Why is it that these fucks get to increase their price and just to offer shittier service but if I want a raise at my job I’ve got to go above and beyond?
Raises where you work are still based on merit? Damn!
You guys get raises?
Technically, no. The last few have been significantly below either measure of inflation. So in real terms, I've had a wage cut!
Likewise. My promotion was less than the annual inflation.
They aren't, it's just an excuse.
I'm not even sure how many streaming services make a profit at this point. They all seem to lower the quality everywhere at the same time.
Your employer probably made you sign a contract, Amazon just changes their eula/terms&conditions. Amazon aren’t legally bound to keep their prices the same.
[When launched] Prime Video with ads was given a "very light ad load," providing subscribers “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like." The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn't show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year.
Planned enshittification a la boiling frogs.
I'll just pirate their shit. I'll pirate it so hard and I'll do it with both middle fingers in the air. But not literally, I would definitely need both hands to pirate their content.
We still need one person with a membership to download and post it all. Maybe we should start a fund to support their ever increasing membership costs…
Pretty sure you can be a decent pirate with a hook for a hand buddy. Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
If you train enough you can probably do it with your feet
So are executives born with an asshole where their mouth belongs or do they surgically put it on when you get the gig?
Humans, being deuterostomes, have an embryological stage where we are just anuses.
Some humans never develop past that.
Light my arse, from the start they've interrupted with adverts for their own crap making it barely tolerable. Even on the adfree tier.
Canceled and no intention of ever going back.
Measuring your ad load by American standards doesn't work when your competition is netflix and iPlayer.
The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn't show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year.
So regular TV is designed around the ads.
Cliff hangers before ads are done not only for the story, but to keep you there through the ad to get the outcome to the cliffhanger.
That partially went away with the no ad streaming.
Now that shitty behavior is going to come back.
Now that shitty behavior is going to come back.
Of course not. Streaming sites are far too lazy for that. They'll just cram the commercial into the middle of the show with no regard for the story. It's the only way they'll be able to put ads in the middle of shows not made to have ads.
Ugh, you're right. Enshittify to the max!
That's not even true, they interrupted episode 2 of Rings of Power for me.
What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren't really ads, because the company isn't actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.
The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn't show commercials in the middle of Content
That's a blatant lie, it definitely does.
Copying my reply to someone else:
What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren't really ads, because the company isn't actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.
Pretty sure it was some random Aldi commercial or sth.
I'm getting non-stop Samsung, insurance, food, and other kinds of ads in the middle of shows.
It makes me not want to use Prime. And in fact, I don't anymore.
I will ramp down my use of amazon prime
Hmm, unfortunately I can't go negative.
Get an RF jammer and block your neighbors' wifi
Lol.
I guess I could also slash the tires of the Amazon delivery truck when it drops off packages at my neighbor's house. Then again, I'd prefer to not go to jail.
I won't. At least not via TPB.
What do they even have that's worth watching? It's mostly garbage unless you're into critical role. The boys shows? Oh no my poor hard drive space is going to be swamped with prime video mkvs lol
I don't know. I don't really even watch anything anymore. I just like being snarky like that.
Well, guess it's time to get an eye patch and a pet parrot
Do you know any sea shanties to go along with that?
What shall we do with an ad filled service?
What shall we do with an ad filled service?
What shall we do with an ad filled service?
Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Before we go crazy!
Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now!
Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now!
Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now!
Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Before we go crazy!
Search for the show on pirate websites!
Search for the show on pirate websites!
Search for the show on pirate websites!
Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Ahoy the season is starting!
Before we go crazy!
Yo ho ho and a terabyte of NAS!
Aye!
Is Alestorm close enough?
Yarr harr fiddle dee dee
Stealing from Bezos is alright with me
Don't watch their ads cause your time's not for free
You are a pirate!
I have already ramped up on that one on their last ad ramp up.
I can't stand it.
Thank you amazon for encouraging piracy
I'm not even sure it encourages piracy. That would assume amazon has content people want to watch.
Name an amazon show.......
See? You can't do it. Nobody can! It's like trying to name lost media from the silent movie generation. Nobody would know what you were talking about if you did name one.
The Boys, Fallout, Invincible, Good Omens. These were all good shows, though the Boys is kinda wearing thin and I'm glad it's ending next season.
Haven't seen em, but Jack Ryan, Reacher, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Marvelous Ms. Maisel...all these seem to have done extremely well and been popular.
Sure they have their absolute disasters like the Rings of Power too, but it's not like they're on the same level of quality as like the freevee's and roku original shows.
Reacher is so much better than Tom Cruise's tiny Reacher.
Amazon as a company sucks enough on its own. No need to make shit up.
See? You can't do it.
I can. I can even name multiple really good shows. But you don’t want to hear them. You want to fabricate a narrative.
American Gods, Rings of Power, Good Omens, the Expanse, Man in the high castle, the Last of us, etc etc.
