Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads on January 29th

Liver said:
This is incorrect in my personal experience. To get all the stuff I wanted on cable, I would have to go to their “top tier” of service because the cable company knows what channels people really want and they divide them across different tiers. So, if I got the top tier of service, and without teaser rates, it was well over $250 a month. This was the exact same issue with Direct TV.

Just getting the channels I want is much less than $250 a month. Less than 1/2.
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Wow, I haven't had regular cable in so long, I've lost touch with pricing. I get ripped off by youtube tv just so I can watch college sports. Went from 45 to almost 75 in like 3 years. Youtube red went up tremendously as well.
 
When VRs one day let you take a movie theater with you where ever you go ? Like a portable VR.

Like as small as a contact? If not that small then as small as normal sunglasses ?
 
kamikazi said:
Wow, I haven't had regular cable in so long, I've lost touch with pricing. I get ripped off by youtube tv just so I can watch college sports. Went from 45 to almost 75 in like 3 years. Youtube red went up tremendously as well.
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Before COVID, Dish prices were out of their freaking minds. To get the sports channels, not NFL ticket or the MLB (whatever), and some channels was over $180. To get NATGEO jumped it to almost $220. What Im saying is that I wanted Nat Geo, but that was a whole different tier with about 50 channels that I knew I’d NEVER watch.

Oh that was before all the taxes and fees.

I’d also get all the college football channels and that really added to the cost.

With FUBO I get a bunch of channels, but I get all the sports channels I want for $70, well below what I was paying for Dish. I’ve had Prime and Netflix since they came out, so that is constant.

I find myself watching more and more YouTube for the educational content, mainly listening to it when I drive 35 minutes each way to work. I’m really considering paying for YouTube now.
 
When I fully quit cable in 2020, Comcast wanted $8 extra per month for the movie package that had to have ESPN etc. included. Then you had the re-broadcasting fees for the over the air tv networks. That was $10/month. So $18/month extra for stuff I wouldn't watch to get some things I wanted to watch. They offered me a slightly better deal exactly one day after my new plan went into effect where I would just stream tv thru their app and not a tv box. I told them no.
 
Seeing social media spam already about this, essentially that people are cancelling their Prime subscriptions over this. I hope it's true, because people leaving Prime and threatening Amazon's money is the only message that will be clear to them.
 
GotNoRice said:
VLC is my go-to app for viewing offline files over the network, since I can browse SMB network shares directly from my file server through the VLC app. That's my preferred method since there is no transcoding involved, etc. The only thing that sucks is that with thousands of movies, it's difficult to remember what many of those movies even are when scrolling through the list. One thing that is super amazing about many of the DLNA-based apps is that they also scrape info from IMDB or similar and give you a description of each movie as you are browsing them. That's ridiculously helpful, especially for family members.

In many cases we end up getting the idea to watch a certain movie via seeing that movie in the cable channel listing (on a commercial channel) or on one of the free streaming services. But instead of clicking on it, we just switch to VLC and watch the commercial-free version instead. Even if it's on a channel or service that doesn't have commercials, I'd rather watch a high-bitrate 4k bluray rip than some low-bitrate streaming version full of obvious color banding and other compression artifacts. Obviously streaming services have a vested interest in keeping the bitrate as low as possible to keep bandwidth costs down. People are so focused on resolution, thinking 4K is the gold standard. Most don't realize that in many cases even a high-bitrate 720p movie can look better than a low-bitrate 4k movie. #BitrateMatters
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I'm a big fan of VLC, especially as it "just works" for just about everything and has a comprehensive features et. For higher quality or some more esoteric features MPV - https://mpv.io/ -is a great solution, though since it has a very, very limited GUI and by default requires config in .ini files, there are a handful of variants/forks as well as front-ends, projects that use libmpv but expand upon its feature set and often add a GUI- https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/Applications-using-mpv ; MPV net, Kawaii Player, SMPlayer, and many others are updated with some frequency. However, as you said that by default VLC and many other players don't scrape TMDB or other info sources for media (though some of the MPV frontend projects have the abiity to enable download of this info through addons, much like downloading subtitles etc If you would want ease of use combined with access to high resolution , high bitrate, HDR, certain audio types, and other features , I find that my setup with Kodi can do that info scraping and finding sources an overall a smoother procedure than manually downloading via torrent or elsewhere to store it on a NAS somewhereon the LAN . Though I hear you can do something similar with Jellyfin, I've not looked into the specific addons or sources required.
ng4ever said:
When VRs one day let you take a movie theater with you where ever you go ? Like a portable VR.

