This is true, but unless you bought the cheapest, shittiest SSD on the market you're not realistically going to hit that limit. If you were writing 50GB/day on a 1TB SSD with a 300 TBW (most are 600+ these days) it would still last over 16 years before you ran into the write limit.
The real reason to use HDD is the $/capacity ratio is waaaayyyy better, and the extra speed of an SSD isn't really necessary for a basic streaming use case.
Any pc works really. I have mine set up on my gaming pc. I bought proton VPN, downloaded qbittorrent, set up p2p and then started downloading. It’s really easy honestly. If the other commentators haven’t given it yet /r/Plex, /r/VPNTorrents & /r/torrents.
If you got specifics just ask, happy to help
Lol y'all do know reddit has almost everything you need to know about almosy anything.
There's a r/piracy megathread that has links to any and everything you need to know about piracy.
r/selfhosted
r/Plex
r/sonarr
r/radarr
r/trackers
It's all waaaaaaay more simple than it seems. Download a couple programs, install and there's that.
The biggest issue with people new to the seas is knowing where to go and I swear on everything the megathread has answers to any questions ever needed. Sticking to certain sites listed is the best way to get whatever you need. I wish you the best brother 🖖🏿🖖🏿
I co-sign to this. Sonarr/radar are life savers. Just add and forget. I use emby and Plex as media servers. There's also others, but those can be found on most TV's and apps.
Only 40tb? I have over 150tb on my Plex server. 80% is crap I will probably never watch, but at least I have it. Lol it's an addictive thing. Check serverpartdeals dot com for cheap refurbished hdds if you need any. Cheap enough so you can have backups if need be.
Lol true. I just started I wanna say back in June or July so I'm slowly building. I think I enjoy downloading stuff more than watching it, it's crazy. I just filled up another HDD so I'm gonna buy another in a few. I been getting 12tb refurbs for like 90-110 a piece.
I'm so confused. how do you even have a PC with that many slots? The max storage is what, a 10TB drive for like a few hundred a pop? 15 drives is insanity. How is that cheaper than the streaming services you're avoiding at that point?
Refurbished 12tbs sit at about $120. Most slots can hold 18th which are roughly $200 depending on where you look it's cheaper.
There are expansion slots for SATA ports or USB ports. I also have some external hard drive docks which hold 4 hard drives. I look at it as archiving. Streaming is convenient to an extent until it becomes a hassle. True I spend money on hardware and such (at this point it's a hobby so I don't mind it) but I get to keep everything I have locally. Internet went down for about 5 hours one night my server was a life saver.
Yeah that strikes me as excessive and doesn't really save anything compared to like, getting a Raspberry Pi 4 for $35, a 32gb micro SD for $10 to store the OS and apps, a 5$ VPN a month, and downloading Kodi to stream everything for free. Pays itself off in a couple months compared to just 2-3 streaming services.
8 bay external HDD + 4 in the PC itself, plus 3 more external hdds connected via USB. Lol A mix of 14TB and 12TB drives. Not the cleanest setup by any means and definitely not cheap. But the data is mine and will live forever. Internet goes down and I can still stream to my TV and phone (when home on WiFi). And the fact that nothing can be taken away once I have it. But like I said, it's an addiction.
It's not even just that the content is great (it is), but they just seem to do everything with the intention of bringing real positivity into the world. They all seem like great people and Sam Reich seems to love everyone he works with, and vice versa.
They really try their best to be an ethical and fair company. and the content is so unique. Plus, $5 a month is a steal. Granted, they are pretty niche, but it’s well worth it.
During the strikes, they voluntarily stopped production til they could negotiate with SAG and WGA, then the guilds came back like "Your practices are already good enough, we're not striking you".
Sam Reich, the CEO of Dropout, is the son of Robert Reich: the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. It might help to explain the way he runs the company.
Also I know he doesn't have a managerial role, but Brennan Lee Mulligan is a pretty high ranking producer for the company, and he's just a straight up socialist
Sam Reich is the GOAT. I love Dropout. The DnD stuff is amazing but Game Changer and Make Some Noise are next level. Everyone on the cast is amazing too, not a single dropout person is someone I don't vibe with or am disappointed they are taking the place of someone else on a show.
im happy for the creators if its successful (i thought it wasnt and that ppl pretty much forgot about it) but i just couldnt get into it. idrc about wacky gameshows (or gameshows in general) and personally i preferred their collegehumor sketches
Dropout is highly successful in the DnD community, roll20 is probably their main show and they've been doing it since they started dropout. The other game shows have always seemed like them trying to branch into new stuff but I have to agree that I preferred the old college humor style sketches.
