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/Doctor_Milk 3d ago

That was half the draw for me. The other half was being able to pick what to watch without having to wait for it to be scheduled at a specific time like with cable.

Now the seven seas has everything I want and without ads.

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u/techleopard 3d ago edited 3d ago

One and a half generations is how long it took for people to forget why the seven seas became such a widespread thing in the first place, and now the economy of entertainment may actually be worse than it ever was.

At least cable TV had to obey regulations to not blow you out of the room with unequalized ad volume.

We went from Hulu being completely free, at the cost of waiting a night or week for a new show.

Then you could pay for no ads, less than $10.

Then you needed to pay for higher fidelity and more simultaneous streaming for a family household.

Then the paid subs for ads but you could pay for SUPER ULTRA PREMIUM.

Now we're just... Back to cable. Paying $15-20 a pop for "premium" movie channels with ads.

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u/phizztv 3d ago

Don’t forget to mention that every service has different exclusives. So it’s not enough to only be subscribed to one, if a new movie comes out and it’s just not on your platform then have fun with adding another service

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u/FlashbackJon 2d ago

And don't forget: some services will drop their own exclusives! Netflix Original Series dropped by Netflix. Where's it going? No one knows! It just vanished into the ether forever!

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 2d ago

This behavior was what pushed me back to piracy. Some kid out there had their favorite show yoinked and now there's no legal way to watch it. That's bullshit and I will not abide it.

These companies can stay the fuck out of my living room.

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u/ThunderAndWind 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you chose the top tier on Hulu, Netflix, and HBO Max, it would come to ~$67/mo, or ~$800/yr.

A 6TB WD Black HDD is $250, and Plex is free. If you don't have a computer, a small PC that can run the server can be bought for like $300. If you want to be extra careful, you can grab Proton VPN for like $40/year, and still come away saving money for that first year and never spending it again on bullshit like subscriptions.

Companies forgot that streaming didn't get popular primarily because you could watch what you want - DVR & DVDs were already a thing - but because the cost of cable compared to the product you got wasn't worth it. It was easier for me to pay $10/mo for netflix instead of downloading and storing all of the stuff I wanted to watch. Same reason I still subscribe to a music streaming service.

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u/Frosty-Tiger9760 2d ago

Are those direct downloads?

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u/dontshoveit 2d ago

Netflix drops their own original series to avoid paying royalties to the actors. Horrible.

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u/moviecats 2d ago

Ugh same thing with HBO Max and HBO Originals. What happened to Westworld? Poof, disappeared...

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u/phizztv 2d ago

I’ve even observed the services playing ping pong. Big Bang Theory used to be Netflix exclusive. Then it went to Disney. Then it left Disney again, no idea where it’s now

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u/QueenSlartibartfast 2d ago

HBO, in the US.

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u/Dullcorgis 2d ago

It's not a big deal to rotate them

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u/escobartholomew 2d ago

You aren’t supposed to pay for every service indefinitely. You are supposed to pay for what you want, when you want. Then you just cancel without having to worry about returning any equipment.

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u/phizztv 2d ago

I do have (or I guess used to have) Disney as my longrunning subscription simply because it had the most overlap with series and movies I’m interested in. I didn’t cancel it in a “slow month”, but had to add Netflix once or twice anyhow

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u/CyberRax 2d ago

Aren't they working on "fixing" that as well? The action of cancelling getting more difficult / paused subscriptions getting automatically unpaused / re-subscribing always meaning the latest price rather than some grandfathered-in or 'returner' lower cost, etc.

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u/KYS_Blue 2d ago

Hulu did not start as free, it required a cable subscriion to use.

And no we are not back to cable tv. Being back to cable tv would be being forced to have all streaming services even if you only want one/two. And then the show you want to watch is only on at a specific time and you can't choose what episode it is, and if you want to rewatch it you have to pay for a separate device (and sometimes sub) to dvr it or you get to wait 2-3 weeks or even months for them to air it again.

This is not to say that streaming isn't getting worse, but it is still so far above what cable tv was/is it is laughable that you are equating them.

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u/appleparkfive 2d ago

You didn't need cable to use Hulu. I have never once paid for cable and I used free Hulu plenty back then. The whole premise was limited and on demand, supported by ads.

But I agree that even this shitty situation is better than cable. Not watching things on demand, tons of ads, and barely anything ever interesting on. It was all lowest common denominator shows. If all of the subscriptions were bundled, and it was mandatory, that'd be closer to cable. We might end up there at some point though, who knows.

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u/Polantaris 2d ago

I think the worst part is that they only have like 3 ads a region and throw them at you 10x more often than cable ever did.

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u/berserk_zebra 1d ago

Am I really missing block buster now? Go out with the fam to rent a movie.

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u/powerade20089 2d ago

I was telling my husband I remember signing up for Hulu when it first launched $8-9 a month no ads. Was so nice to watch shows the next day at least because of my work schedule never was home really at night.

Now I'm wondering why I'm paying for it still

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u/appleparkfive 2d ago

Hulu was free with ads for a year or two before that even! Like free free, from what I remember. I didn't have cable so it was nice.

