This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
All the streaming services are unethical now, both in pricing and operation. Netflix is maybe the least bad, but I can’t justify the cost for that, either.
Stremio + Torrentio is the way to go.
What happens next is like what happened in the 2000s. People will turn to piracy as legitimate content is no longer feasible, affordable, or ethical. Then the corporate oligarchs will crack down violently to make examples of the people they’ve given no other choice or recourse.
It’s time to eat the rich.
people they’ve given no other choice or recourse
I don't know, I find I also have the option to not consume media that I can't pay for or justify ethically. For instance, the only streaming service we have a subscription for is The Criterion Channel.
True. But many people can justify it ethically.
Ha fuck… that was my last personal sub… any alternative beside the high seas? I’m seasick…
Honestly, piracy is easier than it ever has been. You can automate torrents or usenet downloads with the *arr suite. There’s a bit of a learning curve to get it set up… But once it’s running, it’s basically just “add show to your watchlist” and ~15 minutes later it shows up on your media list with full metadata, subtitles, etc ready to go.
Plenty of people will suggest stremio, which is… Contentious. It works for streaming by downloading a torrent to cache. After you watch it, stremio automatically deletes the cache. So in day to day operation, it uses very little hard drive space and primarily relies on your internet speed and properly seeded torrents. But that latter part is the problem… Since it deletes the cache, it isn’t actually seeding anything in return. If everyone used stremio, nobody would actually be able to use it, because none of the torrents would be seeded. It’s a sort of mass prisoner’s dilemma.
Technically, you can set stremio to keep a rolling cache of {x} size, and it will hold onto the torrents until you start to download something new and it needs that space. But very few people will expect to hit a 1.0 ratio, even with a decently sized cache.
The whole point is not to do any setup and maintenance just to watch anime… I already have a job where I have to do that and I was hoping that it would pay for the convenience. My passion is watching anime, not setup downloading pipeline for them.
The end goal was always to deprive us of alternatives
There’s always torrents but it was very convenient to just go to crunchy and start something… torrenting and putting it in plex and all… it’s just less convenient
Look into setting up an -arr stack. Overseer with radar/sonaar plus your torrent client of choice and a VPN. The setup takes a weekend at most and the final product is honestly easier to use then navigating shitty streaming services now. It actually is more convenient after just a little bit of setup.
Usenet is great also downloads very quickly. Just automate the whole process.
I was doing usenet more than 10yrs ago… not that straightforward, needs a subscription anyway… and the whole NAS + plex or something similar is still needed. I get the idea but there’s a point in life where 10€ per month for the ease of use is very appealing.
I pay around 2 to 3 dollars a month, I bought lifetime index subscriptions.
HiDive. Until they get the fuckaround bug.
I would never subscribe to Crunchyroll, because they use DRM.
These mutherfuckers forgot where they came from! Time to remind them
Oh they do remember. They fondly remember those early years piggybacking on strangers goodwill before laughing all the way to the bank.
They've been on borrowed time since Sony bought them. Honestly I'm amazed they've lasted this long.
I wonder what goes through went through their minds when choosing this company. Everyday I hear about starvation and dead children, apparently that isn't important to them.
What do you expect, they started as a pirate platform.
Well then, fund an alternative.
Just canceled. Thanks.
I'm doing my part!
My renewal was literally tomorrow too. As these streaming services get worse, I keep on cancelling. Been two years for Prime (literally smashed cancel the day ads were announced) and all i've got left at this point is netflix and spotify.
Netflix pricing almost has me there.
Netflix has been enshityfying and on the capitalist death spiral for YEARS, cancel that shit and spend your money on a VPN and some hard drives...
I've been paying for a VPN for over a decade and I am up to about 20TB of used disks. Make of that what you will.
Your setup isn't modern enough and you still find convenience in paying for Netflix?
I don't know what else to make of it...
I much prefer owned media over subscriptions, but this is perhaps one area where they're actually good. A bad business decision that drives away customers can have a pretty immediate and visible impact on revenue. It's not "hey nobody bought our latest release, blame racism/sexism/wokeness" or whatever other whipping-boy they choose to bury their heads in the sand with, it's "we did a thing and within days to a month people were leaving us."
In many cases, this drives them to actually pay attention to customer reactions. We've seen the same with Disney in regards to Kimmel and I wouldn't be surprised to see recent changes to Gamepass have a similar impact. I hate to say it, but subscriptions like this really do allow customers to vote with their wallets.
Which is also why many are probably going to try to lock more customers in to longer terms, add gimmicks, and generally make it harder to unsubscribe. Kinda like phone companies. We'll likely end up with a "streaming sign-up/connection fee" and offers like "**free Frozen tablet with a two year Disney+ subscription"
** regular price $599, applied as a discount from your regular bill over 24mo
fan subs are best
Kind of miss how much effort went into fan subs, with notes explaining things that didn't exactly translate without context...
I can't imagine an anime like detective conan or school rumble without translator notes. They would be unwatchable
Not just the notes, but I feel like they put more effort into making sure the text doesn't blend with what is on screen. Instances on Netflix of some shows where there will be white text with a white background, and the text has no drop shadow or black border.
Oh man, I remember seeing things go from burned in subs to sub tracks with all kinds of nice functional markup and managed font color schemes and such to... Slapping white text with no border/shadow in the bottom middle of the video unconditionally without formatting...
^ this
"keikaku means plan"
To the extent they exist
Oh, didn't realize this. Had a rolling sub which I never bothered to cancel as I very occasionally watch with mates, but have now cancelled it.
I cancelled it because I forgot I had it a few days ago. This is merely coincidence to me but nice coincidence.
Don't forget that Crunchyroll is also owned by Sony, who have basically picked up a monopoly on anime streaming services by buying out all of the competition. Aniplex, Funimation, Crunchyroll, Kadokawa, all under the Sony umbrella.
And still can't offer the full catalog in my country
