Amazon of the "prime" example of a new-er tech company that bought their way into a monopoly and they used it to gouge people while providing bad service. Uber being the other obvious one.
As for video specifically, I mostly watch older shows from the 80s and 90s. Do they have everything I'd like to watch? No, but there is enough to watch an episode a few times a week.
However, I won't pay this additional fee and I'll cancel after they show me the 1st ad.
This is a company worth $1.5 trillion dollars (with a founder worth $175 billion dollars)....yet they can't help themselves but triple-dip? Yeah, no.
Arr, matey, I hear the high seas calling.
I was surprised with the things I bought since then, despite the quoted delivery being wose, they all actually arrived next day anyway. And I did not miss prime video at all.
Since I'm not paying to make my eyeballs available you're not even going to make the ad money off me. The ads are just punishing the people still giving them money for prime.
I also find Super Saver helps me spend less: I won't order something unless my order is big enough for free shipping, and half the time by the time it is, I decide I didn't really need something or other anyways.
For being a sub-product when compared to other streaming platforms, I, the naive me, would expect that Prime wouldn’t be in such a rush to milk money from users and instead they would focus on making the best product they can given that their mother company is wealthy as fuck.
Like I said, I am naive.
And I don’t subscribe to the “but my HTTP requests” rationalization that’s so common here on HN.
I can’t stand all the freevee crap they have been forcing down our throats too. They pack a record amount of commercials into those movies and it’s all clunky when you pause and go back, or need to fast forward or rewind. Just wish there was better ways to get rid of the freevee crap, but if 2.99 gets rid of those ads too, I might be inclined to upgrade. I know it wil just be the stuff that has no ads now tho.
Everything gets worse because it starts off amazingly good, so there’s no where left to go but down.
In this case, most ppl had Prime for the shipping, and just got a free video service on top. It gave us a few great shows like, the Boys, Maisel, expanse, and probably a few others I’m forgetting.
I for one thank the VCs for all of the subsidized stuff. But now that era is over.
I’m definitely not buying this new thing or watching more Amazon shows (obv unless they put out a new show that is worth the ticket price).
But it was nice while it lasted
Relatedly, see how Uber prices have changed over the past few years. https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-r...
There is no triple dipping occurring here. Prime Video is included with the normal Prime membership under (1). So, (1) and (3) are true, but (2) isn't. I believe you can buy Prime Video (2) separately from Prime (1), if you don't want to pay the full price required for an Amazon Prime membership (1), but if you have (1), you don't pay extra for (2).
I've googled this just now, and I'm pretty sure about what I wrote above.
I would definitely complain about (3) too, but I think it's important to be accurate in the complaint.
- an old film (the Maltese Falcon, Wizard of Oz, Wings [1927 silent film])
- a really bad film (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)
- something you already own but don't have access to at the moment
- anime
- none of the above?
I remember historically, some countries have had much better catalogs than others. Incidentally, I think the catalog quality is proportional to the amount of piracy. more lucrative markets have worse catalogues, despite making more money.
It would be nice of they made a customer focused app for Prime Video (vs their decision to make one that incrementally maximizes revenue).
If I watch show X to the end, a little prompt will display saying, "Start Next Episode", I then close the viewer. Next day when I click resume series, it will bring me back to the episode that is 99% complete so that I can watch the credits roll. Why is the algorithm to detect end of show so poor? They have already identified I could advance to the next episode.
Even better is when I want to re-watch a previously seen episode, and it will return me to the end of the show where I last stopped. I think it is HBO(?) who lacks a "Restart from Beginning" option, forcing you to manually rewind.
Or that some platforms do not maintain a, "Continue Watching" video bar in the same consistent location, forcing you to bounce around to locate your show. This one at least seems like an obvious dark pattern to remind you there is other content, so I can at least attribute some thoughtful design to that annoyance.
We came of age in streaming at a time when Netflix was a de facto monopoly and, importantly, monopsony. Its monopoly/psony was based on a technical moat: streaming was very challenging to pull off, and only Netflix had the technical talent necessary to make it happen.
Whether through the goodness of the hearts of those in charge or through fear of regulation, Netflix didn't do much to extract monopoly rents. But monopsony is generally treated much more lightly by regulators than monopoly, and Netflix extracted monopsony rents on those who made movies -- if they wanted to get money after theatrical distribution, they had to make a deal with Netflix, the end. Netflix extracted a monopsony rent and distributed it partly to themselves and partly to the end users.
Then the technical moat eroded as it became technically easier and easier to build the infrastructure necessary to stream movies. Movie makers (studios etc) were eager to end their dealings with a monopsonist, and they all jumped head-first into the bandwagon of making their own streaming service (Disney+, Paramount+, HBOMax being the Warner Brothers streaming service, etc.). They also saw that Netflix had a great business and wanted in on that money.
But the Netflix business was built on the monopoly/psony. The monopsony surplus being driven to consumers meant that prices were low for consumers and they stayed subscribed to Netflix, delivering Netflix an enormous audience. Post-technical moat, the audience fragmented, and it turns out that there are in fact fixed costs (mostly tax liabilities related to writing off the costs of making a movie) associated with maintaining a big library. Without the big audience and the monopsony surplus, the economics of streaming haven't actually been attractive at all, so now the streaming providers are all aggressively increasing prices/including ads to jack up the revenue stream.
Obviously, the end of free capital/rise of interest rates was also a factor in all this, but I think the monopsony story is the big one.
It's not about the market cap specifically, it's stating that prime video doesn't need to operate at a profit in order to benefit amazon's core business.
Everything everybody spent on cable + all ad revenue = cost of delivering cable + cost of producing all TV shows + profit
New equation:
Everything everybody spent on subscriptions + all ad revenue = cost of delivering subscriptions + cost of producing all TV shows + profit
So, "ad revenue" went from a big number to 0. "Cost of delivering" went from a big number to a small number. But the revenue went way down as well.
One solution would be to make less TV, but the industry obviously isn't a fan of that idea, so they are increasing your spend. If everybody gets on an average of 5 services and watches ads too the revenue will be similar-ish to the good old days of cable!
I've become a lot more really leery of "free" services, and a bit more okay with spending money when I think it makes sense. For example, I'm anti-Amazon Prime because I realize it's basically a huge loss just to get you into ordering more items from Amazon to keep their total revenue and usage high as they've diversified into even less savory business practices due to their market share. Tech companies over index too much on convenience because consumers want convenience. We should be okay with less convenience for a greater good.
The local "cheap" supermarket (Lidl) to me has plenty of >€70k vehicles in the carpark.
Or is the idea that Bezos should subsidize Amazon with his billions out of the kindness of his heart? At that point, aren't there better, more worthy causes than this for Bezos to give his money to?
I tend to wince when people suggest that, because a CEO is wealthy, therefore the company ought to operate in some specific way. Those two things are unconnected, as it's rarely a direct compensation that causes the CEO to be as wealthy as he is.
No ads and I "own" it. I read somewhere that if Apple cut me off, they'd have to refund all those purchases.
But even better is buying a DVD set and ripping it. What a pain, but at least you never have to make a deal with this particular devil.
An update on Prime Video
Dear Prime member,
We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here.
