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TV, Film, Ads and Costs


kliebor

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Binge watching two series right now with the wife.

 

Andromeda for my SciFi fix

 

Madam Secretary for some Drama

 

Nothing but Amazon prime/Netflix and DVD/BluRay borrowing from the library, cut the cord on Cable TV 3 years ago and have not looked back. Commercials and I just do not get along.

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3 hours ago, kliebor said:

Andromeda for my SciFi fix

Nothing but Amazon prime/Netflix and DVD/BluRay borrowing from the library, cut the cord on Cable TV 3 years ago and have not looked back. Commercials and I just do not get along.

I just started watching Andromeda on Amazon a couple weeks ago after not having seen it since way back when it was still on syndicated TV.  Like you, I cut the cord a few years ago and haven't looked back.  It wasn't just the constant commercial breaks that bothered me, it was the constant pop-ups/ads DURING shows FOR OTHER FRICKIN' SHOWS that really bugged me.  It's like "hey, you're watching this show on this channel right now, but this other show that's on later is WAY more important so you NEED to see this super distracting ad featuring the main character walking across the bottom of your screen" and then when you watch the show later that they were advertising previously, they do the same damn thing, this time advertising the show you were just watching before that an ad for the current show interrupted.  It's nauseating.  They are so desperate to convince you not to change channels that they'll do just about anything to constantly force their schedule down your throat, even though everyone on Earth who can actually view most of these channels now has a built in digital guide provided by their cable/satellite company that tells them what is on when on each and every channel, so what's the point?  Just to be obnoxious and give you a reason (other than skipping the 15 commercial breaks of course) to buy the series on DVD/Blu-Ray when it comes out.

Yeah, I can do without that garbage.  If I want to see a show badly enough, I'll buy it on Amazon Video (assuming Netflix doesn't have it already and it's not included with Prime) and it's in lovely HD with no ads, no TV station watermarks in the corner of the screen, and no obnoxious animated pop-up ads during the show itself (not even during the credits, imagine that!).

I hope more people follow our lead, especially now that faster internet is becoming more widely available.  The prices for TV keep rising, yet the quality of the content keeps dropping.  It's no wonder I watch mostly shows from the 90s~early 2000s.

I didn't put up with this garbage when websites tried it (thank you HOSTS file, Adblock Plus and Malwarebytes ;) ) and I'm not going to put up with it from these television networks either, especially since you have to pay for the privilege of receiving most of those stations which means they're actually being paid at least twice; once from my TV provider (yes, your TV provider actually pays for each and every station they carry, they don't get any of them for free, not even the really lame ones :P ) and then again by the sponsors/advertisers.  That's double-dipping and should be illegal in my opinion.  If a person is forced to pay for content, they shouldn't be forced to sit through hours of ads as well to view it, especially not during the program itself, that's just too much.  There's a reason I don't use Hulu and never will, and that's it, because they show ads, even to their paying customers.  So I stick with the providers who got it right from the start: Amazon and Netflix.  I watch stuff on YouTube too, but thanks to all the ad blocking stuff I have, I don't have to sit through any of Google's ad inserts either.

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Yeah, I consider all of those things technically commercials, some more annoying than others it is true, but all pretty much advertisements that interrupt the flow of my day.

I do not mind paying for TV but as you said before, paying a premium then also watching ads is paying twice. 

I love my Netflix and Amazon Prime. The recent commercials on Netflix are annoying but at least they appear once, at the end and if you are binge watching just clicking OK to start the next episode instantly closes the side screen ad for whatever Netflix series.

My opinion on web based ad blockers is mixed, I hate to deprive a service of revenue but I am torn as many ads are malware in disguise, I find my feelings on the situation difficult to reconcile as my home network security is very important to me.

I am looking with a great deal of trepidation at the fracturing of the streaming landscape and every studio, broadcast group, entertainment company and distributor building their own tiny pay to watch empire. it fragments the viewing landscape, makes it harder to easily cut the cord and increases the expense to end users. If it goes too far it could make cable bundles a bargain again as users interested in watching their favorite 8 shows need a subscription to:

  • ABC at $8.99
  • CBS at $9.99
  • Disney at $19.99
  • Netflix at $14.99
  • Turner Network at $14.99
  • BBC at $9.99
  • Hulu at $9.99

You are suddenly looking at Cable monthly at say $50-$70 and another $90 in streaming services because each distributor yanks its catalog from Netflix or Amazon as aggregaters, removing convenience and ease of use as each service has a unique user interface, no ability to search all content easily, it is just a nightmare that looks to be rolling our way.

Dave

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Edited by kliebor
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I haven't seen the ads on Netflix yet, but it's possible they're being blocked by one of my tools somehow.  The closest I've seen are the trailers that auto-play for the show/film being advertised at the top of the homepage, but thankfully once you mute it one time, it is retained on future visits so it's not as distracting (plus as soon as you scroll it off screen it stops playing).

Yeah, I hate that Disney, CBS and everyone else is suddenly trying to be Netflix.  It makes no sense since none of them (save for maybe Disney) have a sufficient catalog to maintain a large subscription base.  People will try it for a week or a month to watch the one or handful of shows/films they wanted to see, then drop it as soon as they run out of new content that interests them, and with seasons being cut from 26 to 13 episodes for most series now, it's even less likely that they'll be able to retain a viewerbase for any real length of time.

