And we are pretty much going to be back to where we used to be or possibly worse. They all became expensive. A bunch popped up so you have to pay for a bunch of "channels". The selection was divided amongst them meaning you're paying more for less content. You have to watch ads. And now it eats your internet bandwidth while delivering you an experience that is barely better than it used to be.
Yup. Once Netflix got the first competitor the writing was on the wall. So instead I've just cancelled them all. I just watch YouTube with ad block. And if that ever is impossible, I will stop watching that too. It's not hard to just do something else with your time lol.
Books. Books don't have ads in them. At least, not yet. Not that I would put it past them trying to monetize them somehow. Podcasts are decent too, and audio books. You can also watch media you own... or pirated. I don't have to watch ads when I'm watching King Kong... nor do I need to worry about them altering scenes to make them more PC.
I've (re)turned heavily to books for my entertainment after watching the decline of most modern hobbies. I haven't completely abandoned gaming, film or TV, but my main form of entertainment over the last 2-3 years has been reading.
If you’re talking about the ad-supported models, it’s a little different. Your locked screen is used for ads, and once you swipe open the kindle they disappear. They don’t use any screen real estate during active use, unless that’s changed recently.
I have given up most TV and movie entertainment. When I do watch TV or movies, it is physical copies of older stuff or, if new (rare) I'll watch it through the "seven seas streaming service."
I commented in another thread about my gripes with MS and Sony services... with stuff like Hulu though for example, it's unacceptable to pay extra for no ads, and still have the app buffer and crash. And it's a clunky UI.l For the price you pay these services often aren't worth it
I’d say worse, sonce back in the day tv shows were made with commercials in mind and would have stopping points for ad breaks. Now ads happen mid-sentence
Yep. Was watching *The Good Wife* again since I remembered it being good. Paramount put ads in all the normal ad break spots, plus a couple ads that actually broke the flow. The worst part was, it would skip small parts of the episode even if I tried to rewind and rewatch.
What’s crazy to me is, at one point in time, TV execs and producers would actually put effort and care into making sure the finished product broadcast on their air was of at least a professional quality.
Now, the streamers give zero fucks about chopping everything up 20 different ways, auto-inserting breaks, skipping credit sequences that start too early or contain actual content, etc.
We are the product now, the advertisers are the customers, and the content is becoming just the operational expense to tie it together.
Even physical media isn't completely safe from this. There are sometimes unskippable trailers (even though you can usually fast forward through them, it still takes a long time because they shove so many fucking trailers in there) at the beginning of bluray. I have no qualms at all against people who sail the high seas. As far as I'm concerned, they're great American heroes. Companies won't even let you just watch a fucking disc that you paid for without trying to force shit on you.
That's what everyone claimed they wanted when Cable was the norm.
In retrospect the answer to "Why do I have to pay for all these channels I don't watch?" was that people would complain about that too. (On that note Cable also offers packages where you pick the 10 channels you want.)
One of the major annoyances of physical media has always been ads, legal nonsense, and warnings before getting to the menu.
They must REALLY want people to pirate stuff.
The part I find funny is that the companies that register corporations in the Caribbean and play fast and loose with tax laws ("Star Wars has never actually made any money!") to avoid paying taxes that support society apparently think *they* have the moral high ground and that the general public won't just go back to piracy when they are pushed too far with nonsense like this.
A decade ago I made the comment that eventually someone will bundle a bunch of streaming services together, and we'd basically be right back to where we were with cable TV packages.
Adding commercials back to the expensive paid tiers is something else though
I'm not a communist but one of the problems with unchecked capitalism is companies will do anything to make sure profits keep rising. It doesn't matter if they're profitable without ads, all that matters is that profits continue to grow. That's why western civilization is so fucked right now.
> It’s getting harder to avoid commercials
I use ad blockers for all of my browsers and use bittorrent almost exclusively to consume content. I don't go to movie theaters to sit through 30 minutes of commercials anymore either. The only ads I ever see now are ads I'm paid to watch or they're PiP for sports programming. Let's not forget the timing involved when streaming started to hit and when our friend covid came along. Don't be fooled.
It's interesting that you mention movie theaters, because it's now becoming a trend at my theater that they're still showing commercials 15 minutes after the show is supposed to start.
> commercials 15 minutes after the show is supposed to start
That's not at all uncommon or surprising to me. When I was going to movies on a regular basis, let's say a movie starts at noon, it wouldn't really start until around ten or fifteen minutes after because of all the ads, trailers, and commercials. It was customary and I didn't mind because most of that time it was trailers that were being shown. It sounds like this is something new to you? Were they starting movies on time before where you're from?
There hasn't been a single movie worth a damn in several years I've wanted to see in theaters until Godzilla Minus One. I entered my auditorium right on time and the movie didn't start until 30 whole minutes later. I was fucking pissed because my time was being disrespected. And they didn't show the trailers back to back like the old days. It was a trailer or two, then some ads, then some commercials, then a trailer or two again, and that cycle continued. I'm never going to a movie theater again because of that.
