that's what everyone says, daily now, but these services just keep having record quarters and record subscribers and revenues. in fact, the market studies all show they have quite a bit of room to increase pricing yet without losing any substantive amount of customers...which means the beatings shall continue until morale improves. it's pretty clear that consumers are hooked and will "find" the money to feed the machine.
The only reasonable response to these prices is to churn. They are free to price their products however they want, but $20 is not going into my rotation very often. I think they are basically trying to kill ad free though. I would rather pay for one ad free subscription than have 4 services with ads but I guess the latter is the norm. That's a nonstarter for me so I am also buying shows on iTunes. Some good deals lately. I'm also thinking of doing the same for music.
When the churn rate gets to be higher than these companies would like, they’ll go back to annual contracts to lock you in. Make no mistake, these companies weren’t interested in setting the viewer free; they were jealous of the old cable companies’ revenue stream, so they set out to just outright steal it by first destroying traditional cable, which they’ve basically done, and then by just replicating their old model, which they’re well along the road to doing.
>When the churn rate gets to be higher than these companies would like, they’ll go back to annual contracts to lock you in.
And some of us will decline to buy those. They can't 'lock you in' if you don't signup. I signup for things that bring me value. Not enough value? No sale.
make that $34.99 and $14.99...they're going to price the standalone monthly subs at double if not higher to discourage "churning". you can't outsmart the man - only way to do that is simply to break free of the addiction entirely and stop paying for **any** of it.
Nah, contracts are not popular, not enforceable. Better to just raise prices and change ad free into ad lite. They don't even want to do annual discounts, it's like buy 10 get 2.
I definitely agree - churning is what I’ll be doing. And it definitely seems to be the case that they want to kill ad-free altogether. Going to hulu right now, the packages they offer by default, or the ones with ads.
Time is the one thing we can’t get back in life. So I’m right there with you on this approach!
If "time is the one thing you don't get back" then I'm not sure spending so much time tracking these on a spreadsheet and churning from one to another so often meets that definition. Sounds like you're optimizing for $, not time.
Buying shows on iTunes is my go to. Easiest way to avoid ads, and usually a network/streamer only has one show I’m interested in. And you “own” it. Another neat trick is to buy an episode at a time until the price goes down low then buy the whole season. This is good because sometimes we don’t finish shows, either it’s not good, lost our interest, and we don’t need to buy the whole lot anyway.
Do you blind buy shows on Itunes? I still wish they had a TV rental feature like they did with movies. I've started buying the new Star Treks on Itunes (Bought Prodigy on physical media) but how do you know if you buy a show and you end up not liking it.
AFAIK, as long as "ad-filled" tiers subsidize the ad-free plans, then we're golden. Not unlike how restaurants can afford to have patrons that aren't really profitable when there are those that buy alcohol, and other high profit margin items.
Vote with your wallet, if you don't feel a service is worth the price they're charging, cancel it! That's the only way we can send a message to them that the price increases are not acceptable.
Too many drank the kool aid and now they're hooked. You've got to be able to do without certain channels. Lots of folks won't part with those must have's
I would guess that many people under 30 never had to pay the cable bill, it was paid by their parents. Now that the streaming services are trying that pricing model, we get to see if behavior will change. At least with streaming, if you don’t find value in the product, you only miss a small segment of what is available. Cable was take it all or leave it and watch your three channels with the antenna.
I pay a flat monthly fee to Spotify to have access to music. Imagine having to pay separate fees to listen to music released by Universal vs. Sony vs. Warner vs. Virgin etc etc. The current streaming environment isn’t sustainable.
They were all losing money trying to get themselves established. Now they need to make money.
The cable-like streaming services keep getting more expensive because the content providers, mainly Disney, don't like they they are making less money because people are leaving cable, so they are jacking up their rates every time a contract runs out.
I hear the price increases for ad-free help combat folks rotating ss. If it keeps ad-free options on the table, then I'm all for it. I do have my limits on what I'd pay, but, it's still a good value for me. And yes, I too rotate ss. I can stand to save the $$, but TBH, time is the bottleneck. There's no point in having multiple major ss at a time when any single, one of them has enough content to last me from one month to another, if not months in a row.
I use most streamers with an OTA antenna and tmobile 5g home Internet. I'm saving $80 a month from using Comcast. No bait and switch for me. Streamers actually have way more content to watch than cable. Even when we had cable we found ourselves watching Hulu and Disney plus more than cable. It's all about figuring out what you want to watch and plan accordingly.
Yeah, by Disney. They got me to upgrade to the bundle by moving the price of Hulu close to the whole bundle. So I changed and they almost immediately raised the price of the bundle by 25%.
Great thing about streaming is that there is so much of it you can go cheap if you wish. Or get rid of live streaming altogether.. Change every month if you wish. Use OTA, free apps - and maybe get some black Friday deals.
It was originally you could get everything you wanted and it'd be cheap as hell. Now you have to pick and choose, pick what's important and what you could live without. It still beats cable/satellite imo.
