OldBoy

A new one crops up everyday. I have nearly all of them and use some more than others, but each one is unique and have their owned movies and tv and whatnot. Each has at least one thing I watch or want to watch yada yada. But, it’s like addicting to have them all and have everything at the touch of a button. It’s maddening sometimes, the choices. Anyway, it’s out of control imo.

Giantrobo

^Sounds like YOU are out of control. Streamers gonna Stream...

But I hear ya. There are several Streamers I want to sub too but I have a hard time justifying spending more money. i.e. I want to see that Monarch Show on Apple TV, I want the Criterion service, etc.

DJariya

You have to know yourself and how much free time you actually have. Otherwise you're just wasting money on something you don't have time to watch.

Plus, if you're buying new digital movies, along with physical media and video games, when the hell are you going to have time to eat, work or get some fresh air?

There is a lot of programming that comes out every month that this forum barely pays attention, because most just don't have time. And that's totally understandable.

TheBang

With prices rising, and ad tiers being pushed, it really is time to be churning. Just subscribe to the one you want to binge for a month or two and then cancel.

kefrank

I’m the opposite of the OP. I don’t find having a bunch of streaming services addictive. The only one I keep indefinitely is The Criterion Channel because I watch stuff on it all the time. I also get Max for free with my home internet. I’ve canceled every other subscription service. Between The Criterion Channel, Max and Kanopy (through my local library) I have more quality content available than I could ever watch. If there’s something really compelling on another service I subscribe long enough to watch it and then cancel but I really don’t do that very often.

fujishig

We have more content then we have ever had before, with almost complete access to a ton of older content, on demand. Yet there's still only so many hours in the day you can devote to watching stuff. You want less choice so you can control your impulses better? Well that may yet come but I doubt we'll be happy about it.

At least you didn't say "well it's cable all over again." At least as of right now you can subscribe to any streaming service for a month, watch all the content they currently have on demand, then cancel the next month. You could never do that with cable. Oh you want to watch all the shows before this to catch up? Well hopefully there's a rerun scheduled soon.

mndtrp

At this point, I only have Disney+. We don't watch a whole lot of TV/Movies at our house. For our movie nights, the kids are getting old enough that we have been showing them movies from decades ago that we already own. If we find a need to have other subscriptions in the future, we'll likely subscribe for one at a time, and rotate through as needed.

Red Dog

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous.

I plan to dump Apple+ right before my upcoming monthly renewal with the ridiculous price increase. I'll probably lose out on the rest of For All Mankind until I renew. But there is no word on Silo and Severance which were probably my 2 favorite shows in the last year or 2. So until those come back, bye bye Apple.

I have Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ through my Verizon mobile account and that price hasn't changed.

I have Netflix and Amazon Prime (just renewed Prime for a year after dumping it in January). I might dump out of Netflix after I watch The Crown.

I grab MAX and Paramount off shared family accounts/passwords.

Eddie W

I don't know if I would call them out of control because no one is being forced to subscribe to them. If someone doesn't like them they can continue paying $150/mo for cable in order to watch prescription drug commercials briefly interrupted by cheap reality programming. At least with streaming, the value is comparable to the cost.

I do wish someone would invent a device that gives a more DVR like list of everything I'm watching though. I tend to watch a few episodes, then forget I'm watching. Trying to navigate a bunch of thumbnails across multiple platforms is very frustrating. Tivo sort of tried it with the Tivo Stream, but with Netflix opting it out, it was all but useless.

Giantrobo

Cue the, "This is what you asked for while bitching about Cable!!" commenters...

fujishig

If only we could go back to the good old days when I was home for the Summer and watched Leave it to Beaver and soap operas because that's all that was on, or try to wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to get a glimpse of some new cartoons

Kids today don't know how good they had it.

Giantrobo

Also, check out who's giving Streaming for free. I just called T-Mobile to ask an unrelated to Streaming question. Well while talking to the Rep, I discovered they are also offering FREE Netflix and free Apple TV. They already had me grandfathered in for free Hulu from being a Sprint customer so that was a nice discovery.

Meathead

The Apple TV does a good job with that except for Netflix. They just refuse to participate with anyone. Amazon, Disney, Hulu, Max, Paramount, Peacock, Starz all work (non exhaustive list).

Peak streaming is definitely behind us now. Avoiding the ads is (already) getting harder and more expensive.

Spiderbite

My son sent this to me after our Star Trek watching fiasco and I thought it couldn't be more spot on.

DJariya

And a few years ago, everyone thought streaming services was the savior of entertainment and was going to save everyone so much money

PhantomStranger

I do believe many of the streaming outlets will go out of business over the next 3-5 years. There's a lot of hopium in Hollywood, much like the early Dotcom era, of unworkable business models succeeding. I doubt more than 5-7 mainstream streamers make it to 2030. There will be consolidation and smaller outlets teaming up.

Mike86

At this point my wife and I have quite a few. I get Max from work. We pay for Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, and Hulu. Also have Prime Video because I pay for Prime yearly.

I might drop Peacock since I rarely watch it. A couple wrestling events and the odd movie are about all I use it for. Probably could also do away with Paramount+ but they do have the odd thing I like to watch here and there.

