I was so happy when Netflix became available in my country. I was waiting for any serious streaming provider, that will give me easy and legal access to the movies I love. Ok, looks like not to all of them were there, but future was looking bright. As time was passing, offer was extending. They eventually added even some Polish movies, which my wife appreciated. Seems like my country is not in the same league like USA, Germany or UK. Screw it! It’s still better than nothing, right?

I prefer original audio and subtitles, but rest of my family prefer dubbing. It was all slowly propagating and right now most movies have it.

UI is simple and responsive on all devices I use. I’m quite disappointed, that in basic plan there’s no FullHD quality and if you want 4K, you have to pay even more. Pirates just provide you a variety of resolutions, audio codecs… But it’s at least legal, legal is good, right?

When I started my adventure with them, I was quite satisfied. I like to watch Sci-Fi movies. I had there “The Expanse”, “Star Trek Discovery” and few more. There were Marvel movies, not all of them but most.

I also have HBO GO. I was following “Game of Thrones”, “Chernobyl” and few more. Quality is not as good as on Netflix. I think it’s max FullHD, but probably some of videos are even worse. I pay for it half the price of Netflix, but I also have access to 3 FullHD TV channels. Video quality is lower, but actually movies and TV series are in my opinion of better quality. More engaging, better rated on IMDB, etc.

Two years passed and landscape is kinda different.

I have now:

  • Netflix
  • HBO Go (for one third of the price of Netflix)
  • Apple TV (half of the price of Netflix)
  • Amazon Prime (costs ~15 times less than Netflix)

Netflix was pioneering the whole market. They were fist, that provided an easy to use and legal service allowing people to watch any movie in the front of TV/PC. They even make it simpler than downloading pirate copy. No need to dig through multiple torrents and hoping that it will download. It’s all already there, ready to use.

Others saw their success and decided to copy it and that IMO started decline of it’s quality/value. I can’t watch “The Expanse” anymore on Netflix, it was moved to Amazon Prime. I can’t watch new season of “Star Trek” because it was moved to some “Paramount+”. I’m not even sure, if I can register to this service from my country right now.

My daughter wanted to binge watch Marvel movies during Xmas holidays, so we could catch all nuances together. We can’t. There are no Marvel movies on Netflix, just one or two on HBO Go. There’s this new Disney+, but it’s not available in my country. I can’t watch Avengers, Star Wars or even some fairy tales disappear (which my younger kids enjoy).

On Apple TV, I watched “The Fundation”. Not bad, but actually I don’t see anything more interesting. There are more movies and even quite fresh block busters, but buying them cost around the monthly value of Netflix. There’s also option to borrow for ~20% of Netflix monthly price. Quality of video is really good, maybe even better than on Netflix. On the other side application on my TV is not of the Apple class. It’s crappy, not intuitive. I just don’t like it. When I think about the service, I have mixed feelings. I pay, to gain access to the service so I could pay even more to watch something recent. Summing it up, I have to pay more than for Netflix or even a cinema ticket to watch something on my own TV. Streaming on mass scale, don’t cost that much like whole service in cinema. I don’t have 7.1 audio and boxes of pop-corn. Why would I pay more to buy movie like that than going to cinema?

I have 4 paid services active right now and I’m not able to watch what I want to. It feels, like history turned the full circle and again pirates can provide higher quality of the service, giving people easy access to all the materials and you can even choose the quality you want. They might again gain the market and I can already hear yelling of corporations how they’re responsible for artists loosing their money. But is it ok, if I loose my money for 4 paid services, but can’t really get access to what I want? Is it ok, to block access to some movies in other streaming platform but do not provide legal alternative?

I wanted a fair service, for fair amount of money. Now I feel like someone cheated me. I believe for next 2-3 years they will choke with all those new Stream+ services of smaller and lower portfolios. They won’t be profitable and people will be more and more annoyed. I hope they all will fail and eventually instead of building closed platforms, they will find way to share media in more open way.

For now I will share my opinion and cancel most of the subscriptions. It’s time to review the list of books I wanted to read 😃