NOTHING TO WATCH ON PAID STREAMING VENUES!

I'm a movie junkie. I'd watch a mediocre movie over a real good tv show anytime.

I struggle finding decent movies to watch. Very small % of movies made in the last 10 years are worth watching for free, IMO. Bad acting, bad scripts, bad directing, all that kills modern movies.

I too find some relief with watching older movies. I will try to watch most of the movies a fav actor has done. Paul Newman, for example. I had never seen The Hustler until a couple of years ago. Amazing flick.

I enjoy quirky movies that not many people know or have seen. Some of those are Flim Flam Man, Cotton Comes To Harlem, Gator, Follow That Dream, etc. All are wonderful movies, IMO.

Classic movies also fill some time. Casablanca, African Queen, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lillies Of The Field, In The Heat Of The Night, etc. All those get watched once a year by me. All excellent movies.

There's some good western series being shown on Paramount tv. Obviously, Yellowstone is the big one. 1887, 1923 were both excellent series, IMO.

Tommy Lee Jones has a long, long list of excellent movies that may not be widely known. The Homesman is one of them. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is another.

Finding a good actor & then watching their movies can be good too. Tom Selleck is a good follow with his Jesse Stone movies. The older Clint Eastwood movies are a must-see as well.

But the garbage Hollyweird is grinding out these days clearly shows their execs have NO clue about the ticket buying public, IMO. Disney is losing their shirt AND pants. Many other studios are as well. Then they blame the public and/or insult them, like the recent Disney princess. A pox on all of them, IMO.

My .o2
 
I subscribe to TCM on Xfinity. Inexplicably, it's bundled with a sports package, but no matter the cost is still reasonable even if I don't watch sports. TCM is full of excellent movies. Watch them as they're broadcast on the channel or stream what you want to see on-demand. No commercials and lots of old black and white movies. If it's black and white, I'll generally watch it.

I've been tempted to subscribe to Britbox. I enjoy a lot of British programming on PBS. Britbox may be good or too much of a good thing.
 
We ditched satellite cable and picked up Roku with a subscription for Philo. We looked around and found numerous free streaming services, Documentary Channel, Cinebox. Pluto (free with library card), Youtube and others. We have not looked back. $30 a month is better than $200 a month.
 
The Homesman?
Now that’s a weird movie!
Big Duval Fan here- So I watched Seven Days in Utopia.
Texas Cowboy Golfing Movie? Say what?
Or A Night in Old Mexico.
Neither one near his best, but good enough for us Hard Core Duval Fans.
 
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HOUSTON RICK said:
We ditched satellite cable and picked up Roku with a subscription for Philo. We looked around and found numerous free streaming services, Documentary Channel, Cinebox. Pluto (free with library card), Youtube and others. We have not looked back. $30 a month is better than $200 a month.
Click to expand...

There are several streaming services that are "free with a library card". I chair the county library board and the cost to each library is $20,000. For libraries in towns of 1500 or less that is way too deep for their budgets.
 
I cannot remember the term for this phenomenon. There is another term, "streamflation" which is obvious, but not the term I am talking about.

You will have noticed that Amazon Prime, which is supposed to have free 2-day shipping, which you are paying for with your subscription, includes shipping options which have extra charges. It appears that with the option you can pay a few bucks to get it even quicker...until you read the fine print to find that there is no promise of that at all.

You will have noticed that streaming services which were sold to you initially as "ad free" now are showing ads. Price increases are designed to push you into bundles which require you to see the ads. This thread is observing that there is nothing to watch. How could there be if every movie studio now has their own platform. Are you going to watch Paramount movies on Netflix? Should we expect NBC programs to be on Hulu or on Peacock?

The young folk are suggesting to each other that they jump from platform to platform from month to month. So, the idea is to subscribe to Max while you are watching "Game of Thrones." Then cancel that and go over to Paramount+ for a while and watch "Yellowstone" and so forth.
Anybody here trying this?
"But people don't remember to cancel!"
(I am not referring to jumping around among the free trials BTW.)
There will be some of that I expect, but not enough to keep the streaming services profitable in the future. The problem I expect would be the same as we have seen with time shares or gym subscriptions, they will not "let" you cancel.