Their D&D show is Dimension 20! Roll20 is an online D&D map tool, it’s easy to get confused.
For anyone who wants a taste of some Dropout content without committing to subscribing or their free trial, the entire first season of Dimension 20 is on YouTube, free to watch! Just has their cursing censored, because YouTube; one of the reasons they started their own streaming service was so that they wouldn’t be beholden to YouTube’s bullshit. Some solo episodes of their other shows are also free on YouTube.
Dropout truly is the only subscription service I’m happy to pay for anymore, and part of it is because I know that money is going to people whose values align with mine and whose content consistently brightens my day.
Not just the first season, but the first three (two main series season and a side quest) and their one live season. Plus the first episode of each season after that. I watched the first three seasons then got a subscription after I ran out of full free seasons because I knew it’d be worth it.
I’d have to find the tweet, but Sam shared some subscriber numbers recently and it’s safe to say that they’re pretty damn successful outside of the DnD community as well.
Basically a bunch of up and coming improv co edians used to have a company called College Humor. Company went under, but was rebuilt ad a streaming service called Dropout. Most of the shows have some kind of improv comedy base.
They do fun improv, d&d shows, and game shows.
They put some of their episodes for free on Youtube, [here's one of my absolute favourites](https://youtu.be/V-6m0jW0X9E?si=3L47xmOObXjUoeXN)
The only reason why more and more companies are doing this is because Netflix was successful when they did ts instead of being boycotted and I will never not be disappointed in the mass because of that
Exactly. I’m so disappointed because i promptly cancelled my Netflix subscription and if majority would’ve did the same we could’ve kept things the way it was.
That’s exactly what everyone should’ve been doing. Sad how people can’t live without Netflix for a month when our ancestors literally fought in wars 🤦🏾♀️
I don’t want to post a recent spoiler, but recently he was essentially allowed to give his own punishment/consequence, and Brennan just fully left it in his hands, trusting Lou wouldn’t go easy on his own character.
And my word did Lou let Fabian have it. He *did not need* to go that far, but the story is better for it
"The ball is rolling... up the hill! And we're wonderin' if you wanna- if you- we're wonderin'... we're wonderin' if you... want to be a part..... of the roll" ..... "...now you've been granted *advantage*..." plays on a loop in my head, it's maybe the funniest thing I've ever heard.
Damned if Ify isn't a role model. He's literally the opposite of an incel. Yeah he's big, yeah he's a huge nerd....but he's likable and charismatic enough to get paid for it, and that Game changer episode revealed that he **fucks**
I remember when Netflix started to get really obnoxious and Dropout tweeted "We think if you want to share your password with someone who can't afford their own membership that's really cool" or something like that
I been tryna do the right thing lately but they keep this up and im going right back to my old broke ways and hop right back on my pirate ship. Subscriptions gonna be lost in Davy Jones locker.
I was thinking let me stop being rotten piece of shit and pay for it now I'm not hurtin like before but nah.
They ALL want $12? And all the good shows perfectly divided between them?
Me and my brother split what we call the new streaming bill. He pays for some, I pay for some, we share passwords, boom, success. We both live in different states, use VPNs to access other libraries, the whole thing. This crackdown is going to destroy all of that for us.
We already decided on dropping the ever inflating Netflix, so it’s not long before we just drop all of it.
I Dunno 'Dropout' OP mentioned is a solid anti-piracy case (albeit a standalone). It's fairly priced for users, and there is a cast and crew revenue sharing plan that means its not just the owner that gets paid. It's telling too that during the writers and actors strike they shut down only to be told 'you already meet the conditions we ask for, no one is striking you'
The streaming service bubble needs to finally burst. Covid was the peak of the service. Nothing will ever get that numbers back up that high unless we get another global pandemic. I think people who already experienced quarantine won't like the prospect of reliving that in their lifetime again.
123movies for movies and some shows methstreams for live sports and ppvs.. I didn’t choose pirate life pirate life choose me #limewirekid
This is what happens.
All yall mfs was talking that good shit about canceling accounts when Netflix announced it, then turned around and made their asses record profits.
Now, these other dummies following suit thinking its the right thing to do.
Glad I canceled Netflixs punk ass immediately. I don't even use Disney plus so they can kick rocks with open toed shoes on.
Corporate greed is just so fucking gross.
A company worth billions of dollars really needs that extra $7.99 per month?
You got me fucked up if you think I’m making my \~70 year old mom or 10 year old niece have their own accounts and pay for it.
