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


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29 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

On the really outside chance that you didn't know and might want to:
You can create and Apple account without purchasing anything from Apple. 

Thanks for the tip.  I'm trying to stay out of as many ecosystems as I can.  As I said, I should have known that they wouldn't just let it show up on my TV like in the olden days.

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Just wanted to share that you can stream the entire first season of Severance for free on the Roku Channel right now. Got a message for it on the Roku home screen when I turned on my TV this evening. I've been meaning to watch that show after hearing how excellent it is, so I thought it might help anyone else who either wants to watch or re-watch before season two. Says the free episodes will be available until 1/19, so that gives a lot more time to stream it than what Apple TV+ offered last weekend. :)

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On 1/6/2025 at 7:54 PM, atomic said:

Just wanted to share that you can stream the entire first season of Severance for free on the Roku Channel right now.

Thank you for posting this.  My Roku screen didn't say anything about it, but when I went to search in Roku, when I put in "S" the first thing over on the right was Severance. 

I have a standalone DVR and recorded the episodes in succession overnight.  Not unlike the olden days with my DirecTV when a free preview of HBO would have all of a season of some show, one episode after another.

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7 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Thank you for posting this.  My Roku screen didn't say anything about it, but when I went to search in Roku, when I put in "S" the first thing over on the right was Severance. 

I have a standalone DVR and recorded the episodes in succession overnight.  Not unlike the olden days with my DirecTV when a free preview of HBO would have all of a season of some show, one episode after another.

Wait. What? Can I record from Roku to my standalone DVR?
Now where did I put that cable splitter?

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Mine does both and even records from the tape side to DVD. It's about 20 years old.

The recording will be decidedly not HD, but especially for regular TV shows, I don't care.  Being able to watch it on my schedule and without commercials outweighs the quality.

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8 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

The recording will be decidedly not HD, but especially for regular TV shows, I don't care.  Being able to watch it on my schedule and without commercials outweighs the quality.

Yes. Low-res, for sure. It's just that I only have it hooked up to catch my antenna feed, not the Roku. I suppose I should poke around back there after I get my latest personal old-lady drama under control.😉

Edited by shapeshifter
On 1/9/2025 at 10:28 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:

My Roku screen didn't say anything about it, but when I went to search in Roku, when I put in "S" the first thing over on the right was Severance. 

Hey!  My Roku screen just now gave me the message about season 1 of Severance being available.  Of course I already streamed the whole thing a couple of days ago thanks to the message here.  And they know that, obviously. 

Oh well.  Better late than never?

 

Update:  I got the Roku tv.  Will set it up soon.

I discovered a feature in profiles that allows you to view your watch history with both Netflix and Prime.  Problem is the series I was watching most have been on another app.  I can’t locate it.  Ugh….lol.  
 

So, the Roku supposedly has 3 free months of Apple Tv.  So, will that be available on any tv in the house or just the Roku tv?

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5 hours ago, SunnyBeBe said:

So, the Roku supposedly has 3 free months of Apple Tv.  So, will that be available on any tv in the house or just the Roku tv?

Any AppleTV promos I've used or heard of have been connected to my Apple ID, not to a particular device.  But I'm not familiar with Roku devices so maybe they somehow do things differently?  If nobody can give you a better answer, I guess you'll know when you activate the promo.

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It may also be connected to the email you use for Roku purchases in which case the same applies & it should be any screen as long as you use the same email address. 

What app can't you locate? I've only ever had one app they don't have & that was for a British football team & was their own that they wouldn't bother converting for U.S. tv just for me, I also can't cast it to any tv from iphone/ipad which is how I know it's the formatting. 

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54 minutes ago, caitmcg said:

(Gift link)

Appreciated, but WaPo requires giving them an email address in order to use that gift.

Here's an NPR article.

I access Netflix via my parents' account (working around the "no password sharing" thing), and use it far more than they do.  I wonder how many more price hikes before I get the "We're done with this" email.  It's the only streaming service I'd consider paying to keep, as I have by far the longest watch list on there, but they're really pushing it with this stuff.

Netflix had a "basic" ad-free plan for $11.99/mo, but got rid of that last summer.  People who'd been on that plan could switch to the "standard" ad-free plan (which I think is what they have, and may be what they already had, I'm not sure) for $15.49/mo, splurge on the "premium" ad-free plan at $22.99/mo, or downgrade to the ad-supported plan at $6.99/mo.

Just six months later, they're increasing the cost of all those plans?!

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6 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Just six months later, they're increasing the cost of all those plans?!

