Which streaming services do you have?

[mtosev]

I have Netflix, HBO max, skyshowtime, Disney+, Amazon, Spotify.

[somdcomputerguy]

I use Pluto.TV and TubiTV.com. I use the Vivaldi browser when streaming, and pretty much only for that. I am starting to use a few webmail services with this secondary browser, just to see what it's like.

[Moonchild]

Amazon Prime, but only because I already got Prime for the shipping reasons. I don't use it very much.

[Pentium4User]

No one. And it stays like.
There are 3 reasons: I hate DRM and most of them enforce it.
I don't want to support the "content mafia" that wants to enforce DRM and surveillance in the law to ensure nobody can copy their stuff. I also don't support them because they sue the customers of internet access if anybody else there did copyright violation.
I am not interested in their films and serials.
20 of of free car crash compilation is much more interesting that a serial.

[Night Wing]

I am really old fashioned.

I do not own a smartphone and I do not subscribe to any streaming services. My friends tell me I've got the money to subscribe to streaming services, but I do not want to. I tell my friends there is nothing on those streaming services I want to watch or listen to.

But lets say someone subscribes to four streaming services at $6.00/month. That is $24.00/month. At the $24.00/month, twelve months comes to $288.00/year. At that price, I could purchase "three" new top of the line center fins for my single fin 9'3" surfing longboard.

I explain to my friends I have "different priorities" with my money than they do. After I told this to one of my friends, he told me I'm like an extinct dinosaur in my ways. I told my friend I am a dinosaur, but I'm not extinct because I still roam the Earth.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

No one. And it stays like.

Ditto.

[BenFenner]

I consume A LOT of TV and movie content. Absolute boat loads.

Off-topic:
And Netflix DVDs was a huge part of that up until the end of this month.

We subscribe to Netflix streaming, and it's been hit or miss over the past decade or so, but always worth it for us.
We get Amazon Prime streaming but just because it comes with our Prime subscription (same as everyone, for the good shipping that has gotten worse). We really never use it.

The rest comes from free services like YouTube (I am subscribed to many, many channels and watch every non-shorts video they release), Crunchy Roll, Pandora, for a while Comedy Central streamed good stuff free on their site, etc.

[Blacklab]

No streaming services here... yet. No desire to pay subscriptions to watch largely news and factual TV via Apple, Amazon, or Netflix. Kind friends supply copies of the occasional recent movie I'm interested in watching. The BBC's completely Ad-free radio channels, especially the speech-based Radio 4, remain a constant delight.

The UK still has a pretty decent free-to-air digital terrestrial TV broadcasting system 'Freeview' which is obviously i) free, and ii) completely private as it is an entirely 'passive' system requiring no return signal or registration with any provider. However, I imagine the cost of maintaining the infrastructure of a large terrestrial TV broadcast transmission network, and the government income to be made by auctioning off the radio frequency spectrum terrestrial TV occupies, will eventually lead to its demise in the not too distant future?

Intrigued that Night Wing can still survive in US without a Smartphone! Here in UK recent changes in banking anti-fraud regulations and procedures means that banks now require you to have 'secure' transaction authorisation via their smartphone app for 'card-not-present' purchases. I can't imagine how people without access to their bank's App can purchase anything online in UK?

[Night Wing]

Intrigued that Night Wing can still survive in US without a Smartphone! Here in UK recent changes in banking anti-fraud regulations and procedures means that banks now require you to have 'secure' transaction authorisation via their smartphone app for 'card-not-present' purchases. I can't imagine how people without access to their bank's App can purchase anything online in UK?

Off-topic:
I do not have any online banking accounts. All of my banking transactions/accounts are done with a land line phone. Ditto for credit card transactions. How? Because I actually speak to a "live customer service rep" to get things done. The bank verifies my land line phone, verifies my voice signature, verifies my one primary password and my secondary password for my banking accounts.

People using apps, the banks have the vast majority of people in the world "trained" to use apps. This is basically for "convenience". To boggle your mind further, I do not have any online hospital or physicians online accounts either. I do the same thing above.

