And ads. Lots of ads.
Did they say ads?
If it weren’t for those pesky content breaks every now and then, they could serve even more ads. Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?
And companies wonder why film piracy is on the rise… 🤔
Pretty wild to want to add channel when:
- their interface is garbage
- their content is pretty lacking
If they play any “pay for that channel”, it’s insta unsub
I’m already thinking about it. I can’t watch new content outside the service, so if I’m torrenting for long term storage regardless, why am I paying in the first place?
only reason I still have disney+ is because my cousin used to borrow it from me. then I stopped paying for it and he was too lazy to make his own account to he just started paying mine. I’ve had free disney+ for year and a half now
Wow that kinda took an unexpected turn. Doing something nice does come back around sometimes huh?
for real. it still baffles me that he just didn’t make his own :D but sometimes nice things do happen
Same thing happened w my mom and Netflix. Except I still don’t use it
🏴☠️🏴☠️ argh, matey
I’m old enough to remember the promise that cable TV was paid so you wouldn’t have commercials…it lasted what, 6 months? The channels without commercials cost extra…le sigh
Yep. It was pretty clear streaming services were always going to end up the same way from the start. Even YouTube has, although that was harder to predict when it was mostly 30s cat videos.
The predictable backstop of subscription plus the nearly limitless potential upside of ad sales is just too tempting in the long run for media companies. They get to have their cake and eat it too. Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and have all eventually given in, despite insisting they never would. Shareholder owned media companies will always gravitate to this model. It’s the only way to maximize quarterly revenue growth.
I can’t see this sticking. The only people I know who have cable are my Boomer parents. The model is dead.
Honestly this is a nice feature for some kinds of shows. Sometimes I don’t want to watch a show from the beginning in order for certain kinds of shows. The only problem is this feature is coming as streaming services are fracturing and becoming less and less usable.
ya it seems like a no brainer for streaming services. not sure why it’s being poked fun at. if you dont like the feature you dont have to use it
YES! FINALLY! I FUCKING LOVE LINEAR TV PROGRAMMING!
Not being funny, I actually do love linear programming. I miss the days when I’d just turn on the TV and there’s be a random episode of the Simpsons or King of the Hill, or something with stupidly many episode like one of the thousand Law & Orders.
Picking something to watch from the beginning is a chore, and now I feel invested if I don’t end up being in the mood. Stuff that’s just “already playing” is something I dreamed of recreating when I started (not)pirating everything. "It started 5 minute ago but this is a good episode " was how I grew up watching TV (and even movies).
man, piracy, i mean owning physical media, seems like a better and better method of enjoying media.
It’s a good thing every show ever has been released on physical media. Right? Right?
they hyped up X-Men 97 for months and then didn’t bring it to my region. i don’t even know how there would be copyright issues since it’s an original. they just want me to stop paying and start sailing.
Cable is better than streaming in 2024. Like seriously… It’s all in one place, and it’s cheaper than subbing to all the services.
They finally did it. They ruined streaming.
This is pure fantasy. Cable did not have everything in one place for cheaper. Unless you paid extra you only had the default channels where you had to watch everything at a specific time or pay extra for a PVR to record and even then you didn’t have access to entire backlogs of TV shows. If you wanted to watch front to back a show you had to pay $100+ for the box set.
Also ADs ADs ADs ADs ADs ADs.
Yeah streaming is getting worse and worse but if you told me I had to choose between cable and a single streaming service I’d pick the streaming service every time.
Streaming is still leagues ahead of cable. Don’t sub to all of them at once (you can only watch one at a time anyways), plus I bet even the ones with ads are still way lighter on them than cable is.
Plus, as long as these channels don’t replace on demand selection, they don’t make anything worse. It’s just a new way to use the streaming service.
If they do it like Paramount I’m all for it. I like just throwing on the Star Trek channel rather than deciding what episode of which series I want to watch. That’s part of why I get so much use out of Plex’s Live TV channels. Only difference is paramount doesn’t have ads on their channels
I have playlists set up in Plex that I use like a TV channel. One’s all [adult swim] cartoons, another is old sci fi, another is just documentaries. Best part is no commercials.