Prime is a very compelling value. Prime members enjoy a wide range of shopping, savings, and entertainment benefits, including:
More than 300 million items are available with free Prime shipping and tens of millions of the most popular items are available with free Same-Day or One-Day Delivery. Access to exclusive and broad streaming video content (including Prime Video exclusives like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Boys, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Citadel, The Wheel of Time, Reacher, and The Summer I Turned Pretty, as well as blockbuster movies such as Air, Creed III, Dungeons & Dragons, Candy Cane Lane with Eddie Murphy, and exclusive live sports including NFL Thursday Night Football). Access to Prime Video Channels, which provides an unmatched selection of subscription channels like Max, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, BET+, MGM+, ViX+, Crunchyroll, PBS KIDS, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV, and STARZ—with no extra apps to download, and no cable required. Customers only pay for the ones they want, and can cancel anytime. The ability to use your Prime shopping benefits—like fast, free delivery, a seamless checkout experience, 24/7 live chat support, and hassle-free returns—on online stores beyond Amazon.com with Buy with Prime. Exclusive deals and shopping events like Prime Day. Ad-free listening of 100 million songs and millions of podcast episodes with Amazon Music. Prescription medications as low as $1 per month and fast, free shipping from Amazon Pharmacy. Access to unlimited eligible generic prescription medications for only $5 per month (including free shipping) with RxPass from Amazon Pharmacy. High-quality health care from One Medical for only $9 per month (or $99 annually), with the option to add up to five additional memberships for the family for only $6 per month (or $66 annually) each. Free two-hour Fresh grocery delivery on orders over $100 (and delivery charges between $6.95 to $9.95 for orders less than $100), and in-store savings on select groceries at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market stores across the U.S. Unlimited photo storage with Amazon Photos. Gaming benefits with Prime Gaming. More than 3,000 books and magazines with Prime Reading. A free, one-year Grubhub+ membership trial valued at $120 per year, offering unlimited $0 delivery fees on orders over $12.
And, you can expect additional features and programs added in the future for our Prime members.
As mentioned above, no action is required from you. If you wish to sign up for the ad-free option, you can click here. And, as always, if you have questions about your Prime membership, you can manage your account here.
Thank you for being a valued member of Amazon Prime.
Sincerely, The Amazon Prime team
Because people need bonuses and new boats. And I suppose I need my Amazon stock to appreciate too.
Would you buy the DVD boxset or perhaps the final season?
Or maybe download the last few episodes?
The obvious downside though is at some point the show may just magically disappear from your purchased library, if negotiations between the platform and the creator go south††. I'd love to see some laws in this area where "a purchase is a purchase" to prevent this, but for now it's a risk (albeit one with maritime workarounds).
† or license leasing if you're buying digitally
†† ie https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6449826?sortBy=best
For those unaware, you can spin up your own direct-to-consumer streaming subscription business in a box (assuming, of course, you have sufficient content to entice viewers) with https://vimeo.com/ott . Perhaps the best known brand using them is Dropout TV (formerly CollegeHumor) - see https://www.dropout.tv/copyright .
At a lower level, Cloudflare, mux.com, and others provide streaming and transcoding APIs that a small team of developers can easily weave together for a custom experience.
There is literally zero barrier to entry for a media company to have all the capabilities of Netflix, if they can bring their own customers and marketing. Which, of course, is no small feat, and requires playing in social media sandboxes. But it's increasingly hard to understand how Netflix has the staying power of the rest of FAANG.
Something seems off about being able to enter the business of nickle-and-diming while propping up the wealth of a single individual.
I can understand the grievance of GP.
It’s not worth keeping anything for as little as we watch now.
Because profits tend to fall over time [1] so to keep profits the same (let alone increasing) revenue have to go up and/or costs have to go down. More evenue can be higher prices, more subscribers, etc. Lowering costs can mean paying less in licensing, paying people less, employing less people, etc.
This was one of Marx's key observations of the inherent contradictions in capitalism.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
Another example: both Netflix and Amazon make finding your saved watchlist difficult probably because they want you to watch random other content instead of watching your finite watchlist (and then unsubscribing when you finish everything on your watchlist).
Buy a season of a show (an album, a book) digitally to indicate your support and help keep it running. Then pirate and keep a local copy of the same to ensure against future unavailability, and for more convenience.
I bet enough people in the media industry understand this mechanics, and sort of turn a blind eye at it, because it's not affecting their bottom line materially.
Well I guess I'll be saving ~70£ a year once it gets rolled out in UK.
Welcome to the "bean-counting age of TV," in which streaming services try to milk subscribers for as much as possible without pissing them off too much.
Going forward, I'm expecting cheaper content, greater restrictions, higher prices, a proliferation of tiered subscription plans, and pervasive advertisement.
Completely predictable, and yet also very disappointing.
I rarely ever watch anything twice so I’m fully ok with renting and be done with it
Apparently Amazon Prime accounts get a median of 300 minutes per week of view time. That’s 20 hours of TV a month with (in the order of) a few hundred ad slots I am paying to not have to watch. Amazon are making a penny per unwatched-ad from me.
Contrast with broadcast TV: Good Morning Britain wants £4k for an ad slot in a show that has 500k to 800k viewers so that’s a CPM also in the order of a penny [edit: ahem, £5, not a penny] paid for by the advertiser, for 1000x views.
So, even taking into account Amazon’s targeted ads vs broadcast TV ads, they can indeed make a lot more money from withholding ads than if they show them?
We could call their bluff. Maybe they don’t have any ads to actually show for which advertisers are willing to pay significant fee. But if the business model is to get consumers to pay Amazon to make the pain go away then they’d probably just show 90 seconds of screaming at the start, middle and end of every episode of The Boys.
What we see here is prices rising, in a landscape which is becoming more competitive.
I hope you read the contract and confirmed the “I’ll get my money back” part - because others have done the “sorry, you no longer have access to your purchases and you’re also not getting a refund” trick. I don’t think Apple is beneath that if they can get away with it.
I used to think kind of like this, but came to the realization that it doesn't matter, at least for movies. First, it's not "people" that expect you to pay for it, it's corporations, and they don't really make money from you directly; if you pirated a movie instead of buying it, it really makes no difference, because either they came out in the cinema and the companies expect to make as much money as possible from the cinema ticket sales, or it came out on streaming which has a really muddy economic calculation. It's much different than, for example, a band's album on Bandcamp or a short film on Vimeo. Second, you're not even really "taking" something in the sense that you're not depriving someone else of the thing you have now, because it's digital, unlike if you stole a Blu-ray from someone's home or off of a shelf. Thirdly, sometimes it's legitimately not possible to get certain media other than pirating. There are multiple movies that I've wanted to watch and pay for but couldn't because of rights issues, and in those situations I'd have no option but to pirate or ask a friend to "get" me a copy.
Essentially, if it's a small artist or filmmaker, support them directly, and if you want to see a movie, go to the cinema to watch it if you can. Shows might be a different matter, but I also think they fall under the same "streaming economics" model where the pirate makes little/no difference in reality and you often can't even pay for the show individually if you wanted to.
Or Sony just steals it from you.
Air was great! I haven't seen a single other thing I'd want to watch. Started a few things, but nothing grabbed my interest.
I know most people don't try life without TV, and I used to LOVE TV and movies. But honestly, give yourself a month without, and you just may find that you are filling your time with more interesting things.
I actually still wish I had more things to do, but just as a few, pick up an instrument (I play guitar), try art (I paint, would like to sculpt), write, read, exercise, make new friends. Even try spending more time cooking, or meditating.
I almost think that staring at a blank wall with your own thoughts can be better than most of what is on TV.
Also, remove the physical TV, and layout your house around socializing rather than watching.
I can download whatever I want, in a world wide scope, for free, with no DRM shit. And no ads or other onerous garbage bolted on.
And I keep what I download, rather than "stream" (download every time, with no ability to save).
