There is a very disturbing trend that is happening now. There was a time where you could subscribe to one streaming surveys for all your needs. Now, more and more individual studios are starting their OWN streaming service, which means that obviously they will want to stream their own shows on their own platform, which means all these favourite shows we like to see on Netflix and Prime will disappear. More and more major networks are offering their own service, including the new Peacock (NBC Universal), Disney and others - so if you want to catch your favourite shows you will have to subscribe to multiple services - so you end up paying more than Premium cable. This is a very disturbing trend and it puts Netflix and Prime Video in a tough spot. There are lot of really good shows on NBC, they will ALL be disappearing from Netflix this year. This means Netflix will be left with documentaries, original programming, which is not always up to par, and little to no TV series.

I wonder how Netflix is going to survive. Amazon will survive of course as Prime is only a tiny part of Amazon, and there are other benefits to Prime other than videos.... It's enough that these studios already get paid royalties y Netflix, but I guess it is not enough, they want more money so they start their own streaming service - They are basically going to charge less than Netflix, so it's likely Netflix will lose a lot of subscribers. It would have to produce substantial amount of original content to keep its members, and that won't be without costs, there is no way Netflix can keep increasing rates. When I started Netflix years ago it cost me $7.99 a month........TODAY, with the SAME plan, $13.99 !!! and tons of shows leaving the platform to their respective studios' own streaming platform.

The only one at this point in time for me that I prefer to keep and that is Amazon Prime.
It's worthy because there is a lot of programs to watch, even old movies and new Amazon shows, etc.
In addition, I keep my photos uploaded in the cloud and free shipping, etc. So everything I get with
Amazon is a good deal for me.

In regards to Netflix, not so much interest. I usually keep it in the winter and lose it in the summer.
This year with the virus and some shows I was interested in, I kept it. BUT, there is really not a lot
I like in regards to programs on Netflix. Most of their movies and programs are more for the younger
generation. Stupid movies, stupid series. Stuff teens would like. I do like some of their documentaries
when they come out with some about crime or some such as that.

As far as all the individual companies charging for their networks, well that might bite them on the
arse and not take too long about it. Today, one can watch and read a lot of stuff online on video
sites and news sites. Even many free to watch movies at YouTube. With this coronavirus and people
being unemployed, many are not going to be capable of paying for all those subscriptions.

I have smart tvs and also Roku box's. Mostly I use Roku and there is about 100 channels in my Roku.
Many of the channels are free to watch. I even get my local news that is a channel in my Roku.

For some people, it might be a good thing all these separate subscriptions because they can choose
what they like to watch and ignore what they don't. For many, it can be cheaper than paying cable
or satellite because they choose one or two.

Netflix has been bound and determined to continue their dvd options. I used to do 3 out at a time
about 20 years ago when Netflix first started. Eventually decreased it to 1 out at a time simply
because we did not have time to watch them and because were only interested in the new release
movies.

So, I dunno. Some people may spend more to get more subscriptions right now since they are
more prone to stay home but then those that are unemployed and having a difficult time making
ends meet, may cancel it all.

valerie wrote: The only one at this point in time for me that I prefer to keep and that is Amazon Prime.
It's worthy because there is a lot of programs to watch, even old movies and new Amazon shows, etc.
In addition, I keep my photos uploaded in the cloud and free shipping, etc. So everything I get with
Amazon is a good deal for me.

Initially I had subscribed to Prime not for the streaming but for the same day / next day shipping I saved a bundle on shipping ever since I am a member, well worth it, and eventually I started using the streaming side, there's lots of perks when you are a Prime member, not just the series and movies, and it's affordable too, . It's amazing what you get for that low price. Not like Netflix that dings me $13.99 a month :/ But still I have both because there is stuff I want to watch that is NOT on Prime but that is on Netflix. This is the problem when you have multiple streaming services, I mean there was a time when Netflix ruled the streaming world, not anymore, eventually you will have dozens or more new streaming services........

Check out Tubi.tv, it's 100% legit and FREE, they have a deal with a few studios and production companies.

Quote:
As far as all the individual companies charging for their networks, well that might bite them on the
arse and not take too long about it. Today, one can watch and read a lot of stuff online on video
sites and news sites. Even many free to watch movies at YouTube. With this coronavirus and people
being unemployed, many are not going to be capable of paying for all those subscriptions.

It might be the opposite, because these new streaming services will charge far less than Netflix, that wold be their strategy of building their member base Just like Netflix did, and years later when they build their member base,
then they will raise the price. It's fairly easy to win your customers over with a good price AND their favourite shows, they will follow you.

