To Subscribe Or Not To Subscribe, That Is The Question: Paid Streaming Services

[atomic]

16 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

For those of you who "stack" library cards for Kanopy and Hoopla:

Hoopla has Ken Burns's Vietnam series.  That makes me happy because I recorded it back when it first aired but didn't get around to watching it, and the machine died and took Vietnam with it.

I get four "borrows" on Hoopla through my library card.  Hoopla considers each of the ten episodes of Vietnam one borrow, even though it might be less than 1-1/2 hours, and they're episodes of a series, not standalone programs.  Grr.  I think that even the original presentation on PBS doubled up shorter episodes on one night, for a three-hour program.

There's no way for me to get cards from other libraries that would give me more "borrows" on Hoopla.  However, I could ask my friend to get a library card.  The question is, can I stack his library card with mine, on my Hoopla via a Roku device?  If it matters, we have the same street address (I use his address as my official residence because I travel fulltime). 

It's my understanding that I can stack MY library cards (assuming I could get more than one, which I can't), but can I stack someone else's library card with mine?

My understanding is that you can add multiple library cards to one account on Kanopy, but not on Hoopla. My advice to you since you live in Texas like me is to sign up for a Houston Public Library digital card. It is free to all Texas residents and gives you 15 free Hoopla credits every month instead of just the four you have right now. That way you should be able to watch all 9 episodes of the Vietnam documentary without having to bother with linking and unlinking streaming devices. You might also get more Kanopy credits through the HPL card since they issue 20 every month. Here is the link to sign up, it says you should be able to access electronic resources right away: https://houstonlibrary.org/mylink

[StatisticalOutlier]

1 hour ago, atomic said:

It is free to all Texas residents and gives you 15 free Hoopla credits every month instead of just the four you have right now.

Thank you! 

My library card is in Austin, and I posted upthread about the TexShare program that allows patrons to get cards at other libraries.  There's a six-month waiting period, and it's for physical items only.

It looks like the Houston one is for digital items only.  I can work with a bifurcated system. 

I'll report back how the Vietnam war turns out.

[StatisticalOutlier]

The Houston Public Library asked for my Texas driver's license number and my street address.  I gave those, and it came back saying my last name isn't associated with that address, and I have to show up in person to remedy it.  Sigh. 

The address is a friend's house.  I don't actually live there but I've used it as my street address for years, for insurance, driver's license, banking--everything that requires a street address and not a p.o. box.  Not to mention that it's on the driver's license they made me give them.  I have no idea why their system didn't find that to be a sufficient association with that address.

Aah, the easy breezy life of fulltime travel in an RV.

But I happen to know my friend's driver's license number, so I used his information to set up the HPL account, and it worked.  I have Kanopy and Hoopla accounts using the HPL account (and a new email address I created to keep all this separate from mine). 

I think that may be the extent of my capabilities on this.  I'm going to task Mr. Outlier with figuring out how to get this stuff to show up on the TV.  Being a hog, I'd like to be able to use both my Austin and Houston credits.

FWIW, non-Texas residents can sign up for $40/year.  It includes 20 Kanopy tickets (movies are usually two tickets, and there are quite a few that are 0 tickets) and 12 Hoopla borrows.  It might be worth it if you're in a stingy library streaming area like Austin.  No ads, and no cluttering up the screen and the end, begging you to stay on the platform.  So far, anyway.

Edited Tuesday at 04:12 PM by StatisticalOutlier

[Ohiopirate02]

23 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

FWIW, non-Texas residents can sign up for $40/year.  It includes 20 Kanopy tickets (movies are usually two tickets, and there are quite a few that are 0 tickets) and 12 Hoopla borrows.  It might be worth it if you're in a stingy library streaming area like Austin.  No ads, and no cluttering up the screen and the end, begging you to stay on the platform.  So far, anyway.

I have to defend the Austin library here. Hoopla can get very expensive for libraries. It really depends on how much other users are using it. For them to cap the number of checkouts per month per card to 4 means they have a sizeable number of patrons using the service. I would not call them or any library stingy. They are doing their best to satisfy as many patrons as possible with the budget they have. 

[StatisticalOutlier]

I just find it surprising Austin has more limited library services than a lot of other places around the country.  Houston's providing streaming to anybody in the whole state, and more of it to each person.

It's possible Houston taxpayers are more generous to the library system than Austin taxpayers, but it's not what I would have expected.

