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The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy (vice.com)
A new study from network equipment company Sandvine finds that BitTorrent usage and piracy is increasing after years of declines. The reason appears to be due to "an increase in exclusivity deals that force subscribers to hunt and peck among a myriad of streaming services to actually find the content they're looking for," reports Motherboard. From the report: Sandvine's new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed. But there's another interesting tidbit buried in the firm's report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
Either that, or the fact they're about to start advertising on the service.
It doesn't help when they put ads on the service. Amazon Prime Video has started randomly putting ads between show which is annoying but they also have copied what older ads used to do which is pump of the volume for ad which is really annoying.
it's like there needs to be some company like comcast that could sell you al the channels for one price.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It’s getting back to the point where the *only* way to find many movies and shows you want to watch is by finding the torrent.
Netflix likes to pretend they’ve got a huge audience for their self-produced stuff - just like they tried to pretend everyone was rating it five stars. I know there are some folks who like that stuff, but in my experience it’s a pretty limited group.
#DeleteChrome
I wonder if part of bittorrent's resurgence is due to the fact that it offers a way to access censored material.
What's the old saying-- the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it? That's being put to the test, right now, on an unimaginably huge scale. You have totalitarian regimes like China (to name but one example) which restrict free access to information, and massive corporations like Google that are eager to help them restrict free access to information, and a population that is more aware with every passing year that they are being denied something that the rest of the world is allowed to have.
At one time you could get all the shows you wanted to see on cable. Now you need five services at $10+ per month and they still don't have everything that is on cable. Screw that.
>competitors
How generous.
They're not offering a competitive product. In fact, "exclusivity" means the product in question no longer exists. Even if you disregard the fragmentation, neftlix/streamers have become more finger-grubby, more "inform you of viewing opportunities you may be interested in", more metrics and number-mulling, more watch-as-you're-told and curating. And who can blame them, it's just optimal use of a sea of shallow dullards.
But I won't disregard it. Fragmentation isn't driven by "healthy market competition", this is kids taking their ball and going home. Kids trying to cut themself a bigger slice of a limited consumer pie.
Seriously, that pie isn't infinite. We heap out a trillion hours of viewsumption every year and they pick it clean apart. Everyone wants their pile to be given more. A billion eyeballs live in screens and the attention economy claws for more, big or small.
Oh wait, actual TFS is just eagerly interpreting a relative increase of torrenting in the upstreams. "97% of file-sharing is torrents" is like announcing 97% of typing is being done with fingers. It's not like we, being raised as consumer cattle, do much in the upstream anyway.
I've watched literally hundreds of movies over the past couple of years, all for free, via streaming websites.
For me it is a superior way to watch movies and the fact that it is free of charge is secondary.
I refuse to pay companies which will insult me by forcing ads on me after I am PAYING for the content.
If you give it to me for free, sure I will watch your ads, but no way I am paying to see ads when I don't want to see ads.
The old adage is true, competition is good, but too much competition is bad and leads to market fragmentation.
Listen up you Weekend Harvard MBAs.
NOT EVERY COMPANY NEEDS THEIR OWN STREAMING SERVICE, YOUR CONTENT ISN'T THAT VALUABLE. You don't have to fragment the market just to justify your existence and try to show everyone how you saved a penny by not letting Netflix rob you blind.
Seriously, negotiate a long term deal with one of the following and go play golf or mine cryptocurrency:
Netflix
Amazon
Hulu
YouTube
Done...
New flash! people can only watch one show at a time. We realize your catalog is Huuuuggggeee, but remember, only one show at a time, and people pretty much want the NEW shows.
If everyone in the USA watched a show simultaneously, that would be 300 million shows. That is the max.
Remember, no matter how you slice it, Amazon and YouTube own the streaming cloud, so you are paying either Amazon or YouTube indirectly at some point. Even Netflix hosts in the Amazon cloud.
So stop it already, pick a streaming partner and go play nice. Stop the fragmentation before it bites you in the ass.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in, then cancel and move on to another service. Rinse and repeat. By the time you get back to the first service they should have a bunch of new content for you.
For the small handful of times that you need to watch a SPECIFIC movie or show RIGHT NOW you can temporarily subscribe to a service that has it, or buy the BlueRay or DVD.