It's not always as good of a selection as other services, but it's got a fair few gems on there and a good amount of back catalogue films and tv shows that are fab :-)
And the fact that they collect so much stuff that would otherwise not be available at all (usually because its only on some random foreign streaming service and refuses to work with netflix) is where they really shine.
That said, I immediately stopped using it when they brought adverts in to the paid subscription. I'm not paying to watch adverts, sorry, no.
It still boggles my mind how paying for ads became acceptable. Not only is the company making money from the advertisers for the ad space, they now get to make money off the population for viewing the ads. This is a crazy world we live in.
Also The Boys, Invincible, and Wheel of Time.
Oh yeah, forgot about those! I enjoyed the boys and invincible a lot, I never got around to watching wheel of time, I will eventually, but I've heard nothing particularly good (or that it's middling at best) so I've shoved it to the back of my to watch list.
I personally hated WoT.
If nothing else it'll make a decent bit of filler before something better like Firefly Season 2 comes out!
I think amazon actually has the most enjoyable stuff to watch for me.
Not that I pay for it.
The Boys maybe? (Idk I don't watch Amazon shows)
Btw if you're gonna put a question like that in your comment, at least make us answer it before making your point. Makes for better conversations methinks.
Ones that haven't been mentioned yet is Clarkson's Farm and the Grand Tour.
I take your point. Generally it might be correct. However, Jean Claude Van Johnson was great! Comedy. If you don't know it, you should watch it. I can't name anything else however.
Right, sadly..
That's okay, I'll ramp up my piracy of Amazon-exclusive shows in 2025 too.
Stopped watching netflix because they banned sharing accounts and £18 (24 USD) monthly was too much for just one person. Cheaper plans didn't have 4K or 5.1 audio, so it felt like a waste when I couldn't even use my setup as it is meant to be used.
Never watched prime because I refuse to pay for something then still see ads.
Now I either source stuff by other means (🏴☠️🦜) and put it on my media server, or I use BBC iPlayer. Not sure if that's a thing outside of the UK, but zero ads and decent quality programming is something I'm happy to pay their fee for, especially when it also goes towards funding ad-free TV, radio, news, sport, podcasts, etc.
It's fucked how greed has completely ruined the streaming market. Back in ~2010 it felt like the market was going in such a positive direction.
Same thing happened with cable decades ago.
The public TV was full of ads and bad programs. Cable offered you pay them for no ads, good series and new movies. Then the prices rose, then the ads started, then the programs turned to shit as much or even more than before.
Streaming just went the same path.
I want to congratulate streaming services. They got me off torrenting for a decade but multiplication, price hike and general enshitification has gotten me to install an *arr stack. My only media subscription now is $5 a month for a VPN.
So congrats guys, you've become the new cable and we've come full circle 👍.
Just in time for me to have already cancelled my Prime membership last month. I've also not purchased from Amazon at all since then. Plan working as intended?!
I do have a prime account as do use Amazon, but we haven't watched a second of prime TV since they put ads in the included video subscription.
For some reason this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I setup a NAS, Plex server and all the arr apps. It's been amazing. Haven't looked back.
I'm using plex but still hosting it on my desktop which is a little inconvenient at times. I really should set up an always available NAS
I watch their content, I just dont pay them for it
When they announced the ads it was just the incentive I needed to quit Prime totally. I don’t miss it. I already was wary of buying from Amazon due to the sketchy sellers and fake products, so I’m glad buying my stuff elsewhere except when I can’t find something somewhere else, which has been rare.
Same, dumped them, but they resubscribed me twice weeks later to Prime after I got two confirmation emails I was cancelled
They've been increasing the ad load the whole time. The most I've seen so far is 5 ads. Streaming will return to broadcast TV convention sooner than people think probably. 15 minutes of ads per hour.
20?
Why stop there?
I mean 20 is the standard ...
I think they tested over the decades. I would assume there is breka even point is even for the biggest normie bootlicker npc
Looks like I cancelled at the right time. They seem to forget that we in fact do have a choice at the end of the day. And my choice is to sail the high seas.
Media clowns act like their engagement slop is food or shelter... Guess users haven't voted with their feet enough on this 100% discretionary expense
I unsubscribed in January and still have too much stuff to watch. Although that is helped by being in the UK and having iPlayer I guess. I've also spent way less on impulse buying crap because of the free shipping. Absolutely do not miss Prime.
I’ve had prime for years but still pirate.
It’s just easier.
Often times better.. I have a 1080p 5.1 surround version of sg1. Prime has a 4:3 version with 2.0 audio, not to mention it's super dark.
I think I'd miss the free shipping and I might have to actually put things in a cart and wait until I reach minimum order to checkout. I could easily live without video and when I actually went to watch something on it the other day the ads were already enough to turn me off
You’re already paying for shipping - just upfront and once a year. My reasoning when I quit was that I could likely add things to get to the free shipping or just pay for shipping a few times and still save money.