Like as small as a contact? If not that small then as small as normal sunglasses ?
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We're already kind of sort of there, at least at the sunglasses level There are a lot of cheap-ish VR goggles that look close to (admittedly bulky) sunglasses, but I expect this to of course continue. The real issue will be ensuring the qualities and features in such a form factor which will take a bit longer.

Liver said:
Before COVID, Dish prices were out of their freaking minds. To get the sports channels, not NFL ticket or the MLB (whatever), and some channels was over $180. To get NATGEO jumped it to almost $220. What Im saying is that I wanted Nat Geo, but that was a whole different tier with about 50 channels that I knew I’d NEVER watch.

Oh that was before all the taxes and fees.

I’d also get all the college football channels and that really added to the cost.

With FUBO I get a bunch of channels, but I get all the sports channels I want for $70, well below what I was paying for Dish. I’ve had Prime and Netflix since they came out, so that is constant.

I find myself watching more and more YouTube for the educational content, mainly listening to it when I drive 35 minutes each way to work. I’m really considering paying for YouTube now.
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If you're using YouTube for a lot of content on an Android device, I highly suggest https://newpipe.net/ . Its a libre/FOSS client for YouTube among others (notably PeerTube) that, in addition to ad-blocking, has a ton of other features. You can get it on the FDroid standard repository, or if you want the updates fastest, you can add NewPipe's own repo. There's even a fork of it that is called "NewPipe x SponsorBlock" that integrates the crowdsourced sponsored-section-skipping functionality that you an grab from a different FDroid repo Also, if you like educational content you may want to check out Nebula - I've been thinking of giving it a shot as its a creator-owned indie streaming service that apparently has a lot of educational stuff on it though that's not the only content by far. (they used to partner with CuriosityStream as well which is even more documentaries and educational stuff). If you think it may be worth it check out some of the YT content creators you like and see if they are also on Nebula - if so they probably have a discount promo sponsorship thing for signing up etc.
 
Harvestor said:
We have completely cord cut at the house including all streaming services except prime just because of the shipping. Prime video will gone now as well, just need to convince the wife she doesnt need a prime account anymore
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I am in this boat, going to have to pull the number of what we order from Amazon, how often and do we really NEEED it same or next day? meh, prob not, and that may help cut back on quick buys of things we think we need..
 
GotNoRice said:
VLC is my go-to app for viewing offline files over the network, since I can browse SMB network shares directly from my file server through the VLC app. That's my preferred method since there is no transcoding involved, etc. The only thing that sucks is that with thousands of movies, it's difficult to remember what many of those movies even are when scrolling through the list. One thing that is super amazing about many of the DLNA-based apps is that they also scrape info from IMDB or similar and give you a description of each movie as you are browsing them. That's ridiculously helpful, especially for family members.

In many cases we end up getting the idea to watch a certain movie via seeing that movie in the cable channel listing (on a commercial channel) or on one of the free streaming services. But instead of clicking on it, we just switch to VLC and watch the commercial-free version instead. Even if it's on a channel or service that doesn't have commercials, I'd rather watch a high-bitrate 4k bluray rip than some low-bitrate streaming version full of obvious color banding and other compression artifacts. Obviously streaming services have a vested interest in keeping the bitrate as low as possible to keep bandwidth costs down. People are so focused on resolution, thinking 4K is the gold standard. Most don't realize that in many cases even a high-bitrate 720p movie can look better than a low-bitrate 4k movie. #BitrateMatters
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You need Plex, or Kodi, but Kodi has an annoying audio bug, STILL around TrueHD / Atmos "rips" where audio cuts out for a second randomly...and Kodi doesnt seem to care to fix it...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I never understood why people bother with he complexity and load of Plex. I just NAS/SMB/NFS everything and play back in full glorious bitrate without any experience ruining transcodes.
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Because Plex only transcodes over local network / High enough upload speeds if you're an idiot and fail at life. Otherwise, you wouldnt be able to play your content remotely anyway as you cant upload fast enough for it to be seamless.

