Do they really care anymore ?

[royarcher]

Yes it's me your favourite PITA with another off forum question
Ok hello now do the streaming services really care at the moment? I usually stream US. Services because let's face it when it comes to drama, horror or thrilling stuff, the USA rules.
Today I thought I would buy Amazon prime for a month or so and when I do this I use a VPN ( usually express VPN,s LA 3 Or Atlanta) via a Roku ultra streaming device from Australia. In the past all I had to do was make sure I had the VPN active and bob's your father's brother but not anymore. If I click on Amazon on my Roku device ( which goes through the VPN router / tunnel I get the home page of Amazon Australia which is crap but if I go on my phone or laptop and log in to amazon.com ( not Amazon com.au ) via a VPN and pay with the same credit card ( an au credit card obviously) I pay for and get US. Amazon prime. WTF is up with that.
I know you gurus know how to tweek the routers to convince every inquirie ( be it IP or DNS server inquiries) to believe that you are where you say you are even when your not and if you tell me how to do it I promise I will go away and stop asking dumb question

 

[Tech Junky]

Amazon is just really tight wads about this for content. I roll my VPN connection until I find an IP that works. Make a nire I'd it in a spreadsheet and then it works for awhile until they block it Nord changes their IPs frequently for this purpose. I've switched to mostly downloading the content instead because they're a pita and I have the license with membership if someone comes snooping are und like an IP troll. Regional content restrictions are part of the contract Amazon has with producers.

 

[royarcher]

Amazon is just really tight wads about this for content. I roll my VPN connection until I find an IP that works. Make a nire I'd it in a spreadsheet and then it works for awhile until they block it Nord changes their IPs frequently for this purpose. I've switched to mostly downloading the content instead because they're a pita and I have the license with membership if someone comes snooping are und like an IP troll. Regional content restrictions are part of the contract Amazon has with producers.

I hear you. They seem to have really tightened up recently. It used to be Netflix that was a pain in the UNO where but lately I never get the dredded error message ( you may be using a VPN or proxy server please disconnect it and try again) but I never see that anymore,on Netflix anyway.
Amazon seems to have taken Up the mantle though.
The difference between Amazon us and au is like chalk and cheese both for Content and price , for the US I pay almost $20 au for Australian Amazon I only pay $10 but it is not worth $1 . Just crappy d movies and a crap load of indian stuff. Ok if your a Hindu but I'm an atheist god damb it

 

[L&LD]

I solve this issue by choosing to be a consumer only when convenient to me. No VPN, no subscriptions, no hairpulling required.

I tried Netflix and in less than 3 weeks there was no content for me to see (I only want to see actual movies, series are less than useless to my erratic schedule and short attention span). I quickly found out that movies with a red 'N' on them were not worth watching either. Like bad books with no purpose or direction to them. I canceled Netflix, of course. Back to just picking up a good book when I have time to do so.

 

[machinist]

I quickly found out that movies with a red 'N' on them were not worth watching either. Like bad books with no purpose or direction to them.

This is part of the reason for their downfall. A lot of their programming in recent times have been more miss than hit. Most of their movies are pretty bad, IMHO. Yes, they have Stranger Things, which is a hit, as well as Squid Game. But other than that, man... I can see why they're losing subs.

I don't particularly blame them either. Must be close to impossible to compete with the monsters in the space, like Warner and Disney.

 

[Tech Junky]

They're all mostly junk for content most of the time anyway. The only reason Amazon retains value for me is shipping. When I'm testing things out they're quick to show up and no charge returns.

All of the services have some value though periodically when the release a new season of something you're interested in but most of the time it's pointless. Some cord cutters cycle subscriptions throughout the year based on what they're tracking for content. There's no reason to keep it active if you're not using it.

Using something like duckietv to keep track of things makes it easy to figure out when new seasons come along.

 

[L&LD]

Stranger Things and Squid Game. Great examples of what not to watch (for me).

 

[machinist]

Stranger Things and Squid Game. Great examples of what not to watch (for me).

I get it. Stranger Things had a strong first season, then got silly. Now it's a kids show, but with gore. Really strange (no pun intended).

I liked Squid Game, but then I very much like Korean films and series. Directors like Park Chan-wook (Old boy), Na Hong-jin (The Chaser) and Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) all very good, I think.

 

[heysoundude]

This is part of the reason for their downfall. A lot of their programming in recent times have been more miss than hit. Most of their movies are pretty bad, IMHO. Yes, they have Stranger Things, which is a hit, as well as Squid Game. But other than that, man... I can see why they're losing subs.

I don't particularly blame them either. Must be close to impossible to compete with the monsters in the space, like Warner and Disney.

Yes, those massive & deep back catalogs of the incumbents cover just about everything, so there's nothing relatively little new under the sun.
(I'm rather enjoying For All Mankind on AppleTV and The Undeclared War on Peacock. The twisting of history and perspective on current events are delicious to me)
Remember, Netflix disrupted the model that had been in place for a LOOOOOOONG time. (just like Napster did for the record companies) Now the incumbent Hollywood big guns have caught up, and are finally surpassing the upstart.
What's the next disruptive application of tech, or what's about to be released into the wild for the masses? That's where to put your money.