That's exactly what I am doing. Bought something from them (ugh) 3 times this year. All something my brick and mortar store either pulled from inventory and doesnt sell anymore, more expensive elsewhere or just damn convenience since it's bigger at the store and thus cumbersome to transport or too expensive or both.
a good way to balance if it's worth it, look at your order history, and look at delivery costs of items without prime, and then divide the yearly price of prime by the delivery cost, then again by 12.
For example, if the average shipping cost is 7$, that's roughly 1.6 orders small (read under 35$) a month, if you order less than that it might not be worth keeping prime.
I stopped my auto renew for next year, we don't order things like we used to so at this point we probably pay more on the yearly contract than we would have on shipping. Plus best buy Costco and Walmart have decent webstores too so we'll probably diversify a little
Check out Ludwig on iPlayer it's a good watch! David Mitchell in some light, witty modern day Poirot detectiveing.
We are halfway through it!
I canceled prime as soon as they introduced ads into prime video. You should do the same.
You'll be less tempted to buy shit from them as an added benefit!
I know it’s only fractionally better, but I’ve started using AliExpress more for shit that I’d buy on Amazon in the past. Delivery takes a couple of weeks, but that’s had the added bonus of making think about how much I really need the thing I’m ordering.
But yeah, we canceled Prime when they added adverts. We didn’t really watch much on there, but it gave us the bump we needed to stop giving Amazon £10 a month, even if we didn’t order anything.
I also started to use AE, I feel a bit queasy about it for no good reason, but for some stuff AE is much cheaper and I don't see the point of giving 30% to a middle man selling Chinese stuff they got of Alibaba on Amazon.
What I discovered is that they have warehouse in Europe so even though it's not next day shipping, most stuff take no longer than a week sometime 3 days. I do remember the time when everything took a month or more.
Their app, though... Designed by a fucking lunatic, and the amount of scammy shit in there is astounding. Like products showing for $3 but when checking the product you realize the $3 is for an accessory and the product shown in the picture cost 20 times that. Most products have 3 or 4 variants which can be completely different items. There are literally no way to easily know what you're buying without carefully trying to decipher broken English and voluntary confusing description.
Yeah, the app is batshit and has got much weirder over the past year or so. It's now rammed full of competitions and ways to waste your time trying to get discounts that you'll never actually achieve.
There's also some really odd stuff on offer on there, which I kind of enjoy finding.
Is it weird that I have prime but I pirate still?
It’s just not a good experience…
I do the same. Their video app was shit before the ads.
No, they need to have perpetually increasing profits.
Deeper into the high seas!
🎶We’re rascals and scoundrels, we’re villains and knaves
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
We’re devils and black sheep, we’re really bad eggs
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me🎶
I have free prime through my ISP. I still pirate the content. I started even before the full blown ads, when they had "previews" of other shows and movies.
Stop, stop, I already decided to never buy anything off Amazon ever again, you don't have to convince me further.
And I will "ramp down" my Prime subscription.
I'm subscribed to Prime because I order too much shit and want to save on delivery costs. Those little Amazon lockers are too damn convenient for me.
If I watch their content, it's via my PC with an ad block. I stop watching their shit the day I can't block their ads because fuck'em.
Fwiw, I've been prime free now for almost three years. If you batch your orders, you can still get free shipping.
Not only that but if you're looking at a high priced item the manufacturer will often ship it for free at the same price as amazon.
I still pirate shows I would have the right to stream 😂😅quality is better and no tracking 🤷🏻
“Amazon.
We’re evil, and we like it!”
Honestly, it’s one of the more mask off of all the big companies.
that's why bezos doesn't conceal his demonic laugh
seen here being informed that an Amazon truck ran over a child
I cancelled prime the day they announced it and got a VPN instead.
Hmmm maybe it's time to solicit that VPN that doesn't collect logs and is shady enough to accept cash payment.....
You know you can pay proton with cash, right? No need to go all shady
Oh I know
In this day and age, accepting cash payments is the least shady and most customer friendly thing of all.
It's the ones who want to know ALL about you and partner with payment processors who want to know ALL about you that are shady.
I've just stopped watching all prime content. Paramount+ is really pissing me off right now as well.
Paramount's video player is ass. I have to fight it to start the video by reloading the page and clicking exactly in the right places. Then the player doesn't pause when the space bar is pressed. And to top it off, the progress bar doesn't disappear unless you click inside the window then float the mouse away. Fuck that noise. It isn't worth it. What's the point of paying if the service is broken?
Yar har.
Jeff, I’ll say this as nicely as possible. Go fuck yourself
That's what you do if you pay a giant corpo; you feed a kraken, so it can grow more arms and get greedier.
