Shrinkflation, hitting online world too.
That’s why I pirate. Jellyfin FTW.
I was a long time pirate back in the day, and thinking of sailing once again. However all my old booty spots are gone. What is Jellyfin?
A great UI to stream your movie files from your TV. A bit like Plex, but open source.
Tbh JF is faaaaaaaar from a ‘great UI’, it suffers from the ‘open source design’ of developers who have no idea how to design a good UI as the designers for the UI. I shouldn’t need to click vaguely in the direction of where I think the X (close) button is to make it appear in the first place. The settings for a user should be in the same location as the admin settings. The main screen shouldn’t look like it came straight out of 2000, it should have the categories all visible by default, it should be easier to setup https (plex was WAY easier in this regard), ota channel guides shouldn’t be outsourced to a paid project, there is no built-in import/export (I recently moved to a docker image and found that out, yay)…
It ‘works’, but fuck me it’s so rough around the edges that it draws blood. Plex has issues (downloading content from a server is wonky, metadata can grab the wrong movies, paid sub/lifetime etc) but it’s so, so, so much closer to what an all-in-one media platform should be, imo.
I’m not arguing that any of your complaints are invalid. I just want to say that I use jellyfin to organize my movies and TV shows and access them from other computers on my home network. It works, is easy, was free. I like it.
Yeah, there’s a reason I keep it installed and at the ready, but it’s just less user-friendly and that is essential when my users aren’t tech savvy, they just want things to ‘work’. If JF reaches feature parity I’ll migrate my users, but I can’t be asked to explain why they need to pay a monthly fee for ota guides or why everything looks different, if I also need to explain that features are missing and why can’t I move their watch history. It’s got to be easy for them, but also for me too.
I’ve found that most FOSS projects just have a “for us, by us” mentality where nobody cares about making things easy to use to the point that it’s not even possible if you’re not an experienced coder AND have strong knowledge of networking.
That’s because it’s a fork of Emby from 13+ years ago, still running 90% of that old code. They’ve kept it functional, that’s about it.
If you want something that’s actually still being developed/improved look to Emby or Plex. Emby is more focused on ‘personal’ media servers with your own content and users under your own control; plex is more focused on cloud services, integrating content they can run advertising on and requiring your users to authenticate through their public servers to be able to access your local/private server.
I’ve had plex running on my nas for 6+ years now, and have it set to where all the cloud stuff is available but out of the way, as I have a small collection so I don’t need to lean into the cloud streaming. I remember trying Emby in my evaluation of Plex, but as I recall the UI was bleh and it too followed a paid model. I know of Kodi but I haven’t looked into it in a long time, and I never ended up actually trying it.
Plex is fine for my needs, but I decided to get setup with JF just ‘in case’ plex takes a sharp new direction or something (I’ve had it installed since the whole ‘watch stuff free with ads’ kicked off), so if/when I can just be like ‘hey all plex did [stupid thing] so I just need you all to uninstall plex, grab this jellyfin app, and login with [credentials] and we will be all set’.
Why did they fork Emby if Emby is still being actively developed?
Emby used to be entirely open source, it’s free to use the base product (server software and the built in web browser based app) but requires a license for the installable apps and some server features so that the developers have some income from their work and incentive to keep spending their time+efforts on it.
Some people don’t like paying others for their hard work so they’d regularly fork Emby as it releases updates so they could remove those paywalls.
Unwilling to continue supporting this, Emby went closed source so their work could no longer be stolen. Jellyfin is the final fork of emby before it officially closed its source code. They have since kept it running, but have made little to no improvements or changes beyond that.
I use Plex for music because it is very good there, but Jellyfin for movies/tv which I like more for that kind of content.
Not to mention the setup for hardware encoding which basically expects deep knowledge of the matter to even get it to run, let alone run well. Plex on the other hand hides it behind a license but it JUST WORKS, there’s no setup or anything.
I really wanted to use Jellyfin, but there’s just too many pain points
Plex and Jellyfin are two ways to host your own content. Basically, instead of streaming from a Netflix server, you’re streaming from your own server.
Plex was the original, and Jellyfin is the FOSS alternative. In short, you run the program on a computer somewhere, and tell that program where all of your media is stored. It’ll scan your media depending on the library type (movies, TV shows, music, etc,) automatically pair it with the appropriate metadata, and make it available for streaming via the computer.
