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How many streaming services are you subscribed to?


Edmilson

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These days, everyone is subscribed to at least one streaming, mostly Netflix. And now there are more options than ever. How many do you use?

 

I have:

 

Netflix - this one is obvious, I use it since 2015 when it had way more third-party content.

Prime Video - I'm a subscriber since February 2019, and it has a lot of decent movies in there, you just have to find them.

Disney+ - I've been using it since Nov 2020, when it arrived here in my country, right in time for me to catch Mandalorian S2.

HBO Max - I'm a subscriber since July of this year.

Globoplay - A local streaming service run by Brazil's largest media corporation, Globo. It has a lot of movies, shows and novelas from here, but also some foreign stuff.

 

For music, I use manily Spotify and YouTube. As a Prime member I can use Amazon Music too, but I it has mostly the same stuff I can find on Spotify.

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We have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Disney+

 

We also currently have Apple TV+, but as soon as Ted Lasso season 2 is over we'll cancel it until Season 3 comes out.  Unless Foundation gets astounding buzz

 

We'll probably also try Paramount+ sometime this winter for a bit, maybe when Halo comes out

 

Haven't been tempted by anything on Peacock yet

 

Not sure if Showtime has a standalone service or not but if not we'll subscribe to Showtime through Amazon for a month when Dexter Season 9 is wrapping up to watch that

 

We also use some of the free ones - The Roku Channel and Pluto TV - from time to time

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Prime and Netflix, and I'm giving YouTube Premium a go with a free trial (if they roll out their premium 'lite' further, I'm very likely to continue).

 

Also got Spotify as I actually use it loads, and the sound quality increase was noticeable.

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I have Netflix, Prime Video, a local service and for the moment AppleTV+ (Ted Lasso). Weirdly I use Netflix less these days due to total lack of integration into the TV app on my appleTV (which combines my watch list and up next list from all non Netflix streaming services and also has a very handy universal search that shows on which service a movie or show can be viewed with direct access to the apps.

 

I might get Disney+ for Hawkeye.

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I've often considered dropping Netflix, as I mainly use it for watching old TV series that I could easily just buy. And especially since they dropped Top Gear. I just don't watch many movies these days - music gets my attention more.

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1 hour ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Round figures? Zero.

 

Same here. I have access to Netflix, HBO and DIsney through friend and family accounts. Or promotional subscriptions. I occasionally use Spotify, but only the free version (so plenty of annoying ads).

 

But then I'm in a special situation where I get screeners or press screenings, so I get access that way. And then I watch my physical media now and then (DVDs and Blu-rays).

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Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV for me. The latter definitely has far fewer things than the others and we only really got it when my partner got a new iPhone and they were (not sure if they still are) giving away a year's free subscription to Apple TV if you buy a new Apple device. He really wanted to watch The Morning Show (which is pretty great), as well as Central Park (fun and quirky, with some great songs) and we recently watched the enjoyable but not-as-good-as-it-could-have-been Schmigadoon.

 

Disney+ seems the most promising for the amount of content given how much studios they encompass. Plus there's less chance of things randomly disappearing as they skip from one service to another (or just drop off completely like The Middle which disappeared from Amazon the day after we watched the last episode... amazingly good timing but it's one of those shows I'd love to watch again) since all of the content is its own (or from Fox or Marvel or Pixar or Lucasfilm etc).

 

However, we also subscribe to Cinema Paradiso which is a DVD and Blu-Ray by post service. We used to get Lovefilm but it was taken over by Amazon and, surprise, surprise (as Cilla would say), mothballed by Amazon. It's not as good as Lovefilm but has a pretty decent selection and is a good way to fill in the gaps of things that aren't available to stream. For example, we were watching The Americans (brilliant, highly recommended) on Amazon and it disappeared about 4 episodes from the end... absolutely infuriating but we were able to get it on DVD (oddly not Blu-Ray) from Cinema Paradiso. It since re-appeared on Disney+ but obviously we didn't know that at the time.

 

Streaming is great but the Russian roulette of things randomly being dropped or swapping networks is massively annoying. As I mentioned before, they really ought to indicate how long is left before it's going to disappear (like BBC iPlayer does) so at least you can decide if you need to binge watch something or if it's worth bothering to start at all.

