Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I've been back to the high seas for a while.

Before I get into it, I'll give an honourable mention to the RIAA/music industry, which is largely just putting all of the music on every platform and letting users choose which one they want to use. This is the way, and I'm happy to pay one service to get access to the stuff I actually want to hear.

Back to video/MPAA. Are you all on crack? I saw this coming back when Netflix was the only licensed media game on the internet.... I was subscribed and enjoying some shows, the shows then.... Went away, they disappeared. After looking into it, the show I was enjoying was pulled when a copyright was revoked by the publisher, so Netflix no longer had the right to distribute the show.

I saw the writing on the wall. That publisher was going to make their own Netflix competitor with their stuff on it, to try to extort more profit from the streaming stuff. Clearly their c-suite thought that people would be willing to pay for just their content separately from Netflix. I saw that writing and noped right the fuck out. Grabbed my tri-point hat and flag from storage and set sail, and I've never looked back.

The copyright holding asshats, ruined internet streaming, because everyone wanted to be their own thing. They splintered the entire online streaming thing into a bunch of disparate platforms all with some subset of the media available via streaming. It's worse than cable, honestly.

IMO, the only good move that's happened for streaming (but horrible for so many other reasons) was Disney gobbling up all the other media studios and production companies, then putting all their stuff on one service. There's a few holdouts, but by and large the two biggest players right now are Netflix (the OG) and Disney (+)... So a bunch of good media ended up on D+, and so it's kind of "the" streaming service... For better or worse (mostly worse, as OP points out).

I'm still firmly on my ship, sailing the high seas. Unless they go the way of music, and allow all shows on every platform and you pick your platform based on your preferences, I'll stay on this ship. Thanks.

What bought me back to piracy was the twatting about between several apps, only to find that what I wanted wasn't on any of them.

If they want me back, they'll have be more convenient than piracy. And piracy is pretty damn convenient these days.

We're talking one service, all content that isn't still in cinemas, 4K HDR, 5.1 audio. Let's be reasonable, £30 a month with no ads at any time. Feel free to have ad tiers and lower quality if you're charging less or even showing for free. That's not my thing, I'll pay for the good shit tier. I don't need 8 screens at once or whatever nonsense Netflix know you won't use. It's just me, and my big television and sound system.

Music managed this. There's no reason video can't other than greed. I'm done asking nicely.

D+ dropped support for my tablet since the Android version is too old, but I just ran Firefox in desktop mode and that worked. I don't know whether it made a difference that it's a tablet vs phone though

There is nothing that bugs me more than the intentional enshittification of mobile websites/apps.

I don't want all your shitty apps.

Why do I need an app on mobile, but the website works fine in desktop mode?

Why do mobile browsers even allow shitty sites like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to forbid you to save images.

I wouldn't even care, if every second image search result wasn't one of these horrible sites.

In 20 years Disney SWAT team will kill you for making this post.

Could I inquire what accessibility tools and software you use? I generally want to be well educated on these things, but I’ve been considering something like this for myself. Real time captioning software or something like that. I often have headphones or earplugs in for sensory reasons. Even gaming sometimes I’d prefer to not have to hear discord and still communicate with people.

an add every 5-10min that lasts from 5-40s. Who the hell can actually enjoy a movie or a TV show in these conditions?

Everything comes full circle...

As a kid watching TV, about 30% of the runtime of a show was commercials. Us old people are used to that kind of advertising presence, hell, people used to watch the Super Bowl specifically for the commercials!

Not saying it's a good thing, just saying that the corporate CEOs of today grew up with it, so it's "normal" to them.

The entire app is a slow and clunky mess on our Roku TV. I've never seen a more poorly optimized and irritating service. Every time we're subjected to it I'm dumbfounded that Disney would even greenlight such a thing.

D+ has the buggyst app of and of the services I've tried, you'd think such a major monopoly could afford to fix bugs several years in...

Disney+ has ads? I'm in Germany and I don't see any. Where are you?

edit: removed comment about browser, as OP meant on the phone

There had been at least 2 anime shows I've watched that were really good and I was surprised they didn't have much publicity at all. Turns out, both of them are licensed by Hulu/Disney+ outside of Japan. I really shouldn't be surprised.

The shows are Summertime Rendering and Undead Unluck, btw.

Just curious—what accessibility extensions do you use on desktop?

Honestly, after the SAG-AFTRA strike and hearing about how ads pay for actor and writer royalties, I've gotten less mad about them.

But ofc part of that factor is I pay for the ad-free version on the only streaming service I have (Disney Trio) and I buy or download (in rare case) everything else I want to see. The only ads I come across are on Rings Of Power. It's easier to bear ads if you don't have to watch many of them.