jawa asks... Are you cancelling or changing streaming services?

Are you cancelling or changing streaming services?

TV and film streaming services. Are they becoming a problem? Rising prices, adverts, pay for additional stuff, multiple subscription tiers, removal of content... perhaps they are losing their sheen?

Or... maybe the availability of multiple services offers wider variety and choice?

Please select the voting options that correspond with your thinking and then lay out your stream of conscience in the comments.

I just use Netflix for streaming, but it's there to compliment my physical media rather than replace it.

Blu Ray is still my preferred format.

I currently have Disney+ and I have kept the monthly fee at £7.99 by instantly dropping from the new 4K £10.99 level. I tend to switch between Disney and Netflix every six months or so.

I feel that services have gotten worse value; mainly because the rise of so many competing services has led to content being locked to certain providers. I definitely don't want adverts; that was a key factor as to why I signed up for streaming in the first place.

I still like streaming at the moment... but over the past year I have reverted to buying films on disc, too.

I do find the image and sound quality is better on blu ray when compared to streaming (even though i pay for the same HD picture quality with Netflix), the main reason i use Netflix though is because they generally don't release their main shows on disc.

I certainly don't want ads though which is why i stick with the current tariff i'm on (the £10.99 service).

Streaming should be the way forward. I'm happy to pay a fair amount for unlimited, ad free, content. I can't be arsed swapping discs etc, so it suits me perfectly.

But they really are starting to strawberry float it all up. Content being removed (Disney

), ads for subscription services (Amazon

) and cancelling shows too quickly (Netflix

).

Piracy is looking like the way forward. All the content I would ever want, no adverts and all nicely saved on a hard drive ready to stream locally.

I will keep Prime for as long as I can pay Student price, so once my daughter finishes uni it's gone...

I currently have Disney but may drop it and try a year of Paramount while it's on offer for £35

At one stage due to deals I had netflix, prime, Disney and Shudder but unless you get crazy deals there not worth it.

Video streaming services are a joke, paid tiers with adverts are just there to excuse upping the price of the other tiers, and I hate the opaque way they'll typically advertise their premium tiers with 4K streaming without actually detailing what content is in 4K. We subbed to Disney+ the last month for my son to watch over Christmas as he had 3 weeks off nursery, thought we'd opt for the 4K level as a one off and enjoy some of that ultra high def streaming on the other content, but almost all the 4K stuff on there seems to be Marvel, which I don't give a gooseberry fool about, and hardly anything else. Paid extra for zero benefit.

Video services have learned nothing from the success of music streaming (that's success in combating piracy, not success for artists) where homogeneous libraries are differentiated by service features and extras. Fragmented video libraries just make things more inconvenient and expensive for the end consumer, so piracy becomes the best option again for people who want to be able to watch whatever they want whenever without having to manage a catalogue of rolling subscriptions and expensive quality add ons.

Fairytale of Knoy York wrote:Video streaming services are a joke, paid tiers with adverts are just there to excuse upping the price of the other tiers, and I hate the opaque way they'll typically advertise their premium tiers with 4K streaming without actually detailing what content is in 4K. We subbed to Disney+ the last month for my son to watch over Christmas as he had 3 weeks off nursery, thought we'd opt for the 4K level as a one off and enjoy some of that ultra high def streaming on the other content, but almost all the 4K stuff on there seems to be Marvel, which I don't give a gooseberry fool about, and hardly anything else. Paid extra for zero benefit.

Video services have learned nothing from the success of music streaming (that's success in combating piracy, not success for artists) where homogeneous libraries are differentiated by service features and extras. Fragmented video libraries just make things more inconvenient and expensive for the end consumer, so piracy becomes the best option again for people who want to be able to watch whatever they want whenever without having to manage a catalogue of rolling subscriptions and expensive quality add ons.

Yep, what they're doing with premium tiers is an absolute joke.

Fairytale of Knoy York wrote:
Video services have learned nothing from the success of music streaming (that's success in combating piracy, not success for artists) where homogeneous libraries are differentiated by service features and extras. Fragmented video libraries just make things more inconvenient and expensive for the end consumer, so piracy becomes the best option again for people who want to be able to watch whatever they want whenever without having to manage a catalogue of rolling subscriptions and expensive quality add ons.

Great point.

Currently paying for Disney+, Prime and Paramount+ (Through Prime).

Happy enough with those three and I'm still able to access my families shared Netflix account most of the time.
Everything else is pirated.

