Piracy fixes 2/3 of those issues, thankfully

Yes.

I know people want to think this is the problem, but people paid for cable, which was all of this. High prices, ads, and lower quality experience as they started cutting and/or speeding up shows to fit extra ads in. And on top of that, people then paid for premium channels like HBO just to access some sort of quality. And cancelling could be a nightmare.

What's really killed the TV experience is shorter episode counts and less seasons. TV works as long form story telling, and a popular show gets everyone talking and speculating about it, but this can't occur with short episode counts and cancelling things within one-two seasons before they can build up their audience.

Then there's cancelling shows without giving them a proper finale, which leads to not wanting to get invested in TV in the first place, and is effectively worthless for a streaming platform because few people want to watch something without a proper finale. To be fair, this has been a problem since time immemorial for TV, but is far more noticeable when it's easy to rewatch and binge.

Add on top of that decreasing attention spans, and social media like TikTok and Youtube inevitably bleeds away your audience.

Sure, people whine and complain about price hikes. But do they actually cancel? I've rarely seen people actually care enough to do something. Obviously a place like this is biased towards dropping these services, but the average consumer doesn't care. And sadly, these price hikes are generally based around the idea that they'll lose some people, but the price hike for the shumcks that will continue to use it at higher prices will ultimately make them more money than trying to retain the customers who weren't paying. When that no longer becomes the case, you'll see them offer some 'buy a year' deal for cheaper price nonsense or something. Eventually, they'll create a 'value' bundle for all streaming services in one. And when that's too expensive, don't worry, they've got your back because they'll shave a few dollars a month off your bill if you sign a two year contract.

Yohohoho

Yar matey, it did. 🏴‍☠️🦜

streaming has always been unsustainable, this is usually the result to sustain that.

mcu horrid 6-8 episodes, and the rest 8-10 episodes at the most, scifi shows literally need double fo that to be good. and then the multi-year hiatuses being another factor and then they have to bring in different writers and have cheap prop sets everytime. stranger things was like 10 years for 4 seasons. sandman had pretty cheap props, making the whole show pretty weak, and the poor writing, even if its resembles the source.

I don't mind miniseries as long as I know that's what it is going in. Lucky being a recent example. I'd rather have an eight or ten hour movie that gives more story, than a truncated two hour movie, or a three hour movie that is too long to sit through. That requires a different type of writer. People good at writing a three or four hour movie that gets cut down to two hours, are not necessarily good at writing a 10-hour series.

I canceled Netflix last year. It was the only streaming service I ever paid for, and I was a customer since before it was a streaming service, when it was only DVDs in the mail.

Yeah, every business will continue cutting costs, and raising prices to increase profits. That's capitalism, that's how it works. It's based on greed. That's also why they're so attracted to the potential for AI, and they'll use it wherever they can get away with it, celebrating when we miss it, since they've learned we hate it. That already happens, I'm sure.

disks are about as convenient as they've always been

i.e. not at all.

I'm glad I unsubscribed from Netflix.

better than paying a person any amount per month

Depends on your use case. I'm finding them to be all i need.

I’m not saying they don’t tick a lot of boxes. UHD bluray have superior picture and audio quality compared to streaming. I like listening to vinyl as well.

I’m just saying it’s not convenient.

You have a lot of the great points.

Sure, people whine and complain about price hikes. But do they actually cancel?

Let fools pay. Someone needs to pay for the content and if some people do and then whine then that's that, in a way they are doing those who are not tolerant of paying a favor in a way. I know that sounds selfish but if people don't want to change and don't want to challenge bad behavior on pricing or quality then suffer the pain of being fleeced. I don't feel guilty about saying nah and looking for alternatives.

Eventually a value proposition will return if it gets bad enough, because people will pay for 'good' quality if offered at a 'fair' rate...and someone will always step up to make money even its its less money.

That's fair. But i'm saying i do actually find them convenient.

I can torrent whatever i want to watch and store everything on one hard drive which i can easily access through USB. I don't need internet to watch and it's portable.

I think they're definitely convenient if they tick the right boxes.

NGL, ì'm getting further and further ticked off by the ads on disney that I'm paying for. 😠

I still haven't forgiven them. I want to watch the final stranger things but I resent paying for Netflix