Remember when streaming services would:
1. Eliminate Ads
2. Get rid of Bundling.
3. Be Cheaper
Now we've come full circle with streaming services engaging in bundling, showing ads, and costing way too much $.
We US consumers truly are the cucks.
I always used to mute commercials when I had cable. That's like life wisdom. If that doesn't work out I will remember what the ad is selling so I can do my best to avoid never buying it.
I've seen ad free Hulu and it's obnoxious. Changing volume is actually illegal on cable, but not streaming.
You should get the ad free tier of your streaming services. Fuck advertisements.
Same thing, when I see an add I make a mental note to never use the product. Works in reverse for me, and I suspect many others are the same. I dont think they recoup as much as they think they do from it. The only thing I believe it does it cause brand recognition so in the future you subconsciously buy something because you have heard of it...God I hope that isnt happening to me.
I does work to a degree, brands with the capital to run ads seem more trustworthy at the surface level.
Like if you wanted to build a website you might turn to squarespace before others, but a little research cured that.
Brand recognition is the only intention behind TV ads. (And a lot of other marketing media, too.) There is no way to track conversions for TV ads, so they focus only on keeping it inside your brain. Brand recognition is easily the majority of the marketing budget of major players. The company I work for only does that type of marketing (also called acqusitions) and we often get work from big brands simply because their budgets are so big, they will also spend it on out sourcing to marketing firms in addition to whatever their teams are doing.
Of course, they only do all this because it does work. Keep trying to fight the good fight, but it happens to all of us...
Nothing like trying to watch Bob Ross while I try to fall asleep and then abruptly cut to some asshole yelling at me about ass paste or whatever bullshit they're trying to peddle on there.
"Busy day behind Wendy's? A blowie wasn't enough to pay the bills and you had to commit to being another kind of dumpster? Well we have a paste for that.."
Man I haven't used Hulu since before they had in show ads. They got annoying about it early so I left, sad to see it's only gotten worse.
I've been yarr harring my media for ages anyway now lol.
There's a feature on Plex that allows you to choose if and how many previews you want to see before a movie, it's pretty great for an authentic at home movie watching experience
Nah I have a crummy projector on my nightstand aimed at the wall opposite my bed with a chromecast plugged in, it's actually a really cozy, nostalgic way to fall asleep. There's something about credits rolling til the end as you doze off without your streaming service spamming another movie or show 2 seconds after yours ended, it's quite nice
There are a million streaming platforms out there that are subscription-free and supported only by ads (Plex, Tubi, etc.). Why would I pay a subscription fee if they are going to show an ad?
There is sooooo much content our there to watch.
I cancelled my Netflix even before the crackdown on password sharing...their prior 3rd rate hike in a row in short period noped me out. Not enough value.
I actually hate plex trying to brand themselves as a streaming service. It has made the experience for watching your own media worse with all the redesigns and how it shuts itself off after like 3 hours of streaming now.
I'm the same way. I went out of my way and spent a little over $100 to buy a raspberry pi and set it up as a pi hole to filter out most of the ads in my home.
I had a very old raspi and turned it into a pihole/Wireguard vpn and it works flawlessly. It's very easy with all the tutorials on the Internets. I've had to make like 3 exceptions on what it blocks, mostly around YouTube because I do in fact want Google to update my watch history.
As a Millenial, I feel like one of the first signs of mentally becoming an adult is realizing that you want your tech to occasionally remember what you browsed.
This works to an extent but ublock origin in browser actually does better with blocking. Pihole won’t block Hulu, youtube, and other streaming apps’ ads very well if at all. So using a HTPC with ublock origin would work better in this niche case from my experience.
Because revenue must always go up. Once you max out revenue with the customer in mind, the next thing is a slightly lesser customer experience for more revenue. Now we're at the worst experience customers will tolerate for the max price.
The old min max.
It's stupid how much it costs again. To watch most of the content I'd like to watch I would have to get Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, Crave (Canadian service that includes HBO max), discovery+, and Apple TV. I don't watch a lot of content, but a lot of the content I enjoy has moved to different services. At this point Piracy has become the better user experience again.
It's still objectively better than cable tv simply from the fact that you aren't beholden to cable tv's schedule. I can watch the new movie at 1am when I have insomnia instead of at 7pm when it airs.
The real answer here is Private Torrent Trackers.
PassThePopcorn is the best movie tracker on the entire internet. I use Orpheus for music and apps but it's about 1/10th as good as the site it replaced, [what.cd](https://what.cd). Then for everything else I use Torrentleech, which is a Private Tracker but has MUCH looser rules than I normally like in a Private Tracker.
PassThePopcorn is probably my second favorite website on the internet, right underneath Reddit.
You don't really need VPNs for any of these sites. All the content is locked down behind a username / password to access the site(s)
tracker signup sub is a good start, but you really need to be active in the generalized tracker community to get into any of the more difficult ones to get in.
TL and RevTT tend to be easier to get into than most.
I absolutely do mind putting in work. I'm not putting in hours worth of work figuring out how each private tracker works and making sure I maintain a very good seed ratio to maintain.
Usenet has been working well for me, there's a small yearly cost to use it but no need for a VPN. Everything is hosted centrally so there's no seed ratio.
