I'm sick of goddamned streaming services

Discovered "Barkskins" on Nat Geo, a drama about French settlers in Canada conflicting with the Iroquois in the 17th century.
Started watching it On Demand. The way we watch a show on streaming or On Demand is one episode a week, like a regular old TV show, sop we can watch something different each night of the week.
We got thru the first 4 eps, when Nat Geo pulled eps 1-5 from their On Demand menu.
I've noticed this happen with other shows on other On Demand channels.
Do they NOT want us to watch the whole series?? I really don't get this practice. Fuck.

Is this through your cable company? Directly from NatGeo? If the latter, they want you to subscribe to cable or pay them directly.

I watched about five or six episodes of that. I kind of lost interest. It’s supposed to span hundreds of years so it should be interesting. I’ll probably revisit it at some point.

I don't understand that either. I've had it happen to me with some other shows I've watched on several different channels.

Cable company on demand.
Hm. I see whatcher sayin. I'll check their website.

It's a thing. For some reason, people think that if you like, for example, Star Wars, you absolutely, positively must like Battlefield Earth, and the fact that you haven't subscribed to the Battlefield Earth channel is entirely due to the fact that you're ignorant of it. So, they'll give you a taste of Star Wars, and then tell you that if you want to watch the rest of it, you have to subscribe to the Battlefield Earth Channel, as they occasionally show the other Star Wars things you're interested in. Provided you've watched enough Battlefield Earth content first. Because that's what you really want to see. You just don't know it yet, and even if you have watched the movie and hated it, that's 'cause you're wrong, and if you just watch this 700 hours of stuff related to it, you'll realize you were wrong and forget about Star Wars, though you can still watch it once you've spent the 700 hours watching the other shit first.

I liked how they taunted me with the anime channel for insane costs and I figured out I could pay for 3 commercial free anime services for the cost of cable's anime channel. the best part was the anime channel did not have all the episodes of the series on demand all the time. Like I am going to pay to watch 4 episodes in the middle of an arc when I could get the whole series for a low cost.

Cable on demand overcharges for the service because cable are greedy evil bastards. I know, I used to work for them and it was a lot like joining a cult. Good benefits for a cult, but still a cult.

I've had similar bullshit on Hulu. We're binging all 40 seasons of Survivor. Starting around season 2 or 3, Hulu is randomly missing one or two episodes out the 12ish episodes in a season. I think maybe there was a legal issue with the episode--either a music rights issue, or it got pulled for some controversy (the early seasons have some fairly homophobic and misogynistic comments, including an alleged sexual assault in season 5).

So we did a trial of CBS Access, and that has all the episodes. The missing episodes? No copyrighted music and no controversy. Fucking baffling.

The HBO Max clusterfuck continues.

AT&T made a clusterfuck out of a goldmine, but it's kind of in the "too big to fail" category. They'll figure it out because they have to and they have enough assets that a lot of people will decide they want it. I'm getting HBO Max for the same price I was getting the old HBO. I'm also sure they'll come to terms with ROKU because they have to.
One bit of good news is that YouTubeTV has added the NFL Network. They're also adding some premium tier stuff, like NFL Red Zone. I do wish they'd go to a straight a la carte plan, say $50 for 50 channels, but that would make too much sense and would probably be a technical nightmare. One thing I am glad I don't have is the Bible thumping channels.

I see I get HBO Max for free so I loaded it (which is a minor pain to do). Found a lot of great old movies, so it was well worth the price.

One of the original great things about cable was you paid for it and there was no commercials. That did not last very long when they realized people will put up with commercials even though they pay huge amounts of money for the programming.

I have to say I have found great enjoyment out of not seeing commercials. I do not mind paying for the service, or an ad based alternative if I do not get charged, but the moment a streaming service puts commercials on the programming I already pay for I am going back to piracy.

Netflix considered ads for a split second and everyone came down hard on that bullshit.

Other than the Premium channels like HBO and Showtime, cable has always had commercials.

I briefly tried Hulu with commercials and didn't make it through two episodes of whatever I was watching before upgrading to commercial-free.

I had the same experience with CBS All Access, CBS along with Netflix and Hulu have completely ruined me on anything with commercials.

Even on cable there are very few shows that I'll watch live. I record most of them and then skip the breaks when I watch them.

Broadcast also came across cable. There was a time in history, brief as it was, that cable channels did not have commercials and that was a selling point. This was a very long time ago. However, broadcast channels would have had commercials anyway while being in the cable package. That was because the only way for a broadcast network to get revenue would have been ad structure. It did not last very long, and some people may have never seen it because cable outgrew it so quickly, but the original attraction was that you paid for the service so you did not get ads, and that was how the cable networks got their money.

Also, I would not mind certain ads. Had youtube not put cobra kai on their premium service I would have watched it with ads. They would have gotten their revenue way back when. Instead I just realized it would eventually be cross marketed and waited for it to hit netflix. Now I am enjoying it on netflix. I am a little bothered in giving youtube money considering how they have treated their creators over the years. I wasn't going to shovel them any more money for some premium ch

I will totally pay a subscription fee to turn them off if the service has what I want.

I don't even like skipping the breaks.

I see Amazon has some options with commercials - we watched Becket this weekend, and we had the option of paying $2.99 to rent it, or watch for free with commercials. I think I can spare $3 to keep from screaming at the TV.

I only watch movies on Hulu, not TV shows. No commercials in the movies. Pisses me off that so many services want to charge a premium for their content but also jam commercials into it.

I just terminated CBS All Access; will reconsider when Paramount+ settles out.

May boot Disney+ once I catch up on The Mandalorian.

I got rid of Disney + after I was done with The Mandalorian. I plan to do that again.

I've kept Disney+ because of the other content it has.

Getting ready to restart CBS's streaming service to watch Picard and Lower Decks before S3 of Discovery is released.

Friendly reminder that Disney condones piracy.



Like, real rapey piracy.

Why is all of the rum gone?

Disney filed a DMCA notice against it.

I probably won't stay past S2 of The Mandalorian. I've got 4K disks of the Star Wars and Marvel films, which is the bulk of what interests me on the service.

I liked Picard quite a lot, thought Discovery (esp. S2) was pretty good. The Pike series is interesting. Lower Decks just didn't do much for me.

I'll probably re-up when there are full new seasons of the Trek I like.

I may need to cut CBS too. The "Animaniacs" reboot is coming to Hulu and I'll get way more bang for my buck for that than CBS, which I only use for Trek and occasionally the soaps. Don't need to pay $9.99 to watch Brooke Logan get married for the 15th time this year.