So this 'pay more for less'? Nah, y'all pushing me to piracy. And I have NO problems doing it. And no, I'm not going to pay $150/no for streaming crap that I end up with nothing when I cancel.
So, yeah. I pirate.
If you are a Prime member, it's 5% back. $139 is the annual fee for Prime. $139/3% difference = $4633.33
Somewhat to my surprise, we spent about $3700 on Amazon this past year, meaning $139-$111 or Amazon Prime cost us $28.
Useful things that made it tolerable “free to me” were removed to facilitate ramming the buy & rent stuff down your throat and series seem to get phased out even faster than Netflix which is a feat.
So, it's likely that Amazon is making a little more from those who pay to skip ads, but it's in the ballpark. Plus, the people advertisers want to reach are the people with the disposable income to pay to skip the ads. They don't want the cheap people who are willing to waste nearly two hours of their life a month to save $3.
I think you might have miscalculated the CPM since you've said "that’s a CPM also in the order of a penny." It's on the order of a penny per viewer, but not per thousand viewers. That's probably why you think it's more of a bluff that could be called. It is likely more revenue if you pay to skip ads, but Amazon would probably end up making $2 from you watching ads.
Maybe it is, but honestly more people need to just go for a walk to clear their minds
For ebook the situation is worse but for many technical books there's a way to purchase a DRM version.
Movie/TV series is unique in a way that there's no option to buy a DRM-free version.
Stealing a banana deprives the store of the banana and the revenue from the sale of the banana.
Pirating media does not deprive anyone of anything. And no, pirated media does not equal lost sale. It does not remove the media from the streaming site nor does it prevent the streaming site from profiting from the piece of media.
People need to stop making this analogy as is does not work for digital media.
Are taxes and parking tickets on the list? I feel like I shouldn't have to pay those.
> Pirating media does not deprive anyone of anything. And no, pirated media does not equal lost sale.
What about software? Should we not have to pay for that either? What about the software you make a living writing? Is that exempt from the list?
Thank goodness! I couldn't opt-into seeing ads fast enough! /s
Obviously if your original is lower quality (say, DVD) and your pirated backup is higher quality (say, Blu-ray) then I would concede that it's piracy of the difference (i.e., you're only entitled to backups at the quality you originally purchased) which can reasonably be considered piracy in full. For simplicity, let's suppose both originals are identical releases.
If a copyright holder would consider this to be piracy, logically they should also consider it piracy if you download your digital purchase multiple times without using the same CDN point of presence each time. I'm quite certain they'd consider that a non-issue, since it all shares a common ancestor (the master for that particular release) regardless of any meaningless duplication between the master and the licensed consumer.
2. The Prime shipping logo on an item no longer necessarily means 2-day, but frequently means whenever convenient for Amazon.
3. Anecdotally, customer service changes since Bezos handed over the reins have seemed mixed (some bad, some good).
Looks like I'm going to cancel my 14.99/month Prime membership, and return to Netflix. Which will also make purchases at Amazon and WFM less attractive.
Edit: I just canceled Amazon Prime. I figured that canceling was more meaningful than merely mumbling on the Internet that I might.
If I, a stranger, took your car out of your driveway without permission, is it stealing if I promised to return it?
Never listen to anyone who tells you some service will never have ads just because you pay for it.
I have mixed feelings already about Prime Video, as a watching experience I find it quite annoying because I'll find a movie I'd like to watch only to find I have to pay another $5 to watch it. With the other services, I know if a movie comes up on the display, I can watch it without further cost.
I'm fairly sensitive to adverts, I really don't like seeing them, largely because I've isolated myself from them. The fewer you see, the more unsettling they are, the blatant attractive factor of them, do.not.want. And anther $40/yr is too much.
Apparently, dropping Prime with the shopping really does not impact the speed of delivery or cost. I'm already often selecting delayed delivery. With the increased prices, it's hard to justify the $140/yr.
A good example of where the lines of "stealing" are blurry could be this: A friend of yours has a login to Amazon Prime, and gives you the login credentials, which let you watch a show you would have otherwise had to pay for or somehow acquire. Is this stealing? Similarly, if you go to a public library in a city you don't live in, with a card of a friend's, and check out a book, is it stealing?
I was planning on keeping prime for video but the free shipping is less valuable to me now, but if they’re gonna make the service worse and charge me more for what I had before then I’m just gonna cancel.
Unfortunately the world of DVD and Blu-ray seems to be overrun with too many editions. For example besides that particular HIMYM set (here it is at Amazon [1]), there is also this one [2] which is $49.99.
The pictures for the two look identical. But the release date listed for the $32.99 is about 9 months later, and the media format descriptions differ between the two. The $32.99 one says Subtitled, NTSC. The $49.99 one says NTSC, Widescreen, Box set, Subtitles, AC-3, Dolby. The $32.99 lists language as "English (Dolby Surround)" so does apparently have Dolby. The $49.99 one doesn't list language. The $32.99 one says it has English, French, and Spanish subtitles. The $49.99 just says French and Spanish subtitles. Does one of them have better sound? Do either of them have commentary, deleted scenes, or other special features. Does only the $49.99 have widescreen?
Some comments mention that there is commentary, but (1) Amazon considers these two sets to be variations on the same set and so they share comments, so there is no way to tell which set the comment is talking about, and (2) some of those comments are from several years before either set was released--they were definitely commenting about HIMYM so my guess is that they were for early releases of specific seasons or something like that.
If I were interested in buying that complete HIMYM I'd have no idea from those Amazon listings and comments which set to buy.
I've also seen similar things when considering buying movies. There will often be one or more of a DVD, a DVD + digital code, a Blu-ray + DVD + digital code, a 4K UHD Blu-ray, a 4K UHD Blu-ray + digital code, a 4K UHD Blu-ray + DVD + digital code, and probably some that I've forgotten.
Online listings often don't say if the digital code is for 4K, and often don't say much about special features. It is confusing enough that my impulse to buy the movie does not last long enough for me to figure out which to buy.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B07GJ...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Met-Your-Mother-Complete/dp/B0747...
"This deal is getting worse all the time." --Lando talking about his Prime membership
I suspect it won't stand because the removal of the DRM provisions that potentially allow to retract access to the media is the point of, well, backing it up.
When you buy media DRM-free, you don't have to pirate anything, you can just peacefully make a copy.
If you spend enough, you'll sometimes be offered a full full month of Prime for free. Same thing, once your first order ships, cancel.
I did this all 2023. I had Prime for nearly every single shipment over the year, and it looks like I spent a whopping $14 total for all of it.
Many other retailers have free shipping these days. Rarely do I need something next day. Rarely is Amazon able to deliver things next day anyways. You can very easily get free shipping from Amazon with a minimum purchase order. Their infrastructure isn't able to handle slowing down your package just because you aren't Prime, so you basically get just as fast service.
If anything, we've found way more value out of Instacart for quality of life these days.
Step 1: Create an ad free "premium" experience for a price
Step 2: Raise prices
Step 3: Create a cheaper tier which is "ad supported"
Yes. People should pay for both software and media. But piracy is not stealing regardless.
I highly encourage every single person to drop prime. Adding advertising to streaming will undo all of the gains we’ve made by shifting to streaming.
If one platform does it and everyone quits nobody else will. If everyone stays every other platform will follow suit.
All three prices can be ratcheted up over time mostly independently of each other. Price increases in (2) and (3) are largely invisible to the user.
I'm planning:
- on cancelling Netflix
- Canceling Amazon Prime, slower shipping frequently gives you digital dollars you can use to buy TV shows and music
- Keep using Walmart Plus
I need my groceries, and I don't want to do the shopping. They will pickup about just about anything in the store. I haven't tested the upper limit for size or weight though.