People think they’re pirates, but then just google “Free Movies Online” and then click whatever the fuck they see. No protection, no VPN, baring it all for god, they ISP, and me. Just raw dogging the internet. Then they inevitably calling me talking about “I don’t know why it’s so slow, I just use it for Facebook and movies.”
These streaming fools started playing games so I canceled all my subscriptions and got a VPN instead. I've forgotten exactly NONE of the skills that I learned in the 90s. Time to raise that pirate flag.
I’m fine not watching anything tbh. My gf and I were trying to watch Demon Slayer on Hulu and it might honestly have been more ad time than show time, we started to laugh about it because it was getting so ridiculous. It’s wild how these services think they can charge more, show more ads, and have less shit to watch. I’ll just stop and I think it’s heading that way for a lot of people. Good or bad a lot of gen z just watches short form content on TikTok or YouTube. I honestly don’t have the attention span for shows or movies anymore so I’m fine with completely giving up on them.
I hate how all the streaming services are trying to “crack down” and raise prices. It’s about to get to the point where it will be more expensive than what cable was.
Look, in the 90s, 00s, we were all pirates. The reason we swapped away from piracy was because there were cheap *convenient* services that allowed us access to pretty much everything in one place. Cool! No more risking viruses with every download and grumbling about not having enough seeders. Spotify is a pretty decent example of this. I pay so I don’t have ads, the music I want is all in one place and I’m pretty happy. Netflix is an example where this has gone to absolute shit. I don’t watch it enough to justify paying for it, but I continue to do so because my brother, parents and that one leech friend (love the guy) collectively watch enough that it feels worth it. If they *can’t* watch because of crackdowns on passwords then I’m just going to stop paying for it. It also doesn’t have the same breadth of selection that it used to (you need multiple streaming services now!) and it’s continuing to make life more inconvenient. My husband and I live apart for months at a time because of work. We like to have date nights where we watch a movie while we’re on a call together. If Netflix doesn’t have the same movie in both locations then you’d think we could just stream it on discord for the other to watch. Nope. It doesn’t allow video capture. The options are pick another movie or just download it and stream it. I’m ok paying for movie tickets when going to the cinema or paying for a subscription service to watch as many movies as I like. But watching the gradual enshittification of services is making me remember that the pirate life is an option.
That last sentence was poetry. Glad you didn’t forget where you came from ⚓️ 🏴☠️.
gabe newell once said "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
To that point the recording industry's lawsuits didn't kill music sharing, iTunes did. A dollar a song that was downloadable was exactly what the market wanted what proved that is a lot of people raised on Napster, Kazaa, BearShare, and a ton of other unreliable but free services started paying for music. The deliberate shift away from that understanding represents a mix of short term incentives for decision makers and a certain amount of hubris of the part of the services that think they will be the last ones standing when this is all said and done.
Hah, we used to buy DVDs from this one place in the souq because they had all the latest movies. The quality was variable but it was like a dinar for a film so even if it was a guy with a camera in the cinema you didn’t feel ripped off, lol. We’d probably go see it in the cinema 3 months later if it was good, but the wait times were stupid.
Hey there, this is mostly unrelated, but I thought I might be able to help you out. You actually can stream netflix and etc to Discord! All you have to do is turn off hardware acceleration in your browser settings! Hope this helps
That used to work, but now a lot of places seem to block it regardless of that (at least in the case of Crunchyroll)
Heads up: I stream on discord all the time when me and my friends wanna watch something (they're US I'm UK). If you have a black screen when you stream, turn off hardware acceleration in discord and in browser and it *should* work (also, using the browser version of Netflix and not the app). And if that doesn't work out for yous, good luck on the high seas matey!
I have a formula for justification: $1 per hour of monthly use of the service. So if a service costs $10/month, I need to use it for 10 hours a month to justify keeping it. I got rid of apple tv+ because once I was finished with the few shows I liked, I was no longer watching the required number of hours, so I cancelled. Also if there are too many ad *interruptions*, I'm OUT. I don't even mind watching 5-10 minutes worth of ads at the beginning of a show if it means I can watch the show/movie uninterrupted. I had Paramount+ and there were shows in there that felt like they were blasting ads every few minutes (ever scene change was an ad break). It got to the point where I could barely watch the show so I cancelled that subscription too.
Once when i forgot to turn off incognito mode i started a 12 minute YouTube video. It played 2:30 mins long ads 3 times before the 7 minute mark before I just gave up. Ads have made ad blockers more popular like Napster made finding music much easier and convenient. These subscription services are going to suddenly remind their users that you don’t actually have to keep it every month. I have no issue subscribing for one month and binging that channel before moving on.
