Just rage canceled Paramount+ after seeing the 1 minute of unstoppable ads before each episode.
Then they’ll say people don’t want to pay for content…ffs
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If you’re paying for a service and you still get ads on it, you’re getting scammed.
Hulu built their entire system on this scam. Before Hulu, the majority of TV shows were available on their channel website for free, with ads. Hulu took this and added a subscription on top of the ads.
Yarr harr fiddle dee dee
Shiver me timbers at Hollywood’s greed.
(For the recond i don’t know what that means…)
Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free.
You are a pirate!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/GVXCr6upWUo?si=ZXRl5SLj64ebPgRF
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
We say “yo-ho” but we don’t say “ho”.
Do what you want ‘cuz a pirate is free
For us, we have to watch the unskippable ad during Star Trek Picard, then it jumps back 10 minutes in the episode so we need to fast forward to get back to our place. This has been going on for several episodes.
Ugh I hate that with YouTube ads as well (at least on my Android TV). I’ll watch something, get interrupted by ads, sometimes minutes long and/or multiple ads, and after the ad(s) it jumps seconds or even minutes ahead from where I was watching. Then when I rewind to the point I was at it’ll often play even more ads. It’s super annoying but if they think this convinces me to buy their premium subscription they’re very wrong. It’s so off-putting.
You could just buy the bluray.
Or pirate it.
Or I could just buy the bluray.
We aren’t all savages you know. I get my media in style.
Provided it’s available in your location, and still being sold/produced. Furthermore Blurays are only going to be harder to find as time goes on with companies like Best Buy stating that they’ll no longer be selling them.
I just bought it off of ebay
Surprised that no one here mentioned Pi-hole. It doesn’t work for ads on all streaming apps, but pi-hole successfully removes all ads for my Paramount+ subscription.
I’ve used Pi-Hole for years now and it’s absolutely indispensable. It’s one of those things where you kind of forget about it then you’re over visiting someone’s house without it and it’s absolutely jarring to see ads cropping up all over the place where you’re not used to seeing them.
I know what you mean.
Browsing the Internet at work is a horrible experience. I’m actually shocked at the ad intrusion that I am usually saved from!
What’s hilarious to me is when friends visit and then always comment on how much nicer it is using their phones on my wifi.
I rarely ever need a browser for work but damn I opened it the other day to search some stuff and nearly every single article was so covered in ads I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be reading. 2 sides bars, an floating over head, an ad across the bottom, and some weird floating one that follows as you scroll. How are people not using ad blocks
Do you mean with your phone on company wifi?
Company laptop which is pretty much hardened so no chance of installing anything that is unapproved. No idea how people survive without an adblock.
AdGuard Home is better than PiHole since it supports DNS over HTTPS out-of-the-box, which prevents your ISP from inspecting and modifying your DNS requests/responses. The ISP can do that even if you’re using a custom DNS server, since regular DNS is unencrypted and unauthenticated.
By default it uses Quad9 via DoH. There’s an easy to use Docker container available for it.
Same can be done with Pi-hole. Yes it isn’t ootb, but it is easy to do.
There are still challenges with doh and isp packet scanning. Even without clear text dns, your isp still knows where you go, if not from the lookups. They still inspect traffic and destinations and can make very detailed inferences, even without https inspection on DoH or other packets.
Pihole is fully for free. AdH seems to be the same for now, but it is a company running it, they want to make money. I would be a bit worried about this.
This also doesn’t stop devices from doing their own dns over https. Adguard home and pihole will try to block the DoH locators (canaries) but can’t actually stop a tv from connecting to a known ip if it wants to.
Don’t get me wrong. I highly recommend something, and adguard home is nice, but I’m not convinced by its the right long term solution nor does either solution provide the sum total.
Same can be done with Pi-hole. Yes it isn’t ootb, but it is easy to do.
I’m surprised they don’t use it by default though. People usually use solutions like PiHole and AdGuard Home because they want to configure it via a UI rather than at the command line, so needing to do extra manual command-line steps to get DoH working with PiHole isn’t ideal.
Pihole is fully for free. AdH seems to be the same for now, but it is a company running it, they want to make money. I would be a bit worried about this.
AdGuard Home is licensed under GNU GPL. They can’t relicense it unless they get permission from everyone that’s contributed code (and if anyone disagrees, their parts must be deleted or rewritten).
Code yes, but the information, lists, and capabilities beyond that no.
I do think it’s a low risk, but it is not zero.
They could also do some nefarious stuff if they get bought out.
Don’t get me wrong I hope they last and I’m just plain wrong, but pihole works great and is a bit more pure.
About ui/ux, you are one hundred percent right. People want and demand simple. Single click install and setup is what is really needed and pihole loses resoundingly in that, especially if combined with encrypted dns request forwarding.
I really want to be able to read this and know wtf it means. I have so much skill to up.
DNS is like a big phone book telling you that navigating to “google.com” = IP address 75.209.123.456, for example. Your ISP can see these requests and add information to them like ads. Using AdGuard DNS encrypts these requests so they can’t be modified.
deleted by creator
So does unsubbing and just nicking the bits you want.