Paramount Plus isn't that great but I don't really want to spend my life watching TV. I just sometimes need a distraction.
I've gotten really good at tapping the skip-forward-10-seconds button a couple of times whenever the ad comes up.
The only creator where I don't do that is Acerola, because he puts a video of him playing with his cat in a pip view during his ad. I can zone out for the ad and enjoy the cat video instead. Win-win
One thing that may have made this difficult is that, in fact, there was never a time when cable didn't have ads. It was invented to deliver standard (advertising laden) TV to places geographically out-of-reach of broadcast, and basic cable always was a mix of broadcast stations and additional ad-laden stations.
Premium cable channels didn't tend to have advertising except for their own (or shared corporate parent) programming, but those were charged additionally on top of basic cable.
As someone who had cable since the mid-1980s, its been really weird to see this recent invention of a lost past where cable existed but was ad-free.
As for the streaming space, it honestly isn't that competitive. There aren't that many players. If anything, what we're seeing here is price leadership (which is price fixing and collusion but, you know, legal) Netflix raises their prices $2/month and weirdly Hulu, Disney and Max all follow suit. Strange how that works.
We saw the exact same thing with cable: bundling channels to maintain profits, channels charging more, increasing prices to counter losing customers, etc. And why were the channel prices going up to the cable TV providers? The exact same set of reasons relating to falling profits.
Modern piracy (the so called *ARR stack) provide UX that is pretty close to what you get from streaming services. In some cases even better - now I will use just one app on my TV to watch everything, will not be affected by Netflix/Prime/Apple/Hulu or internet provider outages when I am watching a movie or TV show, and will not have to go through 4 or 5 apps when I am searching for something specific to watch.
The UX is slightly worse when I find a movie or TV show via Plex Discovery and want to watch it immediately, since I will have to wait for *ARR to pick it up and download it, but for now I have quite a few TV shows to finish watching before it will become an inconvenience for me, especially given the fact that this stack can subscribe to upcoming shows - I can tell it that I am interested in Fallout for example, and it will monitor releases and download the show once it will become available.
If the deal is I give the seller money and get the product, that's fine. But if next month the seller says actually now even though you're paying me I'm going to show you ads anyways, or yeah you gave me money but I've decided to take back the product without refunding you[0]... it is easy to become sympathetic to pirates.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/playstation-is-erasi...
Details:
Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99 each month or $139 annually. (Prime Video can be subscribed to individually for $8.99/month.) The new charge for ad-free streaming would bring Prime to just under $18, and would push standalone Prime Video to just under $12.
I'm so glad people have made sponsorblock
So, probably you're right on your perception, but it doesn't invalidate my point of view and of other people who clearly remember a time where you did have ad-free television in Cable, because we only cared for the premium channels.
But I mainly have it for the rapid shipping anyway. Their catalog is pretty useless so I hardly watch it.
"“We’re obviously trying with our pricing strategy to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said in August during a call with investors to discuss the company’s quarterly results."
"Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said the ad-supported versions of their streaming platforms generate more money per user than their ad-free counterparts, as the advertising revenue more than offsets the lower subscription cost." -- https://www.wsj.com/business/media/netflix-price-increase-ac...
"Netflix executives have said that the ad tier brings in more average revenue per user than its $15.49 standard plan." -- https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-reworks-microsoft-pact-...
Cable TV commercials are now the best option we have though, because they can be trivially skipped. A DVR still gives me full control of the video stream. If you time shift you never have to see an unskippable commercial on cable.
Which is just another way of saying that tech companies brought us enshittification faster and more thoroughly than what they supplanted.
I don't have prime. If you are willing to wait a couple extra days, you can usually get free shipping. BUT also, it usually ships faster than indicated anyways.
if you could copy bananas without effort you would get rid of the hunger across the World and then get the Nobel Peace Prize
We’ve been down this road too many times before.
VLC will even open media over http, so one doesn't even have to mirror it locally from the Netherlands (although I do for the kids content, just to provide them a curated selection).
The entire situation is ridiculous. We’ve somehow managed to build an even more exploitative user-service relationship than Cable TV.
Imagine a world in which many of the most intelligent minds were not being exploited to brainwash us into wanting things we don't need to try and ensure we can only find satisfaction by overusing resources that the planet cannot afford.
We should. Also The Software should be Free to copy, modify, sell the changes, use it however we like and give the same rights to others!
Almost everything on Amazon has free shipping. You have to fight through dark patterns four times to get to it, but it's there. Free shipping doesn't take much longer than regular shipping, anyway.
I've been using Amazon less since they sent me counterfeit vitamins. I'll usually order stuff from wherever the drop-shipper gets it from.
We're starting to come back to this from the long way around, though: I've had several shows and movies I wanted to watch, that I knew I used to be able to watch, which are no longer available on the service that I watched them.
Like 1 or 2 channels with a modest amount of original programming each week.
And if they run the Prime tier ads like they've been running the Freevee tier ads, for me, that means "forget about it".
Freevee ads, last time I could bring myself to try a show on it, are copious, inserted willy-nilly into the show often at very awkward and disruptive moments, with no forewarning... AND, the quality of the ads and their copy/content is crap. Not just lots of very disruptive ads, but offensive ones.
Louis Rossman has a recent YouTube video on the severely declining quality of the physical products you find on (U.S.) Amazon. It really helped crystallize for me in my own mind what's been happening there. He can't find a decent electrical butt joint to, well, as you see from his demonstration, potentially save his life (versus the Chinese crap e.g. starting a fire that takes it).
This move is just one more step -- far down the road -- towards Amazon becoming an outright sewer.
I'm supposed to pay $130 ($150?...) a year, for THIS?!
(And by the way, 2 day delivery is a farce now. A few things are quicker, and many are... the opposite.)
Anyway, I'm looking at a set of "Magnum PI" DVD's I just picked up used, because Freevee has had the streaming rights bound up for the last year or a bit more, and I literally cannot watch the show together with their ads. I'll take the downgrade in image quality over putting up with them.
Oh, and if you want Magnum on Blu-ray? You have to pony up the better part of $200 for one of the remaining European box sets. Then purchase a "gray" modded Blu-ray player. Or rip them. Or... that other thing.
F--- the entire "entertainment industry". Once it transitions from creativity to the intellectual property portion of its function, it's just a monster.
P.S. Although I don't regularly survey all the offerings, the only ad-based streaming whose ad delivery I've been able to tolerate is Tubi. They've been increasing the quantity of ads -- sigh -- but you still get a 10 second warning, and the ads I see largely I do not find comparatively offensive. (And those shite/exploitative online gambling ads seem to be in decline -- yay!)
Plus, Tubi overall has a comparable if not better catalog, these days.
So maybe I'll just tell Amazon to stuff it. If I'm going to have ads, Tubi does that better, anyway. (Although I do hate making Fox, now its owner, any money, even such indirect, advertising-based money.)
Reruns were cut, scenes removed, to allow more ads. The prime stuff was more valuable, so reruns brought in less ad revenue, so they sold more spots.
I think it's possibly useful to think of the revenue streams as a form of diversification. For example, there's value in Google diversifying some of their dependence on ad revenue.
If I pay for it, it shouldn't have ads.
I have prime but not for prime video because I practically never use it.
This means I'll use it less and I'll consider the value of the prime offering worse than before.
And using the latter to decry an evolving norm of it being possible to spend additional money to get the entire service ad-free on top of the basic cost of an (ad-supported) streaming service is... odd.
