Max users grandfathered into $15.99 ad-free plan lose 4K, HDR next month::Number of devices you can stream from simultaneously is decreasing, too.
“Grandfathered in” but they’re changing terms.
Fuckers can’t even be honest about what “grandfathered in” means.
also, my $15.99 plan went up to $18.99 in the last year or so anyway
2023 really has been the year of pushing boundaries
Corporate greed is destroying any illusions of a “middle class”, that’s for sure. It’s just all us poor folks and a few rich assholes at this point.
Cloud-serfdom
Never existed to begin with
All the mental gymnastics they do just to avoid outright increaseing prices…
Legally i dont think they could get away with charging more without explicit permission from the account holder. As a business move when they want to generally increase prices, this is basically the only correct move.
That’s how it should work, but many services have been increasing pricing with email warnings for the last decade.
My friend has PS+ and it has multiplied in price for 3-month intervals without him ever confirming the new price. He’s had it for a decade without touching it and genuinely wouldn’t know he’s being charged so much more than he agreed to if I didn’t tell him.
This is in Australia which normally has better protections for consumers, but it’s possible we don’t in this case as it’s happened to me with every subscription I’ve ever had they send a n email and then start charging an amount I never agreed to.
The only exception was AEW+ via Fite.tv which was in USD, that was the only time I ever lost my sub when the price changed, which given it went up +40% I was glad they handled it respectfully.
Yeah this is the key. Price hikes require notification and time for the user to opt out or cancel. Removing features suffers from minimal legal regulation.
Ways to make profit: charge more or give the customer less 🫠
My Disney price went up and I didn’t get the email warning. No message or warning in app. After having their support tell me “too bad” I just cancelled it and Hulu.
I’ve been meaning to look into setting up my own home streaming solution like jellyfin or whatever but I’m very lazy. These companies are going to force me off my ass.
It’s real easy. Just like what plex used to be. Do it. Mullvad, jellyfin, arrr,
Is Plex not it anymore? I’m not really privy to details but my wife runs a Plex server that we can access from anywhere. It’s free and we each have our own profiles. Even my parents have a profile.
Plex has made it clear they’re trying to go “legit”, focusing on features like their FAST service for free movies and TV, instead of addressing issues and features for the normal video hoarder user they originally catered to.
If you have Plex already, and especially if you paid for a lifetime membership, it still works fine. But if you’re new, I wouldn’t recommend it. Emby is also ok, but I’d definitely recommend trying Jellyfin first.
Plex is just fine now but it’s closed source and has some features locked behind a paywall. I bought a lifetime license long before Jellyfin ever existed so I’m still using it without any issue for the past couple years.
My shit won’t stay logged in on my server. No reason for it. I’ve Googled my self to death over it.
Installed jellyfin, works first time, haven’t looked back since.
Imo they’re both really good, and I like running both in parallel because some of my friends still prefer the Plex apps and UX (for example in both you can click on an actor to see other things they are in, but in jellyfin it’s limited to what you have downloaded. Plex’s optional discover feature means it knows about everything you don’t have too, so you can click on an actor and see stuff that’s not downloaded, watchlist something, then let overseerr send it to the *arr apps)
The rest of my setup would be identical if I was just running Plex or jellyfin and when they idle they don’t use any CPU, so I don’t see much of a reason not to run both and let people decide which one they like. They also both use quicksync, though I had to change some settings manually in jellyfin to get it to work. I just point them both to the same media folder and it just works.
For an easier alternative, check out stremio + torrentio + real-debrid.
Once you set it all up its pretty much automated.
Sigh, they really want people to learn how to use torrents it seems.
This year I had 6 streaming services (Netflix, Disney, Apple, Crave (HBO in Canada), Prime and Paramount)
I turned off Netflix for the first time in 12 years this month. Disney will go soon. I probably won’t renew Crave again this year unless they have another big black Friday deal. If Prime charges more on top of their regular service I won’t be upgrading. Apple is still cheap enough and I can trade PC points (Canadian loyalty points for a chain of pharmacies and grocery stores). That just leaves Paramount which is all my mother-in-law watches.
I’ve got the full arr system up and running and I’ll be buying a couple 20tb hard drives if they go on sale during black Friday
Can you use PC Optimum points to buy gift cards? That’s a great idea!
Nope, there’s a specific promotion in the PC app where you can exchange 14000 points for a month of Apple TV plus. You might need to be a PC insider subscriber to get it, not sure
I got an email from disney+ saying my yearly plan is going from $119 CAD to $149.99 CAD on Dec 7th
My actual plan expires near the end of 2024 due to a promo I have right now which paused my yearly plan that I already paid for.
