I saw the writing on the wall when Netflix was forced to remove shows due to licensing.
Like many of you, I was on the “Yay Netflix” bandwagon for a while. And I remember the moment I realized I had to fish my black tri-point hat and eye patch out of the bin. It was the early 2010’s and I was living in a single rental bedroom (student style). I had Netflix and I’m in Canada, but I was experimenting with ipv6, and I realized that Netflix’s ipv6 geolocation stuff was flawed. I wasn’t using a VPN, but my V6 address was a “US” address, so if I turned off IPv4, I could watch US Netflix. I was watching the show “Arrow”, which I got really into early on. After a while, poof, it vanished. A bit of research and the license was pulled. It didn’t take long for me to piece it together. They were going to make the show available on their own streaming platform.
Suddenly, I saw the whole picture. It was like cable, but worse. Each studio was going to have a streaming service and like cable packages, you’d have to subscribe to their streaming service to see their shows, while getting access to a bunch of crap you didn’t care about, then have to find some way to track what shows were on which platforms and stay informed as to when new episodes were released, etc… Same as with cable. I said to myself, hell no.
I got my hat and eye patch, hung my flag, and I’ve been sailing the seven seas since. Fuck that noise.
My main issue with it all (beyond the obvious cost) is managing, monitoring and using multiple services. I wanted a central dashboard of shows that will update with new episodes from shows I watch as they are released. I found Plex. I’ve been using it for something like 10 years or more, and I’m pretty happy about it.
Cable had the merit of channel flipping. You could easily flip from one studios station to another without barriers. Now, you have to go to a completely different app/website/whatever, to change. You probably have to log in, etc. It’s a whole thing. What was a simple push of a button is now an entire ordeal. No thanks.
I knew this would be the eventual outcome and I was entirely right. My friends, if you haven’t already, it may be time to dust off your own hats and eye patches and set sail once again.
When Disney announced they were “looking into their own streaming service” and everyone followed suit, I knew enshittification was coming. It was obvious Netflix only worked because it was one happy medium with everything in one place, it was convenient…
But… I knew once other companies started making their own, it’d create a situation where you had to pay for multiple services to have a decent variety of things to watch. And once they had everyone suckered in, there was room for further monetization.
This is why I consider Tubi the only ethical streaming service.
Dumbly, I consider Disney+ to be the only worthwhile subscription to get. Not because they’re particularly good, but because they’ve eaten most of the “good” studios. They have the most content I’d actually be interested in watching.
But I still hoist my flag. Yarrr.
Their interface sucks though. I feel almost spoiled by the simplicity of the basic interface from Plex. It isn’t complicated at all, and there’s no algorithm to fight to try to find that show you like… On other platforms I sit there struggling to find the link to it and give up and search and search comes up with all kinds of random nonsense that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the query… It’s a mess.
So I go poke my little sailing ship with the black flag and a VPN, to go find it, the Linux ISOs are dropped into Plex and I get sweet sweet relief from the struggles of dealing with garbage interfaces.
I just look at recently added content and there it is. Play it without issue and sail away.
I still have Netflix, the streaming landscape is marginally less fragmented here.
But fucking hell is it a bizarre chore just trying to find where on the home page “continue watching” and “my list” are today.
And they all have different apps, mostly written from scratch, all of wildly varying quality. Some of the pirate apps like Weyd and Syncler have a significantly better user experience compared to most streaming services.
I’ll weigh in.
I saw the writing on the wall when Netflix was forced to remove shows due to licensing.
Like many of you, I was on the “Yay Netflix” bandwagon for a while. And I remember the moment I realized I had to fish my black tri-point hat and eye patch out of the bin. It was the early 2010’s and I was living in a single rental bedroom (student style). I had Netflix and I’m in Canada, but I was experimenting with ipv6, and I realized that Netflix’s ipv6 geolocation stuff was flawed. I wasn’t using a VPN, but my V6 address was a “US” address, so if I turned off IPv4, I could watch US Netflix. I was watching the show “Arrow”, which I got really into early on. After a while, poof, it vanished. A bit of research and the license was pulled. It didn’t take long for me to piece it together. They were going to make the show available on their own streaming platform.
Suddenly, I saw the whole picture. It was like cable, but worse. Each studio was going to have a streaming service and like cable packages, you’d have to subscribe to their streaming service to see their shows, while getting access to a bunch of crap you didn’t care about, then have to find some way to track what shows were on which platforms and stay informed as to when new episodes were released, etc… Same as with cable. I said to myself, hell no.
I got my hat and eye patch, hung my flag, and I’ve been sailing the seven seas since. Fuck that noise.
My main issue with it all (beyond the obvious cost) is managing, monitoring and using multiple services. I wanted a central dashboard of shows that will update with new episodes from shows I watch as they are released. I found Plex. I’ve been using it for something like 10 years or more, and I’m pretty happy about it.
Cable had the merit of channel flipping. You could easily flip from one studios station to another without barriers. Now, you have to go to a completely different app/website/whatever, to change. You probably have to log in, etc. It’s a whole thing. What was a simple push of a button is now an entire ordeal. No thanks.
I knew this would be the eventual outcome and I was entirely right. My friends, if you haven’t already, it may be time to dust off your own hats and eye patches and set sail once again.
When Disney announced they were “looking into their own streaming service” and everyone followed suit, I knew enshittification was coming. It was obvious Netflix only worked because it was one happy medium with everything in one place, it was convenient…
But… I knew once other companies started making their own, it’d create a situation where you had to pay for multiple services to have a decent variety of things to watch. And once they had everyone suckered in, there was room for further monetization.
This is why I consider Tubi the only ethical streaming service.
Dumbly, I consider Disney+ to be the only worthwhile subscription to get. Not because they’re particularly good, but because they’ve eaten most of the “good” studios. They have the most content I’d actually be interested in watching.
But I still hoist my flag. Yarrr.
Their interface sucks though. I feel almost spoiled by the simplicity of the basic interface from Plex. It isn’t complicated at all, and there’s no algorithm to fight to try to find that show you like… On other platforms I sit there struggling to find the link to it and give up and search and search comes up with all kinds of random nonsense that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the query… It’s a mess.
So I go poke my little sailing ship with the black flag and a VPN, to go find it, the Linux ISOs are dropped into Plex and I get sweet sweet relief from the struggles of dealing with garbage interfaces.
I just look at recently added content and there it is. Play it without issue and sail away.
I still have Netflix, the streaming landscape is marginally less fragmented here. But fucking hell is it a bizarre chore just trying to find where on the home page “continue watching” and “my list” are today.
And they all have different apps, mostly written from scratch, all of wildly varying quality. Some of the pirate apps like Weyd and Syncler have a significantly better user experience compared to most streaming services.