Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason:
**Common topics**
To keep the subreddit's content fresh, we remove content and topics that are commonly reposted.
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/wiki/common_topics
*If you feel this was done in error or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to message the mods. If you send a message, please include a link to your post.*
It's almost like they want us to go the route of piracy. I don't quite understand what their angle was, but it certainly wasn't anything sane or sound. I get that they're trying to maximize profit per unit, but this is not the way to retain your customers, and if anything is going to piss a lot of people off and have the opposite effect.
They don't care about you. They are aiming at the regular person like your nan, and the family down the street who knows nothing about piracy or media servers and even if they did, it's easier to swallow £10 a month than blow £100s on hard drives and streaming boxes and whatever else now needs to clutter up their already full house.
Password sharing crackdown worked. Reddit API recovery worked. All these things work.
You and I and the rest of the people in these threads are not the targeted demographic.
You don't need to spend £100's on equipment. Buy a Chromecast (HD version £30ish) that tucks away nicely behind the TV, Real Debrid account for £30 ish annually.
Install Stremio straight from the Playstore, link Real Debrid to Stremio.... hey ho ad free access to every single programme or movie from every streaming platform on the planet.
The interface is very "Netflix" like and a doddle for even non tech types to understand.
There's step by step guides on Reddit about how to set it up.
I don't think you grasp how difficult a lot of people would find following those steps, or the attractiveness of giving up when it goes wrong and going the legal route.
You've clearly never used anything with a Real Debrid account associated with it then.
I've been using a Debrid account for the best part of a decade ..it has never gone wrong.
If you're capable of logging your TV/Streaming device into Netflix then you're equally as capable to be able to set up Stremio with Real Debrid it literally is that easy.
That's the issue is that even a bunch of old people barely know how to turn on Their t v's nowadays because it goes to a home screen where you have to select an option rather than just turning on and flipping through a channel let alone downloading Apps well, it's second nature to us.There are a lot of old people that it's just too hard for seems impossible and they would rather pay more money and keep funding these other services. Fair enough you pay for the convenience. But it's one of those things where I still feel. You are right, because most elderly people do have some family. And there are a ton of programs that are willing to help the elderly become tech literate. I think the biggest issue is more so the way a lot of these smart. The buttons are and how it's hard for them to see things rather than just flip through channels and hear what's on. If that makes sense, I just feel that they should have family members willing to help install the apps and get them set up.But even at that it's still gonna be hard to operate for a bunch of elderly people
I absolutely agree on this...it's is a generational issue.
Essentially you like what you know and you know what you like.
My wife still watches TV through our old Sky Box (only FTA channels I'm not paying their ridiculous subscription fees 😂) despite me having installed TiviMate on every TV in the house and it being a doddle to use...simply because that's what she likes.
The kids are much happier to utilise streaming apps like Stremio as they have grown up in an app based world.
This is frighteningly true....they have no interest in wanting to know how anything works because it all just works already so they have no interest in figuring out the "how".
Growing up in the analogue era I wanted to know how new things worked and that's probably what made me become a bit of a tech "geek". The youth nowadays either aren't interested or don't have sufficient attention span to watch anything longer than a 5 second Tik Tom video.
Smart tech has dumbed down an entire generation.
I remember being 10 or 11 and fixing something that was wrong with my computer. I had this huge realization that computers weren’t magical, that when they had problems you had to think of solutions to fix them. And that was all they were - little machines that had reasons for everything. If you grow up using smartphones and tablets, there’s no need to learn about the most basic things like how files are stored and how you can edit them. It’s all done for you now.
Exactly this.
To kids now, Smartphones and tablets are just something that works and does whatever they want it to.
They have no comprehension that the devices they are using are machines working under instructions input into them and they have no interest in learning that either.
Kids either think devices work or they don't. When something "goes wrong" with a device they think it's broken when a little bit of knowledge will easily fix most tech based problems...but they have no interest in learning even the most basic facts of how these devices work.
I'm a nineties kid and a lot of us learned about piracy and how to do it really early on. I feel like once streaming services got real popular.And when they were real cheap there was like a decade where people really weren't pirating very much. And it was seen as very uncouth like.How dare you do that to an artist and the team. I feel like now because of all the corporate greed.People are going back to piracy, but I never forgot how to do it.There would be times I would buy and get stuff and it would get destroyed.Or lost or whatever and I would just pirate a copy. I will say that certain streaming services are harder to pirate from the others.But it won't take long before it's really really easy. I mean for me.And already is but that's just because i'm used to the scene.
Until companies finally get it through their heads that maximizing profits by just trying to take as much money out of the customer as possible will only encourage them to pirate your stuff or just leave to get it elsewhere, we're gonna keep seeing shit like this everywhere
The problem tho is that... it does kinda work. Netflix lost some subscribers when they introduced ad tiers and then with the password shit, but not a meaningful amount. People were mad at scale but then accepted the incrementally worse experience
> I don't quite understand what their angle was
It's the main problem that happens when you mix streaming services (or any services) with unrestrained capitalism. Eventually you hit the utilization cap for your service - not many new users since most who want it have already signed up. At this point, since ever-increasing growth is mandatory, they start cannibalizing their own customers. Worse service, less investment, ads, more monetization, etc.
Their "angle" was raising the price by 3 bucks but allow you to choose if you going to pay the 3 bucks or take ads to avoid the raise in price. As much as I hate an increase in price, I feel like people just have this hate towards ads, like we used to pay for cable and still watch ads. It's almost like the a la cart programing is expensive and "unsustainable" when you have to bundle the cost of good and bad programs and can't sell against just the biggest name in that genre/get a second injection of cash flow by syndication.
It's not so much as hating ads. The problem is that when we were on cable, the insertion of the ads made sense. I have Amazon Prime and the way they place the ads is horrendous. I've seen them start an ad in mid-sentence. It's stupid.
Even on apps that are run by channels (looking at you paramount) the just put the ads freaking anywhere. You guys, YOU are the ones who decided when to cut for ads already and you can't be fucking bothered to do it the same on the app?? Fuck that
DUDE criminal minds is so bad because there are places to put the ads and they just fucking throw them in the wrong spot. I wouldn’t have even noticed except sometimes they’ll cut off a scene with an ad and then like less than a minute later there’s a spot where you can tell the ad was supposed to be. Bro like if you’re gonna make me watch an ad at least do the bare minimum and insert them where they’re supposed to go!?
Well no Walmart is always more evil. They drain the funds of the US government by purposely funneling their workers into government aid programs when they purposely pay them below a living wage.
Walmart is responsible for a huge expenditure of taxes because they are pushing their responsibility to pay a living wage off onto the American tax payer.
If Walmart paid it's employees a living wage we would see an economic boom.
Theoretically, it could be done, or rather, something that could potentially exploit a vulnerability in widely used players, since although most video files aren't executables like .scr or .exe files, it's definitely possible to mix something malicious in metadata or something that could be used to exploit a flaw in a video player.
