But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

yeah, I haven't had cable for a very, very long time (15 years?) and I was wondering how much of a difference it is these days to not have them bundled.

I recently saw a meme about how all these subscription services with unique programming is basically reinventing into a more tedious cable tv.

Yep. Thanks capitalism for taking an legitimately game-changing technology and just turning it back into the old overpriced thing we all hated 20 years ago.

Remember back in the 1990s when they kept promising truly ala carte cable packages? "Only pay for the channels you actually watch!". Well it's here now, finally, except you have to pay $9.99 to $12.99 for each of the channels.

2019 US pricing chart for now and future reference:

Netflix (standard plan, 2 HD screens) - $13 monthly
Hulu - $6 a month
Hulu/No Ads - $12 a month
Hulu/No Ads/Cable/enhanced cloud DVR - $61 a month <- recommend this for cord cutters as it is pretty solid for sports
Amazon Prime - $13 a month, $120 a year; comes with amazon's other stuff
Apple TV+ - $5 a month; free with purchase of new apple hardware
Disney+ - $7 a month or $70 a year; pre-order starts today
NBC Peacock - As yet unannounced
YouTube TV - $50 a month cable package
YouTube Premium - $12 a month
AT+T Watch - $15 a month cable package, free if you're on their network
HBO Max -Currently reported at $15 a month, presumably will offer a package deal with HBO Now
HBO Now - $15 a month
Showtime - $11 a month
Starz - $9 a month
Facebook Watch - Free at the moment
CBS Interactive - $6 a month
Discovery/BBC - As yet unanounced
Criterion - $11 per month, $99 per year
Mubi - $11 pre month
Fandor - $10 per month, $99 per year
Shudder - $5 per month, $48 per year
Acorn - $6 per month, $60 per year
Crunchyroll - Free option or $7 per moth with hi-def and better programming
DC Universe - $8 a month or $75 per year
AMC Premiere - $5 a month
Pluto - Currently Free
Crackle - Currently Free
Kanopy - Currently Free

On the sports tip:
NFL Sunday Ticket is $74 a month or $294 a year
NBA League Pass is $120 a year for one team or $200 to $250 a year for all teams
NHL Season Pass is $140 a year
MLB Season pass is $25 a month via Amazon, $90 a year for one team or $120 for all teams

We currently pay for Netflix (incl. dvds!), get Hulu through a friend's account, and HBO Go through a family account that was supposedly canceled but still magically works! All through PS4. Have never rented/bought a digital show or movie a la carte.

if you were to buy all the above with hulu as a basic cable delivery option, that plus hi-speed internet would run you around $275 a month for television.

I highly recommend just downloading PLEX as it's free. Basically, if you have any kind of smart tv option, you can stream whatever you download directly to your television.

That netflix standard plan for me is $8usd a month but it's another country's pay structure I guess.

yeah there's a "standard definition" single screen plan for $8

No, this is for 2 screens HD.

I just looked up the basic one screen it's about 6.50 USD.

torrent everything, $0

a given.

well ya gotta pay for internet and hard drives! plus not everybody is ethically down with / has the technical expertise / willingness to take the time to learn how to join better groups / etc

although do people really torrent tv shows and movies that much anymore when you can find a free stream of almost anything?

for me it's most helpful when the tv show in question just isn't commercially available in my region

Worth noting that YouTube Premium also includes YouTube Music (and formerly Google Play Music).

a recent streaming experience with hulu, trying to start an episode in the middle:

click episode, cannot seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
accidentally clicked on another episode while trying to close the app on my fone, 90 seconds of commercials starts
click original episode again, 90 seconds of commercials
close hulu, torrent entire season of show, cancel hulu

i won't front: all video streaming services are flawed in a dozen ways that piracy frankly is not.

