I am over being disappointed by streaming sites.
“I wanna watch X, let’s see if Netflix has it…”
*Opens webpage*
“Hmm… Netflix usually sucks, they probably wont have it. I’m just gonna say I’ll watch Y off my hard drive instead. But let’s still confirm that Netflix doesn’t have X…”
Next thing you know, I’m watching Y off my hard drive.
Streaming services suck so much nowdays that I already resolve myself to watching something else before I even finish checking. Gotta shield myself from disappointment. Why would you pay for each channel on a TV? Just get the hard copy at that point…
With 25Mbps internet, for me harddriveflix is often the streaming service with the highest bitrate…
Yeah, I pay for Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime and yet, I am still downloading shows that are on those services because their shitty DRM schemes limit me to 720p. It’s insanity.
I’m with you on that. There are some gems on streaming sites still, but lots of half baked content to sift through.
I’ve actually started buying DVDs again to add to a plex archive. A lot of not-current shows and movies are in my budget and I don’t have to worry about availability. I will say Plex tells me what service has what content in my watchlist which is nice, but doesn’t work for everything.
My SO and I were searching for a show and just gave up; too much of a hassle. Downloading would have been easy if we wanted, but after doing the searching dance, we just didn’t care anymore and threw on a show we know and enjoy.
we just didn’t care anymore and threw on a show we know and enjoy.
Yep! Ya know back in the old days we had to just watch whatever was on TV! Or go buy a VHS! But nowdays we have entire media libraries on our computers that, as a VHS collection, would be the kind of shelf someone would brag about. I suppose I should feel grateful for that. But I wanna have it! Blockbuster died for a reason… maybe not the one we thought?
Commercial streaming sites are so bad. The “pirate” streaming sites have so much content from so many different countries, providers, and in so many different languages, it blows my mind how short-sighted commercial streaming websites are. They could be making so much more money by having one single video hosting service where all the production companies put their products on. Basically, a video streaming warehouse.
Imagine, no matter which country you’re in, which currency you pay in, which OS or browser you use, all you have to do is go to one single website where you pay a tenner every month and you’ve got any and all TV shows, movies, maybe even merch for the media you watch, etc. . Imagine you could even give money to keep a show alive. Tip a few extra coins here, a few extra there, or blow a few hunnies on merch of your favorite show.
Instead, they have 100 different silos. Fuck that.
The quality is often terrible too. I’ve literally been watching Netflix and the pixellation/stuttering has been so bad that I’ve shut off the film, spent 2 minutes downloading it, then just carried on watching the downloaded version from where I left off.
So I’m not the only one! Can’t remember when this was since Netflix was cancelled a while ago, but back then it wasn’t even possible to select the quality or get the true quality. 1080p was actually streaming 720p. IMO, that should be worthy of a fine, but ain’t nobody got the time. Much quicker to just find it elsewhere.
Eventually you’ll reach the point where instead of checking Netflix for X and settling for Y locally, you’ll just download X and watch it.
This. I feel like watching Das Boot. Okay, it streams on Fubo. Maybe I’ll watch K-19. No, that one is on Peacock. The Hunt for Red October? No, it’s on HBO Max.
Do they really expect me to subscribe to all those different services when I could just put it into Radarr and have it a few minutes later?
Yes, they really do. There’s nothing that business types love more than smelling their own bad ideas and thinking it’s genius.
You can be sure that a CEO on $10 million thinks regular people would think nothing of subscribing to ten different services because he does personally, so what’s the big deal?
AppleTV: you wanted to watch this movie, that’s great, it’s on Amazon, BellTV, and Crave
Open any of those apps and it’s only available outside my subscription and I have to subscribe to some weird ass TV channel I’ve never heard of and didn’t even have their own app.
Libraries use a couple streaming services (such as Kanopy), so check them out.
And there are tools for saving what you stream from them. Here’s one for Kanopy.
I’ve tried to give them my money. Max, Hulu, Netflix… and none of them want it unless they can get my telemetry. American in Europe, so I can’t use US services. Netflix and Prime will only show me the Euro selection. Don’t want that. Use a VPN, you say? All those services block IPVanish and Proton. They want my data not my money. It would be optimal if I paid them to give them my data, but if I can’t give them clean telemetry, they don’t want my money. This tells me they should be paying me for that info. And that’s not going to happen.
So, I tried. I honestly did.
Enter Stremio-Torrentio-Debrid and I can now watch every single thing I can think of. For the pittance I give Debrid, it’s been a game changer. I don’t expect it to last forever, but aligning with you fellow seafaring folks will keep me at the forefront of the game. 🤘🏼🏴☠️
Proton VPN works for me.
But we should not have to pay another company to watch the content owned by a company we are already paying.