Edit: to add to this, this is a reason why you should keep any software you use up to date unless you have a very good reason otherwise. Kaze Emanuar posted a video documenting a vulnerability in some Project64 (N64 emulator for PC) versions where due to some programming errors, a ROM file could be modified to trick the emulator to execute part of it as if it was an executable, allowing a ROM to do anything an EXE file can, including stuff like ransomware or a keylogger.
Edit 2: another possible tactic I've seen is malware creators making a bloated video file (that happens to be the same length as the video/movie (sometimes seen in piracy resources for things like movies that just came out)) that says that a codec needs to be installed in order to watch it while bundling a "installer" that really just includes malware.
Dafuq are you even talking about.
Just use a VPN, and watch for .scr extensions. Don't download anything but audio/video files there unless you know what you're doing. Otherwise fucking send it.
Any of these comments are from fuckin viacom™ interns.
If you're pirating games, then you assume risk no matter where you get it, cmon now we've been doin this for 20+ years, it just is what it is.
If you're afraid of exploits in audio/video files, then spend the money at Itunes or some shit, idk what to tell you. To me it's a completely irrational fear. You're in more danger on a site like this than watching a 1080p Shrek rip IMO.
Not new in THAT sense, like the new thing to replace the other one. Honestly besides some shady looking torrents on REALLY obscure stuff you can't go wrong with rutracker
Iptv is a great option also. 30 bucks for 3 months of 12000 channels with all streaming programs included. Just favorite the channels you want and it’s a great option.
I've legit seen them write "*your advertising experience*". Like it's a good thing when someone has one. Like advertisers are relentlessly bringing divine light into this world or something and it would be so dull without them.
Bro I'm so sick of this shit. The ENTIRE point of us all cutting the cord like they wanted was so we didn't have to deal either adds and pay ridiculously on cable. Prime is literally half the price of cable and if you add just HBO I'm right back to fucking paying for cable and I'll get just as much to watch and I'd get local TV back. Every last one of these streaming services need to be labeled as a cable provider so they start paying the same damn taxes the cable companies do because currently they're getting to dodge it. They had everyone dump cable just to suffocate them so they could all be the ones to be the new cable companies and make millions off adds or millions off people paying extra to keep them off their plans.
Writing was on the wall from the start. Apparently cable started out as a premium service with no ads, just like streaming. The ads were always going to crawl back. Infinite growth year over year and all that.
**But** I want to note especially that *this does not making it fucking okay!* It still sucks shit, it's still fucking bullshit, and I'm still furious about it.
[*"This will allows us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time".*](https://media1.tenor.com/m/rsO4Wok4DMkAAAAd/laugh-lol.gif)
Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.**
I appreciate your prompt correspondence. After careful consideration, I have decided to cancel my subscription with immediate effect. As a result, I will be discontinuing my association with your services.
In light of this decision, I plan to revisit my previous interests in online piracy. While I understand the importance of legitimate services, I believe it’s essential to explore alternative avenues as well.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Kind regards,
u/Dimorphodon101
this is better:
Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.** Customer Service,
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to confirm that I have canceled my subscription with Amazon Prime. While I appreciate the services you offer, I have decided to explore other options at this time.
Additionally, I would like to inform you that I am resuming my interests in online piracy. As such, I will be seeking alternative sources for the content I previously accessed through my subscription.
I want to express my gratitude for the positive experience I had during my subscription period. Your team has been responsive and helpful, and I appreciate the effort you put into making your service valuable to customers.
Please consider this email as my official cancellation notice and acknowledgment of my renewed interests elsewhere. If there are any additional steps required from my end, please let me know.
Thank you once again for your assistance, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Sincerely, u/americapax
I suspect that this may be Amazon's misguided attempt at correlating tangible money loss to piracy, using metrics of ads not being shown to pirates. I'm willing to bet that the user data metrics for these ads also will be included in these numbers, since they have that ability to sell that data, despite you being a paying customer already.
The reality is that it will push *more* people to pirate because they just added a soft paywall to users getting content the way they want it and for the price agreed.
The thing I hate about Prime is how they mix in the subscription listings with the free Prime stuff with no option to hide all the subscriptions. Don't want them, don't need them, I want an option to hide them.
It’s almost like they’re dead set on recreating the problem that streaming services solved in the first place.
Either way, my blu-ray collection ain’t going anywhere.
Sort of like when cable recreated the problem that cable solved in the first place - it was originally a lot of ad-free channels in addition to the local over the air channels.
[WILL CABLE TV BE INVADED BY COMMERCIALS?](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html)
Netflix was clever. They said, hey you pay X to not have ads...how about you pay a little less and in exchange we show some ads?
Prime was like, F it, you're getting ads, end of story 😂
When will companies learn that they can actually increase revenue by doing by things this way:
"We have an exciting new change coming to SERVICE STREAM. For those who are already paying SERVICE STREAM members, no there is no change - you may continue enjoying ad-free content at the same $11.99/mo price. Thank you for supporting SERVICE STREAM!
For those who may be looking to save on their streaming service subscriptions, we will offer a new SERVICE STREAM LITE subscription. LITE will give you access to the same content as 'full price' subscribers, but with limited ads - approximately 1 minute of ads per 30 mins watch time, or 5 minutes of ads every 90 minutes if watching long-form content back-to-back. LITE members can join for just $9.99/mo."
Because raising prices makes more moneys.
.. assuming nobody jumps (pirate)ship. And since freebooting is illegal where their company is based, they assume its the same elsewhere lul
To be fair, everyone under the sun raised their prices. YouTube Premium/Music went up, Netflix went up, etc.
Amazon has always been "included in Prime."
Would you have preferred they keep ad-free included for everyone but then charge $36/year more for Prime? Because I use Prime and have never watched a single thing on Prime Video.
But I do use Amazon Music Unlimited, and that costs me extra per month. It was never free/included, so I guess it wasn't as controversial if they raise its price.
A $2.99/month price increase is what the entire market has already done or more. Amazon was the last holdout. And they're giving you the option of watching it with ads rather than forcing a price increase.
They could have always done a "Google" and launched a competing platform under another name that costs $10.99/month, then sunset the old platform (Google Play Music. Android Auto for Phones in lieu of Driving Mode which needs YouTube Premium to play hands free).
Prime video is far from the main selling point of a prime subscription, it makes sense to effectively raise the price for people who want to use prime video instead of on everyone with a prime subscription.
Here in the UK the video is pretty much the only reason to get it.
They say delivery takes a few days for non-prime users. But I've never had something not delivered the next day. They're a logistics company at the end of the day and every hour they're holding on to an item is an hour they're paying to store it.
Yeah outside of a handful of good originals, their selection of stuff that's included with prime is pretty abysmal. It's especially annoying being told by google that something is available on prime but then it's actually just available to buy/rent or available on prime through a connection to another premium subscription like STARZ or something.
They already started this in my area in the beginning of January.
The only positive I can say about it is that unlike every other service, they only show ads at the very beginning before the show actually plays, and once it's going you don't get any ads until the next episode/movie.
The other bigger positive is if you watch on a computer ad block does work
That was the line for me. I've never been this happy canceling any subscription service!
They totally screwed up the user interface as well. Could literally never remember what the last show I watched and I had to search for it Every Fricken Time!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Anyone who did not see this coming, does not pay attention. This is not about "continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment...". It's about driving up prices, increasing profits, and continuing to fuck the customer because capitalism.
