this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 260 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Remember, streaming only has a business model as long as it has a better user experience than piracy. That's why iTunes took off in the era of Napster. When a streaming service's user experience drops below that of digging up pirate treasure off a shitty ad-ridden torrent site, that service is not long for the world.

[–] [email protected] 120 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I cancelled Netflix and prime and went back to piracy a few months ago, it's been a nice blast from the past

[–] [email protected] 103 points 10 months ago (5 children)

In addition to piracy, I've also been checking out DVDs from my local library. It's kinda fun.

Surprised myself because I half expected I'd miss the convenience of Netflix, but I haven't missed it even a little.

"Was I a good streaming platform?"

"No."

[–] Peaty 57 points 10 months ago (4 children)

The benefit of the library DVD is it takes away the "What will we watch tonight?" conversation. You're going to watch the DVD.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

It just switches the question to the library: "What will we borrow tonight?"

Source: experience from my Blockbuster days.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

We used to rent movies every weekend when I was a kid, and we supported our local video rental store instead of Blockbuster. It was so much fun to decide what to rent! The staff there always knew so much about movies too, and we'd follow their recs often. We watched a bunch of classics and silent films that there's no way would get visibility on streaming libraries today. I wish I'd kept a journal of all the movies we watched, I remember almost no titles now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

lol I remember those days. Standing there trying to decide what movie to rent. Good times...

[–] Peaty 1 points 10 months ago

Yes but you have that discussion somewhere else. By the time your ready to be watching something you have made that choice

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Checking one out is fun, too. It feels like an event vs. just watching anything out of boredom

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Shows are harder to come by though

[–] Peaty 1 points 10 months ago

That depends on your library

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You can also buy used DVDs. Just got a stack of studio Gibili movies for a fraction of the price they cost when they were new. Still haven’t watched all of them, but some I have watched more than once.

[–] epyon22 32 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It was nice when you could actually watch almost everything on it. Once everyone else started taking peices of the pie it just feels like cable with more hoops now

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Every time I open a streaming service now, the things I want to watch are locked into an extra subscription. I generally end up just walking away rather than watching anything, and when I do dig around and find some thing else that is available on “my tier,” it absolutely wasn’t worth it.

Forget even piracy, I’m just not watching anything anymore. When streaming makes my chore list look more attractive, they’ve definitely fucked up.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The only reason I keep Netflix is kids.

We don’t really watch it otherwise.

Even my in-laws are now pirates using hacked amazon fire sticks that are being hawked around their retirement community.

My mother in law is like “I get every streaming service and channel for 1 dollar a day, isn’t that great”.

I’m all “if it’s simple and works for you yeah, absolutely. “

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We’re about to cancel Netflix despite my kids’ protests and start rotating. My husband just wanted to watch the new Castlevania and then we’re cutting and running — for a while at least. It’ll end up on the rotation again at some point.

If streaming services ever make us sign up for more than a month at a time, we’ll be hard-pressed to keep doing it the “right” way.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is a great time to teach your kids Internet piracy and internet safety at the same time! Don’t click the pictures of the nice lady and you get to watch your show lol

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

"These hot babes are most certainly NOT in your area."

I think this is an excellent notion and allows you to better shape their foray into the subject matter. They will be the cool kids, but you'd have to instill the "no talking about Usenet" type of rule. No boasting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have a mini PC running Linux that connects to my TV via hdmi so we can watch anything!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have a mini-pc running a plex vm. And all the TVs are Rokus. So can watch anything, including live broadcast tv. And the roku is so simple kids can operate it, and do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I have a Roku too, which I mainly use for work trips.

What I did at home was get one of those cheap rechargeable wireless keyboards with trackpad for like $10 so that we can browse for what we want to watch from the sofa.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I would change that to:

"Was I a good streaming platform?"

