Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::<em>What should I watch? </em>is now a much easier question than <em>How do I watch it?</em>
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.
Somehow my mind read over the isn’t and I had to deeply think on Wtf I missed and couldn’t come up with shit
What did Gabe do differently? I can’t recall any specifics
He noted piracy was an issue of service and ease of availability, not price. Case in point, it’s far easier for me to wait for a Steam sale and have a legal game than it is for me to go through all the effort of waiting for a decent crack, torrenting the game, and then waiting for the crack to the patch because of something that doesn’t run well.
I used to pirate games to “sample” them, and now it’s simply easier to just buy through Steam. If I hate it…oh, well. It only cost $10 through a Steam, GOG, or Humble Bundle sale.
Video streaming used to be somewhat like this when everything was through Netflix. One place to get everything you wanted was far easier than trying to acquire things through piracy.
Now, however, you’ve got to have 6 different streaming services to get what used to require only one, and with the price of hard drives going down every year, it’s actually easier to torrent what I want and just have things in my personal collection that’s never going to just get removed suddenly because NBC Universal decides that they want a piece of the pie as well.
You can ask a refund for any Steam game after a few hours of play. Refund is full, no questions asked. I’ve done it multiple times with games that just didn’t click for me.
Also pirating games needs a lot of space. First for setup files and then as much or even more space to install the game.
Installing games from Steam is much more space efficient.
One of the best things about Steam is not having to store install ISOs so I can reinstall games when I upgrade.
From a business standpoint that might make sense. In my opinion though, what we now call “piracy” is really a superior model of universal access to information. As-is we’re needlessly holding back humanity in the name of promoting profit for rights holders.
Provides a better service and doesn’t just jack up the price. Steam sales are some of the best discounts around. Embraced Linux and worked to build upon its open foundations to deliver a great handheld which is open . Great customer service in general. Obviously there will always be people pissed off but going by sales and the general vibe I think it largely favors a positive position.
I think steam is a private company so there are no shareholders to crack the whip. They seem to be good to their staff too and give back to the Linux community.
He specifically stated that before, and also in general just focused on making steam accessible. Some people have issues with steam and what it has for annoying DRM, but compared to what EA and Ubisoft did with their platforms, Steam doesn’t shine itself down your throat, doesn’t bloat everything, and has a massive library.
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.
Can you link to something? This could be useful for my old man.
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!
Can we stop over-simplifying corporate greed as “capitalism”?
Ten years ago Netflix gave is the solution all of us wanted, and that was also capitalism.
I wholeheartedly agree. Capitalism isn’t the issue here, corporate greed and not understanding the market is the issue. A free market allows better solutions to come into play, hopefully driving the price down of a greedy service.
Don’t forget the taxes they surely pay very diligently.
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.
Or just not getting the content via torrenting
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.
If you have a spare USB 3 port and a spare power outlet, then you can get an external 4K Bluray drive for $100 or less.
It may be cheaper to just buy an old PC for this purpose.
An old, sub-$100 PC isn’t going to be able to read 4K blurays, and if you only want a regular bluray reader then those drives are even cheaper.
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
They’re pretty cheap, I have one that can read 4K blurays. About $70. I get access to all sorts of hard to find movies, and my library will even order blurays for me if they don’t have it in their catalog (up to 30 per year)
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
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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…
The ads were terrible.
At least they didn’t autoplay or pop up
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! 🏴☠️🦜🏴☠️
You got a typo there… let me help you out.
I think you mean;
Scissor me tinders
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)
And that’s where the piracy comes in. How do you think I’ve been watching The Owl House?
By subscribing to D+, surrendering your soul, finding out that it’s unavailable in your region, trying to import the BD/DVD, failing because of import tax or shipping not offered to that region and then dusting of the good black hat and saying Arrr matey?
Almost. I tried t’ get it on DVD, but one o’ th’ sellers were bein’ based in China, and th’ other were bein’ a “large retailer” operatin’ out o’ a garage in London, and not th’ nice part. I had already been piratin’, but I thought I’d try t’ get it legitimately t’ support th’ people who worked on th’ show. Aarrr! Few movies and series be good enough t’ earn that, in me book.
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Depends on the quality of the rip. As far as streaming goes, yes the Blu-ray will always look and sound better due to the huge bitrate difference. Netflix says “oh it’s 4k!” Okay great, but resolution has little to do with quality. It’s all how much information is available per second (bitrate).
My SamsungTV + native Netflix App could show the bitrate when pressing info on the remote.
If you paid $500~ for your TV, no probably not. If you’ve got a $2k OLED yes (4k Bluray though)
'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
Too much of a pita. I just want to turn my tv on and go.
Once you have it set up right you can
Highly depends on the torrent. If it’s something obscure that’s on streaming but only has a couple of slow seeders as a torrent, you’re probably not going to be able to watch the latter as you download it.
It’s still cheaper, and still has a wider selection, but it is not always as convenient as streaming.
But for anything new and popular? Hoist the main sails!
I haven’t bothered with torrents since we cancelled all our streaming services. Usenet is so good right now. SABNZBD, Sonarr, Radarr, Plex, Overseerr for my family requests/Plex share users. Finding a few good providers/indexers was really cheap (Black Friday sales were great last year).
It definitely takes a lot of fucking around/learning initially, but once you’ve set it up right, it’s seamless.
Somewhat related - I hear real-debrid is a pretty slick way to basically stream torrents, if you don’t have access to a bunch of physical storage. Haven’t tried it myself, but people seem to dig it.
Who said torrent? There’s other ways to have it set up too, e.g join a Plex share
Unless you’re like me, no friends with plex servers to hop on to lol
The irony is this article requires a subscription to view it…
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.
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.
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.
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
You wouldn’t download a car
Given how 3D printing is developing, I would.
Yes, yes I would
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?
Jellyfin is a great alternative system. You just have to get the shows and movies somewhere which also isn’t that hard cough cough
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.
To bypass the paywall: https://archive.ph/GO7mu
The irony…
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!
Too bad they’re cracking down on sharing. :(
How do you mean?
They’re closing accounts for the big plex-sharing communities. A bunch of them are having issues keeping their accounts active.
Thank you.