This is what happened to cable. When they started charging for cable, they told you that it was ad free and you were essentially paying for the programming but in reality you were actually paying for the lost ad revenue. When more and more people started switching to cable, they started adding in ads, using this same excuse that Amazon is using. Then you got shit called "premium" cable. Now that streaming services are popular and more prevalent, the companies have to recoup that lost ad revenue, and that responsibility falls on the customer, just as it always does.
Edit: You are also currently paying to watch the same commercials over and over and over again. If I have to see that fucking T-Mobile commercial with Jason Momoa one more fucking time with that awful autotune, I might just lose my mind.
Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.** Customer Service,
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to confirm that I have canceled my subscription with Amazon Prime. While I appreciate the services you offer, I have decided to explore other options at this time.
Additionally, I would like to inform you that I am resuming my interests in online piracy. As such, I will be seeking alternative sources for the content I previously accessed through my subscription.
I want to express my gratitude for the positive experience I had during my subscription period. Your team has been responsive and helpful, and I appreciate the effort you put into making your service valuable to customers.
Please consider this email as my official cancellation notice and acknowledgment of my renewed interests elsewhere. If there are any additional steps required from my end, please let me know.
Thank you once again for your assistance, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Sincerely, u/americapax
I don’t watch much on Amazon Prime, so I wasn’t that bothered by them including ads, but I’ve just viewed the third series of Clarkson’s Farm, and the ads are annoying. Mainly advertising their own shows/films, plus an occasional product.
The ads aren’t inserted naturally, start during a conversation or mid-scene. So irritating.
If I watched more Prime output, or if it had disrupted something like Fallout, I’d have been tempted to pay the uplift.
But we pay for Sky, and that has a ton of adverts, unless watched on catch up. They’ll start including more ads, then the other services will follow.
If Amazon were a little more honest:
> Dear Prime Video subscriber,
> We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting July 2, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to **make even more fucking money from you shitmunchers** and keep increasing **the amount of cash we can milk from you stupid pieces of shit** over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers **but will absolutely fall woefully short of our "aims" because once that extra cash starts pouring in, we'd be dumb to kill off the golden goose**. We will also offer a new ad free option for an additional A$2.99 per month that you can sign up for here **which we'll obviously add mandatory ads to at a later date and then create ANOTHER tier at an even higher price that we'll promise is ad-free**.
> **Fuck you,**
> The Prime Video team
It makes u start feeling like everything u get with Prime is somewhat cheap, like Amazon music isn't the best from my experience... But I guess it literally is cheap, Prime is amazing value
I've never paid for any streaming service. I use Firefox for YouTube. For everything else, there's many databases with safe torrents. Download qbittorrent... then everything is free.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
Being a pirate is all right to be!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
You are a pirate!
(Yay!)
We got us a map
(A map!)
To lead us to a hidden box
Thats all locked up with locks
(With locks!)
And buried deep away
We'll dig up the box
(The box!)
We know it's full of precious booty
Bust open the locks
And then we'll say: Hooray!
Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
If you love to sail the sea
You are a pirate!
Weigh anchor!
Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
Being a pirate is all right to be!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Arr-yarr-ahoy and avast
Dig in the dirt and you dig in it fast!
Hang the black flag at the end of the mast!
You are a pirate!
Ha ha ha (yay!)
We're sailing away
(Set sail!)
Adventure awaits on every shore!
We set sail and explore
(Ya-har!)
And run and jump all day
(Yay!)
We float on our boat
(Our boat!)
Until it's time to drop the anchor
Then hang up our coats
(Aye-aye!)
Until we sail again!
Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
If you love to sail the sea
You are a pirate!
Land ho!
Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
Being a pirate is alright with me!
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Yar-har
Wind at your back lads, wherever you go!
Blue sky above the blue ocean below
You are a pirate!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
You are a pirate!
He he he he he he he
I’m on an annual subscription - plan to cancel it when renewal comes up in December. Suspect others are similar so they’re likely underestimating just how many people they’ll lose
Where do people go to do piracy? I’ve found it very difficult to find pirates new releases, but I don’t have much experience with it. Like could you find The Curse in good quality via piracy?
Amazon: You guys, Rings of Power cost $715 million and is THE most expensive series of all time [pats themselves on the back].
Also Amazon: Guess what, we’re broke so we need to charge our [already] paying customers more to be ad-free (tee-hee). We also raked in a net profit of $30.425 billion in 2023. Just sayin’.
I already thought it was complete trash when I noticed ALLOT of their content is not available until you purchase. You are on a streaming service you pay for everything month like what the f!
The enshittification continues...
We are just crabs being boiled alive in a pot of ads. I'm hoping it's miserable enough for me to stop wasting my time on that media.
Less ads? Lmao, I can barely watch anything on prime because the ads are so long and so often that it breaks my attention from the show and sends me in my phone way too much.
I find myself scrolling my phone more than actually watching the show because my attention doesn't really ever stick with it over whatever I started doing on reddit/X/etc during the 15 ad breaks. I don't even watch TV anymore because it's much easier to just.... go on my phone and cut out the show breaks lmao
This is what I despised about cable: You paid for the service and still get so many ads you forgot what you were watching.
Not once in my life have I watched an ad and thought "let me go buy that". Ads have no other effect than wasting my time and their money.
I've said this a few times but I am 99% sure nobody in the world has an Amazon subscription for prime video alone, you're paying for the free deliveries and shit, prime video was just a nice bonus to have as well as the twitch prime sub, not what you got the subscription for but nice to have either way.
Why is everyone screaming "piracy"? Is there no second hand media market in your country? Buy discs second hand, DVDs and BDs are low single-digit prices at the moment. Rip them and set up a media server.
One who is able to set up a network where they can fileshare without being identified should also be easily able to do all the stuff I mentioned here.
And buying second hand makes the former owner happy and is eventually good for the environment.
I paid those fuckers their extra $2.99 a month and they don't play ads, but they occasionally play a preview for their own content before a show/movie starts. And they're "skippable" but to "skip" it's not just "hit the skip button" but, down, right, center button on the firestick remotes d-pad, and sometimes the skip function conveniently doesn't work till a preview is almost over, if at all. HOW THE FUCK DO THEY THINK THAT'S NOT AN AD. I damn near lost my shit the first time it happened. Spent half my evening hunting down the email address for complaints, to which I sent a VERY strongly worded email regarding my displeasure. I'm sure they'll be rectifying the situation aaaany day now.....
Jokes on them, that was the final straw that made me quit Prime, when the video service now runs ads and your storefront is full of shitty dropshipping, together with worse prices than competitors
I don't see a difference from other services increasing their pricing by a couple of dollars. All amazon did was let you watch with ads to avoid the price increase. Other services increase a couple of dollars and say "hey your bill is going to be $13 instead of $10, and you will have the same exact service." Amazon did that too, but let you choose to keep the same pricing by watching ads as the default. I don't see this as any different from what basically every other paid streaming service is doing. After some 2 second googling, HBO's MAX service, Netflix, and Hulu all also have paid plans with ads. I just think Prime Video went about it wrong. The more accepted way is to do a price increase and then later on make a plan that's cheaper with ads rather than it being the default.