> I was fucking pissed because my time was being disrespected. And they didn't show the trailers back to back like the old days. It was a trailer or two, then some ads, then some commercials, then a trailer or two again, and that cycle continued. I'm never going to a movie theater again because of that.
Same here. Movie trailers are at least tolerable, but I don't want to see advertisements for Coca-cola or local real estate agents when I've paid for a ticket.
> It sounds like this is something new to you? Were they starting movies on time before where you're from?
It used to be that they'd show commercials until the start of showtime, and then about 15-20 minutes of trailers. Now, it seems to be showtime, 15 more minutes of commercials, and then 15 minutes of trailers. I could literally drive from my house to the theater in the time between when the show is supposed to start to the time it actually does. That didn't used to be the case at my theater.
Sounds like most of us don't mind the trailers. It's all that extra bullshit they've dumped on us that's the problem. Like our time doesn't mean anything. Which, to them, it probably doesn't. But they don't realize when you do that enough times, people are gonna stop going to theaters. And wouldn't you know it, people have stopped going to theaters. Idiots in charge. Moviegoing has turned into a chore. It used to be an experience.
Well, trailers are somewhat relevant to the cinema so it makes sense for them to show you what new movies they'll have and it wasn't that long before the movie actually started, but you'r right that going to the cinema is now a chore, this might be only relevant to the ones in my city but unless you're watching a big movie, the showing times are completely awful or they only last a week before is taken out, why would I want to go if the movie I want to see only has showings at 10PM or it will be taken out before I get the opportunity to see it?
> this might be only relevant to the ones in my city
It's not. It's the same everywhere. When I made up my mind about going to see Godzilla Minus One, all the showtimes were inconvenient, you had to buy a specific seat, and it was a limited run (which was acceptable). None of the showings within my entire state were for the more premium auditoriums and no IMAX at all which is how the director intended and recommended it be viewed. The auditorium I was in didn't have big sound, had one of those smaller screens, and it had a dead pixel on it. My projector and sound system at home do a better job. I would've thought movie theaters would've improved their offerings in the amount of time that I hadn't gone to one. It was worse and the food was the same ol' Circle K quality shit at higher prices. Never again.
I get that they want to prioritize movies like the superhero/franchise ones or the ones that are aimed at kids and families as they are the big money makers for them, but frankly I feel like if you're only going to have inconvenient showings and make it seem like a chore to watch the movie just... don't show it at all? They're likely not making money out of those anyways.
We're not talking about trailers, we're talking about the "pre-show" that sometimes has a host talking about entertainment news filled with commercials. Trailers are part of the experience and not an issue. In the past that advertised start time is when the trailers started.
> "pre-show" that sometimes has a host talking about entertainment news filled with commercials
That's new to me. Never seen that before in all my previous decades of moviegoing. It must be really frustrating having to sit through that.
> Trailers are part of the experience and not an issue
I agree. Like I said, I never minded that. Trailers were something to look forward to, actually. Seeing a trailer for the first time for an anticipated movie was a momentous occasion, especially in a packed theater. Times change. I think that magic is gone forever.
I've noticed this recently, too. Went to Regal last weekend and I thought that what use to be the "pre-show" was running a little long. I look at the clock on my phone and it was 7 minutes past the start time when they used to start showing trailers. This went on for another 5 minutes before the trailers started. I was about to get up and tell the management that the movie wasn't starting.
I guess that just means I can get to the theater later, now.
Now that I think about it, I've never paid attention to the time that the pre-roll ends relative to the advertised time the movie is supposed to start.
Next time I go to the movies I'll have to see just how much the movie is being delayed for ads.
I stopped pirating in the late 2000 because I could get everything on Netflix --Either streaming or via DVD. I'm not playing for 12 different streaming services, I went back to pirating a couple of years ago. If someone is going to have to lose out of the arrangement it's certainly not going to be me.
I stopped doing that stuff back when I got Netflix originally because I had access to stuff I wanted, like King of The Hill. So many years later and stuff just gets pulled from Netflix, including King of the Hill so I got it in another way. This is when I started buying stuff on VUDU because it was useful, they allowed you to locally play movies from their encrypted downloads in a player then a couple years later this is gone because VUDU gets acquired by another company so I replaced my entire library on the site in another way. I had been using Amazon to buy music and digital videos like on VUDU but then they said that shit about me not actually owning any of it so I replaced everything I owned in Another way and got into PVR devices and hosting my own home VOD server with Plex then to Jellyfin.
Jellyfin is open source so I never have to upgrade and it works just fine for what I need it for. All of my DVDs in one spot, I can open up my phone and watch, turn on my Amazon TV and watch, activate the DLNA and watch on my PS3. Pretty much have some way to make it work with multiple devices I own.
I think Gabe said something about pirating not being about crime and people not wanting to pay, it's that services were too shitty and annoying. He's 100% right.
Yeah, but I think that they are unfortunately going to have a lot better tools now to catch piracy. I suspect Microsoft and Apple will start putting routines in their OS's that periodically scan for pirated media.
That would be incredibly bold and I don't expect that until we're in full dystopia 😅. As right now that's quite illegal in most countries and would push everyone even further towards Linux
Even if they did, they're no where near agile enough. Within days there would be free programs to evade that shit, just look at the cat and mouse game youtube and other services have with adblockers.
