1y ago

Paramount+ unskipabble ads

Just rage canceled Paramount+ after seeing the 1 minute of unstoppable ads before each episode.

Then they'll say people don't want to pay for content...ffs

70 comments

If you're paying for a service and you still get ads on it, you're getting scammed.
- See exhibit A: Cable TV
  
  Yeah it's come full circle.
  Cable exists. You pay for content but still get ads because greed.
  Piracy gains traction. Technically illegal but usually unenforced. All content, no ads, kinda a pain, but clearly worth it to many.
  Streaming gains traction. Cheaper alternative to cable. On demand. No ads. Many pirates diminish or quit pirating content. Clearly most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for quality on demand content and no ads.
  Streaming really picks up steam as the mainstream starts cutting cable for ad free on demand content for less. Again, people are happy paying for what they see as good value.
  Greed creeps back in, content is fractured among many streaming services, making the cost basically a wash vs cable but still has advantages of on demand and no ads and the ability to share and juggle subscriptions.
  Greed continues, ads creep back in, "premium" streaming offered for higher fees to eliminate introduced ads. Content continues to diminish. People start turning back to piracy for the same reasons as they did 15-20 years ago. Services also start cracking down on sub sharing.
  Assuming greed continues, I predict we'll see these services attempt to squeeze even more money from the loyal subscribers they have left as they restructure their subscription models to contracts. No longer will there be any paying month to month. But rather you'll have to enter onto a 1 or 2 year contract to stream. I also predict that they'll very carefully curate their selections so that new seasons are available to current subscribers, then once the season is complete, they go away for a year before coming back, just to get people to maintain subscriptions instead of juggling contracts by year.
- Hulu built their entire system on this scam. Before Hulu, the majority of TV shows were available on their channel website for free, with ads. Hulu took this and added a subscription on top of the ads.

Yarr harr fiddle dee dee
- Shiver me timbers at Hollywood's greed.
  (For the recond i don't know what that means...)
  
  Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free.
- Do what you want ‘cuz a pirate is free

Surprised that no one here mentioned Pi-hole. It doesn't work for ads on all streaming apps, but pi-hole successfully removes all ads for my Paramount+ subscription.
- I've used Pi-Hole for years now and it's absolutely indispensable. It's one of those things where you kind of forget about it then you're over visiting someone's house without it and it's absolutely jarring to see ads cropping up all over the place where you're not used to seeing them.
  
  I know what you mean.
  Browsing the Internet at work is a horrible experience. I'm actually shocked at the ad intrusion that I am usually saved from!
- AdGuard Home is better than PiHole since it supports DNS over HTTPS out-of-the-box, which prevents your ISP from inspecting and modifying your DNS requests/responses. The ISP can do that even if you're using a custom DNS server, since regular DNS is unencrypted and unauthenticated.
  By default it uses Quad9 via DoH. There's an easy to use Docker container available for it.
  
  Same can be done with Pi-hole. Yes it isn’t ootb, but it is easy to do.
  There are still challenges with doh and isp packet scanning. Even without clear text dns, your isp still knows where you go, if not from the lookups. They still inspect traffic and destinations and can make very detailed inferences, even without https inspection on DoH or other packets.
  Pihole is fully for free. AdH seems to be the same for now, but it is a company running it, they want to make money. I would be a bit worried about this.
  This also doesn’t stop devices from doing their own dns over https. Adguard home and pihole will try to block the DoH locators (canaries) but can’t actually stop a tv from connecting to a known ip if it wants to.
  Don’t get me wrong. I highly recommend something, and adguard home is nice, but I’m not convinced by its the right long term solution nor does either solution provide the sum total.
  
  I really want to be able to read this and know wtf it means. I have so much skill to up.
- So does unsubbing and just nicking the bits you want.
- But then they still get rewarded with your money
- Controld.com also works of you don't want to host it yourself

For us, we have to watch the unskippable ad during Star Trek Picard, then it jumps back 10 minutes in the episode so we need to fast forward to get back to our place. This has been going on for several episodes.
- Ugh I hate that with YouTube ads as well (at least on my Android TV). I'll watch something, get interrupted by ads, sometimes minutes long and/or multiple ads, and after the ad(s) it jumps seconds or even minutes ahead from where I was watching. Then when I rewind to the point I was at it'll often play even more ads. It's super annoying but if they think this convinces me to buy their premium subscription they're very wrong. It's so off-putting.
- You could just buy the bluray.
  
  Or pirate it.
  
  Provided it's available in your location, and still being sold/produced. Furthermore Blurays are only going to be harder to find as time goes on with companies like Best Buy stating that they'll no longer be selling them.

DM me if you need help setting something up to replace it
- I appreciate it. I'm trying to get familiar with rss and the sort. I am just a bit scared of the rabbit hole where I'll end up dedicating a whole room of the house to selfhosting lol
  
  I've dedicated one single machine to self hosting and I never plan on increasing that. It's just one big beefy hunk that has a shitty CPU and lots of RAM and HDD space.
  Sonarr/Radarr/qBit/Plex is all that's needed. I pay $5/mo ($15/3mo) for AirVPN and that's all.
  