Apparently, they're riding high on profits thanks to all those new subscribers and are bargaining on people eating the higher price so they can keep going. It's a bit of an ouroboros, given that not so long ago, they shed a lot of subscribers and had to make a bunch of cutbacks.

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I had the cheap ad-free plan for 11.99 til they increased the price and bumped me down to the 6.99 with ads. But I really don't use it very much these days, and I hate the ads. So I might just drop it when it goes up.

Maybe I'll start being someone who subs for a month, binges stuff, then cancels, and rotates through different streamers that way, instead of sticking with long term subs of just a few. 

 

8 minutes ago, Anela said:

I got an email from Hulu, telling me that they will be inserting ads into some content, even for those of us who pay for the no-ad plan.

I'm so tired of this. 

This should only affect live events you choose to stream on Hulu like sports and the Oscars. Stuff where commercial breaks are built into the show and Disney has chosen not to create a different stream for the ad-free plan.

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On 1/22/2025 at 10:56 PM, possibilities said:

I had the cheap ad-free plan for 11.99 til they increased the price and bumped me down to the 6.99 with ads. But I really don't use it very much these days, and I hate the ads. So I might just drop it when it goes up.

Maybe I'll start being someone who subs for a month, binges stuff, then cancels, and rotates through different streamers that way, instead of sticking with long term subs of just a few. 

 

I am becoming that person. 

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2 hours ago, Anela said:

I got an email from Hulu, telling me that they will be inserting ads into some content, even for those of us who pay for the no-ad plan.

I have the with-ads Hulu, and was finally watching the last 2 episodes of Interior Chinatown while medicated, and so kept falling asleep, then rewinding to the last part I recalled, and continuing. 
Interestingly, it skipped over the commercials after a couple of seconds.
So, I got to sleep through the commercials.

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Last year, some of us were complaining about ad-free Prime and Paramount+ both showing ads -- promotions for their original programming, before your selected program begins.  Prime at least offered a "Skip" option, but with P+ you'd have to back out and click on the title again to get it to play without the ad.  Well, P+ finally added a "Skip" option.  It still irritates me on principle; ad free means ad free, not "well, other than promos for our programming", so the only way they should be promoting things to me is by recommending them on the home page.  But at least there's a quicker way to skip it now.

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8 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Well, P+ finally added a "Skip" option.  It still irritates me on principle; ad free means ad free, not "well, other than promos for our programming", so the only way they should be promoting things to me is by recommending them on the home page

True. But I find if I choose “Skip” then it won’t show the  closed captioning! So I have to GO BACK and let the stupid promo play I morder for the closed captioning to appear. ASSHOLES.

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On 2/17/2025 at 3:38 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

True. But I find if I choose “Skip” then it won’t show the  closed captioning! So I have to GO BACK and let the stupid promo play I morder for the closed captioning to appear. ASSHOLES.

I haven’t experienced that but it doesn’t surprise me. P+ is prone to some weird issues. Certain episodes won’t let me fast forward and my closed captioning will randomly switch to Italian. 

10 hours ago, Makai said:

I haven’t experienced that but it doesn’t surprise me. P+ is prone to some weird issues. Certain episodes won’t let me fast forward and my closed captioning will randomly switch to Italian. 

Funny you should say that about P+ because I was listening to Howard Stern yesterday & he was going off on one about them because he was trying to watch some of the SNL 50 show & it wouldn't let him FF more than 10 seconds at a time & he wasn't happy but he was very frustrated.

He's notoriously bad at using streaming services so it may just be him, but his closing comment was "why can't they just copy what Netflix does & call it P+ instead of trying to be different".

 

46 minutes ago, Shrek said:

Funny you should say that about P+ because I was listening to Howard Stern yesterday & he was going off on one about them because he was trying to watch some of the SNL 50 show & it wouldn't let him FF more than 10 seconds at a time & he wasn't happy but he was very frustrated.

He's notoriously bad at using streaming services so it may just be him, but his closing comment was "why can't they just copy what Netflix does & call it P+ instead of trying to be different".

Maybe I'm the one who's bad at streaming services, but I could have sworn SNL & its related specials are on Peacock (the NBC-related one), not Paramount+ (the CBS-related one).  Maybe that contributed to his frustration?

7 minutes ago, SoMuchTV said:

Maybe I'm the one who's bad at streaming services, but I could have sworn SNL & its related specials are on Peacock (the NBC-related one), not Paramount+ (the CBS-related one).  Maybe that contributed to his frustration?

Yeah that's just me getting them mixed up rather than him, point still stands about some being more of a pain than others. 

 

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