Plex is a great streaming alternative. Cancelling Netflix pays for the upgrade to gigabit Internet. Hard drives are cheaper now than ever. Usenet access remains safe and speedy. The DIY community for automation is thriving.
Is that the Jolly Roger coming in to port? Welcome back old friends.
I MUCH prefer Jellyfin to Plex. Jellyfin seems to have active development whereas Plex is more interested in adding in a ton of "features" (aka garbage) that I never ever wanted and continues to leave YEARS old bugs out in the wild. I think it won't be long until Plex enshittifies itself to death. They clearly have a financial situation that is not aligned with its users.
I tried but the technical gap from Plex to Jellyfin was too intense for me to try and make work at this time of my life. Plex works well for my purposes and I paid for the phone apps when needed ($6 per device I think).
I admire and support Jellyfin as FOSS and hope I can jump on when I have more time to make it work.
Yep. Finally got Radarr and Sonarr with overseerr setup this summer because I need a GUI solution for my family. It’s been working pretty great so far!
I have the same but the one thing I can't get working is accessing overseer from outside the network (ie internet). I've read guides of course but at some point they start talking about domains and certificate signing and I start to have a siezure.
Plex is cracking down on pirated content. They can't do anything locally (yet) but they sent out a mass email about two weeks ago saying that anyone that hosts a Plex server in the cloud (they didn't specifically mention Hetzner, but that's who is largely being affected) will lose access on October 12th.
That's because people were creating their own 'streaming services' using pirated content and selling access to it using Hetzner servers, which is very bad for all parties involved because it brings a lot of negative attention when actual profits are being generated from distributing pirated material.
I'm just as jaded and cynical as the next guy, but I think that this is a mischaracterization of that email. People were hosting Plex servers with thousands of users and terabytes of pirated content on Hetzner and selling access. I don't read them taking action as a signal for them blocking local libraries in the future.
I might be missing something, but there are lots of guides once you figure out what you're looking for. A little technical know-how makes things go smoother and faster though.
the capitalists are unable to understand that the "eternal growth" their books mention is not feasible in real world and in fact it is a bug. There are physical upper limits that cannot be overcome. There will not be unlimited people that will always enrol in a new subscription. They need to somehow understand that at some point a company may reach their ceiling. This is not reason to do whatever panic change in order to show growth in the numbers. It will just not happen.
Ah but when the prices can't go any higher they can always remove content, paying their suppliers less and getting cheaper hardware. I wish I was joking but these are the options that are left.
The thing is, they do know this. They are perfectly willing to drive a company into the ground on the promise of annual growth, and they'll dump it the moment it cannot serve them monetarily.
When will the greed stop? At what point will these corporations realize that the average American is completely stretched thin financially and will have to cease unnecessary expenses? They’re all just shooting themselves in the foot.
It‘s laughable to expect corporations to act against their only purpose. As soon as a company sells shares it takes the route of infinite growth which is impossible. First they grow their user base and once they start to inevitably stagnate, they start milking their costumers, shaving off features and laying off workers in order to grow their income. It is really the only way for them to remain existent when the market is saturated. They cannot stay in business when they make billions a year when these billions aren‘t even more billions than last year. You can‘t attract new investors that way and therefore cannot continue to exist. Enshittyfication only just started. It cannot possibly get better when they can‘t expand their user base, only worse. They know they will self destruct eventually, but that doesn‘t matter as long as shareholders get their piece of the cake and jump ship to sink the next one. Just being a massively profitable company is bad business if you‘re not growing. That‘s the state of capitalism we‘re in.
“first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. “
It will stop when our species exterminates itself out of greed.
Climate change will probably only thin our numbers by the billions as a result of of the owner's greed, but then they want to profit off AI, and CRISPR, and innumerable other potentially profitable means to our self-extinction.
The greed will stop when all the humans are dead almost certainly by our own hands, and humans are actively working to accomplish this.
As consolidation continues corporations do not need to compete on prices as there are no alternatives. Yes people will pirate but they’ve already lobbied vendors to embrace DRM and governments to make it illegal so that makes it as annoying as possible.
