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None of the paid options should have ads. That's part of the point of paying; to avoid ads.
People who pay for the ad plan help subsidize the ad free plan. That’s all they are all doing. Although I suspect they make more money from ad plan payers when factoring what those companies placing ads offer.
 
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weirdly enough, i've never gotten kicked off of my sisters account on my apple tv since they've started the password crackdown

Same here in the UK, it chucked up a message one time whining about me sharing the account but that was a long time ago and it hasn’t reappeared.

My brother lives in the same building (flat above mine) so I could easily start using his wifi if I had to but I'm not overly fussed if I get booted off to be honest as I barely watch it, my main entertainment are books and gaming, I would rather watch YouTube. A few years back I watched a lot of twitch, well I just had it playing in the background like a radio but I don’t bother now.
 
After something like 21 years with Netflix, I’ll drop it if they ever have no option for no ads. I will not do ads.

They've never bothered me, I don’t have any regular broadcast tele, I’ll go up my folks a few times a week and my old man will be watching some old Western every single time an ad break comes up he moans about it then switches over to a different channel then misses some of the movie he was watching when he doesn’t switch back it time. So I’ll just read a book, or fiddle with my phone, you can’t watch anything like that.

There's little in life I will actually pay for, I keep my monthly expenses as low as possible so I can afford to work part time, so I can spend time with the pets or hobbies etc, spending money on ad free tiers isn’t something I would ever do.
 
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I pay for the 4K and Atmos. Not having a Vision Pro app has pissed me off. I think I’m going to cancel after Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy final seasons depending on if they release a Vision Pro app. I can get the couple other shows I watch other ways. I’ve really been watching a lot more Apple TV+ content lately anyway.
 
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So 8GB to 16GB RAM is $200 and that's "through the nose"?

Pletny off people are happy with 8GB of RAM. Probably 95% of them. You know, not everyone who buys a Mac is a Macrumors power user....right?
Practically, it's more like $400, because 3rd party retailers sell the base model for $200 off, but don't sell a 16GB/256GB configuration. You end up paying 44% extra to add 8GB of RAM.
 
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I love it when people quibble over the definition of "theft" and "piracy" - regardless of what you call it, you're depriving not only the company releasing the content of income, but those who were part of its production. There is no excuse for it, but people keep finding new ones every time the structure of media changes.
 
I am paying about 21 dollars for their premium plan, downloads, 4k, etc. My whole family watches and its our only TV subscription. very happy with Netflix, they have an exceptional choice of Asian TV and movies (that's where I am from), very good library.
 
YouTube ads are getting longer and worse.
All in an effort to annoy you to pay up.
The content is not worth paying the same a proper streaming service to get access to.
The dentist plays ad free relaxing videos on the ceiling tv. He can afford it and makes sense.
Everyone else watching the occasional short would be hard to justify it especially given world economy at the moment.
I probably watch more YouTube than free to air. It’s curated to me and I get to watch what I want. Other than sport. Reality tv crap on free to air is worse than ads.
 
What’s the difference between a snail and a slug?

I thought Ad Tier would be rubbish on Prime Video. It’s a single 30 second ad at the start of an episode. No different to the "Watch next" stuff at the start of every other streaming service, except I can’t click to remove.

Unlike YouTube that has increased sized ads throughout the video.
Oh no… now you told Amazon and Netflix that they can do just that. Increase length of ads.

There is no free lunch. Netflix originally had all cutting their cables where we payed a lot to see mediocre content interrupted by waaay to many adds. A decade or so later Netflix is gravitating towards the same state because corporate America wants more profit every year. I bet that in the early days of flow TV adds were less dominant than they were in 2010. It will be the same for Netflix.
 
I love it when people quibble over the definition of "theft" and "piracy" - regardless of what you call it, you're depriving not only the company releasing the content of income, but those who were part of its production. There is no excuse for it, but people keep finding new ones every time the structure of media changes.
True, but having purchased at least a few HD widescreen movies from iTunes that were later replaced with placeholder SD full frame versions when the distributors changed does make me wish the media companies cared about me as much as I used to care about them.

