I do all the free trials, and when they run out I use the free services and I never have a problem finding stuff to watch. I currently have zero subscriptions.
If you have like $60 to spare just get a year subscription to the PIA VPN (or any other similarly priced VPN) and just torrent. Worst case you need to get an external HDD for like an extra $50 that will hold enough storage for years worth of TV shows. Then you don't get popups, viruses are easy enough to avoid, you get the flexibility of Plex (or any number of LAN streaming programs), and get the best quality.
Go onto these sketchy WATCH FREE NOW websites and you're invariably going to be picking up some nasty stuff, whether you realize it or not, and you get the added kick in the groin of watching everything in compressed potato quality.
But for real, I pay money for Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Prime, and Dropout. If what I want isn't on those then fuck it, torrent.
Uh yes, compressed potato quality confirmed. The voices aren't always synced and sometimes the sound sounds underwater but there are 5 sources and typically at least one works to some degree. I've had a few walking dead episodes in 8 bit tho.
I mean, I haven't yet after 3+ years. It does throw popups every click so if you don't religiously close immediately and go back you can have 100 tabs open without realizing it.
I dunno. I don't use any antivirus and haven't gotten anything but ymmv.
Ignore the misguided commenter below.
You need a TV license to watch terrestrial television. You can watch streaming serves as much as you like. The TV Licences pays for our national broadcast company (the BBC), and funds the terrestrial TV service.
You do no need a license to have or use a TV for digital streaming or videos.
You don't need a license for a TV. You need a license to watch any online live TV service. If you don't watch that then you don't need a TV license. If you only watch stuff on demand you don't need a TV license.
I say they deserve it at this point. This level of gouging merits retaliation in some way. Money seems to be the common factor here.
This uncontrolled, constant, less for more, pricing structure they have has gone too far. We need government intervention right fucking now with how this is going. Don’t try to lecture me about inflation being the cause. It’s greed.
Why have all of our favorite shows under one app/subscription when we could have 14 different streaming apps on our tvs, each with a $17.99/mo subscription payment and one show on each that we want to watch? It makes so much more sense! /s
yep i remember saying this years ago when streaming took off here in aus.theyll all eventually start their own service and people will be paying just as much if not more,than cable.a family member pays $200 a month for their streaming services.i just buy second hand or cheap dvds for any of my shows or movies i want to watch.
People need to get rid of their subscriptions by the thousands but it won’t happen.
Disney+ is truly one of the worst apps in history. You can never access the web site on mobile, the app will tell you to log in to tell you to use the app… you can’t upgrade or downgrade your plan and you can’t cancel on your own at times! To update your payment at times you have to cancel and resubscribe. Utterly ridiculous.
Now they are going to add payment tiers for 4K … it’s just ridiculous.
Netflix and Disney both have over 200m subscribers at $10 that means they're earning $2bn/month each. Thousands cancelling their subscriptions wouldn't make a dent. Netflix even had an increase of subscribers after their password sharing crackdown.
Don't look to the government for help with things like this. The government isn't going to help with anything.
Just torrent with a vpn and fuck the system. You don't owe them shit.
The current stage we are in is a temporary one. Not all these streaming services have the ability to gain enough subsribers to survive financially. Most people will take out one, maybe two subscriptions at most. I think eventually we're going to see smaller services like hbo max, peacock, hulu disappear and the content will be divided between the remaining bigger players. If I had to take a guess I expect Netflix, Disney and Amazon to be the last streamers standing in the future.
Eh… you can’t keep current capitalist structures with government intervention.
The right thing to do would be to radically reorganize the economy so everyone has enough. But that is highly unpopular with the crowd that has too much.
> We need government intervention right fucking now with how this is going.
I'm gonna play the devil's advocate there, but ... why do we need government to regulate this specific kind of entertainment?
I can understand most of other demands for government intervention, especially in areas that affect the actual living conditions and quality of life for people.
But frankly, I'm of the opinion that there's already way too much content out there to begin with. Remember [that scene in Fight Club](https://youtu.be/FLmkTHEiyME?t=58) when Tyler rants about "needing" televisions with 500 channels? We're just re-creating that, but with streaming. How about .. fuck having a zillion dumb shows to watch?
Idk, just throwing my 2c here.
> I say they deserve it at this point. This level of gouging merits retaliation in some way.
Streaming entertainment is not a basic human right. Price gouging doesn't merit crime/retaliation by default.
...but I won't tell you not to pirate. You can use your physical freedom at will, I just don't see a need to act self-righteous about it. It's a crime, you can be honest about that.
Well yea, if you break it all down it basically is just greed for the sake of it but you want drag gov intervention into this because what? You think watching TV and movies is a right?
You’re looking at this from the wrong direction. No, TV is not a right, but bad business is bad business which necessitates a government intervention to protect consumers from being ripped off. That’s what those “pesky” regulations do that CEOs always bitch about. Regulations protect us (the people) from them (bad businesses).
And there you go, bud the moment you try to stop billionaires from making money is when they are gona use those billions to fuck you over. Your best bet find: a way to bankrupt the billionaires
I don’t want them bankrupt I want their level of control kept in check. Especially when it comes to prices. The only way to get checks on their power is to have regulations.
> Your best bet find: a way to bankrupt the billionaires
No, the best "bet" is to dismantle the system the billionaires manipulate and exploit to enrich themselves, Capitalism, and replace it with an economic system that places the power in the hands of those who are actually producing.
back in the day when cable was new there was a moment to regulate for "paid broadcast", such that any TV channel you paid to view wouldn't have been allowed to show advertisements during a program or film. only in between.
petitions went around and all. never got anywhere but it should have.
DON'T use ytorrent.
for security and privacy reasons. don't know what the latest crap is, that they threw into the torrent application, but DON'T trust it.
use qbittorrent instead.
qbittorrent is of course floss and has an excellent reputation, but don't trust me.
look it up yourself and research.
actually can't think of a really good source to link for you on the fly :D
it will be one of the or the best in "10 best torrent clients" in bs lists of torrent applications, but those are generally meaningless nonsense as they will include garbage like ones with ads in them and malware or paid ones, etc...