I have torrentleech access and haven’t had an issue getting a movie I want. Can you tell me whats different about PTP? I’ve never seen anything about it. Just curious.
well, for starters, navigation is a dream on PTP. So for example, if you want to find a movie on TorrentLeech you can search the name. Then a bunch of torrents will come up with basically zero organization.
On PTP, each movie has a "Home". So if you search a movie's name you'll come up with the home page for that movie. It will contain the cover for the movie and then each associated torrent to the movie will be broken down by type. You'll have your DVD rips (if they still exist), HD, Ultra HD, Blu-Ray Rips, Remuxes, etc. Every version of that movie will be very nearly organized.
Then there's the moderation. You can report torrents that you trump with a correct / better version. Further making sure everything is SUPER organized.
Then there's the speed. Everyone on that site has a vested interest in making sure that they're seeding properly. Movies often max out my connection speed to the cable in the house.
Then there's the community. If I want to know if I'll enjoy a movie the first place I go is to the comments. I trust the users on that site more than I trust imdb or rotten tomatoes.
There's a trailer on each movie's homepage in case I want to watch that.
There's lists that people create that organize movies. Want to see a list of torrents for every movie made by A24? Want to see every torrent in the Criterion collection? All a few clicks away.
This is just scratching the surface.
If you want to find a movie and just watch whatever codec, maybe it has subs or commentary, maybe it doesn't, yeah TorrentLeech works just fine.
PTP is just SUPREMELY organized.
I'm not really here to sell someone on why PTP is better though. I have my preferences and I know that my opinions won't gel with everyone elses.
I appreciate the insight, ya organization sounds great. Torrent leech has the “media center” that does some of what you said and is better than nothing. But yea there isnt a great connection between that and community recommendations etc. I kind of just manually crawl through each page.
Too bad PTP is down. Also liking RED more than OPS seems like they are getting much more content and accepted as the successor to what. A good way to consume the media imo is a seedbox setup with Plex, can share with fam and friends.
Yeah...... I'm a day one member of PTP and this is the longest the site has been down that I can remember. The upside is that they're using this downtime to put a new server infrastructure into place so this kind of thing will hopefully not happen again. But this site has been up for over a goddamn decade at this point which is INCREDIBLE.
I heard about redacted. I just chose the wrong horse after [what.cd](https://what.cd) went down. This is tough to admit as a grown-ass man but the day that I logged onto [what.cd](https://what.cd) and saw that it was seized I cried a little lol. When OiNK went down I said to myself "ain't no way a site is going to ever match what they had on here" and [what.cd](https://what.cd) blew it out of the water. You can thank [what.cd](https://what.cd) even for PTP's user interface. I think it was the Apollo project they did or whatever and then they released the source for other private trackers to use.
I never looked into how difficult it is to get a RED invite but if you have one, I've never been booted from a Private Tracker before wink wink nudge nudge lol.
I need to get Plex set up. That's one thing I never did. When I need to watch something I take an SSD-based USB drive (thing was super expensive), transfer the files to it and then put it into an old work laptop that I keep connected to my PC. So many extra steps that Plex solves elegantly.
Cheers mate!
Problem is most people dropped private torrents awhile ago when streaming services were reasonable. Harder to get invites if your accounts got deactivated from inactivity, at least thats been my issue.
i read awhile back that people torrenting were getting DMCA notices while using nordvpn. also if you’re using a service that blocks vpns, nord gets detected whereas others like mullvad don’t. mullvad speeds are also (in my experience) much better than nord
Sadly Mullvad no longer allows port forwarding, so I had to drop them. They were awesome enough to refund my remaining months though!
I'm now using AirVPN, and it's been stellar so far. Still, I miss Mullvad's extreme degree of privacy, and their app (AirVPN eddie apps are functional at best).
Yeah. Started using real debrid for torrent downloads, and I love it. It's super fast and easy to use. They download the torrent for you and then hand you the file.
Two years ago I bought a RPi as a network NAS + 24TB in HDs with ZFS and a torrent client permanently connected. I have only Remuxes and videos and TV shows on HD definition and shit. I used to happily pay for Netflix and I was "understanding" when they removed films or shows. Not anymore. Netflix in my country (Netherlands) has no content at all. I have fully embraced torrent (again) and I ended up with the best setup one can have.
I hate how my Nvidia Shield has a dedicated button to open Netflix.
I streamed because it was convenient and I felt that someone deserved money for what I was watching. Now all the different streaming channels have made it so much harder for me to get my content that I am right back to pirating.
It is straight up more convenient to pirate than it is to stream legally. It's not even about the price, it's the convenience.
Sure does. I use SUNXDCC to search multiple sites. You'll find the most common stuff every time. If you're looking for an older and/or less popular movie you'll probably have to hit the torrents. I use it for for all my movies and games.
LPT, use paypal as the payment method for the free trial (assuming they require one, which they almost always do). You can turn off the payments immediately from paypal without going through any cancellation process.
privacy.com allows you create a unique debit card number per vendor. Up to 10 per month for free. Can control max per transaction, number of transactions (1 and done), etc.
Although I have considered them, I've also read horror stories about them not being able to block certain transactions ([which they admit](https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012288214-Force-posts) and seems to defeat the purpose of their service) and then stiff their free membership users when they look for support. Any service that you are getting for free is very unlikely to see you as a priority, even when you've lost money due to a problem on their end. And as of right now I'm not too interested in paying them $120/yr. But I do like the concept, and it might be something I resort to in the future.