Are we reading the same thing? Netflix has more competition now than it ever has. When Netflix had cheaper prices when it has no competition than it does now. Piracy has been making a huge resurgence as well.
As long as people pay for it and they make massive profits through it.
I mean, look at the last situation in which netflix addressed account sharing. Their user number actually increased because of it from what I have read.
Those people that can't afford it will most likely switch to a less expensive tier and then probably see ads. I have seen that recently with my father who wasn't even bothered or annoyed by the constant ads while watching a single episode.
I don't understand how people are ok with ads? They annoy me so much. It's wasting your time so it can attempt to manipulate you into buying stuff with the money you can't afford to spend.
We keep saying this but they keep profiting more and more every time lol. Remember when everyone on reddit was gonna quit Netflix for the password sharing block? Ya, their users increased afterwards.
We should all know that Netflix's method of "throwing money at the wall and hope one of the shows becomes a hit, cancel immediately after a season if it doesn't work out" is completely unsustainable at this point, as this kind of dehumanizing disposablilty of production is the exact " industry disruptive" approach to expect from a bunch of arrogant Silicon Valley techbros, so this cost increase should not come as a surprise.
Many long running shows have had pretty bad first seasons, "Parks and Rec", the US version of "The Office", and "The Simpsons" comes to mind, and these shows would never have even gotten off the ground if Netflix was running them, because as with all industries, it takes a while for people to find their footing and get to know each other to work together effectively.
The real sad part is, the industry that has copied Netflix's "disruptive" approach are now finding out that the emperor has no clothes and are desperately trying to pass the cost off to anybody else for their own survival, which is why it is more important than ever to fight for the dignities of the people who worked on your favorite shows for your entertainment.
I could very well be mistaken and please correct me if I am. I remember reading that canning a show before season 3 or so was a way of getting around union costs that kick in for a 'longer' running show. A very anti labor strategy designed to cash in quickly then drop it so Netflix wouldn't have to share the wealth.
I thought it was a balance between new shows getting better engagement than old shows, and contracts lasting 3 seasons, which required re-negotiations in favor of the talent. Basically a business model hyper-focused on subscriber growth metrics instead of subscriber retention.
Imo they're really poisoning the well. If they pump out shit show after shit show what will happen (and is likely already happening) is consumers wait until the second season for a show releases to make sure they're not wasting their time getting invested into a show that will be canceled anyway. That will then lead to fewer and fewer shows actually becoming successful, eventually leading to people cancelling the subscription because the last time they watched anything (good) on Netflix was 10 years ago.
To be frank, I don't think they care about anything else other than keeping people on the platform. Which is not such a bad goal to be had if they tried to achieve that with quality of service, good offering of entertainment, etc. What they are doing is desperately trying to create some long running series where on which people will get hooked and won't be able to leave even if everything else starts sucking. Should this ever happen I think we can fully expect their next step to be reduced amount of licensing towards other shows and movies.
But as you rightly put it, you can't grow forever and ever increasing revenue can only be had in dreams.
Actually, I don't think they care about retention at all, because to the industry retention = stagnation. They only care about new subscribers because that "shows" growth. They much prefer hearing "We increased subscriber counts by 10%!" over "We kept 100% of subscribers YoY!"
Perhaps they realized number of people that keeps paying versus number of people who cancel their subscription results in net positive revenue, so they are testing where the line is. All the while trying to fund some new content to get more people to come back.
I wouldn't doubt there's collusion. It's very convenient that none of these services are taking advantage of this and are seemingly raising all of their prices simultaneously.
I canceled after they lost Star Trek. And then I never subscribed to the place that does have Star Trek now. Now I'm so annoyed with all of the price hikes that I may only ever subscribe to the high seas going forward. Lol
Hulu will still show ads for some things, even if you pay extra for ad free. Pisses me off, they're a terrible company. They'll never get another dime from me.
They're not great, but I haven't seen any ads on ad free.
Their interface is weird as hell and it almost seems like they purposely bury things you've recently been watching which is weird.