With a huge drop in income, Netflix is going to struggle, because it might not have the resources it once had to produce their own exclusive series, so we might see less Netflix exclusive series or watered down, low budget garbage.

Quote:
I have smart tvs and also Roku box's. Mostly I use Roku and there is about 100 channels in my Roku.
Many of the channels are free to watch. I even get my local news that is a channel in my Roku.

Yes I've heard of Roku. I have a Smart TV too, it's a Samsung and it supports installing of apps. It comes with Samsung's own ad supported TV streaming service, free, with hundreds of channels.

Quote:
Netflix has been bound and determined to continue their dvd options. I used to do 3 out at a time
about 20 years ago when Netflix first started. Eventually decreased it to 1 out at a time simply
because we did not have time to watch them and because were only interested in the new release
movies.

Really ? Who uses DVDs now anyway, the DVD Player and some BluRay players are being phased out. Finding quality DVD and BR media is near impossible now, they are all being phased out. Nowadays people are using USB, SSD and Hard Drive for storage. HDs are very cheap now, you can store your entire collection of music and DVDs on a single HDD. And now with the digital age, you can order, pay and download your movie - store that movie on your HD and play it when you want. DVD rentals are a thing of the past. Of course movie studios are still producing to DVD and BluRay, but eventually they will produce exclusively on BluRay, and eventually on memory modules, it might one day be actually cheaper to distribute movies that way than actual DVD and BluRay, and with media that can potentially store several times a BluRay, this means studios could pack more content and at a higher bit rate, so this means better quality, less compression, more content, no more swapping of DVDs and BluRay.
I have already started moving all my DVD / BR collection into digital copies and on an extra HD for backup.
It's practical when I need to watch something I just plug the hard disk to the smart TV's USB port. I'm using software I purchased online that converts authored DVD/BR into single file MKV and MP4 format.

Most of my tv's are Samsung. Some are Smart, some are not.

The most recent TV I have is a Google TV. Eh, I'd have to go in the other room to see
the real name of it. It has a bunch of APPS on it and apps can be added. I played
around with it for a few days after I set it up but I have not used it since....a few months.

I'm not a DVD collector. I have several old classic movies on dvd and at least one entire
tv series that I bought last year 'All In The Family' that I still have not watched all of it.

I do have a DVD player but I have an Xbox and I use it for dvd's.

I remember years ago we used to tape movies. They were horrible to watch. We taped
them on tracks.....8 track I guess. Half the time when ejected the tape stayed in the
player.

valerie wrote: Most of my tv's are Samsung. Some are Smart, some are not.

The most recent TV I have is a Google TV. Eh, I'd have to go in the other room to see
the real name of it. It has a bunch of APPS on it and apps can be added. I played
around with it for a few days after I set it up but I have not used it since....a few months.

I'm not a DVD collector. I have several old classic movies on dvd and at least one entire
tv series that I bought last year 'All In The Family' that I still have not watched all of it.

I do have a DVD player but I have an Xbox and I use it for dvd's.

I remember years ago we used to tape movies. They were horrible to watch. We taped
them on tracks.....8 track I guess. Half the time when ejected the tape stayed in the
player.

You got it wrong - 8 track tape was used for AUDIO, it was basically a cartridge with a tape that ran in an infinite loop. In reality it was 4 stereo tracks or 8 mono tracks.

I think what you are referring to is VHS tape There was never such a thing as an 8 track video recorder. There was VHS, which recorded 1 track of video, and it had 1 linear track for HI-FI Stereo and 1 mono if not mistaken, or something like that. Before VHS there was BETA

And BTW, you would be surprised that your entire audio cassettes and VHS library will outlast the best DVDs out there

But the vinyl is making a comeback.

As far as horrible to watch, it depends on the VCR you used. I always used JVC high-end VCRs and high quality VHS tapes, the recordings were far better than the crap highly compressed cable channels now, and even some badly compressed DVDs. If you used a bad VCR' bad tapes and recorded in EP mode sure, you would get less than stellar images. The VHS format was limited to 220-240 lines of resolution. DVD is 480 lines of resolution.

In my opinion it has become very very expensive just watching TV, If you just want movies and series there are many alternatives and services with a broad selection, But if you are a bit of a sport fanatic like me, And like to watch international Football(Soccer), National leagues, Tour DE France etc., It suddenly becomes a costly affair,

Our biggest cable company has just lost 12 of their most viewed channels due to arguments about raising the monthly subscription fee (Which just keeps going up due to the increasing costs of sports rights), Instead of lowering the monthly fee they just threw some movie-channels in instead.

