New streaming services give you the same convenience you had in the 90s

And ads. Lots of ads.

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

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

its so tiresome to have all these services constantly made worse. these days it feels whenever a new thing comes out, it has about two or three years before it's run into the ground in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

and this kind of thing is also happening to movies/tv shows/video game franchises. it feels like no matter how good it starts, you only get (at most) 2 or 3 sequels before the executives get their hands on it and run it into the ground. sure there are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between. and its becoming even more common for shows/video games to simply disappear if the parent company decides to remove them from online stores/streaming platforms.

all around, it just feels like things are becoming less and less permanent

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?

Let me guess: which channels you have access to depend on your subscription level? Fuck these jerks.

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.

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

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️ argh, matey

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

They're really gonna make people start pirating out of spite lol

Minus ad breaks, I missed this aspect of content consumption. Choosing to watch a random episode of a random show just doesn’t happen and I missed being able to just “see what’s on”. I spent a fair amount of time setting up random “channels” I can tune into that play random episodes from tv shows on my media server and it’s great.

YES! FINALLY! I FUCKING LOVE LINEAR TV PROGRAMMING!

And companies wonder why film piracy is on the rise... 🤔

Can we get rid of IP laws pretty please

This has been the plan for decades.

Telecom companies existed before the internet and have made every effort their television fiefdoms would have the right to own it as well.

Then again the only bastion of defense against this has been a parade of old ass people who don't own computers and were handed a smartphone 15 years ago but only want campaign donations in exchange for not understanding the problem.

So it really wasn't much effort at all to turn the internet into TV 2.0.

The only good thing about streaming services is theoretically they aren't region tied.

The only thing I really miss about cable over a media server on shuffle is the ability to know what is going to come up next in the shuffle.

And if they could add bumpers like on adult swim that would be awesome, too.

VPN, random port, docker, and jellyfin.

The golden age of streaming has passed.

The more things change....

Only for $300/month, with a 2 year contract

I can't see this sticking. The only people I know who have cable are my Boomer parents. The model is dead.

Have they already added commercial breaks?

I don't mind this sort of setup on Pluto TV but it's free so... Yeah.

Also, they do free streaming as well so you don't even have to use the live TV function.

🏴‍☠️🦜

I actually wanted this feature for so long. You may ask why not just get cable and yes I could but my area is a bit remote and doesn't have cable.

You all should check out criterion channel. Definitely more art house style but a great value.

They pretty much already have that though...

So same old broadcast thing, but with internet, a framework designed to send a different data to each user.
Meaning you will be wasting way more energy with the same stream going in different packets to people.

Sure, that would definitely be cheaper.

How are these super low resolution screenshots taken? Is anyone still using phones with a screen resolution that low?

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.

Disney+ has a problem where they are very strong but in very specific genres. I go for the Marvel and Star Wars stuff, but am not interested in kids or teens stuff. Depending on the details, this could make it nicer by filtering out the stuff I will never be interested in

The Solution: Stremio+Torrentio

And prices will commensurately reflect that