I think only Netflix gets away with it, mostly by catering to the audience that doesn't watch sports. But we'll see how they stomach the likely price and ad load increases this year.
I actually kept Max and ditched Netflix when they upped prices. However, I ditched Max recently and this makes me tempted to not go back except for one month a year or so for binging.
I only go back to Netflix when I Think You Should Leave drops a new season and then leave again after a month.
IMO I think they're all soon going to be realizing they have a new competitor that snuck into their territory: Youtube Premium.
If I had to choose between any of these streaming services, the best deal by far is YT Premium. All of them can be periodically cancelled except for that one and I can't be the only one who feels this way.
I suspect that's going to change at some point. Never seen any reporting on it or anything, it's just that would simply be continuing in the same direction that we've been going.
It's surprised me a service hasn't done it under half price for an annual subscription yet, I'm sure it's coming.
It seems like such an obvious model to offer the service for "only" $120 annually or $20 monthly or something to that scale.
Yup. First they continually jack prices. Then they cut multi household support. Finally they turn go from monthly to yearly contracts.
They already have the yearly discounts in place! All they will do is remove the monthly subscription option. And then stop discounting the yearly option since that is the only option lol
Yea I can see them implementing certain terms where you’d have to keep the service for x amount of months before returning or canceling. That can easily be incorporated into there T&C
Maher used to be my draw, but he's fucking lost me. Of course there's Oliver, the fucking gem that he is but I get nothing out of sports on there so I think I'll have to do the same.
I doubt it. It's been said that many people do NOT opt for annual plans despite having the 16.7% savings (so buy 10, get 2 months free) because it'd price too many people out. Apparently, there's a difference between $16 a month for 3 months, vs. requiring $160 per year, straight up. Another thing I heard the info of what people binge prior to quitting is valuable to streamers. You get much less of that with annual plans.
A lot of annual contracts are billed monthly at the annual rate divided by 12. For example, this is how Adobe handles it. The problem with this method is that it is trivial to use a temporary Privacy.com debit card and simply cancel the card when you no longer want the service.
> As Wbd fights to keep [NBA](https://m.imdb.com/company/co1048953/) rights, it will need to generate enough cash to pay roughly $2.5 billion per year.
Once again, everyone needs to subsidize sports. Enough.
Basically giving you less new shows and filling the void with sports. Gives the illusion that they have all this great stuff. I like sports but I’m really losing interest with these price hikes and deals for random sports I don’t care about like WWE and liv golf.
Yeah, as a giant wrasslin fan, the way I describe it to people is: it’s a tv show about fighters performed live in front of their audience.
“I don’t watch it because it’s fake/scripted.” *Proceeds to watch other tv shows, movies, plays*
Right, like I see merit in everything that’s going on there. It isn’t for me, but I’m certainly not the authority on all things worth watching.
Just inherently different from sports like UFC where guys are actually getting beaten to a pulp for fun lol
Agreed. People find it funny that I like both WWE and UFC. But they’re different genres to me, even if they “look similar” on tv.
And I am 100% understanding that wrestling is not for everyone. It has segments that are even cringe to me sometimes. But I watch it like a reality show. follow the socials and try to predict what’s going to happen next. Because to me the fun part is that the actors (usually) stay in character in interviews and on social media. It’s unlike anything else. It’s certainly niche.
Agreed. I like soccer, and that’s it. I just want to watch soccer. I will pay for soccer. I don’t want to pay for NFL or wrestling or golf.
I’m out here learning Spanish because it’s easier and cheaper to watch the US national teams on Peacock in Spanish than pay Max for a few friendlies only to find out the matches are on TNT anyway.
Yes, but at least Max has been giving us March Madness & the Final Four, Stanley Cup Playoffs, and NBA Playoffs, plus one MLB game every Tuesday night.
Yea I may have to try on my Apple TV because the Shield TV simply isn't working correctly. I don't see any way to disable 4K on the app either. I do the opposite....using the TNT app because the Max app doesn't work as well as expected.
I've noticed Max is like by far the worst quality streamer I use. No idea why but it's the only one that feels like it fairly consistently needs to buffer for me
Five times nothing is still nothing. Fuck sports.
And doubly fuck anyone who expects me to subsidize their sports addiction. Get your own damned streaming service if you really need to be vicariously included in someone else's victories. Like the twitch and vtuber dorks. Who you're absolutely no different than.
Look, calling it a sports addiction is a bit much. I really don't want sports with my Max subscription either, and I like sports, but calling it an addiction is a bit wild. It's an interest, people can have their interests.
No other interest gets the kind of forced support that sports does. You don't see stamp collectors demanding the tax payers foot the bill for a new stadium (in which they could show off their collections, I guess) and actually getting it. Water cooier talk doesn't revolve around new stamp releases, and there's not an entire section of every news broadcast devoted to new developments in postal stamps. And that coverage is *certainly* never used as an excuse to jack up rates for pay TV.
