Netflix Puts AI Ads in Paid Tier: Pirate Everything at This Point
Netflix Puts AI Ads in Paid Tier: Pirate Everything at This Point
138 comments
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Pirate Everything at This Point
Way ahead of you.
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I pay for an emby share personally.
Plex/emby/jellyfin, there are a ton of paid shares out there that are cheap.
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I pay for an emby share personally.
I read this as "enby share" and thought, "Is that like a queer polyamorous social group? If so, I want in."
(BTW I use emby share to pirate too, so no need to explain. My brain just expects the word "enby" first.)
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Do I misunderstand emby or does it just not seem like a good deal on the basis of it being an ongoing subscription? I use the free version of emby and it's really great. There was at least one feature that required payment to unlock. I like emby already and when I tried using jellyfin, the core features that were on both it and the free version of emby worked far less reliably and the paid feature on emby that was free on Jellyfin, worked extremely unreliably. Obviously resources and development had been spent to make something that worked very well and their paid feature probably would too. I use emby to make it easier to cast media locally to my chromecast and to access media on my computer, from my phone in my bedroom, so for me, it's a fancy file browser and media player. The feature I wanted was to do with free to air tv streaming and I was thinking I'd be happy to pay for the Emby software to unlock this since they made good software that works. But here's the thing, it's FREE to air TV and yet they want me to pay, ongoing, in a perpetual arrangement to use it. I don't get it. I use it to play media, but the media is my media stored on my machines. I understand software development isn't free, I was happy to pay ONCE, but why would I keep paying when they don't actually produce the media I use it to play? That seemed unjustifiable.
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Is Emby totally self hosted (like Jellyfin)? Or do they host your stuff (like Plex)?
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Question, what even is a "Generative AI ad"?
Is the lead actress of the horror movie I'm watching look into the camera and tell me about the new coca-cola while she waits for the monster to come get her?
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I actually haven't seen one yet. I just assume it's an AI voice, reading AI generated text, about something that Netflix's data about you says you might like.
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Oh like that one episode of The Boys
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Stremio is everything I could ever want and more.
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Yep, link it with real debrid As you are, sailing the seas in style.. Great UI. Evan has a calendar to keep track of your series.
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I love Stremio it is so simple to use and relatively easy to set up, I like the set it and forget it format it has (and your settings and setup are synced across all the devices you like).
With that said, geek me can't leave aside Kodi for good, I have a Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 and that is where I use it, even when the setup I've for it is somewhat heavy (it makes my Shield struggle sometimes) I love thinkering with it, because... there is fun thinkering right?
My gf does Stremio almost always though.
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Is this how everyone used to say “use plex. It’s easy!” But plex was actually a piece of crap that most people couldn’t run properly?
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No it's like Netflix for torrents /real Debrid and really very simple to set up.
Download stremio.
Optionally pay for a Debrid service such as real Debrid (this will basically give you a smoother experience for a couple dollars a month)
Search torrentio
Choose the options (very self explanatory) and install the addon.
You're literally done. Start playing any show/movie you like. It'll work.
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Plex is a solid meh/10 back end wise, provided you have the knowledge to run the docker container it's not that bad.
Running it standalone is potentially effort.
My main issue with plex is it's transition into enshittification as a service.
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I love it, but I wish there was a way to still seed while using it.
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When using Stremio you are seeding. There's a cache size that holds a specific size that you will be uploading back. As long as Stremio is running in the background you will be seeding.
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While using Stremio alone without a debrid service?
I think you do... perhaps not in the healthiest way, but it is something.
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I used Stremio for a while and then I discovered it doesn't seed and it is just a leech. Since then we have a Jellyfin server at home and we are able to watch everything in 4K without having to worry if the movie will play smoothly.
If I could, I would stop seeding to all the Stremio clients out there. Whenever someone brings up the seed issue most of the people say they don't care.
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Stremio is great.
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It's the way of all subscription based entertainment. To increase profit eventually the choice comes down higher subscription fees or introduce ads.
And once ads are there, it's a one-way street. Until adpocalypse.
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If it's in your systems in an open format it's yours, if it's outside your systems or wrapped in some kind of locked format that forces you to go through somebody else's software it's de facto theirs.
