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?

  • Open@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve not had any subscriptions for 3 years now. Turning point for me was when I found it easier to sail the high seas rather than to figure out which service the show I had already paid for was on.

    • EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      DRM kept me away from streaming services.

      Since my devices didn’t had the required DRM level, I could only get 360p with my paid abo. Paying for potato quality if there are alternatives in fullHD or 4k? Pretty bad sales pitch.

      • Open@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That too! I think it was either Prime, D+, or both but I was trying to watch something. The native app only supported up to 480p and thanks to DRM the web version just didn’t work.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Did you mark you account as a bot? Some people ignore posts and comments by bots so I wouldn’t turn that on if you’re not using the account for bot purposes.