Just rage canceled Paramount+ after seeing the 1 minute of unstoppable ads before each episode.

Then they’ll say people don’t want to pay for content…ffs

  • DreamySweet@ani.social
    English
    107·
    11 months ago

    If you’re paying for a service and you still get ads on it, you’re getting scammed.

      • hydrospanner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        Yeah it’s come full circle.

        Cable exists. You pay for content but still get ads because greed.

        Piracy gains traction. Technically illegal but usually unenforced. All content, no ads, kinda a pain, but clearly worth it to many.

        Streaming gains traction. Cheaper alternative to cable. On demand. No ads. Many pirates diminish or quit pirating content. Clearly most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for quality on demand content and no ads.

        Streaming really picks up steam as the mainstream starts cutting cable for ad free on demand content for less. Again, people are happy paying for what they see as good value.

        Greed creeps back in, content is fractured among many streaming services, making the cost basically a wash vs cable but still has advantages of on demand and no ads and the ability to share and juggle subscriptions.

        Greed continues, ads creep back in, “premium” streaming offered for higher fees to eliminate introduced ads. Content continues to diminish. People start turning back to piracy for the same reasons as they did 15-20 years ago. Services also start cracking down on sub sharing.

        Assuming greed continues, I predict we’ll see these services attempt to squeeze even more money from the loyal subscribers they have left as they restructure their subscription models to contracts. No longer will there be any paying month to month. But rather you’ll have to enter onto a 1 or 2 year contract to stream. I also predict that they’ll very carefully curate their selections so that new seasons are available to current subscribers, then once the season is complete, they go away for a year before coming back, just to get people to maintain subscriptions instead of juggling contracts by year.

    • AlphaOmega@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      Hulu built their entire system on this scam. Before Hulu, the majority of TV shows were available on their channel website for free, with ads. Hulu took this and added a subscription on top of the ads.

  • hemmes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    391·
    11 months ago

    Surprised that no one here mentioned Pi-hole. It doesn’t work for ads on all streaming apps, but pi-hole successfully removes all ads for my Paramount+ subscription.

    • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      11 months ago

      I’ve used Pi-Hole for years now and it’s absolutely indispensable. It’s one of those things where you kind of forget about it then you’re over visiting someone’s house without it and it’s absolutely jarring to see ads cropping up all over the place where you’re not used to seeing them.

      • Oneobi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        11 months ago

        I know what you mean.

        Browsing the Internet at work is a horrible experience. I’m actually shocked at the ad intrusion that I am usually saved from!

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          11 months ago

          What’s hilarious to me is when friends visit and then always comment on how much nicer it is using their phones on my wifi.

        • LifeOfChance@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          I rarely ever need a browser for work but damn I opened it the other day to search some stuff and nearly every single article was so covered in ads I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be reading. 2 sides bars, an floating over head, an ad across the bottom, and some weird floating one that follows as you scroll. How are people not using ad blocks

          • Oneobi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Company laptop which is pretty much hardened so no chance of installing anything that is unapproved. No idea how people survive without an adblock.

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      81·
      11 months ago

      AdGuard Home is better than PiHole since it supports DNS over HTTPS out-of-the-box, which prevents your ISP from inspecting and modifying your DNS requests/responses. The ISP can do that even if you’re using a custom DNS server, since regular DNS is unencrypted and unauthenticated.

      By default it uses Quad9 via DoH. There’s an easy to use Docker container available for it.

      • shutuuplegs@reddthat.comEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        Same can be done with Pi-hole. Yes it isn’t ootb, but it is easy to do.

        There are still challenges with doh and isp packet scanning. Even without clear text dns, your isp still knows where you go, if not from the lookups. They still inspect traffic and destinations and can make very detailed inferences, even without https inspection on DoH or other packets.

        Pihole is fully for free. AdH seems to be the same for now, but it is a company running it, they want to make money. I would be a bit worried about this.

        This also doesn’t stop devices from doing their own dns over https. Adguard home and pihole will try to block the DoH locators (canaries) but can’t actually stop a tv from connecting to a known ip if it wants to.

        Don’t get me wrong. I highly recommend something, and adguard home is nice, but I’m not convinced by its the right long term solution nor does either solution provide the sum total.

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Same can be done with Pi-hole. Yes it isn’t ootb, but it is easy to do.

          I’m surprised they don’t use it by default though. People usually use solutions like PiHole and AdGuard Home because they want to configure it via a UI rather than at the command line, so needing to do extra manual command-line steps to get DoH working with PiHole isn’t ideal.

          Pihole is fully for free. AdH seems to be the same for now, but it is a company running it, they want to make money. I would be a bit worried about this.

          AdGuard Home is licensed under GNU GPL. They can’t relicense it unless they get permission from everyone that’s contributed code (and if anyone disagrees, their parts must be deleted or rewritten).

          • shutuuplegs@reddthat.comEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Code yes, but the information, lists, and capabilities beyond that no.

            I do think it’s a low risk, but it is not zero.

            They could also do some nefarious stuff if they get bought out.

            Don’t get me wrong I hope they last and I’m just plain wrong, but pihole works great and is a bit more pure.

            About ui/ux, you are one hundred percent right. People want and demand simple. Single click install and setup is what is really needed and pihole loses resoundingly in that, especially if combined with encrypted dns request forwarding.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          DNS is like a big phone book telling you that navigating to “google.com” = IP address 75.209.123.456, for example. Your ISP can see these requests and add information to them like ads. Using AdGuard DNS encrypts these requests so they can’t be modified.

  • Youthless@lemm.eeEnglish
    36·
    11 months ago

    For us, we have to watch the unskippable ad during Star Trek Picard, then it jumps back 10 minutes in the episode so we need to fast forward to get back to our place. This has been going on for several episodes.