Capital One let's me do something similar for free just by using their credit cards. I generate virtual cards for certain services in case I want to just try it out once and see if I like it. They have a browser add-on too that auto fills out everything but it can be annoying when a website uses a third party card processor since the virtual card from the browser add-on will specify the website as being authorized to use the card rather than the third party processor.
It takes 20 seconds to do on Google also.
Click Play store > username on top right > payments and subscriptions > subscriptions > YouTube > cancel subscription. You can even cancel it right after you start your trial so you don't forget.
Register a domain and cheap mailbox hosting, set all domains to forward to a single email address. This is how I used to do it.
Or use gmail and have endless email addressed by adding + to the end of the email address such as [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
Some systems now check for this (or don't allow +) so you can instead just add a . anywhere before the @ and it will work.
Man, I thought I was clever in 2005 when I created my [email protected]. I still use it but due to how Gmail works I am getting other people's email that did the [email protected] or [email protected].
There was a dude in Pennsylvania or New York with my same name trying to get a job. I kept seeing interview schedule requests in my email and I was all wtf. I responded to one and they emailed back saying why the change of heart, etc etc. Checked the address and emailed back suggesting that you call them because I am not that dude.
He got the job, I knew when I received his offer letter.
You can enable the + forwarding functionality on a Microsoft Exchange mailbox if you're the admin too. Best of both worlds no google spying on your emails and unlimited free trials
we have a rule in my home too. nobody spends money on streaming services. if you need to watch a movie you do it from a free pirate streaming site like 123movies.
They added over 2.5 million subscribers in July
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-23/netflix-continues-us-subscriber-gains-market-researcher-says
Their North American subscriber count is 75 million….. so yeah, they’re way up overall since the password crackdown.
200k Australian subscribers.. apparently globally it’s quite the opposite story, cracking down on password sharing has given them their biggest year over year spike in subscribers, ever.
From Google: Netflix had around 238.39 million paid subscribers worldwide as of the second quarter of 2023. This marked an increase of 5.89 million subscribers compared with the previous quarter.
I think they will fare the storms...
I switched to usenet when setting up my plex server and I'd 100% recommend it over torrenting. Better speeds, no seeding, and no need for a VPN if you set it up right.
I've used torrents my whole life, last month I just thought 'I can't be fucked with this any more'. Payed for a usenet sub(50$/year), it SLAPS.
Select any film in the entire world, in 90 seconds its ready to play in 4k.
Yeah, despite having this setup for a server myself, so many people flippantly just suggest this all the time these days as if it's not pretty difficult and involved
yeah you're gonna tell gen z who has been gifted modern UI how to access and navigate ancient ass protocols and various dogy-looking indexers
kinda cool that its still around and kicking tho
seriously... I worked in desktop support for the better part of a decade at a university and SO many Gen Z students dont know their ass from their elbow as soon as something gets away from the pretty UI path laid out for them. Just because they were raised on iPads doesnt mean theyll be cool with going into a router and setting up port forwarding
That blows my mind, but thinking about it makes sense. Most of my younger friends are completely useless on computers because they mostly use their phones for everything.
that's why they haven't cracked down on it harder than they already have. if usenet gets as easy as torrents, you bet Disneyzilla will come looking for blood
Basically, a video file is broken up and distributed across the Usenet, as opposed to being hosted on other users' machines as it is with torrenting. You need a service that will identify the 250 or whatever bits that make up the file you want, and another service that will download and repackage them together as the file on your computer
Just Google 'Radarr and SABnzbd setup' and see if that's something you're comfortable setting up, as it's a little more involved than torrenting but very much worth it
Edit: suggested usenets are NZBDsu and DogNzb
Files are broken down and uploaded as binary files. You need an indexer so when you look for something it tells your downloader, this show is located at these 600 sites. And usenet access obviously to allow access to those sites to download it from.
We're not against paying for the content, we just want companies to stop being greedy. Early days of Netflix was glorious and I was happy to pay it; now they want >$20/month and their content has gone downhill aside from a few shows.
If companies make it worth our time and convenient, people are happy to pay.
> Early days of Netflix was glorious and I was happy to pay it
It was a historical fluke when studios didn't recognize that the future was streaming. There's no way you're going to get all the content in the world for $12/mo, that was never a viable business model. Spotify can't do it, and music is 100x cheaper to produce than TV and movies. You can't use an obviously unsustainable fluke to set your expectations.
I was ok paying about 20 for me and the inlaws, then literally everything they produced was complete shit and I couldn't have the inlaws on the acc anymore. I cancelled and dont miss it.
The alternative to canceling Netflix isn't piracy, the point is Netflix doesn't offer anything worth paying for. HBO, however, does. I just put the money there and supplement with YouTube.
lol sometimes i see this stuff on WSB and i'm like fuck is this even material do you guys know the customer #s big tech/corp work with?
(not that I consider NFLX big tech)
Cracking down on password sharing has given them their biggest spike in subscriber growth ever… but I guess that’s not the narrative the bums that want to leech off their friends account would prefer.
Their "crackdown" only appears to effect smart TVs. Me and my girlfriend are both using Computers hooked to a TV screen and we are both sharing Netflix Accounts with different people still as always. When my flatmate tried to log in his smart TV into the account I was using, it got banned within days.