It used to feel like a great deal, not anymore.
$150 a year is just too much for what they offer when we didn't use the music or photos or very limited kindle offerings.
There's several ones listed here : https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions
I use the scripts (https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions#scripts) instead of the proxy solution, as i dont want to rely on a third party server to be working.
We used to have TV channels now we have multiple streaming services each is in a way a channel. But it's hard to justify paying for a half dozen streaming services. Plus many push for another layer to pay for.
And I swear to god these streaming services monitor what you like and end the series with three shows to go taunt you about buying it.
Amazon in particular is bad for user interface and shows disappearing. They have older shows which is nice but the interface, the constant push to buy more, and just overall lack of innovation makes it feel blah. The lack of ads was the only good thing it had going for it! The lack of ads was the only good thing it had going for it now it's toast!
(Maybe I'm being too literal here -- it'd be fair to argue that Netflix mostly just advertises their shows, not the plans themselves directly.)
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/688525/netflix-ad-expens...
The same with Google and Facebook.
There is a reason Google can't do AI and Facebook can't launch hardware. It is a natural evolutionary process in the lifespan of a business organism.
This is startup opportunity and where the next companies are made.
Companies like Valve are the only exception because they have hacked this natural law.
If someone takes a movie or show episode, there's plenty for anyone who comes after them.
Meanwhile, if the store starts running a scam after ruining the market for bananas, yeah -they fucked me over so fuck them too.
And no, everyone who gets Prime gets bundled Prime Video as a hidden add-on cost.
Nah, I'll source my videos, music, books, and games in more DRM free manners :D Yarr harr harr and a bottle of RUM
After getting rid of my membership, I have not really missed it nearly as much as I thought I would. It doesn’t actually affect me very much, and at the current, high, price for Prime it’s worth canceling just to save the money.
Its gone too fucking long towards extreme copyright and gimmee programs like the DMCA. Piracy is that counteracting force.
Pirate it all. No other lever can make these companies correct.
That said, I can’t say I’ll ever buy their hardware again.
Either this is master satire, you communicate with the future, the timeline model you’re running coalesced into the Singularity, or all of these simultaneously.
Do you by chance have a newsletter?
Anyway, as a user, if I need something today, I find a retailer and drive to them. If it's weird enough that there is no retailer I can drive to, then I wouldn't have got in in a day or two even from Amazon anyway, since it won't be in a local Amazon warehouse any more than it was in a local Walmart or AutoZone or PC Richards etc.
And these days, you no longer even get a good search result to find the right things, you just get pages and pages of no-name chinese crap versions of things. The selection used to be the one real killer feature of Amazon, but now you effectively don't even get that any more.
There is really hardly any reason to use them any more. I'm actually pretty suprised they allowed that to happen. Even when they were being evil in the sense of taking over the world, they were doing it by making sure their product was irresistable, maybe by unfair means, but still the case never the less. Like them or not you could not deny that. Now, it's no longer true. Their value proposition is actually gone. I never would have thought that would happen, but I'm glad it is starting to.
They already took away key/garage delivery by default.
And really, I still have plenty of other streaming options.
It's amazing we all don't develop PTSD with the way amazon product listings are going these days. "Sponsored" everywhere.
Try it. It takes several clicks, multiple word-heavy pages, hard choices, flat-out lies, and in the end maybe you just accepted to be reminded 60 seconds before the renewal date.
Link to albums featured in the scene? Fashion? Small appliances shown in the protagonist’s kitchen?
(To be clear, I hate this. But it seems inevitable)
You do agree there was a paid service that had no ads. We're good on that, right? No objections, I reckon.
I see you have a point with me and others calling it cable, when it was a subset of all the cable you could get. I readily concede your point here.
So ok, there was a fucking paid service that had no ads, and I have no hard data to back what I am going to say, but I strongly suspect that those premium channels were all that mattered for most people. I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
And this subset of people, who I suspect was a plurality of cable users, that cared most about those premium channels and paid for that, had the experience of seeing those channels introducing ads while charging the same for their packages.
I wouldn’t. They already bring in plenty of money to pay creatives more. Just because they’re too greedy to pay them doesn’t justify upping the price for everyone.
But I don’t care why they took it away. It was a great feature for me… I live in a gated community but I travel a lot, so it’s nice to have all my stuff stowed in the garage, without thinking about it.
They can’t manage Alexa, they can’t manage Key, now they’re doing ads. They’re also underwhelming on Whole Foods — selections are down, inventory is off, and they removed the Hubs. They seem off. Jassee might be ROI focused but he’s choking the customer delights. They don’t feel essential anymore.
Whatevs. Not impressed. It’s a bye for me.
There's something to be said about the idea of not allowing content companies to own distribution...
The big killer for newsgroups is indexers. Posts of content to the newsgroups have to be obsfucated to avoid near instant DMCA takedowns, which means that only a handful of indexers are given the 'keys' by the pirate release teams. That centralization makes the indexers a big target, and prevents just starting new ones quickly. To add to that, running an indexer still requires fairly decent hardware, especially with all the automated (*arr) tools that hammer APIs for searching. The ones that are left charge pretty high prices for access, especially considering they could (and have) just shut down without warning after you've paid some large yearly/lifetime fee.
It was beautiful while it lasted.
From the comments here, looks like fast shipping and streaming are not sticky enough for most people.
Probably the one perk keeping me locked in.
Thank you, California!
I already have a VPN and BitTorrent trackers I can rely on. I'm willing to (and do) pay for content. But I will not pay to watch ads. Amazon are scumbags who steal from small enterprises anyway; I almost welcome this motivation to deny them more of my money.
Just cancelled Prime.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-uses-six-dark-pattern-...
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-pu...
As an aside, the ad format (forced ~2 minutes of ads every ~20 minutes) is way more tolerable than something like YouTube (Skip button roulette every ~5 minutes). I can mute the TV, use the bathroom, make a snack, just like the good old days.
So if a viewer watches 155 ads (impressions) in a month they have earned Netflix more money with their eyeballs than they saved in subscription cost.
Netflix says people should expect “about 4 minutes of ads per hour” which is notably not directly equivalent to impressions. If each ad is 30 seconds it takes about 39 hours to reach 155 ad impressions. That’s close to 80 minutes per day each month.
Another way of looking at it is that you get paid $6.58 per hour to watch ads, up until you’ve watched 77.5 minutes of ads. After that you are paid $0 to watch ads.
[0] https://digiday.com/media-buying/netflixs-cpm-still-under-bu...
[1] They also say it was reduced from $65 (131 impressions) and plus this is a sales game so the rates will be up and down all the time based on KPIs and competitions to win steak knives and more comprehensive media buy deals.
I have not carried cable since Cox wouldn't allow me to watch the sci-fi channel without renting hardware per month (the refused to let me purchase the box outright).
I stopped pirating when netflix started streaming, but now I'm back to pirating because fuck these greedy bastards.
Piracy is a market force.
I was just talking to my wife about this. We were watching a Christmas movie via the free “Christmas Classics” app and the catch is that you see an ad every 5-10 minutes. These ads were so goofy and dumb that it felt like I was watching the pretend ads on Rick and Morty.
It's possible you were in an area with a shitty cable company, but many of us did not deal with ads while watching HBO, Cinemax, etc.
There would sometimes be advertising between shows about other shows and while that's technically advertising it's not what people mean when they talk about ads (or the lack thereof). They're talking about interruption of content to show an advertisement.
and yes, cable would also carry local channels, which had ads. No, that's not what people are referring to when they say cable did, or did not, have ads.