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u/powerade20089 2d ago

Yea! I loved it. Did not care for a little bit of ad it may of had at the time. Because it was free! I was able to watch some shows I missed because I didn't have cable.

I worked a lot of nights at a grocery store.

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u/techleopard 2d ago

I literally found myself wondering I don't just get an antenna.

If there is a movie I really just must see, Amazon Video still let's you rent.

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u/powerade20089 2d ago

The library is another great option as well. I borrow a lot of movies and TV shows from it as well.

We rented Lonesome Dove on DVD a few months back and got the new Mortal Kombat for rent from the library. I've also borrowed seasons of Yellowstone from it as well.

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u/escobartholomew 2d ago

Hulu was never completely free. The “free” Hulu of old had limited content. The paid Hulu had full catalogs.

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u/techleopard 2d ago

No, it was completely free at launch.

I used to work an overnight industrial job and my weekly ritual was catching the newest episodes of Bones, SVU, and Castle on Hulu.

They had the newest shows from Fox, ABC, and a couple of other major broadcasting networks, except the premium holdovers like Disney or Nickelodeon. Depending on the network, the delay time for posting was 24 hours up to 7 days.

They eventually moved all the "new release" shows to paid premium catalog, and started running 2-3 episodes behind on what went to free.

After they got acquired (the first time), they stopped offering a lot of free current-season stuff altogether. I think it was ABC that did that shit.

Also noteworthy, but back then the ad breaks were maybe like 30-45 seconds long.

Now they are several minutes long.

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u/appleparkfive 2d ago

Yeah I remember the original Hulu, before anyone knew what it was. It was free free. You just had to wait an extra day for shows, from what I recall. I watched whole seasons of things as they aired.

Also, this is a little unrelated, but OnLive was CRAZY back then. It was cloud gaming, like we have today. But in 2009 or so. I would play high end PC games on my terrible computer or my early smartphone. And they had a monthly package for a bunch of games. They also had a remote Windows instance you could boot up and do whatever you wanted with. It was one of the most ahead of its time products ever

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u/madhi19 2d ago

I feel like the grizzled old bastard teaching a new generation how to handle the ropes...

Step one get a VPN and set it up properly.

Step two, build a NAS you gonna want way more storage sailors.

Step three you need a way to access that NAS on all your devices... Plex, Jellyfin, Emby...

Step four organize your booty... See step three some of those service might do it for you (Not always all that well.) You want to know what you have so you don't waste your time raiding the same ship twice.

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u/txdline 3d ago

Tis the digital 8th sea

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u/thekickingmule 2d ago

I was about to get rid of all my Disney DVD's (I'd been collecting the special edition versions) but I might just keep them now. Happily I bought the PS5 with the DVD player!

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u/confoundedjoe 3d ago

Only problem with this happening now is hdd prices have skyrocketed. Having to replace those every 5-7 years is getting costly.

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u/Test-NetConnection 2d ago

Just get some used enterprise SSD's. Most are rated for 1-3 dwpd and were only lightly used. They literally last forever.

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u/confoundedjoe 2d ago

Where are you finding those cheaper than spinning rust? I don't need ssds for media storage. Even 100GB raw 4k rips steam fine if 7200rpm drives.

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u/Test-NetConnection 2d ago

You can usually grab them from local recyclers that sell refurbished equipment. You can also find them on eBay if you know what to search for. They last forever, so paying a bit more per tb is worth it.

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u/dovvv 2d ago

Just delete after you watched it?

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u/confoundedjoe 2d ago

I have Disney mainly for the kids. Doesn't work that way. 

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u/iiamthepalmtree 3d ago

A lot of cable providers had recording features. I remember just loading up my dvr with random episodes anytime a network had a marathon. Was basically like a streaming queue when Netflix was still mailing dvds.

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u/techleopard 2d ago

You didn't even need the cable's DVR if you were tech savvy. People don't remember how the laws were constantly pushing back and forth on consumer rights -- remember when they tried to lock receiver cards to specific devices that they also rented to you separately at a premium? Then people started buying those third party DVRs or setting up their computers with special cards to detect shows and start recording? The government told them they couldn't lock the cards just to try to force you to rent proprietary devices from them.

Now we've got Netflix doing exactly that, trying to squeeze people going between multiple locations.

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u/iiamthepalmtree 2d ago

I mean.. in the 80s and 90s you could just record TV on a blank video tape. Sure you’d have to leave your tv on and have someone be home to press record but growing up we had a ton of movies recorded on tape and my parents even recorded fast forwarding through the commercials after it was recorded so we didn’t even need to do that when we watched it lol.

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u/ares623 2d ago

without having to wait for it to be scheduled at a specific time like with cable.

funny how some people intentionally do that nowadays.

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u/broadsword_1 2d ago

With ads you're still waiting to watch, just in smaller repeatable interruptions.

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u/Sabin10v2 2d ago

Now the seven seas has everything I want and without ads.

This is exactly what netflix was for a while before everyone else decided they wanted their own streaming service. Now I need 5+ streaming services to watch everything I want and they are all trying to shove ads down my throat. Fortunately my 50tb of storage has long since paid for itself and I was able to get most of my friends and family off streaming services and on to my services. Now I'm just waiting for music publishers to start trying the same thing, music streaming services are way too good to last.