Sometimes I get an email with a square bar code looking thing on it for filling out hospital paper work in an email. I just call the hospital and tell them I do not have a smartphone. Just an old style clam shell flip phone and it isn't connected to the internet. Then I inform the hospital I will come down to the hospital in person to fill out whatever paperwork they need. Ditto for any of my physicians who need any info.

Almost forgot. I pay for most things with a "check". Yesterday I had to use one of my credit cards that had a zero balance and had not been used in eight months. The credit card company sent me a letter telling me if did not use the card within 30 days of said date on the letter, my credit card would be cancelled and my account closed.

To sum up.

In Texas slang; "there is MORE than one way to skin a squirrel". And I know ALL the other ways.

[Moonchild]

Intrigued that Night Wing can still survive in US without a Smartphone! Here in UK recent changes in banking anti-fraud regulations and procedures means that banks now require you to have 'secure' transaction authorisation via their smartphone app for 'card-not-present' purchases. I can't imagine how people without access to their bank's App can purchase anything online in UK?

second factor authentication and signing can easily be done with other methods. For example, my bank offers an "app", SMS authentication, and a non-phone option using a code device that can be used either USB connected or purely stand-alone (a "codebox") that employs a cryptographic challenge/response with the chip on my bank card. I've used it plenty of times.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

The BBC's completely Ad-free radio channels ...
The UK still has a pretty decent free-to-air digital terrestrial TV broadcasting system ...

Intrigued that Night Wing can still survive in US without a Smartphone! Here in UK recent changes in banking anti-fraud regulations and procedures means that banks now require you to have 'secure' transaction authorisation via their smartphone app ...

Concerning TV, I'll never subscribe for pay TV which broadcasts the same things I could probably see for free after a few months, and anyhow I'm unable to watch TV only, except in very rare cases (like a play by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Paolini, when I do not see it in a theatre) ... usually I listen to it while reading a (paper) newspaper, or working at the computer. The choice of the main state TV (RAI1-3) and commercial TV channels is (quite similar and) not great on average, but a few secondary channels (like RAI Storia and RAI Scuola) have (ad-free) history and science documentaries which are quite good (most of the history ones are national stuff, while a fraction of the science one are dubbed from Britoish ones). Sort of a niche audience (this summer on Mont Blanc I met a younger philosophy university professor which belongs to same niche).

Concerning smartphones, I am so far doing my best to live without one. Banking regulations (ascribed to EU in this country, surely not the case of the UK ) require a double authentication, but luckily my bank still allows it via SMS (although SMS are charged 8 euro cent each, while the app is free). Concerning access to public administration sites, since some time they insisted on a thing called SPID https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPID, which although public is managed by a plurality of private providers. It is mainly app-oriented, although some providers like the Post offer a limited number of SMS every 3 months. However I managed to bypass SPID, I bought an USB smart card reader, and use it in conjunction with my national health service4 / fiscal code card from my desktop PC.
Apart from the above, I'm definitely not so rigid as Night Wing for what concerns paying with debit or credit cards, doing transactions online, and accessing public administration and health services online. Actually I'd wish some of them to work better.
One of the positive COVID side effect is that now doctors do no longer issue paper prescriptions for medicines. You instead get a code via SMS, go to the pharmacy and get the medicine. After a few months even the pharmacies stopped printing the prescription.

[Night Wing]

One of the positive COVID side effect is that now doctors do no longer issue paper prescriptions for medicines. You instead get a code via SMS, go to the pharmacy and get the medicine. After a few months even the pharmacies stopped printing the prescription.

Off-topic:
I've two doctors who prescribe medications for me. They like to send my "NEW" prescriptions (with three refills) electronically to my Walgreens Pharmacy. But two times those electronic transmissions got "lost in the cloud" and never arrived. This means I had to call the doctor's office and get them to electronically send the new prescription(s) a second time

I like things done the easy way so I don't have to waste my time.