We wanted to let you know that effective November 1, 2023, your plan will be called Disney+ Premium and will increase in price from your current price of $119.99 to $149.99 per year. The price adjustment will take effect on 07 December 2023. Your payment method on file will be charged unless you cancel your subscription before then.
The above makes it sound like they’re going to charge me the difference if I don’t cancel, and not honor their yearly price I already paid.
There is a bug in Disney’s system, I bought the promo where you got a year for about 10 months of payments when they released in my country. They have now failed to re-charge my card for the second year in a row and i still got access. 😊
This why you should sail the seas
Yup. They delayed it a few months so their dumbass “MaX” rebrand wouldn’t catch the flack.
I have Max included with my home internet plan. I use it so little that if I was paying $16/month for it, I could probably drop it and just buy Blu-Rays for any movies or shows that I would watch on there and still be ahead at the end of the year. Plus then I’d have media to keep for when they inevitably delist it on the streaming catalog to save syndication fees.
They also lowered the number of simultaneous access from 3 to 2. I cancelled my subscription immediately. They can make those profits off someone else.
I’ve got a feeling that we’re gonna get to the point where streaming services only allow you to watch your shows on a single device, must have a certain ISP and that ISP needed changes hourly, prices will be $100+ but you get 5 seconds of show per 50 ads, Mercury must be in retrograde, and you must provide proof you are watching every single second and if you blink, your account is banished to the ad realm. Just for the sake of profit
Drink a verification can
Damn even Canadian cellular networks don’t do that
If these streaming platforms had an “I don’t care about all of this HDR bullshit, 1080p is fine for me” level at a few bucks cheaper, I would take it every time.
HDR isn’t bullshit but it’s a waste if you don’t have a TV that supports it.
At this point I’d rather stick to my dumb 1080p tv than upgrade and get stuck with awful smart tv software and ads
I bought an LG OLED and then just blocked it from communicating over the WAN so it works like a normal dumb TV.
It’s as simple as not connecting your smart TV to the internet.
Plex supports 4k and HDR. Looks great on my OLED of which I never use it’s “smart” tv functionality. I’d sooner buy physical discs than ever subscribe to another streaming service.
It’s bullshit to me personally because the quality of 1080p is fine and higher quality images look good for about 1 minute and then I forget about it because I’m watching the show or movie. If it makes a big difference to you, fine, but it’s as unnecessary as 3D movies to me, which I also forget about once I’m invested in the film. It feels to me like things like ever-increasing resolution and 3D are gimmicks to make up for bad programming.
Before HDR, not even as far back as CRT TVs, just the 1080p era, was the spell ever broken because you were watching something and didn’t think the image was high enough quality? Because I absolutely cannot say I ever have.
It’s not the exact same thing, but I’ve definitely been drawn out of what I’m watching because of compression artifacts.
that you’re content with 1080p SDR doesn’t mean higher quality video is bullshit. However I will add that as video production quality has increased to make proper high quality UHD content, that has also increased the quality of the same content in 1080p SDR (in many cases). So depending on what you watch, the 1080p SDR content might already be of such quality that you don’t perceive a large difference between that and the UHD version because there isn’t, not just because you’re indifferent to it
I said it was bullshit to me. I also said if it’s important to you, fine.
If you’re fine with 1080p that’s fine. Most people definitely don’t notice the difference. That being said 2160p is a straightforward upgrade though, and if you have the right home theater hardware you can get a much crisper image with no compression artifacts at those higher resolutions and bitrates. If you don’t notice or care about those things then you can definitely save on streaming or storage costs by sticking with 1080p.
Yeah, all I’m saying is there should be a lower-cost tier for people who don’t notice the difference or don’t care about the difference or don’t even have a TV that can handle it.
But they would find a way to keep doing what they’re doing to keep profits up. They’d start putting ads in before the show started or something. Make other tiers and do just like what they’re doing here and move you into one that will cost more. You can’t pick a service & price without them fucking you over on price or service eventually. .
I’m sure they would, but it was a nice thought.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Max subscribers who were grandfathered into the streaming company’s cheapest ad-free plan are about to see their service get worse.
To get 4K, HDR10, and Dolby Vision streams, subscribers have to move up to Max’s Ultimate plan, which starts at $19.99/month.
Discovery warned people that the legacy plan would eventually go away when it merged Discovery+ and HBO Max in May.
The move could entice subscribers to pay the extra $4 for 4K and HDR streams.
Max has been better about offering 4K content than HBO had been in the past, though, subscribers may want to peruse the streaming service’s 4K library before deciding to pay more.
Subscribers could also opt to move to Max’s cheaper (starts at $9.99 per month) ad tier.
The original article contains 339 words, the summary contains 123 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yep. My sub expired recently and I didn’t renew. Inflated bs. Now I’ll just cycle streaming services. So dumb. Doing the same with Disney and their awful pricing.