If you make viewers work to find their shows by making them have to subscribe and pay for each network individually, they will just put that work into finding the 'free' content instead. Providers and content producers still do not understand this.
Netflix and Steam became so convenient, people were willing to pay. But whereas game makers want their game bought by anyone and everyone via whatever method people want, most shows were viewed via broadcasters and cable companies, whose business is selling their channels not the shows -- so companies like Netflix are a moral enemy to them and their obsolete business model. Even the film companies play a role in this; they might not like the cable companies but they sure don't want new competitors to have easy ways to publish and popularize their productions.
tl;dr: They brought this on themselves.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
My new and improved cable PVR box.
We recently switched to a service called "Shaw Blue Sky" up here in Canada, and oh my god is the on demand system ever fucking shite. Like, I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-paying-extra-for-this-shit levels of crappiness. I've already cancelled everything I could relating to this particular "feature" (and bumped my internet plan accordingly), but let me give you a rundown of the overall experience:
1) Find a show you want to watch on demand
2) Click the show icon box art
3) Click the "episodes" button
4) Scroll through the seasons, click a season and unfold all the episodes
5) Scroll to the episode you want, click on it
6) Click on "Watch Options"
7) Find out the only options listed are for some random subscription service or some package I don't own
There is no way to filter for shows only actually available to me. I have to spend on average 35 seconds just figuring out if I can watch something. Then there's all the shows that I partly get- either one or two seasons but not the rest, or worse- some episodes but not others within the same season.
You can literally piss away hours just LOOKING for somehing to watch on that flying shitbox of a platform. I think they actually want to piss off people so they eventually subscribe to 4 different streaming services and tack on another $120/mo to their bills just to "get everyhing", because that's the only way to ensure that everything you hit in the browser will be watchable somehow.
This is why I've gone back to piracy. I tried going legit for 4 months, and just got shat on by Shaw's wonderful system. Sorry, but when I want to watch TV, I want to watch it- not browse through your shitty ass on demand browser that doesn't even have the decency to tell me what I can watch up front. It's way easier to just setup some torrents with an RSS feed watcher and dump everything to my media server instead.
The problem is that all of the streaming platforms treat their relation to the general public as a One-To-Many relationship (meaning one of them and many of us)
The effect of this assumption is that we will spend our money on one of them to get access to shows that are exclusive to their platform along with shows that are on many platforms.
They also assume that we will either choose to sign up with their competitors for other exclusive shows as well or choose to not watch the competitors exclusives.
They seem to wilfully ignore that we could sign up with just one and pirate the rest from elsewhere, which can then lead to the thought "Why not just pirate everything?"
The reality is that the streaming platforms have a Many-To-Many relationship with the general public (meaning many of them and many of us)
When normalising a database with a many to many relation, we end up with a link table so that both "Many" sides have a single relation to the link table
In terms of streaming services, the many content producers need to link to a single streaming platform and the many consumers need to link to that same streaming platform
Of course they'll ignore that idea if it was ever presented to them, piracy will increase and they'll opt to deploy the lawyers against pirates instead to protect the many streaming platforms they've built, instead of actually trying to collaborate with their competitors on the platform and compete with the content on that platform
The studios again can't figure out how to get it right. None of them thought Netflix would amount to anything so they allowed it to germinate. Once it took off they did what any clueless, unimaginative Hollywood exec always does when faced with a competitor's success: copy it.
Only it doesn't work out so well. The fragmentation and exclusivity is turning off consumers, myself included. It becomes such an amazing pain to find the content legally that it's just easier and faster to get it in a torrent. I'd pay for it if I could get it from a single source (or a reasonably small number of them, perhaps 2-3 tops), if it came in a high-bitrate H.265.MKV file with lossless audio, and without ads or onerous copy protection. I have about 1,300 HD movies on my Plex along with about 3,000 TV episodes. I don't even own a Blu-ray player anymore. I doubt I ever will. That is how consumers want to consume content.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
No one is going to sign up for half a dozen streaming services just so they can watch all the exclusive content.
One . . . . MAYBE two. After that, fuck it. I'm not going to bother with it. I'll go find it on Yarr Matey TV.
It's like Sony vs Microsoft vs Nintendo in the console market. I'm not buying another GD console just for exclusive titles.
It's the same for Oculus vs Vive vs Sony in the VR world. I bought ONE. That's it.