And when it crashes the greedy rich fuckers who invested will find a way to pass the losses to the tax payers. Private gains and socialized losses are the newest trick of the rich.
I paid for the ad free add-on while Rings of Power is on but after that I'll just cancel Prime completely until there's another show I want to watch, so they're overall losing money from me with this decision.
So I started reaching out to any company puting ads on .my PAID amazon prime account with the lowest rating possible anywhere I can find them on their aps, websites contacting their customer service citing the ads on amazon...if we vote with our wallets things can change.
And they've already ramped it up quite a bit. Been watching a show for couple of months, used to be one ad per episode, which I could handle, now it's like every 10 minutes. So I've already cancelled and found the show using other ways.
Still waiting on a video free version, like I originally ordered... probably $30/mo next year
What’s good about Amazon anyway? It’s better to get stuff directly from a sellers site, even better if they’re indie. There’s not much value to prime shipping anymore, most sellers are pretty good about it now ironically because of Amazon. Using services like Amazon just creates more pollution, wage depression and small business closures. Use services like Amazon less, favor indie and small and fair wage businesses
The hardest part to combat is laziness. Amazon is a one stop shop. Personally I don't care to shop online much anymore but when I do I'm always using direct websites for the companies since I know what I'm looking for.
Also something scary to think about, They could lose most of their customers and still thrive because of how much money they have already pulled in.
While I do try to buy direct on some items that I am confident I’ll keep. The return policy and ease of use are why I’m still with Amazon. I just don’t want to have to deal with thirty different companies and their return policies.
But if I’m buying something like replacement parts or something that I’m not sure about if there isn’t significant savings, then I’m going with Amazon for piece of mind that I can return the item at no cost to me.
I guess I don’t buy enough for that to be an issue 🤷♀️
Duck amazon
Quack.
"Tolerate," my ass. I'm paying the three dollars a month for ad-free Prime, because I'm not watching ads during an election year. The damn election is stressful enough as it is.
Prime Video is just barely worth the price, but now that all the Stephen J. Cannell shows have been moved to Shout Factory TV, I'm reconsidering. Between that and all the shows on Freevee (uh, what part of "ad free viewing" don't you understand?), the only tangible benefit I get from Amazon Prime is free shipping... and that free shipping isn't as fast as it used to be before the pandemic.
Good thing adblock didn't work on the browser version of Prime video last time I used it after getting tired of the ads on the app version!
It's possible they're embedding ads now though
I cancelled prime when they first introduced ads. But the delivery fees without prime, damn. I think I'd pirate shows if I got prime but I'm pretty sure that just makes them think they should invest in fewer shows. And damned if, pre ads, prime didn't have a lot of my favourites (boys, invincible, end of the expanse etc.)
What a ramble. I'm just torn.
I just went cold turkey because I can't/won't watch content with ads, and already felt the cost of our streaming services was too much for what we get out of it.
What I've found myself doing is if I do buy from Amazon and it's below the free shipping amount, I try and buy from a marketplace seller who ships themselves for free. Often this ends up matching the Prime price, but it's buried further down the result because it doesn't have Prime shipping. Or I buy the same product via eBay, which is mostly cheaper. But main thing is, I've found I just buy less. Like A LOT less. As a family we'd often get 3 or 4 Amazon deliveries a week. That's not been replaced with orders from other retailers. It's almost as if having Prime encourages you to buy stuff you maybe don't need!
just wait until you have like 40-50$ worth of items, a lot of the time they'll give you free shipping at a certain price point. Plus some items give you free shipping regardless.
That being said, I still have prime myself cause I order /a lot/ of small orders and it's shared with the house, plus I use the family member feature to give my mom prime as well and we just split the cost. When they do away with that feature is when I cancel my sub, 140-160 a year is not worth it for one person to pay alone, that's roughly 2.5 orders a month
Perhaps the ad-free prime video subscription could be a viable option if prime has a lot of your favourite shows and you are opposed to piracy?
Not judging or telling you what to do. Just thinking out loud.
I would just go with piracy if you don't want to pay the ad free tier.
My gripe is that i was on an ad free tier. They just changed it so that the tier that was previously add free now had ads.
If they had added an ad free tier below my tier i would probably still be a subscriber.
"you watch ads now, pay more or fuck off" didnt sit well with me so i fucked off
Makes sense.
that would have been a good buisness plan as well, make the normal tier premium, but have an ad free tier under it that restricted the video quality down to 720p or something, and maybe removed signature content/prime originals.
My Amazon streaming app on my Xbox literally only works when using my PiHole. Their poorly tested ad software literally prevented me from watching Prime for a few weeks until I turned my PiHole back on.
I mean, I never used prime video even when it was as free, it's selection was garbage even compared to Netflix which has been known to have nothing of value for a few years now. I don't see how them adding /more/ ads is going to do anything but make other people come to the same conclusion I did.
Piracy is going to be as popular as ever.