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Netflix

Amazon Prime (which we really just get paid for shipping and it comes with a streaming service)

Disney+

Hulu - no ads

 

We just dropped HBO. We get IMDB with ads. I've been watching John Wick on Peacock.

 

I'm sure we'll get Paramount+ when Picard comes out.

 

When we cut the cord I did the math of cable vs. the streamers and included the cost of buying a series or two that I watch that aren't on Hulu. We came out way ahead. I should revisit that.

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22 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV for me. The latter definitely has far fewer things than the others and we only really got it when my partner got a new iPhone and they were (not sure if they still are) giving away a year's free subscription to Apple TV if you buy a new Apple device. He really wanted to watch The Morning Show (which is pretty great), as well as Central Park (fun and quirky, with some great songs) and we recently watched the enjoyable but not-as-good-as-it-could-have-been Schmigadoon.

 

Disney+ seems the most promising for the amount of content given how much studios they encompass. Plus there's less chance of things randomly disappearing as they skip from one service to another (or just drop off completely like The Middle which disappeared from Amazon the day after we watched the last episode... amazingly good timing but it's one of those shows I'd love to watch again) since all of the content is its own (or from Fox or Marvel or Pixar or Lucasfilm etc).

 

However, we also subscribe to Cinema Paradiso which is a DVD and Blu-Ray by post service. We used to get Lovefilm but it was taken over by Amazon and, surprise, surprise (as Cilla would say), mothballed by Amazon. It's not as good as Lovefilm but has a pretty decent selection and is a good way to fill in the gaps of things that aren't available to stream. For example, we were watching The Americans (brilliant, highly recommended) on Amazon and it disappeared about 4 episodes from the end... absolutely infuriating but we were able to get it on DVD (oddly not Blu-Ray) from Cinema Paradiso. It since re-appeared on Disney+ but obviously we didn't know that at the time.

 

Streaming is great but the Russian roulette of things randomly being dropped or swapping networks is massively annoying. As I mentioned before, they really ought to indicate how long is left before it's going to disappear (like BBC iPlayer does) so at least you can decide if you need to binge watch something or if it's worth bothering to start at all.

Forgot to mention music streaming... although given how little money artists make from it (supposedly the guy who setup Spotify is three times wealthier than Paul McCartney...), I pretty much never use them. I have Spotify mainly for when someone wants me to try something out, but don't use it otherwise. I have Amazon Music as a way to sample new soundtracks with a view to buying; I figure it's less per month than one album so if I decide against buying one album per month that I don't get much out of, it pays for itself... if you see what I mean. Although even then I don't use it much but it's occasionally useful.

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Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+, and WOW Presents Plus ;););) 

 

We also get AppleTV but only as a year free trial that came with our iPad.  We will likely do what Jay does when our trial runs out - sub for a month only for complete Ted Lasso seasons.  Nothing else has interested us.

 

All those streaming services together is like 1/3 the price of what our cable bill used to be, most channels we never watched.  If there is the odd show that isn’t on those services, we’ll pay $10-20 to buy/stream the season.  That might be one or two shows per year.

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It's so weird when I hear people in other countries say that.  In the USA, Amazon Prime easily has better picture quality than Netflix, without question.

 

I have no idea why it'd be different from country to country

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Disney+/Hulu package

Amazon Prime (more for the shopping benefits than the streaming service)

Youtube TV

Apple TV+ (free for a year, probably won't renew)

 

I also pay for a decent VPN service so I can use the BBC iPlayer/Channel 4/ITV apps on my Apple TV.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Agreed. The third party movies on Amazon Prime here are better than those of Netflix. 

That isn't saying much.

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3 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Netflix. I've had a couple of Amazon Prime trial subscriptions, and the service was an all around awful experience every time (content-, quality-, and usability-wise).

 

I had several problems too with Prime. Out of sync issues, seeing the top part of the frame at the bottom of the screen, too dark image ...