[StatisticalOutlier]

For the record, I just went to my friend's Hoopla account and it says he has 15 borrows available even though the HPL website says Hoopla comes with 12. 

https://houstonlibrary.org/download-stream

[Ohiopirate02]

21 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

I just find it surprising Austin has more limited library services than a lot of other places around the country.  Houston's providing streaming to anybody in the whole state, and more of it to each person.

It's possible Houston taxpayers are more generous to the library system than Austin taxpayers, but it's not what I would have expected.

I have to imagine the public library in a city like Austin is funded pretty well if they are offering both Hoopla and Kanopy on top of Libby/Overdrive and physical materials. The difference may be that there are more patrons in Austin making use of their services than Houston which means they have to offer fewer checkouts per months. Or Austin has more patrons who hear "unlimited" checkouts and go wild. Hoopla charges the library a flat fee for each type of material being checkout. My library cannot afford Hoopla, but I do know that libraries have a choice as to how to limit checkouts. Some choose to set aside X amount of dollars each month and once that is reached, then no more checkouts until the next month. Or they can limit the number per card so that more people can access materials. Four per month per card screams someone or a handful of someones ruined it for all other patrons. 

[shapeshifter]

15 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

… I don't know if I can have two versions of the Hoopla app on my Roku device--one for him and one for me.  The way it is now, I click on the Hoopla icon on my TV and it already knows who I am.

A work-around would to be to set up another Roku identity/login, but it would probably be a very clunky kludge, or at least some degree of a nuisance.
IDK.
Maybe after you got your new Roku ID's preferences and settings all set up, it would be pretty seamless?

[Zella]

9 hours ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Some choose to set aside X amount of dollars each month and once that is reached, then no more checkouts until the next month.

We just got Hoopla this year, and this is what our system does. They had to really hunt for the money to add that service to begin with, and it's not a given we will continue once it is time to renew. We budgeted for what was estimated to be 3 years worth of usage, and we could reach it must faster. We're a very small rural system. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:34 AM by Zella

[Mittengirl]

On 7/1/2024 at 4:35 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:

t's my understanding that I can stack MY library cards (assuming I could get more than one, which I can't), but can I stack someone else's library card with mine?

I haven’t tried it with Kanopy, but I use both mine and my mother’s library cards on Hoopla.  I just log out of one and in with the other.  I would think there must be a way to log out of your Kanopy account.  Spouses and kids should be able to have separate accounts.  

[possibilities]

I use Hoopla with my computer, not my TV.

If you can stream that way, you can have different devices for different accounts and not have to sign in and out all the time on your Roku. 

I don't really know how Roku works, but streaming over the laptop is what I'm doing with all my streaming services, since my TV is not "smart".

I realize your TV is a larger screen, though, so maybe the tv is better if you can make it work.

--

I live in a very small town (1000 people) and our library gives me 10 Hoopla a month. I am feeling very grateful right now! I had no idea how it worked or that I was in such a luxurious position! 

Edited Wednesday at 02:54 PM by possibilities
typos

[StatisticalOutlier]

Thanks to y'all's help, I figured out how to log out of one Hoopla account on my TV (using a Roku device), and log in to another Hoopla account.  To hedge my bets, I used the original Austin account to record episodes 5-8 of The Vietnam War today (I did episodes 1-4 in June, and now 5-8 in July, but still need 9 and 10).

So I'm out of borrows on my Austin account, and log out and log back in with the new Houston account and it says I have 15 borrows available.  Success!

I do a search for "Vietnam" and the Ken Burns series isn't on there.  So I went to my computer, where searching is easier because I have a keyboard, and I searched on the website using the new account, and the Ken Burns series isn't there.  I tried "Vietnam" and even "The Vietnam War"

So I log out and log in using my original Austin account (the one that gives me 4 borrows per month, which I've used up), and I search for Vietnam and it's not among any of the results.  But it IS in my favorites, which is how I got to it to record those episodes today.

Anyone care to venture an explanation? 

No, wait.  I searched for "Ken Burns" and "Burns Ken" on the Hoopla app on my Roku device and none of his documentaries were there.  But I gather that searching for names on the app doesn't work if you're looking for everything by a given director, for example.

So I went back to the website and searched for "Ken Burns" and it has 22 items, and The Vietnam War is among them.  But wait--that's my Austin account.  So I logged out and logged back in with my Houston account and searched for Ken Burns and got only 5 results.  Grrrr.  Then I noticed that the "format" was specified as "movie" even though I didn't ask it to do that.  And up in the search bar, it says "everything" and not just movies.