Usually there is one or two blockbuster movies, a few classics from the 80s or 90s. HBO used to be a little better in this regard.
I miss the red envelope Netflix, that was a deep quality catalog.
I got sick of seeing things on Amazon listed for one price without Prime shipping and a higher price with Prime shipping.
The only “store” I really use nowadays is Bandcamp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...
And now that Bandcamp has been bought out it's only a matter of time before the experience there becomes crappy as well.
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
it's just so gloriously cpanel , you know?!
Really, I just want our smart displays (which I paid real money for) to show our family photos and do smart home things. It's exhausting to repeatedly have to open up the settings panel and uncheck whichever new screens/"experiences" they've added each time they start popping up. There are dozens at this point--talk about shipping your org chart!
Hopefully Matter will mature at some point and Apple will ship some smart displays of their own, and then we can toss our Alexas in the bin.
Also in Canada the "most sites have free shipping" thing is not true at all for us sadly. Nor do they have as consistently fast shipping as Amazon. Amazon (via Canpar) does two delivery cycles each day in my town either in the early day or early evening depending on when you order. Canada Post has gotten way better thanks to Amazon competiton but next day is still a shot in the dark even when ordering regionally, and fedex/UPS conspire to pretend they attempted delivery even when I work from home.
So yeah as a Canadian I can't see myself ending prime any time soon. And I thank Amazon's competition for making the other shipping options better even if they are only 70% of the way there. Maybe one day competiton will plateau and end their ecommerce shipping dominance.
There were some channels that didn't have ads at first -- e.g. Nickelodeon was ad-free when it launched in 1979, and added commercials in 1984.
But there was never a time when basic cable was free of ads, meaning ads for products (not just other shows).
Premium cable channels are ad-free (HBO, Cinemax), but that's not cable. That's premium. You had to pay extra for that, on top of your basic cable subscription.
That doesn't make any sense. You couldn't get basic cable channels like MTV or TBS or Nickelodeon over the air.
That's the whole point of basic cable. And it was full of ads.
Moving the goalpost is not compelling. Yes, national cable stations were commercial free for years (eg Z Channel^1, HBO, Showtime, et al), before every channel was advertised as being on cable, in a marketing shift to shift away from over-the-air broadcast and bundle programming rates. TBS was regional (Atlanta, Georgia^3), when it started off. The niche market of TBS was not industry defining anymore than my local bakery's donut deal is. This was a shift in terminology, but the history remains^2.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel
[2] https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-...
It’s a shame the set up process and UI is typical OSS tier otherwise I’d be telling everyone I know to use it.
Might give the series a quick squizz.
Those of us who know how to, and are willing to spend the time to, get around the current blocks are a comparatively small, potentially trivial, percentage of the YouTube viewing public.
And it'll take time for us to implement these changes for friends and family, during which time YouTube's ad revenue and subscription revenue will undoubtedly increase.
Upload was great for the first season, still ok for the second season and unbearably bad now.
1. I see less 1 day shipping on items than a few years ago.
2. My subscribe and save items are over priced and usually out of stock
3.Twitch has a lot of ads
4.Amazon Prime will now have ads
5. Brand safety - too many scam sellers or low priced untested junk sellers on Amazon. Apparel is particularly bad. A lot of knock offs.
Sounds like there will be targeted ads tailored for the viewer
I wish there was an easy way to digitize large libraries of physical media. Doing it manually is way too much of a chore to bother.
I’m down to Hulu+Disney, Max (via AT&T), and AppleTV+. Everything else is cancelled.
also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite
I see it in my parents/siblings when I visit. An ad that would have me immediately grasping a remote, doesn't even make them budget. They watch it, consider it, and move on.
All these companies have figured out that they can boil the frog and not enough people make enough of a stink for them to care. So they'll keep cramming ads down everyone's throats, because they've got a monopoly on the content.
First, as others have pointed out, subscription based channels came later on. Cable TV had ads right from the get go.
Second, the vast majority of cable subscribers did not have subscription based channels. Most people either had basic (e.g. 20 channels), or some sort of premium tier (50 channels) which did not have ad free options. You had to pay separately an extra $10-20/month to get the ad-free ones (e.g. HBO). To counter your anecdote, almost no one I knew paid extra for them. As in, sitting right now, I cannot even come up with one name. They were for "rich" folks. Plebes like us simply rented if we wanted ad free.
Finally, I really don't get your point. When you got your ad free cable channels, the majority of cable channels carry ads. Even with the Prime/Disney degradation, the proportion of streaming services that have a paid no-ads option is still higher than you ever had at any point in cable history.
You want ad-free streaming options? They still exist!
people, it's 3 bucks a month extra to get rid of ads.
I hate Amazon for many reasons, but the $3 is not going to be the deal breaker
Pirate all the things.
The relationship between publishers and consumers has been almost 100% adversarial for a while, now. It started with payola for radio DJs in the 1950s, and it has only escalated since then.
PIRATE ALL THE THINGS! It is almost our duty, at this point. Publishers are closer than ever to being able to take your money and provide nothing in return if they choose. They keep inching closer and closer to that reality.
Again, this relationship is adversarial. Fight back or lose the fight forever.
Pirate. Everything.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/13sedmx/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/10j2lkv/new_...
Amazon use to be a legitimate competitor, but now, Netflix is a more obvious choice than ever.
It’s $3/month to continue a level of service you were already receiving. If this were a new ad-supported product with $3/month discount it wouldn’t feel as dirty.
Prime fees were always a free money stream for Amazon to direct in to risky bets/build-outs rather than ongoing operations, iirc multiple billion USD per month.
Still cancel if you want, sure, but don't knock their competence the same way.
But nowadays if I want to watch everything I care to watch, I have to subscribe to at least five different services, and the pricing keeps going up, sometimes multiple times per year. They're trying to wring more and more money out of us with more payment tiers, and I refuse to watch ads, so I'll always be paying mire for the ad-free tier. UX has suffered, and apps are buggy and don't work right at the most frustrating times.
Fortunately I rarely use Prime Video for anything; I mainly subscribe to Prime for the free quick shipping. I've had it more or less since they first introduced it, and get value out of it just for the shipping.
Overall I guess I'm fairly disillusioned with Amazon, especially with their product counterfeiting issues, so there are certain classes of things I'll never buy there. And I'm of course uncomfortable with how they treat their warehouse workers and delivery drivers.
And then there's GOG, which I have less experience with, but they were good, too, while I used 'em. They don't offer a Proton/WINE compatibility layer for Linux like Steam does, so I kind of stopped getting stuff there once I switched away from Windows a couple years ago. (Ironically, Linux drove me away from a DRM-free storefront, but here we are.)
In the end what has actually happened is we watch less.
Prime used to be a good deal. Now, unless you are neck deep in the amazon ecosystem, it’s just a bundle of lesser services that you’ll never use, and the ones you use keep getting downgraded
Hell, they'd even show a bumper with the title of the show sometimes just to break up the large chunk of ads.
Once we got a taste of what it was like to NOT have ads, and have more control over what/when we watch... boy did they screw themselves. I can't enjoy OTA television anymore. Both the nearly nonstop ads, and the "appointment television" necessity if you don't have a DVR.
But at least on OTA television, the ads at least had some kind of quality control (at least back in the day). All the ads (or 'sponsored content') I see on YouTube and friends are some of the most disgusting garbage.
And now ATSC 3.0 is introducing paid paywalls for BROADCAST TELEVISION. So even OTA television is about to pass the enshitification red line.