You can combine this with the *arr suite (Radarr, Sonarr, etc) to have your torrent client automatically download new content as it comes out. Basically, the appropriate *arr program listens for when new content gets released, then automatically tells your torrent client to search for that content (based on specific rules like language, bitrate, capture method, etc) and download it automatically. This pairs nicely with Plex/Jellyfin because you can use automatic torrent management to drop the files directly into the right folders for your server to scan and make available.
It does have a few drawbacks. One of the most annoying is port forwarding. Lots of VPNs have stopped offering port forwarding, because some creeps figured out how to use it to share/trade CSAM anonymously. But Plex and Jellyfin require an open port in order to be made available outside of your network, and you don’t want to run the server+torrents without a VPN. Some VPNs allow port forwarding, but randomly assign the port every time you connect. So it may work fine for a while, but will require occasional attention when that port changes.
There’s also the issue with needing a computer that’s turned on all the time. Some people (like myself) just run it on their home desktop. But that means I needed to set up Wake On LAN to be able to boot my computer up remotely, or just be okay with letting it idle all the time and never sleep. Personally, I chose to enable WOL, so I just remote into my network and send a magic packet before trying to stream. But that’s an extra step some people won’t want to do every time. If you have an old computer sitting around gathering dust, it can be a great weekend project.
Is there a benefit to setting something like this up instead of just using some of the better free streaming sites?
It’s fun
Which sites are those? From my experience it’s hard to find 4k/Dolby Vision on those free streaming sites, which is where pirating and streaming your own stuff is the better option.
Higher quality and more reliable. I spent like 2 hours trying to find a site to stream the show I’m currently watching that didn’t have excessive audio issues. Were I a true pirate, I could simply download the highest quality available, and watch it whenever I want.
I wouldn’t want to use Plex, though. If you know what you want to watch and it’s already downloaded, just throw it on a flash drive or transfer it to your phone, no need to stream. If you want a netflix-style 2 terabytes of stuff that you may or may not ever watch, just… Spend the money on Netflix. Your time is worth more than that subscription fee. If Netflix doesn’t have the show you want, do the thing I said in the first paragraph.
What show?
Last Exile. I like obscure old anime, so it’s been on my list for a minute. I needed something to watch, so I checked Hulu. At some point in the last few months, they stopped streaming it.
So I definitely didn’t go to theindex.moe, and I super didn’t click on every damn streaming site they link to. I “promise” I didn’t settle on animeflix dot live, and I definitely didn’t put up with awful audio issues until I realized that the default server it streams from is in SD so you have to click the gear and set it to one of the HD servers instead.
Metadata categorization of your media content
I just pirate everything on to a hard drive I plug into my TV. I don’t see the point in streaming files you already own.
If I understand your setup, when you decide you want to a new movie you have to download it, pull the hdd over to the machine, transfer it to the hdd, rename, perhaps even transcode, and then put the drive back on the TV.
In the type of setup described above or like mine, I can pull out my phone and using a very simple search all of the file handling and such is taken care of for me. I don’t ever have to worry if I have the right filetype for the device I’m on, and I can watch that from any device on my local network, or just about any device that has an internet connection. Also, while I’m watching one thing, several other people can be watching whatever else they want on their devices.
Hdmi cable.
I have a smart TV where you can just plug in a NTFS formatted USB drive and it plays perfectly. Never had to rename or transcode anything. It plays 4K files more smoothly than most computers I’ve had.
The only problem I’ve had is when I’m watching a foreign film and the subtitle file is in the wrong file format.That covers a small subset of the reason a lot of us set it up the way we have. I mean, if that is working for you, great. But you still have to move a physical device, and the ability to watch media is still limited to the location of said device.
I don’t do it now, but I’m looking to.
The main benefit for me is the app accessibility (easier to search through an app than a file system), the convenience of not needing to carry around a bunch of data all the time, and the ease of sharing it with family.
The better free streaming sites are my go-to, because I have plausible deniability, I don’t with a torrent. And unfortunately my VPN throttles you unless you start paying. Which I am thinking about going ahead and doing.
I’ll tell you, I have my setup to the point where I go to one website, subscribe to a show, and episodes of that show appear to watch on my TV same day they are released.
I also set myself up to get email alerts telling me what new episodes I have to watch when they are done being downloaded.
… Setting all that up took me awhile and will take tech skills. But now that it’s set up, it’s zero touch aside from adding new shows.