Great news!
Why is it that these fucks get to increase their price and just to offer shittier service but if I want a raise at my job I’ve got to go above and beyond?
Raises where you work are still based on merit? Damn!
You guys get raises?
Technically, no. The last few have been significantly below either measure of inflation. So in real terms, I've had a wage cut!
Likewise. My promotion was less than the annual inflation.
They aren't, it's just an excuse.
I'm not even sure how many streaming services make a profit at this point. They all seem to lower the quality everywhere at the same time.
Your employer probably made you sign a contract, Amazon just changes their eula/terms&conditions. Amazon aren’t legally bound to keep their prices the same.
Planned enshittification a la boiling frogs.
I'll just pirate their shit. I'll pirate it so hard and I'll do it with both middle fingers in the air. But not literally, I would definitely need both hands to pirate their content.
We still need one person with a membership to download and post it all. Maybe we should start a fund to support their ever increasing membership costs…
Pretty sure you can be a decent pirate with a hook for a hand buddy. Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
If you train enough you can probably do it with your feet
So are executives born with an asshole where their mouth belongs or do they surgically put it on when you get the gig?
Humans, being deuterostomes, have an embryological stage where we are just anuses.
Some humans never develop past that.
Light my arse, from the start they've interrupted with adverts for their own crap making it barely tolerable. Even on the adfree tier.
Canceled and no intention of ever going back. Measuring your ad load by American standards doesn't work when your competition is netflix and iPlayer.
So regular TV is designed around the ads.
Cliff hangers before ads are done not only for the story, but to keep you there through the ad to get the outcome to the cliffhanger.
That partially went away with the no ad streaming.
Now that shitty behavior is going to come back.
Of course not. Streaming sites are far too lazy for that. They'll just cram the commercial into the middle of the show with no regard for the story. It's the only way they'll be able to put ads in the middle of shows not made to have ads.
Ugh, you're right. Enshittify to the max!
That's not even true, they interrupted episode 2 of Rings of Power for me.
What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren't really ads, because the company isn't actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.
That's a blatant lie, it definitely does.
Copying my reply to someone else:
What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren't really ads, because the company isn't actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.
Pretty sure it was some random Aldi commercial or sth.
I'm getting non-stop Samsung, insurance, food, and other kinds of ads in the middle of shows.
It makes me not want to use Prime. And in fact, I don't anymore.
I will ramp down my use of amazon prime
Hmm, unfortunately I can't go negative.
Get an RF jammer and block your neighbors' wifi
Lol.
I guess I could also slash the tires of the Amazon delivery truck when it drops off packages at my neighbor's house. Then again, I'd prefer to not go to jail.
I won't. At least not via TPB.
What do they even have that's worth watching? It's mostly garbage unless you're into critical role. The boys shows? Oh no my poor hard drive space is going to be swamped with prime video mkvs lol
I don't know. I don't really even watch anything anymore. I just like being snarky like that.
Well, guess it's time to get an eye patch and a pet parrot
Do you know any sea shanties to go along with that?
What shall we do with an ad filled service? What shall we do with an ad filled service? What shall we do with an ad filled service? Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Before we go crazy!
Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now! Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now! Cancel our subscription with greatest haste now! Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Before we go crazy!
Search for the show on pirate websites! Search for the show on pirate websites! Search for the show on pirate websites! Before we go crazy!
Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Ahoy the season is starting! Before we go crazy!
Yo ho ho and a terabyte of NAS!
Aye!
Is Alestorm close enough?
Yarr harr fiddle dee dee
Stealing from Bezos is alright with me
Don't watch their ads cause your time's not for free
You are a pirate!
I have already ramped up on that one on their last ad ramp up.
I can't stand it.
Thank you amazon for encouraging piracy
I'm not even sure it encourages piracy. That would assume amazon has content people want to watch.
Name an amazon show.......
See? You can't do it. Nobody can! It's like trying to name lost media from the silent movie generation. Nobody would know what you were talking about if you did name one.
The Boys, Fallout, Invincible, Good Omens. These were all good shows, though the Boys is kinda wearing thin and I'm glad it's ending next season.
Haven't seen em, but Jack Ryan, Reacher, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Marvelous Ms. Maisel...all these seem to have done extremely well and been popular.
Sure they have their absolute disasters like the Rings of Power too, but it's not like they're on the same level of quality as like the freevee's and roku original shows.
Reacher is so much better than Tom Cruise's tiny Reacher.
Amazon as a company sucks enough on its own. No need to make shit up.
I can. I can even name multiple really good shows. But you don’t want to hear them. You want to fabricate a narrative.
American Gods, Rings of Power, Good Omens, the Expanse, Man in the high castle, the Last of us, etc etc.
