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L4sBot @lemmy.world

1y ago

Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?

www.theatlantic.com Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate

What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?

Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate

Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::

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What should I watch?

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is now a much easier question than

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How do I watch it?

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210 comments

The decline of legal streaming, through the dividing up of content onto multiple expensive streaming platforms, has pushed me away from legal options onto the black/grey market where I can get much more content for much less on a more convenient single platform.
- They were never competing with cable but with piracy. Of all media sellers it seems Gabe Newell was unique in understanding that
  
  By all accounts Gabe isn't also a gargantuan piece of shit, which also sets him apart from the other media sellers.
  
  What did Gabe do differently? I can’t recall any specifics
  
  Spotify seems to have done well enough on that front as well.
- I think this is true for most people on Lemmy. But I do wonder what the average streaming users will do. What about "free" streaming platforms like Channel 4 in the UK? Content is king, and the path of least resistance will always trump.
  
  Two days after the Super Mario movie hit theaters I walked into my barber shop and it was playing in 4K on the TV. HDMI streaming sticks loaded with self updating piracy apps with a simple Netflix-like interface can be found easily by most consumers.
  
  In my household, where we pirate very very rarely if ever (the last time I’m aware of was 2010, though I’m not the software engineer in the relationship), we plan to: a) cycle between apps as needed; and b) frankly, watch less tv. We’re watching a couple of things on Netflix right now but once we’re done, that’s the next to go, much to my kids’ dismay. They’ll get over it.
  
  Pluto TV is massively popular with my older relatives. Free, plays the shows they like, and they don't care about the obnoxious ads. Luckily none of them have bought the fake gold coins, Trumpy Bears (don't even look it up), or Shitty My Pillows yet.

I'm back to sailing the high seas and dumping my loot into Plex.
- Same here on Jellyfin.
  
  I was always 100% on board with paying 50-100 bucks a month for being able to watch anything I wanted, whenever I wanted, in perpetuity — for the rest of my life.
  Instead, capitalism chose to fracture all content behind multiple paywalls that don't even host the content I want to watch, or censor/change it so that I can never watch the OG versions I want to watch, so I've instead been spending 50-100 bucks a month on computing hardware to download it and host it myself for over a decade.
  I'll continue to fucking do it too, because these soulless sociopath leeches don't deserve a cent from me. They don't even fucking pay their content creators or staff a decent wage, and will spend 10x more just to screw their workers. At this point I'd prefer them to fail and collapse, so I'll continue not giving them money — I'm doing my part!
- Use your local library! Thousands of Blu-ray/DVD titles for free you can check out and rip freely. And then you don’t have to worry about any nasty letters from your ISP.
  
  Thats what a VPN is for.
  
  I honestly didn't even include a DVD/BluRay drive in my PC build, so can't really use those. And I tunnel all that traffic through Proton VPN, so ISP isn't an issue.
  
  Most libraries always give you access to Kanopy to steam movies/documentaries. Just need your library card and the app.
  
  Love this! Supporting your community library and building your trove of booty at the same time lol.
  I also like to collect physical media from my favorite artists, so I also rip from those disks and get the best of all worlds :)
  
  leave the house
  nope.avi
  
  My local library only has DVDs with kids movies, matey.
  
  Indeed however that would necessitate having an optical drive
- Yeah, this is much less chaotic. It's not even about the cost so much as the convince now.
  BTW I use the plex discovery search to find stuff across streaming services. This deserves a shoutout here. Could be better but I haven't found a better solution. Google voice search on my nvidia shield used to be good at this but it's really degraded lately.
  
  Justwatch.com works well for finding the service hosting the show you want to watch.
  
  It's particularly bad at MAX right now. Several times I've been told a title was available and it wasn't.
- How do you use Plex? Can it work on a fire stick?
  