"Yes, during your first year. Then all companies went greedy monkey savage and ruined it"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The thing that sucks is that a lot of new stuff isn't on physical media at all.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It can be:

Step #1: download it (🏴‍☠️)

Step #2: burn it

Step #3: enjoy owning a more lasting copy for almost free

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Well, yeah, but we were talking about going to the library.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I'm surprised what is, though. One of the movies I checked out was Knives Out.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m about ready to do the same.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I bought a raspberry pi, a SATA SSD and usb adaptor, and installed Plex now I'm the new netflix for my family, they send me movies and shows they want to watch and I put them on there, then they connect to my server and watch

It's been really good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Netflix will also be raising prices soon. Again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Netflix recently stopped shipping discs, that was all I kept them around for anymore...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I’m just always spooked by viruses and shit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Use yts.mx, if you use any other site, try checking comments first if they have them, if not you can use torrent file viewer to check the download is actually a video file before downloading

Lastly you could try anti virus, but don't rely on it to do your job for you, they can catch most but not always all viruses

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

You can't get a virus from a video or music file. Viruses have to be executable.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Paying 0.99 per song was how a better user experience? Music piracy was pretty big till Spotify. No service was even close before.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 10 months ago

Being able to easily purchase a single song from a reputable source in the comfort of your home instead of going out to physically buy an entire album and then rip it to your computer was a better user experience, yes. Most users are technologically illiterate, and trying to pirate stuff just lead to them getting viruses.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Because you were guaranteed that what you were downloading was what it said it was, and was high quality, and would have the correct tagging and album art and all of that.

It's been shown repeatedly that a large part of piracy isn't about cost, it's about convenience. It was easier to pay $0.99 and get what you wanted when you wanted it, than download 8 files off of Napster and hope that one of them was actually a decent bitrate and was the song the title said it was.

Back when eMule was a thing, it was super common to spend an entire day downloading a 700MB video file at 5kb/s, only for it to be Fight Club instead of whatever you thought you were downloading. It's the same thing with music.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago

It’s been shown repeatedly that a large part of piracy isn’t about cost, it’s about convenience. It was easier to pay $0.99 and get what you wanted when you wanted it, than download 8 files off of Napster and hope that one of them was actually a decent bitrate and was the song the title said it was.

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

-Gabe Newell

Sauce: http://web.archive.org/web/20120307035423/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or, with Napster, the person you're downloading from signs off when you're 40% done with the download.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Kazaa/Gnutella era: it says porn on the filename, but there's no previews and it turns out to be CSAM. Thanks for the trauma, now I'm gonna run shred ...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Music piracy was big till spotify apprared. iTunes had a limited selection, music remixes, small band stuff were not available. iTunes only had what Sony and some other music distributors supplied. I understand what you are saying but still, piracy was there and iTunes was not primary source. Spotify came and now music piracy is basically limited to high quality audio albums which is a niche market.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If you have the local MP3 file you can do just about anything you want with it. Use it in just about any device. Transfer it anywhere. And never lose it.

I have Mp3s that are over 20-30 years old and have never needed to get them again.

And yes I go to piracy almost immediately if I can't get a local file. Just because of how many different ways i've used them over the years.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

shitty ad-ridden torrent site

let me introduce you to usenet trackers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That was my first thought too. A seedbox, Sonarr & Radarr and a Usenet site and I've got everything I need for $15/month.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What is seedbix, sonarr &radarr?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

A seedbox is access to a server that someone else runs, and they typically have a policy of not asking too many questions, not keeping too many logs, and offer assistance in keeping things secure. It can be used for any number of things. I use mine to host bit torrent files and to run applications such as Sonarr & Radarr. These are open source apps that manage TV shows and movies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Meanwhile *arr got off (user experience) and Netflix & co. are ad-ridden too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I don't even have to torrent, I have like 3 sites I can just go to, search for content on, and stream video from like a shittier netflix. Adblock keeps them relatively sane, and I sometimes have to try different server sources, but otherwise it works fine.