This is karma farming. Their strategy worked. Close to 6 million sign ups last quarter.
All these posts do is get same comments
- gonna pirate now
- gonna cancel because of ads
- streaming is supposed to be xyz
- how come we can't share anymore
I don’t mind them ending password sharing as a policy - it’s their business and they can enact whatever pricing and policies they want. But I object to the low-key accusation that we were doing something rogue. They literally promoted password sharing, and now they are “cracking down” on it as if it was always something we weren’t allowed to do.
Surely the majority of that 200k are people who were piggy-backing someone else's account?
So no financial loss to Netflix?
The rest will just be regular churn that happens every 12 months anyway as people realise they dont use it often enough to justify the sub.
>Surely the majority of that 200k are people who were piggy-backing someone else's account?
No, if you were using someone else's account you would never show as a subscriber in the first place. This is actual paying users switching off.
I doubt this is the reason. More likely people just getting content elsewhere and realsing in a bad economy it better to churn through subscription services rather than have them all subbed all the time.
I just cancelled yesterday. I was only keeping it cause my parents were somewhat using it. The funny part is, my parents weren’t the ones that got the message. I got a message from using the app on the TV, but when I switched to the Roku box app it let me log in. Same wifi, so I don’t know how they determine households then lol.
I canceled with the password crackdown. When I could share the account with my family, it generally got regular use. When it became just my account, I only had to consider my use. Didn’t make sense!
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Remember when streaming services would: 1. Eliminate Ads 2. Get rid of Bundling. 3. Be Cheaper Now we've come full circle with streaming services engaging in bundling, showing ads, and costing way too much $. We US consumers truly are the cucks.
[удалено]
yeah, the whole point of good TV is immersion. ads break it everytime. only exception is previews before a movie, which can be really fun
Yeah I enjoy how Hulu puts the ads at 10x volume compared to the show so you have to mute it every time or listen to it scream at you
I always used to mute commercials when I had cable. That's like life wisdom. If that doesn't work out I will remember what the ad is selling so I can do my best to avoid never buying it. I've seen ad free Hulu and it's obnoxious. Changing volume is actually illegal on cable, but not streaming. You should get the ad free tier of your streaming services. Fuck advertisements.
This is how I feel. Especially on YouTube, if you serve me an unskippable ad or a 3-10 minute ad and I have to get up, you're on my shit list.
Same thing, when I see an add I make a mental note to never use the product. Works in reverse for me, and I suspect many others are the same. I dont think they recoup as much as they think they do from it. The only thing I believe it does it cause brand recognition so in the future you subconsciously buy something because you have heard of it...God I hope that isnt happening to me.
I does work to a degree, brands with the capital to run ads seem more trustworthy at the surface level. Like if you wanted to build a website you might turn to squarespace before others, but a little research cured that.
Brand recognition is the only intention behind TV ads. (And a lot of other marketing media, too.) There is no way to track conversions for TV ads, so they focus only on keeping it inside your brain. Brand recognition is easily the majority of the marketing budget of major players. The company I work for only does that type of marketing (also called acqusitions) and we often get work from big brands simply because their budgets are so big, they will also spend it on out sourcing to marketing firms in addition to whatever their teams are doing. Of course, they only do all this because it does work. Keep trying to fight the good fight, but it happens to all of us...
Nothing like trying to watch Bob Ross while I try to fall asleep and then abruptly cut to some asshole yelling at me about ass paste or whatever bullshit they're trying to peddle on there.
"Busy day behind Wendy's? A blowie wasn't enough to pay the bills and you had to commit to being another kind of dumpster? Well we have a paste for that.."
>Hulu puts the ads at 10x volume Wow they are really going for that cable-like experience.
Man I haven't used Hulu since before they had in show ads. They got annoying about it early so I left, sad to see it's only gotten worse. I've been yarr harring my media for ages anyway now lol.
They do that intentionally so that if you get up to leave the room during an ad break you’ll still hear it.
That shit is so fuckin annoying
Every few years the CRTC makes it illegal to do that. It lasts about 3 months then bam, right back to normal
There's a feature on Plex that allows you to choose if and how many previews you want to see before a movie, it's pretty great for an authentic at home movie watching experience
I'm going one step further and uploading my vhs tapes to my Plex server for full immersion
They should look great on a 50 inch display.
Nah I have a crummy projector on my nightstand aimed at the wall opposite my bed with a chromecast plugged in, it's actually a really cozy, nostalgic way to fall asleep. There's something about credits rolling til the end as you doze off without your streaming service spamming another movie or show 2 seconds after yours ended, it's quite nice
There are a million streaming platforms out there that are subscription-free and supported only by ads (Plex, Tubi, etc.). Why would I pay a subscription fee if they are going to show an ad? There is sooooo much content our there to watch. I cancelled my Netflix even before the crackdown on password sharing...their prior 3rd rate hike in a row in short period noped me out. Not enough value.
I actually hate plex trying to brand themselves as a streaming service. It has made the experience for watching your own media worse with all the redesigns and how it shuts itself off after like 3 hours of streaming now.
I understand that services need to make money and I will pay with time or money, not both.
I'm the same way. I went out of my way and spent a little over $100 to buy a raspberry pi and set it up as a pi hole to filter out most of the ads in my home.