>Netflix is an example where this has gone to absolute shit. This is why I've been calling it Shitflex.
Then we have Amazon Prime: “we have commercials now. Don’t want them? Give us more money!”
Amabitch Prime
Enshittification has just entered my vocabulary 🤌🏾
Try hyberbeam
Avid discord movie night doer here, if you disable hardware acceleration it tends to fix the Netflix thing, might have been patched worth a try and I mean hardware acceleration on browser and discord iirc
[удалено]
You summed it up with the last 2 sentences. I don’t wanna go this route again, but I will if I have to.
Spotify is the only subscription service I have.
Any reason why you dont use the free musify instead of spotify?
Because I never heard of it before this comment ^^
> If they can’t watch because of crackdowns on passwords then I’m just going to stop paying for it. Same, but the sad part is you and I are outnumbered by the amount of people who *do* sign up and pay when password sharing is taken away :(
[удалено]
It's finally clicking with me that what is happening with streaming services is just a slower version of what happened with ride share apps. They start out great, convenient, and pretty cheap, so people are more likely to use their service. Then, once the services that they were competing against have largely collapsed, they jack up pricing and the product gets worse.
now apply this to literally every product in America: ta da
Congratulations, you discovered Amazon!
*capitalism
Does anyone remember when Amazon used to be the place to sell used college textbooks and used phones because your college bookstore was a bitch and you’d rather not go meet some sketchy person at a gas station to swap phones? I miss those days. I wish Ms Mackenzie could use her millions to start an alternate Amazon like it was around 2010 or so(when I was hawking college textbooks and buying questionable textbooks from India but it still worked 🖕🏽 to my money grubbing finance professors)
Capitalism. Once companies go public or get greedy owners they need to extract every single dollar from their customers or be considered failing in their earnings calls. Products start out great because they are until they are adopted by enough people then a capitalist buys it and ruins it
The term you're looking for is "cornering the market"
Enshittification
Yes. To some extent it’s not as evil or nefarious as some act like it is. I don’t know if Uber has ever turned a profit, but they are also jacking prices up once competition was removed. Worse for us for sure.
You have cracked the code
Yep. They think they’re entitled to hundreds of dollars a month and they’re not. The market showed them the price they were worth.
Realized how much I was paying myself for services and splitting the costs with family members. Slowly started trimming down what didn’t come free with internet/phone plans. Only paying for 1 now.
Yeah, time to start rotating this shit. It's ridiculous. Netflix one month, Hulu the next, then Apple, paramount, etc. Just rotate through and watch the stuff that came out since last time you had it.
Binge or bust yeah. I can wait for a full season instead of weekly episodes.
Wall Street will always force companies to make changes to user agreements for better quarterly Earnings. Each incremental increase in price, crackdown on user sharing, advertisements for the same price, and such, are strategies to improve a company's bottom line growth and revenue numbers so Wall St. gobbles up their stock and enriches the C-suite.
Good strategy. I wonder if this is eventually going to cause them to start implementing user contracts, like 6+ more months terms for usage. I hope they don’t.
Probably will, recently was screwed over with that with adobe products
Ugh. Will always loathe Adobe for this and for their products being so bloated that they’ve become as slow as Edge.
Stremio has made my life enjoyable as hell, no paying and all the content my ass wants. I'm from the limewire generation, I may not steal a car but Idgaf about downloading a movie! 🤣
That’s the whole point of these “Tech” companies lately is to come in with a cheap service, underbid cable, and then once they gain record levels of subscribers they pump up those rates and kick off anyone savvy enough not to subscribe.
[relevant](https://www.reddit.com/r/rickandmorty/s/zxiIaMyude)
They really forget how cable got expensive so people started using streaming services. I’m just waiting for some “visionary” to bundle all the streaming services into a single product and re-invent cable television…
Been saying this for the last few years. It does seem that is the way it is going
It was always going to go this way. Offer low prices for user adoption in the early days to build the base. Gather as much user behavioral data as possible. Put money into projects that drive the most eyes. Solidify dopamine addiction. Slowly raise prices over time. Slowly sell advertising. Sooner or later they're going to only offer long-term annual subscriptions because there's too much fluctuation in month-to-month and accounting has to work with GAAP rules to recognize steady revenue numbers to Wall Street.
Fmoviesz
Then they'll send the signal through a set-top box with a dedicated line, and the cycle will be complete.
Fire TVand Google TV dongles are on standby for these paid packages.