Having to get a Netflix “family” plan with multiple streams just to get higher resolution is a bit annoying as a single person, too.

And having repurchased at least a few of my favourite movies over the years in VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, HD-DVD, blu-ray, UHD blu-ray, and digital formats, I do have to say it is more than a bit annoying to apparently have DRM handshake issues only when I have company over to watch a film. It doesn’t happen often, but it is almost always the kind of bad timing that makes me wonder if my girlfriend has a magnetic field, which makes it far more frustrating.

But it hasn’t completely killed my enjoyment of movies, so I do still buy, just not quite as impulsively as I once did.
 
I probably watch more YouTube than free to air. It’s curated to me and I get to watch what I want. Other than sport. Reality tv crap on free to air is worse than ads.
While SBS news is a lot more world focused than local propaganda free to air tv, i find it awful when they play US news shows.

You get the promise of three stories coming up after the ads, then a 30 second barely newsworthy news, then more ads... at the end of their program. I would have flicked to something else if that was my normal tv presentation.

Movies on free to air are the same. towards the end there is more ad than movie. guess they think you have invested time so you will stick it to the credits...
 
It’s very simple. Shareholders want more profit every year. Here’s how to increase profit:

1. Get more customers
2. Sell more to the same number of customers (think planned obsolescence)
3. Sell the same thing for a higher price
4. Sell less for the same price
5. Reduce production costs (reduce number of employees)

(1) is the fun and easy way when you go in and disrupt a market like Netflix did long ago. You appear to be innovative and you get a lot of love.

But eventually you saturate the market and you have to resort to any combination of 2-5.

If you don’t like these terms you should align expectations with shareholders and let them know that your business plan is to only grow profit up to a reasonable limit. I wish more would do this so customers and employees would have to put up with less s***
 
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“with ad revenue becoming a more meaningful contributor to its business”

The way the world is turning unfortunately….
 
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There is no “value” in pirating. It makes you a common thief, no different than the guy who breaks into your car and steals your radio. I fail to see where theft can be justified under any circumstances.
It’s
There is no “value” in pirating. It makes you a common thief, no different than the guy who breaks into your car and steals your radio. I fail to see where theft can be justified under any circumstances.
the value of pirating is that you save a lot of money which otherwise would be wasted on mediocre content at best.

But then again, you don’t have to watch it, so everyone should do what they think is best.
 
It's 2024, nearly every service has an ad-feature and they are usually the highest amount of paid subscribers. It's time to move on.
But is it that people see this as the best for their buck, or do they think the other plan is overpriced and don’t want to waste more on it.

I think that regardless of the amount, payed subscriptions shouldn’t be able to have ads on it. Period.

Netflix decides to do it. And I’m pirating everything I want to see. Others will use it so they won’t lose much. Nor will they lose anything at all.
 
YouTube ads are getting longer and worse.
All in an effort to annoy you to pay up.
The content is not worth paying the same a proper streaming service to get access to.
The dentist plays ad free relaxing videos on the ceiling tv. He can afford it and makes sense.
Everyone else watching the occasional short would be hard to justify it especially given world economy at the moment.

I gave up a bunch of streaming services at the start of the year and am currently paying for YouTube premium and prime. The value of premium is when I share my subscription with my parents, both of whom are not very tech savvy to begin with (so don’t expect them to run pi-hole ad blockers or torrent content). My mum watches a bunch of Asian drama tv shows that have been uploaded to YouTube on my Apple TV, while my dad has his guilty pleasures that he binges (on my 27” iMac). The difference between ads and no ads is really night and day, and it’s a small price to pay for the convenience, I feel.

And I am more of a YouTube / twitch watcher myself. So I have mostly sworn off scripted content.
 
Why not? Why shouldn't subscribers have the option to go with a cheaper ad-supported plan if they want to? A pay/ad hybrid model has been the norm for content delivery for ages including television, newspapers, magazines, etc. At least here you have a CHOICE to go with or without ads. If someone doesn't want ads, they can choose a plan that doesn't have ads.
I'd pay for a football soccer match with no ads, plus back massages
 
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