So I left Ken Burns in the search bar and hit the magnifying glass again, and this time I got 128 items, and when I filtered for TV, I got the 22 I got with my original search (using my Austin account) and The Vietnam War is among them.

I clicked on the heart to try to "favorite" it, so I could have something to click on on my TV, but it didn't work--no favorites listed on the TV (but it is in my favorites on the website).  However, on the website I clicked on "borrow" for episode 9 and it has shown up in the "borrowed" section of my TV.

Given all this, I have no idea how I even found The Vietnam War on Hoopla in the first place.  And only through this amount of perseverance, because I know it's on there somewhere, was I able to find it this time.

God, I hate this shit.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I checked my Hoopla account, and you can search "movies" and "TV" separately, which might help if you're looking for things involving Ken Burns, because not all titles go in the same category. I get six borrows per month, but I live in Indiana, so that might vary from state to state. I access the site through my laptop because I don't have a Roku, which might also make a difference.

[meowmommy]

2 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Given all this, I have no idea how I even found The Vietnam War on Hoopla in the first place.  And only through this amount of perseverance, because I know it's on there somewhere, was I able to find it this time.

Looks like Kanopy has it, too, at least from my main library.  Had trouble finding it using Roku, but found it searching for Ken Burns Collections on the Kanopy website on my computer.  No tickets required for the series, either.

[StatisticalOutlier]

21 minutes ago, meowmommy said:

Looks like Kanopy has it, too, at least from my main library.  Had trouble finding it using Roku, but found it searching for Ken Burns Collections on the Kanopy website on my computer.  No tickets required for the series, either.

Oh, for fuck's sake.  I'm so pissed off at both Hoopla and Kanopy that I'm not going to go nuts with my increased number of available tickets or borrows, just to deprive them of the revenue.  And I can do it.  I quit watching all the Teen Mom and Real Housewife shows when I started streaming and there became no way for me to watch them without them knowing I was watching (my satellite dish was never hooked up to a phone line).  Seriously.  Cold turkey.  No más.

Kanopy's website is awful.  A lot of the movies they show links for don't have a title--just a still from the movie.  You can hover and the title will come up, but it's one of those interfaces where shit pops up all over the place if you use a mouse.

I eventually found the The Vietnam War.  But woe betide anyone who puts The Vietnam War in the search box and sorts by relevance.  You get over 400 results.   The Ken Burns series titled The Vietnam War is literally dead last.  Because it's less relevant than "The Times of Bill Cunningham," the documentary about the New York Times photographer who took photos of women on the street in NYC dressed in outfits he found interesting.  And less relevant than "The U.S. Cavalry: History of America's Mounted Forces."  And 400 other shows.

No, wait.  The 18th photo is of a soldier in a helmet with a gun silhouetted against the sky.  No words or title or anything.  But if you hover, it says, "The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969)" which might tip you off that it's part of the Ken Burns series if you know the structure of the Ken Burns series.

Or you can just go, "This is so annoying" and anger-scroll the mouse to the bottom, and there it is:  A link that actually says The Vietnam War and A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, with the PBS logo. 

They want you to watch what they tell you to watch.  I don't know why they're so insistent on that, but it's almost insurmountable.

[possibilities]

I agree the Hoopla search function is FUBAR. I don'tunderstand why they can't have an accurate search like every other service in the universe. But your experience tells me that sometimes when I think they are telling me they don't have what I'm looking for... maybe they actually do have it. Hmmmn.... 

[Shrek]

Does anyone know of a way to remove things from the "continue watching" list on Paramount+? I have about 12 things in my list where I thought I would take a look at something & then decided it wasn't for me but now they just clutter up the space.

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows how.

[Anela]

24 minutes ago, Shrek said:

Does anyone know of a way to remove things from the "continue watching" list on Paramount+? I have about 12 things in my list where I thought I would take a look at something & then decided it wasn't for me but now they just clutter up the space.

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows how.

If you have the app on something like an iPad, you can just press on the show image, and it gives you the option to remove it.  I can’t figure it out on the Roku. 
 

edit: on Roku, move to the icon for the show, then click the star button on the remote.  It will give you the option to remove it. The asterisk.  

Edited Friday at 05:42 PM by Anela

[SoMuchTV]

This is interesting. I’ve been rewatching a couple of older shows on Prime - Northern Exposure and Frasier. (I didn’t pay the premium to opt out of ads.) When I watch on my smart tv (Vizio) I almost never get ads. When I watch on a different tv with a firestick, I consistently get a few (short) ad breaks. Anyone else noticing a difference in ads depending on how you watch?