Plus, I never have to worry about trying to find where to stream at it and even if my Internet goes out I can still watch my shows
you run the program on a computer somewhere
“the cloud is just someone else’s computer”
(even if the computer is yours, whereas you have created your own ‘mini cloud’. I hate that term, it’s just a machine running software. It’s all just machines, consuming us all. screams … anyway)
Plex is actually a fork of Kodi (XBMC). Kodi is still actively developed, and easily supports both local media (for example, downloaded using one of the *arrs) and streaming from various sources using addons.
I remember xbmc from back when you had to run an injection from a MechWarrior save file in order to load it onto the og Xbox.
Still got my copy of MW
That’s like saying humans evolved from monkeys. Plex and Kodi share a common ancestor, XBMC.
No it’s not. Kodi is XBMC, they just changed the name.
Edit: straight from the horses mouth https://kodi.tv/article/xbmc-getting-new-name-introducing-kodi-14/
What’s FOSS?
Free (and) Open Source Software
You can use it behind a reverse proxy to avoid port forwarding.
I have been using Emby, which is like Plex and Jellyfin. Just another option. I don’t need bells and whistles, just want to stream my content.
Jellyfin is an Emby fork
Where can I find good tutorials for the *arr suite? I have Jackett installed for easier searching in Qbit, but I half assed that somehow into working. I would love to have auto downloads for content, especially those shows that still release episodes like a drop feed. An almost fully automated Plex would be amazing the TV show requests I get.
Tbh, all you need nowadays for most stuff is a VPN , Qbittorrent and 1337x.to
Download speeds are such that a 1.5gb film takes about a minute to download (in Europe, not sure about third world countries lol)
If you need something more obscure, look up how to add the search engine to Qbittorrent
I highly discourage 1337x. They got caught not banning a user who intentionally uploaded malware. Forgive the reddit link, but there aren’t a lot of piracy news sites.
What is the alternative?
torrentgalaxy.to is pretty solid, but cya with antivirus etc
Viruses or pay for your shit? That’s the alternative.
If you don’t know how to use a computer, I agree
Yeah, because nobody’s ever embedded some sort of crypto spam in their content online. Y’all are way too smart to fall for that. 🙄
Dude… Malware comes hand-in-hand with pirating. You just have to exercise caution and you’ll probably be fine.
Never hafta worry about malware on private trackers!
Damn. Just learned that trusting 1337x and IGGGAMES was a bad idea. Trying to teach my little pirate how to be safe on the high seas only to find out the places and people I thought were safe aren’t so.
Realdebrid costs equal or less than vpn and you don’t need to jump any hoops.
Realdebrid just finds the torrents for you though, right? You’d still need a VPN since you’re technically downloading the movie to watch it. I know a lot of ISPs send notices if you torrent a copyrighted movie
Nope. It also downloads the torrent for you and gives you download link or stream link to the video. Most of the time, the torrent is already on their cache, so it’s instantly available to you.
Wow I had no idea. How are they still running if that’s the case?
They’re more like a private storage server. You can’t see what movies they have. Technically you can only download what you ‘add’ there, but they cache everybody else’s downloads too, so your download is readily available. I’m not sure of all technicalities, but there are a few different debrid services, so there must be some way they are able to do this.
Goated thank you so much
Nevermind that shit, Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid. I’m fucking done with these greedy-ass companies. I was paying Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Paramount , MLB.tv and HBO, and pretty content to do so, and they all continually removed content and adjusted their pricing to reduce what I was getting for my money. They finally pushed me beyond my tolerance limit a few months ago and I’ve been back to sailing the high seas for the first time in 20 years.
I have more content now, all at acceptable quality options, all with good subtitles instead of the mess HBO was, and all on the same platform instead of having to jump between 7 different apps. I’m done with them and I’ll stay done with them until they pull their heads out of their asses.
Edit: if you get a cheap computer, a Chromecast, a FireTV, or what I have - an Nvidia Shield TV, then you get even get a nifty remote controller and a good standard browsing platform for everything.
Just set this up on a cheap Onn 4k box from Walmart. Works fantastic. Also setup the Trakt integration to keep up with what I watch across multiple devices.
I haven’t heard of Trakt before, but that sounds neat. I only ever watch stuff on my TV from my couch, so I haven’t needed anything like that.
I’m like you, hadn’t pirated outside of games since early 2000s and just started again. Wait until you see the shit we have now, it’s mind-blowing how far it’s come.
And with Jellyfin if you have the upload speeds you can even host for family etc, so anyone sharing your Netflix now can just login to your Jellyfin server, for them it will be a comparable experience.
