Pirating went down when paying for streaming was more convenient. Well, you are making it far less convenient.
Streaming has become cable 2.0.
It was wonderful when everything was on one, maybe two providers. Could watch everything in a very easy, very affordable way.
But everyone saw that, went “I know, I want that money!” and spent billions building their own individual infrastructures so make their own streaming services, and right around we go right back to the absolute worst days of cable and bullshit.
Only thing stopping me from saying fuck it and downloading shit I want to watch, is the fact that I no longer know what the good sites are… since I havent pirated since the heyday of the bay.
piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com Their sidebar can teach you a lot.
Join lemmy.dbzer0.com the piracy instance and ask around about private trackers and if there are any open signups
And the irony is that people switched to cable for the exact same reason. They got tired of the nonsense that broadcast TV pulled with subscriptions for different channels and all the ads and everything, and went to cable because you paid one bill for every channel. Then, everyone moved to streaming because you had to buy 50 different cable packages for the one channel on each you actually cared about, and there were just too many ads to deal with, etc.
Something something, those who don’t listen to history are doomed to lose profit margins or whatever.
Broadcast tv had different subscriptions for channels? Where? Free to air tv is free with no subscriptions or options.
TorrentFreak occassionally posts a list of sites, just use a good no logging VPN.
That and movies just suck nowadays. This is partially old man yelling at cloud stuff but also true since the death of DVD’s means studios won’t take risks anymore since they can’t recoup funds after a poor box office.
On the usenet side of the house, I think the only big change was NZB Matrix going away.
I can’t tell if no one talks about usenet because no one knows about it or because they don’t want anyone else to know about it.
Well, this time they have Google and Microsoft on big brother duty to make sure you don’t get crazy ideas. And I’m not seeing enough people jumping away from Chrome and Windows to stop it.
I’m on Windows and it’s never hindered me when I needed to go download something that would make a studio exec cry. Granted, I use Firefox, but I’m not sure what Chrome would do differently - it’s just a matter of clicking links that get sent off to qBittorrent to handle. What “big brothering” do they do?
Google is implementing a new scheme that verifies your browser (correct DRM, etc.) and sites won’t allow access without it.
Basically you have to have Chrome and without extensions they don’t like.
But so far google and microsoft are incompetent big brothers, to the point that most people will find free streaming sites just by searching “free streaming epx of show”. Now we are not talking good streaming, or even safe but if you want an example just look at any place with poor users (like a school or library).
To be completely fair, it’s been over for a while. Even if you completely forget about infrastructure, between the endless wars for licenses, endless removals of content from platforms, shitty inconvenient apps, and regional locks, it’s already a dying market.
On top of all of that, they’re implementing the “don’t you have 5 extra dollars” strategy, with skyrocketing monthly prices for each of these. If it was 15$ a month to watch anything, i would still pay. but it’s 15$ for each of them, and they still serve you ads, and sell your data
The funny thing is we’re rapidly approaching the point where there’s more digital content than any single human could consume in a lifetime. Including content from before copyright. So the main thing streaming services offer you is convenience and up-to-date media. But if you’re just trying to entertain yourself 30-year-old 40-year-old 50-year-old 60-year-old 70-year-old content can be just as engrossing. You just get emotionally invested in it.
I’ve found a DVD rental place close to me with quite a collection. Honestly thinking about just unsubscribing from all streaming and going all in on DVD rental. I watched one recently for the first time … you forget how consistently good the qualilty is compared to streaming (YMMV). But, in true hipster fashion, being more deliberate about what I watch, more openly exploratory, making more of an event of it, all seems attractive. If streaming were actually convenient, fine, but with the way things are now … they can go to hell.
I’d need Blu-ray at least tbh.
But yeah lately I’ve been buying 4k Blu-rays for movie night
Plus you get commentary and behind the scenes and such, not sure why most of the streaming services don’t offer that.
this is a rose tinted glass tbh. maybe if you’re watching a dvd on an iphone screen, but DVDs were limited to 720p, and a bad one too. You need modern bluerays to really get up to par with HD streaming services.
If you can go to a source of older content it often comes pre-filtered for the better stuff too, so you don’t have to wade through a ton of rubbish to find the occasional gem like you do with the new stuff.
And the writer’s strike shows that the artists don’t get paid anyway if you pay for content, so they can’t even play that card either.
We all knew that even before the strike too. Musicians get paid pennies on a dollar, and it’s the same with writers. Actors are probably treated the same way, if you’re not one of the hall of fame elites who get insane cash for garbage roles, after they’ve been in a Marvel movie once
They get paid, they just don’t get residuals for life from every job they were paid to do.
Just read an article stating that the writers of a show were only paid a combined $3000 after the show was streamed over 16 million hours on Netflix. These companies try to crack down on piracy by claiming artists/writers/actors don’t get paid if we pirate but they’re clearly not getting paid anything outside their normal wages when we don’t pirate either.
Peacock HBO Max Showtime Disney. Fucking DC Universe was trying to be a thing.
Every media company wanted a streaming service but failed to deliver because of their hubris.
Hulu and Netflix have been my constant subscription services.
Disney is an absolute must if you have a kid, and a great value besides.
Otherwise it makes 0 sense except for maybe star wars sometimes.
We got Disney + for our kids and they couldn’t care less. The only thing they were interested in was The Mandolorian (bored after the first season) and the latest live action Spiderman (which was not available in Disney+ !!!). We’ll be canceling once our special deal is over. Maybe we’re lucky that our kids don’t care for it because that will save us some money.
Disney is an absolute must if you have a kid and aren’t capable of raising them without parking them in front of the TV.
The era of cheap streaming is over, now begins the era of free streaming
Didn’t 1337x just get caught injecting bit coin mining software into their stuff?
Sad thing is that most people are far too lazy and will just pay the streaming cost
No worries, I wasn’t paying anyway!
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