    • Panda@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      Ugh I hate that with YouTube ads as well (at least on my Android TV). I’ll watch something, get interrupted by ads, sometimes minutes long and/or multiple ads, and after the ad(s) it jumps seconds or even minutes ahead from where I was watching. Then when I rewind to the point I was at it’ll often play even more ads. It’s super annoying but if they think this convinces me to buy their premium subscription they’re very wrong. It’s so off-putting.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          430·
          11 months ago

          Or I could just buy the bluray.

          We aren’t all savages you know. I get my media in style.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            231·
            11 months ago

            If you pay for the streaming service and it doesn’t let you watch the content how it should then you’re perfectly justified to just download a copy, nothing savage about that.

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Provided it’s available in your location, and still being sold/produced. Furthermore Blurays are only going to be harder to find as time goes on with companies like Best Buy stating that they’ll no longer be selling them.

    • Inventa@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      I appreciate it. I’m trying to get familiar with rss and the sort. I am just a bit scared of the rabbit hole where I’ll end up dedicating a whole room of the house to selfhosting lol

      • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        16·
        11 months ago

        I’ve dedicated one single machine to self hosting and I never plan on increasing that. It’s just one big beefy hunk that has a shitty CPU and lots of RAM and HDD space.

        Sonarr/Radarr/qBit/Plex is all that’s needed. I pay $5/mo ($15/3mo) for AirVPN and that’s all.

      • 7u5k3n@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Snag you a micropc from Amazon for like $150 and an external HDD and you’ll be golden. Selfhosting can be as small as you want. Hell sometimes I wish I had a tiny PC and a couple of 18tb externals.

        Good luck op

        • BugFinder@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          I use a old laptop with a 3rd gen Intel processor, probably worth less than $30 right now, with straight debian headless and it works like a charm organizing and streaming. I just avoid transcoding wherever possible.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    18·
    11 months ago

    Paramount are yet another company who do not have enough content to justify their own streaming services.

    They put billboards everywhere, and each one lists like 6 shows that I couldn’t give a fuck about. They’ve not even got enough content for a billboard, let alone a paid for service.

    • shastaxc@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      I just use it for Star Trek. Once I’ve finished Lower Decks and TOS I’m cancelling.

  • OrteilGenou@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    11 months ago

    Yeah but how are these poor dears supposed to create ever-increasing shareholder value with a pure subscription model?

  • jamon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    11 months ago

    I’ve learned that (at least on both Android and Google TV) you can start an episode, immediately go back then start a different one and there will be no ad.

    On Firefox with ublock, you have to hit the play button 3-4 times, but it works and there are no ads.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    51·
    11 months ago

    I just got star trek Picard in my jellyfin instance. I have a hdhomerun that is used for live TV and recording live TV like older star trek.

    No DRM and I control it all

  • r00ty@kbin.life
    4·
    11 months ago

    I feel like they just don’t get it. Why did I stop downloading things err “unofficially”? Because they were almost all available on Netflix, with no ads, and pretty much instantly with a decent interface.

    Then they started making 1000 streaming platforms so that the monthly bill for everything you want works its way back to what I would pay for sat/cable. And now, this?

    Then what, we’ll get the Pikachu face when they realise people are back sailing the seven seas?

  • WhoisJohnGalt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    11 months ago

    I only like Paramount+ for the Italian Serie A and Champions League. A bit different cause it’s live sports but besides that I don’t utilize it too much.

  • Donjuanme@lemmy.worldEnglish
    614·
    11 months ago

    We got a skippable 30 second ad, then the Paramount logo, then watched 2 seasons of Star Trek strange New worlds without a single ad.

    You sure you didn’t just hair trigger yourself there?

    • DudeDudenson@lemmings.worldEnglish
      18·
      11 months ago

      I still think you shouldn’t have video ads in a paid streaming service. Even if it’s just a single ad during a watch session. It shouldn’t be there when you’re paying to see the content

      • r00ty@kbin.life
        2·
        11 months ago

        Here in the UK, I feel like a similar thing happened with cable/satellite. Originally, Sky TV was completely free. They only had 4 channels (and one of them was only kinda sky) mind you. But they were all free (with adverts). Later they brought in encryption and a subscription for the movie channel.

        I am quite sure I recall seeing one of the rationales for when they started the subscription service covering the non movie channel, it was stated that there would be less or no advertising and it would instead be covered by the subscription. Needless to say, that never happened.

        But ultimately, this is just normal business practice. If they can get away with charging you AND making money from ad views, they’re going to do it. The only way to stop it, is not to subscribe to those that do it.

    • Inventa@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      It happened on 2 episodes in a row, with over a minite wait until the episode. Both times the same ad, which makes it even worse, for a 20 min episode of lower decks. I’m sensitive to commercials when I’m already paying premium.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        What country are you in because I just turned it on and tried to play an episode of lower decks, and I don’t get any ads, so I’m wondering if it’s only in some parts of the world.

        • Bp#9@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          I have a subscription in the US and have been watching Picard and Lower Decks – the few ads I get are their up front spam promoting other shows (I hit reload and the ‘forced’ up front ad switches to the CBS logo and plays in a couple of secs). Another show I watch has a few ads, I think the are trying to see how much they can get away with before people cancel. I bought a year at 1/2 price and I won’t be reupping, its a pretty low value and quality streaming service on all fronts (ads, content, video quality, app/site navigation and player, absolutely no useful technical support if their player or service is glitching, cable company class customer avoidance policies and systems).

          The video quality on easynews is also much better should I want to watch more star trek in the future.

      • Donjuanme@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I definitely feel the hatred towards all things ads, I would probably cancel as well if I was in your position. Fortunately 1 ad per session is the rare exception to my ad free viewing (and I did curse quite a bit at that ad, whatever it was for)