• SeekPie@lemm.eeEnglish
      71·
      3 days ago

      I’ve been using RD + Stremio for 2 years now, has worked great (except when RD shut down, then switched to Debrid-Link, which was as easy as RD). It costs about 3€ per month, though I think it has been worth it.

  • JiveTurkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    120·
    4 days ago

    If people would just drop their service en masse they would stop doing this shit. Everyone acts like they can be without a streaming service for a month or two so they’ll just complain as they continue to hand them money.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      331·
      4 days ago

      In other areas, yeah, probably.

      But with music, movies, and TV, they’ll just blame piracy, crank up the DRM and bullshit on their own platforms, pat themselves on the back, and raise prices.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.worldEnglish
      212·
      4 days ago

      The reality is there aren’t enough people that care about ads to do that.

      You either grew up with TV commercials or you grew up with ads, the conditioning is already there. There is a narrow band of people who don’t watch much or any TV and got on the internet for most content that remember when ads weren’t a thing. They have done studies and reviewed user data to determine how much ads they can play.

      They might push users to leave by tickling the ad tolerance while increasing subscription fees, but that is unlikely to happen as the frog is already boiled.

      • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
        28·
        4 days ago

        I grew up with ads but I still don’t tolerate them, I’m practically allergic to ads.

        Even back then I would just switch the Chanel when ads would start and then so many times just forget what I was watching and watch something else. And even as a kid I already would preference shows running on the public television in Germany because they didn’t have ads, they were played in a different way.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        9·
        4 days ago

        People who grew up with ads were okay with it because the shows and movies were free.

          • dan@upvote.auEnglish
            5·
            4 days ago

            I’m from Australia so maybe things were different there, but my parents had cable in the 1990s and 2000s and I don’t remember there being ads back then other than promotions for different shows on the same channel. I haven’t used cable since maybe 2006 so it’s definitely possible it’s changed since then.

            I know the US cable channels have a lot of ads these days, but I moved to the USA in 2013 and don’t have experience of how it was like before then.

            The antenna days are still here. I’ve got a HDHomeRun and use it with TiviMate and Plex. It’s great for local news/shows and gameshows. I find new restaurants through local shows that review restaurants for example.

            • SaltySalamander@fedia.io
              5·
              4 days ago

              There were ads on cable channels as far back as I remember. We got cable in '85 or '86. HBO didn’t have ads during the program, but every other channel sure did.

              • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                3 days ago

                HBO had ads for the other content on HBO (movie trailers, show ads) which also served as filler so the next show or movie could start on the hour or half hour. Definitely a different kind of ad, and it didn’t interrupt what you were watching.

                Still ads, but the least intrusive kind.

    • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 days ago

      I cancelled everything but paramount recently. Just cant quit star trek. Until I fix my DNS server at least

    • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I’m interested to know if Hulu is under pressure from content owners here. The way this is worded makes it sound like ads are a negotiated part of some of their content licensing deals that they cannot avoid. I’m just curious if that’s in part because of the content owners. Maybe those owners don’t want to give content for a flat fee and instead want a % cut of the business, or something?

      • meowMix2525@lemm.eeEnglish
        101·
        3 days ago

        That’s the point of what they’re saying. If you’re only buying a subscription to the content then it’s not theft to get access to that content by other means.

        • MrGeekman@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          3 days ago

          If you’re going to hang onto the files for the foreseeable future, there is a big difference. Streaming services only grang you access as long as you pay. You rent access from them. Just because you subscribe to Hulu doesn’t mean you own anything. iTunes is a different story.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.caEnglish
          55·
          3 days ago

          the point is that it’s incorrect

          You aren’t buying it so the rest of the sentence is irrelevant

          Like stealing from blockbuster because you can rent it vs the video bin at the department store

          Nothing wrong with piracy without being dishonest about it

          • Jhex@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            Ok, commercials on no add streaming services are akin to renting a beach house all for your fam but the landlord shows up and takes a giant dump in the only bathroom available

  • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
    912·
    4 days ago

    If the no ads and ads free version contains adds then pirating is also not immoral anymore.

    • Rooty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      Call it what it is - copyright infringement. Piracy is the act of robbery on the high seas, but we’ve allowed media companies to take a shit in our vocabularies so we can’t call things by their proper names.

      • casmael@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        4 days ago

        Grog no like ad. Grog want buy thing? Grog make up own mind. Grog not want ad tell grog what buy, what like. Grog know what grog like.

      • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
        6·
        4 days ago

        Writing on the phone … sometimes I should proof read it. What i wanted to write was something like

        If the “no ads” and “ads free” version contains ads, then pirating the TV shows/movies is not immoral either.

        • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          4 days ago

          I think they are pointing out that saying “no ads” and "ad-free about stuff that has ads is not using the words correctly. Could be wrong.

  • doctortofu@reddthat.comEnglish
    53·
    3 days ago

    What a wonderful world we live in - boneless chicken with bones, ad-free streaming with ads, unlimited plans with limits… What’s next, Nestle releasing microplastics and cadmium free water (guess what’s in it!)?

    • unalivejoy@lemm.eeEnglish
      112·
      3 days ago

      Ad free with ads isn’t new to me. Paramount Plus will sometimes show pre-roll ads. They’re usually ads for other shows on Paramount and you can skip it right away, but it’s an ad nonetheless.

      I could go without the unskippable 5 second branding bumper though.

  • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
    512·
    4 days ago

    I’d say “sounds like a lawsuit”. After all, you can’t advertise something as no ads, and then show ads.

    But then I remember who is in charge for the next four years and realize they’ll just get away with it.

    • subtext@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      4 days ago

      They get away with it with that damned asterisk. So long as you put an asterisk, you could say this comment does not contain English words*

      * comment may contain some or all English and / or any other language words

    • SaltySalamander@fedia.io
      6·
      4 days ago

      They’ve literally been doing this for over a decade, at least. There were always some shows on Hulu that the “ad-free” plan didn’t include as ad-free, though they usually only showed ads at the beginning and the end of the show.

    • nogooduser@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      Another one that shouldn’t be allowed but is are the unlimited* plans where the * indicates that it’s not really unlimited.

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Anything where the clear statement with such a marker indicating it is not true should be illegal. ‘Up to’ claims should also be illegal unless they are true for 99%+ of users/customers.

    • Smokeydope@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      Look being real they would get away with it no matter which decrepit old man was in office or what their politics are. America is a corporatocracy wearing the skin of democracy. When the IRS audited Microsoft for tax evasion, the IRS got sued and defunded through lobbying to the point of being forced to back off. Fucking Microsoft took down the IRS. The world has changed and our old institutions of power are waning.

  • w3dd1e@lemm.eeEnglish
    331·
    3 days ago

    I first time I see an ad on my ad-free subscription, I will cancel like I did with Prime Video.

    It’s like they want us to become pirates.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      3 days ago

      Just a numbers game. More people will absorb the costs than cancel their subscriptions. So these streaming services can keep ratcheting until they hit a breaking point. There’s no disincentive to these behaviors, as long as net revenue increases quarter to quarter.

      Piracy requires a certain degree of technical competence and internet savvy that the vast majority of end users don’t have.

  • Manalith@midwest.socialEnglish
    28·
    3 days ago

    Hulu has always had a clause like that. Their ad-free tier has always had a handful of shows that have an ad at the beginning and end, which is why I don’t pay for the ad-free tier and just use NextDNS.

    • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      Those were initially limited to shows that had contracts in place before hulu existed and was limited to like 3 shows.

    • MrGeekman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      By “high seas”, you’re referring to torrenting, right? Not ripping DVDs and Blu-Rays?

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    231·
    4 days ago

    To be fair, it most likely refers to live streams, considering more steamers are offering them.

    That being said, I cancelled in favour of the high seas and never looked back

    • SPRUNT@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      It’s not just live streams. On-demand of Comcast networks will have ads because it’s fucking Comcast and they are gonna force you to watch them as much as possible. At least you can use the live tv dvr feature to record the things you want and skip commercials then.

      Comcast continues providing ample evidence as to why they are one of the most hated companies in the US. They used to be THE most hated company, but the founder of an extremely popular battery company, that also makes cars, recently outed himself as a mask-off nazi, so Comcast is gonna have to step it up to keep their hold on #1. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before all ICE vehicles have vinyl wraps on them that boast “Powered by Comcast”, and concentration camps detention centers acting as free (fully tracked and monitored) wifi hotspots.

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    231·
    3 days ago

    Pirate your shows. Not just as a defense against ads, but as a defense against Disney throwing plotlines down the Memory Hole

    • Merlin@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      This is what I do:

      1. Buy a perpetual license to the content I want (usually on Prime or Microsoft Store)
      2. Pirate it and load it onto my PLEX server.

      This is the only way I can actually have control over the content that I fucking paid for. If that makes me a thief, then so be it.

      Of course, this only works for PPV content. I generally just don’t watch content that’s available via streaming subscriptions only. I never paid for cable and I’m not paying for cable 2.0.