Due to my own experience in software development with 3rd party solutions from way back, I never adhered to Streaming solutions (even though I was tempted) and always stuck to getting my entertainment in a media format I controlled (legitimately for a long as I could, not so much once even physical media started having DRM) because I was aware that it's risky to outsource so much control over one aspect of what you do (in this case entertainment) to an entity which, frankly, sees you as nothing else that microscopic fraction of their bottomline.
(The funny bit is that if Netflix would sell me their Series in an open file format that I could download and at a reasonable price, I would have sent lots of money their way, same as I spent lots of money on DVDs and even VHS tapes back in the day. In fact all throughout that period I was doing something like that for games: as soon as I discovered GOG with their DRM-free downloadable installers, I started acquiring all my games by buying them from GOG)
In the fullness of time, my caution seems to have been proven right.
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I agree and I think games are a good example, especially with the Cloud Gaming trend that is trying to apply the same model from video streaming including both the advantages (to be fair, in particular instantaneous start, in theory) but also huge disadvantages (privacy, connectivity needed, no sovereignty, price increase, etc).
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Installed jellyfin this week, it is awesome. My roku found the server and streamed a movie without buffering.
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Did Plex enshittify recently? I've seen a lot of people switching to jellyfin.
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Plex is completely enshittified at this point.
- You need to pay if you want to share your movies with friends
- They spy your watch list, and share what you watched with your friends by sending them emails
- They released a new half broken app
- They removed the "party" option that let you watch a movie together with friends remotely
- They're actively trying to hide the personal streaming features in order to push people to their legally (and ad-riddled) streamed movies
So Jellyfin is now the best solution afaik
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For those with preexisting lifetime memberships, things haven't changed yet (outside of basically trying to make Plex a social media thing), but in my eyes it's only a matter of time. Made the switch to Jellyfin this week after having used Plex for 5 years. If I wanted to invite new users to join my server, they'd have to pay $2 a month to be able to watch on their phone instead of the one-time payment of $5.
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Pair it with the arrsuite and chef kisses
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And nzb360
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🤘 Nice
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Well, it's not that difficult to cancel a subscription...
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Don't give them any ideas
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Already doing it
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Way ahead of you, Mr. Rossmann.
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Soon they'll just tap into your partner and make them speak ads throughout the day.
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i mean people already do this thanks in part to the hyperindividualism where people build their identity through the brands they consume.
An example, i only knew about MCU latest movie because a friend i have is walking MCU ad, he couldnt stop talking about going to watch this Thunderbolts movie. In farming on one side you have guys who are john deere extremists and in the other side you got massey ferguson fundamentalists, rarely you find someone that objectively uses both.
heck people build their identities based on the car brand they drive or the console brand they play instead and thus become walking ads for the brands.
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Peak chad is when you build your own open source tractor
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--cut to living room--
Stephen: Hey guys I'm going to the kitchen anyone need anything?Rachel: I'll take a diet coke, in a glass with ice.
Stevie: Ohh that sounds refreshing
Greg: I'll take a fanta, glass, ice
Stephen: Orange or that new vanilla cherry flavor?
Greg: Ohh you have that, I though it was sold out everywhere! Yes PLEASE!
--cut to kitchen--
- stephen gets 4 frost glasses from the freezer places perfect icecubes to just above the rim and starts to fill each glass.
--cut to glasses, close microphone on the scene--
- the coke products fizz into the glasses magically creating just enough head as the ice clinks down into the glass. You head an almost subliminal sigh of pleasure plays just barely in the white noise of the carbonation.
--cut to living room--
- stephen walks in with a tray of glasses stephen: ohh I forgot mine!
*replays the scene again with a vanilla coke and he puts a sprig of mind on the glass.
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arent sitcoms basically this already
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I will personally rally an economic war against ALL for-profits!
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Previously, on Best of Netflix: price increases, flip-flopping on their account sharing stance (currently on "don't do that"), removing shows without warning, iffy show recommendations by their algorithm, inability to watch shows offline etc.
So, if you're not already pirating at this point I have to ask: what are you waiting for? Seriously, why are you giving these companies money?
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Netflix rapidly becoming Interflix from Black Mirror
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Netflix selling us a caricature of the evil company they were thought of becoming, as they are and further become the evil company in the pisode that they sold
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Piracy isn't the only alternative to streaming! Please consider putting a side a certain amount of money each month to buy physical disks, making films isn't free and buying disks is the best way to suport them. Then you can pirate the rest.