Pirating games is basically unheard of for me, unless it’s a product not readily available on a modern storefront.
Nintendo has a problem with me playing Pokemon Omega Ruby on a 3DS emulator? they are free to offer a switch version.
This is because steam is not an asshole, which is a big reason why I kind of got disappointed when they stopped offering movies. I like having those on the same platform
Do you need to set up a VPN for doing that? Or can they just log in straight up?
They can just log straight in, there is an android app or they can even login via a browser
I’m still maining plex, and at least there, they just create a plex account, you grant access to that account, and that’s it. Don’t even have to open ports. My guess is with JF since there isn’t a central account host, you’d probably have expose some ports on your network to be able to login without a VPN.
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There’s now a whole ecosystem of applications to streamline the download of series (sonarr) and movies (radarr) using torrents or Usenet (prowlarr). Pair those with a good player like Jellyfin or Plex and you have a nice media center that for sure won’t stop working everytime your family tries to watch a movie…
Check out Stremio, if you are used to streaming services it is the best equivalent.
!c/opensignups @c/opensignups @opensignups@lemmy.world !opensignups@lemmy.world
I think one of those should work… Sign up for a private tracker or two
It’s like Plex, but with fewer features and a worse interface.
Facts. I run both but JF is not ‘family-ready’ and thus sits on my server, receiving updates and idling until that changes. Plex took 5 minutes of explaining and the folks have been happily using it for a few years now.
Same experience for me. Is worth the $5/month for premium access.
If you think you’ll be in this long-term, get a lifetime license. What would have got me 2 years has got me 6 and counting.
Yeah buncha haters in here but you’re right.
Personally I prefer Apple TV and infuse.
Ten bucks says anyone downvoting has no idea what XBMC is.
But it’s totally free. You don’t need app unlocks, you can have as many devices as you want, and you can hardware transcode without paying for premium.
Paid ~$100 for the lifetime license 9 years ago. So less than 93 pennies a month.
Throughout that time Emby has constantly been developed bringing bug fixes, UI improvements, and new features; while also providing excellent support as needed on the forums.
TBH I think I’ve vastly underpaid and plan to donate to the project shortly.
In that same time, I’ve seen very few meaningful updates to jellyfin. Just scrolling through their changelogs it’s mostly filled with:
New Features and Major Improvements
N/A
Release Notes
N/A
Add the *arr apps into the mix and you get super low effort pirating, legit changed my life when I set it all up lol
Sorry, what are the *arr apps? Not familiar with that stuff…
Ah, my bad. I’m so used to it all that I can’t help but spit out jargon with no context sometimes 😅
I’m referring to apps like Sonarr, which basically keeps an eye on torrent/usenet providers and downloads episodes for you automatically. So you tell it you want some show, optionally set the quality you want it at, and it takes care of everything so that the episodes just show up on Jellyfin/Plex after they air and it grabs them. There’s also Radarr for movies and a whole bunch of related ones.
Thanks dude!
Just make sure you use a VPN so you don’t get a nasty DMCA notice from your ISP.
Pretty much the one upside of living where I do is ISPs couldn’t care less haha
Appreciate the heads-up anyway, very much relevant to a good portion of the folks who might stumble upon my comment :)
They’re small services that you load your libraries into, and select content you want to get and the quality of that content. Then the service goes out and finds the torrents for you and adds them to your library.
And thanks to you as well!
I’ve tested jellyfin this week on my dedicated server. It’s cool but most of my files need transcoding to be played on the browser, which my weak server CPU cannot handle. The best option I found to stream any file format without eating up all server resources on this machine is to set up a simple nginx server with autoindex streaming the files to VLC. I use the “Open with VLC” browser extension to quickly open the links. Playback performance is quite good (scrubbing is fast) and everything plays well.
Cool
I like Plex and Real Debrid too.
On it’s like Plex.
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It helps me organize what I download. I m trying *arr softwares now for content.
Piracy always rises up from service issues. This is a service issue
The trick is to pirate everything first and if it’s good then pay money afterwards to support the creators
And as an added bonus: If I buy the blu-ray, I don’t need to keep the massive 4k remuxes on my server. It’s a win-win.
This.
Bring back bookshelfs full of DVD cases (or blu-ray nowadays^^)
thats if the corporations behind it are actually paying the creators
For music, to avoid this with record companies, I use a youtube downloader to rip songs from youtube then go to shows or buy shirts. Admittedly probably harder with movies or games, though.
