I remember when it was just Hulu for $5 and Netflix for $8. Saved $50 a month from cable. Now it seems we spend more. I have four. Max, Peacock, Paramount and Hulu. Prime doesn’t count because it sucks balls. (Only paying Netflix when next Stranger Things and Squid Game is released). Curious to see what the average Lemmer/Lemming (what do we call ourselves?) has?
0 streaming services but sailing the 7 seas
Plex is my one
I’m very happy with Jellyfin. Any particular reason why you use Plex instead of Jellyfin?
I have both. I really dislike the navigation in Jellyfin. It seems impossible to elegantly move between various collections compared to Plex, which just seems to fit my brain better.
That said, my daily driver is actually Infuse, which points at the Jellyfin server because:
- Infuse has the most reliable playback and never needs transcoding (Synology server, AppleTV client)
- Infuse will purge its cache and have to rebuild/refetch all the metadata for my library. Pointing it at a Jellyfin server allows all that info to persist including custom posters etc.
This is the way!
One. It’s all you really need. Watch what you want on it for a month. Then cancel and sign up for another. Repeat.
As others have pointed out, you can get a lot of services for free, even if just for a while. Cell phone plans, Target Circle, Best Buy, and other places frequently send out freebie codes or include services with membership.
Only the one. My self-hosted plex server.
I want to do that as well but then my question is how do you do Discovery? For example you can find many movies and series on netflix and some might be good and then you find it.
How do you that when there is no input. I sometimes really like to just scroll a library untill I find something interesting to watch.
Plex has been baking in features like that to help you see what is on other streaming channels, etc…
Personally the whole point of Plex for me was it was a container for my existing DVD/Blu Ray collection, while Plex has added some really cool features. Increasingly they keep resetting the dashboard to try and force engagement with new features, it feels a bit user hostile and I’ve been switching to Jellyfin (same idea but entirely open source and self hosted).
From a discovery perspective, personally I’ve found good content tends to create its own word of mouth style buzz.
For example at the moment you can’t go near twitter, reddit, work, BBC News, etc… without someone talking about ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’. Recently the risa community kept mentioning Babylon 5 so I picked up all 5 seasons for £20 and watched it through. Similarly the Risa community really seems to love Star Trek prodigy so I’ll probably give that a go at some point.
It’s not as convenient but it’s more socially healthy in my opinion to rely on word of mouth. Since I’ve started pirating all of my content and streaming through jellyfin, I’ve found that I’m talking amongst all of my friends more about their interests in docs, shows, movies, etc. I didn’t realize how much social commentary had been replaced with algorithms until then.
I follow a couple of youtube channels that do TV and movie reviews, those usually cover the highlights (good or bad).
Other than that I mostly check the “recent uploads” section of several torrent sites and piracy discord communities.
Sites like tmdb, imdb, trakt
Personally:
Kinocheck (YT, uploads cinema trailers)
gigguk, Crunchyroll (YT, uploading/reviewing shows) NZB360 (Android app for managing *arrs and my other related services)
Trakt (Website)
IMDB/TMDB (Website, If I visit them)I just rate my watched shows on reelgood, it gives pretty decent recommendations.
Overseerr
I used to have all of them. Everybody got my money every month. Then all the prices went up. Now only one of them gets my money per month. It’s not so much the expense. It’s the principle.
And also it’s the expense lol
Zero. I have not paid a cable bill or for a streaming service in over 20 years.
🥇
Respect.
It was zero for a long time, but now it’s one: Nebula. It’s $2.50/Mo and run by many large YT creators and comes with no ads or sponsorships. I wanted to support creators and was getting really tired of YT’s greed.
Only one, Plex and I share it with friends and family.
A free one from the library called Kanopy and F1TV.
I won’t bother saying what I use to have. I sail the seas now.
None. I can’t believe how much money people spend on these things.
Same. I’m just not a TV watcher. YouTube’s enough for me.
Edit: ahh I forgot about Spotify. So one.
None, and every time my coworkers talk about how many they have it seems insane. One has fucking 6 different services. It’s not even about the money. I just truly cannot be bothered working out the maze of what is where when an RSS feed will just deliver me the stuff I’m interested in when it comes out from anywhere.
I have an app called justwatch that tells me what’s streaming and where.
If you’re into keeping track of what you’re watching or what to watch, Trakt is great and it integrates seamlessly with JustWatch.
None, I refuse to sign up for any subscription, unless it can be done through gift cards, so I know that I will only spend a static ammount of money when I can afford it.
You can use gift cards for your Netflix subscription, I did that until I got it wrapped in to my internet package.
Yep, I did that for a while untill it just wasn’t worth it to me any longer.
Have you heard of Privacy? It’s an app that sets up virtual credit card numbers and you can specify how much or how many or how often that number can be charged. I mainly use it for “free” trials that want a credit card to bill if you don’t cancel after the trial period. I set a $1 limit so the company thinks it’s a real card when they do the small feeler charge. Saves me the hassle of remembering to cancel.
You can obviously use it for other purposes, like when you might be dealing with an iffy vendor.
None. We had Netflix for 8 years, but we cancelled it a couple of months ago.
Edit: scrolling through the comments made me remember that music is also a streaming service, so one - Spotify
Zero.
I have a friend’s account to Netflix (I don’t use much) - I mainly type watch x free online in the search engine.
Not sure why you’ve been downvoted, zero is just as valid and answer as anything else.
Do you still have access to Netflix? They don’t allow different IP addresses where I am
Hmm. Okay, I had 😂
Login works but it says to renew the subscription.
The friend might have ended it.
Stemio/realdebrid
Real-Debrid and something like Stremio is really all you need.
Here’s a link to a reddit thread detailing how to setup Stremio, Torrentio and Real-Debrid. The only thing you pay for is Real-Debrid (which is essentially a server you connect to that hosts torrents so that you can stream them directly with high speeds). It costs around 20$ for 6 months.