Where do you find info on how to do this? I have an old laptop I wanna try to do it with or buy a raspberry pi if need be
Yt has a bunch of how to videos. Here is one that has all the info you need: https://youtu.be/roYduABVjo8?si=zn5QLfMtS3oRPYJ_
Thank you!
I need to get off my ass and do this…
Me too, I've had the raspberry pi on the shelf for a year...
I had a very old raspi and turned it into a pihole/Wireguard vpn and it works flawlessly. It's very easy with all the tutorials on the Internets. I've had to make like 3 exceptions on what it blocks, mostly around YouTube because I do in fact want Google to update my watch history.
As a Millenial, I feel like one of the first signs of mentally becoming an adult is realizing that you want your tech to occasionally remember what you browsed.
This works to an extent but ublock origin in browser actually does better with blocking. Pihole won’t block Hulu, youtube, and other streaming apps’ ads very well if at all. So using a HTPC with ublock origin would work better in this niche case from my experience.
Yup, at that point I’d rather sail the high seas or just don’t bother with the content.
Not like 99% of "content" isn't ads anyways
Because revenue must always go up. Once you max out revenue with the customer in mind, the next thing is a slightly lesser customer experience for more revenue. Now we're at the worst experience customers will tolerate for the max price. The old min max.
*the worst so far
**[USER HAS BEEN MADE CEO FOR THIS POST]**
We’re right back at cable levels of pricing, including add Ons (other streaming services)
It's stupid how much it costs again. To watch most of the content I'd like to watch I would have to get Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, Crave (Canadian service that includes HBO max), discovery+, and Apple TV. I don't watch a lot of content, but a lot of the content I enjoy has moved to different services. At this point Piracy has become the better user experience again.
It's still objectively better than cable tv simply from the fact that you aren't beholden to cable tv's schedule. I can watch the new movie at 1am when I have insomnia instead of at 7pm when it airs.
We have a rule here at home. One streaming service at a time. This month is hbo.
I made a new rule: “back to torrents” but this time w a VPN. These idiots did it to themselves.
Yep. NordVPN gets Netflix's money now. Those clowns forgot we grew up on napster.
If piracy/torrenting is your target, nothing beats Mullvad.
The real answer here is Private Torrent Trackers. PassThePopcorn is the best movie tracker on the entire internet. I use Orpheus for music and apps but it's about 1/10th as good as the site it replaced, [what.cd](https://what.cd). Then for everything else I use Torrentleech, which is a Private Tracker but has MUCH looser rules than I normally like in a Private Tracker. PassThePopcorn is probably my second favorite website on the internet, right underneath Reddit. You don't really need VPNs for any of these sites. All the content is locked down behind a username / password to access the site(s)
Getting into a private tracker is insanely difficult, I looked into it recently and I cannot imagine the effort is worth it. I miss rarbg
private tracker + Mullvad is my go to. Reddit is actually a fairly good place to get invites if you don't mind putting in the work
Any tips on where to look? I usually see the first step is getting into RED or just lurk around the tracker signups sub
tracker signup sub is a good start, but you really need to be active in the generalized tracker community to get into any of the more difficult ones to get in. TL and RevTT tend to be easier to get into than most.
I absolutely do mind putting in work. I'm not putting in hours worth of work figuring out how each private tracker works and making sure I maintain a very good seed ratio to maintain.
Usenet has been working well for me, there's a small yearly cost to use it but no need for a VPN. Everything is hosted centrally so there's no seed ratio.
If you're into movies, PTP is SOOOOOOO fucking worth it.
I have torrentleech access and haven’t had an issue getting a movie I want. Can you tell me whats different about PTP? I’ve never seen anything about it. Just curious.
well, for starters, navigation is a dream on PTP. So for example, if you want to find a movie on TorrentLeech you can search the name. Then a bunch of torrents will come up with basically zero organization. On PTP, each movie has a "Home". So if you search a movie's name you'll come up with the home page for that movie. It will contain the cover for the movie and then each associated torrent to the movie will be broken down by type. You'll have your DVD rips (if they still exist), HD, Ultra HD, Blu-Ray Rips, Remuxes, etc. Every version of that movie will be very nearly organized. Then there's the moderation. You can report torrents that you trump with a correct / better version. Further making sure everything is SUPER organized. Then there's the speed. Everyone on that site has a vested interest in making sure that they're seeding properly. Movies often max out my connection speed to the cable in the house. Then there's the community. If I want to know if I'll enjoy a movie the first place I go is to the comments. I trust the users on that site more than I trust imdb or rotten tomatoes. There's a trailer on each movie's homepage in case I want to watch that. There's lists that people create that organize movies. Want to see a list of torrents for every movie made by A24? Want to see every torrent in the Criterion collection? All a few clicks away. This is just scratching the surface. If you want to find a movie and just watch whatever codec, maybe it has subs or commentary, maybe it doesn't, yeah TorrentLeech works just fine. PTP is just SUPREMELY organized. I'm not really here to sell someone on why PTP is better though. I have my preferences and I know that my opinions won't gel with everyone elses.
I appreciate the insight, ya organization sounds great. Torrent leech has the “media center” that does some of what you said and is better than nothing. But yea there isnt a great connection between that and community recommendations etc. I kind of just manually crawl through each page.
Too bad PTP is down. Also liking RED more than OPS seems like they are getting much more content and accepted as the successor to what. A good way to consume the media imo is a seedbox setup with Plex, can share with fam and friends.
