This is what happens when you don’t push back against corporations. They cracked down on password sharing and signed up more users. They know that this change will force everyone into a higher tier with little to know effective pushback. I gave up my Netflix account a while ago, mostly due to a lack of good entertainment. When there is a show I want to watch I purchase a gift card and create an account for the duration it takes me to watch the season of that show, the rest of the time they get no money from me. The only way to make a corporation take you seriously is to affect their profit margin. Other than that anything and everything you do or say is just noise.
This is what happens when you don’t push back against corporations.
I don’t feel like what Netflix did is unreasonable, as it’s described in the article. It says that anyone who already has the plan can continue with it. They just aren’t offering it to new users.
If someone made a decision to go with Netflix based on what was on offer, it sounds like that’s not being taken away or anything.
They didn’t lure in users with one service and the expectation that the service would continue to be available and then try to pressure them to get something else instead.
Ok so they’re taking away a lower priced option for…what reason again?
Is it cheaper to get the gift card rather than just sign up for a month and then cancel?
To be 100% honest it’s probably a few bucks more expensive because of the amounts the gift cards come in doesn’t exactly line up with their monthly plan. The reason I do that is to keep my credit card info out of their hands and to prevent there being a month on my credit card that I didn’t want due to me forgetting to cancel in time. The part about the credit card info being in their hands is because I watch a lot of security and privacy blogs and I hear more and more about data breaches (note I am not singling Netflix out for poor security) and tracking, but also data on users being sold as a secondary revenue source. When I sign up with a gift card I user a service like simple login to create an email alias (check out their free tier) which redirects to my normal email. So no user data to sell. Typing this out I realize this is not an option (affordable or convenience) for everyone so using your regular credit card and cancelling in between series would next best option.
When there is a show I want to watch I purchase a gift card and create an account for the duration it takes me to watch the season of that show
This is what I do these days too. I used to keep it around even when I only opened it like once a week, but these days I only sign up for a month here and there when I’m sick or just want convenient access to something. The rest of the time the high seas are fairly appealing
Ahhrrrrr
I not so quietly axed all of my streaming services last year (Amazon bore the brunt of my dissatisfaction).
IPTV, a self-made Kodi collection, and the local library are all that we use now. Much happier all around, and zero ads.
I actually just implemented a network adblocker and it bounces basically everything except for YouTube because they use the same servers for ads as their regular service. My family have ad-supported Netflix but we don’t get ads anymore.
Personally though I have a multi-terabyte Plex library that I’ve been trying to get the family to use to ease dependence on paid services. The 200 or some odd dollars it would cost to pay for Netflix otherwise goes into server costs for drive space basically, and 200 bucks can buy you a nice multi-terabyte NAS drive.
Nice, I’m running a pi-hole instance on my proxmox server as well, but it is blocking less and less as platforms move to native advertising solutions. Honestly, I’m surprised Netflix didn’t do this right from the start.
Whats your preferred method for IPTV?
I have pretty simple needs when it comes to television and just use the officially-supported IPTV Simple Client to watch legitimately free channels, like mainstream CBC, and news networks. Everything else we watch is my from own library, or from the public library.
Netflix went from being a staple in my house, to being turned on for a month then shut off again. I can wait to watch some shows. They’re just not worth keeping signed up for full time
Reed Hastings always said that Netflix needed to become a content powerhouse like HBO before HBO could adapt their library to a streaming platform. They failed. They do not produce quality, instead they throw money at the wall to see what sticks with a general operating procedure of cancelling anything that wasn’t immediately successful.
I got rid of Netflix when they said my bill would be $20 a month and I rarely used it. I just find other ways to find shows and load up my Plex server. Sometimes have to wait for blu ray releases but I have a long enough watch list to keep me going.
I used to have a rule that if it was ‘readily available’ to stream then I wouldn’t get it for Plex.
Now, media rights shift in such a spectacularly dumb fashion that I’ll just get whatever I want because there no longer is an expectation that it will be available long-term on any provider. Local copies just don’t have that problem. I have things that are just considered lost media because they’ve been deleted by their providers like Infinity Train (CN/HBO/MAX) and Pantheon (AMC). Totally wiped official presence from the internet.