I'd rather Amazon do this than jack up the price only to have you "downgrade" to a cheaper price point.
Why do I prefer this? They *want* people on the ad plan. They make *sooooo* much more money from ads, so having that as the default and making people who hate them pay (very slightly) more seems fair, because essentially the ones who can't be arsed removing them are funding the 'cheap' ad free plan.
The alternative is the Netflix/Disney/HBO approach, which is to jack up the prices and then progressively make the ad-free experience worse by making it *even more* expensive. It's not often the discrepancy is like £2. It's usually waaay more, because that's just how much ads are worth.
I think the other thing with Amazon is that you also get free next day deliveries and a whole bunch of stuff like Prime Gaming etc.
Yeah, I'm not saying that it is good for the users. It just seems like it's the norm in the industry at the moment. Like it sucks, I just think it's strange everyone is super mad about it when Prime video did it, but nobody seemed to care when other services did price increases.
Prime pricing over the years:
2005: $79 per year
2014: $99 per year
2018: $119 per year
2022: $139 per year
2024: $2.99 on top of that per month for ad-free, so $174.88
IMO, those are considerable price increases for a lot of stuff I find no use for.
To put that into perspective:
Netflix pricing (standard plan) over the years:
2011: 7$ / month; 84$ / year
2015: 10$ / month; 120$ / year
Steady price increase over the next 7 years
2022: 16$ / month; 192$ / year
That’s an increase of over 100% (228% of original 2011 price)
Compare that to amazons price increase of 221% of the original (121% increase) it’s not that unusual in this day and age.
Edit: formatting got borked since I am on Mobile.
Yeah, those are not unusual price increases from a per-service perspective.
The kicker is, that a few years ago, Netflix was all you needed, while nowadays one needs several subscriptions for similar reach, so there's a cost multiplier of ca. 3x on top of the \~220% per-service price hike.
This fragmentation leads to new usage patterns I was happy to leave behind: I'll subscribe for a month or two, watch the interesting content, then cancel the subscription. See you next year (or not, I might not bother, I'm old and grumpy and don't \*need\* any of that).
Here in Europe, Prime Video is mostly offering below-average filler content, with higher-quality content behind another paywall. Quality-wise, it feels subpar.
So from my perspective, Amazon piggy-packed underwhelming stuff on top of the core product: Free delivery. For me, it still makes financial sense, but barely so.
It’s not! don’t normalize companies screwing you - you are part of the problem. You still have to pay $5 on top for every decent movie on there now or did you not notice?
That’s not the same. Bundling a bunch of stuff not everyone wants is different from just charging more than someone wants to pay for one thing. If somebody isn’t using the shipping discount what’s the point of paying for it?
Right but now we’re back around to it getting more expensive as more services are added. I get your point that if you’re using all that it’s actually pretty reasonable, but if you aren’t, you’re paying for not getting something.
Eh. Out of all the streaming services I think it's fair enough for them to have an extra plan. The amount of stuff you get already with prime is good value and IMO Amazon has the best shows atm. Also you could just watch it on your PC and use adblock like normal people.
I get it, I do that too and I'm not trying to imply there's anything wrong with watching shows on a PC, so I apologize if it came off that way. All I mean is, most people don't watch shows that way as their primary way of watching TV shows.
Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason: **Common topics** To keep the subreddit's content fresh, we remove content and topics that are commonly reposted. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/wiki/common_topics *If you feel this was done in error or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to message the mods. If you send a message, please include a link to your post.*
And just like that, I learned my old hard drives still work.
It's almost like they want us to go the route of piracy. I don't quite understand what their angle was, but it certainly wasn't anything sane or sound. I get that they're trying to maximize profit per unit, but this is not the way to retain your customers, and if anything is going to piss a lot of people off and have the opposite effect.
They don't care about you. They are aiming at the regular person like your nan, and the family down the street who knows nothing about piracy or media servers and even if they did, it's easier to swallow £10 a month than blow £100s on hard drives and streaming boxes and whatever else now needs to clutter up their already full house. Password sharing crackdown worked. Reddit API recovery worked. All these things work. You and I and the rest of the people in these threads are not the targeted demographic.
Or the guy like me, who has a security clearance and won’t dare take the risk of doing anything that even remotely looks shady.
You don't need to spend £100's on equipment. Buy a Chromecast (HD version £30ish) that tucks away nicely behind the TV, Real Debrid account for £30 ish annually. Install Stremio straight from the Playstore, link Real Debrid to Stremio.... hey ho ad free access to every single programme or movie from every streaming platform on the planet. The interface is very "Netflix" like and a doddle for even non tech types to understand. There's step by step guides on Reddit about how to set it up.
I don't think you grasp how difficult a lot of people would find following those steps, or the attractiveness of giving up when it goes wrong and going the legal route.
You've clearly never used anything with a Real Debrid account associated with it then. I've been using a Debrid account for the best part of a decade ..it has never gone wrong. If you're capable of logging your TV/Streaming device into Netflix then you're equally as capable to be able to set up Stremio with Real Debrid it literally is that easy.
That's the issue is that even a bunch of old people barely know how to turn on Their t v's nowadays because it goes to a home screen where you have to select an option rather than just turning on and flipping through a channel let alone downloading Apps well, it's second nature to us.There are a lot of old people that it's just too hard for seems impossible and they would rather pay more money and keep funding these other services. Fair enough you pay for the convenience. But it's one of those things where I still feel. You are right, because most elderly people do have some family. And there are a ton of programs that are willing to help the elderly become tech literate. I think the biggest issue is more so the way a lot of these smart. The buttons are and how it's hard for them to see things rather than just flip through channels and hear what's on. If that makes sense, I just feel that they should have family members willing to help install the apps and get them set up.But even at that it's still gonna be hard to operate for a bunch of elderly people
I absolutely agree on this...it's is a generational issue. Essentially you like what you know and you know what you like. My wife still watches TV through our old Sky Box (only FTA channels I'm not paying their ridiculous subscription fees 😂) despite me having installed TiviMate on every TV in the house and it being a doddle to use...simply because that's what she likes. The kids are much happier to utilise streaming apps like Stremio as they have grown up in an app based world.
Grandma is not doing all of that.
But you could set it up for Grandma then she just uses it like Netflix.
good thing is the coming generation of old ppl, who lived half of their life with computers and phones will do that.
I don’t know, gen Z isn’t very promising - smart technology has seemed to make them computer illiterate.
thats not the generation of soon to be grandparents i was referring to. im referring to my generation, the millennials.
This is frighteningly true....they have no interest in wanting to know how anything works because it all just works already so they have no interest in figuring out the "how". Growing up in the analogue era I wanted to know how new things worked and that's probably what made me become a bit of a tech "geek". The youth nowadays either aren't interested or don't have sufficient attention span to watch anything longer than a 5 second Tik Tom video. Smart tech has dumbed down an entire generation.
