• _sideffect@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Shit like this is why I don’t feel bad at all for pirating.

    They raise their rates by 65% so they can continue to pay Hollywood actors to make crappy forgettable movies for the service

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Don’t forget the 5 BILLION dollars they just gave to WWE, a company that regularly goes to Saudi Arabia. A country so backwards in human rights that they don’t allow women to work. So WWE’s answer to this was to create a tornament just for the women. Called “The Great Moolah Classic”. Only problem with that is, it happened just as the MeToo movement was happening. Now in case you’re unaware, womens pro wrestling from the 1950s through the 1980s was dominated by “The Great Moolah”.

      Btw, I’M not saying she was great. Far from it. Thats just her stage name.

      But if you were a woman, and you wanted to get into womens wrestling between 1950-1985 you NEEDED to go through The Great Moolah. Here’s the problem though.

      You had to live in a camp, where she controlled every aspect of your life from training through retirement. What she did with this control was appalling. She forced them to prostitute themselfs out to not only the male wrestlers, but also the rest of the general public in the area.

      These women then had to give 100% of the money to Moolah, or else they’d be beaten.

      And that’s the tornament they tried to give as the consolation prize for women not being allowed to wrestle in Saudi Arabia. Oh, and when they were forced to change the name, almost IMMEDIATELY, they changed it to The Mae Young Classic. Mae Young was Moolah’s best friend, and one of the people who would help beat the other women. That’s still what it’s called today. When they first introduced the trophy for it, the trophy was intentionally made to look like a vagina. "Here’s your make believe trophy for winning a make believe tornament, as a consolation prize for very real restrictions on making very real money, and we shaped it like your genitals. Snickers, who sponsered the tornament balked when they saw their logo would be on that trophy, and they were forced to redesign it to something more generic. The tornament continues to this day.

      And that’s what Netflix just paid 5 BILLION dollars for. Either 3 or 5 years. I forget which.

      • set_secret@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Holy shit, do you have some more info or refs for this, this sounds unbelievably fucked up.

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Disclaimer: I only know what I just looked up. Not a big wrestling watcher personally.

          From what I can tell there’s two separate titles. The Mae Young Classic had two tournaments in 2017 & 2018. The Great Moolah was announced in 2018, subsequently changing the name to WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal. It also has only had two tournaments, in 2018 & 2019.

          As for the logo/trophy, WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal looks like this, and the Mae Young Classic looks like this. I couldn’t find any info on previous versions, but if there was one that looked more like a vagina, it might as well be an anatomical model.

    • firkin_slang_whanger@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Care to share what site you use to pirate? I haven’t been in that loop for a while, but all these pricing increases for all these streaming services is driving me back.

    • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I love seeing the private trackers I use not mentioned here. If other sites have the spotlight, that’s a win.

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Netflix has no way to continue growing aside from increasing prices. That is a bad sign. They will just keep squeezing people. Your best bet is to stop subscribing.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Damn near every tech company and major utility provider has no way of growing aside from squeezing.

      No matter where you turn you will be getting squeezed, and it’ll just get worse every year that regulations don’t catch up.

      And if the U.S. has it’s way, institutional regulation will be a thing of the past as a new wave of unchecked corporate oligarchy begins. And since the U.S’s biggest export is crazy, it’ll just spread…

      Making the future more grim.

      • Taohumor@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Anyone care to actually do anything about it? Seems like people are more concerned about abortion and things like that than everyone’s collective livelihood.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Trustbusting would be a solution, but people gotta get behind it. Guess which guy running for President is moving in that direction? Hint: it’s not the billionaire.

    • henfredemars
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      5 months ago

      The shareholders are seeking to juice the company and throw it away as usual. Users need to see the writing on the wall and move on.

    • Taohumor@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yea tbh it’s business model is gonna be obsolete.

      The bottom line is especially in a trash economy where the rich are bleeding everyone, no one is gonna wanna pay for digital luxuries.

      I only shell out for hardware and food.

      • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Streaming is going to end up exactly like cable, it feels inevitable. Adverts, package bundle deals, contracts will be the final thing where they lock you in for a “discount”.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Yup, I’m playing with Jellyfin for our devices. I already have a fair amount of content in a digital format, so I’m mostly testing to see if offline playback works well.

      So far so good, just need my wife and kids to approve and I can kill Netflix.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Do the shareholders care?

      Cause they just want to squeeze Netflix while they still can before they jump ship. And at that time, Netflix dying and another streaming services surfacing would be ideal for savvy investors.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    My biggest beef is that the ad plans also limit your downloads. I use that feature a ton.

    So now I just pirate everything.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      We pay for an ad-free tier and our downloads “expired” when we were in the middle of nowhere. They still existed on our device and on the service, we just couldn’t play them.

      That got my wife annoyed enough that I think I can convince her to just buy DVDs again. $15/month is 1-2 DVDs/month, and that’s about what we watch anyway. We won’t get Netflix originals, but that’s fine with me. If we ever need any of those, we can just binge for a month.

  • Trilobite@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I joined the Plex server plan, it’s better and works everywhere and I don’t get price increases or ads

    • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      All the shows that I like I’ve been buying DVD or Blu-rays for, and then I rip them and put them on my Plex server. Just so I can watch some anytime, and not potentially damage the discs.

      I don’t have to worry about geofencing, Don’t have to worry about a price change ever, Don’t have to deal with commercials, Don’t have to think if the shows that I like are going to disappear and maybe show up on a different provider, and generally higher quality audio and video.

        • lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 months ago

          You’d have to remove the DRM protection to get the same results. But by that point it’s no easier than ripping a blu ray, and with ripping you get the added benefit of having a physical copy.

          • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Okay that makes sense. I have around 1,000 movies on iTunes so not sure if I’d have all the space for the dvds and would take a pretty long time to rip

            Guess we are all lucky that we have options these days

        • comfydecal
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          5 months ago

          I find putting a DVD into a DVD player without having to sign in, have credit, a credit card, and have wifi to be the easiest. Usually costs less too

            • nomous@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Remember those few years when stores had a little machine they could feed the check into and it’d fill everything out for you?

        • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’d say no. Because it’s online and attached to your account it can be lost. If for some reason you lose access to your Apple account you lose everything you’ve bought. And a lot of these online services don’t want you to share or transfer your account. So like if you pass away, most of these online services don’t allow you to transfer the account to a living relative (per of the TOS) (granted I doubt there’s much I could do to actually stop you if you just leave them out of it and just give the account to somebody).

          • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Kids and spouse can still access everything since they are on my Apple family thing. I hear what you’re saying though.

  • Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    Is it that the decade of 0% interest rates and angel funding for startups lulled us into unrealistically thinking we could get unlimited everything for 9.99 per month, or is it that companies are suddenly starting to rip off people?

    As an end consumer it’s impossible to gauge what is a proper price for entertainment.

    • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      It’s probably the latter.

      “Delivering shareholder value” has destroyed numerous companies, and I doubt it’ll stop soon.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      It’s simple really

      Is the boss a multimillionaire?

      No: No problem

      Yes: They’re charging more than they need to

    • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      As with many things, it really is likely a mixture of both. Very possible that 9.99 was unrealistically low, but the current streaming market and “inflation” smoke screening is also enabling some real squeezing of consumers.

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        It was maybe too low for their awesome library they had at the start (though their initial pricing was still more than a lot of their customers spent in a year for movies/TV prior).

        It’s criminally overpriced for their awful library now.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        5 months ago

        The ads are added in the app. If you cast, the Chromecast can’t add apps (yet) so they’d have to make ad streams instead, and switch between the streams show-ad-show which would take several seconds of loading screen each way and so on. Which is a level of fuckery even they shied away from.

        TLDR they can’t (easily) show ads during casting.

    • kif@lemmy.nz
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      5 months ago

      Kind of makes sense - casting is usually a webstream without extra dev effort. I’m not sure if you still can, but I used to circumvent twitch ads by casting from my phone. Not to excuse their shitty behaviour; I gave up on them years ago and started hosting my own content.

  • Patrick@lemmy.today
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    5 months ago

    Not sure if it’d work on Netflix but my wife were pleasantly surprised to A&E and History apps on our apple tv suddenly forgetting how to do ads after I set up adguard home with a few extra filter lists…I did have to ok a few things the list blocked. But the apps work and seem to be adless, at least for now.

    • ccdfa@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Yeah I regrettably* bought a year’s subscription to Peacock and was also pleasantly surprised that my PiHole just blocked all the ads.

      *This was when they were offering a year for 20 USD. They had advertised world cup streaming but neglected to mention that all the commentary was in Spanish with no English option. I ended up just streaming a Swiss TV channel because it was at least in a language I can understand.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You could just ditch all those apps and get Stremio with a Real-Debrid subscription. You can stream any content from any provider for ~$3/mo (including Netflix, A&E, History, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, etc.) Ad*-free, of course.

      Basically R-D works by downloading torrents to a dedicated server, so you can stream them instantly using a Netflix-like interface on your TV/tablet/PC/phone (via Stremio). And since they’re direct downloads, you don’t have to wait for seeds, nor do you need a VPN. It’s like having a seedbox except anyone can add any torrent to it (and not just videos, but literally any torrent can be downloaded instantly).

      Sorry if this reads like an ad, but I really want more people to know about this. There’s a better way than paying for a bunch of streaming services, or waiting hours for people to seed. Or signing up for a private tracker and having to constantly worry about keeping your seeding ratio up.

        • Joe Cool@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          And paying for it with a card with your name on it might be a bad idea…

          EDIT: VPN or Usenet might be better and there are also pretty good tools.

          • Psythik@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You can always pay with Monero, which is completely anonymous if used correctly.

            But I’m almost scared to mention this, given how much Lemmy hates crypto.

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yeah but then you need a VPN and lose the ability to steam instantly, defeating the entire point. The Torrentio plugin works best with a Debrid service.

          • TwanHE@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Not really a problem if you have decent enough internet and already use a vpn for other purposes but yes.

            • Psythik@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I have gigabit internet, Debrid is still faster.

              Internet speed doesn’t matter when people are leeching or a torrent just doesn’t have many seeds. Debrid solves that problem. And it’s cheaper than a VPN, which is perfect for people who don’t need a VPN for other reasons.

              • TwanHE@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Somehow more than 5 ish seeders are usually enough for it to start playing within seconds. But im mostly watching episodes as they come out and 1k+ seeders is usual.

    • Laser@feddit.org
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      5 months ago

      I mean I think I know what you mean I also think “digitizing” doesn’t really describe it. Most media nowadays is digital to begin with. Even audio CDs store a digital format.

  • Corvidae@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    We now have a collection of maybe 400 DVDs (not pirated, legally purchased). Sure, everything we watch is reruns, but there are no commercials.

    • comfydecal
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      5 months ago

      99% of the shit Netflix has is reruns anyways

    • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Cable companies did the cable model because it was profitable. Netflix and others are slowly realizing that and moving towards it.

      • sudo42@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yup. It was the same enshittification process. “Subscribe to cable. We don’t have commercials!” Then a few years later, “Guess what?!? You’re getting commercials!”

  • hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    If that happens,i’ll trakt + jellyfin the hell out of all their shitty shows. Just for kicks.