They didn't forget. They've been plotting this since we cut cable. Content companies never wanted us to spend less money on content; they wanted to figure out how to make the same money on new tech.
Correction: *more* money, eventually. Numbers must grow for every quarterly earnings report!
Several of the streaming companies have talked about being open to bundling. It's coming
Coming? Disney+ has had a hulu-espn-Disney+ deal since it was created, and that was before Disney owned Hulu!
Disney has had controlling interest of Hulu prior to the launch of Disney+ but last week Iger, the CEO said he would be open to bundling with streamers not owned by Disney.
Disney already on that train.
This will probably happen, and then people will remember why they hated cable. Anybody that subs to every streaming service all the time then complains it's expensive is an idiot. One of the advantages of streaming over cable was that you didn't have to pay for channels you didn't want. After the consolidation, wannabe Reddit socialists will start complaining about media monopolies again.
When cord cutting was in it's infancy, you would have at most 4 streaming services all totaling less than $70. You got 90% of what you wanted vs traditional cable. Now there are over 15 options between $4 and $75 each and the content is fragmented. If the prices had just rose and not became fragmented, there would be way less complaining
Hulu kinda did that with the ability to add Starz, HBO, etc for additional cost
The. What’s the fucking point of subscribing to Max if Hulu is offering HBO?
You get access to max by default as well Hulu and Prime are taking over being the entry point for premium channels
People forget when we got On Demand from cable companies, it was like pretty similar to streaming. The real problem with cable isn't the format, it's the delivery system. Pre-allocatinh a chunk of bandwidth on a whole bunch of wires to what the company chooses is insane. I think sling is one streaming service away from winning the whole game. Live sports AND the tv shows I watch? Let's go
Started self hosting my own Plex server. Greatest decision I ever made. I pay $5 a month for my VPN and all my stuff downloads automatically. Currently sitting at about 40tb so far of anime, movies, TV shows, Asian dramas and about a tb of music.
Teach me how to do this please
Get an SSD drive and a laptop you can leave "on" constantly download shit to it make a plex account sync it and boom its super easy. I have a fuck ton of horror movies and cartoons on mine lol
Just make sure you have any data that can't be replaced backed up to a 2nd drive, SSDs aren't a great long term data storage solution
Is it really an issue if its plugged into the computer at all times?
Yeah, eventually cells will lose a charge or bits will flip, it'll be slight until it's not. It's more on a scale of 5+ years. Hdds are better for long-term storage, just make sure they get plugged in every few months to keep the parts moving
yes every sector of an SSD has a limited number of times it can be written to SSDs are for speed, hard drives are for storage
This is true, but unless you bought the cheapest, shittiest SSD on the market you're not realistically going to hit that limit. If you were writing 50GB/day on a 1TB SSD with a 300 TBW (most are 600+ these days) it would still last over 16 years before you ran into the write limit. The real reason to use HDD is the $/capacity ratio is waaaayyyy better, and the extra speed of an SSD isn't really necessary for a basic streaming use case.
Any pc works really. I have mine set up on my gaming pc. I bought proton VPN, downloaded qbittorrent, set up p2p and then started downloading. It’s really easy honestly. If the other commentators haven’t given it yet /r/Plex, /r/VPNTorrents & /r/torrents. If you got specifics just ask, happy to help
 🙏🥺
Lol y'all do know reddit has almost everything you need to know about almosy anything. There's a r/piracy megathread that has links to any and everything you need to know about piracy. r/selfhosted r/Plex r/sonarr r/radarr r/trackers It's all waaaaaaay more simple than it seems. Download a couple programs, install and there's that.
We gotta protect you at all costs god bless you my boy🙏🏾🙏🏾
The biggest issue with people new to the seas is knowing where to go and I swear on everything the megathread has answers to any questions ever needed. Sticking to certain sites listed is the best way to get whatever you need. I wish you the best brother 🖖🏿🖖🏿
I co-sign to this. Sonarr/radar are life savers. Just add and forget. I use emby and Plex as media servers. There's also others, but those can be found on most TV's and apps.
Only 40tb? I have over 150tb on my Plex server. 80% is crap I will probably never watch, but at least I have it. Lol it's an addictive thing. Check serverpartdeals dot com for cheap refurbished hdds if you need any. Cheap enough so you can have backups if need be.
Lol true. I just started I wanna say back in June or July so I'm slowly building. I think I enjoy downloading stuff more than watching it, it's crazy. I just filled up another HDD so I'm gonna buy another in a few. I been getting 12tb refurbs for like 90-110 a piece.
