Netflix: Pay for 4k, max at 720p in Firefox or Librewolf

Trackers: Don’t pay, actual 4k

I absolutely love rubbing it in the face of people subscribing to streaming services that I get more content without even having to enter in my credit card info.

Brains > wallets, every time.

If three or four people did that and shared their library with friends then they would have a massive catalog between them.

Legally, you are allowed to make backups of the media you own (in the US). If a group of friends got together and shared their media libraries, proving that only one person was accessing the media at a time, then there would be no issue.

And they only do it to maximize profit off of people's low standards.

It has never been about putting food on the table or keeping the lights on. It's always been about fleecing idiots with more money than sense.

Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies?

Because the Artists involved don't see the royalties in those industries. They've already been paid and the rights holders want to extract every drop of profit possible. and the sad truth is that splintering streaming worked for a very long time to this end.

Why isn’t there a similar service for TV and movies?

Because Steve Jobs died before he could hypnotize the executives into do it.

Only half kidding, people forget that's how we got all the music labels together, it was Apple iTunes Store which later became streaming.

There were a few weird awkward music stores but Apple did it better and this was early 2000's when their brand was barely recovering from near bankruptcy.

Netflix streaming didn't launch until 2007 and didn't really take off until 2011, the same year Jobs died.

Netflix was the only one that was positioned to do it but they couldn't pull it together because they didn't have the reality distortion field that Jobs had. Netflix had to push into original programming instead to survive and the brand has long since enshittified.

Can't help but wonder if whatever pitch Jobs used to sell record labels couldn't have been reworked to convince the movie studios.

Here’s what’s wild though. At first with music streaming it was largely just American, Western, popular music. I left Spotify for Apple Music because the latter had Japanese music and I was tired of sideloading it into Spotify. Now Spotify has Japanese music too.

The Japanese music market is super weird. Anime is to Japanese music in the 2010s and 2020s what MTV was to western music in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s the international hit maker. So anime is bringing western eyes to all this music, not you go in YouTube and a lot of them have “YouTube edition” videos that are like half the video. Because they don’t fully trust us I guess? Sometimes the video is on Apple Music though.

I know Japanese music is more expensive than ours. I mean like the cost of a CD. So when bands would release a Japanese album, they’d add bonus tracks to help increase the value. Western bands do it too. Look up an album you know on Wikipedia and see if there’s a Japanese version with some bonus tracks.

I’m wondering how Apple Music and later Spotify more or less tamed the Japanese music market but TV and movies are so much harder.

Realistically, if there was a service that had everything on it that was past the cinema/pay per view stage, and was a reasonable price (say £35 a month, the price of two current streaming services), then I would probably be on that instead of Jellyfin.

And I mean everything back to the dawn of time. Anything you want, TV series, movies, the lot. Original versions, directors cuts, etc. George fucking Lucas, I'm looking at you here.

But there isn't. There never will be. Because they're all in a race to grab as much money as they can, before literal heat death engulfs the whole planet.

I don't think I've pirated a game since I started working and actually spending on Steam. Except Borderlands 3, because fuck Epic Games Store, their dumb fucking exclusivity deals, and their shitty launcher - they won't EVER see a penny from me.

I bought it on Steam a year later when it came out, on sale, with DLCs.

Streaming services had it so fucking good, too.

When the price was $9 a month I'd forget it even existed and go months without using a particular service I was paying for. But I didn't mind it because sometimes I'd get the urge to go watch some cult classic I hadn't seen in awhile, or guests could use it.

And I could eat that $9 each month because it was the equivalent of skipping one McDonald's burger a month.

Now? I use them one at a time and pirate anything not on that service. And if the cheapest option they have is ad-supported I skip paying entirely and head straight out to sea.

Of course they had it good. Studios didn't understand streaming and so sold long term rights to Netflix for pennies. Now, everyone is cutting out cable, making it impossible for those studios to fund new production on cable and broadcast alone.

New production is going to hit a cliff as streaming isn't going to be able to fund golden era of television any more.

“progress”? I think you mean “profit”.

There’s nothing really progressive about LLMs. But, some people are making a lot of money and others are pouring money in and hoping for a big payday.

you could account share? most services banned account sharing last year afaik.

and anyway; how is it a bad thing to reject predatory services?

piracy wad literally always a service problem. they solved it by netflix monopoly providing a great service people wanted and piracy was practically dead for an entire decade - then they all got greedy and we're all headed back to piracy.

the solution here seems pretty obvious, and i think even the execs are aware of it.

riseup.net/en/vpn

Here's a VPN that's available for free and funded by donations.

I'd say they are providing a better service and need money more than mullvad.