Like me, they learn to have 0 interest in their content...
[($)]
Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent,
I suspect that Youtube/Facebook video uploads are a large portion of consumer uploads. Back in 2011, many more people were still using flip-phones that took 320x240 video. Now, most of those people have upgraded to phones that take 1080p or 4k video. The larger video file sizes makes Bittorrent data look smaller in comparison.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Some corporate types get greedy and end up recreating the exact same problem people were trying to get away from. Netflix + OTA broadcasts let you dump your cable subscription, and probably HBO subscription, with a million channels you never watch and don't even want. Now you have to have Netflix + Hulu + HBO Go (for most people it's only for Game of Thrones) + CBS All Access (just for Star Trek in most cases) + Amazon Prime Video (which at least comes with your Prime membership) + Disney's new thing whenever they launch it (if you want anything Marvel or Star Wars related) + OTA if you want to watch sports. And you have to remember what shows are on what service and the whole thing is just the old cable package bullshit we were trying to get away from all over again.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in, then cancel and move on to another service. Rinse and repeat. By the time you get back to the first service they should have a bunch of new content for you.
For the small handful of times that you need to watch a SPECIFIC movie or show RIGHT NOW you can temporarily subscribe to a service that has it, or buy the BlueRay or DVD.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in,
Because if I'm going to do the research to track down which streaming service has the content I want, I might as well make the extra click to download it.
Prior to Starz leaving, Netflix had a pretty decent catalog -- plenty of movies and TV shows I wanted to see. After that, their catalog has been getting steadily worse, except for Netflix produced content (some of which is really good). But when I want to watch something in particular, I don't want to have to go figure out which streaming provider it's on and then potentially have to sign up for that provider just for that content.
If it's easier to find content for free download than to purchase it legally, many people will chose to download it.
Every media company wants its own service so it can monopolize its own content and squeeze every penny from their customers. If they would remove their heads from their anuses they'd see that a few services offering everyone's content they'd make a killing. Micro transactions are where it's at. Ask the music and video game industries... Having to buy multiple services, navigate which content comes to which service and when will push consumers away. Make it brain dead simple and ubiquitously available and the money will pour in.
I have found myself lamenting the loss of the humble old video rental store in the last year or two due to this exact topic. If I want to watch a particular movie, just working out which streaming service is a pain, neither alone the need to subscribe to multiple services.
At least with the video store, you could just turn up, pick what ever recent movie had just come out off the shelf and go home a watch it. It was also a great way to discover long lost favourites or some weird esoteric Z grade movie.
"Because if I'm going to do the research to track down which streaming service has the content I want, I might as well make the extra click to download it."
And yet my Roku shows across channels who has what I'm interested in. So what's the excuse again?
"A new study from network equipment company Sandvine " ...
Sandvine, sells DPI equipment thus directly support some of the most repressive Governments on the planet.. They can respectfully go fuck themselves.
Fact that they are still able to isolate Bittorrent traffic should be ringing bells that the protocol is broken by design.
Competition is not what is bad.. competition is GOOD. Exclusivity is bad. Exclusivity is what leads to market fragmentation.
So what we need is one service we can buy that combines all the streaming and web services under one roof for, oh, probably the sum of all the individual costs plus some overhead. But you wouldn't have to hunt around and it'd all be in one bill. The disadvantage is that you'd have to take some services you didn't really want, but people would get used to that. Municipalities could decide which consolidation service got to play in which geographical area.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I noticed that the rise in Redhat competitors led to an increase in Linux being pirated too.
Go figure what's more they can easily figure it out, when a service has one series they actually want to watch and a bunch of crap you couldn't pay them to view.
Toss in the fact that so much of Hollywood is considered to be little more than greedy scumbags by the general population, yeah it makes it that much easier to download that movie.
I cannot confirm or deny that i engage in piracy, but i will say if its not on Netflix i don't bother with any other steaming service.
What needs to happen is for someone to come up with a way to see all the content available to them (cable TV, cable co video on demand, streaming services, all of it) and be able to easily find everything you have access to (without displaying content you dont have access to)
The real problem here is that the cable companies don't want their content to become just another option in a list of available options (since they want you to watch their content and their ads rather than the other guys stuff) and they dont want it to be easy to hide/ignore the cable company-supplied channels and content you dont have access to (since they want you to have to flip past it all the time so you see what's on and become tempted to buy the extra packages)
All this "choice" is just annoying.