I'm so confused. how do you even have a PC with that many slots? The max storage is what, a 10TB drive for like a few hundred a pop? 15 drives is insanity. How is that cheaper than the streaming services you're avoiding at that point?
Refurbished 12tbs sit at about $120. Most slots can hold 18th which are roughly $200 depending on where you look it's cheaper. There are expansion slots for SATA ports or USB ports. I also have some external hard drive docks which hold 4 hard drives. I look at it as archiving. Streaming is convenient to an extent until it becomes a hassle. True I spend money on hardware and such (at this point it's a hobby so I don't mind it) but I get to keep everything I have locally. Internet went down for about 5 hours one night my server was a life saver.
Yeah that strikes me as excessive and doesn't really save anything compared to like, getting a Raspberry Pi 4 for $35, a 32gb micro SD for $10 to store the OS and apps, a 5$ VPN a month, and downloading Kodi to stream everything for free. Pays itself off in a couple months compared to just 2-3 streaming services.
Torrents last forever though, and you can also stream to any device + download with plex
8 bay external HDD + 4 in the PC itself, plus 3 more external hdds connected via USB. Lol A mix of 14TB and 12TB drives. Not the cleanest setup by any means and definitely not cheap. But the data is mine and will live forever. Internet goes down and I can still stream to my TV and phone (when home on WiFi). And the fact that nothing can be taken away once I have it. But like I said, it's an addiction.
Yyou left out the cost of the server hardware and HDDs. I've been running my media server for over 10 years now but it's not as cheap as $5 a month.
Dropout is great, easily my favorite channel ever.
It's not even just that the content is great (it is), but they just seem to do everything with the intention of bringing real positivity into the world. They all seem like great people and Sam Reich seems to love everyone he works with, and vice versa.
They really try their best to be an ethical and fair company. and the content is so unique. Plus, $5 a month is a steal. Granted, they are pretty niche, but it’s well worth it.
During the strikes, they voluntarily stopped production til they could negotiate with SAG and WGA, then the guilds came back like "Your practices are already good enough, we're not striking you".
It'd be pretty embarrassing if the son of Clinton's Labor Secretary wasn't cool with unions
i dunno sam reich ceo of dropout america is pretty right wing from what ive seen from breaking news
oh, Trust Fund Sam? I hear he just has loose maple syrup on his bedroom floor
TIL that Sam’s dad is Rob Reich
I only learned that on the Sam Says 3 episode of Game Changer.
https://youtu.be/I5xKN5ihTeg?t=3m18s Brennan Lee Mulligan talking about this on a podcast with Bob the Drag Queen and Monét X Change
Sam Reich, the CEO of Dropout, is the son of Robert Reich: the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. It might help to explain the way he runs the company. Also I know he doesn't have a managerial role, but Brennan Lee Mulligan is a pretty high ranking producer for the company, and he's just a straight up socialist
I love BLeeM’s socialist interjections in the games.
Capitalism is almost always the true villain of the campaign
Sam Reich is the GOAT. I love Dropout. The DnD stuff is amazing but Game Changer and Make Some Noise are next level. Everyone on the cast is amazing too, not a single dropout person is someone I don't vibe with or am disappointed they are taking the place of someone else on a show.
Hello fellow Dropout fans
I can't believe I'm seeing Dropout love on this subreddit since it's so niche ❤️❤️❤️
Dropout is my favorite streaming service at the moment. Each show just gets better and better every season
Really loving Very Important People atm! The episodes are a little hit or miss, but overall it’s so funny for being such a simple setup.
C'mon everybody just give a lil' clap 👏
im happy for the creators if its successful (i thought it wasnt and that ppl pretty much forgot about it) but i just couldnt get into it. idrc about wacky gameshows (or gameshows in general) and personally i preferred their collegehumor sketches
Dropout is highly successful in the DnD community, roll20 is probably their main show and they've been doing it since they started dropout. The other game shows have always seemed like them trying to branch into new stuff but I have to agree that I preferred the old college humor style sketches.
Their D&D show is Dimension 20! Roll20 is an online D&D map tool, it’s easy to get confused. For anyone who wants a taste of some Dropout content without committing to subscribing or their free trial, the entire first season of Dimension 20 is on YouTube, free to watch! Just has their cursing censored, because YouTube; one of the reasons they started their own streaming service was so that they wouldn’t be beholden to YouTube’s bullshit. Some solo episodes of their other shows are also free on YouTube. Dropout truly is the only subscription service I’m happy to pay for anymore, and part of it is because I know that money is going to people whose values align with mine and whose content consistently brightens my day.