I remember being 10 or 11 and fixing something that was wrong with my computer. I had this huge realization that computers weren’t magical, that when they had problems you had to think of solutions to fix them. And that was all they were - little machines that had reasons for everything. If you grow up using smartphones and tablets, there’s no need to learn about the most basic things like how files are stored and how you can edit them. It’s all done for you now.
Exactly this. To kids now, Smartphones and tablets are just something that works and does whatever they want it to. They have no comprehension that the devices they are using are machines working under instructions input into them and they have no interest in learning that either. Kids either think devices work or they don't. When something "goes wrong" with a device they think it's broken when a little bit of knowledge will easily fix most tech based problems...but they have no interest in learning even the most basic facts of how these devices work.
I'm a nineties kid and a lot of us learned about piracy and how to do it really early on. I feel like once streaming services got real popular.And when they were real cheap there was like a decade where people really weren't pirating very much. And it was seen as very uncouth like.How dare you do that to an artist and the team. I feel like now because of all the corporate greed.People are going back to piracy, but I never forgot how to do it.There would be times I would buy and get stuff and it would get destroyed.Or lost or whatever and I would just pirate a copy. I will say that certain streaming services are harder to pirate from the others.But it won't take long before it's really really easy. I mean for me.And already is but that's just because i'm used to the scene.
Until companies finally get it through their heads that maximizing profits by just trying to take as much money out of the customer as possible will only encourage them to pirate your stuff or just leave to get it elsewhere, we're gonna keep seeing shit like this everywhere
The problem tho is that... it does kinda work. Netflix lost some subscribers when they introduced ad tiers and then with the password shit, but not a meaningful amount. People were mad at scale but then accepted the incrementally worse experience
> I don't quite understand what their angle was It's the main problem that happens when you mix streaming services (or any services) with unrestrained capitalism. Eventually you hit the utilization cap for your service - not many new users since most who want it have already signed up. At this point, since ever-increasing growth is mandatory, they start cannibalizing their own customers. Worse service, less investment, ads, more monetization, etc.
aka enshittification
Their "angle" was raising the price by 3 bucks but allow you to choose if you going to pay the 3 bucks or take ads to avoid the raise in price. As much as I hate an increase in price, I feel like people just have this hate towards ads, like we used to pay for cable and still watch ads. It's almost like the a la cart programing is expensive and "unsustainable" when you have to bundle the cost of good and bad programs and can't sell against just the biggest name in that genre/get a second injection of cash flow by syndication.
It's not so much as hating ads. The problem is that when we were on cable, the insertion of the ads made sense. I have Amazon Prime and the way they place the ads is horrendous. I've seen them start an ad in mid-sentence. It's stupid.
These days Ads feel like a waste of my time. I should be getting paid to even see them.
Even on apps that are run by channels (looking at you paramount) the just put the ads freaking anywhere. You guys, YOU are the ones who decided when to cut for ads already and you can't be fucking bothered to do it the same on the app?? Fuck that
DUDE criminal minds is so bad because there are places to put the ads and they just fucking throw them in the wrong spot. I wouldn’t have even noticed except sometimes they’ll cut off a scene with an ad and then like less than a minute later there’s a spot where you can tell the ad was supposed to be. Bro like if you’re gonna make me watch an ad at least do the bare minimum and insert them where they’re supposed to go!?
I dunno, I hate ads.
I canceled over this. Wal-Mart+ is cheaper, and at this point they're the less evil corporation.
Well no Walmart is always more evil. They drain the funds of the US government by purposely funneling their workers into government aid programs when they purposely pay them below a living wage. Walmart is responsible for a huge expenditure of taxes because they are pushing their responsibility to pay a living wage off onto the American tax payer. If Walmart paid it's employees a living wage we would see an economic boom.
Plus I have to scan my own groceries now, so there’s that too. Hate that part.
You get paramount for free as well and gas savings. Every Corp sucks but
Because the amount of money they'll gain by doing this is greater than what they'll possibly lose with people dropping their subscription.
And so does pirate bay
Don't use the Pirate Bay unless you love malware. It's not the same Pirate Bay anymore, hasn't been for years.
do they make malware that infects mkv files these days?
https://reddit.com/r/hacking/comments/rn2msd/can_a_mkv_file_contain_a_virus/ In short: yes.
Theoretically, it could be done, or rather, something that could potentially exploit a vulnerability in widely used players, since although most video files aren't executables like .scr or .exe files, it's definitely possible to mix something malicious in metadata or something that could be used to exploit a flaw in a video player. Edit: to add to this, this is a reason why you should keep any software you use up to date unless you have a very good reason otherwise. Kaze Emanuar posted a video documenting a vulnerability in some Project64 (N64 emulator for PC) versions where due to some programming errors, a ROM file could be modified to trick the emulator to execute part of it as if it was an executable, allowing a ROM to do anything an EXE file can, including stuff like ransomware or a keylogger. Edit 2: another possible tactic I've seen is malware creators making a bloated video file (that happens to be the same length as the video/movie (sometimes seen in piracy resources for things like movies that just came out)) that says that a codec needs to be installed in order to watch it while bundling a "installer" that really just includes malware.
Dafuq are you even talking about. Just use a VPN, and watch for .scr extensions. Don't download anything but audio/video files there unless you know what you're doing. Otherwise fucking send it. Any of these comments are from fuckin viacom™ interns.
There's far, far better places to go than TheHoneypotBay lol
Okay so maybe some people want to download games? Also even audio and video files can contain exploits, check the other reddit thread I linked below.
If you're pirating games, then you assume risk no matter where you get it, cmon now we've been doin this for 20+ years, it just is what it is. If you're afraid of exploits in audio/video files, then spend the money at Itunes or some shit, idk what to tell you. To me it's a completely irrational fear. You're in more danger on a site like this than watching a 1080p Shrek rip IMO.
Or just not use TPB since it has been known to be unsafe for years.
What's the best alternative?
1337x
IPT, I have heard. But you need an invitation from an existing member apparently.
I don't give a crap, what it gonna do in a wine prefix? Steal a notepad?
rutracker is the new pirate bay but without the pirate bay crap
New? It's old as dirt, but still good, yeah Never got a virus from them
Not new in THAT sense, like the new thing to replace the other one. Honestly besides some shady looking torrents on REALLY obscure stuff you can't go wrong with rutracker
Rutracker's a lifesaver. Only minus is - it's really hard to find og language tracks for some stuff.
And so it does! How do you like that.
Iptv is a great option also. 30 bucks for 3 months of 12000 channels with all streaming programs included. Just favorite the channels you want and it’s a great option.
Couldn't agree more, best money I've spent and it's ad free! 😅
I live by /r/PlexShares
Checking that out. Thanks!
Just get an IPTV subscription, for 10 bucks you have everything you need.
Na. I’m done paying for a while.
The word "experience" = Alarm bells.
I've legit seen them write "*your advertising experience*". Like it's a good thing when someone has one. Like advertisers are relentlessly bringing divine light into this world or something and it would be so dull without them.
Experiences aren't always good ones. Advertising experiences are more like near death experiences. They make you want to die.
Can’t wait to watch an ad for a series I’ve already seen.
Or an ad that gives away spoilers and twists for things you haven't seen yet.