When I play a 4k HDR 10 bit file, it plays at the same resolution and bitrate as if I open the file in a different media player. It has the same overhead CPU/GPU usage. Plex literally does nothing to the file other than play it unless im outside of the house and trying to stream it out on my 10Mb upload - where it will then transcode to a low quality 1080 stream..

The only reason I use plex - literally the only reason - is that I was tired of writing down where I stopped watching a show whenever I wanted to watch something different. I use it solely for the watched/partway tracking.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
Seeing social media spam already about this, essentially that people are cancelling their Prime subscriptions over this. I hope it's true, because people leaving Prime and threatening Amazon's money is the only message that will be clear to them.
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they will always come crawling back though. every time the price went up there was "mass quitting" and prime is still here and the same new price.
 
MrGuvernment said:
I am in this boat, going to have to pull the number of what we order from Amazon, how often and do we really NEEED it same or next day? meh, prob not, and that may help cut back on quick buys of things we think we need..
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and some of the items you usually think you need yesterday you can go to walmart and get for the same price.
 
Liver said:
Before COVID, Dish prices were out of their freaking minds. To get the sports channels, not NFL ticket or the MLB (whatever), and some channels was over $180. To get NATGEO jumped it to almost $220. What Im saying is that I wanted Nat Geo, but that was a whole different tier with about 50 channels that I knew I’d NEVER watch.

Oh that was before all the taxes and fees.

I’d also get all the college football channels and that really added to the cost.

With FUBO I get a bunch of channels, but I get all the sports channels I want for $70, well below what I was paying for Dish. I’ve had Prime and Netflix since they came out, so that is constant.

I find myself watching more and more YouTube for the educational content, mainly listening to it when I drive 35 minutes each way to work. I’m really considering paying for YouTube now.
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I wanted to try out FUBO, but our main TV is run through a PS5 and FUBO doesn't work with it last I checked. When I was blindsided by the YouTube "Red" 50% increase this past year, I really though about canceling. Then I watched youtube on someone else's computer and it was completely unwatchable. Having to watch an ad before the video starts and then one every two minutes is ridiculous, worse than old school TV. I sucked it up and pay because there is a lot of education content and what not that I follow. Just wish I wasn't giving them so much money. It would be awesome if everyone moved to rumble.
 
MrGuvernment said:
I am in this boat, going to have to pull the number of what we order from Amazon, how often and do we really NEEED it same or next day? meh, prob not, and that may help cut back on quick buys of things we think we need..
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Not like amazon is next day or two days on almost anything anymore. At the beginning of December, almost everything I was buying was showing me a delivery date of 7 to 8 days out, with "Prime" shipping.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I never understood why people bother with he complexity and load of Plex. I just NAS/SMB/NFS everything and play back in full glorious bitrate without any experience ruining transcodes.
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I think your disconnect here is the assumption that all plex users transcode. I use plex to playback my bluray collection rips. With plex I can playback full bluray rips in original quality and genuine losses audio which can be accomplished with several other apps, however I prefer the plex ui. I've also found that Kodi and plex are the only apps I can use to pass-through true lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD/Atmos and DTS-HD/DTS-X with height channel meta data to my home theater AVR. Most other network streaming apps cannot do this.

In a nutshell, It's the closest one can get to kaleidescape without spending over 10K USD.
 
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kamikazi said:
I wanted to try out FUBO, but our main TV is run through a PS5 and FUBO doesn't work with it last I checked. When I was blindsided by the YouTube "Red" 50% increase this past year, I really though about canceling. Then I watched youtube on someone else's computer and it was completely unwatchable. Having to watch an ad before the video starts and then one every two minutes is ridiculous, worse than old school TV. I sucked it up and pay because there is a lot of education content and what not that I follow. Just wish I wasn't giving them so much money. It would be awesome if everyone moved to rumble.
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We watch mainly sports with Fubo and they have a very good sports package (NFL and college). The ads haven’t been an issue in that regard. I do not watch anything else on Fubo. The family does, but I do not.
 
kamikazi said:
Not like amazon is next day or two days on almost anything anymore. At the beginning of December, almost everything I was buying was showing me a delivery date of 7 to 8 days out, with "Prime" shipping.
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This right here, my area is lucky to get anything in 2 days at the best of times. The shipping company amazon uses here is beyond brutal.
I feel like the $140 a year she pays for prime could be better spent other places, i prefer to shop locally but its getting hard.
 