  Yes. There is a legit plex app on fire stick and roku. It comes with free live TV and on Demand content, but you can also run your own server on your network with your own downloaded content. If you have an IPTV service you can stream that through plex as well.
  Note that Jellyfin is a similar app/server that works the same way and is totally free. Plex is also free, but there are additional features behind the pay wall like GPU decoding, PVR service for IPTV, and others.
  
  Plex - in the way users here are describing (important context since Plex’s management has recently shifted heavily to trying to be like Pluto.TV with less emphasis on its original purpose) works as an application that acts like a library for your own media collection.
  There are 2 required parts to it :
  A “server” or “host” which acts as your library.
  A client - like an NVIDIA Shield, your phone, PlayStation, Roku, or eve your Fire Stick.
  Without your own server with content stored on it, or at least a friend’s server credentials you can connect to, you are limited to the “Pluto.TV” type ad-driven media collection.
  So the answer is “yes it works on a fire stick,” but you will need #1 also for it to be the single source library for your content and not just another ad-riddled garbage service.
  
  You need something to host it on like a PC or even a Shield plus storage space
  
  Yes you can get plex on firestick

I see an irony in the fact that I can't read this damn article without paying for yet another media / news subscription service. Stop linking to pay walls Lemmites!
- If there just was a way to micro pay for a single article. But no, it always has to be subscription based.
  
  Completely agree. Everyone despises crypto now, but it would be perfect for this.
  
  They'd do it if it made them money. Spoiler Alert...
- Reload the page with Javascript turned off.
- You need a ladder 12ft.io
- There's no real financial model to support good journalism. People should be aware of the food sites out there so they can make a decision to subscribe. Also, I hate the flood of trash articles that just link the pay walled articles and quote 2 sentences from it. At that point I'd rather a lemmy poster link the paywalled article and provide the choice quotes themselves in the comments to save me the ad fest and ad consent pop ups just to read 2 quotes and a bunch of fluff.

The irony of a pay-walled article from one of the 50+ news websites requiring subscriptions complaining about fragmented streaming services is palpable.
- Was there a single website where all news can post their article and be supported by a subscription model before this? If there isn't, how is this comparison relevant?
  
  Yes. It was called a newspaper...
  
  Post.news is exactly that
  
  NPR/PBS.

Yo ho fiddle de dee
Being a pirate is alright with me
- YOU ARE A PIRATE
  
  YARG!
  
  Arrrr!
  
  Scissor me timbers! 🏴‍☠️🦜🏴‍☠️

Piracy
/thread
- The sad thing is that people would pay if it just wasn't so frustrating. I remember coming home from a NYE 10yrs ago or so, and had made up my mind to watch the latest season of Vikings. I was ready to pay for it, and there literally was no legal way for me to get it. So I sailed the high seas.
  
  Wait... You're telling me people will pay for quality service and convenience? That's crazy! My earth is shattered.
- The streaming services have managed to completely forget their business model of being marginally more convenient than piracy.
  As for me, though, I'll start ripping my DVDs. I'll sail the high seas when I have to, but I'd may as well get hard copies of my favourite films and TV shows.
  
  Until Disney decides it better to quit the physical market (they did it already in one region)
- 'They could not live with their own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me." -- Piracy

Just sails the seven fucking seas
- It is so much more convienient. I had Disney+, Amazon and Netflix a year ago and it was too much to bother to open the apps and search if they have what i wanted to watch, only to find out it was on HBO or whatever.
  
  Plus they keep making me verify my account and log back in. Such a hassel.
- Too fragmented. I want my piracy all in one sea

The irony is this article requires a subscription to view it…
https://web.archive.org/web/20230909100630/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/streaming-services-netflix-max-cost/675264/

I blame Disney in particular. People are just so short-sighted.
- Disney felt like a tipping point for me (and Netflix's new role as a production company). It was only when that came about that people like Paramount started offering their own services (idk how true that is but it's certainly how it felt).
  I still pay for Disney+ right now, but a big part of the appeal of streaming for me was having lots of stuff in one place. Now it's just cable/satellite all over again.
  
