Is anyone else just absolutely fed up with subscription services? Netflix is apparently raising their prices again. Amazon Prime Video is going to raise prices after the first of the year and it seems that Disney+ just raised it’s monthly price. I’m not going to pay $20 a month for Netflix.
I was listening to a great episdoe of This Week in Tech a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about these recent price increases along with the available content up on the various streaming services. There has been a lot of talk this past year about various services removing content entirely. Netflix did this with the Willow show and HBO and Discovery have recently gotten into some hot water on the topic as well earlier this year. The whole premise of the streaming services when they first launched was that we were going to have all of the back catalog of content available. It unfortunately seems that we are moving in the opposite direction.
I’ve also found that since getting these streaming services, I watch less content then I used to. Years ago, even when I subscribed to the Netflix disc service I used to regularly watch 1-2 movies per week. Popping a disc in on a Friday or Saturday night to watch a movie was a common occurrence and even going all the way back to the Blockbuster days I regularly watched a movie once a week. These days I feel like I rarely have any idea of what movies are out and about.
I’ve had a bit of a change of heart though recently. TikTok of all places has introduced me to some movies that I have never heard of before. Notably they have been some Anime films that have really caught my eye. Do you know where I ended up finding the DVD/Bluray to watch these films? My local library. My library has a ton of movies and access to even more via their network. I have watched more movies from my library over the past couple of months than I have through Netflix or Amazon all year.
I really think starting January 1st, I am going to strongly cut back on my streaming choices and invest myself back into a weekly movie night with DVD and Bluray rentals.