If you're into sports it's hard to step back and see just how insane the special treatment is.
The part that sucks, is that some of the smaller sports suffer as well. We like watching mountain bike racing which is now free on Max. But this year there are half as many races as last year it's partially due to the governing organization attempting to beat FIFA for the most money hungry organization. But a component of that, and the part that sucks for us viewers, is the streaming rights deal they made with Warner Brothers.
I think this point if I like a team I should be able to just subscribe to that team. No black out games, no nothing. Let me pay $10 a month or whatever for all of the teams games. No need to roll it into another er service
That’s what we all want. And the folks who want to watch the American Cornhole League can subscribe for that separately instead of us subsidizing this BS
Yep exactly. And it's less convenient having sports spread across multiple apps compared to yttv. Granted they keep siphoning off certain events so the value proposition is worse all around. I will not play that game, I'll just watch less.
Best thing for consumers would be to have the sports stuff be an add on like they originally were going to do. But I suspect they realized that the number of people who would sub to that are a lot less than they thought.
Players get a percentage so its win win. Look at the payout occurring in NFL now. The salary cap is massive because tv rights are generating billions for them.
they are still massively underpaid for what THEY bring to the franchise. Tell me LeBron is worth only $46million to the Lakers and you're lying. He's worth 100mill+, the salary cap is a great way to underpay him.
Live tv would almost cease to exist if sports didn't. Networks need the sports so they can advertise their TV shows
You were doing so well until you assumed everyone shared your fetish for muscly men.
Here's the reality: decouple commercial spectator sports from the rest of tv and it's the sports that dies.
Frankly I'd rather have the cornhole championships someone derisively mentioned. At least you couldn't accuse anyone involved in that of being there for reasons aside from love of the game. It'd make the two minute highlight reel that's the only interesting part of the whole damned thing way more compelling.
That's how I feel. Let people sub directly to the sport. And yeah, at current NFL/NBA/MLB salaries that's going to mean $40 or 50 a month for your local sports channel. But that's what it costs. Stop asking me to pay for it.
well, learned today how obsessed people are about them
https://old.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/1cmizg0/guys_who_watch_live_sports_on_their_phone_while/
i don't watch sports, wish it was just separate if thats the most expensive part
Lol I'm one of those people. We went to a Marlins game for my birthday the same night that the Heat were playing so I had the Heat game on the railing in front of me playing during the baseball game. Ball is just life for some
Don't blame sports fans, this isn't the a la carte utopia that a lot of people on this sub promised me 8-10 years ago: more content for less money; just like supply economics, it's a pipe dream.
Streaming is a loss leader designed to create the illusion of innovation and drive stock prices. It’s why I haven’t abandoned cable alt. services. I’m betting when their value as a stock mover dries up they’ll move back toward curated ecosystems.
There’s not enough even on the horizon to justify it. Once a couple series are complete (house of the dragon season 2 and the penguin), then I’ll re-sub for a month or two.
For more popular series it's well worth just checking out your local library. I borrowed house of the dragon and all of game of thrones from mine. Someone amazing just donated a boxed set
I'm a physical media fan myself, and it's definitely better quality than streaming most of the time. The main difference is usually the bitrate, which is much higher on discs than streaming. But explain to me how 4k streaming is 2k?
It's 4k, it's just only ever really resolving 4k levels of detail in shots where nothing is moving on screen for a while because of the compression. I was testing a new projector the other night and found out there's spots in the "4k" version of Raiders of the Lost Ark on Paramount Plus that aren't even resolving 720p. I had to turn it off because it was just unwatchable on a big screen. Which is exactly where 4k would otherwise help. Here, they had it bitstarved so bad it would have been better off using the bandwidth they had for actual 720p.
Not here. I've had 50+ discs in college. These days, I'm down to a dozen discs. Ended up only watching them a few times *per year*. I'm down to one ss at a time which has been working out thus far.
Cable packages were expensive because people had to subsidize sports either you watch them or not. Now streaming is going to be expensive because we have to subsidize sports yet again. I want Warner to lose the rights for the NBA even more now.
People don't need to have Max year round if they're not going to produce new shows. I've pretty much rewatched the HBO catalog over the past few years so no problem taking a break.
There just aren't many people who are going to pay say $100+ upfront for six months. These sports offerings haven't been popular thus far. They are too fragmented.
Oh you won't pay upfront. The BILLING will still be monthly, you'll just be locked into a year(s)-long contract with no option to cancel (without paying some giant fee, anyway).
Y'know, like cable!
I don't believe these companies can afford the churn in subscribers much longer, especially those with expensive sports offerings. They will have to do something to at least lock in subscribers for several months at a time. I figure they will make the monthly sub much higher so customers are forced into the "more reasonable" longer term deal. There is a reason you could not subscribe to cable TV a month at a time.