It's not always as good of a selection as other services, but it's got a fair few gems on there and a good amount of back catalogue films and tv shows that are fab :-)
And the fact that they collect so much stuff that would otherwise not be available at all (usually because its only on some random foreign streaming service and refuses to work with netflix) is where they really shine.
That said, I immediately stopped using it when they brought adverts in to the paid subscription. I'm not paying to watch adverts, sorry, no.
It still boggles my mind how paying for ads became acceptable. Not only is the company making money from the advertisers for the ad space, they now get to make money off the population for viewing the ads. This is a crazy world we live in.
Also The Boys, Invincible, and Wheel of Time.
Oh yeah, forgot about those! I enjoyed the boys and invincible a lot, I never got around to watching wheel of time, I will eventually, but I've heard nothing particularly good (or that it's middling at best) so I've shoved it to the back of my to watch list.
I personally hated WoT.
If nothing else it'll make a decent bit of filler before something better like Firefly Season 2 comes out!
I think amazon actually has the most enjoyable stuff to watch for me. Not that I pay for it.
The Boys maybe? (Idk I don't watch Amazon shows)
Btw if you're gonna put a question like that in your comment, at least make us answer it before making your point. Makes for better conversations methinks.
Ones that haven't been mentioned yet is Clarkson's Farm and the Grand Tour.
I take your point. Generally it might be correct. However, Jean Claude Van Johnson was great! Comedy. If you don't know it, you should watch it. I can't name anything else however.
Right, sadly..
That's okay, I'll ramp up my piracy of Amazon-exclusive shows in 2025 too.
Fitting cover picture
Stopped watching netflix because they banned sharing accounts and £18 (24 USD) monthly was too much for just one person. Cheaper plans didn't have 4K or 5.1 audio, so it felt like a waste when I couldn't even use my setup as it is meant to be used.
Never watched prime because I refuse to pay for something then still see ads.
Now I either source stuff by other means (🏴☠️🦜) and put it on my media server, or I use BBC iPlayer. Not sure if that's a thing outside of the UK, but zero ads and decent quality programming is something I'm happy to pay their fee for, especially when it also goes towards funding ad-free TV, radio, news, sport, podcasts, etc.
It's fucked how greed has completely ruined the streaming market. Back in ~2010 it felt like the market was going in such a positive direction.
Same thing happened with cable decades ago.
The public TV was full of ads and bad programs. Cable offered you pay them for no ads, good series and new movies. Then the prices rose, then the ads started, then the programs turned to shit as much or even more than before.
Streaming just went the same path.
I want to congratulate streaming services. They got me off torrenting for a decade but multiplication, price hike and general enshitification has gotten me to install an *arr stack. My only media subscription now is $5 a month for a VPN.
So congrats guys, you've become the new cable and we've come full circle 👍.
Just in time for me to have already cancelled my Prime membership last month. I've also not purchased from Amazon at all since then. Plan working as intended?!
I do have a prime account as do use Amazon, but we haven't watched a second of prime TV since they put ads in the included video subscription.
For some reason this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I setup a NAS, Plex server and all the arr apps. It's been amazing. Haven't looked back.
I'm using plex but still hosting it on my desktop which is a little inconvenient at times. I really should set up an always available NAS
I watch their content, I just dont pay them for it
When they announced the ads it was just the incentive I needed to quit Prime totally. I don’t miss it. I already was wary of buying from Amazon due to the sketchy sellers and fake products, so I’m glad buying my stuff elsewhere except when I can’t find something somewhere else, which has been rare.
Same, dumped them, but they resubscribed me twice weeks later to Prime after I got two confirmation emails I was cancelled
They've been increasing the ad load the whole time. The most I've seen so far is 5 ads. Streaming will return to broadcast TV convention sooner than people think probably. 15 minutes of ads per hour.
20?
Why stop there?
I mean 20 is the standard ...
I think they tested over the decades. I would assume there is breka even point is even for the biggest normie bootlicker npc
Looks like I cancelled at the right time. They seem to forget that we in fact do have a choice at the end of the day. And my choice is to sail the high seas.
Media clowns act like their engagement slop is food or shelter... Guess users haven't voted with their feet enough on this 100% discretionary expense
I unsubscribed in January and still have too much stuff to watch. Although that is helped by being in the UK and having iPlayer I guess. I've also spent way less on impulse buying crap because of the free shipping. Absolutely do not miss Prime.
I’ve had prime for years but still pirate.
It’s just easier.
Often times better.. I have a 1080p 5.1 surround version of sg1. Prime has a 4:3 version with 2.0 audio, not to mention it's super dark.
I think I'd miss the free shipping and I might have to actually put things in a cart and wait until I reach minimum order to checkout. I could easily live without video and when I actually went to watch something on it the other day the ads were already enough to turn me off
You’re already paying for shipping - just upfront and once a year. My reasoning when I quit was that I could likely add things to get to the free shipping or just pay for shipping a few times and still save money.