Piracy is a service issue. - GabeN
- Einstein
and then all corporations go suprise pikachu face when piracy is on the rise :O
“Piracy is growing back!? How?? We had prattically killed it with our optimal services haven’t we??”
Do what you want cuz a pirate lives free, you are a pirate.
You know, I can actually see this happening and them not understanding why its climbing. I’m sure you could make a great comedy sketch out of it.
People often have a hard time understanding things when their paycheck depends on them not understanding those things.
I feel like that’s on the level of ancient Chinese proverbs but for modern corporate society
Sad thing is, I read it in a book from the 1930s and I don’t think it was new back then.
like retail suddenly writing off large chunks to ‘theft’ coinciding with move to self checkout. surprise
HBO MIN
HBO MID at most
HBO AVG
I came back in here just to up vote this. Perfect!
I’m old enough to remember when HBO’s entire point was you paid for cable so you wouldn’t have ads. That was their business model.
Then sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (I dunno, that decade’s kind of a blur) they started sneaking ads in between shows, but not in the middle of shows. But you were paying a higher price, with a few ads. Then they started showing ads to everyone, and still making you pay. I’m still salty about that.
This was always going to happen. They’ll compound paying PLUS ads, and you’ll like it, because what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
Fuck them all . 🏴☠️
e: massively borked that first sentence
what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
in Australia that was the whole selling point of foxtel when it launched. these days it has more ads than free to air TV and still costs like $60 a month for the basic package. most people only use it for sport
Great example , thanks! Yeah, same thing.
Paying customers attention is so fucking valuable. People pay for something, maybe if we add ads they will pay for more things!
And most people are surprisingly not bothered by ads. So… Just criminalise the people that are, and there you go, infinite money making machine.
Most cable TV channels still had ads, the revenue generated from subscribers would never have been enough to cover otherwise.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I’m right, they’re wrong, deal with it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
And it’s funny that you’re talking about “the early days” since it started in 1948 and I’m willing to bet that you weren’t born.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd.
I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.
e: also
Ad-free, and local access
This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken placeCheck any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/the-complete-history-of-cable-tv
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.I provided a source with more sources, no it wasn’t.
Need more? There:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States
First phrase:
Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948.The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
How old are you?
I don’t need links to tell me what this was like when I vividly remember.
Yea, cable television first became available in 1948. Regular middle class families did not have cable television for a long time after that.
Mobile phone service was available in 1959. Guess how many people had it? A good friend of my family had a car phone in the mid 70s. Guess how common that was?
You can’t go by invention dates on stuff like this. You’ll be amazed at how long some things take to gain market acceptance.
I think the best one is Electric Cars, which were invented in the 1800s, before the Internal Combustion Engine.
So far I’m the only one providing sources, an anecdote of when you were a kid isn’t reliable.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable. Cable exclusive channels weren’t a thing before 1970 (when there’s was 10m subscribers already) and ads on a cable exclusive channel first started in 1977 with nearly all of them having ads in the in the 80s.
7 years of commercial free cable exclusive channels that were a minority of channels available at the time. No, people weren’t paying not to see adverts and no it wasn’t the point of cable TV like you said, the point of creating cable TV was to allow people to reliably watch TV by broadcasting the signal in a way that wasn’t affected by all sorts of elements out of the control of the broadcasters.
According to the wiki article that you linked:
However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
Your link literally states you’re wrong…
No, because the majority of TV channels you got when getting cable weren’t cable exclusive, cable exclusive appeared in 1972 (24 years after the introduction of cable broadcasting) and in 1977 came the first cable exclusive channel with ads.
People saying “not having ads was the point of cable” are wrong since not having ads on all the cable exclusive channels was a thing for 5 years and only happened after cable already had a good fooothold in the market.
You’ve already changed the goal posts. Your initial claim was that most cable networks had ads, and now you’ve walked that entirely back to “well there existed one channel that had ads”
But also the original comment was they were old enough to remember it
And if you look at this timeline: https://www.computertechreviews.com/a-brief-history-of-cable-tv-commercials/
It lines up pretty well with their claims of when ads were during the viewing experience.
I didn’t move the goal post, most of the channels you got access to when subscribing to cable were the same channels you had access to without cable and they had ads, a minority of channels, starting in 72 with HBO, which was the first cable exclusive channel, didn’t have them but in 77 the trend reversed.
That’s 5 years without ads on a minority of channels you could watch and people speak like all cable was ad free and like that was the whole point of it. Well, no, the whole point was to get TV to people who didn’t have good reception and the people here ignore the 24 years of cable TV that came before 1972 and the 46 years since 1977.