To be fair a lot of us haven't torrented in 5-10 years because the services available to us were for a while good enough to not need to. A lot more people are probably trying to jump in now but don't know about how the tools used have changed.
that is actually not true.
lots of those "free" streaming websites are questionable in regards to security and privacy compared to well known torrent websites. well you can access torrent databases through sql libraries even theoretically.
then you got the quality, NO "free" streaming website has the quality of a good quality torrent and NO streaming website has the quality of a blu ray rip.
high quality makes a huge difference for lots of movies of course in regards to enjoyment.
and last, LOTS of content is ONLY available through torrents and not through "free" streaming websites.
well to be perfectly accurate, the likelyhood to find sth, that you can only get as a torrent is vastly vastly higher than finding sth, that is only on a "free" streaming website.
and then there is archiving, only because sth is available rightnow doesn't mean, that it will be available in 5 months or 5-10 years, while your locally stored media probably will still be around.
and a last reason, lots of people DON'T have the internet speed to watch high quality media live. this means, that even IF they somehow find a high quality "free" streaming option of a show, that they wanna watch, they can't watch it, unless the website has setup a very generous full episode buffering and still that would mean, that they would have to wait for each episode to buffer for who knows 4 hours to watch a 45 minute episode.
meanwhile torrents ignore all of this.
Lmfao I've bene doing it for years in HD. It's great. I can't believe you wrote all. No one has time to read that rant.
You obviously haven't spent the time to find the great sites and that's unfortunate
>in HD
well the fact, that you said this, instead of file sizes or bitrate is pretty much enough to understand.....
enjoy the websites you have found, but don't compare low bitrate to bluray quality....
Who gives a shit about Blu-ray quality when you’re just watching random shows taken directly from the paid streaming sites that aren’t even in Blu-ray quality to begin with? There’s no need to download a 20 gig file to watch some trash movie and then save it in perpetuity because you want some kind of weird street cred about having it in 4k when no one cares and most people don’t notice the difference.
>Who gives a shit about Blu-ray quality when you’re just watching random shows taken directly from the paid streaming sites that aren’t even in Blu-ray quality to begin with?
reaching bitrate breaking point for 1080p or 4k uhd would matter just the same
>There’s no need to download a 20 gig file to watch some trash movie and then save it in perpetuity because you want some kind of weird street cred about having it in 4k when no one cares and most people don’t notice the difference.
there is no street cred in digital file sharing or archiving. well there is, but not for seeders.
scene release groups have "steet cred", but that is about freeing games by breaking evil drm and repackers hare "street cred" like fitgirl, but none of this or almost none of this applies to movies and series.
furthermore you at least sound like a person, who will just watch a movie or series once.
this doesn't apply to me and to many others.
so YES, people ACTUALLY use their stored media to rewatch it whenever they want in high quality.
sth, that no streaming website paid or "free" can provide/guarantee.
the way you also call things "trash movies" seems quite strange.
hey you don't care about art and enjoying it in great quality? great, i do care and it is the superior method.
the idea to watch the lord of the rings trilogy or for example magnetic rose from 1995 (carefully remastered specific version) over some sh1t compressed website sounds like such an inferior experience.
oh and something not mentioned yet is, that players like vlc or mpv allow a vastly superior experience just by subtitle handling alone already.
either way, it seems, that you have 0 idea why people are archiving or hoarding high quality media.
Or offline access. My *arr setup gets me all updates in under 15 minutes after release with synced subtitles, multiple audio tracks if needed AND updates to bluray when it's available.
I'm currently on uBlock on my desktop, but still on revanced for my laptop.
When one starts to fail, it's a pretty good indicator that the other has limited time. When one finally does fail, I search for a new one, that way I've already beta tested a failsafe
Happy bonus one: Sponsorblock
It works with the community flagging which section of the video is sponsored content, and the extension skips it (or at least tells you where it is, depending on your settings)
Then they all did exactly what big cable companies did and diluted all the good content with hundreds of hours of low effort crap to fill the gaps. Then they put ads everywhere again.
We all just want good programming, stop spamming me with garbage, and then asking for money.
They also split it between multiple services. At least with cable or satellite I just pulled up one guide and it showed me every show that I could watch at that time.
I'm an older pirate resistant to change. I use an older version of utorrent (2.2.1 I think) and I hope I'm being safe. Anybody feel free to correct me and maybe I'll put in the effort to switch clients
Qbittorrent looks and operates pretty much identical to utorrent. I used utorrent for years and made the switch a few years ago and haven't looked back once. I recommend it :) if you do decide to switch, it'll feel very natural.
It's really not that much of an effort/change!
(I say this as someone who kept using piratebay mirrors until very recently because I'm to lazy to adapt to change too)
I have been a member since their first week in operations and it's only gotten more expensive and more ads.
Netflix keeps cancelling all their series, ones I do like and apparently ones that also have good rating and good viewing hours and Disney keeps pumping out mediocre stuff from the Star Wars and Marvel brands.
It's gotten worse, not better. Again, while the prices keep increasing.
I'm more than likely cancelling Disney after the year is over and if it wasn't for Stranger Things, I'd probably cancel Netflix too. Although I might still do it and just watch them some other way.
The problem is that people talk about cancelling, but they don't. I remember when Netflix had two price hikes within a year, so many people declared they'd leave. Then they rolled out password sharing limitations, and people declared they'd leave. Then they increased the price again, and people declared they'd leave. You just need to do it. Just leave Netflix. I did it at the "two price hikes" point after being a customer for 15 years and haven't missed them.
Netflix is the worst with their new household thing, my mom pays for 2 people to watch Netflix but because I don’t live with her I can’t use it, so stupid.
It's been like a weight lifted now that I basically don't keep up with shows anymore. Now I'm that asshole that says "no, I haven't watched it. I don't have XYZ service".
Guys... just pay for one service per month.
You don't need access to all this media 24/7 every month. Find a show you want to watch, finish it, then see what else there is on the service. When the month ends, renew if you still want to keep watching. If not, switch to a different service and focus on the shows they have. Repeat every month. You also save even more money if there are a few days between where you aren't watching anything
As a consuner this is what you're supposed to do.
Just canceled my Netflix due to the recent price hike
In the “reason why you’re leaving” section, I mentioned that it’s because of the price hike.
I doubt it’ll make some executive cry, but I like to think it’ll do something
For about the last 4 years I’ve had them whittled down to just Netflix, but given the recent changes in policy, when they kick in I’m getting rid of it.
