this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Movies and TV Shows

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I just want to go back to a time when shows built in pause moments for commercial breaks. Watching a video get cut off mid sentence in the middle of an intense scene to be told about how I can send money worldwide just kinda kills the mood.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Or when you're watching an old show that has those pause moments... but they don't use them and just break whenever

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Now that you mention it...Very noticeable with older animation content.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

"Did you know you can save..."

Fuck off and die!

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The most noxious ones are the ads for the platform you are served by the platform when using the platform.

Paramount+ plays almost 90s of ads, sometimes ads for the exact show you are about to watch, any time you hit go. That's just heinous.

Still better than the Peacock app though, for which the sound randomly cuts out for a few seconds every minute or two on a device as uncommon and odd as... a Chromecast.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Paramount used to show no ads whatsoever for their no-ads plan, but now they show an ad at the beginning for another show. For the longest time it was unskippable, but at least now these can be skipped.

Hulu does the same thing. No ads should mean NO ads!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

That was when I dropped Hulu. If I'm already paying, I'm not going to sit through ads as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

YouTube does this on paid content. I bought It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia but it has ads for other FX shows (Mayans, Cake, Sons of Anarchy) baked in to the first 30 seconds and last 60 seconds of some episodes.

It also has a teaser that is the last item in each season's playlist, which is an ad for the season you just watched :/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

These companies think ads are the best thing in the world. They can't imagine a world without them. That's evidenced by what that other person just said, them showing you a generic Paramount ad while you're watching a video on your paid Paramount subscription. Just fuck off, you clueless bitches!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I just canceled Prime because they started with the ads. It was the last streaming service I was paying for. Now I am sharing Disney+ until they crack down on that and then I'm done with their shit. I already read 12 books this year, so there's that. And if I get bored, I guess I'll pick up sailing again, like in the olden days. 🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Sailing has honestly never been easier. Welcome back to the seas!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You're paying for prime video? It comes free with their prime shipping service. I've never paid for their streaming. The shipping service is too valuable not to use, and the video shit is just a cherry on top. Prime shipping pays for itself within a half dozen orders.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Way I see it, it's the other way around. I would never pay for the shipping service, but since it's included in the streaming subscription I guess I'll take it. I don't order from Amazon unless there's absolutely no alternative.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Makes sense. I use their free shipping and returns constantly throughout the year, so the shipping is very much worth the expense for me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Recently, Amazon prime made a change. Prime video was included with Prime membership, ad free, for quite a while. Now, it has ads, UNLESS you pay something like an additional $5 a month. This occurred within the last 6-12 months now.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2024/01/29/amazon-prime-video-commercials/72323206007/

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Right, but they said they cancelled because they started including ads. I'm confused why someone would cancel their prime shipping program over ads on a video service that was included as a bonus. Just stop watching the platform and keep your free shipping.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's not free shipping, you're paying $140/year. Worth it to some, but if you don't order much it's worth cancelling to cut costs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

True. It also covers the cost of returns too though, which can be very valuable if you order online a lot. Like you said though, it's probably not worth much to people who don't frequently order online through Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I paid Prime because Video was included. Just the shipping isn't worth the monthly fee to me.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

There is an ad free solution for those brave enough to sail the high seas...

These idiots seem to forget that media is not a shelter or food so their extraction tactics have natural limits... ARR

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

In the end streaming service became like the old days when we watch TV but worse

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Worse? Clearly you don't remember the days when if you got home at 6:15, you would miss half of your show. Or the days where the only option if you wanted a specific channel was to subscribe to an expensive bundle that included 8 other channels you didn't want.

Advertising has gotten so much worse, but everything being on-demand is miles better than what we used to have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Never dealt with missing shows, as I learned how to set my VCR to timer record when I was like nine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Ah, kids and their fancy new VCRs. Back in my day you had to be on time and make the kids wiggle the rabbit ears just right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

But the good news is now we can block ads although it's hard to setup at first especially if you want routing all network in your home
For laptop, pc, or smartphone it's easy...just install ublock (for browser) or Adguard (for whole protection)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I built a DNS proxy that filters all third-party ads, but ads for the same service (e.g. Paramount advertising its own shows) are hosted by that service, meaning they get through.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Pi-Hole is a local dns proxy that filters ads. It's exactly what was described above, and doesn't work for ads hosted on the service you want the content from. If you block those ads, you lose the content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’m aware. I have two. I was asking if that’s what they built or if it was something else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yep, it was Pi-hole!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Thats not exactly good news, it's still a cat and mouse game but thankfully the ad block devs are more motivated than the streaming providers currently.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

The excuse was always 'but how will they make money?'

It was always a distraction. There is no such thing as enough money, for these bastards. You could pay exorbitant fees, per-show, per-minute, and they'd still drool over taking your money and selling your eyeballs.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

It’s everywhere now, that word. “Content.” Even some artists have surrendered and now use the language of the oppressor.

It's something I've noticed a while ago, it's just so awful. It degenerates pieces of art into monetary value. It's depressing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Yep, but ad least ad block will work on them! Can't do that w/ cable

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

I am not going to watch either

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Jellyseerr

Jellyfin Sonarr Radarr Jackett Transmission

There's your streaming service

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Explain these things please

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

It's quite full-on for someone who's never heard of these.

Think of these services like an ecosystem, each supporting each other.

I'll start with Jellyfin and Jellyseerr, as this is what most people will want to interact with, and what your family would feel comfortable using.

  • Jellyfin is where you can watch movies and shows, on mobile, web or on the TV. This is essentially the streaming client.

  • Jellyseerr is where you can search through all of the movies and shows on the internet, and you can also request them with a click of a button. Once requested, they get downloaded and added to Jellyfin automatically.

Now, for the parts which are more technical, and what your family will not want to see or use.

  • Sonarr is linked up with Jellyseerr, torrent indexers, and the torrent client, to enable it to query for relevant show torrents. Essentially it takes away the manual work of finding a torrent, downloading it, moving it into the directory where Jellyfin can recognise it. It's an automation tool

  • Radarr is the same, just for movies and not shows.

  • Jackett is where you add your private or public torrent indexers. It provides a standard API of which Sonarr and Radarr can use to query for torrents. You may need another service to get through CloudFlare CAPTCHAs, but I forgot its name.

  • Transmission is a torrent client. You don't specifically need this one, but it's lightweight and does the job

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (3 children)

This guy's first problem is watching movies on his cable provider's on-demand service. On-demand has been crap since its inception.

And then:

We are now at the point in the history of show business where a bad experience is free and a decent one costs extra.

This is literally how it's always been. And this the crux of this dude's issues. He's not willing to pay for content and is using freeware and crapware to watch movies. You can't complain about a bad service if you're not paying for it.

He wants the solution? Ditch cable, buy movies and TV shows or pay for streaming services without ads. It's really that simple.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I would say streaming services are worse then sailing these days, shitty quality, unusable offline play,... And buying movies isn't easy too, unless you want to buy BluRay discs most of online places will only lend you a licence to watch the content until they decide to remove it, viz Sony.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

We are now at the point in the history of show business where a bad experience is free and a decent one costs extra.

Except that's not the case. *arrs and plex(probably jellyfin as well, haven't tried it) is a vastly superior user experience than most of the streaming apps. So the good experience is free and the bad experience costs money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Or yes, sail the high seas

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

If you aren't diligent about hitting that skip button be prepared for the worst. Not to mention the frequency increases.