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At our house (Charter Spectrum cable internet, Roku smart TV)

 

Amazon Prime - looks fantastic every time.  Great 4K and HDR.  Oddly, the interface itself to pick what to watch always seems to be really low resolution

 

Netflix - looks fine.  Never really blows me away, but no issues with it.  Interface can be annoying, but gets the job done

 

Hulu - fast, zippy interface, picture quality is always great, no complaints

 

Apple TV - Constant stuttering.  Literally every single episode of Ted Lasso we watch, it stutters 5-6 times during the first 5 minutes.  Usually it's fine after that, but sometimes there are late episode stutter.  Other than the stuttering, picture quality is fine, colors are bright and vibrant

 

HBO Max - Easily the worst interface.  Takes forever to fill in and get to where you can do anything once launching the app, slow to click around and pick things, just clunky overall.  Once you get whatever you want to watch going, it always looks fine, but everything we watch always stutters at random points throughout.  On top of all that, most of their library is only in HD and not 4K right now.  Pretty disappointing, especially since they have the best content.

 

TBS - We installed this app to watch season 3 of Miracle Workers, and it's by far the worst.  Bad interface, and noticeably bad picture quality.  Seasons 1 and 2 of the same show on the HBO Max app looked amazing, so TBS's app is messing with the master files somehow

 

Britbox - We've only watched Fawlty Towers and Are You Being Served, so kinda hard to make any statements of picture quality based on that

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

We are talking about picture quality specifically, not the films themselves

Our netflix always look better than prime but most things we watch on prime are older

Our HBO flys. Our Paramount is slow to loud but the picture is great 

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Of course in one way they all suck bigly (as the Donald might say) due to the absolutely infuriating "skip through the opening credits/recap/end credits" or "jump to the next programme" feature which, even though you can usually reduce the impact, can't be turned off properly on any of the services I use. It's absolutely effing infuriating. Fine... have it as the default as 99% of people won't care but for those 1% who actually like to have the credits play and not be reminded to skip them or have them squeezed to a box you then have to click on to resize back to full screen, it would be good to have the option. Forcing me to do that is not going to make me devour more content, it's just annoying. ANNOYING. I'm quite annoyed. It would be so simple to be able to turn it off so the opening and end credits play uninterrupted.

 

Best of all is Disney+ on something like the Bad Batch. You have to watch their little Star Wars logo ident (you know, the one with the various helmets and robot heads appearing with flashes of light with a weird mangled version of the Force theme) and cannot skip it, but when you get to the title card of the show, which appears for (at a wild guess) 3 seconds, you get the option to skip it. I mean... you can skip watching the 3 second title card. Even the most OCD child can last that long. Maybe not?! Shrug.

 

PS. Anyone else reminded of the Silvestri's Predator with those little snare hits at the opening of the Bad Batch?

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I wish just one of these streaming services would have a well designed, simple interface though.  All of them bury your “currently watching” and queue below tons of other crap.  HBO Max is interminably slow on Roku and I hear it’s much worse and error prone elsewhere. Disney+ includes 5+ minutes of foreign language credits after everything, which stifles some of the functionality (moving to the next episode, replaying something, etc.)
 

Hate the same things Tom hates.  There should be toggles to turn off the skip pop-ups, the minimizing of credits, etc.

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2 minutes ago, mstrox said:

I wish just one of these streaming services would have a well designed, simple interface though.  All of them bury your “currently watching” and queue below tons of other crap.  

 

Thank You The Office GIFs | Tenor

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I wish more of them had an easily accessible "watch history" like Youtube does.  On Disney+ there are a few classic (30s) cartoon shorts that my kids love to watch practically every day and I always have to search for them.

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Yes, it is super annoying when I can't remember what movie I watched recently and go to look it up and the service has no view history feature at all.  Netflix's is great, but all the other services either don't have one at all or is buried somewhere hard to find and use

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Netflix Canada, Crave Canada, Amazon Prime Canada.

 

Ah, and all the old movies I want to see are generally not on these platforms.

 

Spotify for the music.

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30 minutes ago, mstrox said:

I wish just one of these streaming services would have a well designed, simple interface though.

 

I wish none of these streaming services combined the content and the delivery into one proprietary package. Before streaming, there was TV, and TV was  (mostly) standardised - the TV stations broadcast the content, and you bought the TV that offered the best quality and the best usability by your standards. Now the interface and the entire UX comes with the content, and you can do fuck all to change that. I'd be much more inclined to pay subscription fees for streaming content providers if they used a standardised API that I could access through the player (hardware and/or software) of my choice.

