It’s the way of all subscription based entertainment. To increase profit eventually the choice comes down higher subscription fees or introduce ads.
And once ads are there, it’s a one-way street. Until adpocalypse.
If it’s in your systems in an open format it’s yours, if it’s outside your systems or wrapped in some kind of locked format that forces you to go through somebody else’s software it’s de facto theirs.
Due to my own experience in software development with 3rd party solutions from way back, I never adhered to Streaming solutions (even though I was tempted) and always stuck to getting my entertainment in a media format I controlled (legitimately for a long as I could, not so much once even physical media started having DRM) because I was aware that it’s risky to outsource so much control over one aspect of what you do (in this case entertainment) to an entity which, frankly, sees you as nothing else that microscopic fraction of their bottomline.
(The funny bit is that if Netflix would sell me their Series in an open file format that I could download and at a reasonable price, I would have sent lots of money their way, same as I spent lots of money on DVDs and even VHS tapes back in the day. In fact all throughout that period I was doing something like that for games: as soon as I discovered GOG with their DRM-free downloadable installers, I started acquiring all my games by buying them from GOG)
In the fullness of time, my caution seems to have been proven right.
Already doing it
Pirate Everything at This Point
Way ahead of you.
I pay for an emby share personally.
Plex/emby/jellyfin, there are a ton of paid shares out there that are cheap.
Aliexpress summer sale started. Getting a 150 eur ryzen mini pc and slapping some hdds onto it for a cheap media server/nas with 4 digit nas specs.
That’s pretty much the self-made home media system I’ve upgraded to some months ago, only mine has an N100 CPU (which is nicer from a power consumption point of view for an always on system since its TDP is 15W).
It’s wired to my TV, running Kodi on the foreground, runs qBittrorrent on the background over an always on VPN and serves as my home NAS.
From Aliexpress I got a wireless remote that let’s me control Kodi as if it was a TV box, so from my sofa I handle it as a TV box whilst from my PC I can ssh to it and to any computer kind of management.
Probably one of my best purchases ever.
Depending on how much space you want the HDDs will probablybe the biggest cost
This seems like it could be a fun project. Mind making a post about the build sometime?
So far it’s; genmachine 5500u pc barebones, will get random ram and steam decks 256gb ssd, fedora server and some rabdom twin drive hdd enclosure with used 4tb disks to start with. 8gb of ram should be plenty as going 16gb ddr4 to 32gb ddr5 made no difference at all on my main gaming/dev/3d rig.
Total cost: 158 for mini pc, twin drive enclosure 60, 4tb drives: 50 eur each, ram 15 eur or around entry level twin drive nas price.
Id if there’s any build thread to post about “i shoved an external drive up the ass of a chinese mini pc and labelled it homelab”
Stremio is everything I could ever want and more.
Is this how everyone used to say “use plex. It’s easy!” But plex was actually a piece of crap that most people couldn’t run properly?
Stremio is great.
I love Stremio it is so simple to use and relatively easy to set up, I like the set it and forget it format it has (and your settings and setup are synced across all the devices you like).
With that said, geek me can’t leave aside Kodi for good, I have a Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 and that is where I use it, even when the setup I’ve for it is somewhat heavy (it makes my Shield struggle sometimes) I love thinkering with it, because… there is fun thinkering right?
My gf does Stremio almost always though.
I love it, but I wish there was a way to still seed while using it.
When using Stremio you are seeding. There’s a cache size that holds a specific size that you will be uploading back. As long as Stremio is running in the background you will be seeding.
While using Stremio alone without a debrid service?
I think you do… perhaps not in the healthiest way, but it is something.
Yep, link it with real debrid As you are, sailing the seas in style… Great UI. Evan has a calendar to keep track of your series.
I am an old pirate and I cringe when people bash debrid services for their pirate pride, honestly it is a life changer if you are willing to switch to fully stream (I still seed the content I gather with the Arr stack for my Plex).
Trakt too 🫡
Yeah… Trakt also started in the enshitification path though (for some it has been there for a while).
idk its free and it lets me subscribe to lists so I can find stuff easily. Until they break that I won’t notice.
Question, what even is a “Generative AI ad”?
Is the lead actress of the horror movie I’m watching look into the camera and tell me about the new coca-cola while she waits for the monster to come get her?
I actually haven’t seen one yet. I just assume it’s an AI voice, reading AI generated text, about something that Netflix’s data about you says you might like.
Way ahead of you, Mr. Rossmann.
Installed jellyfin this week, it is awesome. My roku found the server and streamed a movie without buffering.
Pair it with the arrsuite and chef kisses
Did Plex enshittify recently? I’ve seen a lot of people switching to jellyfin.
Plex is completely enshittified at this point.