Kind Regards!
BrianD
 
Brian Parrish said:
You will have noticed that Amazon Prime, which is supposed to have free 2-day shipping, which you are paying for with your subscription, includes shipping options which have extra charges. It appears that with the option you can pay a few bucks to get it even quicker...until you read the fine print to find that there is no promise of that at all.

You will have noticed that streaming services which were sold to you initially as "ad free" now are showing ads. Price increases are designed to push you into bundles which require you to see the ads.
Click to expand...

Yes - frustrating!

The young folk are suggesting to each other that they jump from platform to platform from month to month. So, the idea is to subscribe to Max while you are watching "Game of Thrones." Then cancel that and go over to Paramount+ for a while and watch "Yellowstone" and so forth.
Anybody here trying this?
Click to expand...


Yes, we are doing this to some degree. We have kept Amazon, because it's part of Prime, and Netflix. We also currently have Hulu. Other services we have signed up for and then cancelled after watching specific series. We did that with the 'Topic' subscription on Amazon I mentioned earlier in the thread, and with Paramount while watching another series.

IMHO, this is the only way to avoid ending up spending just as much on streaming as cable or satellite. Ultimately all of these services are about making money, so they're going to leverage the system to squeeze as much as they can out of the consumer.

ETA: Sometimes buying the series on Amazon is an effective way to avoid ads. One series we were watching became ad infested... we were able to buy several seasons for as low as $5/season. Definitely worth it to avoid the ads. Prices would fluctuate, though. I recommend looking at what you want to buy on the computer, then not buying. In a day or two, the price often goes down... ;)
 
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Huge amount of free content, lots of movies, on Vizio. But I think it is available only on Vizio smart TVs. Ditto Samsung. TCM usually has a few worthwhile movies each week. Have not been to an indoor theater movie in at least ten years.
 
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The more shows and sporting events go to streaming, the less we watch.
Our Dish bill is high enough, not getting fleeced by all these BS streaming channels. Sadly decent tv shows disappeared quite a while ago.
 
I just watched "Five Graves to Cairo" which I haven't seen in 25 years. I'll bet I've seen "Band of Brothers" 15 time's. Prime keeps track of everything you've seen for over a year. You can revue and pick out something you've watched and could probably stand watching again.
 
I read somewhere that subscriptions to the non-streaming movie services like HBO, Cinemax, etc. have dropped considerably. No surprise there. I think they will go the way of Redbox DVDs. At least locally, Redbox DVD vending machines vanished over a year ago. I wonder what they did with the millions of DVDs they must have had. And all of the thousands of their machines. Maybe they could be converted to gun safes.
 
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On the whole, I like Amazon Prime. Convenient, quick delivery, and I watch some of the programming. Also rent movies for a few bucks. But I was pretty annoyed when they made us pay a few bucks extra a month to avoid advertising.

I occasionally subscribe to channels only to watch specific series, and then cancel.

Also maintain a Netflix subscription but watch it less, I think.
 
Been watching lots of Anime on Hulu. There's some pretty weird stuff, but it's entertaining. I appreciate the artwork.

I'm currently watching one about a spooky kid that's a ghost hunter. She's got skulls for pupils. Like I said, kinda weird.
 
With Comcast there are a number of streaming apps. I get Freevee, Tubi, Xumo, PlutoTV, even YouTube. There are others, too.

There's so much to watch. I really like the '80s and 90s TV shows that I never paid attention to or got to see. Yeah, there are adverts. but even with the ads, it's still better than the garbage being made, now!

IMO, TCM went down hill after Robert Osborne died. They repeat a lot of movies. I do like the film noir they show on Saturday nights. The one movie that played once on TCM was "Come and See" 1985. That's one of the most horrific war movies I've EVER seen.

Last year, one movie that I saw while surfing during prime time was "Pretty Baby" 1978, uncensored. It was on FLIX, IIRC. I had heard of the movie from a film class I took years ago but I had no idea what it really was. If you know about this movie, you know. If you don't, google it. I don't know how it made it on TV during prime time, especially with all PC censorship and everything else going on!

Yeah, there's a lot to watch.
 
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