Comment on Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026
aesthelete@lemmy.world 17 hours agoStreaming just waited to roll out unskippable ads so they could win customers early on with an artificially, temporarily better service.
This is the exact same thing cable did when it came out.
fakeplastic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
No. Cable brought improved picture over broadcast signals, brought programming to underserved areas, and had a greater number and diversity of channels. Those fundamental improvements over the prior technology never went away.
You can complain that cable TV got more expensive over time, but you can say the same thing about cars and houses and health care.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
No, cable was commercial-free when it first came out just like streaming was. They repeated the ota signals for the broadcast stations which of course contained commercials, but extremely similarly to streaming they started out with a quality and ad-free pitch and wound up pivoting to screwing over the customer any way possible.
fakeplastic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
Some cable channels are still commercial free, all of them are since the DVR was invented 25 years ago. Watermarks suck, a DVR can’t erase those. But nothing cable has done comes close to the fuckery we’ve gotten with surveillance and tracking, targeted ads, unskippable ads that is the present and future of streaming.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Cable providers have unskippable ads on their own “on demand” platforms. I’m sure they track everything you do on their apps and their (often required for no technical reason) cable boxes. The only reason they didn’t participate more in surveillance capitalism is that they didn’t have the technical chops. They tried – and are still trying – their best to strangle broadband with needless data caps and anticompetitive agreements with alternative ISPs.
Cable companies were also rabidly anti-dvr as anyone with a tivo can attest to. I’m glad you like your cable provider or whatever, but cable companies suck in the US.