Add in the decline of physical media sales, and... well, there's some dark days ahead, and you can thank shortsighted greed for it.
Make sure to read the docs for minimising database size and traffic volume pending available resources.
[0]:https://bitmagnet.io [1]:https://github.com/bitmagnet-io/bitmagnet
Instead I pirated their shit.
Premium cable channels like Showtime, HBO, et al., came after (by a couple decades), and were priced as a surcharge on top of, cable carrying relayed broadcast and ad-supported basic cable channels.
Regrading Prime - I will continue paying for the premium delivery as long as it lasts, though I would prefer to watch Prime Video ad-free on torrents.
98% of the content is crap anyways.
Thats why popcorn time was solo great. Too bad theres just not a comparable experience in 2023. Apparently all "rebel" Z and alpha gen kids are busy trying to make some quick buck. There's so fewer idealistic folks willing to share, compared to my generation in the 90s and 2000s.
I think it's using DoH so it can't be blocked this way.
depends on what you watch. Some people are very into streams and barely watch youtube, so it's not even a comparison. I'm the opposite and can catch maybe one stream live a month.
>In the end what has actually happened is we watch less.
increase in price always leads to a lower demand. I'm sure they took that into account before the price hike.
I actually have a few old Nest hubs sitting in the basement…
This isn’t as tricky as you think it is!
You don’t watch, read, listen to, play, etc. those things.
If I want to watch an old film, a bad film, or an old bad film, I pay for it or I don’t watch it.
I’ve bought films on Amazon rather than get off my butt to put the DVD in the player. So you can guess that if I don’t have access to it at the moment that I’ll pay for it. I bought the DVD, I didn’t buy the right to download the movie (unless it was one of those DVDs with a download code included).
I have 0 interest in anime.
I would just buy the DVD if I really wanted to see it. I wouldn’t download the last few episodes.
> I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
Damn, and I thought I had a privileged childhood. Many of my friends didn't even have cable despite many coming from families making into six figures in the 90s. Literally nobody you knew only had or even spent any time watching basic cable channels?
Even for the percentage of those I knew who did have cable, most didn't have the premium channels or would only have HBO or only Showtime or whatever. And no, they weren't paying tons of money to only watch HBO, many of those other channels were often watched.
And by the fact you're scoping it to the 90s and beyond shows you're just ignoring the 40 years of history before.
> I have no hard data to back what I am going to say
You don't have the data because its 100% fiction.
> who I suspect was a plurality of cable users
Not even close. Supposedly in May 1987 it was reported HBO had 15 million subscribers. There were 41 million cable subscribers that year. In 2001 it was reported to have 25.5 million subscribers[2]. There were 66 million cable subscribers in the US. Never, in all of cable's history, have the plurality of cable subscribers had HBO.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541...
I mean, outside of their original series going to VHS and pirated material the Sci-Fi channel was only cable/satellite. It wasn't OTA anywhere.
You got TNT over the air? CNN? USA? Cartoon Network? HGTV? Sci-Fi? Comedy Central? MTV?
I don't know about this. I don't have prime and rarely use amazon. I ordered something recently that qualified for free shipping. I honestly felt like Amazon intentionally held my package for 3-4 days before shipping it. I think i got it in 5 business days.
I will say, not having Prime has probably saved me hundreds of dollars as I only use it for things I really need. My above anecdote was of course just that, an anecdote. Prime is core to their business though, so don't expect quick shipping.
They gave up trying to provide 2-day shipping to our rural address over two years earlier during the pandemic, and they never restored that supposedly core feature of Prime. Given that behavior, I now see them for what they are: typical rent-seeking crooks.
100% non-factual. Cable had ads from day one, and the majority of cable-only TV channels had ads from their first day of programming.
Mostly because for a while with the right equipment you'd get a lot of the original feeds direct.
We want our privacy to be respected. We want to prevent false advertising. We can’t and don’t want to ban all advertising.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/11/us/advertisers-look-close...
Regarding the pirated content - I just started, so my experience have pretty low sample size. Still, majority of shows I downloaded so far are in 4K. The only one in 1080p is older show, for which I think there's no 4K source material.
A big difference between those ad breaks and ad breaks today on many streaming platforms today is that there was coordination between the content producers and the broadcasters over where in the content the ad breaks occurred.
The content producers structured their programs so the ads would occur during good places for the viewer to take a break. Shows for 30 minute slots would be written as 3 acts and shows for 1 hour slots would be written as 5 acts. Sometimes the shows would even acknowledge this in the story, e.g., both The Simpsons and Futurama had stories where right at the end of the act a character says they are going to 2 or 3 minutes to think about some problem, and then it immediately goes into the ad break, and when it comes back the character has just finished figuring out the answer.
It was also easier to find something to do during a 3ish minute ad break than it is during the shorter ad breaks common on streaming platforms today. With a 3ish minute ad break when I was a kid, I'd just start reading a magazine or the day's newspaper. With short ad breaks there often isn't time to do anything meaningful. Even though the modern platform might have less total ad time, the total of "time actually watching the program" plus "time doing useful things during ad breaks" in an hour of watching for me was probably more for OTA back then than it is for many of today's ad-based streaming services.
Ads in public spaces, such as on billboards, buildings, taxis, etc. should be illegal. Being in public is not an agreement to receive advertisement.
Any product or service that has advertisements should at least be forced to offer a reasonably-priced paid version. This goes for streaming services as well.
This also goes for things like TVs. Why does my TV try to advertise to me? By allowing it, we end up with all products trying to advertise to us, and living in an ad-filled hellscape with no escape.
Advertising may have existed as long as commerce, and there may be appropriate forms, but it's getting worse and worse.
I don't want to have to "drink a verification can of mountain dew" or keep my eyes open while forced to watch ads in my own room, as in that Black Mirror episode.
I hope they reverse course, but as you say, I'm sure the temptation for control is irresistible.
But I do agree, over the years there has been more advertisements per hour of television.
Its a fucking joke. Netflix, while not having ads has the worst UX for finding genres, movies - cant sort, cant change view modes, cant favorite or easily recommend - they removed the downvotes, then they added them back in.
I asked a friend who is an engineering mgr at netflix some time ago about the UX - he told me the shitty UX on netflix is intentional to hide the poor quality of their content library.
And that was a few years ago - its never gotten better.
Streaming was great until MckInsey and the MBAs hit the market.
I share my brothers prime, so I havent personally had it since this incident:
Prime I cancelled prime before it was to renew. When it renewed - they charged me the $99 and I had just paid my rent and in that window didnt have the $99 in the account when the prime renewed (that I had previously canceled)
I was hit with a $25 overdraft fee when prime hit.
I called them, complained, got a refund for my prime account, and I charged them the $25 overdraft fee - AND I added that I wanted a $25 inconvenience fee for having to deal with all this - and they paid it
So I got the embarrassment of an over draft, but I got it refunded and I was able to get them to pay an inconvenience fee.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
Yes, commercials did eventually invade it (as everyone knows), but this was not the initial marketing (aka promise). I guess you had to be there. Good luck with whatever.
This is just a guess but requiring Widevine L1 might be enough deterrence for some groups to wait for highest quality BluRay releases
Amazon will probably get away with this, just as Apple got away with removing the headphone jack from its best-selling music player. Watch apologists fall all over themselves to excuse it, and attack those of us who decry rip-offs like it.
"You're posting too fast. Please slow down"
Then WHY WAS THE REPLY BUTTON ENABLED? There is no excuse for this rudeness. Why are we expected to put up with it, year after year after year? Deliberately stealing from users is NOT OK, EVER. Why does HN do it?
