Costs of streaming from my Plex server haven’t changed.
Streaming TV costs now higher than cable, as 'crash' finally hits
Submitted 1 year ago by tst123@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/14/streaming-tv-costs/
Comments
theKalash@feddit.ch 1 year ago
NoStressyJessie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Laughs in jellyfin
thoughtorgan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What’s your idle ram usage? After a few weeks uptime it’s sitting at 4GB. Plex is barely at 100mb. Fucking drives me up the wall.
yoz@aussie.zone 1 year ago
Fuck yeahhhh bro
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Still better than dealing with ads. That’s my red line.
I absolutely refuse to watch programming with ads, free or paid. I won’t do it. My time is limited and I’m not every going to willingly hand over a portion of my life to advertisements.
I’m never going back. If ad-free options go away or become too expensive, I’ll simply stop watching shit. There isn’t a price at which ad-supported programming becomes attractive.
I’d love to see the Weird Al movie. I won’t, however, because Roku won’t let me pay to watch it.
samus12345@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So watch it pirated. They get $0 either way.
TheRealLinga@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This is one of the greatest replies I’ve ever seen. Rats off to ya Al!
joel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
what a legend
EmperorHenry@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
the crash was caused by greed, not a lack of people paying.
UFO64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That and insane production budgets. A lot of stream services are dumping hundreds of millions into shows that… Really didn’t need that?
mrvictory1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think that is the true reason. For example D+ has around 160 mil subs but they are still losing money. What are they going to do next, beat Netflix in sub count? No, they already reached their limit already and started to lose subs. They should cut costs instead of chasing revenue.
PhiAU@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Back to the high seas it is.
I’m not paying for 5 streaming services to watch 1 show on each. So now I’m paying for no streaming services.
Convenience as a reasonable price was the deal. It it neither convenient nor reasonably priced any more.
Cable TV all over again. Region locked DVD all over again.
onparole@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yup. They never learn.
msage@programming.dev 1 year ago
What do you mean?
It’s never about providing good service, and always about cashing out.
And that always works.
LakesLem@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’m with you on the high seas ever since Star Trek bounced around from place to place. When you’re thinking “uhhh which do I watch this particular spinoff on, is it Netflix or Amazon Prime or…” it’s already too much like hard work. Then they decided to make the latest exclusive to Paramount, yet another subscription. Eh, nah, at that point it’s time to make like Tascha and Yarr it.
However in part I think the comparison to cable (or would’ve been Sky here) is psychological. With those big services you’re still effectively paying to watch a few shows a bunch of different “streaming services” (channels/networks in that case) but as it’s all bundled up into, say, £60/month, you don’t think about it. Or, the average person doesn’t - personally I’ve never justified that much to watch TV. Now that it’s split out into different payments, £10 here for service A, £10 there for service B, the waste of paying so much to so many different services just to watch a few shows becomes more apparent.
Oneobi@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Streaming services are doing the whole weekly episode releases rather than block releasing a series.
Another way they are trying to retain customers.
I ain’t got time or money to wait for your weekly episodes, man.
LakesLem@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This is one thing I actually like them doing. I’m a social watcher and also have other things to do; I want to talk about an episode with friends afterwards, and the phenomenon of racing to binge watch an entire series in one or two sittings ruined that. (As well as forcing me to stay away from half the internet until I’ve binged the series myself due to spoilers). I don’t like being “forced” to binge, much rather savour it one episode at a time as it’s produced.
I see your financial argument though, I guess you could wait until a series is over and then subscribe for 1 month and binge away. Or, of course, yarr.
thorbot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Back to? Son, I never left
bappity@lemmy.world 1 year ago
yarr harr fiddle-dee-dee
BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 1 year ago
🏴☠️🦜
LightDelaBlue@lemmy.world 1 year ago
the sea is still here my friend.
zikk_transport2@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, it’s not. Turns out Lemmy.world does not like sea at all. In fact, they blocked “info kiosks” at ports near sea, so you have no idea about what is going on in the sea.
joel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
It’s true they did, and it took me less than a minute to make an account on a new instance. An instance that I know will never block said community, because it’s hosted from here!
ScrivenerX@lemm.ee 1 year ago
This is a lousy article rehashing an article behind a paywall.
The cost they have is $87 a month. There is so much that’s confusing about this. They don’t specify how many streaming services they are counting in that, but it’s a good guess that is about 5, each at about $17 a month. I feel I have too many streaming services and share accounts with family, and I can stream from about 7, pay for one and watch 1.5. If I couldn’t share accounts, I wouldn’t have the accounts. I pretty much watch star trek and whatever show someone tells me to watch.