 

[Clark Griswald]

your favourite PITA

I'm personally hungry for a whole wheat PITA with lettuce, meats, etc

 

[RMerlin]

Geofencing content will have to die at one point, because it makes no sense in this day and age. For all the flaks we gave them, the music industry has been adapting much faster to the new online reality than the movie industry. They moved away from IP trolling 10+ years ago when they realized it was doing more negative backlash than anything. Now, you can easily purchase online music from a number of source, and they are all DRM-free. You also have plenty of "all-you-can-eat" products like Spotify and Tidal for people like me who listen to a lot of music. There's still work to be done there to ensure that artists get a more fair cut, but some of them have also adapted. Some go through Kickstarters to help them fund an album. I saw another artist provide a Paypal link in their Spotify profile, allowing their fans to directly send them money.

Meanwhile, the TV/movie industry is heavily locked into geofencing, DRM, online purchases that leave you without the purchased movie because the online service went down at one point, taking away all their DRM-locked content with them. They are dinosaurs.

The streaming services aren't really helping move forward either, as they should have. Everyone is launching their own 10-15$ a month online service now, which means that in the end, it will cost you more than your previous cable subscription to get access to all the content you might be interested in. The one positive there is that you can subscribe/cancel on a monthly basis based on what they publish. That's how I deal with Prime and Netflix personally, subscribing whenever they have a new series that interests me landing, and cancelling 1-2 months later once I've watched that and anything else that might have interested me at the time. The only two services I continually subscribe to are Spotify and Youtime Premium, because both of these I use on a daily basis.

 

[royarcher]

I get it. Stranger Things had a strong first season, then got silly. Now it's a kids show, but with gore. Really strange (no pun intended).

I liked Squid Game, but then I very much like Korean films and series. Directors like Park Chan-wook (Old boy), Na Hong-jin (The Chaser) and Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) all very good, I think.

Parasite was very good the handmaiden from Park Chan - wook is another ripper as is his other work Oldboy,Lady Vengeance &Stoker

 

[Yota]

Geofencing content will have to die at one point, because it makes no sense in this day and age.

The prohibitive cost of producing films is the reason why this doesn't happen yet.

The amount of time consumers play determines the revenue of the copyright owner, unfortunately, we don't have the time to "listen" to films every day like music.

 

[RMerlin]

The prohibitive cost of producing films is the reason why this doesn't happen yet.

The problem is purely a business model one. Studios strike distribution deals, and these deals are regional rather than global, hence the geofencing of content.

You want to drive down piracy? Stop doing regional launches. If I am a fan of "Supershow" and it launches 1 month earlier in the USA than in Canada, then the chances that I will pirate it rather than wait an extra month to get it through the local channels are fairly high.

 

[Yota]

The problem is purely a business model one. Studios strike distribution deals, and these deals are regional rather than global, hence the geofencing of content.

Yes, OTT platforms may not be able to buy a global distribution license for a movie because some regional distribution licenses for the movie have already been sold to other companies, or because they believe a movie only has a market in a specific region and do not need to buy a global distribution license.

It's not the best way for everyone, but for studios, OTT platforms, companies, it's probably the easiest way.

 

[Crimliar]

Am I in the wrong forum here? In many cases you don't need a VPN, just using a DNS Proxy/Smart DNS in the dominion of the service you want to access is enough. Obviously, there can be security concerns related to your searches though...

 

[royarcher]

I solve this issue by choosing to be a consumer only when convenient to me. No VPN, no subscriptions, no hairpulling required.

I tried Netflix and in less than 3 weeks there was no content for me to see (I only want to see actual movies, series are less than useless to my erratic schedule and short attention span). I quickly found out that movies with a red 'N' on them were not worth watching either. Like bad books with no purpose or direction to them. I canceled Netflix, of course. Back to just picking up a

Am I in the wrong forum here? In many cases you don't need a VPN, just using a DNS Proxy/Smart DNS in the dominion of the service you want to access is enough. Obviously, there can be security concerns related to your searches though...

That works and with a much higher download speed but you need to reregister your IP address whenever it changes. There are ddns services that do it automatically whenever it changes but it can be slow at times so you need to stop what your watching log-in to your ddns services and do it manually. A bit of a pain

 

[Crimliar]

That works and with a much higher download speed but you need to reregister your IP address whenever it changes. There are ddns services that do it automatically whenever it changes but it can be slow at times so you need to stop what your watching log-in to your ddns services and do it manually. A bit of a pain

I guess you have to factor in the cost of my using Google Domains as my (cheap but paid for) DDNS, which I pretty fast to update, 99% of the time!

 

[royarcher]

I guess you have to factor in the cost of my using Google Domains as my (cheap but paid for) DDNS, which Is pretty fast to update, 99% of the time

The problem is purely a business model one. Studios strike distribution deals, and these deals are regional rather than global, hence the geofencing of content.

You want to drive down piracy? Stop doing regional launches. If I am a fan of "Supershow" and it launches 1 month earlier in the USA than in Canada, then the chances that I will pirate it rather than wait an extra month to get it through the local channels are fairly high.

Here here down with geo fencing!!
So sick of second rate movies

 

[royarcher]

I'm personally hungry for a whole wheat PITA with lettuce, meats, etc

Don't forget the garlic sauce