With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
The experience is pretty similar.
The main selling point for me is that jellyfin is free open source software and completely self-hosted.
I don’t remember the tipping point even I left Plex, but I recall them injecting some live channels I had no interest in on the default screen. They do track everything you watch, so at the end of the day you and your data is the real product that they’re dealing with
Edit: I think the tipping point was even their password database leaked. Also, I was frustrated that I couldn’t watch content on my local network just because my internet was down.
Interesting. I might have to get Jellyfin set up and run them simultaneously for a bit. Like I said my favorite Plex thing is Plexamp because it’s so clean and simple and I’d rather use a dedicated app for music instead of the main app.
I do like that it’s FOSS though, so that’s pretty great.