They also don’t specify what $87 a month gets you in cable. Around me that’s about basic cable prices, which is significantly less content presented in a less convenient format and is almost entirely reruns filled to brim with commercials.
Not only is the article missing key information it also misrepresents the information it has.
Note: I’m sure people will tell me to pirate everything, but there are reasons to not pirate. And it doesn’t address that this is a poorly written article giving incomplete and incorrect information.
greybeard@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Personally, the lack of ads is a big one for me. I will not watch ad filled content. Any time I’m on vacation and turn on a hotel TV and have to deal with ads it is so frustrating. Especially now that content is made for streaming, so there aren’t logical ad breaks in the story. Just random hard cuts in the middle of content.
ramblinguy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Chadarius@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That article is full of it. I was paying $120-150/month for cable on top of Internet. YoutubeTV is still only $75. I don’t even bother with YoutubeTV anymore. That was way too much money per month and despite 100+ channels, there was almost nothing worth while to watch. I’m not paying $75/month for Saturday Night Live a few times per year and MSNBC on in the background while I work.
I have Netflix and Disney+. When the kids are gone I will also get rid of those. Netflix is a joke now. It takes me so much time scrolling to find a show that I even want to watch, that I usually fall asleep before that can happen. Disney+ filled their service with horrid crap from Star Wars, Marvel, and other formerly beloved intellectual property that they have sullied and ruined.
Bottom line. The Streaming services are just as bad or worse than cable was and is. The quality of the shows is mostly so low that there is nothing worth paying $75, $20, $15, or even $5 per month for. I will happily pay zero because that is what streaming and cable shows are worth, for the most part, right now.
If anyone would please just make some quality shows I would happily pay a reasonable price for it. There has been maybe one show this entire year that thought was good and that was Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Guess what? It isn’t worth paying Paramount+ for a whole year just for one show. Sorry, but they all need to get their act together. Peak TV is long gone. It is Peak Crap TV now.
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have 5 different streaming packages and pay less for cable while having a vastly superior experience.
It’s not even remotely comparable.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
For me it’s High Seas and Tubi, Amazon Prime, but that has uses outside of watching stuff, so it’s really more a side benefit
Chadarius@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah I guess I have Amazon Prime as well. I watched a few shows that were OK on Prime. I enjoyed The Legend of Vox Machina a ton. The Boys, The Expanse, and Reacher were also good. So what is that like two series per year? It is still pretty low for an entertainment value. Lucky for them it has other uses. The Wheel of Time and The Rings of Power were ambitious, but disappointing.
Blizzard@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Unfortunately the latter instance was recently defederated by lemmy.world
can@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Community*
Instance is still federated.
Overzeetop@kbin.social 1 year ago
It is a shame that once you've signed up for a community you're not allowed to make a user account on any other instance.
Hubi@feddit.de 1 year ago
Not the entire instance, they only blocked the piracy community.
SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 1 year ago
Yet another reason to spread out and not centralize on lemmy.world.
Blizzard@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Heard about it. That’s a shame. There’s really nothing illegal there. Admins of my instance make a community voting before defederating.
I think I read somewhere that’s it’s possible to migrate your account to another instance. The idea of Lemmy is that we’re not at the mercy of someone’s whims.
Underwear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why?
theKalash@feddit.ch 1 year ago
The instance wasn’t defedared, but the piracy community was blocked.
Snapz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
However, media execs acknowledged that the prices being charged by streaming services were unsustainable, and that a “crash” would follow – where companies would be forced to increase prices or go out of business.
Absolutely nobody believes you.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They won’t go out of business… they just won’t double revenue year over year. God forbid your business doesn’t grow. We need endless growth! Unlimited growth, even in a finite world.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s what kills me about capitalism. Everything has to be about growth. Nothing can ever be “good enough” or “sustainable”, it must always be improving at a dramatic rate to make those shareholders happy.