I live in the outskirts of a small town. Rural Texas. Prime shipping has really improved out here. Literally next day delivery on most things.

Thats impressive for us.
 
Bigbacon said:
they will always come crawling back though. every time the price went up there was "mass quitting" and prime is still here and the same new price.
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tl;dr: Like all things: we'll see.
Extended thoughts below.


Not sure that's entirely true. There is a tipping point on what the market will bear. And it's likely that also what is occurring that those who stay at an increased price "more than covers" those who leave. If 10% of your people leave but you've increased prices 25%, it's obvious that the net overall is an increase in income. Say that to say people really may have left during all those price increases, it just didn't hurt Amazon's bottom line and certainly they anticipated some user drop off in their calculus.

The same will likely happen here, as let's be honest, commercials onto an Amazon platform will make them a tremendous amount of money. It would have to be a fairly large exodus to offset Amazon's financial gains. However, the other aspect is how this affects not only their streaming business, but their core shipping business. Because all of this is bundled into one price, it's a double edged sword not only for consumers, but also Amazon themselves.

Prime was originally Amazon's "Trojan horse". It was something that lost them money, but encouraged a tremendous amount of increased spending on Amazon's platform. To say it was widely successful is obvious, and is indeed one of the major reasons why Amazon has grown into the behemoth it has today. Those subscriptions all but guaranteed that those customers would be doing a significant portion of their spending on Amazon's platform. These changes are pushing people away from Prime's and consequently Jeff Bezos' original intentions.

I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I would imagine most people are at the 'breaking point' already in terms of yearly cost with Amazon. I bet if I even whispered Prime costing $200, most people would probably run their sub until their renewal and then cancel. $150 is already a lot. Maybe it's not a lot when considering you're getting 1-2 day shipping on everything, but for the consumer it's still cost/benefit. It's just increasingly hard for someone to justify this. And I think people in this thread reflect that. I've cancelled Prime and gone back to Amazon's "free" shipping and I think a lot of people also feel the same way.

At this point, Amazon's entire delivery network is already built. While they can de-prioritize me as a free shipping user, it costs them the same amount of money to 1 day ship as 7 day ship (the same people pack the packages and deliver the packages regardless of service level). So even though theoretically should take a week or more, so far every Amazon package with free shipping has come to me in 3. And I think other people will start finding out the same thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that financially it doesn’t make sense to service my “deprioritized package” at a lower level because all that would mean is idle workers and less full trucks. And it’s obvious from a business standpoint that it’s always better to get that business out the door rather than artificially make things take longer. Especially when all that would do in actuality is waste more fuel (less full truck meaning more trips) and take more man hours (less full trucks mean more trips meaning more man hours) rather than simply deliver the package earlier.

Why pay for the cow when the milk is free? If enough subs drop, then Amazon is stuck paying for its delivery network without Prime shipping subs to offset it. Or it has to go back to not offering a free shipping level. Either of which I think they really don't want to do (if they're wise anyway), because that would be slowly dismantling their own empire. All of this only works if customers feel like they're "getting a deal" and I think it's getting harder and harder to say that customers feel like they're getting that.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
Not sure that's entirely true. There is a tipping point on what the market will bear. And it's likely that also what is occurring that those who stay at an increased price "more than covers" those who leave. If 10% of your people leave but you've increased prices 25%, it's obvious that the net overall is an increase in income. Say that to say people really may have left during all those price increases, it just didn't hurt Amazon's bottom line and certainly they anticipated some user drop off in their calculus.
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We can use Netflix as an example as they increased prices while also introducing an ad subscription earlier this year. It did work, but probably not to the extent they had hoped. They also haven't universally blocked password sharing for the same reason why Google took their time to roll out Manifest V3 in Chrome, because they are afraid of losing users on their platform.
https://www.statista.com/statistics...r-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-in-the-us/
netflix subscribers.png