  I never left the high seas because I knew the sociopaths running these corps would screw everything eventually. It was obvious with the way they treated music streaming...
  Even though I completely stopped pirating music a decade ago, since I could listen to everything I wanted to on Spotify, when I paid for Netflix I'd still torrent the content I liked. Now that content is no longer on Netflix, but they are still on my hard drives, and I can watch them wherever I want.
  If consumers stopped paying for streaming services en mass, they'd be forced to change their business model, but they'll keep making money by screwing both consumers and their workers because consumers are people, and people are idiots.
  
  It’s just cable/satellite all over again.
  Not really though. We can get it ad-free, and watch content on our schedules, not theirs.

This was a Very inevitable situation due to the fragmentation of Programs that are scattered across multiple Networks.
If only there was a solution to this problem of greed….
- Don't support companies who would try to geoblock you if they could.
  Also, using a VPN to circumvent rules is against the TOS on most services. Don't support that with your wallet.
  
  I’m pretty sure you’ve got it wrong. Their TOSes can get fucked, with a VPN you do not need to even USE those services to watch everything on them.

Piracy ftw. I can’t be bothered signing up for all this shit.
- Warning. Do not look for Servarr apps or how to set them up on a home system of your choice like Unraid or it's alternatives. Doing so may be a violation of local copyright law.
  
  Yeah and whatever you do definitely don't use Jellyseerr for Jellyfin setups or Overseerr for Plex setups

Yaaargh mateys, you do be asking the wrong questions.
- I don't even understand what they're talking about. "Streaming?" Is that some sort of a water sport involving small rivers?

To bypass the paywall: https://archive.ph/GO7mu
- The irony...

Jellyfin is a great alternative system. You just have to get the shows and movies somewhere which also isn't that hard cough cough
https://jellyfin.org
- How does this compare to Plex?
  
  I haven't used plex in a while, honestly, after they pushed more things I didn't wanted. But for me it works awesome. I am a Linux user, it just installed straight out of the box, and works. Has a great web interface, and a mobile app that gets better and better. It gets all movie and show info from the internet, its honestly awesome.

My favorite part of every conversation about a new show someone tells me i "just have to see" is when they "oh yeah do you have xstreamingservice?" And i tell them i have me ways
- "Oh you should definitely check out Mr. Inbetween"
  "Is it on Netflix?"
  "idk it's on my plex"
  
  I love Plex!

Ne'er should one relinquish control of thine own vessel. Back to the seas shall we voyage mateys!
Also, 12ft.io

Is there any reason to not pirate the movies?
- If you are ok with the hassle, the risk and possible consequences, then do whatever you want.
  But this is not a fix to the issue broadly, and just boycotting stuff will most likely not work as well, to change the situation.
  The only effective way would be changes in law and government incentives. So instead start being politically active and push for these changes there.
  
  hassle? what's easier then search, click and play
- I'm with you my Plex Library is growing alot lately. I'm not paying for 10 different streaming services. I limit myself to one and anything else not on it is getting downloaded. At lot of the movies I have I have also paid to see in theaters. Some even more than once like across the spider verse and the barbie movie .
- On a macro scale, they'll stop making those movies if they aren't financially viable. Cheap lowest common denominator shit will be all we get.
- YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR
- I mean the streaming services will keep increasing their prices and actors / staff will see less profit as a result of lack of active users..

If I have to google which streaming service a PBS show is on for my kid to watch. Something's messed
- Think of all the extra searches!
- PBS shows are free on its own app/website though...
  
  You'd think that, wouldn't you?
  In actuality, they pull shit like only having the most recent season of things and whatnot. For example, there's no good reason why the PBS Kids Roku channel wouldn't have all 4666 episodes of Sesame Street, but it doesn't.