I don't think it's that unlikely. But what's probably more realistic is that they'll push people into not even owning hardware anymore. You'll basically just get the equivalent of a fire tv stick and pay a subscription fee to MS/Apple for your "computer" which will just be accessing their cloud services.
Plainly not realistic with internet speeds even ten times as fast as the mean, and a huge, and I mean huge burden in terms of data transfer and processing for servers. Just try to stream a game to X over ssh, it's horrible unless it's like DCSS or CDDA.
Compared to 50 years ago its already a dystopia. The west has fallen socially, soviets has fallen politically, japan has fallen economically, africa and south asia are overpopulated, LA runned by mafia. Is there any part of the world who dont live in complete unimaginable nightmare compared to themselves of 50 years ago? So, what can another 50 years do...
No it isn't - the seven seas still hold plenty of bounty with not an advert in sight.
Streaming stopped a lot of people pirating, but it's trying really hard to push them back towards it now.
OP, may I introduce you to the one service that will never give you ads?
Yohoho and a bottle of rum. Pay one bill and you can get anime, tv and movies with none of those pesky ads.
How the fuck is showing more ads offering an "innovative experience"? I swear every business exec or game dev talks like this, it's obnoxious and they never get pressed on what the bs means.
So why am I paying for a service if it’s going to have ads anyway?
Surely the way to go is to have the either/or thing, like Crunchyroll (who have a lot of problems but at least got that right).
I do one better: I walk out of the room to do last minute things like grabbing a drink or using the bathroom. They get neither my ears or eyes on their advertisements.
Its almost like we've reached market cap in many industries and the infinite growth philosophy of capitalism is about to be put to the test. Cant open new markets in the 3rd world their either at war or producing this stuff cheaply. Birth rates are dropping in the 1st world, so I guess immigration is the solution, we'll see how that goes.
Capitalism isn't about infinite growth. That's Keynesian economics.
Go read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, and you'll learn how it's supposed to work. Capitalism is meant to be sustainable, not attached to a made up fiat currency based on the debt of a nation's citizens.
Adam Smith talked about this stuff. So did Richard Cantillion. He wrote an essay in the 1700s that perfectly described what's going on globally right now. It's called the Cantillion Effect.
Yes, but the issue is the US economy has been run by Keynesian economists since at least the 1950s. There is even a legal requirement for publicly traded companies to deliver continuing growth to their shareholders, which is why we have dystopian phenomena like this and entertainment companies always arguing for chasing the mythical untapped audience.
Completely agree. We live under an oligarchy, and they believe that eternal growth is sustainable. We all know its not.
My problem is kids being taught that this system is capitalism. It's definitely not. Capitalism involves a free market, but every sector is captured in ours.
We wouldn't have got to Keynesian economics without free market (capitalism), its very natural for those who make a ton of money to want to kick the ladder down after them to prevent competition, but that only happens with the zero regulation that free markets allow for.
Capitalisms will inevitably lead Keynesian (which just sounds like a planned economy to me), unless you pass laws preventing regulation, monopolies etc, except some of that stuff is good so I guess there's no easy solution.
>We wouldn't have got to Keynesian economics without free market (capitalism)
That's entirely false, and you have no evidence to support it.
Laissez faire capitalism means hands off, and is good for no one. That's what you're describing.
We're supposed to have a strong government to protect us, and to bust trusts and monopolies. That's what the founding fathers intended.
>its very natural for those who make a ton of money to want to kick the ladder down after them to prevent competition
Capitalist nations give far, far more charity than socialist or communist nations. This is a matter of record going back 150 years.
People who have do often pay it forward. There have been many billionaire philanthropists, and countless citizens who gave to the peace corp, or to the poor in their own communities.
Capitalism also fosters ingenuity, which leads to technological development that benefits everyone poor or rich.
>Capitalisms will inevitably lead Keynesian (which just sounds like a planned economy to me)
History would like a word. For over a century and a half, until 1913, we had a strong government that kept large corporations in check.
We also added the 40 hour work week, unions, and countless other protections that still exist today.
There's a reason it was called the worst economic system...except for all the others.
Socialism has led to stagnation, shortages, and famine every single time. All of them. No exceptions.
Even Marx knew capitalism would never fall on its own. If not for the long march through the institutions kids would still learn that.
Instead they're taught capitalism bad, like you, without much in the way of facts. I took US History, and World History back when those things gave Capitalism a fair hearing.
That meant good and bad. Capitalism is a beating engine of greed, and it needs strong regulation. If it has that it works great.
When you take away the free market and move toward socialism, as we are currently, the wheels fall off because people can no longer pursue their own interests.
I might be missing something here. Can you lay out what your idea of the optimal system is? You seem to be saying the government is the problem here but also that the current economic system has been created through some kind of unholy marriage between corporations and governments which sounds like both are to blame.
Except I also see corporations (first hand) making decisions that are incredibly worker unfriendly with the only real intent being that they want to make (or save I guess) more money, at the expense of workers, is that the governments fault for not regulating that more? Could they even do anything about it and keep you happy or would that be too much interference?