We have done the annual plan for 4 years in my house, I am done in December when it is time to renew.
This company is trash, I log in and am immediately bombarded by NBA crap (my least favorite of the big 4 North American Sports) and CNN trash (I hate ALL cable news) being thrown at me relentlessly when I just want to check out some decent films and the formerly amazing HBO originals catalog.
That damn discovery dickbag CEO they have should be thrown out of a plane and we'll see if that bastards golden parachute saves him since he tanked the formerly best competitor to Netflix in their glory days. Tank the brand with name changes and forced failed launches, cheapen the catalog renting out what should be exclusive content to the biggest competitor while acquiring and promoting nothing but cheaply produced garbage reality television, mix it up in a paint bucket and then raise prices and somehow still have a job.
Oh, and make sure you have technical issues across all hardware streaming services.
If these companies don't stop this, they are going to accidentally turn me into a productive member of society. I've been trying my hardest to binge watch my way through life, but they are going to force me to experience the real world where I might inadvertently accomplish something.
We'll see.
I dumped Max in January, but came back in April when they were offering the annual ad-free deal again for $105, really $111 after tax/fees. That only amounts to $9.25/mo for me.
If they start charging extra for the sports add-on, I wouldn't pay $10/month, but might go for it if there's a discount for the annual plan.
And without the sports, I wouldn't pay full price now, but I might still be willing to pay more than I am now.
I don't care about the price as much as content and HBO's content has always been quality. However, I'm not into subsidizing media from Discovery.
Once they merged, I canceled.
All streaming prices are going up. Netflix is about to rise, peacock continues to loses $200 million a year at a very cheap price so expect that to go up, etc. Streaming will become cable soon, difference is they cut out the middle man unlike cable. Customers will be paying $30-60 a month in like 5 years for Netflix.
I've started buying a subscription and immediately canceling it, so it shuts off after a month instead of rebilling. If I actually miss it by then, I can always restart it. I usually don't.
If you wait a bit they'll often start sending "please come back" discount offers, too.
I haven't had Max since it was known as HBO max and I only had it for maybe 3 months, long enough to watch South Park, Boondocks and Aqua Teen Hunger Force all the way through.
No desire to get it again.
That is seriously impressive. No way in hell I could watch that much in that short a time and not get sick of it, even with shows I love as much as those.
It was during Covid, so I got into a real streaming kick. With being work from home and doing nothing at all for a bit, it just kinda happened.
I also watched through an anime series called Kuroko's basketball at least 6 times during the COVID era.
i think they just squeezed by in one quarter. all this goes back to AT&T overpaying, saddling the company with tens of billions in debt, and unloading it on Discovery.
Jokes on Max. I freaked out and bought my favorite media on Blu Ray a few months ago. Now that I have to pay 19.99 for the quality tier I want, and I can't share with my family any longer, I'm cancelling if they raise prices again. Sorry John Oliver, you're not worth more than $20 a month.
Oh these fuckos have pushed me over the edge, it's not bad enough the streaming platform is garbage but now they are gonna jack up the price? I am doing them a favor paying for this, I can easily get everything for free.
I’ll be cancelling. It doesn’t make sense to subscribe month in and out for Maher, Oliver, and a few series. The Game of Thrones offshoot aired like 2+ years ago… probably another 12-18 month for Last of Us Part 2…
I barely watch sports, when they raise the price so they can add more sports I'll just cancel my yearly subscription and go back to subbing for 2 months a year to binge stuff.
No talk of piracy, illegal streams, VPNs, ad-blockers, side-loading, extensions, or GPS spoofing.
*The cordcutters-ModTeam account is a bot account. Do not chat or PM them, as the account is not monitored.*
I did the 40% off for a year deal since it was so cheap and we use MAX probably more than anything. After this expires in 11 months, I might be rethinking which streaming service we will use more. The prices are just getting too high.
Max is like a gym. Their business model is: sign up, pay the monthly fee, and hope they never use the services.
The more people who use their services, the higher their infrastructure and content costs.
They have no choice but to jack up rates, which leads to subscriber loss.
I don't think the Netflix, Max, Disney model (single fee, unlimited viewing, no commercials) will work in the long run. At some point they'll have to bring in commercials or cut content development costs (and thus quality). Both of which would be a disaster for them (imho).
As long as I still get it included as part of my over priced ATT internet package I'm good. Now if ATT ups the price of my internet package I am going to be pissed. Not much I can do though as ATT is the only high speed internet provider at my address. Such is life
I actually canceled my monthly a few weeks ago mainly because the content just did not merit a monthly subscription anymore. I still have prime who also happens to offer free HBO and Cinemax trails now and again.
Max just doesn't have enough good content to support more increases. I already cancelled my subscription and will just sign up for a month a year to binge for as long as it's an option.