Friendly reminder that PLEX is a great, free service, you just have to put in the effort to build up a media collection. High capacity HDDs are very cheap now, so storing a large media collection isn't particularly expensive.
They also offer a lifetime "Plex pass" which adds some neat, but non-essential features, like auto-skipping intros and credits sequences for instance. It's not necessary, but it's a nice way to show support for what they do.
- Jellyfin is an open source alternative without any subscription or fees
  https://jellyfin.org/
  
  Does Jellyfin have the credit and intro skips? Also how does it handle music?
- Don't use Plex. Used it for a long time until open source jellyfin came by. I never looked back.
- I remember having some issue with plex, finding out it was a known issue and had been logged on their issue tracker for YEARS with no progress. They're one of those companies who prioritise shiny new features over actually maintaining the existing ones.

The amount of media we have instant access to has reached a level that I find intimidating rather than inviting. Consuming media is becoming more of a chore than a pleasure. Dividing the available media into more services is a plus for me, if I am honest.
I have access to a streaming service, and if they don't have anything I'm interested in, I just walk away and read a book, play a game, put on some music, go outside, or do my chores.
The days when I thought there were things I "should" watch/read/play/listen to are long gone. Not being driven by what is "the thing to do" makes life so much better.
Not having much choice also makes life easier. There were times when I spent more time clicking around in the flood of what I could consume than I did choosing and enjoying. Now, if I can't decide in less than 5 minutes, I take it as a sign that I should do something else.
- Then you should stop paying for whatever service you subscribe to but are not using. Sounds like you don't need it.
- Seriously. There's way too much content and no way most of it is worth my time. If it is, people will still be talking about it in a couple decades, and then I'll think about it.
  
  too much content and no way most of it is worth my time.
  That's why I cut the cord many years ago.
  Most months I only have 1 streaming subscription, and for a couple of months each year I don't have any.
  As the old song said "I've got 57 channels and there's nothing on"
- According to the Paradox of Choice, when you have to choose from lots of options, you're likely to be less satisfied with the same end product.
- There are an absurd amount of perfectly good books and /or audio books out there. TV or movie as the only way to pass the time indoors may stop being the case. If it does I'm ready.

The prices keep going up and I have already set a max price in my mind for each subscription I'm on based on the content they provide over the year. I as a consumer don't have infinite money.
- This Summer has been particularly bad. I think every subscription I have has gone up 15-20%.

The basic problem with media is that copyright creates a monopoly for 100 years or so depending on various factors. This means that unless you're into Arthur Conan Doyle or whatever, the media landscape is fundamentally monopolistic.

I'll pay for a few streaming services that can keep something I want to watch in stock year around. For the ones that can't, their shows go onto a seedbox with plex and sonarr.
- This is the way. I pay for Sling TV because there are some shows (Drag Race, SNL, Sunday Fox cartoons) that I prefer to watch while they're still in the zeitgeist, YouTube Premium, and Hulu. That covers pretty much all of my watching habits and I don't feel left out of anything.
  For anything else, there's piracy™️

I have just about the opposite problem, as someone who has been known to pirate in the past. I find there is so much content out there that it's harder for me to decide what to watch over where to go to find it.
- That’s literally one of my hobbies, building my collection of media. Plex lifetime pass ftw
  The bigger the collection the harder the choice of what to watch lol

piracy is way more convinient, especially with apps like CloudStream.
Or transmission/qbittorrent + rss + jellyfin + findroid for a self hosted alternative.

Well, how? I go to my mighty little website and they give it to me for free...

Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).
Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.
- I got 3 months free paramount and I canceled the subscription, and it expired in a week instead of 3 months. Its such bullshit.
  
  Really? Whenever I cancel it usually tells me the renewal date pretty explicitly, and the cancel just stops renewing on that date. Maybe if it's 3 free months, you need to keep the monthly process in active status since it's a free renewal?