The same will likely happen here, as let's be honest, commercials onto an Amazon platform will make them a tremendous amount of money. It would have to be a fairly large exodus to offset Amazon's financial gains. However, the other aspect is how this affects not only their streaming business, but their core shipping business. Because all of this is bundled into one price, it's a double edged sword not only for consumers, but also Amazon themselves.
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Other streaming services are also doing this as well, but it's that collective push that might break people away. If it were just Amazon, then nobody would care. Disney Plus standard has ads, Netflix Basic has ads, HBO Max has ads, and of course YouTube itself. It's far more convenient now to just run a Plex server. Pretty sure all smart TVs have the Plex app. Of course most won't, but Americans are running out of money soon so some people will just rotate their subscriptions.
Prime was originally Amazon's "Trojan horse". It was something that lost them money, but encouraged a tremendous amount of increased spending on Amazon's platform. To say it was widely successful is obvious, and is indeed one of the major reasons why Amazon has grown into the behemoth it has today. Those subscriptions all but guaranteed that those customers would be doing a significant portion of their spending on Amazon's platform. These changes are pushing people away from Prime's and consequently Jeff Bezos' original intentions.
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The reason I have a Prime subscription is because the prices usually cheaper on Amazon. Some reason Ebay sellers have lost their minds and started charging the same if not more. Aliexpress is cheaper now if you want to wait for shipping. Otherwise I couldn't care about their video content with the exception of Invisible.
Why pay for the cow when the milk is free? If enough subs drop, then Amazon is stuck paying for its delivery network without Prime shipping subs to offset it. Or it has to go back to not offering a free shipping level. Either of which I think they really don't want to do (if they're wise anyway), because that would be slowly dismantling their own empire. All of this only works if customers feel like they're "getting a deal" and I think it's getting harder and harder to say that customers feel like they're getting that.
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I think most people just pay for Prime for the quick delivery. I believe far less will pay to remove ads. Even fewer will drop their Prime subscriptions over this. Those that are going to drop their Prime subscription were probably going to do it anyway but now have the excuse. Amazon's problem is collective, in that will this trigger a massive amount of people to remove subscriptions from all streaming services? People aren't going to stop at Amazon's subscription if they're cancelling.
 
Figured it would be a matter of time before Amazon jumped on the Google YouTube model of starting off light with injected ads. Be prepared for a systemic gradual increase in both frequency and duration of ads...

I don't mind having a couple/few minutes of "mandatory" ads at the beginning before the feature presentation, but littering ads throughout it just shitbag greed that goes against the fundamental draw of choosing to ditch cable/satellite.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Naw, they will just raise the price on the people that stay.
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SomeoneElse said:
Yep they will justify the prime video "premium price" because people canceled prime. Then raise the price of prime overall.
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cjcox said:
Given all the increases over its history, they could just raise prices because of general Earth's rotation....
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I realize my post above is long, but one of my major points is that Prime offsets the cost of Amazon`s massive delivery network.
Amazon's 'issue' with Prime is that both their delivery service cost and streaming cost are tied into a single package. At a certain point they're losing out on subsidizing their own shipping network and also losing out on customers that would be making more purchases on Amazon because they have a Prime subscription (which was the purpose of Prime in the first place).

Amazon cannot use the same strategy as other streaming services because they simply aren't like other streaming services. I'm not sure what their tipping point is, and I'm sure they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how many subs they needs, how much advertisements also help with their costs/bottom line, and also their estimation on how many people would leave.

However if a massive exodus did occur, paying for their delivery network would become a problem in short order. And like I noted, I'm not paying for Prime now, and every package has still reached me in 3 days with "free" shipping. I think if people figure out they don't need Prime and still get 'free' fast shipping from Amazon, then Amazon simply will be sinking a huge amount of cost into their delivery network and not getting their money back out of it through Prime subs.

I won't write anything else, because as it is I'm basically re-writting what I already wrote, and I'm assuming all of you just didn't bother to read it the first time around. And if you did, then didn't bother to actually address any of the points.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
I won't write anything else, because as it is I'm basically re-writting what I already wrote, and I'm assuming all of you just didn't bother to read it the first time around. And if you did, then didn't bother to actually address any of the points.
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In post #87 all you said was this

"Seeing social media spam already about this, essentially that people are cancelling their Prime subscriptions over this. I hope it's true, because people leaving Prime and threatening Amazon's money is the only message that will be clear to them."