I don't want to sign up to 50 services to get the content I want.
I don't have the privilege of "cutting the cord", I do not have broadband where I am at.
Even then I see the idiocy of "cutting the cord" at the very least to save money, only then to sign up and pay for a few dozen streaming services to fill the gap of their former cable/satellite service. How exactly is that saving money again?
Seriously, negotiate a long term deal with one of the following and go play golf or mine cryptocurrency
So you suggest to basically hand them a rope with the noose tied around your own neck, so they can choke you for more money whenever they feel like it? Great business plan.
If you were a studio with contract with Netflix, and see that Netflix is starting to produce content themselves, what would YOU do? Let them slowly eat up your market all the while you keep feeding them, or immediately look for alternatives while stop feeding Netflix?
Fragmentation is fine if there's no silly barriers to entry.
Food shops are very fragmented, but I can easily wander into any of them and get food.
If the streaming services sold a la carte DRM free shows for a reasonable price, the fragmentation wouldn't matter.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Not sure how they come to the conclusion that Kodi makes it easier to consume pirated content on a PC. Isn't it easier just to double click the media?
As I am already force to pay for my counites live TV I will only pay for one
There now is a number of monopolies. The 'competitors' all just carved out their own corner with 'exclusive content'. With some imagination you can claim there is competition, but in the real world this is simply not true. Customers do not perceive it this way, they only see there is just one place where they can get their favorite series.
I blame vertical integration. Providing a better user experience is always the excuse for vertical integration, but the real reason is almost always that it provides the business more leverage, in the form of customer lock-in and reduced competition.
Maybe vertical integration should be illegal in this area. As a company you would then have to choose to be only one of the following:
1. You provide infrastructure. (physical connections, although this could be a considered a public utility, depending on your political preference)
2. You provide access services. (Internet, TV for example)
3. You provide content services (websites, programs, payment)
The businesses are free to compete with other businesses in the same category, and they may have to make deals with businesses in the other categories to make this work. Yes, that is annoying for them, no more easy money, but it sure would create competition exactly there were it is needed.
The only thing that did was force me to just pirate their content, because I'm not going to register on another service for whatever amount a month just to watch one show.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g...
All these different producers need to stop thinking that THEIR offer is the only thing anyone could ever want.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Its not competition, its the exclusivity that is killing it.
Show 1 is on Netflix
Show 2 is on Amazon
Show 3 is on Hulu
Show 4 is on HBO/ Other..
That's four monthly subscriptions just to watch 4 shows.... If all 4 shows were on all providers that would be competition, as then it would be the cheapest or perhaps highest quality content provider that would win.. THAT is competition..
Price = supply / demand
When something is infinitely reproducible for negligible cost, the supply tends to infinity and price tends to zero. The only thing people have been paying for is "easy access".
Does it go on forever?
The old adage is true, competition is good, but too much competition is bad and leads to market fragmentation.
That is wrong.
What is bad is exclusion, not competition.
The more companies manufacture a gadget, the more choice you have, the more they all are under pressure to improve efficiency (so they can offer lower prices) and to innovate (so they can offer new features), all in an effort to stand out from the crowd.
This works for smartphones, for cars, for almost all consumer gadgets, because all smartphones use the same carriers and WLAN and Bluetooth. All cars use the same roads and the same single-digit number of types of fuel. All electronic gadgets have the same power connectors. All washing machines take the same washing powders or liquids. You get the idea.
If you bring a smartphone that only communicates with other smartphones of the same type to the market, and somehow manage to get a double-digit percentage of consumers to buy it, and then two competitors do the same - then you have market fragmentation. But the cause is not that there are three competitors, the cause is that they are not interoperale.
The subscription service model is one of those business models that has market fragmentation at its core. It wants to be customer-hostile. Forcing as many people as possible to subscribe to your channel, perfectly well knowing that this will make them unsubscribe from competitors, is the business model.