I’m sorry, but I really don’t get it… the bigger question is and always has been where can I watch it.
It was a bit easier during the beginning of the streaming era, but never that easy, especially in Europe…
I need a stupid app (JustWatch) to tell me where I can watch a movie or show… so how is it easy to watch? It’s also not easy if I need 4+ streaming services…
- That's the point that's being made.

I mostly just channel surf on Pluto or Roku for free lol
- That quality is terrible though.

Just let me have my Stremio, and I'm a content man

It's always been, what should i watch. There just used to be the caveat of how.

When lost for what to watch, goto /r/InterdimensionalCable
- GTFO with your subreddit nonsense! (In the nicest way possible.)

After just a few times of trying to watch something and not knowing which or if it was on any of my services I went straight back to the places I know will have exactly what I'm looking for in a couple clicks. Things have only gotten worse since then with the explosion of the number of streaming services.

Personally, that's one of the reasons why I haven't bothered to watch a TV series for almost a decade now. Between this, the constant crackdown on piracy, the outrageous prices for original media, and the constant moral issues from popular culture icons and media CEOs, I'd rather sleep in my free time
- Just get yourself a VPN. You can torrent safely that way

I still use my DVD/Blu-ray by mail subscription from Netflix. Practically everything was available that way. I will be canceling Netflix for a while after that goes away at the end if the month. I plan to just rotate through which services I subscribe to.

“What should Ie watch?” is the question not because the quality of the offerings is so good, but because generally the offerings are absolute crap. Free current B movies are a lucky find, the rest is all old C and D list crap. You can’t even find highly regarded classics like Schindler’s List or Shawshank Redemption for free most of the time.
It’s unbundling all the way down. Charge for the service, charge for the quality of service (# of devices, 4k or not), then charge for the better content.
- As people get accustomed to crap, there will be more money in crap than in great films, so the crap will start to become the norm, and it will become very difficult to find quality.

"what do I want to watch" is stupid hard, cmon. I spend most of my time watching the roku screen saver.
How? If it's not on my plex it's probably on a friends.
I'm tired of this expensive fragmented bullshit.

Nebula.

I don't know much, but Stremio does a fairly good job listing streaming services for anything searched
- torrentio is also really helpful

Streaming services need to be federated, so there is a central search for content, and services are paid seamlessly for what's watched on their platforms. The customer barely needs to know who delivers the content.
- I use JustWatch, I like it well enough.
- Doesn't Roku, Comcast STB, and other OTT devices do just that? You speak into the remote or search. It spits out all possible streaming options to choose from, preferencing the services you have accounts or subscriptions for?
  
  Comcast does it for sure. It's the only way I can get my parents to use streaming services. When they don't know they are doing it. It's expensive as hell, but it does work well.
- My Samsung TV kind of let's you do that by searching though the TVs UI and it telling you if and where it's available. I rarely use it.
- Are you asking for usage based billing?

That's why I ask myself "What do I want to watch?" and shop for physical option day or two before. When watching a movie once a two-three weeks like me it's cheaper and I can keep it.
(Now someone suggest just pirating, but I don't pirate movies that promises to be good)
- If there isn't a physical option available to you just not watch it?
  
  Umm... 😅 Usually there is, but if not DRM-free digital purchace is as good. If there is only DRM streaming available, then f*** it and start to sail.

It’s like the author never used the search function on a set top box. Most will allow you to add a program to a master queue and then will show you what channel(s) the program is on when you want to watch it. And unlike cable, you don’t have to call to add the channel when you don’t have it, or to cancel when you no longer want it.