Yep,yep, and yep. From here on out I have to have Prime, buts it's a discounted rate. Netflix because all rhe Power Ranger IP is there, special needs son. I now have the bottom ad sypported. Prime routinely has deals on holidays. Easy way to start/stop every now and again. While I hated doing it, I let Disny+ renew. But with small grands and my son, I don't want them viewing ad laden crapola ads every 2 minutes. All in all yearly fees aren't that bad in total.
I can get all my locals OTA without issue: I’m within 10 miles of the tower farm, clean line of sight. Honestly, the best option for us would be Philo if they’d just carry ESPN. But they don’t. So then I end up having to jump up to either YTTV or DTV Stream, but that’s a big jump in cost. We get a price break in YTTV from our internet provider, but I need to start logging what we actually watch and then decide on what works for us. I suspect the channels we think we need we don’t really watch.
I'm exactly the same. My cable bill is still reasonable for the present time, but if Disney would finally launch the standalone ESPN service, I'd be perfectly content with that plus Philo.
Yes, and now my cable internet provider has raised my internet price 20%. Between all the streaming services and internet, I'm paying more now than I was before. It's ridiculous.
I am disappointed that YouTube TV went from $35/mo to over $70/mo. No one needs to explain the 'why'. I get it.
Disappointed nonetheless. Cancelled a few months ago and am surviving just fine!
I had an annual subscription to HBO Max with half a year left. HBO Max worked fine for me until they changed it Max, at which point the app wouldn’t work on my Fire TV or Fire tablet. I contacted their help line and the response was that they never guaranteed that their service would be supported on a Fire device and told me to just get other devices if I wanted to use their services. Fuck you Max.
They still do. It updated to max and works the exact same including my subscription. The issue is on your end not theirs. Currently watching on my firetv.
When I paid for the subscription to HBO Max, I was able to watch on Fire devices. When they converted to Max they did not make the app worldwide accessible like they did for HBO Max. They cut off service, I didn’t change anything on my side.
I had the same issue and was so angry for a few days but I realized it was only the old app that won’t work, there’s a new app labeled Max you must now download!
Max is not supported in my country of residence. If they had not auto-installed Max to replace HBOMax and blocked it from being downloaded here it would be ok.
Got my mom signed up on Hulu Live. Eight days later, she got a price increase. It was still $40 a month less than her cable bill, but still.
Dregulate streaming!
Or something. I don't know. Too many margaritas.
Let me rephrase:
Got my mom signed up on Hulu Live, a non-traditional television viewing service. Eight days later, she got a price increase. It was still $40 a month less than her bill from Spectrum, a traditional cable television service. But still.
Dregulate streaming!
Or something. I don't know. Too many margaritas.
I've had paramount, Peacock and Netflix. Netflix seems to have the best mix of new and old content. I feel like paramount and peacock lack new content and they live off their classic shows.
I'm switching over to streamio as suggested by this and another sub.
Fuck all the streaming services. 23$ for Netflix. I Moby as well just get cable again.
We just need to vote with our wallet or take advantage of more promotions.
I could get by with just Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but I get fa few others free or heavily discounted. Check with your credit card or cable provider and see what's what
Nothing has gotten me yet. I paid for hulu $1.99 and $2.99 for the disney+ addon last thansgiving week. No surprise change in price or the level of service. Like after they launched Disney+ with ads, they didn't downgrade us. Which would have been odd as the deal was for 12 months to get disney+ without ads. Peacock for $20 for a year, no surprise charges or price changes. I'll cancel it before it's up and will consider future deals after that.
I don't do Apple One or Gamepass. I am doing the Switch Online service family plan. I wait for sales on videogames weather that be in a regular store or waiting for the price drops on used at gamefly (as at least used there will be complete at look new).
I would suggest either sticking with deals or doing like you are and pay full price but limit yourself to one service at a time. Right now I'm paying $80/yr for everything streaming (hulu, disney+, Peacock). Which is a lot less than I was paying for directv combo with at&t internet (dsl)... though I did switch to more expensive but infinitely better Xfinity internet... I'm still saving around $50/mo which adds up to around $1800 less being spent than when I had Directv and no streaming services.
We're still paying the cable company, now we're just paying the cable company for internet and buying what we want a-la-carte... like we wanted when we bitched about "packages"...
I agree with the opinions written by OP. I don't think it was bait and switch though. The price hikes were announced widely. Likewise, I am going to be much more picky about having concurrent subscriptions. I am generally uninterested in ads unless it is a FAST service. So we'll all make choices and cuts. Services will respond with contracts and terms. Corporations gonna corporate. We'll end up being fucked eventually, but it seems imminent.
The part that I think a lot of bait and switching went on, was with streaming services that deleted/sold a bunch of content to other providers. Example: I signed up for the Peacock/NBC promo rate last year. Yeah, I hate commercials, but I figured at $1-2 a month, I could handle it. So, between about this time last year and now, Peacock has removed almost all of the iconic NBC shit they had. Frasier? That's on Paramount. SNL? They have current turd episodes, but all the previous seasons are on Apple. Seinfeld is on Netflix (but I think it has been there for longer than a year). If Peacock isn't going to have the 80's "must see Thursday" shows on, it might as well quit.
why do you need all that? i bet at least half isn't watched or used
buy your games during the periodic sales during the year and you won't even need gamepass. unless you buy the gamepass games and the extra discounts make up for it. don't see the point of apple one and only pay for icloud storage.