The economy is still in a slump and companies are still laying off people left and right, but at least the money they’re taking away from the incomes of dedicated workers are helping shareholders profit.
adriaan@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I wish there was a way to support the production, actors, writers, vfx artists, animators, etc. of good shows adequately while getting the piracy experience. This system really just fucking sucks. Even if you pay exorbitant amounts to streaming services, the people that made the art get jack shit.
ox0r@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Piracy + donations or something idk
TheWoozy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hmm, let’s see… You could subscribe for all the services and still pirate the content…
iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee 1 year ago
But the sea is rising forcing people to become pirates.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 1 year ago
One can hope. The best things come when the pirates start showing up. Companies are forced to actually compete in a fair market
nickhammes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s not even totally fair, the companies have lots of data on habits, economy of scale, peering, while the pirates have a questionable reputation, risk of law enforcement action, technical hurdles slowing adoption, and delayed access to media. Pirates’ only real advantages are lack of pressure towards unsustainable growth, and lower costs.
The companies fighting against each other are losing an unfair fight tilted in their favor. It’s kind of embarrassing for them.
moog@lemmy.world 1 year ago
yeah but with cable you pay to watch ads.
WhataburgerSr@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We have the basic Peacock plan and still watch ads 😔
Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Even the premium Peacock plan gave ads for Peacock content
MaximumPower@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And soon your you will pay streaming services to watch ads, it’s just a matter of time.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Several of the platforms are already introducing non-skipable ads.
moog@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ahoy mateys
infyrin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s already here.
exohuman@programming.dev 1 year ago
Steaming is still more cost effective than cable. And most importantly, I don’t suffer through ads. I don’t pay equipment leases and fees. I watch everything on my own schedule. Cable cost me anywhere from $150 to $200 a month for my household for basic. With streaming I am paying about $45-55 a month. I only watch a limited amount of any TV anyway. I pay for YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and 1 random. That’s it. Sometimes, that random is Peacock or Paramount or HBO Max, or Apple or whatever.
rckclmbr@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I only had to read the first sentence to know I agree. Videogames are a much better alternative to watching tv
rambos@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Damn! Honestly I never paid for streaming service, but 150-200 $ a month for tv? Wtf? Wtf? And thats just a basic? Cable tv with internet in my country is starting from 30€ a month and I found even that expensive. 20€ a month for inly internet here… I feel lucky cuz I can find everything I want to watch for free on internet, no ads as well, I guess my internet is awesome or Im just happy with what I have
almost1337@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The trouble is, cable has very little to offer in terms of interesting shows.
Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So does any single streaming service.
Stern@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Shocking no one the unlimited growth mindset fucks something up.
StewartGilligan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh, you mean to tell me that paying for a gazillion streaming services individually is somehow more expensive than bundling them all together with cable? Who could have seen that coming?
ultratiem@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I think this article wreaks of corporate backsludge. The entire premise operates under the notion that these services are expensive to sustain and expensive to furnish.
But let’s not forget that they took the lions share of their content from pre existing IPs that were already paid for (millions times over from grossing numbers alone). They are taking the Lion King you grew up, and reselling it back to you. They’ve done this after every technological generational shift. VHS to CD to BR to Digital. Same Lion King.
Just because they want to boost profits 10,000% every quarter does not mean it’s anything more than an entirely artificial metric.
To me I read this as we need to make people more docile and accepting of the penetration. “Oh right, I guess it was always coming” is a much more flaccid mind set than being pissed over the arrogant corporate greed.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
MossBear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They can’t even begin to comprehend my ability to just re-watch 90’s sci-fi.
ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I want to re-watch Sliders.
MajorHavoc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s the part that’s wild to me.
I would love to claim my integrity is why I don’t turn to piracy. But the reality is that Stargate had a lot of great seasons on DVD.
zerbey@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Finally? It’s cost more than cable in my area for some time now. I gave up on pirating almost completely when it was just Netflix and Hulu. Now every single network has their own streaming service and they all charge a premium… sorry guys, back to flying the Jolly Roger for me.
systemglitch@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah I did that four years ago, and I’ve never been happier. More time to exist, and the shows we watch are ones we want to watch because there is no brainless surfing.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Sorry I am not rooting for streaming increases but this is a bunch of baloney. One, few people have all the services listed in the article concurrently. And secondly, they are comparing to the average cable bill which wouldn’t include content like HBO and would likely be well over $100 probably much more for an equivalent amount of content. Hulu alone covers like three quarters of cable content in most markets.
Seems to me like they could still raise another 20% before they are truly on an equitable par.
gmtom@lemmy.world 1 year ago
would likely be well over $100
In the US, sure. But other countries had much cheaper “cable” and now have the same prices for streaming services
I’m British, the last time I had Sky which is basically our version of cable, it cost me just over £20/month. And now its £30/month
ugjka@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But is cable TV a better experience?
