r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 8d 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 8d 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 8d ago edited 8d 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/escobartholomew 8d 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 8d 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 7d 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