All the money I would have put towards Netflix for a year instead goes to drive space and capacity.
Yeah I had that happen too with Westworld being wiped from HBO so they could “show it to other markets”. We’ve reached cable 2.0, not sure what comes next but they’ll have to find something to slow the rise of piracy again.
The problem is that kids are too lazy to torrent and have accepted the overly corporatized internet. They grew up on phones, with loud, annoying, unblocked ads. If it works they’ll just continue to throw money at it, even if the service is garbage. They literally just don’t know better. Most of them just watch 480p streams if they do pirate at all, but otherwise are just accepting of how shitty everything is because they never experienced anything better.
What’s the best way to “get started” with this? Can you get the equivalent experience of something like Netflix that way?
Yeah, I effectively have a private Netflix library of whatever content I want, ranging from anime to stuff that doesn’t get released officially, fan projects like AI upscales for Star Trek series that were deemed not worthy of getting proper remasters, or audio restorations like Daria which had a lot of great Seattle grunge they didn’t re-license for the DVD release, the despecialized Star Wars trilogy which is the closest to the theatrical cut as can be, axing all the special effects and CG additions from the 90s and onward.
The way to get started is basically to get a VPN and do some research into torrent sites. Torrenting is pretty basic - you can eventually start complicating yourself with automated torrenting with Sonarr and Radarr, but that’s when you have a dedicated setup with a decent amount of space. I personally am part of a forum that shares direct download links to content but that is also something more advanced like the equivalent of getting into a private tracker for torrents.
Same. I realised I’d been paying for months and barely watched it. So I canceled (Maybe 2 years ago). I’ve maybe downloaded two shows that I would have missed since then and one of those I gave up on–Black Mirror S6, the other was Midnight Mass.
Streaming services are just as much a waste of money as cable television was. You can replace all of that with Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Jackett, qBittorrent, and SABnzbd.
qBittorrent does streaming now?
No, qBittorrent is a BitTorrent client. Jellyfin is a DIY streaming service. You can roll your own. Radarr, Sonarr, and Lidarr are for automation.
Hmm, ok. You can stream torrents with Deluge and Stremio.
Ownership is the point of piracy.
No I’d rather host my own media server. I can’t stream content from someone else’s server when my power goes out.
You can replace all of that with Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Jackett, qBittorrent, and SABnzbd.
Or you can just go to a private streaming site and watch immediately without having to do anything with torrents.
Like flixtor
Ownership is the point of piracy.
No thanks, I’d rather own my own copies.
Fine by us, we already cancelled when they wouldn’t allow sharing between different house holds
Netflix has mobile games? Saw that listed in the feature list
Yeah, their side project to keep you in their app longer.
Cancelled months ago.
It’s 2023 and large companies are still trying to find ways to get long-term, paying customers to cancel and not look back.
Oh well, saves me
$20$22$24 a month!Cable costs more than that and still gives you tons of ads. I’m fine with the price.
Very few people consider cable a great demonstration of value.
Most people I talk to only really have cable because it is the best way to get a variety of sports. Most leagues now have a streaming option but they are still quite expensive so probably not worth it if you are interested in 3 or more different sports.
We’d be off cable entirely if not for sports and CTV Sci-fi channel that still carries a few shows we can’t get elsewhere.
It’s sports and live news. You can pirate that stuff but it’s annoying. Steam quality varies from place to place and unless you have an IPTV box that has those channels the only real place to get them are from a cable provider.
I’ve found that you can get very good news on YouTube these days. But maybe for smaller cities it is hard.
Very few people consider cable a great demonstration of value.
Most people I talk to only really have cable because it is the best way to get a variety of sports. Most leagues now have a streaming option but they are still quite expensive so probably not worth it if you are interested in 3 or more different sports.
Good thing Canadians are rich… I don’t get why all these rich people would use a basic plan anyway. Netflix is just helping Canadians move into elite tier they rightfully deserve and should pay for!
