• roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    It sucks that Netflix doesn’t have as much as they used to because stuff has been pulled for other services but the value proposition for streaming still blows cable out of the water, even with price increases. Adding free or low cost commercial tiers for more price sensitive people doesn’t give me commercials.

    With all the premium channels and three HD-DVR boxes I used to pay over $200, before internet, more than a decade ago with much of that going to a shitty middle man company. And that’s for commercial, appointment TV. Even with the premium stations you had to DVR shit to watch later. I subscribe to a ton of services, even some fringe ones, so I almost never come across something that I can’t watch immediately with no commercials on any device I have access to anywhere in the world. And with annual rates, discounts from my phone company, and kickbacks from credit cards I’m still under $100. And now the money goes to companies that actually produce content, even if some of them suck for other reasons.

    With what I’m getting I would pay double what I used to for cable, but as it is I’m paying half. It seems like a lot of people complaining never paid for cable with all the packages/premium stations themselves and don’t remember how much appointment TV sucked.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      6 months ago

      Adding free or low cost commercial tiers for more price sensitive people doesn’t give me commercials.

      The thing is they didn’t add a new, cheaper or free “ad supported” option. They added ads to the current price, and then told us to pay more if we wanted to keep the same experience. This is one of the 7 dread turd pillars of enshittifi ation.

      • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        I don’t recall that happening to any of the many services I subscribe to. I’ve always paid for no commercials and I’ve never had commercials without having to change plans, although I think the name has changed sometimes. Maybe my price went up and they added a new commercial tier near the price I used to pay? Could you give an example?

        People keep using this term enshitification but my experience has only gotten better and better since I cut the cord and now more companies offer streaming increasing what is available to me. My total price has gone up as more things become available but it’s still less than half of what I paid for cable.

        Edit: I just remembered prime video did that. They started charging $3/month for no commercials, but that’s the only one I can think of.

        • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          Yeah I was thinking of Amazon, but Netflix briefly demoed it then backed off. At this point most of the providers have at least three ability to stream interstitial content, and we know that advertisers must be banging on their doors waving money at them. I have very little trust in the providers not to mess this up