After the above; when I get a new prescription, I ask my doctor, since I'm seeing him at his office, for a new written prescription. He doesn't mind writing it either. His office will still send the new prescription electronically and if it arrives, the hand written prescription gets relegated to my paper shredder I keep at my home.

If the new prescription gets lost in the cloud, I don't have to call my doctor's office and have them electronically send it a second time. I will wait a few hours and see if the new prescription arrives at the pharmacy. I call my pharmacy and if it hasn't arrived, I go to the pharmacy and hand them the new written prescription.

My new written prescriptions are my "ace in the hole". An insurance policy if you get my drift. In other words, I like to plan ahead just in case "Murphy's Law" shows up.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Off-topic:
Our health system is public, national (actually regional). As soon as the doctor enters the prescription in the Region central computer (he can do that at any time during the day from something I request him by phone between 7 and 8 am, or in real time when I am in his office, but even if I'm there he prefers not to print medicine prescriptions, while he prints other prescriptions), I get a beep with the SMS. Of course I can retrieve all kind of prescriptions (medicine or specialistic) from the Region site (which requires a SPID or CNS-card login). The pharmacy requires my CNS-card and the codes sent via SMS ... I've never seen what they see on their computer screens, if just a list of the current active medicine prescriptions, or all prescriptions but access to non-medicine ones is denied for privacy reasons, or whatever ... I once copied one of the codes wrong, and the pharmacist told me it was "not medicine"
It usually works nicely (there were a few cases of malfunctions described in the press, and even some DDOS/ransomware attacks, but I believe in other Regions, but I was never affected). Even fast COVID swabs done at a pharmacy (which I'm not sure go only to the Region site or also to a national one) were such that you got an SMS at the same time you got the printed result.

[athenian200]

We still have cable. Streaming services as a whole seem to be a worse deal than the bundle deal we have with our Internet service. I have learned however, that we are grandfathered into it and that my ISP is no longer offering cable to new subscribers. I tried Netflix a while back, but I thought it sucked because they kept removing shows before I could finish watching them, and they seemed to be jacking the prices up while offering less and less content.

If the ISP ever stops offering cable, though, I imagine I would rather just settle for OTA broadcasts and YouTube, plus whatever I can get on Blu-Ray rather than pay for a streaming service. They are too locked-down, limited in offerings, and require too much active effort to use. I prefer the experience of just having a channel and watching what's on, I don't want to have to sit and think about what to watch.

[Night Wing]

Streaming services as a whole seem to be a worse deal than the bundle deal we have with our Internet service.

It is the old "nickel and dime" principle. Incremental price increases is the norm.

Some streaming services start out at $4.99/month. Then it goes to $5.99/month. Stays at that price for awhile and then it goes $6.99/month.

[mtosev]

Streaming services as a whole seem to be a worse deal than the bundle deal we have with our Internet service.

It is the old "nickel and dime" principle. Incremental price increases is the norm.

Some streaming services start out at $4.99/month. Then it goes to $5.99/month. Stays at that price for awhile and then it goes $6.99/month.

I got Netflix in 2016 for the price of 9.99€ / month and I'm still paying the same price. They even upgraded my package from full hd to 4K for the same price.

[Night Wing]

I got Netflix in 2016 for the price of 9.99€ / month and I'm still paying the same price. They even upgraded my package from full hd to 4K for the same price.

You are in Europe. I am in the USA.

Here in the USA, Netflix is raising their prices in the article which you can read at the link below. And the article was posted on July 29th, 2023.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/netflix-pricing

[Marcus]

CDs and DVDs.
Books printed in paper.

[mtosev]

I got Netflix in 2016 for the price of 9.99€ / month and I'm still paying the same price. They even upgraded my package from full hd to 4K for the same price.

You are in Europe. I am in the USA.

Here in the USA, Netflix is raising their prices in the article which you can read at the link below. And the article was posted on July 29th, 2023.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/netflix-pricing

The USA has more purchasing power than most of Europe so that would explain why Netflix charges more in the US.