It is really grandfathered if you only get to keep the price and not the features?
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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They're making it like one of those grandfathers who recently found Infowars and is slowly becoming unhinged.
This was my only slight reservation when I cancelled my HBO Max subscription in the wake of all the merger fuckery and cancelations, that I'd lose my grandfathered in perks. I had HBO in some form for decades prior.
Thanks for vindicating me, assholes. If you ever make anything else worth watching, I don't respect you enough not to sail the 7 seas🏴☠️
Just cancelled mine. Good job, capitalism!
Sad as always that the non-wealthy sycophants of capitalism will do mental backflips blaming it on everything but the out of control capital markets absolutely drunk on profit and the power of regulatory/legislative capture.
We need to return to regulated capitalism. It's clear removing regulations makes it not work for us as humans.
The problem is that capital will always fight for less regulation. That is literally how we have ended up here.
Capital will never share the fruits of your labor freely. Regulations are useless as long as capitalists just pay politicians to write laws that benefit them.
It is similar to gun regulations. Studies show that cops largely choose not to enforce gun laws on white right wing nutjobs because they refuse to police "their own." While the people who gun laws are enforced against tend to be minorities, whether they are black, disabled, or trans. Cops are more thn happy to take their guns away.
Similarly, cops are happy to test pregnant women who have had miscarriages for use of abortion drugs, because of course women getting abortions is more important than, you know, enforcing gun laws.
Regulations only work if they are evenly enforced, and we haven't even figured that part out.
Prior to Reagan capitalism was regulated and limited. Then he and Thatcher let the dogs loose.
Slavery called, and wants to remind you that it was a legal, formal, and accepted part of capitalism for a loooooooong time. Blaming it all on Reagan is ignoring massive swaths of US history.
The Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 was also called "The Bombing of Black Wall Street" because it was the most concentrated area of black wealth in the US. Capitalism and Democracy decided the best way to deal with that was to bomb the living shit out of all of them, because the majority white citizentry couldn't deal with the idea of successful black citizens.
Beyond that, this also ignores the entirety of the labor movement that won you things like a 40-hour work-week and labor laws preventing children from being employed.
People literally fought and died, shed their blood, to get you better working conditions, when the business owners were hiring the fucking Pinkertons and calling in the National Guard to fucking murder workers for standing up for their rights.
And everything was regulated and limited until Reagan came around? Give me the biggest of motherfucking breaks. Upton Sinclair would love to have a word with you.
Read a fucking book about US history before Reagan (The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a great one, it's actually about the importance of unions, but most people's main take away is that the food industry was wholly unregulated at the time). Capitalism has always been evil, has always been willing to turn a blind eye to horrible abuse as long as it makes money, and in general is unable to be constrained. The fact that we're re-living the labor disputes of the early 20th century during the previous gilded age is proof of that. We already fought these battles and won, but now we have to fight them again, against the same class of rich twats as before.
That's fair.
I should have added that regulations were implemented post-WW2. My bad on forgetting to add that in prior to posting.
The other side of this problem is that most attempts so far at actually getting rid of capitalism end up being pretty horrific, and then end up back at roughly the same place anyway, but with more autocracy because people will be rightfully pissed off about having violent revolution imposed on their otherwise decent lives.
The reality is that capitalist forces are a byproduct of scarcity and economic complexity. As long as you have these things you will have something resembling capitalism. You can call it something different but you'll still just be meditating scarcity via a monetary proxy in some form or another.
This is the biggest thing orthodox/ML socialists really hate to acknowledge, but there is about a century of hindsight and academic thought which builds on Marx, mostly coming to a similar conclusion. It's extremely bizarre and frustrating to hear MLs reject entire libraries of reformed socialism outright, seemingly because it doesn't route through violence, and for me at least, it really says a lot about what their real priorities are.
The only financial barrier to entry for 4K video sharing is to afford an internet connection and a big enough drive.
“This deal keeps getting worse all the time.”