 

And, not unimportantly: Illegal downloads do give me that choice. In that regard, they are infinitely better from a usability point of view.

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2 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

...but for those 1% who actually like to have the credits play and not be reminded to skip them or have them squeezed to a box you then have to click on to resize back to full screen, it would be good to have the option. Forcing me to do that is not going to make me devour more content, it's just annoying. ANNOYING. I'm quite annoyed. It would be so simple to be able to turn it off so the opening and end credits play uninterrupted.

 

There is zero doubt in my mind that this is a deliberate design decision, which their algorithms and design teams have decided makes us watch more content, or in some way mutates viewing figures in their favour.

 

For a company whose entire business mode revolves around retaining viewers and their subscriptions, there's no way in hell that this is a 'oh, we'll put it on our to-do list' thing. Also, for a business for whom the clarity and intuitiveness of their UI is critical, the idea they wouldn't be able to instantly throw a developer or two on something they needed changing is also ludicrous. I see it very simply: they want us to skip the credits and watch more stuff, every time.

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I like the TV app on my Apple TV (and other apple devices) as it combines every service, except Netflix, into one watchlist/watching row on top of the TV-app. It solved some issues I had with the interfaces and makes it much easier to just watch things or continue to watch things you started on earlier.

 

I'm not a big fan of the "skip intro" either, though I do find it useful for watching multiple episodes of sit-coms. What actually annoys me more is the up next thing after you watch movies. With shows I understand the feature as it goes to the next episode (even if that can be annoying too if you want to listen to the score in the credits) but with movies, Netflix (and possibly some other services too) actually starts autoplaying a completely different movie after a 15 second countdown. Very strange after just finishing watching a movie.

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You can turn that feature off in netflix; You just have to go to netflix.com on a computer, you can't change it in the app (last I checked).

 

Hulu I believe is the same way

 

Some other ones, you have to reach for the remote and click something to hear the whole end credits.  I know on Apple TV, as soon as the Ted Lasso credits start rolling I have to click "up" to prevent it from skipping to the next episode automatically.


I think on Disney+ I had to click something too to hear the Mandalorian end credits

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I'll check that out for Netflix. Never used the browser version.


Yeah, having to click the remote after an episode or a movie is pretty standard for streaming. With HBO Max finally coming to Europe in the end of October I do hope that the app will be better than the old HBO app which has been sluggish to use.

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18 minutes ago, Jay said:

You can turn that feature off in netflix; You just have to go to netflix.com on a computer, you can't change it in the app (last I checked).

 

Hulu I believe is the same way

 

Some other ones, you have to reach for the remote and click something to hear the whole end credits.  I know on Apple TV, as soon as the Ted Lasso credits start rolling I have to click "up" to prevent it from skipping to the next episode automatically.


I think on Disney+ I had to click something too to hear the Mandalorian end credits

You can turn off the feature to jump to the next episode on Netflix, but you can't entirely remove the "skip" prompts or stop it from squeezing down the credits to a small box. At least not as far as I could see, but happy to be corrected. Amazon gives about 2 seconds to hit the right button but at least the pop up goes away quickly once you do.

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14 minutes ago, Mr. Who said:

I'll check that out for Netflix. Never used the browser version.


Yeah, having to click the remote after an episode or a movie is pretty standard for streaming. With HBO Max finally coming to Europe in the end of October I do hope that the app will be better than the old HBO app which has been sluggish to use.

 

Here's the screen in the website and what you have to uncheck

 

image.png

 

1 minute ago, Tom Guernsey said:

You can turn off the feature to jump to the next episode on Netflix, but you can't entirely remove the "skip" prompts or stop it from squeezing down the credits to a small box. 

 

That's right.  It still shrinks the credits down but you can click to the left and back up again to return it to full screen mode.  But the audio is not interupted

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Amazon Prime

Netflix

Disney+

Paramount+/CBS (We've hardly watched this. We got it to watch Picard, and we watched only one episode)

 

We won't add any other services, with the exception of Hulu when they start running The Orville.

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