I read it all the first time around and addressed all the points in this post.
 
rinaldo00 said:
In post #87 all you said was this

"Seeing social media spam already about this, essentially that people are cancelling their Prime subscriptions over this. I hope it's true, because people leaving Prime and threatening Amazon's money is the only message that will be clear to them."

I read it all the first time around and addressed all the points in this post.
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It’s post #101. And if you want to be pedantic and say that that isn’t the post you intend to respond to, then I guess my response to your post is that it’s not so simple. Due to #101.

And also the major points repeated again in the post you just quoted.

EDIT: I literally don't understand the point of going through an entire post that brings up considerably more information to cut to the end and say you addressed those posts when obviously in said response I restated at least the major points again. Why post back at all?
 
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Are the people getting lower priced prime because they are on government assistance going to get commercials as well unless they pony up more money?
 
UnknownSouljer said:
It’s post #101. And if you want to be pedantic and say that that isn’t the post you intend to respond to, then I guess my response to your post is that it’s not so simple. Due to #101.

And also the major points repeated again in the post you just quoted.

EDIT: I literally don't understand the point of going through an entire post that brings up considerably more information to cut to the end and say you addressed those posts when obviously in said response I restated at least the major points again. Why post back at all?
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You snarked that either I didn't read your post or didn't respond to all your points and I wanted to be clear that I did not read #101 and the short reply that you took issue with was completely appropriate for the post I quoted.

Now that I read all of your points I still say they will compensate for lost Prime Members by increasing the price on the ones that stay.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
I realize my post above is long, but one of my major points is that Prime offsets the cost of Amazon`s massive delivery network.
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Considering how much money Amazon makes, I don't see why anything needs to be offset.
Amazon's 'issue' with Prime is that both their delivery service cost and streaming cost are tied into a single package. At a certain point they're losing out on subsidizing their own shipping network and also losing out on customers that would be making more purchases on Amazon because they have a Prime subscription (which was the purpose of Prime in the first place).
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The reason Amazon included streaming to the Prime service was to entice more people to jump on Prime. More value for your Prime subscription. The deal has changed because they have reached peak Prime membership. Also shareholders.
Amazon cannot use the same strategy as other streaming services because they simply aren't like other streaming services. I'm not sure what their tipping point is, and I'm sure they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how many subs they needs, how much advertisements also help with their costs/bottom line, and also their estimation on how many people would leave.
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Putting ads into their streaming service isn't original. Delivery service or not, they're doing what everyone is doing.
However if a massive exodus did occur, paying for their delivery network would become a problem in short order. And like I noted, I'm not paying for Prime now, and every package has still reached me in 3 days with "free" shipping. I think if people figure out they don't need Prime and still get 'free' fast shipping from Amazon, then Amazon simply will be sinking a huge amount of cost into their delivery network and not getting their money back out of it through Prime subs.
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Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world and it's not from his Blue Origin and Altos Labs. If Amazon stops funding their delivery service then they become Ebay with extra steps. Amazon is very profitable, and they don't need more money to support their delivery service or their streaming service. They're putting in ads because their stock was higher during the pandemic and shareholders aren't happy.
 
kamikazi said:
Not like amazon is next day or two days on almost anything anymore. At the beginning of December, almost everything I was buying was showing me a delivery date of 7 to 8 days out, with "Prime" shipping.
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It depends on where you live. There is a distribution center 20 miles from where I live and most things I am interested in ordering can make it to me same-day or next day.
 
Call me a "boomer" or whatnot, but based on how streaming has evolved over the years, I'm glad I never went that direction. I still have "cable" on top of my internet, which fits my needs and also comes with streaming anyways these days (HBO Max with Spectrum, ad-free). I just fly through commercials on the DVR with FFW and I never watch anything "live" anymore anyway. I don't want to keep track of a bunch of services. I'm more entertained by PC gaming anyway vs. shows or movies. If I do find a show I like, I let it run for a while, then just pick up the UltraHD disks and binge watch with true HD surround and 4K... it ends up being cheaper anyway, plus I own them.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Call me a "boomer" or whatnot, but based on how streaming has evolved over the years, I'm glad I never went that direction. I still have "cable" on top of my internet, which fits my needs and also comes with streaming anyways these days (HBO Max with Spectrum, ad-free). I just fly through commercials on the DVR with FFW and I never watch anything "live" anymore anyway. I don't want to keep track of a bunch of services. I'm more entertained by PC gaming anyway vs. shows or movies. If I do find a show I like, I let it run for a while, then just pick up the UltraHD disks and binge watch with true HD surround and 4K... it ends up being cheaper anyway, plus I own them.
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Im glad there are options that can suit more varieties of needs/wants. It is nice having physical media, internet/cable connection goes out and you can still watch something if you want.
 
