Netflix phases out 'basic' streaming plan from its subscription options in Canada
www.ctvnews.ca
Netflix Canada is done with being basic. The streaming giant says it's phasing out the $9.99 'basic' option from its price plans, taking away the cheapest subscription without ads.
  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    My entire family have paid a family plan for years. Once they changed the terms on that plan and want us all to purchase independent plans, we cancelled.

    Pirate streams of Netflix content load faster than they did on original Netflix now. 1 for us, 0 for Netflix.

    We were paying customers. I guess they don’t like money.

  • blackstampede@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    I should probably thank Netflix for helping me save money. Their shenanigans pissed me off enough that I’ve entirely withdrawn from all paid streaming - I have a media server and a VPN now. Total media cost, $70 /year or ~$5.83 /month. For that, I have:

    • Access to any movie or t.v. show any streaming service has ever provided
    • No ads
    • Shows/films don’t get removed from from the platform without warning.
    • blackstampede@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      A couple of people have asked for more info about my setup, so here’s what I did. I’m on mobile, so forgive any typos:

      1. I bought a refurbished Dell mini PC from some website or other - if you Google “refurbished Dell mini PC” it’ll probably be the top result. It doesn’t need to be fast or have too much memory, but I’ve got a 2TB hard disk in mine, which is surprisingly cheap. Also needs at least one HDMI port.

      2. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, and made a single user with no password, then set it to boot straight to the desktop. Plugged it directly into the t.v. with an HDMI cable.

      3. I bought a cheap wireless keyboard with a roller ball in it that (barely, need a better one) can be used from my couch.

      4. Installed Jellyfin and set it to run as a background service on boot. It has two directories it cares about: ~/Videos/Film and ~/Videos/Television

      5. Set up ssh so that I can use scp to push files from my personal laptop to the server without having to dick around with thumb drives etc. I also have a script that checks how much disk space is available on the media server so I don’t run out (that 2TB drive fills up fast).

      6. Got a NordVPN subscription and use Transmission on my personal laptop to download anything I want to see, push it to the server.

      For a while, I also had an external domain name and IP so I could watch my videos on my phone while travelling, but I switched routers recently and something broke. I haven’t set this back up, but there are services that will give you a static IP and route requests to your actual IP so you can have a static domain name without having to pay your ISP for a static IP.

      EDIT: also, you can set commands to run at login, so it boots directly to Firefox running in kiosk mode on the Jellyfin web app. The end result is that on boot, I get the Ubuntu symbol, a brief flash of desktop, and then I’m browsing my media library full screen.