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All this creeping division of what is available on what channel and creeping costs has me frustrated. It also has me wondering when the extraction and division of market stops…
Depends what you compare it against.
If you never had Sky/NTL then 3x £9.99 seems like a lot for netflix, prime and disney
If you already paid £50 for Sky/NTL 30 years ago then it's a bargain.
I don't think we'll see much of a change for a few years at least until someone invents* the next big thing. Middle classes will carry on with 3-4 sub's, everyone else will pick one to watch a blockbuster series, watch a few other things, then cancel and move on when the next big thing comes out. I suspect that's why they've started drip feeding more series with episodes weekly as it keeps people on their platform longer.
* the youtube premium model has got legs I think. Pay an amount each month and it get's divided by the hours of each show you watch. Just needs some sort of agreement so that actual "art" get's properly funded not just paid based on how it fails to compete with cheap productions.
watch. Just needs some sort of agreement so that actual “art” get’s properly funded not just paid based on how it fails to compete with cheap productions.
Has this not always been one of the suggested benefits of licence fee? That BBC would have more artistic creativity, take more risks and also produce viewing for smaller or minority audiences?
Channel 5 doesn’t have ads
Course it does
It depends. Sometimes it just skips straight through the breaks… I guess when no one is buying the ad slots. Have got lucky a few times watching Susan Calman and her little camper without seeing any ads at all.
Well, so far it's been an ad before the show and another a third in, and they've just been ads for Amazon prime. Usually 15 seconds.
I'm guessing they'll run it light at first so most get used to it thinking it's not too bad, and then ramp it up with other ads and longer.
Though the ad placement within the show isn't always great. In the old days shows were made with ads in mind so had natural breaks. Existing content made for streaming platforms maybe less so. They might start putting those natural breaks in again I guess.
I'm not missing it yet particularly.
Cancelled Prime and have deliveries for free to a local Amazon locker like someone explained up above somewhere.
Ironically though I've gone back to Netflix with ads. 😂
It's only £4.99 a month though and they aren't too bad generally.
Barely noticed them when they’ve appeared.
Means I still get to watch Prime as does my kids, one who is at uni and we get parcels delivered to anywhere for free the next day.
TV shows I can live with. I won't watch films on Amazon now though. Hate ads in films even very brief ones.
I was on an annual Prime subby so the rise hasn't kicked in yet. I haven't watched anything on Prime this month. I am 5 minutes walk from an Amazon delivery shop which I pass every day walking the dogs. So I see cancellation coming. An easy £95 a year saving.
Last thing I we wanted to watch was Succession. Available on Prime Video for £17.99 for Season 1. We bought the Season 1 DVD box set for £9.99 instead.
I think we will be going down the route of either buying DVDs (new or second hand) or waiting until a season is all available and sign up the that streaming service for 1 month.
Cancelled on Friday and received a £74 refund from my yearly sub which I paid in November. Ordered something yesterday which was due to be delivered free to my local locker (200 yards away) tomorrow, but currently showing 'out for delivery' so not really a difference.
Last thing I we wanted to watch was Succession. Available on Prime Video for £17.99 for Season 1. We bought the Season 1 DVD box set for £9.99 instead.
unless it's a bluray DVD then that's a drop in resolution, so not the same product...
Paid, too annoying.
Once past the initial two adverts, I didn't notice it again. I'm happy to leave it for the moment.
I've still not seen any ads. If it's anything like Freevee, you can go 3 episodes without seeing any.
That said, I'll be cancelling and picking up a 3 months at a time every so often. Gonna rotate around the various services for a while.
'Tolerate Ads or your Premium will be Extra' is my favourite Stereophonics track.
"unless it’s a bluray DVD then that’s a drop in resolution, so not the same product…"
I guess we are not too picky. On the freeview if I switch from BBC 1 to BBC101 I can see the difference but DVD quality is perfectly watchable.
Not as much of a drop in quality as getting it punctuated by adverts.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
And probably still half the channels are the same low resolution we've had since the 70s.
Talking of which. No Dolby Vision / Atmos unless you pay for ad free now.
Not that I care. I have an old school 1080 telly and av amp from 10 years ago.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
freeview by radio broadcast is to continue for ATLEAST 7 years. I recon by then virtually all pensioners will “need” an internet connection for phone, care alarms etc and will be nigh on impossible to access many services without it. The reality is that many of those who would struggle with that today will have died off, moved into care, become reliant on others to support them by then anyway.
fwiw - I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything on Amazon Prime!
I've gone back to pirating everything. I was happy to pay for a subscription to netfix when it was good, and the free amazon postage was nifty. Now that I need 6+ subs to watch stuff, and all the back catalog has gone....no thanks.
Dear Amazon, I mute every advert you play and look away from the screen.
bit of a **** move, considering the entire reason there's so much choice of great stuff is because (most) people are happy to pay, thus giving the streaming studios massive budgets! Plus you don't [I]need[/I] 6 subs, you're just being a greedy ****. Perfectly feasible to just have 1 or 2 subs at a time and rotate around the services.I’ve gone back to pirating everything. I was happy to pay for a subscription to netfix when it was good, and the free amazon postage was nifty. Now that I need 6+ subs to watch stuff
martinhutch
Full Member
‘Tolerate Ads or your Premium will be Extra’ is my favourite Stereophonics track
*Manic Street Preachers
bit of a **** move, considering the entire reason there’s so much choice of great stuff is because (most) people are happy to pay, thus giving the streaming studios massive budgets!
Are you a streaming company?
I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot given that I know completely tech-unsavvy people using dodgy streaming sticks and it’s gathering momentum.
It’s not impossible to fix - the music industry learned from their mistakes.