Armenius said:
It depends on where you live. There is a distribution center 20 miles from where I live and most things I am interested in ordering can make it to me same-day or next day.
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I'm 2 hours away from the closest distribution center. We used to get next day delivery.

That said, for the past 6 months, EVERY SINGLE next day delivery we order comes in 3-4 days. Its gotten really bad to where every other retailer manages to get us items quicker.

At this point the only reason we keep prime is for a redundant cloud photo storage.
 
Droc said:
I'm 2 hours away from the closest distribution center. We used to get next day delivery.

That said, for the past 6 months, EVERY SINGLE next day delivery we order comes in 3-4 days. Its gotten really bad to where every other retailer manages to get us items quicker.

At this point the only reason we keep prime is for a redundant cloud photo storage.
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I live in a large metro area and can and get same or next day for pretty much everything. I usually do the in-garage delivery which they limit to one specific day of the week you pick now. I can also get things same or next day from Best Buy and Wal-Mart too though.
Amazon for a while used to have 2 hour and even 1 hour delivery, I don't know what happened to that. I look forward to eventual 15 minute drone deliveries. It'll happen at some point.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Call me a "boomer" or whatnot, but based on how streaming has evolved over the years, I'm glad I never went that direction. I still have "cable" on top of my internet, which fits my needs and also comes with streaming anyways these days (HBO Max with Spectrum, ad-free). I just fly through commercials on the DVR with FFW and I never watch anything "live" anymore anyway. I don't want to keep track of a bunch of services. I'm more entertained by PC gaming anyway vs. shows or movies. If I do find a show I like, I let it run for a while, then just pick up the UltraHD disks and binge watch with true HD surround and 4K... it ends up being cheaper anyway, plus I own them.
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I've used a tivo since the first directv one way back when, decades ago. I still use a premier xl4 with around 320 hours of HD storage for my cable. No ad issues since I just 30 second skip a few times or ffw through them like you do. I only rarely watch news or sports live.... If it's something I want to see right away I let it buffer for 15 minutes or so, allowing me some spare room to skip the ads.

I've barely ever used streaming and just buy discs for movies, when I feel like it. I've barely ever bought one on launch as the prices typically decline drastically after a couple of months. Most I dont watch until I can get the bluray for $3-7, or the 4k uhd discs for $8 to 12. I own them, they're better quality, and it is cheaper in the end than 10 streaming services every month.

I buy shows in box sets from Amazon UK generally as it tends to be cheaper by far (half price or less). On the rare occasion I don't care much for rewatching something like a sitcom, I'll buy the digital of it on a hot deal like I did with the big bang theory (10 seasons for $15 total on Google play or similar).

I'm a power user of all kinds of tech, programming, 3d modeling, indie game dev, build my own pcs, home theater, game like crazy to get good, etc. but this is one instance being a luddite is a good thing!
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Call me a "boomer" or whatnot, but based on how streaming has evolved over the years, I'm glad I never went that direction. I still have "cable" on top of my internet, which fits my needs and also comes with streaming anyways these days (HBO Max with Spectrum, ad-free). I just fly through commercials on the DVR with FFW and I never watch anything "live" anymore anyway. I don't want to keep track of a bunch of services. I'm more entertained by PC gaming anyway vs. shows or movies. If I do find a show I like, I let it run for a while, then just pick up the UltraHD disks and binge watch with true HD surround and 4K... it ends up being cheaper anyway, plus I own them.
Click to expand...
So to add to this, I just got an email today that my spectrum account also now comes with Disney+ basic. So it will have ads (unlike HBOmax that is ad free), but still, I see the future of cable being integrating these streaming packages in order to remain competitive in areas where there are options, while still providing normal "cable" stuff.
 
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