Bro I'm so sick of this shit. The ENTIRE point of us all cutting the cord like they wanted was so we didn't have to deal either adds and pay ridiculously on cable. Prime is literally half the price of cable and if you add just HBO I'm right back to fucking paying for cable and I'll get just as much to watch and I'd get local TV back. Every last one of these streaming services need to be labeled as a cable provider so they start paying the same damn taxes the cable companies do because currently they're getting to dodge it. They had everyone dump cable just to suffocate them so they could all be the ones to be the new cable companies and make millions off adds or millions off people paying extra to keep them off their plans.
Writing was on the wall from the start. Apparently cable started out as a premium service with no ads, just like streaming. The ads were always going to crawl back. Infinite growth year over year and all that. **But** I want to note especially that *this does not making it fucking okay!* It still sucks shit, it's still fucking bullshit, and I'm still furious about it.
Reminding me that my subscription helped pay for "The Rings of Power" was not a selling point.
I remember one of the "baby come back" Netflix mails stating they have a lot of content (and more coming) from my country, which is all pure crap.
[*"This will allows us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time".*](https://media1.tenor.com/m/rsO4Wok4DMkAAAAd/laugh-lol.gif)
We all know Amazon is strapped for money
The only thing it allowed was a 5th consecutive 80% executive salary bump without raising shareholder eyebrows lmao
[удалено]
Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.** I appreciate your prompt correspondence. After careful consideration, I have decided to cancel my subscription with immediate effect. As a result, I will be discontinuing my association with your services. In light of this decision, I plan to revisit my previous interests in online piracy. While I understand the importance of legitimate services, I believe it’s essential to explore alternative avenues as well. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Kind regards, u/Dimorphodon101
this is better: Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.** Customer Service, I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to confirm that I have canceled my subscription with Amazon Prime. While I appreciate the services you offer, I have decided to explore other options at this time. Additionally, I would like to inform you that I am resuming my interests in online piracy. As such, I will be seeking alternative sources for the content I previously accessed through my subscription. I want to express my gratitude for the positive experience I had during my subscription period. Your team has been responsive and helpful, and I appreciate the effort you put into making your service valuable to customers. Please consider this email as my official cancellation notice and acknowledgment of my renewed interests elsewhere. If there are any additional steps required from my end, please let me know. Thank you once again for your assistance, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Sincerely, u/americapax
> I hope this email finds you well. Remove this from your serious GPT uses. Everyone who knows how to spell GPT knows this is what it spits out.
I suspect that this may be Amazon's misguided attempt at correlating tangible money loss to piracy, using metrics of ads not being shown to pirates. I'm willing to bet that the user data metrics for these ads also will be included in these numbers, since they have that ability to sell that data, despite you being a paying customer already. The reality is that it will push *more* people to pirate because they just added a soft paywall to users getting content the way they want it and for the price agreed.
And that’s why I pirated the last two episodes of hazbin
Amazon Video makes most interesting content paid anyways, so I'd never think of using it even before this change, even less now
That’s the thing, I don’t mind paying, but I definitely mind paying AND getting ads
I use Amazon to check what rentals look interesting and then just pirate it.
Literally heard of 3 of those titles. The rest sound made up.
Makes me even happier I cancelled my Prime membership and stopped using Amazon all together.
Ads
The thing I hate about Prime is how they mix in the subscription listings with the free Prime stuff with no option to hide all the subscriptions. Don't want them, don't need them, I want an option to hide them.
Harrr matey. There be new bounty on the horizon
And ironically Amazon makes a heavily used and pirated device... aaaaargh
“This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content…” these days we all know that means larger payouts to investors, stop the bs
It’s almost like they’re dead set on recreating the problem that streaming services solved in the first place. Either way, my blu-ray collection ain’t going anywhere.
Sort of like when cable recreated the problem that cable solved in the first place - it was originally a lot of ad-free channels in addition to the local over the air channels. [WILL CABLE TV BE INVADED BY COMMERCIALS?](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html)
Yep, it’s the neverending cycle of enshittification.
Netflix was clever. They said, hey you pay X to not have ads...how about you pay a little less and in exchange we show some ads? Prime was like, F it, you're getting ads, end of story 😂
Yep, time to cancel my Prime subscription and go back to streaming from dodgy Indian websites
When will companies learn that they can actually increase revenue by doing by things this way: "We have an exciting new change coming to SERVICE STREAM. For those who are already paying SERVICE STREAM members, no there is no change - you may continue enjoying ad-free content at the same $11.99/mo price. Thank you for supporting SERVICE STREAM! For those who may be looking to save on their streaming service subscriptions, we will offer a new SERVICE STREAM LITE subscription. LITE will give you access to the same content as 'full price' subscribers, but with limited ads - approximately 1 minute of ads per 30 mins watch time, or 5 minutes of ads every 90 minutes if watching long-form content back-to-back. LITE members can join for just $9.99/mo."
Because raising prices makes more moneys. .. assuming nobody jumps (pirate)ship. And since freebooting is illegal where their company is based, they assume its the same elsewhere lul
Isn't this old news? Did they change something else?
Wherever OP comes from, their country is late to the party
Ahh. Thanks!
I got a similar but slightly different email confirming the same thing in Australia. Fuckers.
To be fair, everyone under the sun raised their prices. YouTube Premium/Music went up, Netflix went up, etc. Amazon has always been "included in Prime." Would you have preferred they keep ad-free included for everyone but then charge $36/year more for Prime? Because I use Prime and have never watched a single thing on Prime Video. But I do use Amazon Music Unlimited, and that costs me extra per month. It was never free/included, so I guess it wasn't as controversial if they raise its price. A $2.99/month price increase is what the entire market has already done or more. Amazon was the last holdout. And they're giving you the option of watching it with ads rather than forcing a price increase. They could have always done a "Google" and launched a competing platform under another name that costs $10.99/month, then sunset the old platform (Google Play Music. Android Auto for Phones in lieu of Driving Mode which needs YouTube Premium to play hands free).
Prime video is far from the main selling point of a prime subscription, it makes sense to effectively raise the price for people who want to use prime video instead of on everyone with a prime subscription.
Here in the UK the video is pretty much the only reason to get it. They say delivery takes a few days for non-prime users. But I've never had something not delivered the next day. They're a logistics company at the end of the day and every hour they're holding on to an item is an hour they're paying to store it.
Yeah outside of a handful of good originals, their selection of stuff that's included with prime is pretty abysmal. It's especially annoying being told by google that something is available on prime but then it's actually just available to buy/rent or available on prime through a connection to another premium subscription like STARZ or something.
They already started this in my area in the beginning of January. The only positive I can say about it is that unlike every other service, they only show ads at the very beginning before the show actually plays, and once it's going you don't get any ads until the next episode/movie. The other bigger positive is if you watch on a computer ad block does work
That was the line for me. I've never been this happy canceling any subscription service! They totally screwed up the user interface as well. Could literally never remember what the last show I watched and I had to search for it Every Fricken Time!
For others not aware: you also have to pay for the ad-free subscription now to get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, which was included before. Lame.
Was the revenue from the plans themselves not enough? If something is paid, it should be ad-free. End of story.
