With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I cancelled Netflix the day they blocked my elderly parents from accessing my account.
I was paying for 4 streams, it shouldn’t matter 1 stream was at my parents house, they were still getting their money.
Don’t worry Netflix, we still get to enjoy your content via torrents and my parents still get a convenient streaming app full media via Plex, so you can eat shit Netflix!
I canceled Netflix, but I stayed on their mailing list so I know about new shows I might like to watch. My frigate is now a submarine that goes beep, beep. (it has sonarr, I guess would be the main point I’m trying to make here)
Check out Overseerr if you use Plex, or Jellyseerr if you use Jellyfin.
It will show you popular and upcoming movies/tv shows, and you can integrate with with the arr suite to have users able to request and download the shows.
It’s fantastic, especially if you’re sharing your media server with others
Thank you so much, I was looking for something like this!
I’m confused. Does this automatically download media?
It will send the request to sonarr or radarr to download it, if you have those set up.
Before ditching Netflix I added all my current shows to a calendar/tracking website, which I check every few days and grab anything new, new new shows, in just rely on word of mouth and/or social media.
Don’t use Plex, use Jellyfin. Plex tracks everything you watch and do. Jellyfin is free, open-source and self-hosted.
Are you going come here and setup my system, then install apps on mine and my kids devices and show them how to use it AND then travel to my parents house, install it on their devices and explain to them how to use it?
No? Guess I’ll stick with the free self-hosted Plex.
Jellyfin lacks a lot of features that Plex has. It also is prone to a lot more problems. Once it matures some more it’ll be a fine replacement.
Tried Jellyfin and it was a pain to get running on my NAS (the only add on in the Synology store is a random community port that doesn’t work well and the apps for the TV are all janky). Will stay with Plex until they sort it all out.
Yes, I believe they have pretty bad documentation, but I after a lot of pain I was able to get it working too.
Jellyfin still has a lot of catching up to do, unfortunately.
I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren’t getting any of my money any more 🙂
I do have to thank Netflix for motivating my to try Plex and see what my uplink could handle, about 3 1080 streams, so there’s that positive.
I used to pay for Netflix because it was easier to have one service to watch everything, than it was to pirate.
I’ve obviously stopped.
Piracy really is a service problem for me.
🙏 PRAISE GABE LORD OF CONSUMERIST WISDOM 🙏
I’d definitely be interested in a Valve streaming service, not to muddy the waters even further.
Yeah it used to be it just wasn’t worth the effort to pirate stuff. There was always plenty to watch on Netflix and all of the movies got there eventually. Now you’d have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, then search around for which one has the thing you want to watch on it. It’s more effort to get stuff on streaming (which you have to pay for) than to simply pirate it.
I have exactly the same story.
Cancelled all subscriptions apart from Usenet and VPN.
Now I just pirate it all and bang it on Plex. All in one place on all devices, easy peasy
In my experience, Jellyfin is better than Plex in every single way.
I don’t disagree but it was hard enough getting my dad and grandma to work plex. I’m not changing now.
Plex is working really well for me at the moment.
Solid reason to stick to Plex. A few of my friends just stayed with Plex until they moved / their setup broke, and switched afterwards
My entire family uses Plex and I managed to get them using it years ago. I still occasionally have to help them setup a new device.
I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up Jellyfin for personal use, but I’m not ready to set aside the time it’d take me to get them on Jellyfin.
What’s specifically so much better about it? We’ve got years of watchlists and customizations to our Plex and it works flawlessly but if there’s a compelling reason beyond “it’s the new hotness” I’m all ears.
Because it’s FOSS. I’m sure there are other reasons but if I am putting my pirated stash somewhere I don’t want a proprietary program to have full access.
Fair enough, thanks!
I pirate everything like a chad. Fuck paying for shit like Spotify, Hulu etc
cant cancel what I never had
yarr
I’d like to yarr, especially anything no longer available via any streaming, but I’m well past my Napster days and pretty positive I’ll screw it up, either privacy wise or safety wise.
I do know how to avoid keywords after that ISP-reddit court debacle, tho…
Nothing left. It’s not even out of protest or anything, I’m just greedy. Netflix was ok when it was 7$ and had a lot of stuff but not anymore. I just pirate everything, it’s centralised, I can watch it how I want. And when my Internet went down a few weeks ago I could still watch shit since it’s self hosted.
Edit: Forgot I still have Amazon prime for delivery but I don’t really use prime video. Oh and Spotify for discovering new music and creating “together” playlists with friends. This one I would only replace with another platform.
You can use your prime membership for music too, it’s pretty bad compared to Spotify but it will save you some coin.
When Netflix was the only service that mattered, i paid for the convenience. As soon as i had to check 3 places for something I wanted, i cancelled and started pirating again
I’ve not had any subscriptions for 3 years now. Turning point for me was when I found it easier to sail the high seas rather than to figure out which service the show I had already paid for was on.
DRM kept me away from streaming services.
Since my devices didn’t had the required DRM level, I could only get 360p with my paid abo. Paying for potato quality if there are alternatives in fullHD or 4k? Pretty bad sales pitch.
That too! I think it was either Prime, D+, or both but I was trying to watch something. The native app only supported up to 480p and thanks to DRM the web version just didn’t work.
Did you mark you account as a bot? Some people ignore posts and comments by bots so I wouldn’t turn that on if you’re not using the account for bot purposes.
There was a point in time where I paid for Netflix because it was simply easier than downloading everything.
That point has long passed, and I no longer pay for streaming.
Removed by mod
My wife and I decided we’ll only have one streaming service at a time. Currently it’s Disney Plus. We recently stopped Disney Plus in favor of Netflix due to the One Piece live action series. After it was done, we stopped Netflix and took Disney Plus again.
We don’t have that much time to watch stuff anyway, so we figured we might be focusing on just a single library.
200$ / month is insane, wow. From what I can tell, lots of people seem to start pirating way more. It looks like it’s common to be subbed to your favorite streaming service and put the rest on Plex.
Remember we’re a very small circle here, and the groups we run with are also pretty close knit, lots more in our groups may mean something but compared to everyone else it’s probably less than a blip.
I think it’s more common for people to rotate which service they’re subscribed to each month.
But piracy is still increasing in popularity.
I got tired of all this B’s long time ago and just resorted to torrenting. I missed the series management and resume feature so I coded a app to do it.
PS: in case anybody wants to use it… It’s open source. https://github.com/Dr-42/offflix
Good sir you are a gentleman and a scholar
Thank you so much
I’m a pirate, always will be.
Real debrid. Kodi. Fen add on. Nvidia shield. Done.
My man
Hoist the black flag!
Not only have I cancelled them almost a decade ago - I don’t even watch series or movies anymore, and barely listen to music outside of the radio. I’m disgusted with the many crimes committed by Big Media and want to have as little as possible to do with it.
