Piracy always rises up from service issues. This is a service issue
The trick is to pirate everything first and if it’s good then pay money afterwards to support the creators
And as an added bonus: If I buy the blu-ray, I don’t need to keep the massive 4k remuxes on my server. It’s a win-win.
This.
Bring back bookshelfs full of DVD cases (or blu-ray nowadays^^)
thats if the corporations behind it are actually paying the creators
For music, to avoid this with record companies, I use a youtube downloader to rip songs from youtube then go to shows or buy shirts. Admittedly probably harder with movies or games, though.
Piracy is a service issue. - GabeN
- Einstein
HBO MIN
HBO MID at most
HBO AVG
I came back in here just to up vote this. Perfect!
I’m old enough to remember when HBO’s entire point was you paid for cable so you wouldn’t have ads. That was their business model.
Then sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (I dunno, that decade’s kind of a blur) they started sneaking ads in between shows, but not in the middle of shows. But you were paying a higher price, with a few ads. Then they started showing ads to everyone, and still making you pay. I’m still salty about that.
This was always going to happen. They’ll compound paying PLUS ads, and you’ll like it, because what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
Fuck them all . 🏴☠️
e: massively borked that first sentence
what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
in Australia that was the whole selling point of foxtel when it launched. these days it has more ads than free to air TV and still costs like $60 a month for the basic package. most people only use it for sport
Great example , thanks! Yeah, same thing.
Paying customers attention is so fucking valuable. People pay for something, maybe if we add ads they will pay for more things!
And most people are surprisingly not bothered by ads. So… Just criminalise the people that are, and there you go, infinite money making machine.
Most cable TV channels still had ads, the revenue generated from subscribers would never have been enough to cover otherwise.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I’m right, they’re wrong, deal with it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
And it’s funny that you’re talking about “the early days” since it started in 1948 and I’m willing to bet that you weren’t born.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
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or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd.
I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.
e: also
Ad-free, and local access
This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken placeCheck any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/the-complete-history-of-cable-tv
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.I provided a source with more sources, no it wasn’t.
Need more? There:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States
First phrase:
Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948.The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
How old are you?
I don’t need links to tell me what this was like when I vividly remember.
Yea, cable television first became available in 1948. Regular middle class families did not have cable television for a long time after that.
Mobile phone service was available in 1959. Guess how many people had it? A good friend of my family had a car phone in the mid 70s. Guess how common that was?
You can’t go by invention dates on stuff like this. You’ll be amazed at how long some things take to gain market acceptance.
I think the best one is Electric Cars, which were invented in the 1800s, before the Internal Combustion Engine.
So far I’m the only one providing sources, an anecdote of when you were a kid isn’t reliable.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable. Cable exclusive channels weren’t a thing before 1970 (when there’s was 10m subscribers already) and ads on a cable exclusive channel first started in 1977 with nearly all of them having ads in the in the 80s.
7 years of commercial free cable exclusive channels that were a minority of channels available at the time. No, people weren’t paying not to see adverts and no it wasn’t the point of cable TV like you said, the point of creating cable TV was to allow people to reliably watch TV by broadcasting the signal in a way that wasn’t affected by all sorts of elements out of the control of the broadcasters.
According to the wiki article that you linked:
However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
Your link literally states you’re wrong…
No, because the majority of TV channels you got when getting cable weren’t cable exclusive, cable exclusive appeared in 1972 (24 years after the introduction of cable broadcasting) and in 1977 came the first cable exclusive channel with ads.
People saying “not having ads was the point of cable” are wrong since not having ads on all the cable exclusive channels was a thing for 5 years and only happened after cable already had a good fooothold in the market.
You’ve already changed the goal posts. Your initial claim was that most cable networks had ads, and now you’ve walked that entirely back to “well there existed one channel that had ads”
But also the original comment was they were old enough to remember it
And if you look at this timeline: https://www.computertechreviews.com/a-brief-history-of-cable-tv-commercials/
It lines up pretty well with their claims of when ads were during the viewing experience.
I didn’t move the goal post, most of the channels you got access to when subscribing to cable were the same channels you had access to without cable and they had ads, a minority of channels, starting in 72 with HBO, which was the first cable exclusive channel, didn’t have them but in 77 the trend reversed.
That’s 5 years without ads on a minority of channels you could watch and people speak like all cable was ad free and like that was the whole point of it. Well, no, the whole point was to get TV to people who didn’t have good reception and the people here ignore the 24 years of cable TV that came before 1972 and the 46 years since 1977.
Thank you for being a loyal subscriber. Please hold still while we fuck you
and then all corporations go suprise pikachu face when piracy is on the rise :O
“Piracy is growing back!? How?? We had prattically killed it with our optimal services haven’t we??”
Do what you want cuz a pirate lives free, you are a pirate.