Kurt D

I'm down to Hulu at 99 cents a month with ads, for a year.

kefrank

Despite the recent price hikes and added fees to be ad-free, streaming services are still arguably much better than the old cable tv model, though it doesn’t seem sustainable.

For example, you can pay for the ad-free versions of Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix (premium tier) for about $75 a month total. That’s a lot of quality programming with no ads for less than what most people have been paying for ad-riddled cable for many years. For the people that don’t care about live sports, it still offers a lot more value than cable ever did.

fujishig

I don't think anyone realistically thought this was going to be the savior of the industry or that these prices were sustainable at this pricing level. Someone (preferably several) was going to get a larger piece of the pie and raise their prices as competition dropped out.

And as I said before, even as prices rise for now this is still much much better than cable ever was. Yes not everything is available and you have to search for things, but it's much easier to find something on streaming or at the very least on demand. There are obviously a few edge cases but then again, it's not like everything was always available on cable or even physical formats. Everything is on demand meaning you are not waiting for reruns. You can, for now, drop and add services on a month to month basis meaning if you have the discipline you have access to pretty much every streaming platform for the price of a couple of cups of coffee (and there are ad versions of most of these if you can't afford that). You can stream to your mobile device, you don't need to buy a set top box or a satellite dish. And without this model, much of the content that has been created in recent years wouldn't exist, period.

I don't know if people have forgotten or just lost their minds but there's some thinking that if Netflix was just left alone, they would have all this content for cheap, and that seems like a pipe dream. Even at it's peak, with no alternatives Netflix didn't have everything, there's no way they could.

But yeah besides that, just like cable.

tonyc3742

I interpreted "out of control" a different way.
I like knowing that there are tons of services out there to choose from, from the big names to the niche.
80's alt? Night Flight Plus.
Horror? Shudder and Screambox.
Broadway? BroadwayHD.
Classic TV? Pluto.
Underground? Tubi.
Learn, or be enthralled, by some of the most talented people in the world? MasterClass.
Subscribe for a month and cancel? Yes please. (Yes, you can get "stuck" in an annual sub to save money, but that's voluntary.)


Skyrocketing pricing, business decisions that seem foolish (tossing the HBO name?) or unconsciably greedy (chucking completed series/movies for the tax writeoff, or whole genres), the fact that stuff moves around or leaves services seeming at random, cancelling well-regarded series with a smaller but avid fan base that didn't hit seventy jillion views (goodbye, American Born Chinese, Mysterious Benedict Society, Babysitters Club)
Those are the out-of-control decisions, in my layman's consumer opinion.

Other than price increases on pretty much everything, lowering of qualities and amenities, and cancellation of programs, my biggest complaints about the current state of streaming are knowing where to watch a specific title (thank you JustWatch for "where" and Hobi for "what"), and that there are more services and programs I want to watch than I have time for (objectively) or money/mental space for (subjectively).
There's a lot of lowest common denominator, focus-grouped crap out there on every service, but there's a lot of great, or at least enjoyable, stuff out there too.

Related note - I just found a digital copy of an old Direct TV bill. 220 $ a month, not counting internet. We're paying less than 200 a month now, including fiber internet, and Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus (each of which come with streaming.)
That said, I am working on trimming down, either services or service levels. (Currently Netflix, Max, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube TV, Paramount, Peacock, Apple+, and I use Vudu to "buy" content. My year of Peacock will end at the end of Jan and I won't renew it.)

It's not anywhere near as good as it was 3-5 years ago, but it is much better than the heyday of cable/satellite. No telling if it'll remain better, of course.

In the interest of devil's advocacy, I will admit that having everything you subscribed to in one place on a cable or sat box was handy, as was having the consolidated billing. Also, sports, which is important to many people (although I just read an article today saying Gen Z is the least into-sports, and the most anti-sports, of the current generations.)

fujishig

I guess the thing I have about "I don't know where things are streaming now, I have to use JustWatch" is that, well, in the old days to find out what was on, you had to consult the TV guide or a newspaper. I realize that now we have way more options but it is still relatively trivial to find out if what you want to watch is on a service. Before this, say you wanted to watch X-men the Animated series: too bad, find some VHS tapes.

What has happened is that we were spoiled by the content we were given at the prices we were given, and people are somehow equating that with "cable was better." No, the advent of streaming when we could have everything for super cheap was better. But it was also unsustainable. It's like me lamenting that I can't see movies as cheaply as I was able to when "old school" MoviePass was around. Amc A-list and Regal unlimited are still way better options to see a ton of movies for cheap (even if I do miss drive ins)

tonyc3742

Right, that's sort of my point. That's a minor inconvenience, one I will gladly deal with to get the other benefits of streaming versus the legacy model.
MoviePass got truly unsustainably crazy toward the end. I was in it at 30 or 40 bucks a month and thought that was a bargain (and potentially sustainable). 10$? Not s chance, ride it till it imploded.

PhantomStranger

Cable just isn't a good value anymore. Even as a rabid sports fan also locked into the TIVO ecosystem, most good entertainment content these days has been moved off cable. And the cable companies keep raising rates to maintain profits as they lose customers.

2024 could very well be the last year I keep cable.

fujishig

At least in my area the one thing cable has going for it is that it is one of the only options for internet and they bundle together. However my cable bill is set to go up in a few months and I'm probably dropping it if they refuse to give me a new client rate.