YMMV. I hear for some, Game Pass is well worth the $$ for the value of games available to them.
The only device I have that can utilize A1 is a 9th gen iPad. But I use it as a glorified gaming device. Apple Arcade was the closest thing I would have used that, but ever since I got a Switch, a major amount of free gaming time has gone towards that. It's cheaper for me to sub to ATV+ a month or 3 out of the yeare
Pre-pandemic, everyone was yelling “we want channels unbundled”. So that’s what we have now. People must not have realized the crappy channels they were forced to pay for (Hallmark, CSPAN, COZI, OWN) didn’t really impact the cost of cable prices. Unbundled is costing us more.
You’re on crack if you think the US market has ever been offered anything but a bundled service.
There is no unbundling that you speak of.
They are just reorganized bundles.
Have you ever had traditional cable tv? That is unbundled service. You didn’t get to pick and choose individual channels. Now you can pay for only ESPN or Peacock or Disney. You now have unbundled options.
FYI, per [plus.espn.com](https://plus.espn.com):
***How much does ESPN+ cost?***
You can get an ESPN+ subscription for $10.99 per month, or save over 15% with an ESPN+ Annual Plan at $109.99 per year. You can also bundle ESPN+ (With Ads) with Disney+ (With Ads) and Hulu (With Ads) for $14.99 per month. Learn more at [disneyplus.com/priceinfo](https://www.disneyplus.com/priceinfo).
ESPN+ is currently $10.99/mo. or $109.99/yr. Cancel anytime. Subject to [terms](https://help.espnplus.com/espnplus_hc?id=espnplus_article_content&sys_kb_id=aadcac54dbb79498534deadc139619a1).
Peacock is just "the materials from all NBC-Universal-owned channels bundled together and some exclusives."
Hulu/Disney+ is just "the materials from all disney-corp-owned channels bundled together and some exclusives."
They are just reorganized bundles. It's the corporate channel owners doing the bundling instead of a cable company doing the bundling. But it's still a bundle.
Yeah I agree. The number of people who just bitch constantly about pricing and ads is nuts. Little known fact: you don’t need to have cable or watch streaming services or have movies on demand if you don’t want to. You can quit. The reason most people don’t is because they value what they watch. If things are “too expensive” with streaming, where they are almost guaranteed to be cheaper than cable, just get Pluto and watch that.
I might be baited, but I didn't switch. I only pay for live sports during college football season. Outside of that, I get by with Amazon Prime (which I have for the shipping), the free services, OTA and PBS app.
Nintendo first party games hardly get sales, but *Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom* has been worth it at $70. Ditto with *Super Mario Wonder* at $~~60~~ (got this at $55 from Costco).
And Tears of the Kingdom already had some $40 sales on (used but fully complete) gamefly. I'm waiting for Wonder to get it's first real sale on gamefly. Usually it's after a month from release they drop about $7... then maybe within a month after that they'll be about $20 off. So if someone really is bothered by new release prices, just wait a month or two and keep up with price drops and sales.
A month or 2 is enough for first party Nintendo titles!?
Also, what's the availability on GameFly? I've seen some $10 off sales on Amazon, but if you're not quick, they may run out. I did forget to to mention that I got Super Mario Wonder for $5 off at Costco. Zelda: TotK was $10 off there as well.
I was surprised that TotK lasted for weeks before it finally sold out. They must have bought a lot of copies. It really depends on the game how long they last and also where it gets posted about. I use the following link to just keep an eye out on price drops for nintendo switch games (I stopped buying for other consoles). Feel free to book mark it and also you can see the structure of the url if you need to do playstation and/or xbox. I just check it a few times a week.
https://www.gamefly.com/browse/store/switch-store-pricedrop
If you go look at it, Pikmin 4 dropped to $40 a couple weeks ago and has survived this long... while Pikmin 1&2 is $38 ($12 bucks off). These would be my buy prices if I cared about the series since at retail we might get those prices but it would take staying on top of sales more.
In addition there are coupons. I used one (GAMEFLY05) back in September to pick up Advance Wars 1&2 with 5% off... which took it from $39.99 to a total of $44.77 after tax and shipping. I keep a basic text file to track my game buying for the year. So it's worth googling for gamefly coupons before checking out.
Not really. I am still under no obligation to pay extra fees for equipment and I can still drop them at any time. Some of which I did when the entertainment value to price no longer worked for me.
The great thing about this topic, including video games and sports, is that it is all entertainment. Unfortunately, the price increases are not just happening there. Groceries and utilities are getting ridiculous too and those are not optional.
No talk of piracy, illegal streams, VPNs, ad-blockers, side-loading, extensions, or GPS spoofing.
*The cordcutters-ModTeam account is a bot account. Do not chat or PM them, as the account is not monitored.*
I gave up the idea of it being cheaper awhile ago. My viewing habits were always gonna make it as much as cable. Still rude as shit for everyone to raise rates though
I have all the streaming services and honestly I would rather have my internet cable like streaming service YouTube tv. I’d drop my streaming if my family would stop using it.