You know, I can actually see this happening and them not understanding why its climbing. I’m sure you could make a great comedy sketch out of it.
People often have a hard time understanding things when their paycheck depends on them not understanding those things.
I feel like that’s on the level of ancient Chinese proverbs but for modern corporate society
Sad thing is, I read it in a book from the 1930s and I don’t think it was new back then.
like retail suddenly writing off large chunks to ‘theft’ coinciding with move to self checkout. surprise
“Thanks for the money, fuck you”
They must think so little of me, as if I’m grateful for this?
This is it isn’t it? I’d complain and cancel but they don’t care about how I feel.
So right after I signed up at the beginning of this year, they switched from HBOMax to “Max.” I paid for a year in advance, and of course when I signed up there was nothing about them switching to a new brand. All of a sudden it was full of trash reality shows and ID Discovery true crime. I have no idea what possessed them to do that.
Then once it switched over I stopped being able to stream any new HBO shows on mobile and customer service won’t refund me any amount. Not that I can even communicate with them effectively. It’s all “chat” with AI or people who have no idea what I’m saying. Half the shows still won’t play on mobile for me.
TL;DR I paid for a year of HBO. They changed their selection a few months in. I lost mobile access to a bunch of their shows. And now I’m losing even more features before the year is up. That’s quite literally not what I paid for.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
Ask them for a refund, in writing, document everything, and if they refuse, take it to your state’s AG office. Obviously I can’t speak for every state, but mine has slapped around whirlpool when they refused to fix a defective fridge, dell when they refused to replace a monitor with dead pixels, etc. I’ve never had a bad experience. It’s amazing how a letter from your local AG’s office will suddenly make companies be less shitty to you.
Letter to your state insurance investigation board also help claims magically settle faster
takes notes
What we really need is an instance of GPT-4 trained on every court case in history as well as Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Clark Howard, Rosemary Shahan, etc, and instructed to act like a small town genius lawyer in a John Grisham novel.
Basically a chatbot absolutely full of ideas about how to punish corporations for shitty business practices. A resource center for consumer advocacy.
If they won’t refund then do a charge back on your card.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
There are government websites you can report this to, though I do not know what effect that will have.
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you paid for a year for a certain set of services they have to give you those services for the whole year, or refund you your money.
They also likely claimed during the merger that it wouldn’t effect customers. Of course we knew that was a lie.
It’s always a lie.
Until each and every one of us reading this commits to expending the energy, and sacrificing the leisure time, to actually pursue what small options we have, this is only going to get worse.
That, and voting into office people that’ll actually write regulation laws to curb these bad behaviors from corporations.
If you paid for a service you were not rendered, presumably with a credit card, and attempted remediation with the company, hopefully in writing or recorded in some form, you can do a charge back with your credit card.
I had purchased a year in advance last fall and when it switched over, it only didn’t play on m9bile for me for a week, then I was able to stream on mobile regularly. However, with their changes, I chose not to renew my subscription. Their quality is degrading quite a bit, it was no longer worth it.
The only way this becomes less likely in the future is if you sue them. Given you’re locked into a year contract, a lawsuit is the only kind of consequences they might face.
Thats the same time that they cancelled raised by wolves. Fuck discovery and fuck corporate mergers.
what they do is lure you in with unsustainable prices and once they got established slap you with real price. Because for the real price you wouldn’t find it worthy in the first place. But now that you enjoy it it’s more likely you’ll pay more than what you might initially do
Man, they really are like drug dealers…
Time to start sailing the high seas!
Hehe, “start”
I have never seen a company actively promoting that they have less to offer. Jesus Christ will capitalism please just come to a crashing halt already
“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
Ja I got the email today, and I’m like, what new features? This is anti new features.
if you want to try your luck, I suggest contacting their customer support to notify them of this issue. I did too.
Did you cancel during that call?
Because they put your concerns in a furnace, if you didnt.
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And what did that do for you?
absolutely nothing. But they said they will inform someone of my complaint. maybe if enough people complain, they will be more likely to respond?
I’m doing everything I can to blow this up, even if some stuff leads nowhere its worth a try. I contacted press websites as well.
Customers cancelling over the shrinkflation, and leaving the feedback as to why you’re cancelling, is really the only thing that companies will respond to. Because of their fiduciary responsibility to their share holders, their share price is all that drives these decisions.
Gotcha, the expected response.
I would cancel if I were the customer, but I have a peg-leg and an eye patch already. Good luck!
ARGHHH, touch water!
They didn’t inform anyone. They laughed as they hung up. The only four words they understand are “I want to cancel”.
“Thank you for being a loyal Max customer”
“Now roll over like a good customer…”
Meanwhile the trusty pitate has none of these problems lol
Don’t worry, they’ll raise those prices very soon.
Shrinkflation isn’t just for meatspace products.
Heh, meatspace