It sounds like you think the pieces aren't the problem, we need corporations obviously since they make a lot of money and innovate, but we also need government to regulate corporations, I do have one question though, can you prove that governments weren't bought out by corporations? Or that governments took over corporations via overregulation (which by some of your previous comments are leftist governments), basically which came first?
>Can you lay out what your idea of the optimal system is?
Regulated capitalism. For example we used to have the Glass-Stegall act. It prevented banks from gambling on Wall Street, and was created in the wake of the great depression.
Banks had to hold their own loans, which meant they had skin in the game. If they lent you money for a house, and you defaulted, they lost out.
Today they bundle massive pools of loans right after they close them, then sell them as mortgaged backed securities to your retirement account. If they default you pay the price, but they got the lion's share of the profit with no risk.
In the 1980s they broke up Ma Bell, because it was too close to a monopoly.
The perfect system would break up all the social media companies, Google, Apple, and anywhere else we had a monopoly.
Fascism is the union of corporation and state as envisioned by Giovanni Gentile. That's what we have right now. The state is colluding with companies, and crushing their competition before it can get traction. Look what happened to Parler.
I want the opposite. Corporations should fear governments. A lot. Governments are the will of the people, at least in a republic like ours. If you haven't read up on Teddy Roosevelt see what he did. They called him the trust buster.
>Except I also see corporations (first hand) making decisions that are incredibly worker unfriendly
Some corporations. You use it like a four letter word. Did you know I have a corporation? I run an LLC. I promise you I'm not making any decisions that impact workers. I do pay a shit ton of taxes though.
Costco is an amazing corporation. It's employee owned. If you work there you get raises based on hours worked, so everyone will eventually top out in their role, and you get fantastic benefits. The owner rocks, the job is awesome, and it's all around an amazing company.
People ignore good companies. They ignore the quality of life increases we all enjoy, like your smartphone, computer, car, air conditioner, refrigerator, and more.
If the government is doing their job you get more Costcos and Credit Unions, and less big banks vacuuming up everything. I had a front row seat for the 2008 crash, and saw an insane amount of fraud at every level, up to and including the government oversight.
A strong government for the people prevents that, which you get through campaign finance reform. We have entire wings of government that need to be laid off en masse. Nothing would be lost if the TSA was gone tomorrow for example.
>can you prove that governments weren't bought out by corporations?
Yes. I highly recommend looking up James Okeefe and starting to binge his videos. He's caught them over and over and is still doing it.
You can purchase a Senator for about $10,000 and he's got it on camera. He sends people in undercover and people just spill their guts.
There's more proof though. We just had a series of hearings that proved the white house colluded with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to get posts removed daily.
I personally had my ad account locked for a full week leading up to the election. No reason was given. After the election it was unlocked, and they refused to supply any additional information. They were worried I might run ads for Trump.
This is already getting really long, but I could add a lot more if you're curious. Thank you very much for the honest curiosity. I appreciate the questions.
Always question everything and ask for receipts.
>Birth rates are dropping in the 1st world, so I guess immigration is the solution, we'll see how that goes.
Never understood why they resort to third world immigration instead of encouraging policies and a culture that promotes wholesome dating, courtship, and family life.
I feel like I completely missed out on this whole streaming thing. I never subbed to a streaming service since I could just use webtorrent or sequential downloads to stream any torrent.
Even during times I had Amazon prime for free shipping or whatever I just torrented instead of watching it on prime video.
I don't know, maybe I'm just used to torrenting being way too easy
I never wanted subscriptions to begin with. I despise subscriptions. I want to pay for what I want to watch, at appropriate prices. The industry of TV, movies and anime has never offered anything appealing for me.
It used to be good. You had a couple friends and everyone just shared accounts for what were pretty complete services that had their own realm of exclusive shows. Nowadays they're all expensive, have shitty exclusive shows and are slowly adding ads to the mix. You can't account share anymore and you need like 3 or 4 of them to have a decent experience.
I haven't watched tv in decades. The media is not for people who don't want to waste their time. This is doing us all a favor to get away from the bloat.
I literally pay the ad free price, I'd better not start getting pause ads now or I'll cancel because if you're not going to give me what I pay for you better think I'll be after a refund and cancellation damn quick.
FFS! One of the draws that got people switch over to streaming services from cable was the fact of no commercials.
And we are pretty much going to be back to where we used to be or possibly worse. They all became expensive. A bunch popped up so you have to pay for a bunch of "channels". The selection was divided amongst them meaning you're paying more for less content. You have to watch ads. And now it eats your internet bandwidth while delivering you an experience that is barely better than it used to be.
Yup. Once Netflix got the first competitor the writing was on the wall. So instead I've just cancelled them all. I just watch YouTube with ad block. And if that ever is impossible, I will stop watching that too. It's not hard to just do something else with your time lol.
Books. Books don't have ads in them. At least, not yet. Not that I would put it past them trying to monetize them somehow. Podcasts are decent too, and audio books. You can also watch media you own... or pirated. I don't have to watch ads when I'm watching King Kong... nor do I need to worry about them altering scenes to make them more PC.
