Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate | What should I watch? is now a much easier question than How do I watch it?::<em>What should I watch? </em>is now a much easier question than <em>How do I watch it?</em>
I’m back to sailing the high seas and dumping my loot into Plex.
Use your local library! Thousands of Blu-ray/DVD titles for free you can check out and rip freely. And then you don’t have to worry about any nasty letters from your ISP.
Thats what a VPN is for.
Or just not getting the content via torrenting
Love this! Supporting your community library and building your trove of booty at the same time lol.
I also like to collect physical media from my favorite artists, so I also rip from those disks and get the best of all worlds :)
I honestly didn’t even include a DVD/BluRay drive in my PC build, so can’t really use those. And I tunnel all that traffic through Proton VPN, so ISP isn’t an issue.
Most libraries always give you access to Kanopy to steam movies/documentaries. Just need your library card and the app.
How do you use Plex? Can it work on a fire stick?
Yes. There is a legit plex app on fire stick and roku. It comes with free live TV and on Demand content, but you can also run your own server on your network with your own downloaded content. If you have an IPTV service you can stream that through plex as well.
Note that Jellyfin is a similar app/server that works the same way and is totally free. Plex is also free, but there are additional features behind the pay wall like GPU decoding, PVR service for IPTV, and others.
Plex - in the way users here are describing (important context since Plex’s management has recently shifted heavily to trying to be like Pluto.TV with less emphasis on its original purpose) works as an application that acts like a library for your own media collection.
There are 2 required parts to it :
- A “server” or “host” which acts as your library.
- A client - like an NVIDIA Shield, your phone, PlayStation, Roku, or eve your Fire Stick.
Without your own server with content stored on it, or at least a friend’s server credentials you can connect to, you are limited to the “Pluto.TV” type ad-driven media collection.
So the answer is “yes it works on a fire stick,” but you will need #1 also for it to be the single source library for your content and not just another ad-riddled garbage service.
Yes you can get plex on firestick
The irony of a pay-walled article from one of the 50+ news websites requiring subscriptions complaining about fragmented streaming services is palpable.
Just sails the seven fucking seas
It is so much more convienient. I had Disney+, Amazon and Netflix a year ago and it was too much to bother to open the apps and search if they have what i wanted to watch, only to find out it was on HBO or whatever.
Too much of a pita. I just want to turn my tv on and go.
Piracy ftw. I can’t be bothered signing up for all this shit.
Warning. Do not look for Servarr apps or how to set them up on a home system of your choice like Unraid or it’s alternatives. Doing so may be a violation of local copyright law.
The irony is this article requires a subscription to view it…
I blame Disney in particular. People are just so short-sighted.
Disney felt like a tipping point for me (and Netflix’s new role as a production company). It was only when that came about that people like Paramount started offering their own services (idk how true that is but it’s certainly how it felt).
I still pay for Disney+ right now, but a big part of the appeal of streaming for me was having lots of stuff in one place. Now it’s just cable/satellite all over again.
I never left the high seas because I knew the sociopaths running these corps would screw everything eventually. It was obvious with the way they treated music streaming…
Even though I completely stopped pirating music a decade ago, since I could listen to everything I wanted to on Spotify, when I paid for Netflix I’d still torrent the content I liked. Now that content is no longer on Netflix, but they are still on my hard drives, and I can watch them wherever I want.
If consumers stopped paying for streaming services en mass, they’d be forced to change their business model, but they’ll keep making money by screwing both consumers and their workers because consumers are people, and people are idiots.
Yaaargh mateys, you do be asking the wrong questions.
Is there any reason to not pirate the movies?
I’m with you my Plex Library is growing alot lately. I’m not paying for 10 different streaming services. I limit myself to one and anything else not on it is getting downloaded. At lot of the movies I have I have also paid to see in theaters. Some even more than once like across the spider verse and the barbie movie .
If you are ok with the hassle, the risk and possible consequences, then do whatever you want.
But this is not a fix to the issue broadly, and just boycotting stuff will most likely not work as well, to change the situation.
The only effective way would be changes in law and government incentives. So instead start being politically active and push for these changes there.
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Good question. Not OP. I think there’s a better chance of independent films being shared on free platforms than the government doing a better job at providing an equitable solution. I’m sure there are models out there that would apply to filmmaking that could replicate the success of say, Mark Normand releasing a special on YouTube instead of going with a paid app. Every actor, key grip, gopher, director, producer, etc. gets a percentage of advertising revenue forever. I’m sure there are flaws with that, but something like that.
The National Film Board of Canada pretty much only does 100% funding for animation and documentaries, but they do offer them all for free online. I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t extend that to regular features as long as they had the budget. The budget is the problem.
YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A CAR
Ne’er should one relinquish control of thine own vessel. Back to the seas shall we voyage mateys!
Also, 12ft.io
If I have to google which streaming service a PBS show is on for my kid to watch. Something’s messed
PBS shows are free on its own app/website though…
You’d think that, wouldn’t you?
In actuality, they pull shit like only having the most recent season of things and whatnot. For example, there’s no good reason why the PBS Kids Roku channel wouldn’t have all 4666 episodes of Sesame Street, but it doesn’t.
The old Sesame Street episodes are on Netflix and are tagged as not suitable for children
may i introduce you to the ARD Mediathek where ‘Die Sendung mit der Maus’ (a kind of sciency kids show) can have, by law, only the latest episode available for streaming. some other things may be available for longer, but it’s still pretty stupid…
Think of all the extra searches!
Friendly reminder that PLEX is a great, free service, you just have to put in the effort to build up a media collection. High capacity HDDs are very cheap now, so storing a large media collection isn’t particularly expensive.
They also offer a lifetime “Plex pass” which adds some neat, but non-essential features, like auto-skipping intros and credits sequences for instance. It’s not necessary, but it’s a nice way to show support for what they do.
Jellyfin is an open source alternative without any subscription or fees
The basic problem with media is that copyright creates a monopoly for 100 years or so depending on various factors. This means that unless you’re into Arthur Conan Doyle or whatever, the media landscape is fundamentally monopolistic.
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The amount of media we have instant access to has reached a level that I find intimidating rather than inviting. Consuming media is becoming more of a chore than a pleasure. Dividing the available media into more services is a plus for me, if I am honest.
I have access to a streaming service, and if they don’t have anything I’m interested in, I just walk away and read a book, play a game, put on some music, go outside, or do my chores.
The days when I thought there were things I “should” watch/read/play/listen to are long gone. Not being driven by what is “the thing to do” makes life so much better.
Not having much choice also makes life easier. There were times when I spent more time clicking around in the flood of what I could consume than I did choosing and enjoying. Now, if I can’t decide in less than 5 minutes, I take it as a sign that I should do something else.
Seriously. There’s way too much content and no way most of it is worth my time. If it is, people will still be talking about it in a couple decades, and then I’ll think about it.
According to the Paradox of Choice, when you have to choose from lots of options, you’re likely to be less satisfied with the same end product.
Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).
Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.
I got 3 months free paramount and I canceled the subscription, and it expired in a week instead of 3 months. Its such bullshit.
Really? Whenever I cancel it usually tells me the renewal date pretty explicitly, and the cancel just stops renewing on that date. Maybe if it’s 3 free months, you need to keep the monthly process in active status since it’s a free renewal?
Prob but either way, it’s dirty practice by them.