I have noticed that I no longer order much from Amazon because of the rampant fake product problem that arised from SKU pooling.
I just went to my account settings and turned on the 'warn me 3 days before renewing'. If they go true with these adds over here, it will be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. And to be fair, unless I see some huge video catalog improvement on some change in SKU pooling so I can trust buying again, they loose my sub anyways.
How much follow-through and ad-blocker installation that translated to, I have no idea. But it's fun to mock Google anyway.
But... I am one person Google drove away. I finally installed an alternative YouTube application simply because Google introduced never-ending ads that must be manually canceled every few minutes. I was OK with watching normal, TV-style ads. But Google crossed the line by basically halting playback of a program every few minutes and forcing you to herd it along over and over and over. I can't do that while I'm cooking.
Edit: imagine that "50lb" has a strikethrough
I'm pretty anti-ad, but I agree with this!
I don't personally want to experience any ads, but the only ads I want outright banned are those that are effectively shown to me without my consent, and that can't be reasonably avoided - billboards, and PA-broadcast ads on airplanes come to mind.
I'm ambivalent about ads in media. If I can't watch/listen to something ad-free, I just won't consume that content.
But their shipping has slowed considerably, and I'm in the no-ads-ever club, so they've lost me as a customer.
Your article literally starts off stating "Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers' monthly subscription fees." Not that it was actually sold that way or promised that way, just that people had some impression that was how cable would work. It also mentions how in 1981 (only few years after the first cable-only big TV channels came out!) advertising was already a $45M. It doesn't once state there were no ads on cable networks, and points to multiple TV channels which launched with ads. The article adds to my point, not takes away from it. There were ads immediately when cable TV only channels were a new thing, this article confirms it.
And this also doesn't say anything about the fact most channels on cable were just retransmissions of the major networks, which had ads. So most content available on cable was advertising based. And as mentioned, most cable-only networks had ads when they launched. Sure, there were a few out there like HBO and Z-Channel and what not, but most of the cable-only channels that came out had ads.
> Many cable channels have yet to begin operating, and those now running commercials, such as Ted Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network or U.S.A. Network's ''You'' program for women, carry 30-second and one-minute commercials that are a standard feature of regular television
Even your other article (everything80spodcast.com) makes a point at the delineation between basic cable (which channels often had ads) and premium cable which relied on additional subscriber fees. Basic cable channels like TBS and USA relied on ads, premium channels charged extra fees. Your own articles continue pointing to the fact ads were on cable from the start.
> Eventually, this cable television concept split into basic cable and premium. One of the first basic cable channels was the Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS. And two of the first big premium channels were HBO and Showtime, which will be a big part of the focus here.
And its funny you mention Z-channel as an example of one of the early "national" cable channels and call TBS "regional", when Z-channel pretty much never left Southern California. If TBS was a regional channel, Z-channel was a hyper-local one. TBS as a cable channel was in six states, over 90 cable networks, and several hundred thousand households in 1976. A decade later in the mid 1980s Z channel was still only in Southern California on a single cable network and had less than 100,000 subscribers. Which one was old hat? Which was the regional again?
Let me reiterate. I'm sorry that you're insisting on pushing that narrative of "national cable stations were commercial free for years" among other things, which are incorrect. I'm not arguing there were not some premium cable channels which didn't run ads, I'm saying the vast majority of regular cable channels had ads from day one. Your own sources agree with me on this. Good luck with whatever.
Better than not being available, no?
If it upsets you, just pretend it doesn't exist.
I specifically go out of the way to get "sold-from/shipped-by Amazon", but I don't know if that's enough to save me...
Click on: Prime Manage your membership, view benefits, and payment settings
This takes you to a page with button on the right: Manage Membership Update, cancel and more
clicking on that button displays a menu of options, including: End Membership By ending your membership you will lose access to your Prime benefits.
This other direction, of "oh, that was nice, we're taking it, and you can pay more to have it back" has a different psychological feel to it. Amazon seems to think that it'll go over fine; time will tell.
It feels so modern, and I love it.
As for content itself, ads and subscribing to multiple services aren’t necessary. You can get almost any title you’re looking for through your local library or inter-library loan. Curation is usually better than what you see on Netflix or any other streaming service.
Cancelling my 10 year old prime subscription was the easiest decision I've made in the last year.
Solving the world’s problem right here
And: https://x.com/doctorow/status/1669073016419155973?s=46&t=UYF...
Think about it, people pay you a monthly sub and you get paid per ad you show?
From an executive POV it’s delicious. And there’s no real way of competing with a flat fee all you can eat sub unless you hike up that price astronomically, because pay per ad will almost always outpace the sub fee.
I have a IRL best friend who is very against all forms of TV and media while I watch quite a bit of it. We argue strongly about this, so I've trodden this path ha.
Sometimes I'm not in the mood or mindset to read. 99% of my YouTube is makers / documentaries / war footage / local history and maps / etc. For mainstream stuff, just biopics or stories loosely based on real life or old war content (recently: Gotti, Edge of the World, Bruno Manser, Founder, Hacksaw Ridge, the Lebron/Lakers TV show, Detroit war production, some others) and I'm a huge sci-fi fan so I'll watch most scifi fiction as well.
To him, its all just mindless consumption. I 100% agree though about being social and desiging around people rather than a screen, but I don't judge others too much. To each their own.
It's very likely what happened here. Chamberlain owns so many brands of garage door opener, and they're trying to lock down remote access to make money off of. For example forcing customers to use their ad-filled app.
I used to take the "this content is not available in your region" when trying to buy a kindle book as an excuse to pirate. If they don't want my money, they clearly don't care.
Now I stopped caring altogether though.
This is a first world problem if I've ever seen one.
I think there is good stuff out there, and I don't put your youtube watching in the same class as lots of the subscription content. Honestly, I think some of what youtube creators make is more valuable than what studios are spending millions on.
I was just surprised that after signing up for Prime, I thought I'd get a good few nights of viewing, but I seriously struggle to find anything worthwhile.
I still love Ken Burns docos, I really enjoyed Air, but I think most people are sucked into TV, and almost don't consider other options.
I think your friend is right that for most people it is mindless consumption. I think most people treat food as mindless consumption as well, and look where that has left the general population.
I think you've got the right approach of being selective of what you watch.
Happy for this to be true
That’s what I did a few month ago when I noticed Prime was way more expensive than I remembered, and couldn’t justify it anymore. I used to love Prime Video but every single thing I want to watch needs an additional few bucks nowadays, so no thanks.
Then again, I just use an adblocker for any twitch streams I watch live.
There’s plenty of things to watch and read. If something isn’t available legally to me, I’ll find something else.
And sipping their next Latte for 10 bucks on their way to work. :)) Oh wait, going to work, thats is now out of the question and very unsettling too.
Same day and overnight delivery are something I never needed or wanted. 2-day delivery was nice, but now it's random. Amazon prices are no longer all but guaranteed to be competitive and buying directly from the manufacturer is often the same or lower price. Prime(sic) goeth before the fall I guess.
I recently abandoned my jellyfin + radarr + sonarr setup because for the above. After Usenet subscriptions, electricity costs and storage costs, it was much cheaper. And I could watch content on demand rather than having to wait for the whole thing to download.
2014-03-20 $79 to $99 (25% after 9 years)
2018-05-11 $99 to $119 (20% after 4 years)
2022-02-18 $119 to $139 (17% after 4 years)
2024-01-29 $139 to $175 (26% after 2 years)
You paid extra for something they haven't provided