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Correction: no one deserves your money. Fuck big business.
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stremio + torrentio + real debris = W
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I care where my money goes, i dont want to support this shit.
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I totally get the anger with Netflix. I fucking hate them as a filmmaker. But I really don't think a long term solution is pirating content.
BUY CONTENT YOU LIKE
Is it more expensive? Of course it is, that's part of an equitable society. Also it means you end up with content you really like and not a bunch of junk.
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I was. Until they made that so difficult and time consuming that the barrier to entry was too high. Not because of the price. But because of availability. When Google play music was a thing? I bought music. When streaming took over I moved to Bandcamp. But Bandcamp doesn't have everything. There's no music stores anymore where I can just go and buy music. It's all Amazon and similar.
I'd love to own the ghibli collection. But to get it I have to buy the DVD's (and have a DVD player to play them on), or I have to pirate them. No digital store front seems to have the whole collection. This happens all the time with media that I'm willing to pay for.
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Along with bandcamp, there's Qobuz, 7digital, and HDTracks that I can recommend for digital music downloads. Those other three often have what bandcamp does not, much more common songs. Many in 24-bit.
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I pay for the streaming services, but don't stream. Maybe this is me trying to justify "theft", but how I like to think about it is this: I pay for the streaming services. I have the technical know-how to either download directly or rip (screen record) any shows I want from any of the popular services, as well as to write the scripts myself to roughly automate this. I also have spare computers to do this 24/7. However, it's actually better for the streaming service that I don't do this myself, since they still get my money without me using the bandwidth. I pay for AMC Stubs A-list but don't often see the movies in theaters, so I don't feel bad pirating new releases. As for movies/shows not on streaming services, I could buy used dvd/blurays, rip them myself, then sell them back, but that would ultimately result in a near-net-zero cost anyway, so what's the point of going through all that? In my mind, as long as I'm paying for these subscriptions pirating feels like it's no longer an ethical/moral gray area.
Note that I only do this because I can afford to. When I was younger, I would pirate everything without worrying because if I couldn't afford to pay the streaming service, they didn't lose a potential customer if I pirated anyway. Now that I am better off and would definitely be paying for these subscriptions, I might as well, but still get to own the content I'm paying for. 120TB and counting!
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I'll buy music directly from artists on bandcamp and such, especially since they offer unlimited DRM-free FLAC downloads, but any other media at this point is just absurdly inconvenient. Everything's just tied to dogshit streaming platforms.
If there were a DRM-free option to buy and download movies or shows for life, I'd definitely be buying what I can here and there. But everything is so locked down or encumbered with other bullshit that it's not a viable option.
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buying physical media and ripping yourself is the only viable option but it's so inconvenient
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Which works for some content, but a lot of childrens content is only available through subscriptions to Netflix/Disney+/Max.
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If there was a Bandcamp for film and TV, then I would buy stuff there. DRM free.
But until then...
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If the argument is talk with money then giving them 0 and taking from them is the strongest argument you can have morally speaking. Piracy is more convient regardless.
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To some extent you're right. There'd be less content if nobody paid. But imagine current society without treats. I don't know if capitalism without "panem et circenses" would start to crumble real fast.
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Vote with your wallet? This has never ended Google, Apple or Microsoft. These capitalist fantasies never work in the real world 🤣🤣
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Pirracy is a service issue. People gladly pay when it's not a shitty experience.
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It's made intentionally hard though. Try buying The Expanse Blu Ray collection for example. Season 4 literally only comes region A locked, and is not playable on non modified Blu-ray players if you're in the EU. I was excited to buy it after getting a decent Blu-ray player so I could rewatch it with my partner who hasn't seen it, but something dumb like that does put a damper on things, so we haven't even bothered with it, despite downloading it.
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IMO focus on purchasing physical content from creators or distributors who NEED to get paid.
It's one thing to foolishly throw money at these big companies for blurays of an already very successful series while they're throwing their old libraries in the trash or 'the vault' or just shoveling most of their money towards low quality reality garbage.
It's another to buy a Criterion or BFI or Vinegar Syndrome bluray of something out of print that they need to recoup the costs of restoring and scanning.