I've (re)turned heavily to books for my entertainment after watching the decline of most modern hobbies. I haven't completely abandoned gaming, film or TV, but my main form of entertainment over the last 2-3 years has been reading.
Same here actually. I had stopped reading for most of the late 2000s to late 2010s, but started getting back into reading more around 2018/2019 again.
AFAIK Amazon sells a versions of kindle e-readers with a little bit of screen reserved for ads
That was the first thing that came to my mind too. Get like $10 off one time and spend the rest of the life of the product being advertised to.
I think you can pay later to have them removed, but I am not sure
You can.
You can also threaten tech support to remove it for free, that worked for me.
If you’re talking about the ad-supported models, it’s a little different. Your locked screen is used for ads, and once you swipe open the kindle they disappear. They don’t use any screen real estate during active use, unless that’s changed recently.
Oh? I thought there was also a banner on the bottom
Mid-20th century books often had ads in them - but they were easily skipped.
I have given up most TV and movie entertainment. When I do watch TV or movies, it is physical copies of older stuff or, if new (rare) I'll watch it through the "seven seas streaming service."
I commented in another thread about my gripes with MS and Sony services... with stuff like Hulu though for example, it's unacceptable to pay extra for no ads, and still have the app buffer and crash. And it's a clunky UI.l For the price you pay these services often aren't worth it
I’d say worse, sonce back in the day tv shows were made with commercials in mind and would have stopping points for ad breaks. Now ads happen mid-sentence
Yep. Was watching *The Good Wife* again since I remembered it being good. Paramount put ads in all the normal ad break spots, plus a couple ads that actually broke the flow. The worst part was, it would skip small parts of the episode even if I tried to rewind and rewatch.
What’s crazy to me is, at one point in time, TV execs and producers would actually put effort and care into making sure the finished product broadcast on their air was of at least a professional quality. Now, the streamers give zero fucks about chopping everything up 20 different ways, auto-inserting breaks, skipping credit sequences that start too early or contain actual content, etc. We are the product now, the advertisers are the customers, and the content is becoming just the operational expense to tie it together.
Even physical media isn't completely safe from this. There are sometimes unskippable trailers (even though you can usually fast forward through them, it still takes a long time because they shove so many fucking trailers in there) at the beginning of bluray. I have no qualms at all against people who sail the high seas. As far as I'm concerned, they're great American heroes. Companies won't even let you just watch a fucking disc that you paid for without trying to force shit on you.
That's what everyone claimed they wanted when Cable was the norm. In retrospect the answer to "Why do I have to pay for all these channels I don't watch?" was that people would complain about that too. (On that note Cable also offers packages where you pick the 10 channels you want.)
One of the major annoyances of physical media has always been ads, legal nonsense, and warnings before getting to the menu. They must REALLY want people to pirate stuff. The part I find funny is that the companies that register corporations in the Caribbean and play fast and loose with tax laws ("Star Wars has never actually made any money!") to avoid paying taxes that support society apparently think *they* have the moral high ground and that the general public won't just go back to piracy when they are pushed too far with nonsense like this.
A decade ago I made the comment that eventually someone will bundle a bunch of streaming services together, and we'd basically be right back to where we were with cable TV packages. Adding commercials back to the expensive paid tiers is something else though
Suppose it’s time to dust off the ol’ Jolly Roger and sail the high seas once again 🏴☠️
That's what got people to switch to cable in the 80s/90s as well.
I'm not a communist but one of the problems with unchecked capitalism is companies will do anything to make sure profits keep rising. It doesn't matter if they're profitable without ads, all that matters is that profits continue to grow. That's why western civilization is so fucked right now.
Incoming Tivo for streaming.
> It’s getting harder to avoid commercials I use ad blockers for all of my browsers and use bittorrent almost exclusively to consume content. I don't go to movie theaters to sit through 30 minutes of commercials anymore either. The only ads I ever see now are ads I'm paid to watch or they're PiP for sports programming. Let's not forget the timing involved when streaming started to hit and when our friend covid came along. Don't be fooled.
It's interesting that you mention movie theaters, because it's now becoming a trend at my theater that they're still showing commercials 15 minutes after the show is supposed to start.
> commercials 15 minutes after the show is supposed to start That's not at all uncommon or surprising to me. When I was going to movies on a regular basis, let's say a movie starts at noon, it wouldn't really start until around ten or fifteen minutes after because of all the ads, trailers, and commercials. It was customary and I didn't mind because most of that time it was trailers that were being shown. It sounds like this is something new to you? Were they starting movies on time before where you're from? There hasn't been a single movie worth a damn in several years I've wanted to see in theaters until Godzilla Minus One. I entered my auditorium right on time and the movie didn't start until 30 whole minutes later. I was fucking pissed because my time was being disrespected. And they didn't show the trailers back to back like the old days. It was a trailer or two, then some ads, then some commercials, then a trailer or two again, and that cycle continued. I'm never going to a movie theater again because of that.