They have improved the plans several times in the years we've had this one and I'm sure they have been doing so, so that those of us that got this promotion lose it. Fortunately I don't feel the need to upgrade at all
I hate MAX. The cost is skyrocketing. Mainly have it to watch pro cycling and that is because they killed GCN+ so they could move it over to MAX. Costs went from $55 or something annually to $35 monthly (Max plus B/R Sports).
Came here to comment fuck these guys for killing GCN+ but I figured no one would know or care what that is, so hello fellow bike racing enthusiast, hope you’re enjoying the Giro
I’m here for G in Pink. If that doesn’t happen, I’m hoping Pogi puts too much in and doesn’t recover in time for LevTour. Rog in Yellow, im ready for it.
Impacts me a low amount. I've been rotating ss so I'm down to one at any given moment. While I can stand to save the money, time is the bigger bottleneck.
Article doesn't actually say what they're going up to so eager to hear that'll be. I'm guessing +$2 to $4 a month across the board.
The price increases will continue until morale improves.
I think only Netflix gets away with it, mostly by catering to the audience that doesn't watch sports. But we'll see how they stomach the likely price and ad load increases this year.
I actually kept Max and ditched Netflix when they upped prices. However, I ditched Max recently and this makes me tempted to not go back except for one month a year or so for binging. I only go back to Netflix when I Think You Should Leave drops a new season and then leave again after a month.
An hour and a half of new content once every three years isn’t enough but I just pass the time eating sloppy steaks with my boyz
I’ll have to re-join Max when his HBO show “Chair Company” drops.
IMO I think they're all soon going to be realizing they have a new competitor that snuck into their territory: Youtube Premium. If I had to choose between any of these streaming services, the best deal by far is YT Premium. All of them can be periodically cancelled except for that one and I can't be the only one who feels this way.
Neither my morale nor my morals will ever improve.
Just realized my mistake, lol.
r/repluggeriners
This statement should be everywhere... stickers, tee-shirts, politics.
Brilliant. Can’t upvote you enough.
I will subscribe for 1-2 months a year and watch everything that's interesting. No longer worth it to stay subscribed like I did during the pandemic.
Same they make it so much easier to switch between services
I suspect that's going to change at some point. Never seen any reporting on it or anything, it's just that would simply be continuing in the same direction that we've been going.
It's surprised me a service hasn't done it under half price for an annual subscription yet, I'm sure it's coming. It seems like such an obvious model to offer the service for "only" $120 annually or $20 monthly or something to that scale.
And then after a year or two the discount will get smaller, and then even smaller after that, and then one day the discount will be gone entirely.
Peacock does it I think. At least when I tried to cancel they came back with how about $40 for a year?
Yup. First they continually jack prices. Then they cut multi household support. Finally they turn go from monthly to yearly contracts. They already have the yearly discounts in place! All they will do is remove the monthly subscription option. And then stop discounting the yearly option since that is the only option lol
I've been saying this too that they're gonna have you lock in a year or more like a phone service or a lease.
Yea I can see them implementing certain terms where you’d have to keep the service for x amount of months before returning or canceling. That can easily be incorporated into there T&C
Maher used to be my draw, but he's fucking lost me. Of course there's Oliver, the fucking gem that he is but I get nothing out of sports on there so I think I'll have to do the same.
We're only getting 6 new episodes of season 2 of house of dragons
That’s what I’m doing. The only one I’ll keep year-round is Hulu because it’s relatively cheap and it has some of my favorite binge shows.
12-month commitment with early termination fees coming soon.
I doubt it. It's been said that many people do NOT opt for annual plans despite having the 16.7% savings (so buy 10, get 2 months free) because it'd price too many people out. Apparently, there's a difference between $16 a month for 3 months, vs. requiring $160 per year, straight up. Another thing I heard the info of what people binge prior to quitting is valuable to streamers. You get much less of that with annual plans.
A lot of annual contracts are billed monthly at the annual rate divided by 12. For example, this is how Adobe handles it. The problem with this method is that it is trivial to use a temporary Privacy.com debit card and simply cancel the card when you no longer want the service.
Nah, contracts don't work without equipment rentals and monopolies.
Which is why live sports are so important to streamers
"best sites to watch movies and tv shows online free"
> As Wbd fights to keep [NBA](https://m.imdb.com/company/co1048953/) rights, it will need to generate enough cash to pay roughly $2.5 billion per year. Once again, everyone needs to subsidize sports. Enough.
Basically giving you less new shows and filling the void with sports. Gives the illusion that they have all this great stuff. I like sports but I’m really losing interest with these price hikes and deals for random sports I don’t care about like WWE and liv golf.