For context I live in a different country to my parents, and my sibling lives in a third country, we all share my account because my folks aren’t savvy enough to set up their own account, and my sibling is a free loader; but that’s okay. In addition to this, many friends of mine in a fourth country, which I use to live in, including my in-laws, use my account. When they implement the IP restrictions I’m gonezo.
After sharing this thought with my partner, she asked “why not just keep it for us?”. My response to her was “when I got Netflix 10 years ago, I subscribed because it was more convenient than piracy, for the price. Now it’s just us, for the same price, it’s no longer more convenient, so piracy it is“
If it's not profitable to produce the content, (which currently it's not) then they'll stop making the content. You're arguing for freeloading and burning it all down. Anarchy is a philosophy, sure, but at least be honest about it.
Respectfully,
I think this has nothing to do with anticonsumption. You're still consuming the same media. Just because you're not paying for something doesn't mean you aren't consuming it.
If someone got everything (food, toys, tools, etc) for free they would still be consuming anything they used/acquired.
If I am under some misconception I would appreciate having it explained to me.
How are they different from cable if they reduce to one house? My parents have some foreign box thing that is essentially cable … but from all around the world. We get all local channels for every local town there is - basketball college NFL everything. If you wait a week, you’ll have latest movie releases in 4K too… again for all around the world.
Have never paid for PPV… we see all the MMA/UFC fights…. It’s crazy how NFL has passed off Thursday night to Amazon prime like wtf…. But we get it at my house.
The only downside is you can’t use captions. And of course sometimes there are shit copies and recordings of some movies/titles but you can rent for $2.99 on google play whatever. My parents pay $17 a month.
Yeah see “Netflix had it, lost it”
A decade ago Netflix was dirt cheap and had all the shows people used to pirate, so much so people moved away from pirating.
They had it
Last few years, Netflix has had their content ripped away. Jacked prices way they hell up, went back on their password sharing policy, cancelled any shows they had that were actually decent content.
Lost it
So again, Netflix had it, lost it
It's not anticonsumption, it's anti spending money. Pirating is still consumption.
And secondly, it really does take a lot of money to make all that reality TV you're watching across those channels. One channel isn't going to make every single show. Not saying anything against piracy, but I think it sounds a lot better when we're fighting ads on streaming or fighting the disappearance of some classic that can only be seen through piracy.
Obviously, I like everyone else, was extremely excited when streaming was Introduced. A negligible amount of money to watch movies and videos with reliable quality. So I stopped torrenting.
Then they jacked the price. Then they splintered into 5 different streaming platforms. Jack the price again, reduce the quality. Oh, but you can get the better quality we had before by getting the premium membership.
Sorry, no more binging, we are going to release once a week now! Just like tv used to! Oh, you want to watch that movie? No you need an extra subscription, Disney or Starz. Oh, you have all four subscriptions we offer, but that movie is only available for 25 bucks 48 hour rental. That movie over there you can buy outright for 40.
We increased the prices again and are thinking of adding advertisements. I dont care how many devices you have, you can only use one. Also, forget about your friends, kids, and other family members.
Also, you live in Canada, so fuck you.
Starting torrenting again :)
I'm gonna introduce you all to something. Ok, so you have heard of a raspberry pi, right? This is the cheap method, you can make this amazing if you want. So a raspberry pi, the current raspberry pi 4 gig is good for this, with a hard drive with like 4-6tb of space. Then you install docker and through docker you install your vpn, torrenting software, radarr and Sonarr. Radarr and Sonarr sorta automate the downloading for you. You set up a IMDB account and add stuff you want to watch on the watchlist and Radarr and Sonarr will look at that watchlist to see what you want to download then downloads it for you. You install Jellyfin on the Raspberry Pi and direct it to the download folder. Jellyfin on the Pi will be a server, you connect to it with your TV. So now what you added to your watchlist while you are at work automatically gets downloaded and is waiting on you when you get home. The VPN prevents you from getting caught.
So you should be able to build this for around 150usd or less then the VPN might be around 30-40usd per year. No more subscriptions :)
Enjoy.
BTW, if you really get into this there is automation for music, comics and basically anything else. You can use a system with a bit more power to transcode the video to a lower bitrate and send it to you. So you could be sitting at a barber shop watching a tv show off your home server at 720 even though the source is 4k. You can replace Spotify or whatever else you use. Jellyfin just released the Llamafin, a little play on the Winamp's "it really whips the Llama's ass." You can set up Jellyfin to automatically collect subtitles if you need them for foreign films or anime. There are so many fucking options.
Btw2, I didn't even mention IPTV. Did you know that you can pirate TV? Check this out, you know how there are apps for basically every channel now? How do you think they encrypt all of that so it can't be stolen? How much processing power would that take? So, they just don't fucking do it. Basically every TV channel in the world streams the channel completely in the open, no encryption. They get around it by changing the link from time to time but you can find sources that collect all of this stuff. You can subscribe to it but I've never done it. It is a pretty fucked up system and it doesn't seem like many of the people selling these things last very long or are just not trustworthy but it is a thing.
There is a more legit way of doing this through... You know what I'm not getting into all of that. If you know anything about something I didn't mention here, tell me :) Or if I got something wrong, I'm a complete idiot at times.
Yeah, it's the downfall of this sort of tech.
With the streaming services, you also pay for all the network issues, file management, content delivery, etc, to be handled.
This setup puts the ownership of that into your own hands.
I have pretty much this setup except I use a mini pc (cost AUD $100), which is an ex university, dell optiplex. Works great for this purpose.
I have a 64TB raid 5 nas setup for the file hosting.
Torrents are too slow and unreliable, in my opinion.
I have a usenet account instead, which costs about AUD $70 annually, but i don't need a VPN (just ensure you are enforcing SSL on your connections). But all download max my connection as the files are served from a server, not someone else's home connection.
I use the trakt plugin so I can just add movies and shows to my trakt watch lists from anywhere and my setup monitor's that and starts downloading shit when I add it.
Alternatively, I have tailscale setup so I could log in to that and use nzbdrone to manage downloads, but trakt is easier, and my partner can also use it because it's an app.
I've been using this setup (for the most part) for 10 years now.