I say we should collectively strike from streaming platforms to send a message. If you want to watch shows, collect DVDs from the library or thrift store and rip them to a USB drive. If you have a newer TV with a built in media player, it can read the video formats on the USB drive for quick access to your favorite shows.
Im at a stage where I am more than happy to pay for really good shows. It really isn't about price, just value. It's just been ages since NF made anything stellar.
They said about The OA (I loved season 1)...
Neflix describes The OA as "a big creative swing we were proud to take," but says that when it comes to deciding what to renew and what to cancel, "viewing versus cost" is always what it takes into account.
This philosophy means we get loads of average crap. They aren't a regular network, why the hell are they acting like it.
I've said before, because it's linked with delivery, Prime seems to be the only service willing to take risks, and they make some great stuff because of it. HBO seems to be a distant second.
Funny enough I just cancelled my Hulu after they jacked the ad-free price up to $18. It was $12 when I first subscribed about 6 or 7 years ago.
I will say thier D+ and Hulu price doesn't seem bad with the current promotion, but I'm getting D+ currently from family. I've always sailed the seas even when subbed to Hulu, but once D+ starts blocking sub sharing I'll be shoving off for the long foreseeable future once again.
I've been a Netflix customer for over 20 years. The recent password crackdown and constant price gouging led me to cancel their service yesterday. Yo Ho MF'ers.
Sounds like Netflix is panicking and scrambling. The frequency of their subscription hikes increases and increases. Perhaps they think they can price hike their way out of the dissatisfaction they have delivered to subscribers. Keep trying Netflix, find that magic subscription price point that will surely cover for all the subscribers you're shedding with your idiocy and will definitely not hasten your arrival to 0% revenue. Increasing that price won't lose you more subscribers right? Of course not. Burn Netflix burn.
More like they took on a shitload of very low interest debt back when the fed rate was 0%. Now that the fed rate is 5.5%, they can't just roll over the loans and have to start paying them back.
They're finding the optimal price point. Each time they raise they lose some customers, but their increased revenue leads them to being more profitable afterwards. Eventually the price increases will result in so many people leaving that they'll have to stop.
Problem is, this strategy has exactly one direction: irrelevance. It can take a very long time to get there, but eventually you lose so many subscribers that your competitors have begun eating your lunch. The profits were solid so you didn't care. It's the normal business life cycle, and Netflix is well into the mature phase. We have worse quality and higher prices to look forward to.
Netflix's lowered revenue growth is the highlight. That's what they and their investors focus on, with subscriber satisfaction being an afterthought. The price hikes haven't shown any effect on that downward trend either. But hey, keep hiking I say. Fires burn bigger when fuel is added and these people can't differentiate water from gasoline. Having washed my hands of this company, I'm looking forward to further scrambling when revenue growth is nil and then negative and the stock drops and drops and the corporatists wail.
Some people seem to believe the customers are suckers who will eternally take the price hikes, but even the most gullible fool still doesn't have infinite money. At some point they'll have to cut something or the bank will cut it for them.
Well, back to the seas it seems. It was fun while it lasted. One might as well pay for a VPN instead.
I'm sure they did the math they've calculated that the increases will offset the loss is subscribers. From the article it looked like the royalties will increase so less subscribers paying more is even more profitable.
The customers are suckers who will take a lot. Look up skylink satellite tv provider, and their "always free" tier that's currently 6,90€ a month.
They gave it for free just around the time analog tv was being decomissioned. And after they've captured the large userbase, who couldn't switch back, they pulled the trigger.
Every time Netflix changes anything, people freak out and say they're gonna lose all their subscribers.
And every time, Netflix makes more money than before, because they have awesome data analysis and have a very good idea of how many subscribers will leave and how much more money they'll make from the remainder.
I remember when they lost like 4% of their subscribers a few years back and everyone was all doom and gloom, but they'd raised their rates like 15%
Eventually they'll figure if they can get one person to pay 10 billion dollars a month, they can lose all their other subscribers and still hit their quarterly goals.
Yeah, this is exactly like the Reddit and Twitter situation. No matter how bad it gets, people don’t care. If they’re used to something, they’ll rather put up with the new bad stuff than changing their habits.