Live TV is handy for sports, but sort of out of date for the modern habit of binge streaming a series.
I don’t really want to watch TV starting from the middle of an episode in the middle of a series. I’d much rather just jump to where I was in my Dropout queue and start watching whatever show is next in the list.
Not everyone wants to binge a show from start to finish
For example, I really enjoyed the episodes of the office that I have watched. It was many years ago and it was only random episodes I caught while airing on TV.
Went to Netflix to watch at started on episode 1. From what I hear season 1 isn’t the greatest. I got through a couple episodes and then thought to myself, this is going to take so many nights of watching to watch them all in order. Never watched another again.
Now if I could turn on the television and say S6EP7 was playing I’d probably enjoy watching it. Might even watch the next episode too.
With classic TV you also get the feeling that you’re watching the show with others.
Channel 1 is having a Harry Potter bingeathon. I catch it on episode 3 and continue to watch it. I’ve seen them all multiple times so I don’t really care where I start. But it’s nice knowing others are having a HP bingeathon with me on a Saturday afternoon. If I was sitting there with my plex server, I could play any HP. But I’m never going to put it on and if I did it would just be me watching the show.
Not everyone wants to binge a show from start to finish
Then don’t.
Went to Netflix to watch at started on episode 1. From what I hear season 1 isn’t the greatest. I got through a couple episodes and then thought to myself, this is going to take so many nights of watching to watch them all in order. Never watched another again.
https://variety.com/lists/the-office-best-episodes-ranked/
Here’s a list of some of the most popular episodes of the office. I’d probably just pick one of the early seasons and go from there.
Now if I could turn on the television and say S6EP7 was playing I’d probably enjoy watching it.
Sure. But you can just watch that one straight out. Why simply hope that’s the one Hulu decides to stream at a given moment?
Channel 1 is having a Harry Potter bingeathon. I catch it on episode 3 and continue to watch it.
There’s definitely an appeal to rediscovering old classic movies. But in my experience, the amount of crap out there far outweighs the amount of gold. And the purpose of running channels isn’t to give you a steady diet of quality show. Its to run what’s cheapest to run at any given moment.
You only start seeing Harry Potter on the Daytime Movie Channel when its completely fallen off people’s radars and the rights are cheaper to acquire.
You’re far less likely to see Channel 1 having a Harry Potter bingeathon than you are to see them showing Gremlins or Home Alone, because these series are far cheaper to fill non-prime air time with.
The only good thing about streaming services is theoretically they aren’t region tied.
They usually are though. Most content (excluding their own) is not available in all regions due to licensing issues.
Most content (excluding their own) is not available in all regions due to licensing issues.
Actually, even including their own for some dumb reason. For instance, Paramount holds the rights to Star Trek, but there’s no way for me to stream some of the shows legally, because Paramount+ isn’t available where I live.
Which to me makes no sense. It’s just a freaking website, globally accessible, hosting content they own…
I’ve kinda wished services would do something a bit like this for a while:
One channel for new stuff, based on your recommendations—just gives you a load of random tastes of shows without you actively picking through things
One for stuff you rewatch. For example, if you’ve watched always sunny or peep show through a couple of times, put random episodes on this channel for when you just want something in the background
Gonna need some machine learning for this. How much AI in your streaming service are you comfortable with?
AI and ML based recommendation engines in streaming services have been a thing for as long as there have been steaming services
Ok, how about ai enhanced TV shows and movies. Still comfortable?
This sounds like a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, if you’re implying that a steaming service using a recommendation algorithm obviously concludes with sinister personalised AI brainwashing injected into my watching, I think you maybe should watch less black mirror.
If you didn’t mean that, we’ve been using AI in film and TV for ages now, the latest batch of Star wars films made extensive use of it. Hell, the huge battles in lord of the rings used a rudimentary AI system for governing all the entities in it.
As someone very hesitant about AI I’m comfortable with it. It’s a streaming service, not my email inbox.
One step further: ai “enhanced” TV shows and movies
We still good, or you ready to start pitching a fit?
Have they already added commercial breaks?
Amazon did. They kept the price the same, added commercials, then offered to remove the commercials for an additional $4/month.