My friends who are subletting my place have like 6 subscriptions and when I stay there I have to leave the room when they are trying to find something to watch (which always ends up taking a minimum of 20 minutes). A lot of the user interfaces are completely horrid.

wish the cinema was cheaper

xp -- ha - i have netflix, amazon, hbo (through amazon), britbox, acorn (which i should cancel because it's pretty much the same as britbox -- i had acorn first), and MhZ --

omg the user interfaces -- yeah some are really bad -- some are not awful, but are crap when it comes to subtitle options

i watch stuff via roku -- my roku is about 6 yrs old at this point and seems to be "dying" -- is this just standard planned obsolescence?

among the most frustrating things is that depending on your device, the interface and remote controls are totally different! You can't even play Criterion on an Amazon Fire and you can't play Mubi on a Playstation. Prime is easy to explore on a Fire but nearly impossible on a Roku. Everything's fucked!

I do Netflix and will do Disney+. More often than not, if I want to see a movie badly enough I buy a physical copy or, if that isn't an option, just watch that shit on YouTube or whatever. I watched a shitty, washed-out '30s movie on Internet Archive this weekend because it appears to have never been released via any legit home video format. Does that count as a streaming service?

youtube and archive.org certainly remain the people's netflix if netflix isn't already the people's netflix

I still pay for cable (and the Criterion Channel) but need to talk to people who get TCM through other services.

i'm dumping cable as soon as we get fiber internet installed at the end of the month, and signed up for Hulu Live. This looks like it'll save me about $80 a month for basically the same channels and faster internet than the shitty Comcast service I have. Still have netflix, amazon prime, and hbo through hulu. I'll pick up disney as well.

oh yeah, and we use the latest generation Apple TVs. I had a Roku that was a few years old and yes, it crapped out. The apps developed by the providers become too resource intensive for the devices.

"That netflix standard plan for me is $8usd a month but it's another country's pay structure I guess." how is this possible?

i use vrv sometimes for anime and amazon until my last ill-advised prime resub runs out next year, and that's it.

Moving to the Los Angeles area with its video stores and cinemas means not having to really care about any of this shit and it rocks.

We cut the cable 2-3 years ago and had Vue for about a year until a price hike, then Sling. The current fight between Fox and Dish/Sling has cramped my baseball watching, so I'm going to drop all channel-package delivery in the next few weeks and not worry about it until the next season of Better Call Saul starts. Dropping Sling and not renewing MLB.tv next season will free up more than enough $$ for Disney, which my wife wants to get. Otherwise, we have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, CBS (for my wife) and Criterion (for me). Our donation to our PBS affiliate is just big enough to give us access to everything on the PBS channel.

When Filmstruck shut down, Fandor offered subscribers a special deal -- I think it was $25 for a year? Anyway, I got that but probably won't renew it.

Netflix & Prime, but in Australia we can also access iView and SBS On Demand, which are half-decent public broadcaster options.

I signed up for Youtube TV so I could talk my mom into ditching her cable bill (you can share accounts with 2-3 people) and it's been the best cable replacement I've experienced. No buffering, standard TV Guide style menu, good enough channel selection. I'm so used to going straight to Netflix or Prime I rarely think of opening the app unless I want to watch sports, though.

Netflix and mlb.tv are free w/ my cell phone, I keep forgetting to cancel HBO Now, keep Prime out of habit, pay for the Criterion Channel so I can feel guilty when I'm too numb at the end of the day to watch something with subtitles and just turn on a CW sci-fi show on Netflix instead.

I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. I watch all of these via roku as well as a fair amount of free YouTube and Twitch. I also use roku to play music via Spotify, as the TV plugs straight into my stereo.

The quality of film selections on Netflix seems to have really plummeted lately. Amazon has the best selections of those three.

I'm strongly considering Disney+ because I'm a sucker and want to watch the Star Wars shows.

akm xpost. I set up my netflix in Chile so the fees are 4,990; 5,990; and 8,990clp for the 3 tiers. There is currency fluctuation of course but it's been in the $8 range at least for the last year (I just checked) regardless if I am using it in the US or Europe.

"The quality of film selections on Netflix seems to have really plummeted lately. Amazon has the best selections of those three."

netflix has totally shifted their focus to original programming, only 1/10th of which is worth watching. but it's still so cheap I keep it.

we have netflix, hulu, amazon prime, and recently became members of our local pbs station to access content on the pbs app. I am constantly advocating to my partner that we pause one or all of them, bc we only ever use them to watch one show at a time and will often go months without opening the others. She doesnt want to be burdened with the annoyance of stopping and re-starting multiple subscriptions throughout the year as shows come and go, which is a reasonable thing to find annoying. For movies I almost entirely watch DVDs from netflix.

