With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.

I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.

I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We are not rich but the streaming services arent stressing us financially. I am however time poor, the streaming services “just work” and my daughter can navigate them well enough to open the app and pick what she wants.

      I know its easy enough to do, but setting it all up and teaching my wife and daughter the new way of doing things… not to mention managing the constant requests for fresh content. Pass.

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Okay, now you’re doing it every 5 minutes, and by the time you’re done A, they are already asking for K.

          • ashok36@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Have you considered maybe that’s not a healthy way to consume media in the first place?

            Just download Mr Roger’s and sesame street and let them watch them over and over. Kids will watch the same thing ten times in a row. I know, I’ve seen them do it.

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Have you considered that’s not healthy watching the same stuff on repeat?

              After the second watch the kids would have the show memorized almost verbatim, how is not having them stimulated with new information a good thing…?

              And just because a kid does it, doesn’t mean they are enjoying it wouldn’t be happier doing something else.

        • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          This scenario is highly undesirable, have you ever considered that not all people, especially kids want to watch content in English? (depends on the age ofc).

          Most torrents offer original language with subtitles, if you say, let’s search for a kids show that is in Latin Spanish not Spain Spanish this will make the task incredible harder… we are talking about searching private trackers with this, heck even I struggle to find cartoons of my time with natal language, it was fairly impossible to do so, at least before HBO MAX and Pluto TV brought back several classics to life again… you can’t beat easiness of streaming media for that scenarios, not even with softwarr.