I keep hearing people say this no content thing. Meanwhile I just went through Castlevania, one piece, sweet tooth and Kingdom this past week and there's like 30 shows and movies on my cue
You enjoyed the garbage fire that was Castlevania? Don't get me wrong, the first season was good enough, but then the writing quickly devolved into a 10 year-old's edgy fanfic, and the animation quality dropped off a cliff.
If only Konami gave the green light to a japanese studio like Madhouse.
Proton vpn is great! I have switched to their ecosystem.long time ago and only thing they could do better is linux vpn. The official linux vpn cannot do any of the new things as for examole windows app.
Speaking of which, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Stremio* + Torrentio is a thing, and contains the entire catalog of every streaming provider combined. Works on smart TVs too.
Because of this comment, I'm converting. Thank you so much! Doesn't seem to hard to figure out and there are plenty of articles online for this. I see a lot of them also add Real Debrid for higher quality and to remove the need for VPN. Anyway, you rock!
Oh god, I can't find it now but before the whole crackdown on shared accounts someone tried to argue with me that it was worth it. As cutting account sharing would allow Netflix to keep their current prices to undercut competition. I actually bet them that that would not be the case and Netflix would still hike the prices again. I wish I could find them just to say “I told you”.
Might finally get me to cancel Netflix, but who am I kidding, I probably have 6+ hours of it playing in the background daily.
The problem I really have is the lack of 4k without buying a ton of extra screens. A single screen 4k plan would fix 99% of my complaints about pricing.
YouTube works for the other 6 hours of content I’m playing in the background. Netflix having long tv series keeps me on the platform cause where else am I going to find 20 seasons of one show easily accessible
For background content, I use either Pluto or Live TV on Plex.
It's kinda great that, as an older person, they're replaying all the same stuff what constantly being replayed when I was kid. And there's news and music, etc.
I cancelled my Netflix in 2018. I've signed back in for a single month three times over the past five years to catch up on things I've missed. I had a hard time finding much to watch over those three months.
Can’t use a VPN while gaming without a high possibility of bans. And I don’t care to pirate. It’s not something I’m interested in doing and takes more time/effort than I’m willing to put in for mindless entertainment.
A huge amount of my watching is done on 55” 4k TVs where the resolution drop is incredibly noticeable. Even 1080p content looks like absolute shit on them most of the time.
If you watch in a web browser then there is no drop in quality cause the browser version only plays 720p
Already going "hybrid" when it comes to content and Netflix only survived the last round because family members voted "stay". Not sure about the next time, especially since their little fabricated "crackdown" on sth. that was once not only tolerated, but actively encouraged definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Streamers are currently benefiting from the actors strikes as no new content is being bought and made while they continue to receive subscription payments for old content.
This, and price hiking is simply greed, nothing more.
There is new content now. But there won't be for awhile. We have had the last season of the Witcher sex education and first season of one piece come out.
Yes but that was all commissioned before the strikes had started. The crown final season is also included in that list iso it seems like there’s new content but there’s just a delay to it all.
The whole industry is a profit driven capitalistic trap to squeeze as much monies from us as possible. The same companies behind extortionate CD / DVD prices and market control are behind the streaming services. While the coast is still semi-clear and we can pirate what we want, they've slowly infiltrated the governments around the globe and introduced stupid copyright laws so that they can go after the common man. I expect that the future is bleak, with more governments succumbing to the industry's lobbying and making it harder for the average user to pirate, so much so, that we'll be forced to pay as much as they ask us
You literally Google, Kodi or Jellyfin whenever you want, and start building your own media library. Then you can cancel all these crazy subscriptions and just enjoy your shows/ films
Just finished watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix, guess that was the last good show on there, now they keep pushing Beckham and reality shows in my face, like I care about that, can't find anything good. I've cancelled it.
Cable is a pipe to get content from TV and Film companies into the home. Netflix was also a pipe to get content from TV and Film companies into the home. The cost of TV and Film isn't magically cheaper on cable or Netflix. TV and Film companies want to get paid, and that cost gets passed on in the subscription cost. Instead of cable being a one stop shop for bundles and packages of everything, you now have to basically have multiple streaming subs that likely add up to the cost of cable.