I'm constantly astonished at how shitty the movie offerings on all of these are, and yet somehow still seem to get worse every year. Was just flipping through hulu yesterday bc I forgot they had movies and the 'classics' tab included Poltergeist II, Mr Mom, and like 25 public domain westerns.

although do people really torrent tv shows and movies that much anymore when you can find a free stream of almost anything?

yes, I do this all the time for TV shows and movies. Wouldn't know where to look for free streams, and besides I value the picture quality and curated content of the big private torrent sites.

a recent streaming experience with hulu, trying to start an episode in the middle:

click episode, cannot seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
accidentally clicked on another episode while trying to close the app on my fone, 90 seconds of commercials starts
click original episode again, 90 seconds of commercials

This is all too real. Lots of the time if theres a TV show I like that is available on DVD i'll just buy the DVDs, which most of the time can be found used for <$10 on amazon or ebay, specifically to avoid experiences like this.

I mostly just use streaming services for TV shows. WRT movies, it's consistently baffling to me that streaming services should ever pose any real threat to physical media sales. The selection has always been spotty and terrible. The notion of just throwing up my hands and being all 'hey, if it's images moving on a screen, I'll watch whatever (dopey giggle)!' is so loathsome. I'm highly-selective when it comes to the garbage I view, thankuverymuch.

My local library added Kanopy access for cardholders and, while I have underutilized it, it's awesome. Up to ten films per month, pretty interesting selection.

yeah, new york public library opting out of kanopy was understandable given the cost, but a bummer

we can also access iView and SBS On Demand, which are half-decent public broadcaster options.

SBS On Demand alone is an incredible resource of more good films than any human can watch - foreigners can browse titles (but not play anything) at https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movies

Especially since they recently added a dedicated movie channel.

the only torrent site I know of anymore is 1337x and the selection is crap, venturing into the private tracker thing was awful when I wanted to download more movies, impossible to keep a ratio up and you probably ought to have a seedbox for privacy and blah blah blah
Easier, as it turns out, to just pay $5 to rent from iTunes or something.

I have Netflix and sometimes Mubi (through scribd) and Criterion Channel. Sometimes I split a crave tv account, which is a canadian service that includes HBO. I think these make more sense than cable, where you have to schedule what you want to watch and still have to sit through commercials. but come on people, bundle a bunch of these services together, there's too many right now.

i torrent tv shows that aren't on netflix or hbo. i just found 1337x a few days ago, when all the tbp mirrors went down together.

The biggest private torrent tracker for TV shows doesn't require you to maintain a ratio. I download all my TV from there, everything's properly curated and searchable with various HD and SD options available so no need to go with public trackers. For movies yes the biggest tracker requires you to maintain a ratio but I've never had any difficulty doing that and I don't have a seedbox. Just keep seeding and don't go overboard downloading and you're good.

Y'all mentioned PLEX upthread, its all we use in our household: 2 TVs, 2 playstations, 2 AppleTVs, a 2 TB server, and PLEX is the glue that sorts it all out. Tho we mumblemumblepiratebaymumble.

But without it how could we ever watch all 20 jillion seasons of Law and Order as we have been doing of late.

Watched Nikki Glaser's latest stand-up special on Max last night — it's called Someday You'll Die, and has some really excellent jokes about wishing her pregnant friends would miscarry, dying of esophageal cancer, suicidal ideation...also a really good shot at anti-trans female comedians (left unnamed). I laughed a lot.

watched A Bluebird in My Heart on Shudder. not a horror movie at all! i really should watch a horror movie on Shudder instead of the not-horror movies i've been watching. i did watch Blood and Black Lace on Shudder last week. i figure its about time that i re-watch classic films that i have only seen on VHS 30+ years ago. especially pretty pretty Bava movies. so pretty.

Is anyone else watching Sugar?

Because what the actual fuck at that twist?