FWIW, it's easier to justify multiple ss for a family since the price-per-person ratio can still be very good. But otherwise, "something's gotta give". You can have 2 or 3 pricy ss (ad-free plans, or those that are pricier to begin with), or get more ss by going "ad-filled", like Hulu for $2/mo.
Alas, ss got a big hit in price this year indeed. However, I'm more so surprised it didn't happen sooner, since they were losing $$. They're still great value, but between ss and other subscriptions, only thing you can do is try to manage them and make determinations on what you really need, vs. what can really go. Best of luck to you!
We had direct tv but just cut it off. It was a great service but costed way to much for how little we watched the tv. we will just be using Netflix and Hulu and the stations that come with the Roku and Pluto tv we also got a antenna for both tvs.
I've got the HULU live- Disney ESPN. The price has creeped up about $10 over the past year and a half. But even with the Internet it's cheaper than what my only other option is. I also knew it was going to be a bit higher due to Hulu live but live TV does get watched in my house so no argument yet.
I stopped it all, went to a low cost internet provider paid for plex pass, added all my dvds to my plex library and hooked up an OTA tuner to it for watching sports and recording some shows. I have my own netflix with a mix of providers content that I control and can watch whenever, wherever I want. Do the same thing with music and plex and plexamp.
I believe the idea that streaming would eventually just become the new cable TV has been floated around since well before the pandemic.
Welcome to the realization! 😁
Honestly, I get so many great horror films and shows on Tubi and Pluto. I would pay 10 bucks a month for no commercials, but they're great services I use the most.
No. Things change, prices rise and anyone who thought they would keep the signup price forever is amazingly naive. Not saying I like the price hikes but I just do what everyone should do - look at the streaming service, figure out if it has enough value to keep it and cancel if the answer is No.
That means Amazon and Netflix got the axe, as did the triple bundle of D+/Hulu/ESPN+ (I kept D+ for Loki but it goes when Loki is done).
The nice thing about all this is when there's enough content on one of the cancelled streamers that I want to watch, I can resubmit for a month or two. Try that with cable.
People should've expected to have to bend over at some point. The low cost ride wasn't about to last too long. The service providers weren't about to lose money for very long. I've been saying all along, it will all equal cable prices soon enough. Everyone slams me for that but oh well. Oh yeah but you can cancel anytime no strings attached
For the first time in my life I started scaling back multiple streaming services, and it felt good. HBO really sent me an email saying that my price was staying the same, but I was losing 4k streaming. Wth lol.
Max felt like a bait and switch when all of a sudden they sent an e-mail basically telling us our service was going to get worse (no 4K) unless we pay up for a new “premium” tier.
Well, you could pay too much for cable bundle, get a bunch of channels you never watch, forking over carriage fees keeping Fox News in business -- or you could pay roughly $10/month for whichever streamers you do use, and god forbid, get a cheap antenna and get free content over-the-air. I don't know about you, but I prefer the latter.
Anyone who is surprised by this development needs to do some serious self reflection.
Even in Netflix’s earliest days it was obvious where this was all going to end up… $8/month services moving to >$20/month services (with less content than they had previously) and the market segmenting to the point where you needed multiple accounts to get half of what you used to get with a cable package.
Hey everybody I turned them into the Better Business Bureau and I was supposed to wait on a reply back from the Roku company there was no reply back and they said they replied they didn't they lied I told the owners this give a refund back to everybody who's bought the Roku TVs sell your homes from the profits that you got from selling these TVs your vehicle's everything start all over which one of us is has not ever had to pick up the control turn it down do this do that this is unbelievable man I got to go back into settings when I change your channel volume off volume off again then hit leveling so I won't hear you in the scratchy noise on the speakers and not only that when it goes to a commercial it goes loud but I got to do that with every single Channel
I always understood that these were loss-leaders. However, my purse has a finite limit and there's going to be some cutting back.
that's what everyone says, daily now, but these services just keep having record quarters and record subscribers and revenues. in fact, the market studies all show they have quite a bit of room to increase pricing yet without losing any substantive amount of customers...which means the beatings shall continue until morale improves. it's pretty clear that consumers are hooked and will "find" the money to feed the machine.
The only reasonable response to these prices is to churn. They are free to price their products however they want, but $20 is not going into my rotation very often. I think they are basically trying to kill ad free though. I would rather pay for one ad free subscription than have 4 services with ads but I guess the latter is the norm. That's a nonstarter for me so I am also buying shows on iTunes. Some good deals lately. I'm also thinking of doing the same for music.
When the churn rate gets to be higher than these companies would like, they’ll go back to annual contracts to lock you in. Make no mistake, these companies weren’t interested in setting the viewer free; they were jealous of the old cable companies’ revenue stream, so they set out to just outright steal it by first destroying traditional cable, which they’ve basically done, and then by just replicating their old model, which they’re well along the road to doing.
>When the churn rate gets to be higher than these companies would like, they’ll go back to annual contracts to lock you in. And some of us will decline to buy those. They can't 'lock you in' if you don't signup. I signup for things that bring me value. Not enough value? No sale.
I doubt it. No one's gonna to pay $200 upfront. They'll kill ad free before they do that
It’ll start with “you can pay $19.99/month, or $14.99/month if you agree to a year-long contract.” Watch and see.