  Only one room?
  
  Snag you a micropc from Amazon for like $150 and an external HDD and you'll be golden. Selfhosting can be as small as you want. Hell sometimes I wish I had a tiny PC and a couple of 18tb externals.
  Good luck op
  
  Look into radarr and sonarr to handle all the media acquisition.

No no, you misunderstand. The subscription is so you're allowed to watch ads. It's a privilege! 😅

Paramount are yet another company who do not have enough content to justify their own streaming services.
They put billboards everywhere, and each one lists like 6 shows that I couldn't give a fuck about. They've not even got enough content for a billboard, let alone a paid for service.
- I just use it for Star Trek. Once I've finished Lower Decks and TOS I'm cancelling.

Yeah but how are these poor dears supposed to create ever-increasing shareholder value with a pure subscription model?

I never paid for Paramount+ because when they would have free trials, it would give me "content unavailable" errors for literally everything I wanted to watch. So I just pirate all the Trek. Fuck Paramount.
- In Canada it's a half bastardized app that's an add on to the Amazon Prime App. Like tier inside of it. On a FireCube when trying to click on anything Paramount+ advertised on the home screens it takes one to the US full App only which won't load due to the Geo lock for outside the US.
  One needs to go into Prime to then find the shows. It's a bit of a shit show and one of the first subs I cancelled in a line of them recently.

I've learned that (at least on both Android and Google TV) you can start an episode, immediately go back then start a different one and there will be no ad.
On Firefox with ublock, you have to hit the play button 3-4 times, but it works and there are no ads.

That's what you get for paying for Paramount+.

I feel like they just don't get it. Why did I stop downloading things err "unofficially"? Because they were almost all available on Netflix, with no ads, and pretty much instantly with a decent interface.
Then they started making 1000 streaming platforms so that the monthly bill for everything you want works its way back to what I would pay for sat/cable. And now, this?
Then what, we'll get the Pikachu face when they realise people are back sailing the seven seas?

I just got star trek Picard in my jellyfin instance. I have a hdhomerun that is used for live TV and recording live TV like older star trek.
No DRM and I control it all
- But then you have to watch Picard 😢
- hdhomerun
  No DRM
  Until ATSC 3.0 is forced on everyone, at least if you're in the USA :/
  ATSC 3.0 is the next version of the protocol used for over-the-air digital TV in the USA. It has some good parts, for example it uses H.265 instead of MPEG2 which allows for 4K TV at lower bitrates to what 1080p uses today, and 1080p at significantly lower bitrates.
  However, it also supports DRM and encryption, and all the major networks are already encrypting their broadcasts. TVs need an internet connection to get the decryption key, and can't store recordings in a decrypted format.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNTc5OWrDic
  If you rely on antenna TV, please write to the FCC in opposition of the encryption: https://blog.lon.tv/2023/07/10/the-fcc-responds-to-my-atsc-3-encryption-complaint-they-want-to-hear-from-you/
  If you're not in the USA... Just ignore me lol
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NNTc5OWrDic
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I haven't noticed any ads during my Fraiser rewatching

I only like Paramount+ for the Italian Serie A and Champions League. A bit different cause it's live sports but besides that I don't utilize it too much.

We got a skippable 30 second ad, then the Paramount logo, then watched 2 seasons of Star Trek strange New worlds without a single ad.
You sure you didn't just hair trigger yourself there?
- I still think you shouldn't have video ads in a paid streaming service. Even if it's just a single ad during a watch session. It shouldn't be there when you're paying to see the content
  
  Here in the UK, I feel like a similar thing happened with cable/satellite. Originally, Sky TV was completely free. They only had 4 channels (and one of them was only kinda sky) mind you. But they were all free (with adverts). Later they brought in encryption and a subscription for the movie channel.
  I am quite sure I recall seeing one of the rationales for when they started the subscription service covering the non movie channel, it was stated that there would be less or no advertising and it would instead be covered by the subscription. Needless to say, that never happened.
  But ultimately, this is just normal business practice. If they can get away with charging you AND making money from ad views, they're going to do it. The only way to stop it, is not to subscribe to those that do it.
- It happened on 2 episodes in a row, with over a minite wait until the episode. Both times the same ad, which makes it even worse, for a 20 min episode of lower decks. I'm sensitive to commercials when I'm already paying premium.
  
  What country are you in because I just turned it on and tried to play an episode of lower decks, and I don't get any ads, so I'm wondering if it's only in some parts of the world.
  
  I definitely feel the hatred towards all things ads, I would probably cancel as well if I was in your position. Fortunately 1 ad per session is the rare exception to my ad free viewing (and I did curse quite a bit at that ad, whatever it was for)

70 comments