I could fix all of this by receiving sattelite TV, But sadly it's not allowed where i live.


$80 a month for my cable TV, $40 for 2 Streaming services for sports, And $30 a month for our national TV license (which is forced upon everyone).


Good old cable days are gone, NOW PAY UP!!!

Yes it was VHS tapes. Oh yeah they were horrific to watch really. No HD then and
we were very unprofessional recording them. So when we watched a movie we had
recorded, it would be blurry, shaky, bad sound, the whole nine yards.

Oh yes those sports networks will really get you if you are one to watch sports.

Nikorj wrote: In my opinion it has become very very expensive just watching TV,

Well that depends on the country, but here it is the case too, everything is expensive, even breathing is expensive If you take premium cable with specialty channels you can run up beyond $100/month, and regular cable with basic networks and the tons of base channels they shove you with, you can run beyond $50-$60. See that's the problem with cable companies, they do not let you choose which channels you want and pay for what you use, they must impose you a package of channels (base) THEN they allow you to add to that. Internet is also expensive. Canada unfortunately is not known for its reasonable prices regarding internet and TV, because of a monopoly - It is basically 1 or 2 main provider, and all other resellers are basically using their networks. Same for electricity

Quote:
Our biggest cable company has just lost 12 of their most viewed channels due to arguments about raising the monthly subscription fee (Which just keeps going up due to the increasing costs of sports rights), Instead of lowering the monthly fee they just threw some movie-channels in instead.

Well you are lucky - Here it's gauge the customers high single digit increases once or twice every year, and throw in nothing - they just give a load of rubbish excuses that they are continually improving their infrastructure - yeah I think they mean they are improving the shareholder's infrastructures

Quote:
I could fix all of this by receiving sattelite TV, But sadly it's not allowed where i live.

There is always the option of free over the air digital sats, you could IN THEORY get all the major US networks, for free, BUT, the signal reception might vary depending on your area, and you always need that few other channels (local news, local stuff). There will come a time where cable will be more expensive than electricity

Quote:
Good old cable days are gone, NOW PAY UP!!!

You mean the days when cable was on the VHF band and only 6 channels ?
Now it's basically a mush of channels that you probably won't watch anyway. On one hand cable companies are raising their prices to meet the demands of their shareholders continually demanding for more......AND at the same time the networks continually demanding an increase in distribution fees.......
Aside from the news channels, and maybe weather, it's pointless to have cable now, unless you like watching re-runs, because nothing new is being produced 1) We are in the summer 2) COVID19, so usually new seasons start taping around this time, BUT due to COVID19 most productions have been paused, this means all new seasons of the series will be delayed months and who knows, depending on how long this mf of a pandemic lasts!

valerie wrote: Yes it was VHS tapes. Oh yeah they were horrific to watch really. No HD then and
we were very unprofessional recording them. So when we watched a movie we had
recorded, it would be blurry, shaky, bad sound, the whole nine yards.

Oh yes those sports networks will really get you if you are one to watch sports.

No need for sports channels here, it's included in the cable package, some of the base channels in the package have deals with sports associations to broadcast games (i.e hockey, basketball, baseball, tennis, etc) There are specialty sports channel you pay for, those have 24/7 broadcast, not hanks.

As to VHS, it was the best thing at the time. The quality of recording depends on your cable reception and VCR and telly

To be honest, in many cases I found the picture on a good analog TV (CRT) to be better in some ways than today's LCD/ LED LCD. I mean sure the picture was not HD, but when watching from a broadcast with excellent reception and well calibrated TV, the picture was excellent. One of the reasons this was so is because analog TV used an uncompressed video, it's analog, but it was sensitive to interference, so if you had bad reception or wiring, the picture would become grainy. This is not the case with digital, you either get an image or you don't or you get blocking / cubes / freezing. One thing that plagues DIGITAL cable is that the companies cram all the channels in as little frequency ranges as possible, and to do so they over compress the video, and to hide the compression artifacts they "blur" (filter) the video before compressing it, so much that some cable companies offering HD or 4k looks HORRIBLE, because the signal is over compressed, which is why I say that some of the analog broadcasts on a regular TV looked better. If you watched TV live (non recorded) you could get as much as 500+ lines on a good TV. When recording to VHS tape you basically cut that resolution in half!). You could still get away with good quality if you had a good VCR. The best VCRs were some JVC models, the ones with picture enhancing and signal processing. The tape quality also was important, and of course recording in SP mode (you'd get 2 hours per tape on a T120) and recording in EP you'd get 6 hours. I'm guessing you probably recorded in EP. as far as the sound, it was excellent, it's hifi linear PCM, uncompressed audio, not like today's highly compressed audio used in digital.

