Yarr, matey.
I’ve been using RD + Stremio for 2 years now, has worked great (except when RD shut down, then switched to Debrid-Link, which was as easy as RD). It costs about 3€ per month, though I think it has been worth it.
If people would just drop their service en masse they would stop doing this shit. Everyone acts like they can be without a streaming service for a month or two so they’ll just complain as they continue to hand them money.
In other areas, yeah, probably.
But with music, movies, and TV, they’ll just blame piracy, crank up the DRM and bullshit on their own platforms, pat themselves on the back, and raise prices.
crank up the DRM
Which is why so many people pirate. Non-conforming browser, OS, TV, some other missing magic? Too bad. Paid for quality 4K? Here’s some low bitrate 720p.
The reality is there aren’t enough people that care about ads to do that.
You either grew up with TV commercials or you grew up with ads, the conditioning is already there. There is a narrow band of people who don’t watch much or any TV and got on the internet for most content that remember when ads weren’t a thing. They have done studies and reviewed user data to determine how much ads they can play.
They might push users to leave by tickling the ad tolerance while increasing subscription fees, but that is unlikely to happen as the frog is already boiled.
I grew up with ads but I still don’t tolerate them, I’m practically allergic to ads.
Even back then I would just switch the Chanel when ads would start and then so many times just forget what I was watching and watch something else. And even as a kid I already would preference shows running on the public television in Germany because they didn’t have ads, they were played in a different way.
People who grew up with ads were okay with it because the shows and movies were free.