I’ve been quitting streaming providers left and right. I lost count of how many services I had, but it was probably up to $150 per month or more. Because I like the ability to just watch whatever I want, I’d sign up for a service to get a particular show or movie, then just not cancel. I’d forget I had a service, then find some movie in a search, and suddenly remember I had showtime or shudder.
Once they started banning family sharing of accounts and increasing prices, I was done. I could have gone on for years like that - I love movies and I binge television shows, but one of my main uses is watching in remote sessions with isolated family members.
The worst thing a subscription service can do is remind you you're paying for it.
On an unrelated note, how's your gym membership going?
That's exactly what happened here. HBO sent me a message saying they were getting rid of 4k streaming and I was like, "wait, I'm still paying these guys $16 a month? Wtf I signed up for Game of Thrones and that shit ended like half a decade ago.”
Edit: I just did the math and I've paid these guys like $864 since GoT ended. I've watched one other show (The Wire) plus maybe a dozen movies since then. No way was that worth that much money. These dumb fuckers could have kept collecting that money indefinitely.
This is an extremely valuable comment.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” explained Newell during his time on stage at the Washington Technology Industry Association's (WTIA) Tech NW conference. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
I'm done with streaming for reasons like the one in the article but damn, the arr suite, a Synology NAS, and Plex on my Apple TV are a fantastic combo. Any show, movie, book, or music I want, at the highest quality, and no getting fucked around by greedy media corporations.
I still spend money on media but now I try and make sure as much as possible goes straight into the pockets of the people who make it.
Any… ahem… any quick guides to get setup and started? Trying not to end up in rabbit holes before I get going.
Between this guy:
and Reddit's /r/usenet and /r/synology subs you should have a good start. Feel free to DM if you get stuck.
Thank you!
I don't think there should be a 4k tier. They should be tiered on ads and number of users. Why should quality be a tier?
If they separate all the features and charge for each of them, then money!
So as with all the other races to oblivion in our economy, ~~sanctioned encouraged~~ private shareholder mandated insatiable greed did it. Same with microtransactions in videogames, "upgrades" to check luggage and reasonably sized seats in airlines, shrinking portions in food service, etc.
Higher cost, lower quality, always. Murica 🤑
Why should quality be a tier?
Because it costs more to stream 4k content than lower quality content?
Not agreeing with it, but the justification is easy to make.
It costs inconsequentially more to host large files, sure, but the cost is usually on the consumer vis-à-vis their ISP to stream larger files.
It costs inconsequentially more to host large files, sure, but the cost is usually on the consumer vis-à-vis their ISP to stream larger files.
You are wording this like you are disagreeing, while still agreeing with what I said.
It's the smartest thing ever people should read about marketing tactics and schemes to get people to pay more money. The smallest thing can be locked behind a $5 increase and people are still going to buy it. It's all about knowing your audience.
It’s the smartest thing ever people should read about marketing tactics and schemes to get people to pay more money.
I strongly agree with this. In fact, just seek out a college level textbook. Here's a free one. Its like having a secret decoder ring to a huge chunk of society you interact with daily. You'll be able to quickly identify an advertising pitch, and identify why its appealing to you and if it is deceptive. You'll also see the gaps as in "okay product A exists and product C exist, so product B probably does too. Now why am I not seeing that one?". It also lets you see that you are sorted into a specific bucket because of your age, race, level of education, income, and geography. There are huge parts of marketing that you don't see because those are for other market segments which you aren't in.
Its like have a cheat code to society.
Takes some cojones to remove such vital features from an already expensive subscription.
Yarr harr for me.
We get Max free through our cell phone plan; I don’t think the merger changed that (we still get it for free), but I’m honestly not sure how this will affect it, if at all. If it ever stops being free, there will be a few shows I’ll miss having instant access to, but nothing that cleaning the sails for a voyage on the high seas can’t fix.
"We will get your money one way or the other."
Take away common features (4K and HDR) from an already existing plan to squeeze out $4 from users at the cost of good-will and subscribers, which is the inverse of increases in subscriber count, which is what matters most to a streaming service along with content.
That's some smooth brain Exec MBA product strategy right there.