Controld.com also works of you don’t want to host it yourself
No no, you misunderstand. The subscription is so you’re allowed to watch ads. It’s a privilege! 😅
Paramount are yet another company who do not have enough content to justify their own streaming services.
They put billboards everywhere, and each one lists like 6 shows that I couldn’t give a fuck about. They’ve not even got enough content for a billboard, let alone a paid for service.
I just use it for Star Trek. Once I’ve finished Lower Decks and TOS I’m cancelling.
Yeah but how are these poor dears supposed to create ever-increasing shareholder value with a pure subscription model?
I never paid for Paramount+ because when they would have free trials, it would give me “content unavailable” errors for literally everything I wanted to watch. So I just pirate all the Trek. Fuck Paramount.
In Canada it’s a half bastardized app that’s an add on to the Amazon Prime App. Like tier inside of it. On a FireCube when trying to click on anything Paramount+ advertised on the home screens it takes one to the US full App only which won’t load due to the Geo lock for outside the US.
One needs to go into Prime to then find the shows. It’s a bit of a shit show and one of the first subs I cancelled in a line of them recently.
That’s what you get for paying for Paramount+.
I’ve learned that (at least on both Android and Google TV) you can start an episode, immediately go back then start a different one and there will be no ad.
On Firefox with ublock, you have to hit the play button 3-4 times, but it works and there are no ads.
I just got star trek Picard in my jellyfin instance. I have a hdhomerun that is used for live TV and recording live TV like older star trek.
No DRM and I control it all
But then you have to watch Picard 😢
hdhomerun
No DRM
Until ATSC 3.0 is forced on everyone, at least if you’re in the USA :/
ATSC 3.0 is the next version of the protocol used for over-the-air digital TV in the USA. It has some good parts, for example it uses H.265 instead of MPEG2 which allows for 4K TV at lower bitrates to what 1080p uses today, and 1080p at significantly lower bitrates.
However, it also supports DRM and encryption, and all the major networks are already encrypting their broadcasts. TVs need an internet connection to get the decryption key, and can’t store recordings in a decrypted format.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNTc5OWrDic
If you rely on antenna TV, please write to the FCC in opposition of the encryption: https://blog.lon.tv/2023/07/10/the-fcc-responds-to-my-atsc-3-encryption-complaint-they-want-to-hear-from-you/
If you’re not in the USA… Just ignore me lol
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NNTc5OWrDic
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I feel like they just don’t get it. Why did I stop downloading things err “unofficially”? Because they were almost all available on Netflix, with no ads, and pretty much instantly with a decent interface.
Then they started making 1000 streaming platforms so that the monthly bill for everything you want works its way back to what I would pay for sat/cable. And now, this?
Then what, we’ll get the Pikachu face when they realise people are back sailing the seven seas?
I haven’t noticed any ads during my Fraiser rewatching
I only like Paramount+ for the Italian Serie A and Champions League. A bit different cause it’s live sports but besides that I don’t utilize it too much.
We got a skippable 30 second ad, then the Paramount logo, then watched 2 seasons of Star Trek strange New worlds without a single ad.
You sure you didn’t just hair trigger yourself there?
I still think you shouldn’t have video ads in a paid streaming service. Even if it’s just a single ad during a watch session. It shouldn’t be there when you’re paying to see the content
Here in the UK, I feel like a similar thing happened with cable/satellite. Originally, Sky TV was completely free. They only had 4 channels (and one of them was only kinda sky) mind you. But they were all free (with adverts). Later they brought in encryption and a subscription for the movie channel.
I am quite sure I recall seeing one of the rationales for when they started the subscription service covering the non movie channel, it was stated that there would be less or no advertising and it would instead be covered by the subscription. Needless to say, that never happened.
But ultimately, this is just normal business practice. If they can get away with charging you AND making money from ad views, they’re going to do it. The only way to stop it, is not to subscribe to those that do it.
It happened on 2 episodes in a row, with over a minite wait until the episode. Both times the same ad, which makes it even worse, for a 20 min episode of lower decks. I’m sensitive to commercials when I’m already paying premium.
I definitely feel the hatred towards all things ads, I would probably cancel as well if I was in your position. Fortunately 1 ad per session is the rare exception to my ad free viewing (and I did curse quite a bit at that ad, whatever it was for)
What country are you in because I just turned it on and tried to play an episode of lower decks, and I don’t get any ads, so I’m wondering if it’s only in some parts of the world.
Us
I have a subscription in the US and have been watching Picard and Lower Decks – the few ads I get are their up front spam promoting other shows (I hit reload and the ‘forced’ up front ad switches to the CBS logo and plays in a couple of secs). Another show I watch has a few ads, I think the are trying to see how much they can get away with before people cancel. I bought a year at 1/2 price and I won’t be reupping, its a pretty low value and quality streaming service on all fronts (ads, content, video quality, app/site navigation and player, absolutely no useful technical support if their player or service is glitching, cable company class customer avoidance policies and systems).
The video quality on easynews is also much better should I want to watch more star trek in the future.
There’s always A/B testing
