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>

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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!

    • errer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Confused_Emus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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 :)

      • return2ozma@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Most libraries always give you access to Kanopy to steam movies/documentaries. Just need your library card and the app.

      • HeyListenWatchOut@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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 :

        1. A “server” or “host” which acts as your library.
        2. 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.

      • CaptainFortissimo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • SmoothIsFast@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The irony of a pay-walled article from one of the 50+ news websites requiring subscriptions complaining about fragmented streaming services is palpable.

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Yeah and whatever you do definitely don’t use Jellyseerr for Jellyfin setups or Overseerr for Plex setups

  • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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….

    • nevemsenki@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • ChouxFleur@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • tpihkal@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ne’er should one relinquish control of thine own vessel. Back to the seas shall we voyage mateys!

    Also, 12ft.io

  • archonet@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Friendly reminder that PLEX is a great, free service, you just have to put in the effort to build up a media collection. High capacity HDDs are very cheap now, so storing a large media collection isn’t particularly expensive.

    They also offer a lifetime “Plex pass” which adds some neat, but non-essential features, like auto-skipping intros and credits sequences for instance. It’s not necessary, but it’s a nice way to show support for what they do.

  • madqubit@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If I have to google which streaming service a PBS show is on for my kid to watch. Something’s messed

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’d think that, wouldn’t you?

        In actuality, they pull shit like only having the most recent season of things and whatnot. For example, there’s no good reason why the PBS Kids Roku channel wouldn’t have all 4666 episodes of Sesame Street, but it doesn’t.

  • rsuri@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The basic problem with media is that copyright creates a monopoly for 100 years or so depending on various factors. This means that unless you’re into Arthur Conan Doyle or whatever, the media landscape is fundamentally monopolistic.

  • Copernican@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).

    Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.

    • Lightsong@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I got 3 months free paramount and I canceled the subscription, and it expired in a week instead of 3 months. Its such bullshit.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Really? Whenever I cancel it usually tells me the renewal date pretty explicitly, and the cancel just stops renewing on that date. Maybe if it’s 3 free months, you need to keep the monthly process in active status since it’s a free renewal?