> It isn't harder to pay than to pirate. It's just getting more expensive.

No, it's harder too. Shows I want to watch bounce between the various silos of un-indexed content, without notice, as licenses shift and expire. Each silo behind their own separate paywalls. New ones pop up and shut down. Their feature matrix changes. They introduce geo restrictions, device restrictions, they force you to sign in from your 'home location' every few weeks to keep features like live TV running. Of course they'll charge you even if you don't, because you've been traveling for a while, in a geo where you can't even access the content you're paying for in the first place.

I don't care about the money, within reason. I care about being able to sit down and watch the show I want, in 4K, with Dolby whatever whatever. Without having to think about it. I'm trying to relax here dammit, lol.

This isn't about Max wanting a few extra dollars, it's just a price hike. We'd whine if they moved the price point up in the same way we're whining they kept the price the same but de-contented it. That's not the part that sucks.

Chasing down which of the 11 streaming services has the TV show you want to watch on a Mario-esque "the princess is in another castle" adventure sucks. When you find it, being greeted with a message saying that you've changed IP address too many times this year so better luck next year sucks. Then trying to figure out why it looks like it was filmed with a potato because you missed the email saying unless you act now and pay more, you're only getting 480p - sucks.

I only recently got into this pirating thing. I was completely willing to have a Netflix subscription, and Amazon Prime, and HBO/Max. Now I feel like I am being milked. So screw it, I literally spent money on some stream pirating software, going hog wild. I have JustWatch and spreadsheets. My targets are listed and I knock them down. Sure, I'll do your service for a whole month, during which I will slurp down the TV shows (anywhere from two to twenty) I want for myself, my mother, and some friends. Then move on to the next. If I do my homework beforehand, that week-long free trial is all I need most of the time. Track movies that are coming on whatever service that month, grab what I can get. I'll manage all of that later. Tubi, despite the low-res films, is the great equalizer, but Roku and Freevee don't hurt either.

I would have been fat, dumb, and happy at a hundred bucks a month but they can't resist The Squeeze. We're dropping the resolution. We're limiting the number of simultaneous screens. We're tightening out catalog. We're putting out Originals, locked to us, instead of your old favorites. Just another two bucks a month. We're introducing ads into your tier. Any and every kind of shrinkflation, with a service almost like you're used to just another few bucks a month away. They can't help it, they just see it as leaving money on the table if they can't tighten the coils just a little bit every year.

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

That sounds more expensive than just paying money for content.

It's even more striking in comparison to music, where with a subscription to either Apple Music or Spotify you've covered pretty much the entire 'current mass-market music' ecosystem.

Something Apple Music tried to change by dumping money into exclusive deals. Which luckily failed.

I think the core difference is upfront capital investment required between music and TV/Film content. Which leads to different incentives and effects down the line.

One of my most common google searches is "what service is ____ on" because I never know where the hell to find anything.

I find justwatch to be reliable. Sometimes I even find something new to watch on there too.

This is something that JustWatch is useful for.

> It isn't harder to pay than to pirate.

lmao, you've obviously never watched anyone over 50 try and use streaming services in 2023.

If I had a one use time machine, fuck killing Hitler, I'm using it to go to the day I taught my parents about Netflix.

People over 50 invented Netflix, dude. Try harder.

Used to pay 20 years ago, during an era of cable TV monopolies and resultant sky-high pricing.

Netflix refuses to serve me HDR/4K content unless I jump through a series of hoops and use the correct browser, OS and whatever else I'd have needed to do. Now I just refuse to pay for it, especially given how easy it is for me to just pirate quality content.

I have no problem paying Floatplane for LinusTechTips content, because they just provide the high quality content, where I can even just download the VODs easily. I'm tired of corporations fucking me at every angle when possible...

[delayed]

IIRC I needed to use Microsoft Edge, and some codec from the Windows Store. Then I HAD to use HDMI (all my monitors are display port). There was something else too probably

Point is, if I can't just use my Firefox browser on Linux to get high quality content for money that I will happily pay, I'll just go get it for free.

Today it absolutely is harder to pay than to pirate.

It was easy when everything noteworthy was on Netflix. You payed for Netflix and got easy access directly on your TV to most trending content. This was more convenient than piracy.

Now the landscape is balkanaized and no one subscribes to all streaming platforms. You can never predict if something of interest will be present on the platform you subscribe to. Do you then subscribe to another service? Now you have to remember to unsubscribe. Do you rotate services and binge watch? Now you are not up to date and risk hearing/reading spoilers. This is less convenient than piracy.

I mean I pay the $20 or whatever for a whole season of a given show on Prime Video, you don't need to subscribe to a streaming service.

[delayed]

I took the "harder to pay" comment as "harder to justify" for families balancing rising costs on all fronts. For the one or two shows mom or dad have time to watch after the kids go to bed, piracy is still a convenient option to consider. Perhaps pay for Disney+ for the kids, and consolidate every other streaming service into automated piracy on a low-cost media server

its ironic that the best anti-piracy feature the "content industry" has going for them wasn't even developed by them, just the simple PITA of self hosting. From setting up a VPN, to finding torrents, to using a NAS, to setting up plex/jellyfin, to having codec issues on players, to annoying subtitles/dubs, to shitty interfaces on some protocols (dlna comes to mind), to difficulty in ripping blu-ray/DVD, I can see how an average (non-techie) family doesn't want to mess around with this shit and just pay for the content.