That's exactly what I am doing. Bought something from them (ugh) 3 times this year. All something my brick and mortar store either pulled from inventory and doesnt sell anymore, more expensive elsewhere or just damn convenience since it's bigger at the store and thus cumbersome to transport or too expensive or both.
a good way to balance if it's worth it, look at your order history, and look at delivery costs of items without prime, and then divide the yearly price of prime by the delivery cost, then again by 12.
For example, if the average shipping cost is 7$, that's roughly 1.6 orders small (read under 35$) a month, if you order less than that it might not be worth keeping prime.
I stopped my auto renew for next year, we don't order things like we used to so at this point we probably pay more on the yearly contract than we would have on shipping. Plus best buy Costco and Walmart have decent webstores too so we'll probably diversify a little
Check out Ludwig on iPlayer it's a good watch! David Mitchell in some light, witty modern day Poirot detectiveing.
We are halfway through it!
I canceled prime as soon as they introduced ads into prime video. You should do the same.
You'll be less tempted to buy shit from them as an added benefit!
I know it’s only fractionally better, but I’ve started using AliExpress more for shit that I’d buy on Amazon in the past. Delivery takes a couple of weeks, but that’s had the added bonus of making think about how much I really need the thing I’m ordering.
But yeah, we canceled Prime when they added adverts. We didn’t really watch much on there, but it gave us the bump we needed to stop giving Amazon £10 a month, even if we didn’t order anything.
I also started to use AE, I feel a bit queasy about it for no good reason, but for some stuff AE is much cheaper and I don't see the point of giving 30% to a middle man selling Chinese stuff they got of Alibaba on Amazon.
What I discovered is that they have warehouse in Europe so even though it's not next day shipping, most stuff take no longer than a week sometime 3 days. I do remember the time when everything took a month or more.
Their app, though... Designed by a fucking lunatic, and the amount of scammy shit in there is astounding. Like products showing for $3 but when checking the product you realize the $3 is for an accessory and the product shown in the picture cost 20 times that. Most products have 3 or 4 variants which can be completely different items. There are literally no way to easily know what you're buying without carefully trying to decipher broken English and voluntary confusing description.
Yeah, the app is batshit and has got much weirder over the past year or so. It's now rammed full of competitions and ways to waste your time trying to get discounts that you'll never actually achieve.
There's also some really odd stuff on offer on there, which I kind of enjoy finding.
Is it weird that I have prime but I pirate still?
It’s just not a good experience…
I do the same. Their video app was shit before the ads.
Did they ever ramp down?
No, they need to have perpetually increasing profits.
Deeper into the high seas!
🎶We’re rascals and scoundrels, we’re villains and knaves Drink up me hearties, yo ho We’re devils and black sheep, we’re really bad eggs Drink up me hearties, yo ho Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me🎶
I have free prime through my ISP. I still pirate the content. I started even before the full blown ads, when they had "previews" of other shows and movies.
Stop, stop, I already decided to never buy anything off Amazon ever again, you don't have to convince me further.
And I will "ramp down" my Prime subscription.
I'm subscribed to Prime because I order too much shit and want to save on delivery costs. Those little Amazon lockers are too damn convenient for me.
If I watch their content, it's via my PC with an ad block. I stop watching their shit the day I can't block their ads because fuck'em.
Fwiw, I've been prime free now for almost three years. If you batch your orders, you can still get free shipping.
Not only that but if you're looking at a high priced item the manufacturer will often ship it for free at the same price as amazon.
I still pirate shows I would have the right to stream 😂😅quality is better and no tracking 🤷🏻
“Amazon.
We’re evil, and we like it!”
Honestly, it’s one of the more mask off of all the big companies.
that's why bezos doesn't conceal his demonic laugh
seen here being informed that an Amazon truck ran over a child
I cancelled prime the day they announced it and got a VPN instead.
Hmmm maybe it's time to solicit that VPN that doesn't collect logs and is shady enough to accept cash payment.....
You know you can pay proton with cash, right? No need to go all shady
Oh I know
In this day and age, accepting cash payments is the least shady and most customer friendly thing of all.
It's the ones who want to know ALL about you and partner with payment processors who want to know ALL about you that are shady.
I've just stopped watching all prime content. Paramount+ is really pissing me off right now as well.
Paramount's video player is ass. I have to fight it to start the video by reloading the page and clicking exactly in the right places. Then the player doesn't pause when the space bar is pressed. And to top it off, the progress bar doesn't disappear unless you click inside the window then float the mouse away. Fuck that noise. It isn't worth it. What's the point of paying if the service is broken?
Yar har.
Jeff, I’ll say this as nicely as possible. Go fuck yourself
That's what you do if you pay a giant corpo; you feed a kraken, so it can grow more arms and get greedier.
And when it crashes the greedy rich fuckers who invested will find a way to pass the losses to the tax payers. Private gains and socialized losses are the newest trick of the rich.