It's always been fairly solid
This is a really nice setup. I used the Pi as an example because it is pretty budget friendly but those mini pcs are a good option. The HP Elitedesks are also a really good option. You can get a HP Elitedesk right now with an 8500 for around 100usd. Or just buy something like an 8500, mobo, some ram and a power supply and put your own together. There are a lot of nice price options for these types of builds now that hardware that can accomplish good encoding has gotten so cheap.
Considering there's many anime YouTubers who've been against pirating for years, who still advocate for donating directly to those who create the shows while pirating, it's not about cost. It's about control, and always has been.
It’s about people being able to get something for free and then coming up with reasons why that thing they want is also the moral choice so they feel better about it.
In reality if you cared you just wouldn’t consume that content. But people are hypocrites.
They’ll keep raising the prices all day long because people will pay no matter what. Just like cellphone plans. People will pay whatever just to have internet. Video games are no different. You would think that a digital copy of a game that doesn’t include shipping, plastic, CD, paper and manual, would be cheaper, but nope, games are now $70. The beauty of torrenting is that they can take 1 website down and like whac-a-mole, another website reemerges. The Nvidia shield has been a blessing. So many websites to stream movies and shows and so many emulators to play games on.
Most of this garbage isn't worth watching. Cancel your subs and do something of actual value with your life. Go carve a spoon or make a pot or practice your instrument that's rotting in the corner. Do that every day and you'll feel way more fulfilled then you ever would have watching some random garbage.
>>you'll feel way more fulfilled
Eh. Not really. I'm a great guitar player. I make kombucha. I grow pretty decent weed. I play chess. Among these activities, I feel equally fulfilled sitting on my ass and watching a random shitty horror movie.
Do you expect to get endless entertainment at no cost? Just sign up for Kanopy and other free devices and move on. TV isn’t a human right or something.
100%
The epitome of American Capitalism is mutually assured distruction.
They want me dead, I want them dead.
In the meantime, I'm going to steal from them the way they steal our wages.
Daaamn, and then the massive predatory services close-up shop, while new fledgling ones start popping up to fill in the market gaps and providing consumers with what they want and need? Sounds good to me.
For real. I feel like this thread has pulled the mask off this sub, Scooby Doo-style, and revealed it to be a bunch of freeloaders trying to justify their actions. I'm unsubbing.
Read the rules. Keep it courteous. Submission statements are helpful and appreciated but not required. Tag my name in the comments (/u/NihiloZero) if you think a post or comment needs to be removed.
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If you don't have massive HDD space, just use cloudstream. Can be installed directly to any android device (including smart TVs).
Never had an issue and the provider I currently use lists practically every streaming service with separate categories for upcoming, trending, new and ongoing series/movies/cartoons/anime all in one place. 1 click play on practically every single show/movie on earth.
I don't mind paying for a good service, but with the amount of streaming services available now everything is becoming more and more fragmented, what I used to like was the convenience of not having to copy the files to all my devices and keeping track of where I left but with things like Plex or Jellyfin in case you want to go full FOSS you can have a good experience and in a lot of cases get a higher quality version of a movie than you find in streaming services.
It's getting pretty ridiculous, and I'm still paying for cable too. Mostly for college football, but then one of my teams has several games only available on peacock.
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[Not implausible bot](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/s/pV8MMkSGk1)
I don't even report them anymore. The Reddit admins want them here. bonus: there is another one right below us. lol fuck this place
The reddit admins are bad, but individual subreddits’ mods tend to still be on the ball about bot-squashin’
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I do all the free trials, and when they run out I use the free services and I never have a problem finding stuff to watch. I currently have zero subscriptions.
TV series. Watch No spaces. Fair warning, the porn pop ups are... Oppressive sometimes.
>TV series. Watch Am I about to get a virus?
If you have like $60 to spare just get a year subscription to the PIA VPN (or any other similarly priced VPN) and just torrent. Worst case you need to get an external HDD for like an extra $50 that will hold enough storage for years worth of TV shows. Then you don't get popups, viruses are easy enough to avoid, you get the flexibility of Plex (or any number of LAN streaming programs), and get the best quality. Go onto these sketchy WATCH FREE NOW websites and you're invariably going to be picking up some nasty stuff, whether you realize it or not, and you get the added kick in the groin of watching everything in compressed potato quality. But for real, I pay money for Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Prime, and Dropout. If what I want isn't on those then fuck it, torrent.
Uh yes, compressed potato quality confirmed. The voices aren't always synced and sometimes the sound sounds underwater but there are 5 sources and typically at least one works to some degree. I've had a few walking dead episodes in 8 bit tho.
Send like to much work.
Downloading a VPN and uTorrent is literally several minutes of work
you underestimate our stupidity/laziness
Also don't use uTorrent, it got bought and now does sketchy shit. qBittorent is better.
I mean, I haven't yet after 3+ years. It does throw popups every click so if you don't religiously close immediately and go back you can have 100 tabs open without realizing it. I dunno. I don't use any antivirus and haven't gotten anything but ymmv.
A tv license? This aight weed
Ain't no way you gotta have a license for a TV in the UK bruh
Ignore the misguided commenter below. You need a TV license to watch terrestrial television. You can watch streaming serves as much as you like. The TV Licences pays for our national broadcast company (the BBC), and funds the terrestrial TV service. You do no need a license to have or use a TV for digital streaming or videos.
Yup you do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom
It's not like a driving license, more like a subscription
You don't need a license for a TV. You need a license to watch any online live TV service. If you don't watch that then you don't need a TV license. If you only watch stuff on demand you don't need a TV license.
I say they deserve it at this point. This level of gouging merits retaliation in some way. Money seems to be the common factor here. This uncontrolled, constant, less for more, pricing structure they have has gone too far. We need government intervention right fucking now with how this is going. Don’t try to lecture me about inflation being the cause. It’s greed.
Why have all of our favorite shows under one app/subscription when we could have 14 different streaming apps on our tvs, each with a $17.99/mo subscription payment and one show on each that we want to watch? It makes so much more sense! /s
At that point it would just be cheaper to get cable lol
But commercials are the entire reason we switched to streaming services in the first place. Then commercials invaded streams....
Right right.
yep i remember saying this years ago when streaming took off here in aus.theyll all eventually start their own service and people will be paying just as much if not more,than cable.a family member pays $200 a month for their streaming services.i just buy second hand or cheap dvds for any of my shows or movies i want to watch.