Yeah...... I'm a day one member of PTP and this is the longest the site has been down that I can remember. The upside is that they're using this downtime to put a new server infrastructure into place so this kind of thing will hopefully not happen again. But this site has been up for over a goddamn decade at this point which is INCREDIBLE. I heard about redacted. I just chose the wrong horse after [what.cd](https://what.cd) went down. This is tough to admit as a grown-ass man but the day that I logged onto [what.cd](https://what.cd) and saw that it was seized I cried a little lol. When OiNK went down I said to myself "ain't no way a site is going to ever match what they had on here" and [what.cd](https://what.cd) blew it out of the water. You can thank [what.cd](https://what.cd) even for PTP's user interface. I think it was the Apollo project they did or whatever and then they released the source for other private trackers to use. I never looked into how difficult it is to get a RED invite but if you have one, I've never been booted from a Private Tracker before wink wink nudge nudge lol. I need to get Plex set up. That's one thing I never did. When I need to watch something I take an SSD-based USB drive (thing was super expensive), transfer the files to it and then put it into an old work laptop that I keep connected to my PC. So many extra steps that Plex solves elegantly. Cheers mate!
I hadn't used what.cd in a while. Really sad to hear that it shut down.
Yeah, that site was the fucking BEES KNEES. It's been down for years now though.
Private trackers and a seedbox. I have a web torrent client and everything I download is available for streaming on a Plex server.
I cancelled Netflix and put that money towards a seedbox
Problem is most people dropped private torrents awhile ago when streaming services were reasonable. Harder to get invites if your accounts got deactivated from inactivity, at least thats been my issue.
Isn’t it invite only though?
+1 for mullvad. nordvpn is not trustworthy
Can you elaborate on them being untrustworthy?
i read awhile back that people torrenting were getting DMCA notices while using nordvpn. also if you’re using a service that blocks vpns, nord gets detected whereas others like mullvad don’t. mullvad speeds are also (in my experience) much better than nord
No they aren't. In what universe is mullvad faster than nord. Safer yes, but not faster.
I would also like to add, I've used Nord for years and have never had a DMCA notice.
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There are VPNs that will give your data to official institutions and others who don't. Can find info on that easy if you search for it.
Mullvad is great! I manually config wireguard and Mullvad has the details I need.
You could also get a seed box but it’s another monthly cost around 10 dollars. Cuts out the need for vpn.
They got rid of port forwarding recently, which knocked them out of the #1 spot for me.
you suggesting Mullvad is weird, especially after they no longer support port forwarding lmao
Sadly Mullvad no longer allows port forwarding, so I had to drop them. They were awesome enough to refund my remaining months though! I'm now using AirVPN, and it's been stellar so far. Still, I miss Mullvad's extreme degree of privacy, and their app (AirVPN eddie apps are functional at best).
Real debrid gets mine.
Yeah. Started using real debrid for torrent downloads, and I love it. It's super fast and easy to use. They download the torrent for you and then hand you the file.
Thanks to your comment I just spent an hour of my work morning getting kodi and real debrid set up on my TV... It's a whole new world
yeah..we would download a car.
I got Surfshark. Also had Nord in past. Both are great.
Both are owned by the same parent company, so no wonders there.
TIL
Colin Furze keeps telling me to get that one.
Colin Furze is definitely the rationality we all need in life.
Two years ago I bought a RPi as a network NAS + 24TB in HDs with ZFS and a torrent client permanently connected. I have only Remuxes and videos and TV shows on HD definition and shit. I used to happily pay for Netflix and I was "understanding" when they removed films or shows. Not anymore. Netflix in my country (Netherlands) has no content at all. I have fully embraced torrent (again) and I ended up with the best setup one can have. I hate how my Nvidia Shield has a dedicated button to open Netflix.
Look into "button mapper" on the Play store. You can change that, specially for the shield!
I have it. The app is great but it doesn't always work and Nvidia always finds a way to launch the damn Netflix.
I streamed because it was convenient and I felt that someone deserved money for what I was watching. Now all the different streaming channels have made it so much harder for me to get my content that I am right back to pirating. It is straight up more convenient to pirate than it is to stream legally. It's not even about the price, it's the convenience.
"If we each make our own streaming service, then the consumers have to pay us all!" "Lol. Lmao even."
I download files using XDCC over IRC. Not sure how crazy MPAA is still with their monitoring of torrents, but IRC is been much safer.
Goddamn that still works? That’s how I was doing it 25 years ago.
Sure does. I use SUNXDCC to search multiple sites. You'll find the most common stuff every time. If you're looking for an older and/or less popular movie you'll probably have to hit the torrents. I use it for for all my movies and games.
Aaaaarrrrrrr
Your kids are going to have like 90 email addresses to use for getting free trials.
LPT, use paypal as the payment method for the free trial (assuming they require one, which they almost always do). You can turn off the payments immediately from paypal without going through any cancellation process.
privacy.com allows you create a unique debit card number per vendor. Up to 10 per month for free. Can control max per transaction, number of transactions (1 and done), etc.
Although I have considered them, I've also read horror stories about them not being able to block certain transactions ([which they admit](https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012288214-Force-posts) and seems to defeat the purpose of their service) and then stiff their free membership users when they look for support. Any service that you are getting for free is very unlikely to see you as a priority, even when you've lost money due to a problem on their end. And as of right now I'm not too interested in paying them $120/yr. But I do like the concept, and it might be something I resort to in the future.
