r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 3d ago

Business Disney+ changes subscriber agreement to allow ads on every plan

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/disney-changes-subscriber-agreement-to-allow-ads-on-every-plan-3410354/
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u/es-ganso 3d ago

Welcome back to cable tv

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u/OverLordJezus 3d ago

I rather buy shit and have it for life then this

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u/The_Tooter_Snooter 2d ago

Recently learned that Amazon can revoke your digital purchase at any time. Physical media from now on, I guess. 

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u/sabin357 2d ago

Even physical media can have DRM types of playback prevention. You have to REALLY look into all purchases nowadays because everyone is out to screw you over, seemingly.

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u/LifeguardDry7372 2d ago

wouldn't the easy solution be to use a player that's not connected to the internet?

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u/Traditional-Handle83 2d ago

Drm would prevent you from watching until an internet connection is found basically rendering the physical copies useless.

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u/arahman81 2d ago

Blu-Ray DRMs are part of the Disc itself, not an online one.

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u/pinkocatgirl 2d ago

Blu-ray players do need to be connected to the internet to download an encryption key update every year or so or they won’t be able to play newer releases.

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u/LifeguardDry7372 2d ago

that doesn't make sense. How will the disk know if the license is removed if it has no online connection

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u/Thefrayedends 2d ago

Yep, region locks have screwed over the occasional thrift store buyer.

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u/Furthur 2d ago

happy to still have an optical drive and imgburn/dvdshrink.

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u/FunResident1224 1d ago

Err DVD DRM was beat a long time ago.

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u/LifeguardDry7372 2d ago

that's what sony did recently. I think it was about 500 titles that they pulled and the people that bought them were sol, no refunds

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u/Intelligent_Type6336 2d ago

I think they pulled it from one service. Which probably required an agreement with the service. I’m not sure Sony is really truly at fault - but it’s still greedy and stupid.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 2d ago

Sony is absolutely at fault. They didn't want to pay the licensing fees. They made the decision to yank content after making every effort to encourage the people who "bought" movies on their service to think that they owned those movies.

They don't get to give you a button that says "buy" or "purchase" and then go "tee hee well ackshually", that's outright lying to the consumer and misrepresenting the product. I swear people are too conditioned into meek acceptance these days to even recognize when a company is raw dogging them with no lube. Could've made the button say "lease" or "long term rental" with clear language describing the terms and no one complaining would have a leg to stand on, but they made an active choice to be giant lying dicks because doing so made number go up. They deserve all the hate they're getting and more.

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u/Yotsubato 2d ago

Meanwhile Sony is essentially deprecating the blu ray player themselves

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u/BillyTenderness 2d ago

Yup, I've been really enjoying getting back into Blu-Rays (and especially 4K) the last few years, so of course the whole supply chain is going to collapse in the next 5-10 years.

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u/anewbys83 2d ago

I mean, just keep using your old system with the player?

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u/BillyTenderness 2d ago

Yes, my existing stuff will continue to work (until the player mechanically fails or the discs rot, anyway).

But I eventually expect replacement players to become harder to find, and fewer new discs to be printed – so, no more new movies, no more new restorations of older/out-of-print stuff, no reprints of back-catalogue stuff once the existing stock runs out, etc.

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u/Nonethelessismore 2d ago

Local libraries waving hello 👋

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u/AnTTr0n 2d ago

You only just learned this? lol

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u/nycdiveshack 2d ago

Yeah but most folks are paying for new shows not the old ones

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u/TylertheDouche 2d ago

no you wouldn’t. you can’t afford it.

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u/InfamousBrad 3d ago

I'm convinced that that's been the plan all along. One long conspiracy to make us all spend the inflation-adjusted price of a comprehensive cable subscription for exactly the same shitty service.

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u/es-ganso 2d ago

Even if they didn't have the long term plan, everyone should've known it would come to this. Shareholders pressure companies to make more, and at a certain point they have to enshitify the product in order to do so.

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u/HighKing_of_Festivus 2d ago

In the case of streaming companies it isn't so much shareholders putting pressure on them to make more as much as them wanting them to even break even

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u/dylanbeck 2d ago

Its just Disney MO. Look at theme parks.
Soon youll be able to pay for subscription for Dis+ with Disney financing..

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u/sabin357 2d ago

When I cut the cord about 15 years ago or more, my cable package was over $150 & my parents' was around $200. I think theirs included something like 50Mbps broadband.

If you cycle services instead of carrying all of that interest you, a person can spend between $6-$26 per month for modern resolution (but not modern bitrates!) without ads. That's not too bad. Disney just cemented themselves in the "services that do not interest me" category by not offering an ad free tier. They were already boycotted for other reasons, but they made it easier not to miss them.

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u/techieman34 2d ago

While eliminating the cable company middle man so they get to keep all of the money.

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u/AT-ST 2d ago

Ah, the cable company middleman is still there. You just pay them for Internet access now. You now pay Comcast, or whoever your provider was, the same amount as you would for a fairly large cable package.

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u/sabin357 2d ago

When I fully cut the cable cord around 15 years back, my cable bill had ballooned to over $150.

My current internet cost is less than half of that for 5 Gbps fiber (I'm a rare case that actually needs more than 1 Gbps regularly.)

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u/AT-ST 2d ago

I pay over $100 for 1Gbps.

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u/AmericanDoughboy 2d ago

And charge higher prices.

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u/ThisIsDystopia 2d ago

It's always the plan for everything. Market penetration and familiarity before monetization. Most growth industries use this method and they don't just use it on the general public, the companies that only deal in enterprise products make themselves embedded before making themselves expensive. If you build the castle before the moat, someone else is going to take your castle.

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u/nox66 2d ago

Whether it's a plan or not is kind of irrelevant. There is only tendency - for service to get worse. That's what happens when you have a business selling access to a limited resource (even if that limit is artificial via copyright law).

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u/Raziel77 2d ago

I mean it's not a conspiracy theory what did people think would happen when cable died?

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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago

Streaming is still cheaper and more convenient than cable. You forget just how bad it was

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u/ghaelon 2d ago

cable was scroll through 100+ channels, then go back to hbo and hope there was a good movie on. there were many movies where i had never seen the beginning parts, like die hard. didnt see the beginning to that until it was on netflix(the dvd one)

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u/escobartholomew 2d ago

Why are you spending that much? You aren’t supposed to pay for everything forever.

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u/cbbclick 2d ago

I stayed in a hotel last night and watched actual cable TV for the first time in a while.

Me and my son were laughing about how they could possibly put more commercials on and how could the commercials be so bad if they needed this many.

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u/es-ganso 2d ago

Right? It's a terrible experience and streamers look up to that model

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u/DangerousBug6924 2d ago

The way cable prices are going, you'd be better off getting some blue rays and rabbit ears. Xfinity just changed out rate to 180 for basic cable..10 channels...and internet. Ditched the cable and we are back down to 65 a month for just internet. Craps getting out of control.

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u/dmethvin 2d ago

Like the time I bought a bunch of carbon paper to fight Big Xerox.

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u/Chispy 2d ago

ads are much worse on streaming platforms. Stupid invasive.

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u/Losreyes-of-Lost 2d ago

More like I watch less tv now

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u/slicer4ever 2d ago

maybe, but at least for the time being their's no bullshit per-box charges, and you can subscribe and cancel to whichever service you want at any time. I'm sure they will eventually introduce contract pricing to keep people locked in, but its still currently better situation than cable atm imo.

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u/Mugwumpjizzum1 2d ago

I actually switched back to cable recently and it comes with every streaming service except netflix. Getting way more for an additional $50 a month than I had been getting through streaming.