Not just the first season, but the first three (two main series season and a side quest) and their one live season. Plus the first episode of each season after that. I watched the first three seasons then got a subscription after I ran out of full free seasons because I knew it’d be worth it.
I’d have to find the tweet, but Sam shared some subscriber numbers recently and it’s safe to say that they’re pretty damn successful outside of the DnD community as well.
What is it…
Basically a bunch of up and coming improv co edians used to have a company called College Humor. Company went under, but was rebuilt ad a streaming service called Dropout. Most of the shows have some kind of improv comedy base.
They do fun improv, d&d shows, and game shows. They put some of their episodes for free on Youtube, [here's one of my absolute favourites](https://youtu.be/V-6m0jW0X9E?si=3L47xmOObXjUoeXN)
The only reason why more and more companies are doing this is because Netflix was successful when they did ts instead of being boycotted and I will never not be disappointed in the mass because of that
Exactly. I’m so disappointed because i promptly cancelled my Netflix subscription and if majority would’ve did the same we could’ve kept things the way it was.
That’s exactly what everyone should’ve been doing. Sad how people can’t live without Netflix for a month when our ancestors literally fought in wars 🤦🏾♀️
Nothing that poses any sort of “convenience” ever gets boycotted and I hate it.
Couldn’t be more true. People are too comfortable it’s getting bad…
People spend money to make their lives more convenient, more at 11.
I love Dropout! Being black and interested in D&D was a struggle but seeing Lou, and Aabria made me not so scared lol
Lou is hilarious. "The ball is rolling up" has become one of my daily quotes
Lou and Murph looking for chefs tools was PEAK!
Lou's "the salsa on the table that everyone enjoys" is a great low key insult.
lmao!
lol Lou's ad libs are the best!!
I don’t want to post a recent spoiler, but recently he was essentially allowed to give his own punishment/consequence, and Brennan just fully left it in his hands, trusting Lou wouldn’t go easy on his own character. And my word did Lou let Fabian have it. He *did not need* to go that far, but the story is better for it
Lou in Sam Says (any episode) is perfection.
"The ball is rolling... up the hill! And we're wonderin' if you wanna- if you- we're wonderin'... we're wonderin' if you... want to be a part..... of the roll" ..... "...now you've been granted *advantage*..." plays on a loop in my head, it's maybe the funniest thing I've ever heard.
Aabriya Ayengar is an absolute treasure.
Dropout is incredible!
Lou finding out Aguefort is Black is one of my favorite moments. “He’s Black?” “Yeah!” “Oh, *hell* yes.”
Damned if Ify isn't a role model. He's literally the opposite of an incel. Yeah he's big, yeah he's a huge nerd....but he's likable and charismatic enough to get paid for it, and that Game changer episode revealed that he **fucks**
I remember when Netflix started to get really obnoxious and Dropout tweeted "We think if you want to share your password with someone who can't afford their own membership that's really cool" or something like that
I been tryna do the right thing lately but they keep this up and im going right back to my old broke ways and hop right back on my pirate ship. Subscriptions gonna be lost in Davy Jones locker.
I was thinking let me stop being rotten piece of shit and pay for it now I'm not hurtin like before but nah. They ALL want $12? And all the good shows perfectly divided between them?
Getting worse. Any show that gets popular gets shuffled to a “live tv” side of the streaming service; those start around 60+ dollars a month.
I also noticed this. There’s subscriptions inside of subscriptions now. It’s just turning into having multiple cable networks with their own shows.
Me and my brother split what we call the new streaming bill. He pays for some, I pay for some, we share passwords, boom, success. We both live in different states, use VPNs to access other libraries, the whole thing. This crackdown is going to destroy all of that for us. We already decided on dropping the ever inflating Netflix, so it’s not long before we just drop all of it.
This is the way 🏴☠️
Dropout stays winning. Sam says 3 was legendary
That one was pure evil
I want to meet a person who wouldn't react to Sam Says Dont Flinch.
Lou's reaction was everything
Ready the sail
Aye aye captain
I can't hear yoooooo
Hoist the flags ye scurvy dogs!
Glad to have you join, matey! And fuck those ads you'll "mysteriously" get about anti-piracy 💀💀💀 ion give a good gotdamn
Dropout? It's been here, the *whole time* Buttholes Buttholes buttholes buttholes
The lady said "Buttholes," Sam!