I paid for the ad free add-on while Rings of Power is on but after that I'll just cancel Prime completely until there's another show I want to watch, so they're overall losing money from me with this decision.
So I started reaching out to any company puting ads on .my PAID amazon prime account with the lowest rating possible anywhere I can find them on their aps, websites contacting their customer service citing the ads on amazon...if we vote with our wallets things can change.
And they've already ramped it up quite a bit. Been watching a show for couple of months, used to be one ad per episode, which I could handle, now it's like every 10 minutes. So I've already cancelled and found the show using other ways.
Still waiting on a video free version, like I originally ordered... probably $30/mo next year
What’s good about Amazon anyway? It’s better to get stuff directly from a sellers site, even better if they’re indie. There’s not much value to prime shipping anymore, most sellers are pretty good about it now ironically because of Amazon. Using services like Amazon just creates more pollution, wage depression and small business closures. Use services like Amazon less, favor indie and small and fair wage businesses
The hardest part to combat is laziness. Amazon is a one stop shop. Personally I don't care to shop online much anymore but when I do I'm always using direct websites for the companies since I know what I'm looking for.
Also something scary to think about, They could lose most of their customers and still thrive because of how much money they have already pulled in.
While I do try to buy direct on some items that I am confident I’ll keep. The return policy and ease of use are why I’m still with Amazon. I just don’t want to have to deal with thirty different companies and their return policies.
But if I’m buying something like replacement parts or something that I’m not sure about if there isn’t significant savings, then I’m going with Amazon for piece of mind that I can return the item at no cost to me.
I guess I don’t buy enough for that to be an issue 🤷♀️
Duck amazon
Quack.
"Tolerate," my ass. I'm paying the three dollars a month for ad-free Prime, because I'm not watching ads during an election year. The damn election is stressful enough as it is.
Prime Video is just barely worth the price, but now that all the Stephen J. Cannell shows have been moved to Shout Factory TV, I'm reconsidering. Between that and all the shows on Freevee (uh, what part of "ad free viewing" don't you understand?), the only tangible benefit I get from Amazon Prime is free shipping... and that free shipping isn't as fast as it used to be before the pandemic.
Good thing adblock didn't work on the browser version of Prime video last time I used it after getting tired of the ads on the app version!
It's possible they're embedding ads now though
I cancelled prime when they first introduced ads. But the delivery fees without prime, damn. I think I'd pirate shows if I got prime but I'm pretty sure that just makes them think they should invest in fewer shows. And damned if, pre ads, prime didn't have a lot of my favourites (boys, invincible, end of the expanse etc.)
What a ramble. I'm just torn.
I just went cold turkey because I can't/won't watch content with ads, and already felt the cost of our streaming services was too much for what we get out of it.
What I've found myself doing is if I do buy from Amazon and it's below the free shipping amount, I try and buy from a marketplace seller who ships themselves for free. Often this ends up matching the Prime price, but it's buried further down the result because it doesn't have Prime shipping. Or I buy the same product via eBay, which is mostly cheaper. But main thing is, I've found I just buy less. Like A LOT less. As a family we'd often get 3 or 4 Amazon deliveries a week. That's not been replaced with orders from other retailers. It's almost as if having Prime encourages you to buy stuff you maybe don't need!
just wait until you have like 40-50$ worth of items, a lot of the time they'll give you free shipping at a certain price point. Plus some items give you free shipping regardless.
That being said, I still have prime myself cause I order /a lot/ of small orders and it's shared with the house, plus I use the family member feature to give my mom prime as well and we just split the cost. When they do away with that feature is when I cancel my sub, 140-160 a year is not worth it for one person to pay alone, that's roughly 2.5 orders a month
Perhaps the ad-free prime video subscription could be a viable option if prime has a lot of your favourite shows and you are opposed to piracy?
Not judging or telling you what to do. Just thinking out loud.
I would just go with piracy if you don't want to pay the ad free tier.
My gripe is that i was on an ad free tier. They just changed it so that the tier that was previously add free now had ads.
If they had added an ad free tier below my tier i would probably still be a subscriber.
"you watch ads now, pay more or fuck off" didnt sit well with me so i fucked off
Makes sense.
that would have been a good buisness plan as well, make the normal tier premium, but have an ad free tier under it that restricted the video quality down to 720p or something, and maybe removed signature content/prime originals.
My Amazon streaming app on my Xbox literally only works when using my PiHole. Their poorly tested ad software literally prevented me from watching Prime for a few weeks until I turned my PiHole back on.
I mean, I never used prime video even when it was as free, it's selection was garbage even compared to Netflix which has been known to have nothing of value for a few years now. I don't see how them adding /more/ ads is going to do anything but make other people come to the same conclusion I did.
https://youtu.be/i8ju_10NkGY
Breaking news, money making company found a way to make more money.