Watch this…
I know I’m in a minority here but Amazon warehouse work is decent pay for not having to think very hard. You’re on your feet a lot, and you’re monitored, but you have zero decision making, zero risk, and zero responsibility.
With overtime you’re earning the same as a paramedic or junior doctor with none of the challenges.
I don't miss Prime. Still nothing worth watching and bought a book yesterday... free postage, turned up today.
I can't say I miss Prime. Yes, there are a lot of things are exclusive to it, some of them decent enough, but not enough for me to want to pay for it again. Same with Netflix, AppleTV and the others.
We had a very bad Amazon habit due to convenience factor. Cancelled a few months ago and not missing it at all include prime video. We are just better organised now and use subscribe and save which further reduces prices as well. Lots of items are free to deliver anyway even if they take a bit longer to arrive.
Prime, Netflix, Disney all got cancelled last year. As a diehard movie fan there was absolutely f'all to watch, and they are overpriced.
Only kept HBO as we got the Black Friday "half price for life" offer a few years back so it's only a fiver a month and the youngest watches the cartoons. Again though, film selection is dire. Back to torrents for me.
hardly a new thing though is it? Back in the 80s/90s people were buying dodgy Sky cards etc. And compared to Sky, IMO Disney/Netflix etc is great value [I]and[/I] don't tie you into a contract i.e. much easier to cancel! What needs "fixing", exactly?I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot given that I know completely tech-unsavvy people using dodgy streaming sticks and it’s gathering momentum.
It’s not impossible to fix – the music industry learned from their mistakes.
Has this not always been one of the suggested benefits of licence fee? That BBC would have more artistic creativity, take more risks and also produce viewing for smaller or minority audiences?
Yes, but the license fee (that the BBC actually gets) has been decimated like every other public service under the tories. It's been pretty much unchanged since ~2010 which in real terms is about a 40% cut
Now once you set aside a budget to actually run it as a TV service (overheads, BBC news, daily live TV shows etc), and the other things that just cost money but you have to do (coronations, funerals, Olympics, world cups etc) then it's even more stark as the only things you can actually cut the budget for are the shows people actually remember and associate with the BBC like Peaky Blinders, Ambulances, etc which aren't cheap to make.
The reason there's so much dross on at the moment is because Homes under the hammer, Bargain hunt, are cheap and repeatable. Studio shows like Would I lie to You and Pointless are cheap and repeatable (because you film 5-6 episodes back to back per day, makes the most of the studio budget). Things like Mock the Week, HIGNFY, etc have either been cut or are in trouble because they're really expensive to make, the studio either needs to sit there all week empty, or be built / struck every week which means 3 days work per show each week rather than churning out an episode every couple of hours for just a few weeks.
I don't think it's lost on the government that the biggest cuts fall on current affairs, news and news based comedy.
Comic Relief ad stuck 20 minutes into a film last night. Less than impressed. Currently I don’t actually pay for Prime as it comes free with my life insurance policy, but that’s changing next year (I guess Amazon put the price up for Vitality too) and this isn’t persuading me to pay.
Jus****ch app tells you where a movie/tv programme is available and on what basis.
Lovely recommendation, with the demise of search engines and streaming services removing content to find what I want to watch! Shame the show I first looked for is on ITVX, I tried watching something on there before and the ads were crazy, an hour show with 4 sets of ads and 6 x 30second ads to sit through, didnt even start episode 2 of a 4 series show it was so bad! The highlight was it not remembering why I last was, so I had to start from the beginning which meant watching the ads again to then fast forward and then watch more ads to fast forward back to where I was.
Companies, if I saw you advert on ITVX or it interrupts YouTube I will stop or never buy your products.
bit of a **** move, considering the entire reason there’s so much choice of great stuff is because (most) people are happy to pay
The only reason people were happy to pay was because it was less than Sky/licence fee and had no ads. They've now pissed that goodwill up the wall.
If they actually thought about it and only rolled ads/service losses/massive price hikes out for sub hoppers/new customers thus rewarding loyalty then we wouldn't be having this conversation. But they chose enshitification, so we are.
Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
Amazon must pay well then. Five years after starting a junior doctor is on £51k base before overtime etc. Top 15% of earners in the UK
Complete of on a tangent there IRC but remember that’s 5 years after their initial training, so 10 years total.
Amazon has been rubbish for quite a while now, the ad thing was the final straw. Netflix has also been getting worse. I've cancelled both and and subscribed to STW instead, saves me money and I get to chat shit to strangers on the internet.
I lasted half of one episode with the new adverts. Caved and paid for no ads. First world problems.
Can’t say the adverts bother me, but the lower quality sound and picture quality sneakily implemented is a bit disappointing. That might make me upgrade as I like the UHD and Atmos.
Away from home and the TV is UHD. Netflix prods me asking if I want to upgrade for only £7 per month extra.
FRO
Amazon has been rubbish for quite a while now, the ad thing was the final straw. Netflix has also been getting worse. I’ve cancelled both and and subscribed to STW instead, saves me money and I get to chat shit to strangers on the internet.
Yep, especially once I discovered that you can have next day delivery to a locker for free. As a prime subscriber things had slipped to roughly 48-72 hours for a home delivery. When you realise that everything on Prime is priced to include delivery anyway (kinda like eBay + free postage) there's no benefit.
Can’t say the adverts bother me, but the lower quality sound and picture quality sneakily implemented is a bit disappointing. That might make me upgrade as I like the UHD and Atmos.
Not happy about the changes (we've just replaced our 15 year old 1080i set with a highish end LG, and DV is astonishing) but to be fair to Amazon, you are still getting UHD, HDR and HDR10+ with the cheaper tier. Still, won't be renewing now largely due to realisation from above posts that next day delivery to the lockers is free.