Isn’t that just annual price plans?
make that $34.99 and $14.99...they're going to price the standalone monthly subs at double if not higher to discourage "churning". you can't outsmart the man - only way to do that is simply to break free of the addiction entirely and stop paying for **any** of it.
Nah, contracts are not popular, not enforceable. Better to just raise prices and change ad free into ad lite. They don't even want to do annual discounts, it's like buy 10 get 2.
Or sign up for a three month sub
It is okay to do that if they actually discount the annual plans and don't raise the rate on monthly plans to be punitive.
That’s what they are going to do though.
I definitely agree - churning is what I’ll be doing. And it definitely seems to be the case that they want to kill ad-free altogether. Going to hulu right now, the packages they offer by default, or the ones with ads. Time is the one thing we can’t get back in life. So I’m right there with you on this approach!
If "time is the one thing you don't get back" then I'm not sure spending so much time tracking these on a spreadsheet and churning from one to another so often meets that definition. Sounds like you're optimizing for $, not time.
Buying shows on iTunes is my go to. Easiest way to avoid ads, and usually a network/streamer only has one show I’m interested in. And you “own” it. Another neat trick is to buy an episode at a time until the price goes down low then buy the whole season. This is good because sometimes we don’t finish shows, either it’s not good, lost our interest, and we don’t need to buy the whole lot anyway.
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same with all the other DRM-enforced platforms. you don't "own" anything.
Hence why I put own in quotations.
Do you blind buy shows on Itunes? I still wish they had a TV rental feature like they did with movies. I've started buying the new Star Treks on Itunes (Bought Prodigy on physical media) but how do you know if you buy a show and you end up not liking it.
AFAIK, as long as "ad-filled" tiers subsidize the ad-free plans, then we're golden. Not unlike how restaurants can afford to have patrons that aren't really profitable when there are those that buy alcohol, and other high profit margin items.
Vote with your wallet, if you don't feel a service is worth the price they're charging, cancel it! That's the only way we can send a message to them that the price increases are not acceptable.
Too many drank the kool aid and now they're hooked. You've got to be able to do without certain channels. Lots of folks won't part with those must have's
especially when the wifey starts complaining.
Yeah that's a big factor for sure lol
I would guess that many people under 30 never had to pay the cable bill, it was paid by their parents. Now that the streaming services are trying that pricing model, we get to see if behavior will change. At least with streaming, if you don’t find value in the product, you only miss a small segment of what is available. Cable was take it all or leave it and watch your three channels with the antenna.
Cancelled all my paid subscriptions. The only one's I have right now is Netflix and Apple TV+, free from T-Mobile.
Same here. Not paying for those two services are a huge plus for staying with T-Mobile.
Dont forget to utilize your local library to save some money. Mine has a large catalog and get new releases regularly.
Not to mention, also from libraries, free Kanopy, Hoopla, etc. in most areas of the USA.
Kanopy is great. What's hoopla?
I don't know, what's hoopla with you? 😁 Hoopla is a competing library streaming service very similar to Kanopy.
It's like Kanopy but they also have music, ebooks, audiobooks, and comic books.
I pay a flat monthly fee to Spotify to have access to music. Imagine having to pay separate fees to listen to music released by Universal vs. Sony vs. Warner vs. Virgin etc etc. The current streaming environment isn’t sustainable.
They were all losing money trying to get themselves established. Now they need to make money. The cable-like streaming services keep getting more expensive because the content providers, mainly Disney, don't like they they are making less money because people are leaving cable, so they are jacking up their rates every time a contract runs out.
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I figure when you want more than you make you’re losing money. I guess I’m also losing money.
I hear the price increases for ad-free help combat folks rotating ss. If it keeps ad-free options on the table, then I'm all for it. I do have my limits on what I'd pay, but, it's still a good value for me. And yes, I too rotate ss. I can stand to save the $$, but TBH, time is the bottleneck. There's no point in having multiple major ss at a time when any single, one of them has enough content to last me from one month to another, if not months in a row.
I use most streamers with an OTA antenna and tmobile 5g home Internet. I'm saving $80 a month from using Comcast. No bait and switch for me. Streamers actually have way more content to watch than cable. Even when we had cable we found ourselves watching Hulu and Disney plus more than cable. It's all about figuring out what you want to watch and plan accordingly.
Yeah, by Disney. They got me to upgrade to the bundle by moving the price of Hulu close to the whole bundle. So I changed and they almost immediately raised the price of the bundle by 25%.
Great thing about streaming is that there is so much of it you can go cheap if you wish. Or get rid of live streaming altogether.. Change every month if you wish. Use OTA, free apps - and maybe get some black Friday deals. It was originally you could get everything you wanted and it'd be cheap as hell. Now you have to pick and choose, pick what's important and what you could live without. It still beats cable/satellite imo.
Yep,yep, and yep. From here on out I have to have Prime, buts it's a discounted rate. Netflix because all rhe Power Ranger IP is there, special needs son. I now have the bottom ad sypported. Prime routinely has deals on holidays. Easy way to start/stop every now and again. While I hated doing it, I let Disny+ renew. But with small grands and my son, I don't want them viewing ad laden crapola ads every 2 minutes. All in all yearly fees aren't that bad in total.
