The good thing is that you don’t have to sign up for all the services; sign up for a few. Once you see all the content that you want, cancel and sign up for something else.
Netflix, HBO, and Hulu gradually cancelled over the last few years.
What’s stupid of them is that if they’d stayed around $8-10/mo each (ad-free), I probably would have stayed subscribed forever. Now they each get nothing.
Biggest blocker I get for doing this is the family plan… There’s at least one out two in the household who are watching Netflix to mean we keep it, and I don’t want to downgrade as they take away the HD streams… That’s my biggest peeve, HD/4K should be standard, not a premium (yes I know, it’s more data but we’re not in the 90’s anymore.
It has pushed a lot of people back to piracy, what did these money grabbing schmucks think would happen
I’m not in the US, and even though most (but not all) services adjust for local pricing, finding and keeping track of where something is (often isn’t, or not anymore) available to stream is more of a hassle (PITA really) than going to my favorite magnet site.
Just like streaming music where 95% of the content I want is available on all providers, I’d pay for an all-in tv-streaming service. I do buy digital/physical copies of music through Bandcamp. It’s all about convenience.
PlayStation of all places has this. I will often turn it on just to see if something is available on one of the services I share with family. Then I turn to sketchy streaming sites or the public library.
Roku isn’t available in my “area”, so it (still) says. It’s a bummer because I wouldn’t have any issues with paying to binge something at high quality.
Edit: I have used justwatch.com in the past, but it isn’t always correct or up-to-date either.
But can you constrain that global search by the services you subscribe to? It’s not useful to find all the places I can’t watch something
And can you constrain the search by language? One of the things that made Netflix easier to give up was the flood of search results in languages I don’t speak
The good thing is that you don’t have to sign up for all the services; sign up for a few. Once you see all the content that you want, cancel and sign up for something else.
Yep. Disney+ (for now).
Netflix, HBO, and Hulu gradually cancelled over the last few years.
What’s stupid of them is that if they’d stayed around $8-10/mo each (ad-free), I probably would have stayed subscribed forever. Now they each get nothing.
Biggest blocker I get for doing this is the family plan… There’s at least one out two in the household who are watching Netflix to mean we keep it, and I don’t want to downgrade as they take away the HD streams… That’s my biggest peeve, HD/4K should be standard, not a premium (yes I know, it’s more data but we’re not in the 90’s anymore.
It has pushed a lot of people back to piracy, what did these money grabbing schmucks think would happen
Or if they were willing to continue selling to Netflix instead of trying to pull off their own abusive service, they’d be more likely to get my money
I’m not in the US, and even though most (but not all) services adjust for local pricing, finding and keeping track of where something is (often isn’t, or not anymore) available to stream is more of a hassle (PITA really) than going to my favorite magnet site.
Just like streaming music where 95% of the content I want is available on all providers, I’d pay for an all-in tv-streaming service. I do buy digital/physical copies of music through Bandcamp. It’s all about convenience.
Roku helps with that as it has a global search. Maybe other streaming hardware does too. Not sure.
I am happy and a bit surprised that music streaming ended up so good.
PlayStation of all places has this. I will often turn it on just to see if something is available on one of the services I share with family. Then I turn to sketchy streaming sites or the public library.
In my experience it’s pretty universal. My TV offers it (Android/Google TV), my Xbox has it, and Plex has it
Roku isn’t available in my “area”, so it (still) says. It’s a bummer because I wouldn’t have any issues with paying to binge something at high quality.
Edit: I have used justwatch.com in the past, but it isn’t always correct or up-to-date either.
Try reelgood.com
But can you constrain that global search by the services you subscribe to? It’s not useful to find all the places I can’t watch something
And can you constrain the search by language? One of the things that made Netflix easier to give up was the flood of search results in languages I don’t speak
I think the price hikes are basically relying on or incorporating this practice into their pricing models.
I do wonder though if we’ll see changes made to the cancellation policies. I’ve certainly been expecting a change there for years.
What kind of changes to the cancellation policies are you imagining?
That you can’t cancel each month? Like a six or twelve month minimum?
That’s not a change in cancellation policy; that’s a change in package pricing and availability.
Well, rather the subscriptions. IE, no monthly subscriptions but 6-monthly or 12-monthly. Or cancellation fees.
No idea if my expectation is valid, but it intuitively seems to me like an obvious way to grab some cash.