Bodkin - was hoping for "Irish Deadloch" but it's more "Only Murders but not funny"

"Dinner with the Parents" on Amazon's Freevee is a loose American reboot of the UK series "Friday Night Dinner." Great cast including Carol Kane. If you know Friday Night Dinner, it's funny to see what has been Americanized (Neighbor Donny: "JANE, you are looking fine to-NIGHT")

Scavengers Reign cancelled by WB but first season picked up by Netflix and if it does well they'll apparently greenlight a second season

I will rep for TOKYO VICE, especially the second half of S1 and the first half of S2. I wish the gaijin journalist and mama-san had switched protagonist / supporting character roles, but still.

Season 5 of the 100 - not good, but Bellamy turning into Keanu Reeves is pretty lol

I love this Conan O'Brien Must Go travel show on HBO Max.

I was just talking to someone about The 100 this morning. I had no idea it was an SF show; I thought it was about 100 people with superpowers or something.

The 400 used that premise.

The 4400

I looked up the 4400 today, remember it starting as a poor man's X-Files and going completely to hell but it doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere.

Maria and I are almost done with season 3 of The Expanse and i'm watching Bosch as well. among other things...

also in the bad sci-fi realm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWGbfQOFN60

xp. Yes, thanks for catching that. I watched the first version, but missed the remake series. Was that any good?

Eureka (on Netflix) was a goofy sci-fi show that I thought held up over its run. Good cast, fun scripts, etc.

I watched the trailer for Dark Matter on AppleTV+…. which is like a different take on Constellation, another show that just ended (and mercifully canceled) on AppleTV+? Why did they green light the same concept twice??

I don’t plan to watch it unless someone comes along and tells me it’s brilliant

Sometimes I see a trailer for a new futuristic psychological thriller mystery type show along those lines and realize what a gift it was to get six seasons of just a straightforward epic hard sci show like The Expanse.

Are any of these worth watching?

https://www.looper.com/680590/sci-fi-shows-that-fans-of-the-expanse-should-watch-next/

I too miss the Expanse.

Dark Matter was a good ensemble show. I liked the cast. Took me a while to recognize the female lead in her new role on The Rookie. Would recommend, though big caveat that it was hitting its stride when cancelled, so is incomplete.

Of that Looper list, haven’t seen Lost in Space or Altered Carbon, would like to eventually. Heard both are good.

Killjoys had a complete run, would recommend. More in the Firefly caper vein than a hard sci-fi show, but had a good arc over the series. Forgot about Defiance, which I liked, though can’t remember how/if it completes.

That list doesn’t mention Falling Skies, which had a decent, complete run.

I second Dark Matter, enjoyable ride despite the cancelation.

Discovery is pretty awful, I'm a Trek diehard and had to stop watching it.

Alerted Carbon has a great first season, but a boring second.

On the last rewatch Galactica's back half was better than I remembered, possibly because a couple of things that seemed terrible at first could be laughed at.

Only made it two episodes into Altered Carbon, it felt very "horny basic cable."

pgwp is talking about the new Apple show Dark Matter (based on the mediocre Blake 'Wayward Pines' Crouch book) and not the one where all the people wake up on a spaceship with their memories wiped xps

I second Dark Matter, enjoyable ride despite the cancelation.

Is Dark Matter canceled yet? I know Constellation is. I made it through one episode of Constellation and couldn't muster any sympathy for anyone (except Pullings, obviously) or any interest in the supposed mystery. I suspect Dark Matter is exactly the same. The other "what the fuck is happening" show on Apple we have now bailed is The Big Door Prize.

I'm finally getting around to Ripley, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think it's actually not very good in a lot of ways:

- The performances have a distinct odour of not having been directed much if at all - the actors left to their own devices. Dialogue is flat, almost like rehearsal level. Many long pauses. The only real life and brio comes occasionally from Scott who is of course a huge ham, and his mischievousness is like a breath of fresh air when he decides to deploy it

- The editing, which is not something I usually notice, is just very lugubrious. There are scenes which are clearly written as comedy but which the editing undercuts. The scene with the postman and the stairs and the suitcases, for instance, when Ripley first arrives in town, which some brisk editing could have rendered quite funny, falls kind of flat, despite Scott's best efforts