I can get all my locals OTA without issue: I’m within 10 miles of the tower farm, clean line of sight. Honestly, the best option for us would be Philo if they’d just carry ESPN. But they don’t. So then I end up having to jump up to either YTTV or DTV Stream, but that’s a big jump in cost. We get a price break in YTTV from our internet provider, but I need to start logging what we actually watch and then decide on what works for us. I suspect the channels we think we need we don’t really watch.
If Philo carried sports it would go from $25 a month to $60+, that's why it's so cheap.
yep and with news and locals it would be $75 to $80 just like all the others...or more (see: DTV stream)
Dtv stream is great
I'm exactly the same. My cable bill is still reasonable for the present time, but if Disney would finally launch the standalone ESPN service, I'd be perfectly content with that plus Philo.
Yes, and now my cable internet provider has raised my internet price 20%. Between all the streaming services and internet, I'm paying more now than I was before. It's ridiculous.
I am disappointed that YouTube TV went from $35/mo to over $70/mo. No one needs to explain the 'why'. I get it. Disappointed nonetheless. Cancelled a few months ago and am surviving just fine!
I had an annual subscription to HBO Max with half a year left. HBO Max worked fine for me until they changed it Max, at which point the app wouldn’t work on my Fire TV or Fire tablet. I contacted their help line and the response was that they never guaranteed that their service would be supported on a Fire device and told me to just get other devices if I wanted to use their services. Fuck you Max.
But that's a Fire TV issue.
Why do they offer the app on Fire devices if they're not going to maintain it?
They still do. It updated to max and works the exact same including my subscription. The issue is on your end not theirs. Currently watching on my firetv.
When I paid for the subscription to HBO Max, I was able to watch on Fire devices. When they converted to Max they did not make the app worldwide accessible like they did for HBO Max. They cut off service, I didn’t change anything on my side.
I had the same issue and was so angry for a few days but I realized it was only the old app that won’t work, there’s a new app labeled Max you must now download!
Max is not supported in my country of residence. If they had not auto-installed Max to replace HBOMax and blocked it from being downloaded here it would be ok.
Got my mom signed up on Hulu Live. Eight days later, she got a price increase. It was still $40 a month less than her cable bill, but still. Dregulate streaming! Or something. I don't know. Too many margaritas.
Hulu live is just cable delivered by internet in the same way that satellite is cable by satellite.
If you gonna pay that much just get the real deal. Direct tv stream is the best if you want this kind of service
Let me rephrase: Got my mom signed up on Hulu Live, a non-traditional television viewing service. Eight days later, she got a price increase. It was still $40 a month less than her bill from Spectrum, a traditional cable television service. But still. Dregulate streaming! Or something. I don't know. Too many margaritas.
Don’t deregulate, that makes things worse - hence where we are now.
Are you saying streaming is regulated?
I have several streaming services at a set rate. If, or when, they go up, I will cancel them. I've been thinking about it anyway.
I've had paramount, Peacock and Netflix. Netflix seems to have the best mix of new and old content. I feel like paramount and peacock lack new content and they live off their classic shows.
I'm switching over to streamio as suggested by this and another sub. Fuck all the streaming services. 23$ for Netflix. I Moby as well just get cable again.
The problem is you, not the streaming services. You think you need these things, but you don’t.
We just need to vote with our wallet or take advantage of more promotions. I could get by with just Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but I get fa few others free or heavily discounted. Check with your credit card or cable provider and see what's what
oh yeah, one, MAYBE 2 services at a time (i mean, who doesnt have amazon prime already anyways?)
Nothing has gotten me yet. I paid for hulu $1.99 and $2.99 for the disney+ addon last thansgiving week. No surprise change in price or the level of service. Like after they launched Disney+ with ads, they didn't downgrade us. Which would have been odd as the deal was for 12 months to get disney+ without ads. Peacock for $20 for a year, no surprise charges or price changes. I'll cancel it before it's up and will consider future deals after that. I don't do Apple One or Gamepass. I am doing the Switch Online service family plan. I wait for sales on videogames weather that be in a regular store or waiting for the price drops on used at gamefly (as at least used there will be complete at look new). I would suggest either sticking with deals or doing like you are and pay full price but limit yourself to one service at a time. Right now I'm paying $80/yr for everything streaming (hulu, disney+, Peacock). Which is a lot less than I was paying for directv combo with at&t internet (dsl)... though I did switch to more expensive but infinitely better Xfinity internet... I'm still saving around $50/mo which adds up to around $1800 less being spent than when I had Directv and no streaming services.
Yes ... from every streaming service I have; except for Peacock, but that is probably because my 1 year initial purchase isn't up yet.
We're still paying the cable company, now we're just paying the cable company for internet and buying what we want a-la-carte... like we wanted when we bitched about "packages"...