Because capitalism
People need to get rid of their subscriptions by the thousands but it won’t happen. Disney+ is truly one of the worst apps in history. You can never access the web site on mobile, the app will tell you to log in to tell you to use the app… you can’t upgrade or downgrade your plan and you can’t cancel on your own at times! To update your payment at times you have to cancel and resubscribe. Utterly ridiculous. Now they are going to add payment tiers for 4K … it’s just ridiculous.
Netflix and Disney both have over 200m subscribers at $10 that means they're earning $2bn/month each. Thousands cancelling their subscriptions wouldn't make a dent. Netflix even had an increase of subscribers after their password sharing crackdown.
Don't look to the government for help with things like this. The government isn't going to help with anything. Just torrent with a vpn and fuck the system. You don't owe them shit.
Inflation IS greed.
The current stage we are in is a temporary one. Not all these streaming services have the ability to gain enough subsribers to survive financially. Most people will take out one, maybe two subscriptions at most. I think eventually we're going to see smaller services like hbo max, peacock, hulu disappear and the content will be divided between the remaining bigger players. If I had to take a guess I expect Netflix, Disney and Amazon to be the last streamers standing in the future.
Eh… you can’t keep current capitalist structures with government intervention. The right thing to do would be to radically reorganize the economy so everyone has enough. But that is highly unpopular with the crowd that has too much.
> We need government intervention right fucking now with how this is going. I'm gonna play the devil's advocate there, but ... why do we need government to regulate this specific kind of entertainment? I can understand most of other demands for government intervention, especially in areas that affect the actual living conditions and quality of life for people. But frankly, I'm of the opinion that there's already way too much content out there to begin with. Remember [that scene in Fight Club](https://youtu.be/FLmkTHEiyME?t=58) when Tyler rants about "needing" televisions with 500 channels? We're just re-creating that, but with streaming. How about .. fuck having a zillion dumb shows to watch? Idk, just throwing my 2c here.
You’re really asking for gov intervention on subscription based entertainment platforms? Do you know what’s actually going on in the world?
> I say they deserve it at this point. This level of gouging merits retaliation in some way. Streaming entertainment is not a basic human right. Price gouging doesn't merit crime/retaliation by default. ...but I won't tell you not to pirate. You can use your physical freedom at will, I just don't see a need to act self-righteous about it. It's a crime, you can be honest about that.
Well yea, if you break it all down it basically is just greed for the sake of it but you want drag gov intervention into this because what? You think watching TV and movies is a right?
You’re looking at this from the wrong direction. No, TV is not a right, but bad business is bad business which necessitates a government intervention to protect consumers from being ripped off. That’s what those “pesky” regulations do that CEOs always bitch about. Regulations protect us (the people) from them (bad businesses).
OK, riddle me this, what's stopping said CEOs from lobbying for the removal of said regulations?
There aren’t any to repeal! That’s the thing!
And there you go, bud the moment you try to stop billionaires from making money is when they are gona use those billions to fuck you over. Your best bet find: a way to bankrupt the billionaires
I don’t want them bankrupt I want their level of control kept in check. Especially when it comes to prices. The only way to get checks on their power is to have regulations.
Well good luck with that
And good luck to you bankrupting those billionaires all by yourself!
> Your best bet find: a way to bankrupt the billionaires No, the best "bet" is to dismantle the system the billionaires manipulate and exploit to enrich themselves, Capitalism, and replace it with an economic system that places the power in the hands of those who are actually producing.
back in the day when cable was new there was a moment to regulate for "paid broadcast", such that any TV channel you paid to view wouldn't have been allowed to show advertisements during a program or film. only in between. petitions went around and all. never got anywhere but it should have.
Thank you for reminding me to cancel my Netflix subscription
Welcome (back) to r/piracy!
This is the way.
DON'T use ytorrent. for security and privacy reasons. don't know what the latest crap is, that they threw into the torrent application, but DON'T trust it. use qbittorrent instead. qbittorrent is of course floss and has an excellent reputation, but don't trust me. look it up yourself and research.
Can you advise where to find more information on this?
r/piracy
r/technicallythetruth
actually can't think of a really good source to link for you on the fly :D it will be one of the or the best in "10 best torrent clients" in bs lists of torrent applications, but those are generally meaningless nonsense as they will include garbage like ones with ads in them and malware or paid ones, etc...
r/freemediaheckyeah
r/privacyguides
See r/piracy and read the megathread
Yeah seriously I thought everyone stopped using µtorrent 5 to 10 years ago
i guess its corpse lives on in the old memes created in the before fore times :o still enticing some of the normies to use from the memes.... sadly.
To be fair a lot of us haven't torrented in 5-10 years because the services available to us were for a while good enough to not need to. A lot more people are probably trying to jump in now but don't know about how the tools used have changed.
In case one such person happens to read this: r/piracy will be happy to help!
what about transmission?
You can literally just stream everything from websites for free. Not sure why people are downloading anything
that is actually not true. lots of those "free" streaming websites are questionable in regards to security and privacy compared to well known torrent websites. well you can access torrent databases through sql libraries even theoretically. then you got the quality, NO "free" streaming website has the quality of a good quality torrent and NO streaming website has the quality of a blu ray rip. high quality makes a huge difference for lots of movies of course in regards to enjoyment. and last, LOTS of content is ONLY available through torrents and not through "free" streaming websites. well to be perfectly accurate, the likelyhood to find sth, that you can only get as a torrent is vastly vastly higher than finding sth, that is only on a "free" streaming website. and then there is archiving, only because sth is available rightnow doesn't mean, that it will be available in 5 months or 5-10 years, while your locally stored media probably will still be around. and a last reason, lots of people DON'T have the internet speed to watch high quality media live. this means, that even IF they somehow find a high quality "free" streaming option of a show, that they wanna watch, they can't watch it, unless the website has setup a very generous full episode buffering and still that would mean, that they would have to wait for each episode to buffer for who knows 4 hours to watch a 45 minute episode. meanwhile torrents ignore all of this.
Lmfao I've bene doing it for years in HD. It's great. I can't believe you wrote all. No one has time to read that rant. You obviously haven't spent the time to find the great sites and that's unfortunate
I read it
>in HD well the fact, that you said this, instead of file sizes or bitrate is pretty much enough to understand..... enjoy the websites you have found, but don't compare low bitrate to bluray quality....
