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Amazon adding ads to Prime Video in 2024 unless you pay $2.99 extra

Jason

By Jason
in The Performing Arts Centre

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TwinIon

TwinIon

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Ads feel increasingly inevitable and the lack of them is the thing that I'll miss the most from the golden age of streaming. It's long been a cliche to note how streaming services have become the new cable, but that's usually in the context of their total price as compared to cable. It's true that if you collect a bunch of these services it's as much or more than cable was, but even at those prices most of the streamers are still being subsidized and will need ads to get to a point of profitability.

 

I expect every ad-free service to add ad-supported tiers, and for the ad-free charge to get increasingly expensive as streamers continue to eat market share and get better at the ads business.

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Chairslinger

Chairslinger

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I almost made a thread about this, but at this point we almost need a general thread on the death knells of the golden age of streaming. At this point it seems like every service is having 2 or even 3 nut punch announcements per year.

 

I mean, it's been going downhill for a while now, but it has really accelerated in the past year or two.

 

Netflix kills account sharing then adds an ad supported plan.

Hulu and Disney Plus both increase to 18 a month for ad free plans.

Paramount and Peacock both went up in price.

 

All of that happened just this year(though I think rumblings about account sharing started in '22).

 

I still think people who try to snarkily talk about the good old days of cable are forgetting just how badly cable sucked.....but as far as comparing nowadays to the one two punch of having  Netflix/Hulu circa 2016(and add in Prime Video because you have Prime for the free shipping regardless) it's a mess.

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ort

ort

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Ads on streaming are worse too... they are crazy repetitive, completely unskipable... sometimes glitch out and cause your stream to stop or go screwy... shows either don't have proper ad breaks so they just come in at weird random times, or if they are old network TV shows, the ad breaks don't line up with the actual ad breaks...

 

When I had cable and TiVo, skipping ads was butter smooth and they didn't even bother me. Ads on streaming SUPER SUCK.

 

We were enjoying all the companies happily lose money to try and get a foot in the door, but eventually no one wants to lose money and then the BS starts to creep in...

 

The truth of the situation is that the world cannot support 15 different pay streaming services. It's not a tenable situation.

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SoberChef

SoberChef

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So Amazon, one of the world's largest companies & wealthiest, cannot even guarantee 2-Day shipping anymore for Prime members, but now you have to pay essentially a luxury tax atop of your membership (which isn't even getting taken care of right to begin with) all so we don't have to be hassled with more BS ... wow completely & totally fucked!

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Keyser_Soze

Keyser_Soze

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You know with all this talk of avoiding stumbling on :pirate_2: sites, I find it funny that my mom is ahead of the game in this regard.

 

I got her a fire stick and she has some friend who hooked her up with all these pirate streams and stuff that they put on the stick. She will watch it with no issue, which makes it funny that younger people are kind of hung up on the idea. 🤔

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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

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1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I too would like to know what these are... so that I might avoid them at all costs :whistlin:

I, too, would love to know which sites of these... to avoid... for moral reasons.

 

It sucks rarbg shut down.

 

 

It's kind of wild to me that the film/tv industry basically all but fucking killed piracy. For years. You used to be able to get damn near anything pirated before the damn thing even came out, now finding anything even remotely resembling good quality from a site that is anything close to trustworthy is damn near impossible.

 

Meanwhile, the music industry just adapted. Sure, not everyone is happy under the new Spotify empire, but piracy in music is all but eradicated and has been for a decade.

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Air_Delivery

Air_Delivery

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The only thing is with invite sites you basically need a seedbox unless

 

1) You have awesome ISP upload and don't mind running you PC 24 hrs because you have to keep your dl/ul ratio good.

 

2) You live in a country that doesn't care about piracy. While in the US you won't go to jail or get sued you might eventually get cut off from your ISP with enough violations. So you would need a VPN.

 

My seedbox runs me 16 bucks a month although it can run Plex over the internet much faster than my local server. So its still a monthly bill and my local server with 4 18TB HDDs was a significant initial cost that I could have bought every streaming service for years with.

 

 

However with my setup I can get movies that aren't on any service. I can also play at much higher bitrates than anything offered by streaming services and I'm not beholden to random shit that Amazon or Netflix pull. I buy Amazon Prime and I haven't used their streaming service once. 

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Greatoneshere

Greatoneshere

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1 hour ago, Air_Delivery said:

The only thing is with invite sites you basically need a seedbox unless

 

1) You have awesome ISP upload and don't mind running you PC 24 hrs because you have to keep your dl/ul ratio good.

 

2) You live in a country that doesn't care about piracy. While in the US you won't go to jail or get sued you might eventually get cut off from your ISP with enough violations. So you would need a VPN.

 

My seedbox runs me 16 bucks a month although it can run Plex over the internet much faster than my local server. So its still a monthly bill and my local server with 4 18TB HDDs was a significant initial cost that I could have bought every streaming service for years with.

 

I am fortunate that I can do number 1 so I don't bother with a seedbox but I do use a VPN for protection.

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Nokra

Nokra

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12 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

You know with all this talk of avoiding stumbling on :pirate_2: sites, I find it funny that my mom is ahead of the game in this regard.

 

I got her a fire stick and she has some friend who hooked her up with all these pirate streams and stuff that they put on the stick. She will watch it with no issue, which makes it funny that younger people are kind of hung up on the idea. 🤔

We've long known that boomers have no conscience. :p

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Greatoneshere

Greatoneshere

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1 hour ago, Air_Delivery said:

My dad had a cable descrambler in the 80s so piracy is a family tradition.  Only thing I don't pirate anymore are games cause its too much of a hassle. Well and music because a Spotify family plan is cheap and convenient. 

 

Yeah, I don't pirate modern games either, huge pain in the ass. I do emulate older games a lot though. 

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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

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1 hour ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Only thing I'll pirate is movies and shows. I just don't care enough. I keep my Netflix and Hulu subs, but the rest, fuck it. I buy all my books and games because those are hobbies I love.  I'm not big on music. I buy stuff on iTunes once in a while, but I usually just listen to the radio.

Even with music, I pay for YouTube premium, which comes with YouTube music, which has all of the music Spotify does.

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Air_Delivery

Air_Delivery

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1 hour ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Only thing I'll pirate is movies and shows. I just don't care enough. I keep my Netflix and Hulu subs, but the rest, fuck it. I buy all my books and games because those are hobbies I love.  I'm not big on music. I buy stuff on iTunes once in a while, but I usually just listen to the radio.

I'm a member of myanonamouse, one of the best book torrent sites on the web, but I'll still buy from authors I like. However I'll torrent the shit out of programming language books and such.

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Keyser_Soze

Keyser_Soze

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Quote

Dear Prime member,

 

We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for


Prime is a very compelling value. Prime members enjoy a wide range of shopping, savings, and entertainment benefits, including:
blah blah blah

 

Just got the email. I guess Bezos doesn't have a big enough yacht.

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Keyser_Soze

Keyser_Soze

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1 hour ago, Brian said:

I don’t watch anything on Prime. I only have it for the free shipping for myself and the rest of my family that are on my account. 

 

Kind of the same for me. I watch stuff on prime occasionally but the main reason I got it was for the shipping. Still no excuse to start showing ads on what is essentially the most expensive streaming service. (Technically it is cheaper if you pay it all up front but pay monthly and it's on the higher end)

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Best

Best

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1 hour ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I also just got the email. My only response was

 

boyfriend GIF

 

I was just watching Home Alone 2 and Tim Curry has only a 10 minute cameo. However, he does such an amazing job in it that he actually makes the movie. Ashame he had a massive stroke. 

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