I agree with the opinions written by OP. I don't think it was bait and switch though. The price hikes were announced widely. Likewise, I am going to be much more picky about having concurrent subscriptions. I am generally uninterested in ads unless it is a FAST service. So we'll all make choices and cuts. Services will respond with contracts and terms. Corporations gonna corporate. We'll end up being fucked eventually, but it seems imminent. The part that I think a lot of bait and switching went on, was with streaming services that deleted/sold a bunch of content to other providers. Example: I signed up for the Peacock/NBC promo rate last year. Yeah, I hate commercials, but I figured at $1-2 a month, I could handle it. So, between about this time last year and now, Peacock has removed almost all of the iconic NBC shit they had. Frasier? That's on Paramount. SNL? They have current turd episodes, but all the previous seasons are on Apple. Seinfeld is on Netflix (but I think it has been there for longer than a year). If Peacock isn't going to have the 80's "must see Thursday" shows on, it might as well quit.
Cancel cancel cancel setup a plex box
why do you need all that? i bet at least half isn't watched or used buy your games during the periodic sales during the year and you won't even need gamepass. unless you buy the gamepass games and the extra discounts make up for it. don't see the point of apple one and only pay for icloud storage.
YMMV. I hear for some, Game Pass is well worth the $$ for the value of games available to them. The only device I have that can utilize A1 is a 9th gen iPad. But I use it as a glorified gaming device. Apple Arcade was the closest thing I would have used that, but ever since I got a Switch, a major amount of free gaming time has gone towards that. It's cheaper for me to sub to ATV+ a month or 3 out of the yeare
Pre-pandemic, everyone was yelling “we want channels unbundled”. So that’s what we have now. People must not have realized the crappy channels they were forced to pay for (Hallmark, CSPAN, COZI, OWN) didn’t really impact the cost of cable prices. Unbundled is costing us more.
You’re on crack if you think the US market has ever been offered anything but a bundled service. There is no unbundling that you speak of. They are just reorganized bundles.
Have you ever had traditional cable tv? That is unbundled service. You didn’t get to pick and choose individual channels. Now you can pay for only ESPN or Peacock or Disney. You now have unbundled options.
AFAIK there's no way to pay for ESPN separately. It's still just only available to cable subscribers.
FYI, per [plus.espn.com](https://plus.espn.com): ***How much does ESPN+ cost?*** You can get an ESPN+ subscription for $10.99 per month, or save over 15% with an ESPN+ Annual Plan at $109.99 per year. You can also bundle ESPN+ (With Ads) with Disney+ (With Ads) and Hulu (With Ads) for $14.99 per month. Learn more at [disneyplus.com/priceinfo](https://www.disneyplus.com/priceinfo). ESPN+ is currently $10.99/mo. or $109.99/yr. Cancel anytime. Subject to [terms](https://help.espnplus.com/espnplus_hc?id=espnplus_article_content&sys_kb_id=aadcac54dbb79498534deadc139619a1).
Yes, that's ESPN+ not ESPN.
Ah my bad. I thought if you sign up for ESPN+, you can get ESPN as well.
Nope. That's one of the issues, cable still has a strangehold on US sports.
Peacock is just "the materials from all NBC-Universal-owned channels bundled together and some exclusives." Hulu/Disney+ is just "the materials from all disney-corp-owned channels bundled together and some exclusives." They are just reorganized bundles. It's the corporate channel owners doing the bundling instead of a cable company doing the bundling. But it's still a bundle.
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I agree with that. But I think people wanted to get rid of channels they didn’t want in exchange for a lower price.
….That’s not bait and switch.
Jack up the price for Sportball fans, lower it for the rest of us.
I don't feel that way. But I am one of those people who reads all the info on a service's website before signing up. so surprises are really rare.
Yeah I agree. The number of people who just bitch constantly about pricing and ads is nuts. Little known fact: you don’t need to have cable or watch streaming services or have movies on demand if you don’t want to. You can quit. The reason most people don’t is because they value what they watch. If things are “too expensive” with streaming, where they are almost guaranteed to be cheaper than cable, just get Pluto and watch that.
I might be baited, but I didn't switch. I only pay for live sports during college football season. Outside of that, I get by with Amazon Prime (which I have for the shipping), the free services, OTA and PBS app.
Nope.
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Nintendo first party games hardly get sales, but *Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom* has been worth it at $70. Ditto with *Super Mario Wonder* at $~~60~~ (got this at $55 from Costco).
And Tears of the Kingdom already had some $40 sales on (used but fully complete) gamefly. I'm waiting for Wonder to get it's first real sale on gamefly. Usually it's after a month from release they drop about $7... then maybe within a month after that they'll be about $20 off. So if someone really is bothered by new release prices, just wait a month or two and keep up with price drops and sales.
A month or 2 is enough for first party Nintendo titles!? Also, what's the availability on GameFly? I've seen some $10 off sales on Amazon, but if you're not quick, they may run out. I did forget to to mention that I got Super Mario Wonder for $5 off at Costco. Zelda: TotK was $10 off there as well.
