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The [TV] Thread, what a concept!
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Sorry what Netflix is 25 years old?
Physical media and cable are still very popular with me and will continue to be. Nothing bad that's happening to streaming services (aka everything in the streaming service era) is something I didn't expect, because it's happened before in other formats*/sections of life. Try replacing something (under the guise of being for convenience sake), but making it more complicated and separating it into more and more segments that eventually lead to it being more expensive, and eventually it'll fully negate the purpose (let alone effect and quality) of being a replacement
The only thing this era's really accomplishing is making older stuff more rare and in danger of being lost. I highly recommend preserving what you can
*An example of this continuing in other formats is Snoop's recent announcement that Death Row is making its own streaming service. I doubt it's the only music label that's discussed (or in the process of pursuing) doing this in an attempt to eat Spotify's/Apple's/Bandcamp's/Tidal's/Amazon's lunch, which is obviously already its own segmented/separated/more complicated replacement method of music-listening and now on the verge of getting even moreso
Steam
God, I hope not. By now that lost copy of Dave Barry's Big Trouble is so overdue that they'd announce the IPO by taking my house.
Points out that Netflix has a lot more competition in streaming now, and it's not just competition in terms of customers. They've lost some pretty big shows like the Office and Friends to competitors, and they're not the only service taking pitches for new projects. I'm someone who, looking back on it, mostly used Netflix to watch shows like the Office or Lost or New Girl, with like...a couple of Netflix originals sprinkled in. They've lost two of the three of those, and there are other streaming services doing original stuff that's way more interesting to me. You toss a price hike and a bid to crack down on password sharing on top of all of that, and, well, people are gonna spend that money somewhere else.
I don't think Netflix is like...doomed to fail, or anything, and I imagine they'll probably remain in the lead pretty comfortably. Apart from anything else a lot of their competitors can't make a video player worth a shit
I’m still gonna share my password though.
Doesn't hurt that the "upstarts" in this competition are absurdly large corporations. Like, Peacock is getting obliterated by all of those other services, but like...that's owned by NBCUniversal, they're gonna prop that thing up as long as they can (and to be fair...they're taking a lot of interesting chances on that service, right now)
CBS All Access was a joke, but now Paramount Plus (essentially the same thing) is a major player
Weird times!
Which, I think, is kind of already happening to some degree? I think Shudder is already bundled in as part of AMC+, and you can add a lot of these onto Your Hulu as upgrades.
Everything is just beamed to a console so we have marginally more control over what gets added to our cart, but everything is pretty clearly backsliding. They're just figuring out now how to extract the wealth from customers more efficiently and we're watching it in real time as they remake the picture like it used to be, only faster, and with 1080p.
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I was going to say that AMC+ is already where I moved to from Shudder since it's included there for not much extra. Which doesn't preclude it from becoming part of a larger bundle/service, but at a certain point I lose the willingness to pay more for extras beyond the core Shudder catalog that I'm really in it for.
Showtime is Showtime. It's been a thing for long enough that I see it remaining an independent option for a good long while - at the very least as a channel you can subscribe to through Prime, Hulu and whatever else in addition to cable. Ditto for Starz.
I'd never even heard of Curiosity before today. Looks cool, but also feels more likely to end up a component of something larger.
Like I got the PBS app to watch All Creatures Great And Small, and despite the weird signups required with your local station, and the fact it is an ostensibly free service was better than our experience using All Access for the first seasons of Disco and Picard.
Honestly I doubt it, most people aren’t worrying about it as long as a decently clear picture and audio come through and they can push pause.
I don't use Peacock because of how bad their streaming player is to utilize.
I can manage my way through the difficulties/challenges of HBO-Max & Paramount+, but Peacock is just too shitty.
I like Umbrella Academy, I Think You Should Leave, Nailed It, Russian Doll, and that's... Kinda it? If I didn't get to write off streamer fees, I'd probably only have Netflix for one or two months a year.
Hm, I meant more along the lines of broken experiences rather than design choices. Really bad encoding meaning you can't see anything during a nighttime scene, ads reloading because they didn't get a signal so you get kicked back to the beginning, UI just not loading, etc.
On your other point about cancellation policies, I think customer perception is never going to change on that one regardless of any data.
Brockmire is DYING for a blu ray boxed set.
At the moment I haven't found a streaming service that I think has a really great UI experience. I don't necessarily have notes of things I want, but nothing feels good to use/I always feel like I'm fighting against the ui to find what I want.
Like! Disney+ and others for instance have a "finish watching" deal where it knows the last episode of something you watched and then you dipped out of it. Which is very useful for jumping back into a show. But! let's say you have kids who watch a show endlessly and want to jump around. They may not even want that episode again! But if you use that episode to get into the show's area, when you try to then "back out" into the episode selection, it takes you back to the home screen. What?!?!? why?!?!?!? Why is it like this?!?!?!?
I bet he's pissed because he probably expected the series to get cancelled without him.
Easily accessible volume control
Skip forward/backwards X seconds with arrow keys
Space bar to pause/unpause
A small and a large player, in addition to full screen
Ability to cast
Manual resolution control(!)
Playback speed adjustment
No shit on screen when I pause the video
Closed captioning button
Chapter/section markers (where applicable)
Scrub bar and controls disappear quickly when not being used.
It also has the lowest rate of ad repeats due to server issues.
This one is my biggest pet peeve. I don't need to to finish the credits on The Simpsons or segment 2 from Jon Oliver 4 weeks ago and clicking back should let me pick a new episode, not boot me back to home.
if a player cannot cast to the tv it drives me insane, espn does this or at least did, it fucking sucks. I am literally paying for ESPN+, how in the world are you blocking me from putting this on a tv. You often can't watch ESPN+ stuff on tv at all
does Cobra Kai count
I recommend getting a Roku stick. They're <$50 and I haven't run into a streaming service that you can't get up and running on it with ease.
Signed, someone who watches a fuckton of ESPN+ on both of his TVs and never casts anything other than Steam games
I thought twitch was completely gone from rokus unless you use backward ways of loading it on there (and youtube eventually due to the google/roku tiff)
oh i have espn + on my tv, I just mean when i am at a friend's house or my parents and we want to throw a game up and it's just a black screen. What is the difference to ESPN if we're all crowded around my phone vs throwing it to the tv, other than to be annoying?
Oh, that may be true. I pretty much exclusively use twitch as second-monitor entertainment when I'm on my PC, I don't think I've ever had the urge to move it to my TV. Youtube works fine on my rokus for now, but I don't know what the future holds on that front (I also don't like Youtube so I typically choose other options if they're available)
Requires the backwards channel loading online and even that breaks sometimes. Twoku is the one I've got on my Roku stick.
Everything to do with sports is terrible about that, because of blackout rules from the leagues. Heaven forbid that you cast a game from your phone that's meant to exclusively be available via partner X or Y in a given market.