What are you streaming these days?

@PooltoyWolf Kinda hard to pass up 2 months of Showtime, Paramount+, and Acorn for $1/month (each) for the next 2 months. Prime deals during Prime Days this past Mon/Tue.

It’s still cheaper than cable.

@PooltoyWolf, better than $80 for cable.
One day I’ll sign up for streaming service again, when I have time to actually watch a show.

@PooltoyWolf Netflix streaming was a ridiculously good deal in the early years of streaming. Nobody thought streaming rights were worth much, so they had so much premium content for so little money.
As you can see, studios have since caught on.

@PooltoyWolf i mean…if you want to watch tv or movies, generally speaking, it’s going to cost money one way or another. i don’t really think netflix is any more of a money grab than going to a theater or paying for cable.

i will say though the one thing i don’t like is every tv network now coming out with their own streaming service…and then wanting us to pay for it when we already pay for the parent channel. the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was making sure i had all my cooking channels when we had to switch from youtubetv to fubo, and then it was announced that good eats would only be available through discovery+, yet another new streaming channel! for yet another $5 a month! sorry, no, i’ll just download it.

@jerk_nugget I thought you could usually indicate to the channel services that you had cable and thereby gain access without spending extra. I see all those “Enter your cable provider here” screens.

@InnocuousFarmer that works with the TV Everywhere content put out by the networks but more and more of the networks are starting paid apps with exclusive content and shows locked to them, like Discovery Plus, Paramount Plus, and Peacock.

@PooltoyWolf The real advantage of streaming is that there is no contract. All of them (as far as I know) charge by the month, and you can add/drop them at will, though some do give discounts if paid by 6 months/year. It’s easy to add a channel, watch/catch up on whatever series or movies you want, then drop the channel before another month’s “rent” is due. I’ve been doing this for years with no problem at all. When I drop a channel then add it back a year or two later, my settings are usually still there, including my watch lists. I’ve never had any “pressure marketing” from any of the streaming services when I drop them.

@InnocuousFarmer that’s only to access the cable content. in other words, our cable package includes disney and disney XD, but we have to pay a separate subscription for the streaming service disney+. same thing with discovery & discovery+, and cbs/cbs all access (now paramount+). sometimes certain conglomerates will link up and do a “get one month free of [service]” type deal and so they need your cable login for that too, to prove your eligibility.

@InnocuousFarmer @jerk_nugget Prime Day just had a $0.99/mo for 2 months on Showtime, Paramount+, PBSMasterpiece, Acorn, Sundance, and more. So keep your eyes out for those invitations to binge for 2 months.

However, the broadcaster/studios have crapped the bed even on their own trials by moving their premier shows to release weekly, just like broadcast just to stick it to binge watchers and suck a few more months of subscription fees out of viewers.

I do think the Balkanization of cable into streaming a la carte is in the end a negative for creativity in popular media. With all the licensing deals and self-dealing, it devolves into a corporate shell game of pretending there is competition when the reality is that there isn’t any due to the over-concentration of IP ownership and distribution rights into too few corporate conglomerates.

@mike808 yeah, for me it played out like a meme, “we want to be able to pick which channels we want!” [all this happens] “wait no…not like this…pls”

the current reality is like the monkey’s paw version of consumers’ wish for a la carte cable. all we wanted was to essentially build our own cable package, but that will never happen as there’s no incentive for this.

@kittykat9180 You’d have to pay more than a cable bill to get everything from streaming that you get from cable. Those $10 services add up fast.

@mike808 2 months yeah, but after that? If you want the same amount of content variety you get on cable, you’ll have to pay nearly as much, or more, than cable for all the different streaming services.

@PooltoyWolf The trick is to binge the fuck out of your trial. And then see if enough new stuff is out next year when another trial rolls around.

The studios are going to their own streaming to screw the cable operators out of distribution fees and revenue sharing with the other crap channels to keep more for themselves.

@PooltoyWolf, HBO Max and Disney+ (comes with Hulu) is all you need.

@hchavers
If you think that hasn’t already happened, then you must be living under a rock. Also, these days the internet providers and cable companies are one and the same.

@hchavers [laughs from the land of comcast or nothing]

@gsrivast Good choice. You should try the Acorn channel if they’re still running the $0.99/mo for 2 months trial. Try Hidden, The Wisting, and Line of Duty S5 (S6 is airing now in the UK), Loch Ness. Also Liar, Sanctuary (excellent).

Netflix has a bunch too. Try Hinterland, Shetland, The Tunnel, The Sinner, Deadwind, Undercover.

There are some really good Nordic procedurals (Iceland Fortitude, Norway Wallander, Sweden) and some good Baltic ones too (Poland, Belarus, Russia) like Bordertown, and Borderliner and Method, Sniffer, Silver Spoon.

@gsrivast if you like any of those dark, wet, tortured detective ones that mike listed (and i’ve enjoyed several) i would also add top of the lake, the investigation, the killing, the fall, happy valley, luther, and marcella (the first season anyhow. as it goes on they really get carried away and it goes off the rails, imho).

@fredmavis We just finished streaming that a couple of months ago… so much fun

POPSOCKETS! ROAD ROCKETS! SONNY CROCKETT! AWESOME!