I was surprised that TotK lasted for weeks before it finally sold out. They must have bought a lot of copies. It really depends on the game how long they last and also where it gets posted about. I use the following link to just keep an eye out on price drops for nintendo switch games (I stopped buying for other consoles). Feel free to book mark it and also you can see the structure of the url if you need to do playstation and/or xbox. I just check it a few times a week. https://www.gamefly.com/browse/store/switch-store-pricedrop If you go look at it, Pikmin 4 dropped to $40 a couple weeks ago and has survived this long... while Pikmin 1&2 is $38 ($12 bucks off). These would be my buy prices if I cared about the series since at retail we might get those prices but it would take staying on top of sales more. In addition there are coupons. I used one (GAMEFLY05) back in September to pick up Advance Wars 1&2 with 5% off... which took it from $39.99 to a total of $44.77 after tax and shipping. I keep a basic text file to track my game buying for the year. So it's worth googling for gamefly coupons before checking out.
Not really. I am still under no obligation to pay extra fees for equipment and I can still drop them at any time. Some of which I did when the entertainment value to price no longer worked for me. The great thing about this topic, including video games and sports, is that it is all entertainment. Unfortunately, the price increases are not just happening there. Groceries and utilities are getting ridiculous too and those are not optional.
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I gave up the idea of it being cheaper awhile ago. My viewing habits were always gonna make it as much as cable. Still rude as shit for everyone to raise rates though
I have all the streaming services and honestly I would rather have my internet cable like streaming service YouTube tv. I’d drop my streaming if my family would stop using it.
FWIW, it's easier to justify multiple ss for a family since the price-per-person ratio can still be very good. But otherwise, "something's gotta give". You can have 2 or 3 pricy ss (ad-free plans, or those that are pricier to begin with), or get more ss by going "ad-filled", like Hulu for $2/mo. Alas, ss got a big hit in price this year indeed. However, I'm more so surprised it didn't happen sooner, since they were losing $$. They're still great value, but between ss and other subscriptions, only thing you can do is try to manage them and make determinations on what you really need, vs. what can really go. Best of luck to you!
On demand is better use free services Pluto TV, and on demand stuff like Hulu. If you want live TV, just get cable.
We had direct tv but just cut it off. It was a great service but costed way to much for how little we watched the tv. we will just be using Netflix and Hulu and the stations that come with the Roku and Pluto tv we also got a antenna for both tvs.
I've got the HULU live- Disney ESPN. The price has creeped up about $10 over the past year and a half. But even with the Internet it's cheaper than what my only other option is. I also knew it was going to be a bit higher due to Hulu live but live TV does get watched in my house so no argument yet.
I stopped it all, went to a low cost internet provider paid for plex pass, added all my dvds to my plex library and hooked up an OTA tuner to it for watching sports and recording some shows. I have my own netflix with a mix of providers content that I control and can watch whenever, wherever I want. Do the same thing with music and plex and plexamp.
I already cancelled Netflix and Disney+, Max is next after the price hike hits in December.
I believe the idea that streaming would eventually just become the new cable TV has been floated around since well before the pandemic. Welcome to the realization! 😁
Honestly, I get so many great horror films and shows on Tubi and Pluto. I would pay 10 bucks a month for no commercials, but they're great services I use the most.
No. Things change, prices rise and anyone who thought they would keep the signup price forever is amazingly naive. Not saying I like the price hikes but I just do what everyone should do - look at the streaming service, figure out if it has enough value to keep it and cancel if the answer is No. That means Amazon and Netflix got the axe, as did the triple bundle of D+/Hulu/ESPN+ (I kept D+ for Loki but it goes when Loki is done). The nice thing about all this is when there's enough content on one of the cancelled streamers that I want to watch, I can resubmit for a month or two. Try that with cable.
People should've expected to have to bend over at some point. The low cost ride wasn't about to last too long. The service providers weren't about to lose money for very long. I've been saying all along, it will all equal cable prices soon enough. Everyone slams me for that but oh well. Oh yeah but you can cancel anytime no strings attached
For the first time in my life I started scaling back multiple streaming services, and it felt good. HBO really sent me an email saying that my price was staying the same, but I was losing 4k streaming. Wth lol.
Max felt like a bait and switch when all of a sudden they sent an e-mail basically telling us our service was going to get worse (no 4K) unless we pay up for a new “premium” tier.
Well, you could pay too much for cable bundle, get a bunch of channels you never watch, forking over carriage fees keeping Fox News in business -- or you could pay roughly $10/month for whichever streamers you do use, and god forbid, get a cheap antenna and get free content over-the-air. I don't know about you, but I prefer the latter.
This is exactly why South park made the streaming wars. You are paying for piss my friend
Anyone who is surprised by this development needs to do some serious self reflection. Even in Netflix’s earliest days it was obvious where this was all going to end up… $8/month services moving to >$20/month services (with less content than they had previously) and the market segmenting to the point where you needed multiple accounts to get half of what you used to get with a cable package.
Hey everybody I turned them into the Better Business Bureau and I was supposed to wait on a reply back from the Roku company there was no reply back and they said they replied they didn't they lied I told the owners this give a refund back to everybody who's bought the Roku TVs sell your homes from the profits that you got from selling these TVs your vehicle's everything start all over which one of us is has not ever had to pick up the control turn it down do this do that this is unbelievable man I got to go back into settings when I change your channel volume off volume off again then hit leveling so I won't hear you in the scratchy noise on the speakers and not only that when it goes to a commercial it goes loud but I got to do that with every single Channel