If someone buys a bluray of an MCU movie they are a chump, firstly for liking that stuff, secondly for giving Disney more money for it when those things already earn piles of cash in theaters and that alone would be enough to keep them paying salaries and producing that stuff.
Spend money on independent film-makers/releases, on restorations, on series you like on the verge of cancellation.
Sadly I think the conclusion is already written, physical media's days are numbered, the big companies are going to shut down the overwhelming majority of bluray and dvd production within 5-10 years is my feeling because why sell you for $20-$30 a copy of something when they can get your rent in the form of streaming monthly payments for the rest of your natural life?
And best of all with the rent they can push ads which further increase their revenue. That bluray is a one-time payment, ads for watching the movie on streaming are a continual revenue stream. I predict that they will either have completely killed off ad-free tiers of streaming to push most of their audience into an even bigger and more valuable ad pool to sell to advertisers OR the prices of the ad-free tiers will grow dramatically away from the ad-supported tiers. Right now it's a few bucks a month, I suspect within 10 years it will be 170-300% the cost of the ad-supported version.
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Can't consume it, can't buy it.
Buy food, copy data.
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Smarttube
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You mean "boycott all privative culture and start learning how to not depend on entertainment to have a fulfilling life" right?
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Is there not a service like Bandcamp, but for movies and TV?
I want to pay for stuff, so the creators are rewarded, and then I own a copy.
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Wrong community?
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Only if you don't watch the video where it's discussed how these AI ads would work and the implication on privacy.
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Fair enough question. I don't think it deserves the downvotes - the answer is informative.
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Advertising isn't the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I'll back away slowly while explaining myself....
We've always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That's not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the "cut to ad break" in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami "sunglasses of justice" stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its...
That's not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It's literally in front of the content, within the content, etc... It's not about "hey look, it's an ad break, let's go refill our 7-up and take a piss", it's inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT'S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you're going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you're going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I'll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I'd be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON'T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
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Just because something always used to be some way doesn't mean it's automatically acceptable.
TV might have been designed for the ad break but what if it wasn't? You give Star Trek as an example, and here in the UK growing up I watched TNG episodes on BBC2, which is a tax-funded station without adverts. Did the lack of adverts make my childhood TNG experience worse? Personally I'd say it made it better.
Even in the cable TV age, to have adverts in something you are paying for is still horrible, and to me it's unacceptable.
I will do everything in my power to not expose my brain to a barrage of advertising, and that includes not using any service where I have to subject myself to it.
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Totally agree.
Broadcast TV shows where designed with advertising in mind because it was the only way to monetize it at the time (except for tax-funded of course).
When cable TV started, one of their selling points was that it didn't have ads, at least on the "cable-native" channels.
But after a while, they started putting ads everywhere, and that of course lead to the shitty experience that made a lot of people "cut the wire" when streaming services started.I'm wondering what's the next thing that will replace streaming, and eventually repeat the cycle.
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Also, I don't know how it was in other countries, but I remember that pay-tv services in Italy didn't have ads during programs and films, but only between the programs. It was a way better experience.
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This person seems to think that CSI Miami pioneered the format. So of course it easy to find examples of them being wrong. CSI Miami wasn’t even the first CSI. So I am sure they can’t remember that premium cable channels that don’t have commercials exist. Let alone that public broadcasting doesn’t have commercials.
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What old age are you talking about? Television was not invented in the 2000’s.
And if you don’t like ads, then that is the problem.
Regardless, Netflix has historically been delivered without ads which many seem to like. You do you, take a break and watch some ads every 20 minutes, but I won’t, and will especially not pay to do it.
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There are no ads on the CD I bought from the merch table at a concert last week.
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Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn't like being beholden to someone else's tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became "infinite channels," they did start showing ads, but that wasn't paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn't have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don't try to normalize it by claiming "it's always been this way," because it hasn't.
television was designed around the advertising break
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don't have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they've always had product placement). It's been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You're entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I'm going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I'd pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
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I think your argument is so contrary to the ad-free reality I experience every day, I don't think there's any point of counter argue you as we will probably never find a common ground to debate our differing viewpoints on.
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This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don't have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don't have ads in between the shows.
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138 comments