From a consumer perspective, the only solution is to pressure those companies into abandoning a customer-hostile business model and force them into an interoperable model.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Exclusivity and arts does not work good together. Reproductible arts shoudl be just marketed out to broadcaster/streamers - price negotiated and anyone can buy with no exclusive rigths. That means Netflix shoudl be also required to put their shows on the market. It still would be cheaper for them but if one would develop tech to stream cheaper faster etc then why we should not benefit. But then it would put some strain on their app making, sub fees and quality of streams. They are quite ahead of competition in every area here so that would not change their business by an inch but others frauds would be hit hard.
You left out the biggest streaming service of them all, Disney.
One of the big reasons i do not subscribe to any streaming service is, that i won't get what i want from one source. I woud have to pay a huge sum of money every month to get all the shows i want to watch, because once again everyone tries to be the one, so no one is.
it's the fact that I don't want 14 different accounts with 14 different apps to watch the stuff I want to watch
That sucks. I'd level similar (but maybe less extreme) criticism at Amazon, and even to some extent Netflix. For whatever reason, Netflix just can't surface decent stuff I might want to watch (maybe due to lack of catalogue in the UK?). Honestly, the best stuff I've found on Netflix was stuff I had to search for after looking up "good stuff to watch on netflix" on the Internet. Amazon can't filter between 'pay extra', 'already paid for' and 'free'. As such it's a constant 'upselling', which even my kids have worked out means they're just going to have to go without. That too gets in the way of finding stuff to watch, although no where near as bad as your experience.
What Netflix do really well though, is their 'kids' profile thing - like BBC iPlayer, it's a (more or less) safe place for the kids to find something to watch. There are no ads, and whilst some of the stuff isn't age appropriate, none of it's going to be overly violent or scary, offensive or whatever. The BBC go one better by pretty much making certain that all the content has British accents in the main leads, and they also have two age-ranges you can choose.
I do not pirate because I was taught the difference between right and wrong.
I do vote with my dollars.
Isn't that also happening for games? Because i got a feeling that more people are into this business since all the prices got ramped up through the roof. Distributors started feeling free to label their games with some pure science-fiction prices because they are now safe and secure thanks to all the new and improved DRM... and unfortunately games are different business - you can't make anything like netflix for games beause there is no option for losing a license...
Good luck with that. Companies want to maximize revenue, and subscription services are the darling for that these days.
I've pretty much decided I'll stick with Netflix, because I'm not paying for half a dozen subscriptions because that would be stupid.
Now, take the specific case of Di$ney (and by extension Marvel). We all know Di$ney are greedy assholes. The problem is between the kids stuff (which parents know their children will watch over and over and over), and the Marvel stuff (which people will watch over and over and over) ... those properties are that valuable, because they know that if people have kids they pretty much will have to pay for their service.
Their titles account for billions in box office revenue.
The cable networks? I wouldn't pay extra for their streaming services, if I can't get it in my package, I don't care enough to see it. I don't care if I see Game of Thrones or the latest "gotta see" show.
Me, I'm content with buying the BluRay for movies I really want to watch, and living with what Netflix has. Between their original stuff, and the stuff they license, I can pretty much always find something to kill some time with.
At some point, you pretty much need to figure out what point you say "nope, not paying any more, I'll do without". For some people, that just means they'll say the hell with it and pirate it.
At the end of the day, it's entertainment. And as such, I don't need to see it, and will simply find something else.
Running on a raspberry pi. Easy to set up and has most of the new tv shows and films. Only issue in my mind is it lists cinema rips along with the other versions. If its out on bluray, its safe to watch on kodi.
Might get netflix again for a month when the new Stranger Things comes out.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Hotboxes running Kodi and a couple plugins have essentially gone mainstream.
Not only does the random guy at work have it, but he got the recommendation from his grandfather.
I'm surprised how many people I discuss movies with say they already saw something at home on a hotbox, while I'm waiting patiently for the bluray to be released on RedBox (my preferred way to rip movies).
Yes, ripping off RedBox is piracy as well, but it's not on the scale that these guys with no technical ability are able to stream movies at home that are still in the theater.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Cool plan but it involves a lot more trouble, expense, waiting, and ads than torrenting.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For years we heard people complain about cable channel packages. "They're making me pay for dozens of channels I never watch. Why can't this be a la carte?"
Well, that's essentially what we are getting--a la carte channels. It's streaming services rather than channels from a cable company, but now it's a different bill for each channel. And it sucks. So we (some of us) just to to torrents.