Depends on if it coincides with raises for working class staff, or there was enough transparency in operating costs and expenditures to be confident it's not just being done for additional profit margins. If the cost of serving video has actually gone up by $2 * subscription count every month, then no problem. I suspect that isn't the case, though.
Netflix is planning to increase the cost of its streaming service yet again, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The streamer will reportedly issue the price hike a “few months” after the Hollywood actors strike ends, which could happen in the coming weeks.
Just last week, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) ended its strike and began voting on a contract with major Hollywood studios, including Netflix, that could change the business of streaming.
For example, Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and other services will now have to share streaming data with the WGA under the new contract, allowing writers to see how well their content performed.
Netflix is likely waiting until the end of the strike to raise prices, as hiking up costs when no new content is coming out doesn’t seem like a smart move.
Once both writers and actors are back to work, there will likely be a lot of new shows and movies coming out that Netflix can use to justify the increase.
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And my desire to have an account has reduced even further. It's already way too expensive, but on top of that we have endless license wars, so the actual consumer will never win. We're playing checkers while they are playing monopoly where every spot is get out of jail for free
Sign up for a month and pay.
Immediately go and cancel the subscription. It will say the cancellation takes effect in 30 days, however they will actually cancel your subscription in 2-3 days and issue you a refund. In that 2-3 days you can watch Netflix. Repeat.
I’ve personally done it twice. Mostly was trying to actually sign up for a 30 day period to watch a show, but wasn’t planning on letting the subscription run unquestioned like I used to. The price is too high for that. Turns out Netflix is petty. Either you let the subscription run, or they cancel you.
Well, if you linearly extrapolate from recent events, eventually they will have a single user who is paying a billion dollars a month for their subscription.
I watch Netflix on occasion and share it will my sibling, who watches it a ton. If it does go up any higher, I'm going to have to have them start paying for half. Otherwise, I'll just have to cancel. They don't have enough content to justify me paying anymore than I currently am. I'm mostly on Hulu anyway.
I would love to cancel it. I almost never watch it and there's nothing I do watch that I couldn't live without. Unfortunately, my mom does watch it constantly, and she'd just sign up for her own account if I got rid of mine, so in the interest of keeping her bills down, I'm kind of stuck. At least I got her to dump Hulu's outrageously overpriced live tv option, so I got that going for me.
All these services from Netflix to Uber are built on understandable foundations. They lose a ton of money in their first phase in order to gain subscribers but sooner or later start looking to turn profit out at least stop the bleeding.
I can already hear the outcry of surprised gamers when Microsoft cracks the whip on their Game Pass pricing, and there will be little to no alternative because they bought out most of the studios and publishers.
This shouldn't really surprise anyone, the writers all finished striking for MORE MONEY. Services aren't free, content isn't free. Netflix hires a lot of writers and endless unionized people to make their shows and films. If we all want to be part of making society more equal it does infact come with higher costs for our selves, and I am perfectly fine with that.
You really bought into the entire PR material here. What makes you think the extra profits are going to go to staff? That never happens. Instead it grows the company profits so the shareholders gets richer.
Every company, specially in the US, are keeping their salaries low so the company can make higher profits.
Netflix profits last year was 3.5 billion dollars, and that was one of the bad years.
Love the down votes haha... I guess people don't want to actually pay for creators to make content. I don't think the average person has any idea how much content creation costs, nor how time consuming it is.
In a new chart, which can be viewed below, the WGA estimated how that $343 million breaks down on a studio-by-studio basis. It estimates that the proposed contract would cost Disney an additional $75 million, or less than 0.1% of its $82 billion annual revenue. It also estimates that Netflix would pay up an additional $68 million, or 0.2% of its $31.6 billion annual revenue.
Oh ONLY 68 MILLION dollars, not to mention the ever increasing cost of living for all the other unionized cast and crew. I suppose they can totally just absorb those costs, or people should not get cost of living increases right... The company has a little over a 10% profit margin, which doesn't seem egregious to me.