A community driven to showing our voice through the things we buy and use.
A few useful links:
Jellyfin is really easy to setup and use. Just sayin'...
There should be a starter pack for newcomers :) "Here you go, a collection of the top 100 movies and top 10 tv shows!"
Arrrrr
Strongly disagree. Lemmy keeps suggesting Linux too, but most tech illiterate casual users can't handle that level of DIY tech. This is even more true for self-hosting. This will be beyond the tolerance and competencies and interest of the vast majority of people.
I've got an excellently maintained Jellyfin, Arr's, Usenet setup. My wife will not use it. She's gone and paid for Netflix WITH ADS and would rather use that. Any network hiccups, any need for server restart, subtitles not synchronising (or not downloaded), or trying to install Jellyfin on a new device and being asked the server URL.....all this instantly scares her away. Netflix shits itself far more than my Jellyfin setup does, but she knows how to restart the phone or TV, knows how to log out and log back in and is just generally more tolerant of an outside service being down rather than my server (my responsibility) not behaving right. I would say my Jellyfin works perfectly more than 98% of the time.
It is not like my wife is some freak, I've given Jellyfin accounts to a bunch of friends and my mother. None of them use it.
Not that it will solve all your issues but there's an Arr stack app called Bazarr that will make sure you've got the subtitles you want automatically. Removes just one more impediment :)
What I did is gave my wife the NZB360 app so she can download whatever she wants.
All series and movies are than synchronized between kodi and jellyfin. She find kodi a lot more user-friendly and logical than jellyfin. She's not tech savvy at all but the combination of NZB360 and kodi works like a charm. We haven't had any streaming services for the last 7 years.
Eh, a Windows box with Jellyfin installed. Whoever is the maintainer needs to be somewhat tech literate. IP addresses, folder navigation, torrenting, and vpn I think would cover a bare minimum setup.
But when users are on the same network, Jellyfin is not difficult to use from an end-user perspective. My kids can navigate Jellyfin on our Roku TV. My tech illiterate wife can navigate it on her phone.
For the maintainer, I speculate it's a tradeoff of time and money. I save $70 a month, don't have to navigate multiple BS streaming providers, and get to feel like I'm putting it to the man.
The level of DIY needed to set up Linux Mint or Jellyfin is an essential life skill. It is sad that people are that afraid of putting the circle-shaped block in the circle hole, but that doesn't make the recommendation incorrect.
Of course if someone is as illiterate as a grade schooler even as an adult, just telling them to fix it isn't helpful. Something is holding them back from learning in a healthy way, and that blockage takes emotional support or even therapy to clear.
People will spend more hours of their lives looking at screens than at the faces of their children. This is not some sort of niche expertise, this is a massive part of people's lives. Their quality of life would increase so much if they could get over that psychological hurdle.
Installing Linux Mint is easier than driving a car. It's easier than safely changing a lightbulb. It's easier than assembling ikea furniture. It's easier than navigating to this comment to reply to it. It's easier than filing taxes and it's easier than making a budget.
I understand people aren't familiar with it, but please, for your own sake, get familiar with it. You will benefit from it for the rest of your life.
If my partner paid for something that had ads when we have higher quality the same thing available for free without ads, I’d get them medical help for brain broken.
It certainly isn’t the top movies but there is quite a bit of public domain stuff to be had. Just about every movie you ever saw in a dollar store dvd collection is public domain. Check out whats available on Archive.org for instance. Lots of old sci-fi and noir style detective movies etc.
Yes. I would.
Don't tell me whether I
Nebula and dropout are the only subscriptions I pay for. Love some Patrick Willems and some Irish anti capitalism rants from Brennan Wee Wulligan
There is always on-again, off-again drama with Bandcamp. While it's generally not as bad as services like Distrokid or others, it's always worth a bit of digging (and reading fine print) if you leverage any third-party service. They were also bought out by Songtradr some time last year or so.
@topsongattourney has a review of their TOS here: https://youtu.be/EywCOmOUreQ (probably a bit dated by now) While her style is a bit drama focused/click baity, she has worked with Benn Jordan and Venus Theory in the past which is a major plus for her reputation for me, IMHO.
(OP, I am not sure if the list of service providers you listed were in a positive or negative context by the way you worded the description, but that is probably just a "me" problem.. Regardless, I 100% agree with the purpose and motivation of this post.)
Music services are always in a state of flux, so review everything before you distribute or sign-over any works. It seriously sucks that new producers have to basically be lawyers as a side-gig these days and has absolutely prevented me from releasing anything at all.