- You need to pay if you want to share your movies with friends
- They spy your watch list, and share what you watched with your friends by sending them emails
- They released a new half broken app
- They removed the “party” option that let you watch a movie together with friends remotely
- They’re actively trying to hide the personal streaming features in order to push people to their legally (and ad-riddled) streamed movies
So Jellyfin is now the best solution afaik
Yep, big time. Basically dead at this point, forcing payments to stream your own content.
I started setting up my homelab last month and immediately went to Jellyfin because Plex just screamed “corporate bullshit” to me. Sure enough, it was the right call.
Basically dead at this point
For free users though, there are some of us who paid for Lifetime Plex Pass tier a long time ago… I do wonder if Lifetime really means forever though.
Narrator voice: “But it did not last forever…”
They made it so server owners need a plex pass to stream to anyone outside the same LAN. Or the clients need to pay $2 a month if the server owner doesn’t have one
2 dollars just for providing the tunnel service, mind you. A subscription for glorified port forwarding.
The glorified port forwarding issue is even worthless if you are a CGNAT user, and it is 2025 so I’ll assume everyone is.
Wrong community?
Only if you don’t watch the video where it’s discussed how these AI ads would work and the implication on privacy.
Fair enough question. I don’t think it deserves the downvotes - the answer is informative.
Netflix rapidly becoming Interflix from Black Mirror
Netflix selling us a caricature of the evil company they were thought of becoming, as they are and further become the evil company in the pisode that they sold
I totally get the anger with Netflix. I fucking hate them as a filmmaker. But I really don’t think a long term solution is pirating content.
BUY CONTENT YOU LIKE
Is it more expensive? Of course it is, that’s part of an equitable society. Also it means you end up with content you really like and not a bunch of junk.
If there was a Bandcamp for film and TV, then I would buy stuff there. DRM free.
But until then…
Which works for some content, but a lot of childrens content is only available through subscriptions to Netflix/Disney+/Max.
I’ll buy music directly from artists on bandcamp and such, especially since they offer unlimited DRM-free FLAC downloads, but any other media at this point is just absurdly inconvenient. Everything’s just tied to dogshit streaming platforms.
If there were a DRM-free option to buy and download movies or shows for life, I’d definitely be buying what I can here and there. But everything is so locked down or encumbered with other bullshit that it’s not a viable option.
buying physical media and ripping yourself is the only viable option but it’s so inconvenient
To some extent you’re right. There’d be less content if nobody paid. But imagine current society without treats. I don’t know if capitalism without “panem et circenses” would start to crumble real fast.
I was. Until they made that so difficult and time consuming that the barrier to entry was too high. Not because of the price. But because of availability. When Google play music was a thing? I bought music. When streaming took over I moved to Bandcamp. But Bandcamp doesn’t have everything. There’s no music stores anymore where I can just go and buy music. It’s all Amazon and similar.
I’d love to own the ghibli collection. But to get it I have to buy the DVD’s (and have a DVD player to play them on), or I have to pirate them. No digital store front seems to have the whole collection. This happens all the time with media that I’m willing to pay for.
Along with bandcamp, there’s Qobuz, 7digital, and HDTracks that I can recommend for digital downloads. Those other three often have what bandcamp does not, much more common songs. Many in 24-bit.
Buy the dvds and rip them…
Yeah, just buy yourself a dvd/blu-ray player just to rip it, wait for the disk to arrive, connect it to your computer and set aside the time to rip it (if you even know how).
Such a reasonable alternative to setting up radarr one time and watching the movie immediately. Can’t have a digital storefront where I get to own my digital copy.
That is extremely inconvenient and jist feels wrong. There’s no reason a digital file has to be tied to an inconvenient, small-volume media.
Man. Google play music. Fucking miss that service.
Found so much good music… Still hurts me it died.
Pretty sure all of Studio Gihibli is on Fandango/Vudu.
So… buy the DVDs? Or any other Ghibli merch.
Nah fuck that. Ignore this guy, everyone pirate everything until they fix it again.
People don’t pirate music, guess why?
People don’t pirate music
😶🌫️
The days of Oink and what.cd are long gone. I’m sure people rip streams, but most will just actually stream.
Not the only ways to do it by far, but I do agree with you that most people just pay for streaming services.
I buy vinyl and buy flac music from artists I like.
But if your digital content isnt available in my region imma pirate it and assume the racist fucks have enough money.
If the argument is talk with money then giving them 0 and taking from them is the strongest argument you can have morally speaking. Piracy is more convient regardless.
Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…
We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.
But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.
Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.
I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.
This point doesnt really make sense when you consider that there are TV channels that don’t have ads like any of the BBC channels, PBS and even Disney Channel. They are channels that only promote their own other shows but for the most part don’t have ads in between the shows.
Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes
Oh, hell no. We had HBO my entire teen years, and that was the huge difference between cable and broadcast - there were no commercials on HBO.
I never had cable as an adult; I didn’t like being beholden to someone else’s tastes and show times, so we just rented videos: Blockbuster, or more often the locally owned rental place - they had weirder stuff.
When Cable became “infinite channels,” they did start showing ads, but that wasn’t paying for content: that was paying for delivery. It was supersized broadcast TV. To emphasize this, packages cost extra, and those special, extra channels (HBO, etc) didn’t have commercials. The basic package was just extra broadcast TV.
Netflix is more analogous to HBO than cable. Supporting this is their original operating model: a subscription fee that got you DVDs mailed to your house. Just like a subscription fee to Blockbuster that got you a certain number of rentals per month.
Don’t try to normalize it by claiming “it’s always been this way,” because it hasn’t.
television was designed around the advertising break
Television was free. Netflix was originally movies. Movies don’t have ads (not specific, non-story related ones, anyway; they’ve always had product placement). It’s been only relatively recently that Netflix has gotten into the episodic game, which is even less justification for ad breaks, because episodes are shorter than movies. Which have no ads.
You’re entitled to pay for what you like and be happy with it, buy fuck if I’m going to pay someone to watch their ads. If I was a TV watcher, I’d pay for choice - a thousand channels, with ad-ridden content. I draw the line at going to a movie theater, paying for a ticket, and then having the movie interrupted with ads, which is what this is equivalent to. You can always skip the ones up front with timing, and fuck those ads too.
I think your argument is so contrary to the ad-free reality I experience every day, I don’t think there’s any point of counter argue you as we will probably never find a common ground to debate our differing viewpoints on.
There are no ads on the CD I bought from the merch table at a concert last week.
Just because something always used to be some way doesn’t mean it’s automatically acceptable.
TV might have been designed for the ad break but what if it wasn’t? You give Star Trek as an example, and here in the UK growing up I watched TNG episodes on BBC2, which is a tax-funded station without adverts. Did the lack of adverts make my childhood TNG experience worse? Personally I’d say it made it better.
Even in the cable TV age, to have adverts in something you are paying for is still horrible, and to me it’s unacceptable.
I will do everything in my power to not expose my brain to a barrage of advertising, and that includes not using any service where I have to subject myself to it.
Totally agree.
Broadcast TV shows where designed with advertising in mind because it was the only way to monetize it at the time (except for tax-funded of course).
When cable TV started, one of their selling points was that it didn’t have ads, at least on the “cable-native” channels.
But after a while, they started putting ads everywhere, and that of course lead to the shitty experience that made a lot of people “cut the wire” when streaming services started.I’m wondering what’s the next thing that will replace streaming, and eventually repeat the cycle.
Every major shift in how media is consumed has always come because of evolutions in the technology used to deliver it - going from just a few broadcast channels, to cable, to “on demand” cable and satellite, and finally to Internet delivery.
And it’s just really hard to imagine what delivery technology could provide any new capability beyond the always-on, bidirectional, high capacity data stream in your pocket that is the Internet we now have.
With streaming we’ve already achieved what should in theory be the best way to watch - and with the studios all having their own streaming platform now, there’s not even any middleman to undercut anymore, like there was when the cable companies were cut out by Netflix at the dawn of streaming. This is endgame.
The only thing left now is enshittification.
The one thing that could save us from this fate is if new programs and content are produced that are competitive in quality with what the current giants are putting out, giving people other places to go and forcing competition.
This is what we’ve already seen with indie studios and single developers disrupting the games industry, and perhaps with ever more achievable 3D animation, AI and other accessible production techniques we’ll start seeing this disrupt the film and TV industry too.
Good point about the indie studios. I mostly play indie games, there’s rarely any AAA game that is worth the price.
Seems like the way to go, support services that stream independent media and stop supporting the enshittified ones.
Also, I don’t know how it was in other countries, but I remember that pay-tv services in Italy didn’t have ads during programs and films, but only between the programs. It was a way better experience.
This person seems to think that CSI Miami pioneered the format. So of course it easy to find examples of them being wrong. CSI Miami wasn’t even the first CSI. So I am sure they can’t remember that premium cable channels that don’t have commercials exist. Let alone that public broadcasting doesn’t have commercials.
What old age are you talking about? Television was not invented in the 2000’s.
And if you don’t like ads, then that is the problem.
Regardless, Netflix has historically been delivered without ads which many seem to like. You do you, take a break and watch some ads every 20 minutes, but I won’t, and will especially not pay to do it.
Lol yea that’s definitely getting demonitized. Somebody please download/archive it.