I've heard a lot about setting up a Plex or a Jellyfin server locally, but from what I can tell they are just media storage platforms and in order to watch anything you would have to add your own content. In this age of digital content, it is very unlikely for a simpleton like me to go out and purchase hundreds of movie disks separately and manually load them into my CD drive to even have a fraction of the catalogue these streaming services combined provide. Also torrenting really isn't a viable option for me as I personally use a free tier Proton VPN which doesn't allow P2P, and even if I did get a proper one, I would still be limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch, which may or may not exist depending on the popularity of the said movie. I currently use a niche streaming site to watch my movies without any issues. Are self hosted plex/jellyfin servers really for a person like me?
- Jellyfin is the way to go. Yes, you'll have to download your own content. It's more work, but I definitely think it's worth it. Use qBitTorrent as your client, and sites like yts.mx are great for movies.
- This is exactly my problem. Downloading music (even crappy mp3) is basically impossible if you are not in the right, sometimes paid, tracker. In a way, copyright holders actually won their war against piracy.
- limited to availability of seeds for movies I want to watch,
  Unless you're into SUPER niche stuff, that's not an issue. If you ARE into super niche stuff, it wouldn't be on streaming services anyway. Anything on streaming services is mainstream and easily downloadable.

Honestly, the only reason I have Netflix in the first place is because it came bundled with my ISP. Can't cancel it without phoning them up and I'm much too lazy to do so.
- Thanks man. People like you are keeping the economy afloat. I run a business and I kept charging a customer thinking when he calls , i'll return the money. He called after 9 months and guess who kept the interest on all his money ? Again, thank you all of you.

Roku has a great voice search which works across all of the installed apps. I can just ask it for a movie, and it tells me which services have it.

I just subscribe to everything. Even a few niche services like britbox.
After taking into account credit card kickbacks, discounts from T-Mobile, and discounts from annual plans, I pay about 1/3 less than I did for cable with all the movie stations and DVR service back in the early aughts. And I'm even counting adding basic cable to my Internet (I use an app to stream that so no extra box). And I'm not even accounting for 20 years of inflation, with that it's about a 60% reduction.
So I pay 60% less after inflation for almost every movie and TV show ever made commercial free on demand on any device I own anywhere in the world (some programming changes apply) and live news and sports with the cable app (I don't think I've tried the cable app overseas though).
It used to be appointment TV with non-premium stations having 30-35% commercial time. Even when TiVo came out you had to buy it and pay a sub, and when cable started offering DVR you paid for a more expensive box rental on top of paying monthly for the ability to DVR, double-dipping fuckers.
I really don't understand complaints about streaming. Compared to what it's replacing it's an amazing upgrade in price, quality, and convenience. When do you ever get that? How hard is it to figure out what service something is on? Most boxes have a universial search and if your using a mobile device Google is right there. Yeah prices get higher on occasion, but inflation is a thing and now that content producers see the profit in streaming they're putting money into new content, which makes me think of another thing: content produced for streaming is vastly superior, even on streaming services from the old major networks. Stuff that wouldn't have gotten by the advertisers, let alone the censors for commercial broadcast, and no editing for time. A particular episode needs an extra couple/several minutes to be told correctly, no big deal.
As someone who loves the silver screen, and the small screen, for art and entertainment that can't be called art with a straight face, I love streaming. I can't understand how anyone who paid for cable/satellite in the past couldn't.
Sorry for the ramble, can't be bothered to edit for clarity or readability.
- I think one thing to keep in mind, is that a lot of the streaming service news is more American focused. A lot of Americans are struggling to afford things as it is. Obviously there is animosity and frustration about it all especially as streaming services lose value and raise prices at the same time.
  
  Those arguments are exactly what I'm disputing. The prices are lower and value proposition is higher.
  It seems like prices are going up because services are coming out a bit at a time and each of them are taking a little while to mature. Cheap initial offerings followed by price increases when they get their shit together.
  Imagine if you could go back 15-20 years and flip a switch and have all the streaming services as they exist today all at once. You could tell those same struggling Americans "I can reduce your tv bill 40-60%, increase available content, and you can access that content anytime and anywhere you want commercial free, also unlike cable/satellite you can pick and choose or rotate services to save even more and if your cool with some (still less than cable) ads you can save even more."
  Streaming is a massive value increase over cable/satellite, and a major price cut with options to tailor the price and content to work best for you.

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