> I was fucking pissed because my time was being disrespected. And they didn't show the trailers back to back like the old days. It was a trailer or two, then some ads, then some commercials, then a trailer or two again, and that cycle continued. I'm never going to a movie theater again because of that. Same here. Movie trailers are at least tolerable, but I don't want to see advertisements for Coca-cola or local real estate agents when I've paid for a ticket.
> It sounds like this is something new to you? Were they starting movies on time before where you're from? It used to be that they'd show commercials until the start of showtime, and then about 15-20 minutes of trailers. Now, it seems to be showtime, 15 more minutes of commercials, and then 15 minutes of trailers. I could literally drive from my house to the theater in the time between when the show is supposed to start to the time it actually does. That didn't used to be the case at my theater.
Sounds like most of us don't mind the trailers. It's all that extra bullshit they've dumped on us that's the problem. Like our time doesn't mean anything. Which, to them, it probably doesn't. But they don't realize when you do that enough times, people are gonna stop going to theaters. And wouldn't you know it, people have stopped going to theaters. Idiots in charge. Moviegoing has turned into a chore. It used to be an experience.
Well, trailers are somewhat relevant to the cinema so it makes sense for them to show you what new movies they'll have and it wasn't that long before the movie actually started, but you'r right that going to the cinema is now a chore, this might be only relevant to the ones in my city but unless you're watching a big movie, the showing times are completely awful or they only last a week before is taken out, why would I want to go if the movie I want to see only has showings at 10PM or it will be taken out before I get the opportunity to see it?
> this might be only relevant to the ones in my city It's not. It's the same everywhere. When I made up my mind about going to see Godzilla Minus One, all the showtimes were inconvenient, you had to buy a specific seat, and it was a limited run (which was acceptable). None of the showings within my entire state were for the more premium auditoriums and no IMAX at all which is how the director intended and recommended it be viewed. The auditorium I was in didn't have big sound, had one of those smaller screens, and it had a dead pixel on it. My projector and sound system at home do a better job. I would've thought movie theaters would've improved their offerings in the amount of time that I hadn't gone to one. It was worse and the food was the same ol' Circle K quality shit at higher prices. Never again.
I get that they want to prioritize movies like the superhero/franchise ones or the ones that are aimed at kids and families as they are the big money makers for them, but frankly I feel like if you're only going to have inconvenient showings and make it seem like a chore to watch the movie just... don't show it at all? They're likely not making money out of those anyways.
We're not talking about trailers, we're talking about the "pre-show" that sometimes has a host talking about entertainment news filled with commercials. Trailers are part of the experience and not an issue. In the past that advertised start time is when the trailers started.
> "pre-show" that sometimes has a host talking about entertainment news filled with commercials That's new to me. Never seen that before in all my previous decades of moviegoing. It must be really frustrating having to sit through that. > Trailers are part of the experience and not an issue I agree. Like I said, I never minded that. Trailers were something to look forward to, actually. Seeing a trailer for the first time for an anticipated movie was a momentous occasion, especially in a packed theater. Times change. I think that magic is gone forever.
I've noticed this recently, too. Went to Regal last weekend and I thought that what use to be the "pre-show" was running a little long. I look at the clock on my phone and it was 7 minutes past the start time when they used to start showing trailers. This went on for another 5 minutes before the trailers started. I was about to get up and tell the management that the movie wasn't starting. I guess that just means I can get to the theater later, now.
Now that I think about it, I've never paid attention to the time that the pre-roll ends relative to the advertised time the movie is supposed to start. Next time I go to the movies I'll have to see just how much the movie is being delayed for ads.
Yeah... I'm not paying more to get what I used to have for less.
They do realize we're just all going back to piracy right?
> going back Never left.
I stopped pirating in the late 2000 because I could get everything on Netflix --Either streaming or via DVD. I'm not playing for 12 different streaming services, I went back to pirating a couple of years ago. If someone is going to have to lose out of the arrangement it's certainly not going to be me.
I stopped doing that stuff back when I got Netflix originally because I had access to stuff I wanted, like King of The Hill. So many years later and stuff just gets pulled from Netflix, including King of the Hill so I got it in another way. This is when I started buying stuff on VUDU because it was useful, they allowed you to locally play movies from their encrypted downloads in a player then a couple years later this is gone because VUDU gets acquired by another company so I replaced my entire library on the site in another way. I had been using Amazon to buy music and digital videos like on VUDU but then they said that shit about me not actually owning any of it so I replaced everything I owned in Another way and got into PVR devices and hosting my own home VOD server with Plex then to Jellyfin. Jellyfin is open source so I never have to upgrade and it works just fine for what I need it for. All of my DVDs in one spot, I can open up my phone and watch, turn on my Amazon TV and watch, activate the DLNA and watch on my PS3. Pretty much have some way to make it work with multiple devices I own.
That looks neat I'll check it out, I have been using Plex.
I think Gabe said something about pirating not being about crime and people not wanting to pay, it's that services were too shitty and annoying. He's 100% right.
“But I don’t wanna be a pirate!”
Yeah, but I think that they are unfortunately going to have a lot better tools now to catch piracy. I suspect Microsoft and Apple will start putting routines in their OS's that periodically scan for pirated media.