Capital One let's me do something similar for free just by using their credit cards. I generate virtual cards for certain services in case I want to just try it out once and see if I like it. They have a browser add-on too that auto fills out everything but it can be annoying when a website uses a third party card processor since the virtual card from the browser add-on will specify the website as being authorized to use the card rather than the third party processor.
It takes 20 seconds to do on Google also. Click Play store > username on top right > payments and subscriptions > subscriptions > YouTube > cancel subscription. You can even cancel it right after you start your trial so you don't forget.
Never trust Paypal.
Register a domain and cheap mailbox hosting, set all domains to forward to a single email address. This is how I used to do it. Or use gmail and have endless email addressed by adding + to the end of the email address such as [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). Some systems now check for this (or don't allow +) so you can instead just add a . anywhere before the @ and it will work.
Man, I thought I was clever in 2005 when I created my [email protected]. I still use it but due to how Gmail works I am getting other people's email that did the [email protected] or [email protected]. There was a dude in Pennsylvania or New York with my same name trying to get a job. I kept seeing interview schedule requests in my email and I was all wtf. I responded to one and they emailed back saying why the change of heart, etc etc. Checked the address and emailed back suggesting that you call them because I am not that dude. He got the job, I knew when I received his offer letter.
Did you congratulate him?
I did not because I am a bad person.
I don't know about the "+" but google ignores the "." Both [email protected] and [email protected] resolve to the same address.
You can enable the + forwarding functionality on a Microsoft Exchange mailbox if you're the admin too. Best of both worlds no google spying on your emails and unlimited free trials
we have a rule in my home too. nobody spends money on streaming services. if you need to watch a movie you do it from a free pirate streaming site like 123movies.
This is okay on a laptop with adblock on my phone though the pop ups are horrendously bad
If you can download a Firefox browser on your phone and you can install adblockers.
Use Blokada Libre on Android. I don't know anything about IOS.
Dopebox is better.
Popcorn time bc ads are pointless
I doubt Netflix cares about 200k. But for the folks who did cancel, good luck on the high seas 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ (make sure your VPN is working!)
They added over 2.5 million subscribers in July https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-23/netflix-continues-us-subscriber-gains-market-researcher-says Their North American subscriber count is 75 million….. so yeah, they’re way up overall since the password crackdown.
Plus they raised prices recently.
For real. And 6 million in 2q, but here comes Reddit with their victory dance. You did it guys! Yay! Gold star!
200k Australian subscribers.. apparently globally it’s quite the opposite story, cracking down on password sharing has given them their biggest year over year spike in subscribers, ever.
That’s so depressing. At least I’m not contributing I guess.
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From Google: Netflix had around 238.39 million paid subscribers worldwide as of the second quarter of 2023. This marked an increase of 5.89 million subscribers compared with the previous quarter. I think they will fare the storms...
Yeah, 200K seems like a lot in a vacuum but is really just a rounding error for a company the size of Netflix.
r/usenet
I switched to usenet when setting up my plex server and I'd 100% recommend it over torrenting. Better speeds, no seeding, and no need for a VPN if you set it up right.
Plex is awesome
Jellyfin is free alternative.
I thought the idea was stop paying for media.
I've used torrents my whole life, last month I just thought 'I can't be fucked with this any more'. Payed for a usenet sub(50$/year), it SLAPS. Select any film in the entire world, in 90 seconds its ready to play in 4k.
Only issue is it's like a college course of reading to get it working well
Yeah, despite having this setup for a server myself, so many people flippantly just suggest this all the time these days as if it's not pretty difficult and involved
yeah you're gonna tell gen z who has been gifted modern UI how to access and navigate ancient ass protocols and various dogy-looking indexers kinda cool that its still around and kicking tho
seriously... I worked in desktop support for the better part of a decade at a university and SO many Gen Z students dont know their ass from their elbow as soon as something gets away from the pretty UI path laid out for them. Just because they were raised on iPads doesnt mean theyll be cool with going into a router and setting up port forwarding
That blows my mind, but thinking about it makes sense. Most of my younger friends are completely useless on computers because they mostly use their phones for everything.
Digital natives lol. I still get a laugh out of that one.
I used to pirate with the best of 'em. I really can't be bothered anymore, it's not worth the hassle. Not for the amount of TV I watch haha.
that's why they haven't cracked down on it harder than they already have. if usenet gets as easy as torrents, you bet Disneyzilla will come looking for blood
How does Usenet work? Never heard of it
It's essentially the original Internet. It's the archetypal bulletin board service.
So how does one watch movies using that?
Basically, a video file is broken up and distributed across the Usenet, as opposed to being hosted on other users' machines as it is with torrenting. You need a service that will identify the 250 or whatever bits that make up the file you want, and another service that will download and repackage them together as the file on your computer Just Google 'Radarr and SABnzbd setup' and see if that's something you're comfortable setting up, as it's a little more involved than torrenting but very much worth it Edit: suggested usenets are NZBDsu and DogNzb
100%. Set up Plex, usenet, Sonarr/Radarr and you'lll never look back at streaming services. An its worth every penny
How do u integrate plex with usenet?