The first few years where Netflix was able to license all the content they could possibly want from the studios for super cheap is over. Every company with the wherewithal has gotten jealous of Netflix's pie and have run around setting up their own services to compete, and in the process they hold back any content they have the rights to so that it exclusively shows only on their own service.
Signing up for half a dozen or more different streaming services and paying more than the cost of cable on top of the cost for high speed internet just so you can have access to content that still comes and goes in availability is not what the consumer wants, especially when some streaming services start shoving ads into their streams.
Or the decline in the breadth of Netflix content combined with the threat of ads on Netflix?
"BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic"
Is that because the numbers look more impressive that way?
Or, you know, just don't watch it ... or buy it on DVD.
Nobody is forcing you to watch this stuff, and saying you had no choice but to pirate it is pretty lame ... it basically says "waah, I'm self entitled and demand access to your content".
It's a damned movie/TV series ... it's not life or death if you see it or not.
If I don't buy it on DVD/Blu Ray, and can't find it on Netflix ... I simply don't give a damn.
I rate this as about as justified as saying "I can't afford a car therefore I'm entitled to steal one".
Why does everyone act like they should be guaranteed the right to watch something?
A lot of cable system operators jack up their Internet-only price such that a bundle of expanded basic TV and Internet isn't substantially more expensive than Internet alone.
Content producers should legally be required to be separate from content distributors.
......It's way easier to just setup some torrents with an RSS feed watcher and dump everything to my media server instead.
Was curious....what feed watcher/automation setup do you happen to use/recommend?
It's the continuing problem of media monopolies like Comcast that are fueling this.
So...Cable provided the model where all 4 shows were accessible through one service. And you paid the price for those 4 "channels" (plus countless others that were bundled in your subscription plan) just to watch those 4 shows. So the decision to cut the cable and go with the a la carte subscription means that you either pay for each channel, or pay an aggregation service like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. for the right to watch their content.
I get it. No one likes the fact that cable companies work as both facto and de facto monopolies in most regions. And that their customer service really, really (and I mean it) really sucks, because in most cases, the rep can just laugh into the phone if you threaten to cut the cord and go with another cable or internet provider.
The better thing we can do is just cut it off cold turkey. Stop consuming the crap that content providers think we should be watching. Most of it really is crap. Instead, go join a local adult sports league, or get involved in local politics or a service organization bent on changing your community for the better (Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, even church groups). Or even just go down to your local sports bar if you absolutely must watch that football or basketball game.
The less time you spend worshiping the one-eyed goddess, the better off you will be in the end. And maybe, just maybe, the cable companies will get the message and start doing things to attract customers now that customers found a way to break their addiction to connectedness by making real connections in their local communities. An then maybe they an start attracting customers again.
For sure it is.
Netflix is nice and all, but I want to see the movies I like and they are not there. Also why should I pay for something like that, when it's free available with torrents?
If you want to force me into subscribing to 10 different medium to get 10 different series, YEAH, i'm going to illegaly download them.
Competition is bad for TV. Look at how many shows get cancelled before the first season has even finished airing. If they don't immediately become massive hits they are mercilessly put to death.
It's bad enough that they cancelled Star Trek after season 3, but these days they would probably have killed it after 8 episodes and not even completed the first season.
There are so many channels and so many shows competing for views that stuff which takes time to become a hit or stuff that is niche like a lot of sci-fi gets cancelled prematurely, if it gets made at all.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not to mention what hoops do you have to jump though to cancel these services? Are they just as simple to cancel as signing up. Or is it like SiriusXM where it's a simple signup, but probably an hour on the phone to cancel? I found the easiest way to cancel a SiriusXM account is to auto bill it on a CC that's about to expire, or if your bank offers same day replacement of a "lost" card, a replacement card might be an easier option than dealing with SiriusXM on the phone. When they can't successfully charge the card, they will just eventually shut off the service. Note this may only be valid if you are on a month to month service with them. If you are under any kind of contract you are likely still liable for the remainder of the contract and they may send that to collections. They never sent the month they couldn't bill my card to collections.
Netflix doesn't make a profit and there is a constant stream of media pieces that would have you believe it is the only valid player in the game.
Same thing happened with Twitter. Nearly a decade of being underwater, inferior tech, and yet... somehow it became "the official" social media, if you want to communicate with your elected officials.