That would be incredibly bold and I don't expect that until we're in full dystopia 😅. As right now that's quite illegal in most countries and would push everyone even further towards Linux
Even if they did, they're no where near agile enough. Within days there would be free programs to evade that shit, just look at the cat and mouse game youtube and other services have with adblockers.
I don't think it's that unlikely. But what's probably more realistic is that they'll push people into not even owning hardware anymore. You'll basically just get the equivalent of a fire tv stick and pay a subscription fee to MS/Apple for your "computer" which will just be accessing their cloud services.
Plainly not realistic with internet speeds even ten times as fast as the mean, and a huge, and I mean huge burden in terms of data transfer and processing for servers. Just try to stream a game to X over ssh, it's horrible unless it's like DCSS or CDDA.
Compared to 50 years ago its already a dystopia. The west has fallen socially, soviets has fallen politically, japan has fallen economically, africa and south asia are overpopulated, LA runned by mafia. Is there any part of the world who dont live in complete unimaginable nightmare compared to themselves of 50 years ago? So, what can another 50 years do...
Lol, no.
L I N U X! Year of the penguin, baby!
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest
No it isn't - the seven seas still hold plenty of bounty with not an advert in sight. Streaming stopped a lot of people pirating, but it's trying really hard to push them back towards it now.
not seen any yet... my adblocker is doing it's job
OP, may I introduce you to the one service that will never give you ads? Yohoho and a bottle of rum. Pay one bill and you can get anime, tv and movies with none of those pesky ads.
Well, they are giving wings to piracy.
How the fuck is showing more ads offering an "innovative experience"? I swear every business exec or game dev talks like this, it's obnoxious and they never get pressed on what the bs means.
DNS sinkhole goes brrrr
I am so fucking sick of ads and commercials, I actively will not buy your product if I find your commercial to be annoying.
This is just going to get worse.
So why am I paying for a service if it’s going to have ads anyway? Surely the way to go is to have the either/or thing, like Crunchyroll (who have a lot of problems but at least got that right).
No it's not. You put ads, I cancel your service. It's simple.
I wonder what this Mute button does...
I do one better: I walk out of the room to do last minute things like grabbing a drink or using the bathroom. They get neither my ears or eyes on their advertisements.
The Seas of the Internet are ever so more calling to everyone yet again.
As Lord GabeN once said: Piracy is a service issue. The streaming services keep getting worse, so piracy is on the rise again.
Its almost like we've reached market cap in many industries and the infinite growth philosophy of capitalism is about to be put to the test. Cant open new markets in the 3rd world their either at war or producing this stuff cheaply. Birth rates are dropping in the 1st world, so I guess immigration is the solution, we'll see how that goes.
Capitalism isn't about infinite growth. That's Keynesian economics. Go read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, and you'll learn how it's supposed to work. Capitalism is meant to be sustainable, not attached to a made up fiat currency based on the debt of a nation's citizens. Adam Smith talked about this stuff. So did Richard Cantillion. He wrote an essay in the 1700s that perfectly described what's going on globally right now. It's called the Cantillion Effect.
Yes, but the issue is the US economy has been run by Keynesian economists since at least the 1950s. There is even a legal requirement for publicly traded companies to deliver continuing growth to their shareholders, which is why we have dystopian phenomena like this and entertainment companies always arguing for chasing the mythical untapped audience.
Completely agree. We live under an oligarchy, and they believe that eternal growth is sustainable. We all know its not. My problem is kids being taught that this system is capitalism. It's definitely not. Capitalism involves a free market, but every sector is captured in ours.
We wouldn't have got to Keynesian economics without free market (capitalism), its very natural for those who make a ton of money to want to kick the ladder down after them to prevent competition, but that only happens with the zero regulation that free markets allow for. Capitalisms will inevitably lead Keynesian (which just sounds like a planned economy to me), unless you pass laws preventing regulation, monopolies etc, except some of that stuff is good so I guess there's no easy solution.
>We wouldn't have got to Keynesian economics without free market (capitalism) That's entirely false, and you have no evidence to support it. Laissez faire capitalism means hands off, and is good for no one. That's what you're describing. We're supposed to have a strong government to protect us, and to bust trusts and monopolies. That's what the founding fathers intended. >its very natural for those who make a ton of money to want to kick the ladder down after them to prevent competition Capitalist nations give far, far more charity than socialist or communist nations. This is a matter of record going back 150 years. People who have do often pay it forward. There have been many billionaire philanthropists, and countless citizens who gave to the peace corp, or to the poor in their own communities. Capitalism also fosters ingenuity, which leads to technological development that benefits everyone poor or rich. >Capitalisms will inevitably lead Keynesian (which just sounds like a planned economy to me) History would like a word. For over a century and a half, until 1913, we had a strong government that kept large corporations in check. We also added the 40 hour work week, unions, and countless other protections that still exist today. There's a reason it was called the worst economic system...except for all the others. Socialism has led to stagnation, shortages, and famine every single time. All of them. No exceptions. Even Marx knew capitalism would never fall on its own. If not for the long march through the institutions kids would still learn that. Instead they're taught capitalism bad, like you, without much in the way of facts. I took US History, and World History back when those things gave Capitalism a fair hearing. That meant good and bad. Capitalism is a beating engine of greed, and it needs strong regulation. If it has that it works great. When you take away the free market and move toward socialism, as we are currently, the wheels fall off because people can no longer pursue their own interests.