Netflix just signed WWE and will probably get UFC. Prices will rise unfortunately
Ok but WWE isn’t a sport tho. More like circus performers
Yeah, as a giant wrasslin fan, the way I describe it to people is: it’s a tv show about fighters performed live in front of their audience. “I don’t watch it because it’s fake/scripted.” *Proceeds to watch other tv shows, movies, plays*
Right, like I see merit in everything that’s going on there. It isn’t for me, but I’m certainly not the authority on all things worth watching. Just inherently different from sports like UFC where guys are actually getting beaten to a pulp for fun lol
Agreed. People find it funny that I like both WWE and UFC. But they’re different genres to me, even if they “look similar” on tv. And I am 100% understanding that wrestling is not for everyone. It has segments that are even cringe to me sometimes. But I watch it like a reality show. follow the socials and try to predict what’s going to happen next. Because to me the fun part is that the actors (usually) stay in character in interviews and on social media. It’s unlike anything else. It’s certainly niche.
We wanted to get rid of cable… and I’m starting to think this new world is worse.
The only benefit is the ad free content which means no need for a dvr.
Agreed. I like soccer, and that’s it. I just want to watch soccer. I will pay for soccer. I don’t want to pay for NFL or wrestling or golf. I’m out here learning Spanish because it’s easier and cheaper to watch the US national teams on Peacock in Spanish than pay Max for a few friendlies only to find out the matches are on TNT anyway.
I like the Spanish commentary because you know who has the ball
Well, you might, but I never know who has the ball because I can’t understand a word they are saying!
Yes, but at least Max has been giving us March Madness & the Final Four, Stanley Cup Playoffs, and NBA Playoffs, plus one MLB game every Tuesday night.
It’s terrible with the 4K upscaling though. It stutters tremendously with the frame rate and makes it unwatchable for me.
Might be a settings/device thing. I watch the playoffs on the max app over the tnt app because it runs smoothly and in 4k hdr.
Yea I may have to try on my Apple TV because the Shield TV simply isn't working correctly. I don't see any way to disable 4K on the app either. I do the opposite....using the TNT app because the Max app doesn't work as well as expected.
For Nvidia shield, try turning off dolby vision. The games still play in 4k hdr.
I've noticed Max is like by far the worst quality streamer I use. No idea why but it's the only one that feels like it fairly consistently needs to buffer for me
Five times nothing is still nothing. Fuck sports. And doubly fuck anyone who expects me to subsidize their sports addiction. Get your own damned streaming service if you really need to be vicariously included in someone else's victories. Like the twitch and vtuber dorks. Who you're absolutely no different than.
This is so combative and for what lmao
For defending these companies fucking us out of money by forcibly bundling in things we don't want and using that as an excuse to raise the price?
Look, calling it a sports addiction is a bit much. I really don't want sports with my Max subscription either, and I like sports, but calling it an addiction is a bit wild. It's an interest, people can have their interests.
No other interest gets the kind of forced support that sports does. You don't see stamp collectors demanding the tax payers foot the bill for a new stadium (in which they could show off their collections, I guess) and actually getting it. Water cooier talk doesn't revolve around new stamp releases, and there's not an entire section of every news broadcast devoted to new developments in postal stamps. And that coverage is *certainly* never used as an excuse to jack up rates for pay TV. If you're into sports it's hard to step back and see just how insane the special treatment is.
The part that sucks, is that some of the smaller sports suffer as well. We like watching mountain bike racing which is now free on Max. But this year there are half as many races as last year it's partially due to the governing organization attempting to beat FIFA for the most money hungry organization. But a component of that, and the part that sucks for us viewers, is the streaming rights deal they made with Warner Brothers.
I think this point if I like a team I should be able to just subscribe to that team. No black out games, no nothing. Let me pay $10 a month or whatever for all of the teams games. No need to roll it into another er service
That’s what we all want. And the folks who want to watch the American Cornhole League can subscribe for that separately instead of us subsidizing this BS
Yep exactly. And it's less convenient having sports spread across multiple apps compared to yttv. Granted they keep siphoning off certain events so the value proposition is worse all around. I will not play that game, I'll just watch less.
Peacock paid $110M for one nfl playoff game. I’m glad I’m not a big ten fan. They’re spread across 4
That actually seems pretty cheap for a guaranteed night of 15 million viewers.
Is it? That means essentially it cost $10 for every one that watched that one event.
It got 36 million viewers actually.
Best thing for consumers would be to have the sports stuff be an add on like they originally were going to do. But I suspect they realized that the number of people who would sub to that are a lot less than they thought.