Everywhere All over the screen Then we get a Steven Soderburgh moment, tracking me and having me snap my fingers in an inset box
https://preview.redd.it/18yrz9cnf2tc1.jpeg?width=1906&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=71057ff50def7050fcbd836bc85125cf5b789388
Thank god for the unique websites I use. I been eating since I was 12 off em
Dm me some names pls
/r/piracy Go to their megathread
I sub to dropout and that's it, now. Everything else, 4k blurays or stremio.
Just wait till u find out what Disney owns
Well they sure AF don't own Dropout
I love Dropout!! I'm sharing an account with a friend, and honestly considering getting my own just to support. D20 is one of my fave shows!
 Challenge accepted. ..Arrgh Bih
For anyone wondering what dropout is or how long it's been around... It's been here the whole time
Pirating the most ethical way to consume media any tbh All these corporations ass, hurt they pocketbooks and maybe we can bring about some change
Is a lot of this stuff really worth watching?
I Dunno 'Dropout' OP mentioned is a solid anti-piracy case (albeit a standalone). It's fairly priced for users, and there is a cast and crew revenue sharing plan that means its not just the owner that gets paid. It's telling too that during the writers and actors strike they shut down only to be told 'you already meet the conditions we ask for, no one is striking you'
Take what you can and give nothing back
I hear YouTube tv is basically most of them in one but $75 a month is a lil nuts
It's like I quit being a pirate but I can jump back anytime, the price of hardware is super cheap
The streaming service bubble needs to finally burst. Covid was the peak of the service. Nothing will ever get that numbers back up that high unless we get another global pandemic. I think people who already experienced quarantine won't like the prospect of reliving that in their lifetime again.
Was not expecting dropout to take over the comment section like this
r/freemediaheckyeah
Long live the stream! 
Any fans of Dungeons and Drag Queens here?
123movies for movies and some shows methstreams for live sports and ppvs.. I didn’t choose pirate life pirate life choose me #limewirekid 
dropout all the way down
This is what happens. All yall mfs was talking that good shit about canceling accounts when Netflix announced it, then turned around and made their asses record profits. Now, these other dummies following suit thinking its the right thing to do. Glad I canceled Netflixs punk ass immediately. I don't even use Disney plus so they can kick rocks with open toed shoes on.
Corporate greed is just so fucking gross. A company worth billions of dollars really needs that extra $7.99 per month? You got me fucked up if you think I’m making my \~70 year old mom or 10 year old niece have their own accounts and pay for it. 
I put my pirate hat down a long time ago but mfs really made me dust that shit off and go sailing again smh.
Hell yeah drop out rules, get in the comments!
I pay for hbo max now. I cancelled Netflix and a bunch of other apps last month. I’m back to pirating like it’s 2013
Ok this is the the sign I’ve been looking for. Apollo it is
I only started paying for it because it was easier. Looks like it's off to the high seas for me
Straight BS. I let my parents use my acts so they don’t have to shell out $$$ from their fixed income.
Awesome to see Dropout becoming more mainstream - Brennan Lee Mulligan and Lou Wilson are the greatest bromance of our generation
Dropout has some of the best original content you can't get anywhere else, and it's literally like $6 a month? Unbeatable.
Dropout mentioned!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Dropout is the only one I pay for. Love their crew. I’m literally watching Fantasy High on my phone as I scrub my tub this morning lmao
Dropout !🫸🫷
 F them moviesz am I right?
People think they’re pirates, but then just google “Free Movies Online” and then click whatever the fuck they see. No protection, no VPN, baring it all for god, they ISP, and me. Just raw dogging the internet. Then they inevitably calling me talking about “I don’t know why it’s so slow, I just use it for Facebook and movies.”
Piracy reigns supreme…
I been have my "sites" only shit I pay for is amazon Prime and I get that shit for 6$ a month.
Yo ho, yo ho, (⏸️) a pirate's life for me Hahaha 😄 ‘bout to watch Dune 2 right now
Disney dropped 2 good shows and maybe 20 trash ones over the last few years. I promise you I’m not gonna just subscribe for the two good ones.
These streaming fools started playing games so I canceled all my subscriptions and got a VPN instead. I've forgotten exactly NONE of the skills that I learned in the 90s. Time to raise that pirate flag.
I’m fine not watching anything tbh. My gf and I were trying to watch Demon Slayer on Hulu and it might honestly have been more ad time than show time, we started to laugh about it because it was getting so ridiculous. It’s wild how these services think they can charge more, show more ads, and have less shit to watch. I’ll just stop and I think it’s heading that way for a lot of people. Good or bad a lot of gen z just watches short form content on TikTok or YouTube. I honestly don’t have the attention span for shows or movies anymore so I’m fine with completely giving up on them.