They've all strawberry floated it frankly. When it was just Netflix and Prime it was great, because WE were the customer. They wanted to get us all into their ecosystem and they did it. But now that they've got us, we're no longer the customer. It's the advertisers and the shareholders, so everything gets noticabley shiter in an attempt to create value for those banana splits.

Then you've got all the other twats jumping on the bandwagon. Wanting their exclusive little service for their own library of stuff.
It's like when EA and Ubisoft decided they didn't want to be on Steam anymore and set up their own, vastly shitter services. Unsurprisingly they came back to steam.

It'll correct itself over the next few years. We'll see some services die out and we'll be left with three or four that find a model that works for everyone.

But through it all, piracy remains the one true option if you don't want to put up with their gooseberry fool.
I've pirated more in the past year or so than I have in a very long time.

strawberry float those corpo pigs choom.

Netflix because they generally have something we want to watch each month.

Disney plus I get free club Lloyds bank account.

Apple TV on a 3 month trial but will cancel when it ends.

Now TV on a £1 a month offer for 6 months and will cancel when it ends.

Paramount+ did the £35 offer for a year, really like some of the shows but the app is awful.

I'm cancelling everything other than the god tier Internet, as soon as contracts are up.
It's the high seas for me.

I currently sub to Disney+ and AppleTV but I’ll cancel both this month and sub to something else in Feb.

Quick question, the tiers where ads are included, where do they actually show the ads? Is it just before the stuff you watch or do they insert them in the middle of films/shows like an ITV or Channel 4?

Can't believe I'm the first (paying) weeb in this thread. :shifty:

I should really cancel Prime.

But I'm hanging on to BritBox (for now) and Now TV Kids (purely for Adventure Time and Apple and Onion).

BritBox has been quietly removing a lot of content in the last year, so it's on borrowed time. I guess they want customers to move to ITVX, but the client (on my Samsung) is gooseberry fool.

Subscribe to Netflix and pay
Subscribe to D+ (rarely pay, always get it for "free" via Clubcard vouchers or O2 Priority)
Share my brother's Amazon Prime account
Got a 5 month free sub for AppleTV which I'll cancel when it expires

Also, I didn't know Lionsgate+ was a thing.

I'm currently paying £21.99 for Sky Sports+Boost through NOW (had I waited a bit longer I could have got it down to £17.99) and I'm on another 3 month trial of AppleTV+ (alongside Apple Music I NEVER pay for this). Was also on a free trial of Amazon Prime last month (they seem to give these out once every 2 years) but have now cancelled having watched what I wanted to (007: Road to a Million, Clarkson's Farm, Grand Tour, Oh Cook, and Premier League football).

Did use Disney+ a couple of years ago, but that was also on a price discount.

WWE Network is the only one I ever pay full price for at £9.99 a month (they've never put their prices up...yet), but I cancel that in and out throughout the year.

NOW are very good at giving out silly promotions (Sky Cinema/Entertainment for a £1) so I sometimes get that, but the picture quality isn't up to the standards I like watching movies in, so still favour 4K Blu Ray or iTunes (which also run promotions frequently, such as the Beverley Hills Cop selection, which the other week was £5 compared to around £60 on disc).

If you're not bothered about keeping your subscription rolling I find the prices to be very good, it's just the hassle of keeping on top of everything and knowing what you want to watch and where (and if/when the rights expire).

I got one of those :shifty:

"special"

Firesticks for Christmas and whilst it does give me EVERYTHING, I haven't cancelled Prime/Netflix/Disney yet as I'm still getting to grips with it. One thing that the streaming services have over it (and this will either be major or minor given your preferences) is that there's no slick front end that lets you keep track of what you've been watching or what you might want to add to a watchlist or anything like that. It's just boom, here all the sports, tv shows and movies in the world, enjoy!

I'm sure once I've used it a bit more I'll be binning off Disney and Netflix (keeping Prime for the next day delivery), so that'll save me a bit of money each month.

I too have a special Firestick which provides access to everything. It also has the slick front end that Preezy mentioned, which allows you to pick up where you left off, add favourites, alerts etc.

We also pay for Netflix and Disney for the kids.

Currently pay for Netflix, Disney and Prime but I really should look at cancelling at least one of them. It's just hard to decide which to keep.

jawa asks... Are you cancelling or changing streaming services?

Relating to TV/film subscriptions....

Who is online

Affiliates