Streaming rant.

[d.anders]

I doubt anyone is surprised that Netflix is raising their prices once again. I sincerely doubt the streaming wars are going to end up being beneficial to the consumer. I sure do miss the DVD-in-the-mail days, when you had easy access to all those wonderful special features at no extra cost.

I think paying for a service that forces you to tolerate these endless ads is insane. It won't surprise me if YouTube goes this route. When it comes to ads, Hulu seems to be the greatest offender. It feels like there is a 2-minute ad every 5 minutes. 

Streaming seems headed for ad dominance, far worse than network television. If you don't want the ads, you better be rich. Those high monthly fees will ad up very fast.

Amazon Prime has an endless catalogue of movies. Once you finish with the few good ones, there's an abundance of mediocre garbage to sift through. I guess this is true of most of the services today. These companies can't produce content fast enough, and fast content usually means shitty content.

Can the marketplace accept what's coming? The only way to fight back is to end your subscription, and tell them it's because of the ads and the rising monthly cost. How many American couch potatoes are willing to do that?

I may have to go back to reading books. A quality life involving a TV is difficult to find these days.

[Luv2play]

I am an outlier in that I don’t have a television and don’t subscribe to any streaming services. I read books. 
Currently I’m reading The Splendid and the Vile, an account of the London Blitz in 1940/41. It has eyrie similarities to the current bombing of Tehran and Beirut.

Thousands of Londoners were killed and maimed during that grim winter. Churchill and those around him were constantly preoccupied by German efforts to take him out by bombing his headquarters and country retreats. He often went up to the rooftops during air raids to watch the action. 
 

Today the Germans would have had the technology to kill him but luckily for us it was just the dawn of radar and electronics to accurately target its victims. 

[mtaabq]

Dude, go back to reading books. Like the poster above me I do not have a television. My Kindle has over 20 books on it and goes with me everywhere. Or I can listen to music. YouTube is already increasing ads but occasionally there’s something worth watching. And I can watch on my phone. I’m more of an introvert so I don’t make conversation easily but I can always disappear into a book. 

[+ jeezopete]

Don't know why but I've never been bothered much by ads. They give me a chance to pee, get a drink, check my phone, etc. Ads have always been a part of my TV viewing since the early days with 4 channels through our antenna so it's not like they're anything new to me.

1 hour ago, d.anders said:

A quality life involving a TV is difficult to find these days.

This might be the problem. I would never think of TV viewing as a quality life. You could be right about going back to books, if that's something you enjoy. To be fair though, quality of life means something different to each of us so I understand your frustration.

[wsc]

The two greatest affronts to human happiness have been The Black Death and Advertising, the art of convincing people they can't live without something they'd never heard of until now.

Pay TV (as I remember cable TV was called in its early years) was depicted as a Godzilla-like head atop your TV and you had to keep shoving coins into its mouth to watch. But at least there weren't going to be any commercials. That worked out well, didn't it? I challenge anyone to randomly tune to CNN and not hit a commercial 8 out of 10 times, which is why I think of it as the Commercials Now and Next channel.

Shakespeare had it wrong; first, kill all the advertisers!

This completes this episode of screaming at the rain.

And now a word from ...

Edited March 27 by wsc
correction

[+ Lucky]

Good topic!! I canceled Netflix right after I watched the Yankees season opener, which should never have been on Netflix and was botched at that.

[d.anders]

On 3/27/2026 at 11:05 AM, jeezopete said:

I would never think of TV viewing as a quality life.

It may be important to differentiate between TV viewing and using a Smart TV to view streaming services. This isn't the 1960's anymore. It has only been a few years where we can view Oscar nominated movies in the comfort of our homes, just weeks before the Oscar's. To me, quality of life often means having quality culture in your life. I have always loved the movies, well, visual storytelling to be more precise, and I designate the best of the best as quality culture.

[TonyDown]

Eventually I canceled Apple, then Hulu and recently Netflix.

[jeezifonly]

In addition to their price increase, Netflix is dumping a big chunk of their library, which does piss me off. But right now, it's the only original content streamer NOT owned by a megalomaniac tech bro billionaire. 

[+ SirBillybob]

I have been finding consistently that downloading a Prime movie or series episodes yields ad-free viewing in contrast to watching the same things on the home page.

Hulu is not available in Canada but its content seems to drop on Disney+ up here, ad free.

Apple and Netflix seem to be commercial-free so far. I have neither encountered ads nor been prompted to an ad-free upsell. 

CBC Gem has ads. I basically only watch the Brit baking competitions, mostly in fast forward, and occasionally a series, but this streaming service is merely about $4USD monthly and the Sports component offers fuller viewing than on CBC cable.

Edited yesterday at 03:24 AM by SirBillybob

[d.anders]

I suspect this issue may be different for users in another country. Everything from my Prime account has ads, usually at the very beginning, but they are nowhere near as obnoxious as Hulu. HBO Max is also obnoxious, but not quite as bad as Hulu. 

Streaming companies are making a fortune off of these ads, and their making another fortune off the consumer who pays for the bare minimum service, which also comes with ads. With endless bad movies costing hundreds of millions of dollars, most failures at the box office, it's the consumers who end up paying for these insane budget failures. It's an incredible racket that sickens my stomach. It's going to get much worse before it gets better, I'm afraid.

Edited yesterday at 11:12 AM by d.anders

[+ Pensant]

As others have commented, I ditched the TV ten years ago and prefer reading. I still have a Netflix subscription, but am considering dropping it. 

[Nue2thegame]

I’ve given up on most American television programming. I’m a Britbox fan and I read a lot. 

[+ SirBillybob]

I’m always reading, during either medium, closed caption and books.

Edited 18 hours ago by SirBillybob