One annoying thing though is when your VCR went bad and started eating your tapes But if you had a good VCR that was maintained and did not "eat" your tapes, you could have a VHS collection that outlive your hard disks, CDs, DVDs, BluRays

I think generally the cable picture in the U.S. is far better than here, the signal is over compressed !!!! Some cable companies here still use the outdated MPEG-2, which was not meant for HD in the first place and behaves poorly for low bit rates !!! I think in the US it's pretty much MPEG-4. Also don't ever try watching VHS on a big screen TV - I think VHS was meant for smaller CRT TV, or intermediate size, but the bigger it gets, the uglier the picture.
If your picture was fuzzy and shaky, you may have had tracking issues or a bad reception, were you getting cable through the rabbit ears ?

Darkstar2 wrote:

Nikorj wrote: In my opinion it has become very very expensive just watching TV,

Well that depends on the country, but here it is the case too, everything is expensive, even breathing is expensive If you take premium cable with specialty channels you can run up beyond $100/month, and regular cable with basic networks and the tons of base channels they shove you with, you can run beyond $50-$60. See that's the problem with cable companies, they do not let you choose which channels you want and pay for what you use, they must impose you a package of channels (base) THEN they allow you to add to that. Internet is also expensive. Canada unfortunately is not known for its reasonable prices regarding internet and TV, because of a monopoly - It is basically 1 or 2 main provider, and all other resellers are basically using their networks. Same for electricity

Quote:
Our biggest cable company has just lost 12 of their most viewed channels due to arguments about raising the monthly subscription fee (Which just keeps going up due to the increasing costs of sports rights), Instead of lowering the monthly fee they just threw some movie-channels in instead.

Well you are lucky - Here it's gauge the customers high single digit increases once or twice every year, and throw in nothing - they just give a load of rubbish excuses that they are continually improving their infrastructure - yeah I think they mean they are improving the shareholder's infrastructures

Quote:
I could fix all of this by receiving sattelite TV, But sadly it's not allowed where i live.

There is always the option of free over the air digital sats, you could IN THEORY get all the major US networks, for free, BUT, the signal reception might vary depending on your area, and you always need that few other channels (local news, local stuff). There will come a time where cable will be more expensive than electricity

Quote:
Good old cable days are gone, NOW PAY UP!!!

You mean the days when cable was on the VHF band and only 6 channels ?
Now it's basically a mush of channels that you probably won't watch anyway. On one hand cable companies are raising their prices to meet the demands of their shareholders continually demanding for more......AND at the same time the networks continually demanding an increase in distribution fees.......
Aside from the news channels, and maybe weather, it's pointless to have cable now, unless you like watching re-runs, because nothing new is being produced 1) We are in the summer 2) COVID19, so usually new seasons start taping around this time, BUT due to COVID19 most productions have been paused, this means all new seasons of the series will be delayed months and who knows, depending on how long this mf of a pandemic lasts!

No!!, I mean when you only needed to subscribe to 1 provider to get covered with the channels you wanted.

Look, I'm okay with paying a decent price for a full TV package, But even that is not possible anymore as you're also required to have other subscriptions on the side.

We are not allowed to mount a dish on the outside to receive sattelite TV, So that is not an option i have.


Some people have more money than others, But i think over $100 for watching your favourite channels is insane, Prices are not even being regulated, Just increasing.

The doc series 'Fear City' is on Netflix today.

We did not have cable in our old VHS record days.

Fear City was interesting.

A lot of people don't realize or don't remember how much Rudy J did for New York.

valerie wrote: We did not have cable in our old VHS record days.

If you did not have cable then what were you recording ? The VCR has a cable tuner to directly record from channels. Unless you were recording from satellite or antenna (rabbit ears) or OTA, picture quality would not be stellar, no wonder you mentioned fuzzy and shakes. You would be surprised on the quality of some of high-end VHS recorders, and S-VHS that came out after, doubling the resolution. I guess given the price that was mostly for event videographers like wedding, etc.

If you were to record a clean channel on a SVHS and the same channel on a DVD recorder, you would clearly see the picture from the SVHS is better, because it is non compressed, and some higher-end VCRs compensated for the chroma noise.