If you have access to hosting you could check out Faircamp. You can use it for both streaming and selling downloads to people directly. It's pretty easy to use for a website generator 👍
Let me edit the original post to make this clearer!
Thanks for flagging the issues around Bandcamp. Music streaming options are a minefield!
So how come Netflix have more subscribers each time ? Because last reports where like look, Netflix has more subscribers now. Something does not add up.
Correct me if I'm wrong
2 guesses:
First time subscriber pool refreshes every year. Teens and young adults moving out on their own for the first time or college kids getting a subscription while away from home. Most of these people will likely drop their subscription within 6 months as prices keep increasing while catalog doesn't add enough content to make it worth it.
Secondly, Zoomers (and to lesser extent Millennials) don't subscribe year round but rather one month subscriptions a few times a year to binge watch new shows they want to watch. Netflix doesn't have to say how many of their subscriptions were for the whole year or how much per quarter, so they can report x million subscriptions even if the total sub time paid for was much lower.
I bought a subscription to Shudder, as I like horror movies and there really aren’t many in other streaming services.
It’s like they want me to quit. Removing content, they rewrote the app to use custom components that break every accessibility feature, and they’re hiking the price. To give an example, they REMOVED the ability to see what language a movie is in or the genre.
What the fuck? It’s my only US based service, it’s terrible now.
No, they actually do want you to quit Shudder. AMC's been trying to shutter it for over a year now, and I'm surprised it's still up at the moment. They even cancelled JoeBob's show, which was one of the few draws for Shudder overall.
I love that you included the alternatives instead of just identifying the problem. So many posts tell you what's shitty without helping you know what to use instead.
I used to use bandcamp exclusively because I don't listen to a lot of big artists and I had some lovely interactions. I asked a band called Roommate for the lyrics to a song called ghost pigeon and they actually replied. It was very sweet. Couldn't tell what the hell they were saying.
I cancelled every subscription except Netflix because my mom uses that. I steal exes' subscriptions until I get kicked off when they eventually notice hehe, not sorry.
I am not ready for whatever it is you are trying to teach me <3
It's nice to watch tv or a film and listen to music but you don't need to download an app as and alternate to downloading another app. There are other non-online alternatives like mp3 players and dvd's. This keeps you one step removed from the greedy "tech bros".
I'll throw in a recommendation for a Surfans F20. Cheap, powerful, no moving parts, dead easy to repair. And it can use Rockbox!
If you think that's cheap then wait until you see this bad boy
Pass. Those are cheaply made and cheap. I've had ones like those in the past, and they're crap. Plus "up to 32GB".
Every time I see a headline saying "X% of Americans did a sensible thing", my immediate reaction is "only X%?"
It said in the last 3 months. That seems nuts to me, like a crazy high percentage. Why now? Everyone i know who cut streaming cut it a long time ago
Ah. I did not read the article, so egg on my face. Yeah, in that case it's pretty significant, even considering the known phenomenon of people who only subscribe for the duration of the run of something they want to watch.
Can vouch for Qobuz. You can buy DRM free high quality music as files, directly downloaded. Then you can listen anywhere.
We'll be dropping Netflix soon. Just want to watch a couple of things that I've had in my backlog and then they are gone. Their content does not justify their price point.
The only reason I haven't cancelled Netflix yet is that my kids watch a bunch of random stuff on it. Since they're using a kids' profile it doesn't have ads, and since they browse for stuff ad-hoc it would be difficult to try to torrent and put on Jellyfin beforehand.
I've put all the movies my (primary school) age children could think of on my server, all the TV shows (Bluey, Sesame Street, Spider-Man, Teen Titans Go, etc etc) and also any YouTube they've been interested in (mostly video game playthroughs) downloaded and onto the server. Works out well to get a separate kids profile set up. Give it a shot.
Eventually my neighbor will probably cancel their Netflix. Or change their password...
the only reason we keep ours is because we see our neighbor still watches it. fair trade for free plums.
FUCK PLUM SEASON IS COMING
Another creator-driven service I like is 2nd Try, the Try Guys channel. They modeled their service after Dropout, and most of what they’ve put out has been great.
Can’t beat it for $5/month.
Leaving this here for the next guy: https://www.2ndtry.tv/
Good call. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to leave a link or not.
Doing the heavy lifting for everyone here - thanks🙂
I don't get how anyone does these things. I would have to have pretty high disposable income to splurge for a streaming service. These should be like the first place people tighten up. Like I had a sister who was a personal trainer and during bad economic times I asked about this and she said people surprisingly did not let it go till they absolutely had to to. That I get. That is a useful and valuable thing. streaming garbage though. would drop in a sec if I ever had the excess to go do it.
Arrrrrrrr!