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
The whole of the TV industry has lost their damn minds. I saw this shit coming when studios started pulling their content from Netflix without any obvious reason, sure enough, they all made their own version of Netflix and turned it into an idiotic turf war. The only ones that are losing, are the users.
But this is par for the course, looking back, TV started over the air, it was the only feasible way to deliver fast scan image content with sound to a large number of people. First for news, but eventually, for other entertainment content, but people need to make money, so ads. So many ads.
Anyways, cable comes along, now you can get perfect reception of all the ad filled stations all day every day, and we’ll even throw in stations you wouldn’t otherwise be able to receive, just pay us for the privilege of getting the ads.
Rinse and repeat for every cable or TV technology or service. Pay us for ads. Justify it how you want, that’s what’s happening.
Streaming enters the market, finally, no ads… Streaming wars. Now your favorite shows are on entirely different platforms… Is there a new stranger things? Go check Netflix, nope, nothing new here, what about the mandalorian? Go log into dickney+ and see… Nothing here, ok, let’s go over to paramount+ or MAX or whatever… Oh, by the way, we all cost more than your cable, but at least there’s no ads…
Meanwhile OTA still exists, and you don’t have to pay for it. Everyone not going OTA, is ending up on the pirate ship. Yo ho ho, me maties!
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Remember when all those articles about ‘cord cutting’ was a thing. How streaming ushered in a new age.
So what’s this going to be called? Are people going to switch back to the cable? Are TiVo stocks about to go skyrocket? Or is pirating about to see an all time surge? Since storage has never been cheaper, VPNs are mainstream (you can’t watch YouTube without hearing about it), the number of applications to help facilitate it has never been more user friendly and plentiful, and internet speeds have only increased…
I mean, I know what a bunch of people here will do, but I mean the general public at large. Because it’s hard not to notice those price increases, especially if you have more than one service. Because their price increases (based on percent) is far out pacing the pay increase people are getting. I already cancelled my Netflix (due to policy changes even though they didn’t affect me, price increases, and their response to the writers strike).
infyrin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Something in the back of my mind tells me that this is a long planned plot of revenge by networking firms, that planted the seeds for greed to take it’s toll on streaming services when people were dropping cable like flies.
And maybe they want the cable subscribers back.
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
In Canada, cable packages are still pretty freaking expensive.
But as streaming prices increase, we’re closing our accounts on an the platforms. I just shut down my Netflix account due to their new policy and pricing. Next is probably going to be Disney who’s going to add commercials soon.
If there are going to be ads, it better be free. I’m not paying to see commercials. I’ll use Tubi and Pluto instead and I’ll use torrents and set up my own shared media server at home.
It’s not like Disney and Netflix and Amazon aren’t making any money. They’re making record profits while the actors and writers are on strike. Fuck em and their greed.
fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ahoy there, high seas mateys!
EmperorHenry@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The majority of the shows on most of these services suck anyway.
But I have to pay hundreds of dollars per month for every single one of these services…because that’s the moral thing to do when I’m only interested in about 1% of the content on most of these services. And I have to buy the same movies multiple times when one of these services decides for my own good that I don’t own it anymore.
I never torrent or find places to stream these things for free. I would never use mullvad or any of the services offered by torguard to do that. That would be immoral.
MossBear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wish we had a viable alternative where we could bypass the corporate system and allow the actual creative people to do their thing.
DigitalWanderer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
not if you raise the black flag
Flanhare@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I did that many years ago and the fact that all content is in one place instead of multiple apps is so nice.
Kamikazimatt@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I miss the early days of Netflix when that held true too. If I remember right piracy was down too. But everyone wanted a piece of the stupid pie and we’re back to where we started all over again
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 1 year ago
My Plex Server is a bastion of hope. I’m not paying for another streaming service ever again.
valkyre09@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve been a Plex user for over a decade now. I’m not impressed with the direction they’re taking, but the alternatives aren’t quite there yet in terms of polish. I hope that by the time they fuck it all up there’ll be a better solution to switch to.
ex_redditor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How is this different to using stremio?
Dasnap@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Piracy is now easier than ever when you use torrent streaming clients.
DigitalWanderer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
its always been a convenience issue, i want it easy to find a show not search through 5 apps, pay 5 times etc. Netflix took many pirates to port because it was easy and reasonably priced. Then everybody and their mother made their own streaming service…sails were raised again
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Usenet is even easier with more reliable quality. Strong recommend.
refoux@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Shh, you trying to get c/technology banned from lemmy.world?