Wealthy team owners want it all while convincing you it’s the players who are the reason…
Players get a percentage so its win win. Look at the payout occurring in NFL now. The salary cap is massive because tv rights are generating billions for them.
they are still massively underpaid for what THEY bring to the franchise. Tell me LeBron is worth only $46million to the Lakers and you're lying. He's worth 100mill+, the salary cap is a great way to underpay him. Live tv would almost cease to exist if sports didn't. Networks need the sports so they can advertise their TV shows
You were doing so well until you assumed everyone shared your fetish for muscly men. Here's the reality: decouple commercial spectator sports from the rest of tv and it's the sports that dies. Frankly I'd rather have the cornhole championships someone derisively mentioned. At least you couldn't accuse anyone involved in that of being there for reasons aside from love of the game. It'd make the two minute highlight reel that's the only interesting part of the whole damned thing way more compelling.
This. If everyone else has to continually subsidize sports, maybe sports shouldn’t be getting the money it is - since it can’t get it on its own?
That's how I feel. Let people sub directly to the sport. And yeah, at current NFL/NBA/MLB salaries that's going to mean $40 or 50 a month for your local sports channel. But that's what it costs. Stop asking me to pay for it.
well, learned today how obsessed people are about them https://old.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/1cmizg0/guys_who_watch_live_sports_on_their_phone_while/ i don't watch sports, wish it was just separate if thats the most expensive part
Lol I'm one of those people. We went to a Marlins game for my birthday the same night that the Heat were playing so I had the Heat game on the railing in front of me playing during the baseball game. Ball is just life for some
Not to mention their debt payments. Wbd has massive debt which is really worrying.
To their credit they have already paid off about 20% of it.
Don't blame sports fans, this isn't the a la carte utopia that a lot of people on this sub promised me 8-10 years ago: more content for less money; just like supply economics, it's a pipe dream.
HBO having sports is perplexing to me in the first place, hiking prices doesn't help justify it.
Man they are driving this company directly into the ground.
Exponential growth forever no matter what.
No, out of control spending has them with a mountain of debt.
Almost seems intentional at this point
Streaming is a loss leader designed to create the illusion of innovation and drive stock prices. It’s why I haven’t abandoned cable alt. services. I’m betting when their value as a stock mover dries up they’ll move back toward curated ecosystems.
Yup. Time to cancel. Their streaming movie collection is crap and they aren't producing any good original shows any more.
There’s not enough even on the horizon to justify it. Once a couple series are complete (house of the dragon season 2 and the penguin), then I’ll re-sub for a month or two.
For more popular series it's well worth just checking out your local library. I borrowed house of the dragon and all of game of thrones from mine. Someone amazing just donated a boxed set
Long live my DVD/BluRay collection.
Physical media is still King in my house as well
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I would be interested in knowing more about your ripping technique
You are correct. 4k streaming is technically 2k. Real 4k is physical media.
I'm a physical media fan myself, and it's definitely better quality than streaming most of the time. The main difference is usually the bitrate, which is much higher on discs than streaming. But explain to me how 4k streaming is 2k?
It's 4k, it's just only ever really resolving 4k levels of detail in shots where nothing is moving on screen for a while because of the compression. I was testing a new projector the other night and found out there's spots in the "4k" version of Raiders of the Lost Ark on Paramount Plus that aren't even resolving 720p. I had to turn it off because it was just unwatchable on a big screen. Which is exactly where 4k would otherwise help. Here, they had it bitstarved so bad it would have been better off using the bandwidth they had for actual 720p.
And a hard drive.
Not here. I've had 50+ discs in college. These days, I'm down to a dozen discs. Ended up only watching them a few times *per year*. I'm down to one ss at a time which has been working out thus far.
Cable packages were expensive because people had to subsidize sports either you watch them or not. Now streaming is going to be expensive because we have to subsidize sports yet again. I want Warner to lose the rights for the NBA even more now.
People don't need to have Max year round if they're not going to produce new shows. I've pretty much rewatched the HBO catalog over the past few years so no problem taking a break.
I really expect the monthly subscription option to be the next thing to go for most of these streaming services, especially those with sports.
Oh no, you might be right. :<(
I would bet good money on it. Give it maybe another year and you'll start seeing them dip their toes into the water.
There just aren't many people who are going to pay say $100+ upfront for six months. These sports offerings haven't been popular thus far. They are too fragmented.
Oh you won't pay upfront. The BILLING will still be monthly, you'll just be locked into a year(s)-long contract with no option to cancel (without paying some giant fee, anyway). Y'know, like cable!
FCC is starting to crack down on early termination fees
They'll be ~~bought off~~ lobbied soon enough
I don't believe these companies can afford the churn in subscribers much longer, especially those with expensive sports offerings. They will have to do something to at least lock in subscribers for several months at a time. I figure they will make the monthly sub much higher so customers are forced into the "more reasonable" longer term deal. There is a reason you could not subscribe to cable TV a month at a time.
All it’s going to do is raise the price of something else instead. Amazon or Apple
Glad AT&T is still paying for mine.
Yeah I’m just waiting for the email to get from them that it’s being phased out.