The only ones I think might have a shot are the premium channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax etc., although they also offer their content via a subscription option through Amazon directly (which I think is way more convenient, and the way these other content providers should go if they really must charge exclusively for their content like that, though I'd much rather they just sell it to Netflix instead as they have been).

Getting to select specifically what I want to watch, when I want to watch it and without any ads or interruptions is something I've gotten used to and I'm not going back no matter how attractive they try to make it seem and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in feeling that way, at least based on what I've been hearing online from others on the subject.  It's no different from when music companies tried doing their own thing (especially the likes of Sony) trying to have their own version of iTunes (not that I actually use iTunes since I kinda despise Apple's software and I've never been a fan of their proprietary format or the DRM they used to force on everyone so I buy DRM-free MP3s from Amazon) but they all flopped and eventually gave in.  I think it will be the same with these movie studios and TV networks.  They'll see that the market just isn't there for their limited amount of content, proprietary, unwieldy systems and lack of consistent standards for quality, bandwidth, pricing and availability and they'll ramp up their support of services like Amazon Video and Netflix, taking what they can get rather than tearing down their own houses with their own hands like some of the movie and record companies did in the past (looking at you Sony, with your damn rootkit embedded in your audio CDs).

On the plus side, there are services like Sling TV pushing a "pick your channel lineup"/pay only for what you want type service and it looks like others are starting to follow their lead with Dish and Verizon joining their ranks, likely with many more to follow.  I think they're finally getting that people are no longer willing to take whatever their providers give them when they only actually watch a handful of shows/channels each week.  Movie studios are starting to learn the same lesson with many more people waiting to see films until they're available on their favorite streaming service like Amazon, Vudu and Netflix rather than shelling out all that $ for a movie ticket to sit in a loud, crowded theater with a bunch of talkative kids (damn, I sound old :P) ruining the experience for them and having to watch the film when and where it's available with no ability to pause it if you need to go to the restroom or grab a snack (and an insanely overpriced snack at that if you get one at the theater) so they've started releasing movies for streaming much earlier than they used to, with many of them getting to Netflix not long after they're available on DVD/Blu-Ray (and often even available early if you purchase the film on Amazon or Vudu, which is nice).  I haven't been inside a theater since 2014 when the first Legendary Pictures Godzilla came out.  I loved it, but I only went because I was visiting my brother and he wanted to go see a movie.  Prior to that I hadn't been since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (MAJOR disappointment) and I don't miss the experience at all.  I've got a 1080p HD screen on my laptop and that's good enough for me.  I don't need some massive screen that I can't even see everything going on in the film on at any given time because it's so huge, I just want it to look good and sound good and this does.  Getting to view it in the privacy of my own home, on my own schedule and being able to pause, resume, restart and re-watch it whenever I want is the final nail in the coffin for a provider-centric experience.  As long as the stream is fast enough/provides sufficient bandwidth for full HD and I can watch it in my web browser (without any goofy third party add-ons or superfluous hoops to jump through) I'm happy.

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Yeah I think I have joined the darned whippersnappers crowd... having hit 50 this year... I do not feel old yet, and I try to stay in the loop on tech, but I do find the constant connectivity crowd with the need for instant appreciation and back pats a little distressing.

 

Heck, I see series that last 4 episodes and are cancelled and it hurts, many of the best series from the 60s through 90s took a season or two of struggle to hit a stride and become fantastic, lasting for many more seasons.

Anyway... discussion has been nice but to get back into what is watched...:) the topic of the hour...

I have also picked up to start watching Haven again. A little Steven King is always entertaining.

We will see how the future rolls, I hope you are right and I hope that consumer outrage is enough to make them stop with the really junky one offs of services. I can understand the desire to profit off your work, but locking things in walled gardens only limits your viewers and lessens the value of the series as a whole. 

 

Dave

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I like The pay-for Movie Channels ( no streaming ) and do it over FiOS.  However What I do NOT like is when they are showing the credits, at the end of a given movie,  and you want to read them to see who the actors were, etc.  I think it is Starz Channels where they put the credits in a picture within a picture and you can no longer read the credits ( it is now too small ) and you have commercials for Starz programming in the larger picture.  To me that is as annoying as Broadcast TV where you have both censorship and intermingled commercials.  To me, that's bloody annoying stepping on the credits of a movie.

 

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Agreed!  I always watch the credits, often to find out what the name of a song was or some other obscure reason.  If you think that's bad though, watch a movie on TNT.  Start pumping coffee into you ten minutes before the end of a movie so you can watch the credits zoom by at breakneck speed in the bottom half of the screen.

 

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Not only do they accelerate the credits, Commercial TV has found that they can increase the speed of playback by 10% without the viewer noticing a difference.  That 10% increase in program speed means they now have more time for the intermingled commercials.

 

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On 8/20/2018 at 8:56 PM, David H. Lipman said:

Not only do they accelerate the credits, Commercial TV has found that they can increase the speed of playback by 10% without the viewer noticing a difference.  That 10% increase in program speed means they now have more time for the intermingled commercials.

 

That’s not highly annoying or anything 

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I pay the premium for a commercial free existence and do like my no commercials no interruptions TV viewing. I honestly was so used to it that I got annoyed at my brothers house who uses Cox cable, we were watching Big Bang Theory and I had honestly forgotten that a half hour show was quite literally 17 minutes of content and 13 minutes of commercials once they were done speeding it up, putting PIP commercials over edges and streaming crap in bars at the bottom of the screen.

 

I t was awful. I am so much happier with Netflix and 40+ years of back content to watch without all that junk.

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