Weird, huh? Weird how the legacy media gets to decide which "new media" companies get to succeed.
Really? Because in my experience if you spend a little time curating your playlist, the shit goes away, and the stuff you care about bubbles to the top.
At least once a week I'll spend a little time down-voting the crap I have no interest in seeing (like their apparently vast catalogue of Indian movies and rom-coms). The net effect is if I haven't voted it off my playlist, then at some point I might be willing to watch it if I'm in the right mood -- and conversely, if I've voted it down, I'm simply never going to watch, and Netflix stops showing it to me.
From there when I watch the stuff I am actually interested in, the next round of things which show up in my list have a higher chance of being something I care about. Lather, rinse, repeat.
No, Netflix doesn't have every movie on the planet because of licensing agreements. But, they do have a lot of stuff, and taking a little time to down-vote the crap will make it go away never to be seen again, just give it a thumbs-down and forget about it.
Because when you do that, and watch the stuff you want, you'll suddenly find really specific playlists that crop up in your list ... I watched a couple of old kung-fu movies, and got a "historical Cantonese language action films" (or something like that) section as a reward.
If you don't tell it what you don't want, it's far less good at helping you find what you do want.
Here is how:
Where I live, Cable TV service from Spectrum costs you $65 a month for 125 channels, of which you give a shit about maybe 20 of them. 3 or 4 of those are broadcast in HD over radio waves for free, so the value proposition is already looking sketchy. By the way, it's more than that $65/mo if you want any other channels that may interest you, such as extra sports channels, or the premium channels where the signal-to-noise ratio of quality programming isn't shockingly low.
Then, if you dare to want to actually have a DVR attached so you can watch shit when you actually have time, rather than arranging your life around what some douchebag network executive in New York arbitrarily decides, you have to rent one for another $12/month because they use encryption to make sure you can't just make your own out of a spare computer you have laying around and a tuner card. But wait, there's also a "DVR Service Package" for another $13/month, whatever the hell that is; doesn't matter, you'll be paying it. And their DVR will be a huge piece of shit with a 10-year old hard drive inside as far as capacity goes. So now we're already at $90/month without including Internet service. Until the price goes up because some introductory offer expires at some point in the future.
Charter / Spectrum costs: https://www.cabletv.com/blog/h...
We won't include the cost of Internet service because you'll have that in either scenario.
We're over $90/month for a shitty service with shitty hardware when you could instead go with YouTube TV ($40/month) and Netflix ($13.99/mo for premium plan with 4k content) for a little more than half the cost, with DVR functionality built-in, a UI that isn't total garbage, and without the most shitty customer service ever.
So, less cost for better service and better quality. I hope that answers your question.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Is it because there are more competitors that there is an increase of piracy?
Or that Netflix with their monopoly and increase in price/reduction in choice lead to increased piracy and competitors springing up?
If consumers end up economically demanding centralized monopolies under pain of mass piracy, that suggests that the era of Tech Giants will be systemically reinforced for the foreseeable future.
Competition is great, but it's bad enough that the promise of mass economic markets generally means only the largest survive due to economies of scale, but now even a properly-competitive market participant can't win against the network effects of lock-in. Yikes.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
How's that help when 90% of the shit sucks?
just pick one service, i have netflix, and i couldn't imagine where to get the extra time for another one.
there are already so many things to see on netflix that i'm time struck as it is. i'm sure there are many other good shows out there, but bad luck, i don't have time for them and i don't miss them either.
well, it's not really true, i also watch a lot of youtube, so yeah, with both netflix & youtube my tv addiction is complete.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Um, yeah. I never left. I torrent. Have for years and have no plans to stop.
I had Netflix for a while, but pulled the plug when the anti-VPN insanity started. I don't miss them and I doubt they miss me, so we're all happy about it.
Used to be a StarChoice subscriber (back when Shaw was still operating under that name), realized how much of a steaming pile of shit they were selling, and dropped them like a hot potato. I'm not surprised at all by what you're describing. Certainly sounds like they haven't acquired any level of competence in all that time.
My folks still have a basic package, which used to cost $20/month, and (apparently) is now closer to $50/month. I *really* wish I could convince them to drop Shawn as well--they get the same content with their OTA antenna, except for the freakin' weather channel. Being technologically impaired, they can't be convinced to look up the same weather info on a tablet instead and save that money.