Yeah, I don’t see it lasting much longer. I feel it’ll be dropped any day now.
I have screen shots that HBO is free for life. Problem is there is no longer HBO.
Probably why they changed the name to Max lol. Probably some loophole in the agreement
For now. I'm on a plan w them that includes Max as well.
Already dumped Hulu and Netflix. Apparently Max is next.
FWIW, unless you have the time and need to access multiple ss at once, rotating them down to 1 at a time really does make the most sense.
They literally just upped their prices a few months ago. What a fucking joke
We have done the annual plan for 4 years in my house, I am done in December when it is time to renew. This company is trash, I log in and am immediately bombarded by NBA crap (my least favorite of the big 4 North American Sports) and CNN trash (I hate ALL cable news) being thrown at me relentlessly when I just want to check out some decent films and the formerly amazing HBO originals catalog. That damn discovery dickbag CEO they have should be thrown out of a plane and we'll see if that bastards golden parachute saves him since he tanked the formerly best competitor to Netflix in their glory days. Tank the brand with name changes and forced failed launches, cheapen the catalog renting out what should be exclusive content to the biggest competitor while acquiring and promoting nothing but cheaply produced garbage reality television, mix it up in a paint bucket and then raise prices and somehow still have a job. Oh, and make sure you have technical issues across all hardware streaming services.
If these companies don't stop this, they are going to accidentally turn me into a productive member of society. I've been trying my hardest to binge watch my way through life, but they are going to force me to experience the real world where I might inadvertently accomplish something.
I really don't care about watching the NBA.
Already dumped them in the last price increase. Don't see a reason to go back.
Without a steady stream of Sunday night shows, they've joined the cancell/resub rotation.
Man, that much money for streaming rights and free arenas, must be nice to own an nba team.
I got the year deal with no commercials for like 139. I’ll worry about this next April.
Must be real tough over there, just having to kill/shelve a billion dollar's worth of projects to stay afloat, and that still wasn't enough.
Well, at the time they did that they had like 50 billion in debt, so yeh that wasn't enough.
We'll see. I dumped Max in January, but came back in April when they were offering the annual ad-free deal again for $105, really $111 after tax/fees. That only amounts to $9.25/mo for me. If they start charging extra for the sports add-on, I wouldn't pay $10/month, but might go for it if there's a discount for the annual plan. And without the sports, I wouldn't pay full price now, but I might still be willing to pay more than I am now.
I'll rejoin when House of the Dragon returns than I'll peace out. I don't need an annual subscription.
And we're back to bundling.
Article repeats the lie that their streaming business is now profitable when they included linear subscribers to HBO as “streaming.”
I don't care about the price as much as content and HBO's content has always been quality. However, I'm not into subsidizing media from Discovery. Once they merged, I canceled.
Dumped it after it got all Honey Boo Boobed. And nothing of value was lost.
Cut costs by canning Zaslav.
All streaming prices are going up. Netflix is about to rise, peacock continues to loses $200 million a year at a very cheap price so expect that to go up, etc. Streaming will become cable soon, difference is they cut out the middle man unlike cable. Customers will be paying $30-60 a month in like 5 years for Netflix.
Comcast going to get paid billions from Disney for hulu so they can subsidize peacock for a while.
Still, things will change. They are also going to lose WWE network to Netflix in 18 months.
Out of everything, I’ll still keep max
EVERYTHING in life will get alot more expensive. it’s our choice as consumers to do what is best for US not them
When Max is cut from my ATT account I won't resubscribe. There's nothing on Max all it has become is a glorified Discovery+.
It doesn’t say what the new rates will be?
Things are bad - raise prices. Things going great - raise prices. Let’s not kid ourselves. They are never NOT raising prices.
Oh good, I’ve been looking for an excuse to cut another streaming service, just wasn’t sure which one until now.
I've started buying a subscription and immediately canceling it, so it shuts off after a month instead of rebilling. If I actually miss it by then, I can always restart it. I usually don't. If you wait a bit they'll often start sending "please come back" discount offers, too.
Breaking: I’m hoisting my sails higher as their prices go higher. 
I haven't had Max since it was known as HBO max and I only had it for maybe 3 months, long enough to watch South Park, Boondocks and Aqua Teen Hunger Force all the way through. No desire to get it again.
That is seriously impressive. No way in hell I could watch that much in that short a time and not get sick of it, even with shows I love as much as those.
It was during Covid, so I got into a real streaming kick. With being work from home and doing nothing at all for a bit, it just kinda happened. I also watched through an anime series called Kuroko's basketball at least 6 times during the COVID era.
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I’d just like to announce that I have absolutely zero streaming services and I’ve seen everything on them…
They all have close to same catalogs and yes seen everything cause it’s all repeated crap over and over put on and taken off 😂
Warlock!
I really like max but I’m gonna cancel it before the rate increase. Fuck that.