I heard of technology also called D-VHS that came out also which is a digital format, aimed mainly at professionals.
Sometimes old technology has its value........There are exceptions, I saw a documentary once about how large hard drives were, they were gigantic and weighed a ton and made the noise of jet engines, and they were 20MB I think, imagine that, and now you can basically carry a 2TB hard disk in your pocket

I'm not sure exactly how we did it but yes it was difficult.

My sister and her family was the ones that would record movies constantly and
yes they were horrible.

I had a converter of sorts. Some how it was attached to the tv and then it went
to the converter and the converter went to the VHS tape. Funny, I have not thought
about the item since way back when we had it. Must have been in 80's or maybe
earlier. I do know it was a name brand product.

I don't remember how my sister recorded hers but they recorded every movie
they watched. They all lived on the same valley you could say and would pass
around movies they recorded.

But yeah for sure, they were a mess to watch.

Also, I used to have a ton of floppy disks. I would spend hours placing all my
photo's on them.

valerie wrote: Also, I used to have a ton of floppy disks. I would spend hours placing all my
photo's on them.

The big or the small ones, there were 5 1/4 floppies and 3 1/2 I think, yeah floppies, How much did these things store ? 1.44mb - and when you think now that for the size of a floppy you can store terrabytes, so a typical 1TB drive could store over 1.4 million floppies
Now computers of course no longer come with a floppy drive, and even optical drives are being phased out, that sucks, what happens to people who put their family collection on DVD and BluRay!!!

It looks like memory will wipe out all mechanical media storage, the same way hard drives and optical wiped away floppies, memory will replace floppy and optical, eventually SSD will be as cheap as hard disks. I have a 1 TB Samsung 960 EVO Pro SSD,it's up 30x faster than the fastest hard drive, I boot my Windows 10 to full desktop in 10 seconds.
Eventually hard drives will less popular though I do not think they will completely disappear yet, SSD have finite write cycles and are not meant for archiving data.

I don't remember the size. I may have had both. Of course, I don't have them any more
but I do remember placing loads of photos on them. One would hold a lot.

That is something I think about in regards to saving photos and documents. I still like to
print them out.

There are people that see Facebook, Amazon Prime, Cloud storage as the best way to save
their photos. I do think that is handy because if something happens to your physical you
have them safe in the cloud. With that said, you never know what is going to happen with
Facebook, amazon or even the various cloud storage.

The photos that are the ones I really like and same with documents, I print them.

PS. I was thinking about an old gateway laptop I have but I don't even think it had
a floppy drive.

I had a Compaq from 'Radio Shack' store back in the 90's and it had a floppy disc
and that is computer I recall sorting photos onto floppies.

valerie wrote: PS. I was thinking about an old gateway laptop I have but I don't even think it had
a floppy drive.

I had a Compaq from 'Radio Shack' store back in the 90's and it had a floppy disc
and that is computer I recall sorting photos onto floppies.

Ok so they were big floppies then I guess, now memory the size of a piece of chocolate can store millions of these big floppies

As far as cloud storage no thanks, like you said, you never know what can happen to these companies, if they go bankrupt or whatever, there goes your storage. Not only that, what if internet is down or for whatever reason you cannot access it, you are cooked, whereas on your physical media you have full access at all times. The one thing is to have a backup of your data, very important. Another issue is security, I mean now you have hackers (mainly Chinese and Russian) hacking into banks, NSA, government, NASA, Capital One, etc, so it would be a disaster if cloud storage providers get hacked. I would never store personal and sensitive data on the cloud or even photos. And storing photos on social media is the WORST you can do, basically there is a clause that any photo you upload on a social media, it belongs to the social media now, and they can do with it what they want, so unless you want to find your photos on advertising or photos misused, then it's better to keep all the sensitive data local.

Some companies seem to store all their client info and personal stuff on the cloud nowadays.

It would always be a good idea to keep a full backup on another media type or provider, but anyhow, the way I go about is that I use hard drives, and I buy equal amounts to have a data. For highly sensitive data, I will use 3 backups + I will keep one on a quality media. One thing people should *NEVER* do is keep archival data stored on SSD, those are not meant for long term storage of data. Ideally would be to use SLC memory but nowadays most SSDs are becoming cheap and use QLC which can store 4 bits per cell - so the data retention is much weaker.

Gotta miss those floppies, if you still have a floppy drive you may find out that the data on your disks are intact !
The will likely outlast the best SSD, CD, DVD, BluRay media, even HD.