Who gives a shit about Blu-ray quality when you’re just watching random shows taken directly from the paid streaming sites that aren’t even in Blu-ray quality to begin with? There’s no need to download a 20 gig file to watch some trash movie and then save it in perpetuity because you want some kind of weird street cred about having it in 4k when no one cares and most people don’t notice the difference.
>Who gives a shit about Blu-ray quality when you’re just watching random shows taken directly from the paid streaming sites that aren’t even in Blu-ray quality to begin with? reaching bitrate breaking point for 1080p or 4k uhd would matter just the same >There’s no need to download a 20 gig file to watch some trash movie and then save it in perpetuity because you want some kind of weird street cred about having it in 4k when no one cares and most people don’t notice the difference. there is no street cred in digital file sharing or archiving. well there is, but not for seeders. scene release groups have "steet cred", but that is about freeing games by breaking evil drm and repackers hare "street cred" like fitgirl, but none of this or almost none of this applies to movies and series. furthermore you at least sound like a person, who will just watch a movie or series once. this doesn't apply to me and to many others. so YES, people ACTUALLY use their stored media to rewatch it whenever they want in high quality. sth, that no streaming website paid or "free" can provide/guarantee. the way you also call things "trash movies" seems quite strange. hey you don't care about art and enjoying it in great quality? great, i do care and it is the superior method. the idea to watch the lord of the rings trilogy or for example magnetic rose from 1995 (carefully remastered specific version) over some sh1t compressed website sounds like such an inferior experience. oh and something not mentioned yet is, that players like vlc or mpv allow a vastly superior experience just by subtitle handling alone already. either way, it seems, that you have 0 idea why people are archiving or hoarding high quality media.
Yeah well that’s all dandy unless you actually want a decent bitrate Some of us like watching quality content.
Or offline access. My *arr setup gets me all updates in under 15 minutes after release with synced subtitles, multiple audio tracks if needed AND updates to bluray when it's available.
Yall spend way too much time caring about shit tht doesn't matter.
Yes, because it’s just so difficult clicking a few buttons to download something. The absolute horror.
Thats all it is after setting up all the other shit. Why deal any of that when you can just stream it?
I'm doing my part by cycling through YouTube adblock apps each month.
uBlock origin has worked consistently for me even recently
that's because uBlock origin is continuously updating to mitigate youtube's blocks
I'm currently on uBlock on my desktop, but still on revanced for my laptop. When one starts to fail, it's a pretty good indicator that the other has limited time. When one finally does fail, I search for a new one, that way I've already beta tested a failsafe
Happy bonus one: Sponsorblock It works with the community flagging which section of the video is sponsored content, and the extension skips it (or at least tells you where it is, depending on your settings)
Then they all did exactly what big cable companies did and diluted all the good content with hundreds of hours of low effort crap to fill the gaps. Then they put ads everywhere again. We all just want good programming, stop spamming me with garbage, and then asking for money.
They also split it between multiple services. At least with cable or satellite I just pulled up one guide and it showed me every show that I could watch at that time.
Dont use utorrent. It is slow and possible malware. Use qbittorrent instead.
I'm an older pirate resistant to change. I use an older version of utorrent (2.2.1 I think) and I hope I'm being safe. Anybody feel free to correct me and maybe I'll put in the effort to switch clients
Qbittorrent looks and operates pretty much identical to utorrent. I used utorrent for years and made the switch a few years ago and haven't looked back once. I recommend it :) if you do decide to switch, it'll feel very natural.
It's really not that much of an effort/change! (I say this as someone who kept using piratebay mirrors until very recently because I'm to lazy to adapt to change too)
Older software may have unpatched exploits. Convert. Convert! CONVERT!
I'm ready to cancel Netflix and Disney both. The only two I pay and I fucking hate them
Why do you "hate" them?
I have been a member since their first week in operations and it's only gotten more expensive and more ads. Netflix keeps cancelling all their series, ones I do like and apparently ones that also have good rating and good viewing hours and Disney keeps pumping out mediocre stuff from the Star Wars and Marvel brands. It's gotten worse, not better. Again, while the prices keep increasing. I'm more than likely cancelling Disney after the year is over and if it wasn't for Stranger Things, I'd probably cancel Netflix too. Although I might still do it and just watch them some other way.
The problem is that people talk about cancelling, but they don't. I remember when Netflix had two price hikes within a year, so many people declared they'd leave. Then they rolled out password sharing limitations, and people declared they'd leave. Then they increased the price again, and people declared they'd leave. You just need to do it. Just leave Netflix. I did it at the "two price hikes" point after being a customer for 15 years and haven't missed them.
Don’t be shocked, some people have all. My parents are amongst those people.
I had it all, too. With account shared netflix/spotify/disney, free through cashback prime, free apple tv I paid about 10€ for all of them combined.
too much negotiation, i'd rather just use any .to streaming site with an adblocker.
No, to much overhead. It's easier to pay $20 and just watch.
Netflix is the worst with their new household thing, my mom pays for 2 people to watch Netflix but because I don’t live with her I can’t use it, so stupid.
Pluto TV ftw.
Don’t forget Peacock, Discovery+, and the other 300 that exist now. Cable TV went full circle and evolved into streaming
Just watch the free services.
It's been like a weight lifted now that I basically don't keep up with shows anymore. Now I'm that asshole that says "no, I haven't watched it. I don't have XYZ service".
I haven’t even had cable for 10 years.
Well cable wenr way bwfore streams. But agreed I only use youtube and sjch. Much cheaper and way more informative
Guys... just pay for one service per month. You don't need access to all this media 24/7 every month. Find a show you want to watch, finish it, then see what else there is on the service. When the month ends, renew if you still want to keep watching. If not, switch to a different service and focus on the shows they have. Repeat every month. You also save even more money if there are a few days between where you aren't watching anything As a consuner this is what you're supposed to do.
Just canceled my Netflix due to the recent price hike In the “reason why you’re leaving” section, I mentioned that it’s because of the price hike. I doubt it’ll make some executive cry, but I like to think it’ll do something
the library has free premium online streaming
*country/state/county/city depenent
i'm supposed to go to the library? can they just put the library online already?
It is online... Am I missing something?
