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?

  • @wheeldawg@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    -9•9 months ago

    Honestly I laugh at the people whining about password sharing getting shut down. It was never really intended to be used that way, everyone just saw an easy loophole and just thought they were the coolest shit.

    Really surprised that people got used to a cheap loophole and when it got shut down, instead of the expected “it was fun while it lasted”, people got really butthurt about it.

    It was always going to happen, it took way longer than I ever expected.

    The ones who had it for family and not being able to include college kids I understand. But in my experience almost everyone seems like they knew at least one person with access to each and a massive group would share the cost that way.

    If it’s not a family group issue, stop whining about having to pay a fair share.

    Yes, the amount of them that are all separate costs is totally obscene now. There really should be some kind of “build your own” combination for a lower cost than the total of the parts thing happening.

    But being mad about an unintended hack no longer working is dumb.

    But to the actual question being posed here, I’ve only ever had one at a time. I don’t watch much of what’s out there anyway. I had Netflix while it was free with phone bill (who I worked for, so I got it included along with half off the bill. But these days I just have Paramount, but all I really use it for is Star Trek.

    Although I’m still mad about Prodigy. Everything I wanted was in one door and now I’m gonna have to figure out how to get that.