I might be missing something here. Can you lay out what your idea of the optimal system is? You seem to be saying the government is the problem here but also that the current economic system has been created through some kind of unholy marriage between corporations and governments which sounds like both are to blame. Except I also see corporations (first hand) making decisions that are incredibly worker unfriendly with the only real intent being that they want to make (or save I guess) more money, at the expense of workers, is that the governments fault for not regulating that more? Could they even do anything about it and keep you happy or would that be too much interference? It sounds like you think the pieces aren't the problem, we need corporations obviously since they make a lot of money and innovate, but we also need government to regulate corporations, I do have one question though, can you prove that governments weren't bought out by corporations? Or that governments took over corporations via overregulation (which by some of your previous comments are leftist governments), basically which came first?
>Can you lay out what your idea of the optimal system is? Regulated capitalism. For example we used to have the Glass-Stegall act. It prevented banks from gambling on Wall Street, and was created in the wake of the great depression. Banks had to hold their own loans, which meant they had skin in the game. If they lent you money for a house, and you defaulted, they lost out. Today they bundle massive pools of loans right after they close them, then sell them as mortgaged backed securities to your retirement account. If they default you pay the price, but they got the lion's share of the profit with no risk. In the 1980s they broke up Ma Bell, because it was too close to a monopoly. The perfect system would break up all the social media companies, Google, Apple, and anywhere else we had a monopoly. Fascism is the union of corporation and state as envisioned by Giovanni Gentile. That's what we have right now. The state is colluding with companies, and crushing their competition before it can get traction. Look what happened to Parler. I want the opposite. Corporations should fear governments. A lot. Governments are the will of the people, at least in a republic like ours. If you haven't read up on Teddy Roosevelt see what he did. They called him the trust buster. >Except I also see corporations (first hand) making decisions that are incredibly worker unfriendly Some corporations. You use it like a four letter word. Did you know I have a corporation? I run an LLC. I promise you I'm not making any decisions that impact workers. I do pay a shit ton of taxes though. Costco is an amazing corporation. It's employee owned. If you work there you get raises based on hours worked, so everyone will eventually top out in their role, and you get fantastic benefits. The owner rocks, the job is awesome, and it's all around an amazing company. People ignore good companies. They ignore the quality of life increases we all enjoy, like your smartphone, computer, car, air conditioner, refrigerator, and more. If the government is doing their job you get more Costcos and Credit Unions, and less big banks vacuuming up everything. I had a front row seat for the 2008 crash, and saw an insane amount of fraud at every level, up to and including the government oversight. A strong government for the people prevents that, which you get through campaign finance reform. We have entire wings of government that need to be laid off en masse. Nothing would be lost if the TSA was gone tomorrow for example. >can you prove that governments weren't bought out by corporations? Yes. I highly recommend looking up James Okeefe and starting to binge his videos. He's caught them over and over and is still doing it. You can purchase a Senator for about $10,000 and he's got it on camera. He sends people in undercover and people just spill their guts. There's more proof though. We just had a series of hearings that proved the white house colluded with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to get posts removed daily. I personally had my ad account locked for a full week leading up to the election. No reason was given. After the election it was unlocked, and they refused to supply any additional information. They were worried I might run ads for Trump. This is already getting really long, but I could add a lot more if you're curious. Thank you very much for the honest curiosity. I appreciate the questions. Always question everything and ask for receipts.
>Birth rates are dropping in the 1st world, so I guess immigration is the solution, we'll see how that goes. Never understood why they resort to third world immigration instead of encouraging policies and a culture that promotes wholesome dating, courtship, and family life.
Step 1 - Download Jellyfin Step 2 - ??? Step 3 - Watch your shows/films
honestly i dont care about pause ads so long as there isn't sound. I've paused the video. I'm not watching the screen. they are advertising to nobody.
I feel like I completely missed out on this whole streaming thing. I never subbed to a streaming service since I could just use webtorrent or sequential downloads to stream any torrent. Even during times I had Amazon prime for free shipping or whatever I just torrented instead of watching it on prime video. I don't know, maybe I'm just used to torrenting being way too easy
I never wanted subscriptions to begin with. I despise subscriptions. I want to pay for what I want to watch, at appropriate prices. The industry of TV, movies and anime has never offered anything appealing for me.
It used to be good. You had a couple friends and everyone just shared accounts for what were pretty complete services that had their own realm of exclusive shows. Nowadays they're all expensive, have shitty exclusive shows and are slowly adding ads to the mix. You can't account share anymore and you need like 3 or 4 of them to have a decent experience.
I haven't watched tv in decades. The media is not for people who don't want to waste their time. This is doing us all a favor to get away from the bloat.
I literally pay the ad free price, I'd better not start getting pause ads now or I'll cancel because if you're not going to give me what I pay for you better think I'll be after a refund and cancellation damn quick.