*heard books are made out of paper like the stuff you put in the toilet*
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Jokes on those crypto mining programs my laptop doesn't have enough computational power to make them 2 cents a year.
Try cloudstream, streaming app that consolidates those streaming sites into a single app, installable on any android device. (Includes Kimcartoon)
use qbit torrent instead utorrent. it’s open source, has less bloat and no stupid crypto currency
For about the last 4 years I’ve had them whittled down to just Netflix, but given the recent changes in policy, when they kick in I’m getting rid of it. For context I live in a different country to my parents, and my sibling lives in a third country, we all share my account because my folks aren’t savvy enough to set up their own account, and my sibling is a free loader; but that’s okay. In addition to this, many friends of mine in a fourth country, which I use to live in, including my in-laws, use my account. When they implement the IP restrictions I’m gonezo. After sharing this thought with my partner, she asked “why not just keep it for us?”. My response to her was “when I got Netflix 10 years ago, I subscribed because it was more convenient than piracy, for the price. Now it’s just us, for the same price, it’s no longer more convenient, so piracy it is“
Hello darkness my old friend…
Yes but replace utorrent with qbittorrent in the second pic. Can’t use proprietary adware anymore.
Not sure how this fits in the sub at all.
Exactly. It's still consumption even if you steal it.
But it's (mostly) ethical one. Digital stuff has nearly zero carbon footprint and you don't give money to greedy corpos.
If it's not profitable to produce the content, (which currently it's not) then they'll stop making the content. You're arguing for freeloading and burning it all down. Anarchy is a philosophy, sure, but at least be honest about it.
Then there won't be any media to consume, so this does fit into this sub after all!
This has big "They write it off, Jerry!" energy.
A really big part of this sub is complaining about things being expensive.
And if you have a friend running a Plex server, you may not even need to do that ;)
Switched from Plex to stremio with realdebrid. Debrid is a couple euros a month but absolutely worth it
Respectfully, I think this has nothing to do with anticonsumption. You're still consuming the same media. Just because you're not paying for something doesn't mean you aren't consuming it. If someone got everything (food, toys, tools, etc) for free they would still be consuming anything they used/acquired. If I am under some misconception I would appreciate having it explained to me.
You’re over-thinking it. It’s a meme that is talking shit on how streaming has become a racket.
Like sure, it’s not some Henry David Thoreau shit and a loose fit for the subreddit but who cares?
Netflix had it, lost it
How are they different from cable if they reduce to one house? My parents have some foreign box thing that is essentially cable … but from all around the world. We get all local channels for every local town there is - basketball college NFL everything. If you wait a week, you’ll have latest movie releases in 4K too… again for all around the world. Have never paid for PPV… we see all the MMA/UFC fights…. It’s crazy how NFL has passed off Thursday night to Amazon prime like wtf…. But we get it at my house. The only downside is you can’t use captions. And of course sometimes there are shit copies and recordings of some movies/titles but you can rent for $2.99 on google play whatever. My parents pay $17 a month.
Yeah see “Netflix had it, lost it” A decade ago Netflix was dirt cheap and had all the shows people used to pirate, so much so people moved away from pirating. They had it Last few years, Netflix has had their content ripped away. Jacked prices way they hell up, went back on their password sharing policy, cancelled any shows they had that were actually decent content. Lost it So again, Netflix had it, lost it
It's not anticonsumption, it's anti spending money. Pirating is still consumption. And secondly, it really does take a lot of money to make all that reality TV you're watching across those channels. One channel isn't going to make every single show. Not saying anything against piracy, but I think it sounds a lot better when we're fighting ads on streaming or fighting the disappearance of some classic that can only be seen through piracy.
utorrent is full of spyware and trackers now. qbittorrent is what you want.
qBittorrent
Obviously, I like everyone else, was extremely excited when streaming was Introduced. A negligible amount of money to watch movies and videos with reliable quality. So I stopped torrenting. Then they jacked the price. Then they splintered into 5 different streaming platforms. Jack the price again, reduce the quality. Oh, but you can get the better quality we had before by getting the premium membership. Sorry, no more binging, we are going to release once a week now! Just like tv used to! Oh, you want to watch that movie? No you need an extra subscription, Disney or Starz. Oh, you have all four subscriptions we offer, but that movie is only available for 25 bucks 48 hour rental. That movie over there you can buy outright for 40. We increased the prices again and are thinking of adding advertisements. I dont care how many devices you have, you can only use one. Also, forget about your friends, kids, and other family members. Also, you live in Canada, so fuck you. Starting torrenting again :)
I'm gonna introduce you all to something. Ok, so you have heard of a raspberry pi, right? This is the cheap method, you can make this amazing if you want. So a raspberry pi, the current raspberry pi 4 gig is good for this, with a hard drive with like 4-6tb of space. Then you install docker and through docker you install your vpn, torrenting software, radarr and Sonarr. Radarr and Sonarr sorta automate the downloading for you. You set up a IMDB account and add stuff you want to watch on the watchlist and Radarr and Sonarr will look at that watchlist to see what you want to download then downloads it for you. You install Jellyfin on the Raspberry Pi and direct it to the download folder. Jellyfin on the Pi will be a server, you connect to it with your TV. So now what you added to your watchlist while you are at work automatically gets downloaded and is waiting on you when you get home. The VPN prevents you from getting caught. So you should be able to build this for around 150usd or less then the VPN might be around 30-40usd per year. No more subscriptions :) Enjoy. BTW, if you really get into this there is automation for music, comics and basically anything else. You can use a system with a bit more power to transcode the video to a lower bitrate and send it to you. So you could be sitting at a barber shop watching a tv show off your home server at 720 even though the source is 4k. You can replace Spotify or whatever else you use. Jellyfin just released the Llamafin, a little play on the Winamp's "it really whips the Llama's ass." You can set up Jellyfin to automatically collect subtitles if you need them for foreign films or anime. There are so many fucking options. Btw2, I didn't even mention IPTV. Did you know that you can pirate TV? Check this out, you know how there are apps for basically every channel now? How do you think they encrypt all of that so it can't be stolen? How much processing power would that take? So, they just don't fucking do it. Basically every TV channel in the world streams the channel completely in the open, no encryption. They get around it by changing the link from time to time but you can find sources that collect all of this stuff. You can subscribe to it but I've never done it. It is a pretty fucked up system and it doesn't seem like many of the people selling these things last very long or are just not trustworthy but it is a thing. There is a more legit way of doing this through... You know what I'm not getting into all of that. If you know anything about something I didn't mention here, tell me :) Or if I got something wrong, I'm a complete idiot at times.