Thank you for being a loyal subscriber. Please hold still while we fuck you
“Thanks for the money, fuck you”
They must think so little of me, as if I’m grateful for this?
This is it isn’t it? I’d complain and cancel but they don’t care about how I feel.
maybe or maybe not. but they do care where you spend your money
Cancel it, problem solved.
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what they do is lure you in with unsustainable prices and once they got established slap you with real price. Because for the real price you wouldn’t find it worthy in the first place. But now that you enjoy it it’s more likely you’ll pay more than what you might initially do
Man, they really are like drug dealers…
So right after I signed up at the beginning of this year, they switched from HBOMax to “Max.” I paid for a year in advance, and of course when I signed up there was nothing about them switching to a new brand. All of a sudden it was full of trash reality shows and ID Discovery true crime. I have no idea what possessed them to do that.
Then once it switched over I stopped being able to stream any new HBO shows on mobile and customer service won’t refund me any amount. Not that I can even communicate with them effectively. It’s all “chat” with AI or people who have no idea what I’m saying. Half the shows still won’t play on mobile for me.
TL;DR I paid for a year of HBO. They changed their selection a few months in. I lost mobile access to a bunch of their shows. And now I’m losing even more features before the year is up. That’s quite literally not what I paid for.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
Ask them for a refund, in writing, document everything, and if they refuse, take it to your state’s AG office. Obviously I can’t speak for every state, but mine has slapped around whirlpool when they refused to fix a defective fridge, dell when they refused to replace a monitor with dead pixels, etc. I’ve never had a bad experience. It’s amazing how a letter from your local AG’s office will suddenly make companies be less shitty to you.
Letter to your state insurance investigation board also help claims magically settle faster
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What we really need is an instance of GPT-4 trained on every court case in history as well as Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Clark Howard, Rosemary Shahan, etc, and instructed to act like a small town genius lawyer in a John Grisham novel.
Basically a chatbot absolutely full of ideas about how to punish corporations for shitty business practices. A resource center for consumer advocacy.
If they won’t refund then do a charge back on your card.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
There are government websites you can report this to, though I do not know what effect that will have.
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you paid for a year for a certain set of services they have to give you those services for the whole year, or refund you your money.
They also likely claimed during the merger that it wouldn’t effect customers. Of course we knew that was a lie.
It’s always a lie.
Until each and every one of us reading this commits to expending the energy, and sacrificing the leisure time, to actually pursue what small options we have, this is only going to get worse.
That, and voting into office people that’ll actually write regulation laws to curb these bad behaviors from corporations.
If you paid for a service you were not rendered, presumably with a credit card, and attempted remediation with the company, hopefully in writing or recorded in some form, you can do a charge back with your credit card.
I had purchased a year in advance last fall and when it switched over, it only didn’t play on m9bile for me for a week, then I was able to stream on mobile regularly. However, with their changes, I chose not to renew my subscription. Their quality is degrading quite a bit, it was no longer worth it.
The only way this becomes less likely in the future is if you sue them. Given you’re locked into a year contract, a lawsuit is the only kind of consequences they might face.
Thats the same time that they cancelled raised by wolves. Fuck discovery and fuck corporate mergers.
Time to start sailing the high seas!
Hehe, “start”
Don’t worry, they’ll raise those prices very soon.
Ja I got the email today, and I’m like, what new features? This is anti new features.
if you want to try your luck, I suggest contacting their customer support to notify them of this issue. I did too.
Did you cancel during that call?
Because they put your concerns in a furnace, if you didnt.
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And what did that do for you?
absolutely nothing. But they said they will inform someone of my complaint. maybe if enough people complain, they will be more likely to respond?
I’m doing everything I can to blow this up, even if some stuff leads nowhere its worth a try. I contacted press websites as well.
Customers cancelling over the shrinkflation, and leaving the feedback as to why you’re cancelling, is really the only thing that companies will respond to. Because of their fiduciary responsibility to their share holders, their share price is all that drives these decisions.
Gotcha, the expected response.
I would cancel if I were the customer, but I have a peg-leg and an eye patch already. Good luck!
ARGHHH, touch water!
They didn’t inform anyone. They laughed as they hung up. The only four words they understand are “I want to cancel”.
“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
I have never seen a company actively promoting that they have less to offer. Jesus Christ will capitalism please just come to a crashing halt already