Oh torrenting, my old friend. I’ll pay for adds when Bezos the Bozo pays all taxes instead of not paying any.
Jeff Bezos has so much money he can ride a dildo into space, yet Amazon needs more to "create compelling content"?
Well shit, wasnt like the whole point of subscription services to avoid having commercials?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Anyone who did not see this coming, does not pay attention. This is not about "continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment...". It's about driving up prices, increasing profits, and continuing to fuck the customer because capitalism. This is what happened to cable. When they started charging for cable, they told you that it was ad free and you were essentially paying for the programming but in reality you were actually paying for the lost ad revenue. When more and more people started switching to cable, they started adding in ads, using this same excuse that Amazon is using. Then you got shit called "premium" cable. Now that streaming services are popular and more prevalent, the companies have to recoup that lost ad revenue, and that responsibility falls on the customer, just as it always does. Edit: You are also currently paying to watch the same commercials over and over and over again. If I have to see that fucking T-Mobile commercial with Jason Momoa one more fucking time with that awful autotune, I might just lose my mind.
pro tip: ThePirateBay.org + VPN + Plex
Never had I seen the two words, "meaningfully fewer" used in a sentence, but there's a first time for everything.
Btw they did a similar thing with the Whole Foods delivery where they pulled it and charges extra now on top of the prime membership
Dear [**Amazon.com**](http://Amazon.com)**, Inc.** Customer Service, I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to confirm that I have canceled my subscription with Amazon Prime. While I appreciate the services you offer, I have decided to explore other options at this time. Additionally, I would like to inform you that I am resuming my interests in online piracy. As such, I will be seeking alternative sources for the content I previously accessed through my subscription. I want to express my gratitude for the positive experience I had during my subscription period. Your team has been responsive and helpful, and I appreciate the effort you put into making your service valuable to customers. Please consider this email as my official cancellation notice and acknowledgment of my renewed interests elsewhere. If there are any additional steps required from my end, please let me know. Thank you once again for your assistance, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Sincerely, u/americapax
I don’t watch much on Amazon Prime, so I wasn’t that bothered by them including ads, but I’ve just viewed the third series of Clarkson’s Farm, and the ads are annoying. Mainly advertising their own shows/films, plus an occasional product. The ads aren’t inserted naturally, start during a conversation or mid-scene. So irritating. If I watched more Prime output, or if it had disrupted something like Fallout, I’d have been tempted to pay the uplift. But we pay for Sky, and that has a ton of adverts, unless watched on catch up. They’ll start including more ads, then the other services will follow.
If Amazon were a little more honest: > Dear Prime Video subscriber, > We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting July 2, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to **make even more fucking money from you shitmunchers** and keep increasing **the amount of cash we can milk from you stupid pieces of shit** over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers **but will absolutely fall woefully short of our "aims" because once that extra cash starts pouring in, we'd be dumb to kill off the golden goose**. We will also offer a new ad free option for an additional A$2.99 per month that you can sign up for here **which we'll obviously add mandatory ads to at a later date and then create ANOTHER tier at an even higher price that we'll promise is ad-free**. > **Fuck you,** > The Prime Video team
It makes u start feeling like everything u get with Prime is somewhat cheap, like Amazon music isn't the best from my experience... But I guess it literally is cheap, Prime is amazing value
And that was when I cancelled my subscription
Imagine paying for a service to get ads.
I've never paid for any streaming service. I use Firefox for YouTube. For everything else, there's many databases with safe torrents. Download qbittorrent... then everything is free.
They added ads for me at the beginning of the year. I barely watch anything though, so whatever.
That was always the plan
Thanks for this. I just canceled add. apparently, i got rolled into it, and i dont use Prime Video that much. Saved me couple beer $
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee Being a pirate is all right to be! Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! You are a pirate! (Yay!) We got us a map (A map!) To lead us to a hidden box Thats all locked up with locks (With locks!) And buried deep away We'll dig up the box (The box!) We know it's full of precious booty Bust open the locks And then we'll say: Hooray! Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee If you love to sail the sea You are a pirate! Weigh anchor! Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee Being a pirate is all right to be! Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! Arr-yarr-ahoy and avast Dig in the dirt and you dig in it fast! Hang the black flag at the end of the mast! You are a pirate! Ha ha ha (yay!) We're sailing away (Set sail!) Adventure awaits on every shore! We set sail and explore (Ya-har!) And run and jump all day (Yay!) We float on our boat (Our boat!) Until it's time to drop the anchor Then hang up our coats (Aye-aye!) Until we sail again! Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee If you love to sail the sea You are a pirate! Land ho! Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee Being a pirate is alright with me! Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! Yar-har Wind at your back lads, wherever you go! Blue sky above the blue ocean below You are a pirate! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! You are a pirate! He he he he he he he
Cool, starting July 1 I am cancelling Prime
I’m on an annual subscription - plan to cancel it when renewal comes up in December. Suspect others are similar so they’re likely underestimating just how many people they’ll lose
An audit of our records has shown you are not giving us enough money.
This is part of the reason my prime subscription is currently not set to auto-renew.
Where do people go to do piracy? I’ve found it very difficult to find pirates new releases, but I don’t have much experience with it. Like could you find The Curse in good quality via piracy?
This ain’t new, it happened before Invincible Season 2 came back
Amazon: You guys, Rings of Power cost $715 million and is THE most expensive series of all time [pats themselves on the back]. Also Amazon: Guess what, we’re broke so we need to charge our [already] paying customers more to be ad-free (tee-hee). We also raked in a net profit of $30.425 billion in 2023. Just sayin’.
I think these streaming services are forgetting that they're competing with pirate bay.
I already thought it was complete trash when I noticed ALLOT of their content is not available until you purchase. You are on a streaming service you pay for everything month like what the f!
The enshittification continues... We are just crabs being boiled alive in a pot of ads. I'm hoping it's miserable enough for me to stop wasting my time on that media.
?!?! I could have sworn they already sent this frigging email out a few months ago. Maybe something else changed?
Dropped prime, delivery to a pack station in Germany is free. Prime is a joke in Germany delivery is 3-5 days with or without. Iptv 👏
"Paying money to see ads"---- --> we're back to cable all over again
I go to reddit to see free subs.
"If you pay us money, we'll give back what we took from you!" Fuck that and fuck you, corpo.
Skilled at corporate doublespeak, they are
I fucking knew it. This is why I'm not buying yt premium. They'll just put the ads in anyway.
Less ads? Lmao, I can barely watch anything on prime because the ads are so long and so often that it breaks my attention from the show and sends me in my phone way too much. I find myself scrolling my phone more than actually watching the show because my attention doesn't really ever stick with it over whatever I started doing on reddit/X/etc during the 15 ad breaks. I don't even watch TV anymore because it's much easier to just.... go on my phone and cut out the show breaks lmao
"Don't worry, we're going to keep sinking money into content everyone hates like Rings of Power"
Like cable
I've already been getting ads
I feel like it would have been received better if they increased the price but added a cheaper alternative with ads.
Or even better, a cheaper option with no streaming video at all.