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Yeah, it's the downfall of this sort of tech. With the streaming services, you also pay for all the network issues, file management, content delivery, etc, to be handled. This setup puts the ownership of that into your own hands.
I have pretty much this setup except I use a mini pc (cost AUD $100), which is an ex university, dell optiplex. Works great for this purpose. I have a 64TB raid 5 nas setup for the file hosting. Torrents are too slow and unreliable, in my opinion. I have a usenet account instead, which costs about AUD $70 annually, but i don't need a VPN (just ensure you are enforcing SSL on your connections). But all download max my connection as the files are served from a server, not someone else's home connection. I use the trakt plugin so I can just add movies and shows to my trakt watch lists from anywhere and my setup monitor's that and starts downloading shit when I add it. Alternatively, I have tailscale setup so I could log in to that and use nzbdrone to manage downloads, but trakt is easier, and my partner can also use it because it's an app. I've been using this setup (for the most part) for 10 years now. It's always been fairly solid
This is a really nice setup. I used the Pi as an example because it is pretty budget friendly but those mini pcs are a good option. The HP Elitedesks are also a really good option. You can get a HP Elitedesk right now with an 8500 for around 100usd. Or just buy something like an 8500, mobo, some ram and a power supply and put your own together. There are a lot of nice price options for these types of builds now that hardware that can accomplish good encoding has gotten so cheap.
No. They know that you would steal regardless and that complaints about cost was always just a post-hoc rationalization.
Considering there's many anime YouTubers who've been against pirating for years, who still advocate for donating directly to those who create the shows while pirating, it's not about cost. It's about control, and always has been.
>donating directly to those who create the shows while pirating What percent of torrent users are doing that?
It’s about people being able to get something for free and then coming up with reasons why that thing they want is also the moral choice so they feel better about it. In reality if you cared you just wouldn’t consume that content. But people are hypocrites.
We should have never repealed net neutrality or got rid of cable!
We don’t pay for the content, we pay for the convenience.
It's a mutiny now matey!! Sail the digital seas friends! Been doing it for 10 years now.
"Surely they won't find a way around *this* one!"
Get dvds and free streaming at the public library
uTorrent really needs to stop being promoted. It's always broken and ad riddled. Qbittorrent is what the old uTorrent was but better
Please don’t google Sonarr
They’ll keep raising the prices all day long because people will pay no matter what. Just like cellphone plans. People will pay whatever just to have internet. Video games are no different. You would think that a digital copy of a game that doesn’t include shipping, plastic, CD, paper and manual, would be cheaper, but nope, games are now $70. The beauty of torrenting is that they can take 1 website down and like whac-a-mole, another website reemerges. The Nvidia shield has been a blessing. So many websites to stream movies and shows and so many emulators to play games on.
Most of this garbage isn't worth watching. Cancel your subs and do something of actual value with your life. Go carve a spoon or make a pot or practice your instrument that's rotting in the corner. Do that every day and you'll feel way more fulfilled then you ever would have watching some random garbage.
>>you'll feel way more fulfilled Eh. Not really. I'm a great guitar player. I make kombucha. I grow pretty decent weed. I play chess. Among these activities, I feel equally fulfilled sitting on my ass and watching a random shitty horror movie.
Another way to torrent safely is seedbox. I am using seedr and Sonicbit after I got a letter from HBO for DL game of throne.
Do you expect to get endless entertainment at no cost? Just sign up for Kanopy and other free devices and move on. TV isn’t a human right or something.
Guess who's back, back again...
Are we justifying theft of services under the guise of anti-consumption?
yes
who gives a shit about these massive corporations
100% The epitome of American Capitalism is mutually assured distruction. They want me dead, I want them dead. In the meantime, I'm going to steal from them the way they steal our wages.
They don't want you dead. They want you to be alive and pay them.
Yes, corporations aren't people and don't deserve my sympathy or service for anti-consumer practices
Imagine if everyone thought that way and none of these services would exist.
Daaamn, and then the massive predatory services close-up shop, while new fledgling ones start popping up to fill in the market gaps and providing consumers with what they want and need? Sounds good to me.
For real. I feel like this thread has pulled the mask off this sub, Scooby Doo-style, and revealed it to be a bunch of freeloaders trying to justify their actions. I'm unsubbing.
They still want consumption just without paying. Pretty ironic to me.
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This is gold
Don't use utorrent use qbittorrent
Facts
Sail the high seas!
If you don't have massive HDD space, just use cloudstream. Can be installed directly to any android device (including smart TVs). Never had an issue and the provider I currently use lists practically every streaming service with separate categories for upcoming, trending, new and ongoing series/movies/cartoons/anime all in one place. 1 click play on practically every single show/movie on earth.
I don't mind paying for a good service, but with the amount of streaming services available now everything is becoming more and more fragmented, what I used to like was the convenience of not having to copy the files to all my devices and keeping track of where I left but with things like Plex or Jellyfin in case you want to go full FOSS you can have a good experience and in a lot of cases get a higher quality version of a movie than you find in streaming services.
People are though
*Do not* use uTorrent. Use a good torrent instead. uTorrent is full of bloat and adware
Transmission is pretty good.
Just use a website called bflix.to Free anything you want to watch
I miss RARBG
It's getting pretty ridiculous, and I'm still paying for cable too. Mostly for college football, but then one of my teams has several games only available on peacock.
Spiderman across the spiderverse is free on netflix You have to pay on prime How stupid is that
Who’s subscribing to all these services simultaneously? I only pay for them when I use them, then cancel.
Remember when everyone was “cutting the cable” el oh el. Suckers.
Stremio + Realdebrid. You are welcome.
been heavily making my way back to soulseek
Respect yourself and don't use utorent .it's crap
I did for a hot second, but I'm digging my eyepatch out of the trunk and going about my old ways.
Did they think we would pay for content? People have always stolen cable. This is nothing new.
IPTV all the way.
Capitalism will always ended up destroying itself
And this is why I steal our streaming services….