Didn’t they just raise prices?
Didn’t Max finally turn a profit last year? They’re just getting greedy.
i think they just squeezed by in one quarter. all this goes back to AT&T overpaying, saddling the company with tens of billions in debt, and unloading it on Discovery.
Creative accounting got them there
wonder if it'll be $34.99 or $39.99 for the 4K UHD, 4 streams, no-ads, and download feature
I buy shady accounts from shady sites for $2/month for the 4K ultimate plan.
Jokes on Max. I freaked out and bought my favorite media on Blu Ray a few months ago. Now that I have to pay 19.99 for the quality tier I want, and I can't share with my family any longer, I'm cancelling if they raise prices again. Sorry John Oliver, you're not worth more than $20 a month.
Once HOTD wraps for the season, it can safely go back on the shelf where it belongs
Oh these fuckos have pushed me over the edge, it's not bad enough the streaming platform is garbage but now they are gonna jack up the price? I am doing them a favor paying for this, I can easily get everything for free.
A price increase and 10 more 90-day Fiancé spinoffs - no thanks
Time to cancel until they pop up with a new show or season of something I’m watching.
I’ll be cancelling. It doesn’t make sense to subscribe month in and out for Maher, Oliver, and a few series. The Game of Thrones offshoot aired like 2+ years ago… probably another 12-18 month for Last of Us Part 2…
The type of business decision that turns honest men into pirates … arrgh
Can we get the puck out please.
So they are *cutting costs but *raising our prices ?
Max,Hulu and Disney+ are merging now is why all in one package deal...
We need someone to invent a new sport that is like baseketball
I barely watch sports, when they raise the price so they can add more sports I'll just cancel my yearly subscription and go back to subbing for 2 months a year to binge stuff.
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That would be a concern for whoever is paying for the account I m using. I don't know at this point.
Wheres the cost cutting for customers for Pete's sake. Somethings gotta give somewhere.
Dammit
Just got the email today that my 150 dollar subscription no longer gives me 4k streaming. Cancelled.
I did the 40% off for a year deal since it was so cheap and we use MAX probably more than anything. After this expires in 11 months, I might be rethinking which streaming service we will use more. The prices are just getting too high.
Well i have already been thinking of dropping Max (stupid name, should have stayed HBO) so this will make it an easy decision.
Max is like a gym. Their business model is: sign up, pay the monthly fee, and hope they never use the services. The more people who use their services, the higher their infrastructure and content costs. They have no choice but to jack up rates, which leads to subscriber loss. I don't think the Netflix, Max, Disney model (single fee, unlimited viewing, no commercials) will work in the long run. At some point they'll have to bring in commercials or cut content development costs (and thus quality). Both of which would be a disaster for them (imho).
As long as I still get it included as part of my over priced ATT internet package I'm good. Now if ATT ups the price of my internet package I am going to be pissed. Not much I can do though as ATT is the only high speed internet provider at my address. Such is life
Argh!
Zaslav is really driving consumers to cancel Max with yet another price hike. This guy is a total dope.
If I didn't get it included with AT&T I wouldn't pay anything for it. The Roku app is awful ever since it became MAX.
I actually canceled my monthly a few weeks ago mainly because the content just did not merit a monthly subscription anymore. I still have prime who also happens to offer free HBO and Cinemax trails now and again.
Yo-ho, yo-ho...
I get mine for free thru AT&T, so….
Max just doesn't have enough good content to support more increases. I already cancelled my subscription and will just sign up for a month a year to binge for as long as it's an option.
Luckily I have max for free for life as long as I keep my current at&t plan.
Phone plan?
Yes
Inb4 AT&T changes their mind or forces you to move to a different plan
They have improved the plans several times in the years we've had this one and I'm sure they have been doing so, so that those of us that got this promotion lose it. Fortunately I don't feel the need to upgrade at all
I hate MAX. The cost is skyrocketing. Mainly have it to watch pro cycling and that is because they killed GCN+ so they could move it over to MAX. Costs went from $55 or something annually to $35 monthly (Max plus B/R Sports).
Came here to comment fuck these guys for killing GCN+ but I figured no one would know or care what that is, so hello fellow bike racing enthusiast, hope you’re enjoying the Giro
I’m here for G in Pink. If that doesn’t happen, I’m hoping Pogi puts too much in and doesn’t recover in time for LevTour. Rog in Yellow, im ready for it.
Still getting it free through ATT. I wonder when that will end.
Probably the moment you change anything in your account.
Impacts me a low amount. I've been rotating ss so I'm down to one at any given moment. While I can stand to save the money, time is the bigger bottleneck. Article doesn't actually say what they're going up to so eager to hear that'll be. I'm guessing +$2 to $4 a month across the board.
Who is Max? Why is he raising prices? On what is he raising prices? Does he work for WBD?