I am watching "Person of Interest"; the series from 2011-2016
I have had Prime for years, before all of the ads.
I had Prime for €3 per month.
Then it became €5 but the video quality remained sh*t at "busy" hours.
Then the video service started going SD because my 2nd monitor is pre-HDCP. But I had to find that out myself because the message would just say "because your browser doesn't support HD". So I had to use "Prime Video for Windows"... but whenever you put that on full screen and click something on another monitor, like drawing in Solidworks... it would minimize the Prime Video window.
Then the English subtitles disappeared. But guess what? When I'm watching something with English audio, I don't want Dutch subtitles. More and more series have too much background noise over the dialogue so I just need the subtitles for that. But no joy with Amazon Prime..
And then came the ads... if you put the PC to sleep and then return... it would run a new ad... and then after the ad it would give an error so you would have to reload... and get another ad.
Then I had enough and stopped the subscription.
And yeah, the missing seasons, mislabeled episodes and season, disappearing series while mid-seasons are just more annoying things.
Now I am back to mostly *ugh* alternative ways *ugh*. It downloads at 70 MB/s... it unzips at 2000-4000 MB/s (depending on whether it's still in RAM cache or not) then plays in VLC with zero delays. I can pause and unpause without a stupid overlay, I can put the PC to sleep and return and not having to reload anything. I can choose whatever subtitles I want, I can choose their position, I can drag the viewing window to whatever monitor etc. etc.
For years and years it was the case that pirating was a cheap alternative with no legal online alternatives. It was either buy the disc, rent the disc or pirate it. That was also the time where in the USA people were charged with insane fines for pirating. Yet it persisted. Then came the streaming services and pirating took a nose dive off a cliff. And now that enshittification struck the streaming industry... pirating is picking back up. Because even regardless of price, it gives a better user experience.
Even when I still had my Prime subscription I would sometimes find a series on there... then just pirate it and watch it in VLC because it was so much less annoying.
There are also series that never sold on Blu Ray but where shown on cable TV in HD. No matter how much you are willing to pay... you can only buy them in SD. But if you go the pirate route... you have no problem getting recordings of the original HD broadcast.
I have also buy Blu-Ray discs to watch on the PC. But they made that sh*t too. They DRM'd that up the arse to make it nearly unplayable.
The most retarded of all was that they included an "ad" on DVD movies that pretty much said
"You don't steal a car, you don't steal a purse, you don't steal a movie." That stupid clip was a waste of time... because it would be on DVD's you BOUGHT yet never on pirated stuff. Also it gave people who had never heard of pirating a great idea...
And my generation always laughed "If I can copy that car for free I would definitely do that too."
And if I look back at those that were in my class in school; there were those that pirated movies (because no money) and when they became adults and finished school, they bought the discs and later on got a streaming subscription. Those that didn't pirate... still don't watch any movies. Tell me what is the better outcome for that movie industry...
Now that we are talking about Amazon... they had the Knipex 12 12 10 precision stripping pliers for a good deal. So I bought it. And of course... they tried to lure me back in for Prime... by promishing "
Free faster shipping. Select for more info" (the blue area). But even without the translation... you can see that the Prime delivery date is 2 days later than the standard...
It arrived on tuesday 25th by the way, without prime.
I keep finding more and more sh*t that is just becoming worse. Like Windows 11 is even worse than 10, and while 10 was better than 8, it was still worse than 7 (*). More and more changes aren't making things better, but worse. With more and more things I have the feeling that around 2016 we arrived at a peak and that since then a lot of things just went downhill.
Now it's only more bloat, more "milking" (subscription based everything), more violation of privacy ("this app requires access to contacts, photos, messages"), more vendor lock-in ("Only Available in Apple Store and Google Playstore"), more f***ng irritating Ai bots everywhere.
(*) Just to give one example; Windows 7 could recognize the network you were on and have a "location specific default printer". So whenever I would hit Ctrl+P to print something, it would always come up with the printer at that location. But in Windows 10... "this feature has been discontinued". WHY?
)
