After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video.
Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price—up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month—following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October.
Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years.
dvd and bluray are so goshdarn cheap that my wife and I thought to just buy everything we like watching physically. yeah we still have to rent new things every so often, but we generally just watch completed series or older movies.
we did an activity called ‘the vault’ where we identified ~800 movies/series that we could just live with forever. Now that the list was made its been the fun casual game of hunting for the best deal.
for instance, we like horror and we found all Blu-rays of the nightmare on elm street for like $15, all Halloween movies for ~$30, original star trek complete series $25.
I am predicting that our 800 works will cost somewhere around $2000? i winced at seeing that price, but spreading it over a few years of searching (we like trying to find our copies at local used stores) i think it isn’t too bad! plus its another activity for me and my wife to do.
Simply realizing that “wow we should just buy the stuff we watch on repeat” has been good for the monthly expenses. yeah we miss out on some exclusive stuff, but honestly there is just so much good shit out there from the past. i can certainly wait for that exclusive stuff to go on sale or finish up its finale so i can resub for a month to binge it.
certainly not laying out all the pros and cons of doing it, but i think the adventure of rediscovering physical media again has been showing is more pros than cons.
I’m all for owning media and having hard copies but not sure I am following on the financial side. $2000 for your “vault” is around 16 years worth of paying for streaming services. That’s not including your self reported extra renting. Do you think the 16 year ROI is worth it? Is the higher quality media a factor?
Just curious how it would be good for your “monthly expenses” given how much you are intending to spend.
16 years of a single ad-ridden service, maybe. Most people probably have more than just their lone Disney+ bundle or Netflix, so I’d say it’s probably closer to 5 years, also assuming they don’t continue to raise prices, which obviously won’t happen.
Watching through complete old series will save you from the disappointment of a show getting canned after one season which seems to be all the rage with streaming providers now.
Weird how you think you’re taking the intelligent play when you’re actually getting taken for a ride.
The smart thing to do would be to subscribe to a VPN for <$4/month then download everything you want.