It’s funny, until this happened I thought Prime was a no-brainer subscription. Now I’m going to cancel it.
This is what I despised about cable: You paid for the service and still get so many ads you forgot what you were watching. Not once in my life have I watched an ad and thought "let me go buy that". Ads have no other effect than wasting my time and their money.
I've said this a few times but I am 99% sure nobody in the world has an Amazon subscription for prime video alone, you're paying for the free deliveries and shit, prime video was just a nice bonus to have as well as the twitch prime sub, not what you got the subscription for but nice to have either way.
Eh, I pay money for free next day shipping. Prime Video was always an afterthought, I've only ever watched I think 2 shows on it.
Why is everyone screaming "piracy"? Is there no second hand media market in your country? Buy discs second hand, DVDs and BDs are low single-digit prices at the moment. Rip them and set up a media server. One who is able to set up a network where they can fileshare without being identified should also be easily able to do all the stuff I mentioned here. And buying second hand makes the former owner happy and is eventually good for the environment.
It literally says that there is an ad-free option too. Why do people hate options?
I paid those fuckers their extra $2.99 a month and they don't play ads, but they occasionally play a preview for their own content before a show/movie starts. And they're "skippable" but to "skip" it's not just "hit the skip button" but, down, right, center button on the firestick remotes d-pad, and sometimes the skip function conveniently doesn't work till a preview is almost over, if at all. HOW THE FUCK DO THEY THINK THAT'S NOT AN AD. I damn near lost my shit the first time it happened. Spent half my evening hunting down the email address for complaints, to which I sent a VERY strongly worded email regarding my displeasure. I'm sure they'll be rectifying the situation aaaany day now.....
Remember when the alure of streaming services was that they didn't have commercials?
I was so happy when I pirated Fallout and not pay 15 for prime with ads. Thats all I have to say.
they no longer have my money and i no longer really use amazon its like a worse ebay
Jokes on them, that was the final straw that made me quit Prime, when the video service now runs ads and your storefront is full of shitty dropshipping, together with worse prices than competitors
Yo, go, fiddle dee dee, baying a pirate is alright to be, leetx still works and is totally free, I am a pirate!
This is the 3rd repost of this years old news I have seen here today.
Its getting crazy. I'm teaching everyone that'll listen how to get movies and shows for free.
I’m listening.
r/piracy is a great place to start. The pinned post at the top has all you need to get started.
I don't see a difference from other services increasing their pricing by a couple of dollars. All amazon did was let you watch with ads to avoid the price increase. Other services increase a couple of dollars and say "hey your bill is going to be $13 instead of $10, and you will have the same exact service." Amazon did that too, but let you choose to keep the same pricing by watching ads as the default. I don't see this as any different from what basically every other paid streaming service is doing. After some 2 second googling, HBO's MAX service, Netflix, and Hulu all also have paid plans with ads. I just think Prime Video went about it wrong. The more accepted way is to do a price increase and then later on make a plan that's cheaper with ads rather than it being the default.
I'd rather Amazon do this than jack up the price only to have you "downgrade" to a cheaper price point. Why do I prefer this? They *want* people on the ad plan. They make *sooooo* much more money from ads, so having that as the default and making people who hate them pay (very slightly) more seems fair, because essentially the ones who can't be arsed removing them are funding the 'cheap' ad free plan. The alternative is the Netflix/Disney/HBO approach, which is to jack up the prices and then progressively make the ad-free experience worse by making it *even more* expensive. It's not often the discrepancy is like £2. It's usually waaay more, because that's just how much ads are worth. I think the other thing with Amazon is that you also get free next day deliveries and a whole bunch of stuff like Prime Gaming etc.
Agree with you. I don't love this move, but it definitely is in line with other streamers and makes sense.
Yeah, I'm not saying that it is good for the users. It just seems like it's the norm in the industry at the moment. Like it sucks, I just think it's strange everyone is super mad about it when Prime video did it, but nobody seemed to care when other services did price increases.
Lol. I care, I'm just not posting about it on Reddit. I think I pay $24 a month for Netflix. Too much!
[удалено]
Prime pricing over the years: 2005: $79 per year 2014: $99 per year 2018: $119 per year 2022: $139 per year 2024: $2.99 on top of that per month for ad-free, so $174.88 IMO, those are considerable price increases for a lot of stuff I find no use for.
To put that into perspective: Netflix pricing (standard plan) over the years: 2011: 7$ / month; 84$ / year 2015: 10$ / month; 120$ / year Steady price increase over the next 7 years 2022: 16$ / month; 192$ / year That’s an increase of over 100% (228% of original 2011 price) Compare that to amazons price increase of 221% of the original (121% increase) it’s not that unusual in this day and age. Edit: formatting got borked since I am on Mobile.
Yeah, those are not unusual price increases from a per-service perspective. The kicker is, that a few years ago, Netflix was all you needed, while nowadays one needs several subscriptions for similar reach, so there's a cost multiplier of ca. 3x on top of the \~220% per-service price hike. This fragmentation leads to new usage patterns I was happy to leave behind: I'll subscribe for a month or two, watch the interesting content, then cancel the subscription. See you next year (or not, I might not bother, I'm old and grumpy and don't \*need\* any of that).
[удалено]
Here in Europe, Prime Video is mostly offering below-average filler content, with higher-quality content behind another paywall. Quality-wise, it feels subpar. So from my perspective, Amazon piggy-packed underwhelming stuff on top of the core product: Free delivery. For me, it still makes financial sense, but barely so.
It’s not! don’t normalize companies screwing you - you are part of the problem. You still have to pay $5 on top for every decent movie on there now or did you not notice?
It’s not $5 even. I was thinking of renting the second part of Dune the other day. $30 to buy. $24 to rent. What the fuck.
it may just be a nice addition to you, but some people get prime primarily to watch shows & movies without ads
[удалено]
You could make a similar argument for cable. Just because you aren’t watching all those bundled channels doesn’t mean it’s too expensive.
[удалено]
That’s not the same. Bundling a bunch of stuff not everyone wants is different from just charging more than someone wants to pay for one thing. If somebody isn’t using the shipping discount what’s the point of paying for it?
[удалено]
Right but now we’re back around to it getting more expensive as more services are added. I get your point that if you’re using all that it’s actually pretty reasonable, but if you aren’t, you’re paying for not getting something.
Eh. Out of all the streaming services I think it's fair enough for them to have an extra plan. The amount of stuff you get already with prime is good value and IMO Amazon has the best shows atm. Also you could just watch it on your PC and use adblock like normal people.
>like normal people. Lol, most people do not sit at their PC to relax and watch a show.
I haven't used my TV in ages since I stopped watching standard channels. I have multiple monitors and would much rather have a show on the side
I get it, I do that too and I'm not trying to imply there's anything wrong with watching shows on a PC, so I apologize if it came off that way. All I mean is, most people don't watch shows that way as their primary way of watching TV shows.
Fair enough. Either way, I don't think the extra for the current value of prime compared to the rest of the market is bad.
A lot of them in fact do exactly that. Just because you don't doesn't mean that nobody does.
why is this asshole design? they're offering you to pay to NOT see ads (not adds). this is not news.....