- The dialogue is just not that interesting. Do they ever talk about anything? Maybe this is how certain rich people are. But like... do the characters have an inner life? Hard to say apart from Ripley, whose inner life is conveyed through some hugely telegraphed moments of abasement

But here's the thing... I keep watching it. Why? I think it's two things. 1, there is just an incredible power to a story of a bad person doing bad things and whether they'll get away with it or not. 2, the PHOTOGRAPHY, FUCKING HELL. I have never seen ANYTHING like this. It's overwhelming on a level of like 3-D Imax or something. The razor-sharp precision of every shot is breathtaking. The ripples on the water. The bricks of a wall. And certain shots quite deliberately ape still photography of the period, so you feel as though you're actually inside a Vivian Maier photograph. It's just wild. I keep watching mainly so I can luxuriate in it. And the leaden editing actually helps here - lets me soak in each shot a little more.

New streamer up: Kino Lorber finally launched its own service.

https://kinofilmcollection.com/

of course i want to pay for it but boy do i ignore my mubi and ovid and criterion....they get lonesome. feel like a lot of stuff floats around all three as well. and now four. but i am a sucker for such presentation. i am a born clicker.

Is Dark Matter canceled yet?

The SyFy show from about 7 years ago is, not the current Apple TV show. The former was a Canadian ensemble with some middling production value but a lot of fun and want afraid to push the plot.

Agree with you, Leee, s1 of altered carbon was very entertaining but I tried twice to get into s2 and just couldn’t.

Xps I never saw the tv show but I loved the Wayward Pines books

The other "what the fuck is happening" show on Apple we have now bailed is The Big Door Prize.

Only way this would be acceptable is if it's an adaptation of John Prine/Iris DeMent's "In Spite Of Ourselves."

xpost to Tracer Hand. I’ve come round to the view that it’s really good. The spaciousness of the photography relates nicely to the spaciousness of the dialogue and indeed the sense that people are thinking before they speak more generally. this creates a great feeling of the exterior photography relating directly to their interior spaces in a way i’m not sure i’ve seen done as effectively before.

the photography is marvellous, like you say. i love the way it’s able toe recognise the variable moods of the med. it’s not the sun sex and sybaritism of the classic view. it’s more the med that would swallow entire fleets of ships with its storms. “wind dark” indeed.

it’s also a series that necessarily loves to dwell on people’s faces, necessarily. and they’re all up to it. i think you’re harsh on Scott being a ham - i think he’s a tremendous actor, probably one of the best around! he can convey a lot with body shape and face.

two caveats. he walks like he’s poo’d himself (this is consistent across roles) and he’s too built/swole in the torso. maybe that’s just a necessary hazard of being a modern day male actor.

but no, love it basically. great work with italian statuary and art. done with absolute relish.

agree on Altered Carbon, S2 is the low end of "okay" whereas S1 was a vv good story. The problem was probably due to the first season following the first novel in the series closely, and the second going off on its own to extremely diminishing returns. I really liked Kinnaman in the lead role, Mackie less so but i don't think that was his fault, he would have been as good as Kinnaman in the role if written better. it wasn't a v good storyline, and i never bought Renee Elise Goldsberry as the charismatic irresistible leader of a resistance movement whom Takeshi Kovacs would follow across time and space and as he changed host bodies over and over.

S1 of AC was excellent like everyone’s saying. i don’t think i made it halfway through E1 of S2.

disney+ beach boys doc was ok-ish at best if you're being extremely generous, not for hardcore nerds and really should have been like a 3-parter at least to not be same old same old. present day brian shots from the ending looking very sad and not long for this world, he was at some premiere for the show today or this week i guess and it shocked me how he has declined a lot since that doc of him from a year or two ago where he was already not in a great place but dementia so that's how it goes

I saw him play a few years back on a bill with the original lineup of the zombies doing Odesy and oracle and he seemed really bad. And his wife just passed too so I’ve been thinking he’s not going to be around much longer. Saw the preview for that and figured I wouldn’t lean anything.

Concert was still fun. blondie Chaplin played with his and got to take some highlights and do sail on sailor.