Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.
We’ll also examine each streaming platform’s financial status to get an idea of what these companies are thinking (spoiler: They’re thinking about money).
Netflix starts killing its cheapest ad-free plan in June
Sony bumps Crunchyroll prices weeks after shuttering Funimation
Peacock is raising prices
Fubo cuts 19 channels
In a seemingly desperate push, many streaming services prioritize revenue and profits ahead of building the best streaming service for customers.
We could go on about how this might force people to reconsider their subscriptions, but we should publish before another service makes yet another policy change.
I’ve cancelled Netflix. Just wasn’t using it enough for the price. Instead I will entertain myself by downloading Linux distributions on BitTorrent.
I had to upgrade the 4x8TB drives in my Synology NAS box to 4x12TB to hold all of the extra Linux ISO’s I was downloading.
Got a recommendation for a Nas? My 12tb is getting so full of Linux distros, I have to expand faster than I thought
Synology’s smaller units are great and with a few docker configs you are ready to go.
I use Synology, works as smb, cifs, and nfs for my in garage proxmox stuff. It’s pretty good for the money
I have an older one… 411j I think. Amazon gifted it to me one day… so nice of them.
I canceled my Hulu+Disney+whatever package this week, as well as my Netflix. Piracy all the way.
What do you use?
I’m not a cop btw
I haven’t done this myself because it’s obviously very illegal, but I’ve been told you set up a server with docker and set up the following containers:
- gluetun for VPN (exit in Switzerland with a fallback to Spain) as these countries have the laxest regulation re downloading licensed media.
- radarr for film
- sonarr for tv
- other *arr instances for subtitles, music, ebooks etc
- qbittorrent piped through the Gluetun container
- jellyfish, plex or XBMC in front as a player.
But what do I know? I haven’t done it myself and only download large Linux distributions because I love distro-hopping.
They let people believe that streaming is cheap, but it is not. A server can send streams to many people at the same time, but not so many as it seems and sever up time is a cost, in terms of energy and in terms of sysadmin time. Maintenance of the network is also expensive, especially in the US where most of the people live in low density neighbourhoods.
To that you have to add the cost of the big data servers that check everything people look at and profile their customers.
The dirty cheap subscriptions were meant to attract new customers, the service was heavily subsidized. The companies looked profitable just because other companies bought more ad space than necessary. Overadvertising is the preferred method to give stealth subsidies, but it is a cost for the other businesses of the network. After a while they have to shift those costs to the customers.
When I worked at an internet provider, Netflix sent us a cache (I’m sure they have several at that ISP now). I can’t imagine it cost them more than a few thousand dollars, as it was just a bare bones box full of hard drives. We gave them free power, internet, and rack space in our data center. Every night during the slow period it would fill up with whatever they thought would stream the next day.
There was nothing to do with neighborhoods, the cache served customers all over Maine and they didn’t pay us anything. Netflix’s costs are more likely content and licensing.