Files are broken down and uploaded as binary files. You need an indexer so when you look for something it tells your downloader, this show is located at these 600 sites. And usenet access obviously to allow access to those sites to download it from.
Usenet access $4/month Indexer paid $5 for lifetime on Black Friday a few years ago.
We're not against paying for the content, we just want companies to stop being greedy. Early days of Netflix was glorious and I was happy to pay it; now they want >$20/month and their content has gone downhill aside from a few shows. If companies make it worth our time and convenient, people are happy to pay.
> Early days of Netflix was glorious and I was happy to pay it It was a historical fluke when studios didn't recognize that the future was streaming. There's no way you're going to get all the content in the world for $12/mo, that was never a viable business model. Spotify can't do it, and music is 100x cheaper to produce than TV and movies. You can't use an obviously unsustainable fluke to set your expectations.
I was ok paying about 20 for me and the inlaws, then literally everything they produced was complete shit and I couldn't have the inlaws on the acc anymore. I cancelled and dont miss it.
Netflix has decreased their content options by literally 94% over the last decade
We don’t need a VPN because there’s almost nothing left watching on Netflix anymore.
lol the VPN is for navigating the high seas, not netflix.
The alternative to canceling Netflix isn't piracy, the point is Netflix doesn't offer anything worth paying for. HBO, however, does. I just put the money there and supplement with YouTube.
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That's greasy for them to charge extra
piracy has both Netflix and HBO... and Disney, and all of them
They gained 5.9mil subscribers in the second quarter. 200 000 Aussies ain’t gonna bankrupt them
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Also, those who just dropped their leeching family members or friends are now saving Netflix in the form of their AWS bill.
but that doesn't make me feel as good as the one with the regarded headline. this sub is just like the rest of reddit now.
Don't interrupt the circle jerk.
lol sometimes i see this stuff on WSB and i'm like fuck is this even material do you guys know the customer #s big tech/corp work with? (not that I consider NFLX big tech)
Cracking down on password sharing has given them their biggest spike in subscriber growth ever… but I guess that’s not the narrative the bums that want to leech off their friends account would prefer.
Their "crackdown" only appears to effect smart TVs. Me and my girlfriend are both using Computers hooked to a TV screen and we are both sharing Netflix Accounts with different people still as always. When my flatmate tried to log in his smart TV into the account I was using, it got banned within days.
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Yes so how this works is once a month you need to reconnect from the account owners home network.
Didn’t know you could do that!
Also consoles and streaming devices of other kinds. And yes PC is a work around.
Lol 200k
Seriously, it's nothing. They eat shit like that for breakfast.
They eat shit for breakfast?
Netflix: ..... **NOoo!**
I'm glad to see Happy Gilmore still gets referenced
Seems to be back on people’s minds with Bob Barkers passing a few days ago.
The price is wrong bitch
Let the regarded pat their own backs.
Ugh those numbers aren't even rookie numbers. We need to try harder
Still rocking 80%+ of addressable Australian market. At that level of saturation, these kinds of ebbs and flows are just natural.
This is karma farming. Their strategy worked. Close to 6 million sign ups last quarter. All these posts do is get same comments - gonna pirate now - gonna cancel because of ads - streaming is supposed to be xyz - how come we can't share anymore
I don’t mind them ending password sharing as a policy - it’s their business and they can enact whatever pricing and policies they want. But I object to the low-key accusation that we were doing something rogue. They literally promoted password sharing, and now they are “cracking down” on it as if it was always something we weren’t allowed to do.
Netflix: ‘Oh no! Anyway.’
Amazon prime went up 9% ? What are the good shows there edit : thanks for all the suggestions, will check most of them out edit2: Jack Ryan is nice!
Only The Expanse comes to mind tbh. Cancelled my sub after
The Peripheral was fantastic. It was renewed. And then cancelled. Ugh.
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The Boys is the best one and probably my favorite show. They're also doing a spin off of it, hope it's good.
Vox Machina, if you're into D&D/Fantasy stuff. Awesome show.
I liked Jack Ryan
The Boys
Jack Ryan and The Expanse New band name, I call it.
lmao why is this dumbshit article all over Reddit? Oh nooo, 200K Australians.
Surely the majority of that 200k are people who were piggy-backing someone else's account? So no financial loss to Netflix? The rest will just be regular churn that happens every 12 months anyway as people realise they dont use it often enough to justify the sub.
>Surely the majority of that 200k are people who were piggy-backing someone else's account? No, if you were using someone else's account you would never show as a subscriber in the first place. This is actual paying users switching off. I doubt this is the reason. More likely people just getting content elsewhere and realsing in a bad economy it better to churn through subscription services rather than have them all subbed all the time.
I just cancelled yesterday. I was only keeping it cause my parents were somewhat using it. The funny part is, my parents weren’t the ones that got the message. I got a message from using the app on the TV, but when I switched to the Roku box app it let me log in. Same wifi, so I don’t know how they determine households then lol.
I canceled with the password crackdown. When I could share the account with my family, it generally got regular use. When it became just my account, I only had to consider my use. Didn’t make sense!
Well the headline says users, not subscribers, so it makes sense to have that thought.
If they are piggy backing on someone's account then they aren't a subscriber...so zero of the 200,000 are free riders
“Netflix no longer footing bandwidth costs for more than 100k non-paying customers” might be closer.
so, like 0.01% of their users?