<story><title>Max is taking 4K away from its legacy ad-free subscribers</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/2/23943859/max-4k-hbo-max-ad-free-subscribers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mathieuh</author><text>Baffles me why all these streaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. For about 18 months there was a golden age where it was easier to pay for things than to pirate. Now we’re in a situation where it’s even &amp;#x2F;harder&amp;#x2F; than it’s ever been.&lt;p&gt;People will pay for media if it’s easy and a good experience. The barrier to piracy is non-existent these days and you actually get a far better experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mdasen</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not that baffling. For a time, they were trying to grow their subscriber base and luring them in with low prices. Now that they have their subscriber base, they want to get back to the revenue they were getting before. Realistically, entertainment companies weren&amp;#x27;t going to accept lower revenue than they previously had for their product. As the industry transitions from physical media and cable TV to streaming, they needed to get users over the hump of signing up.&lt;p&gt;It isn&amp;#x27;t harder to pay than to pirate. It&amp;#x27;s just getting more expensive. Max&amp;#x27;s move to charge $4 extra for 4K doesn&amp;#x27;t make it harder to pay. You say that people will pay for media if it&amp;#x27;s easy and a good experience. C&amp;#x27;mon, Max isn&amp;#x27;t changing the ease or experience. They&amp;#x27;re just changing the price.&lt;p&gt;We got used to paying less for entertainment and now we&amp;#x27;re all annoyed that they&amp;#x27;re trying to get us back to paying what we used to pay 20 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not suggesting that cost isn&amp;#x27;t an important factor. It is. But an argument many people made was &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;d pay for it if they&amp;#x27;d just make it available.&amp;quot; Turns out, we don&amp;#x27;t like the price. Tons of people with cable used to pay $15&amp;#x2F;mo for HBO. Max has more content and is more convenient than what HBO offered 15-20 years ago.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really not baffling and they aren&amp;#x27;t making it harder. They want more money and we don&amp;#x27;t want to pay as much. I&amp;#x27;m not saying that it doesn&amp;#x27;t make the price hikes garbage. It&amp;#x27;s just not baffling: they want to get back the revenue they&amp;#x27;re losing in declining physical media sales and declining cable TV subscription rates.</text></comment>
<story><title>Max is taking 4K away from its legacy ad-free subscribers</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/2/23943859/max-4k-hbo-max-ad-free-subscribers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mathieuh</author><text>Baffles me why all these streaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. For about 18 months there was a golden age where it was easier to pay for things than to pirate. Now we’re in a situation where it’s even &amp;#x2F;harder&amp;#x2F; than it’s ever been.&lt;p&gt;People will pay for media if it’s easy and a good experience. The barrier to piracy is non-existent these days and you actually get a far better experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yieldcrv</author><text>&amp;gt; The barrier to piracy is non-existent these days and you actually get a far better experience&lt;p&gt;I hadn’t used a torrent in a decade and revisited the concept due to this streaming service convulsion&lt;p&gt;I found that:&lt;p&gt;VPN to another country was a 1-click in a chrome extension I already had that for other reasons, and all the torrent sites remind you to enable it or install one thats just as simple&lt;p&gt;My TV was running a DLNA server on my network with a lot of storage space I never knew about. I had only connected it to the internet for an OTA update once, and never used any of the “Smart TV” stuff. But it also has USB ports.&lt;p&gt;It runs the latest video formats and can read subtitles packaged with them&lt;p&gt;The torrent downloaded directly to it at gigabit speed over my Wifi 6 network the ISP had already setup with their gear&lt;p&gt;The quality is far higher than what gets streamed over the internet. Something I was willing to overlook as long as the streaming services were more convenient.&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of people have similar infrastructure already right now, without needing to be an enthusiast in electronics or home entertainment&lt;p&gt;really is better at the moment</text></comment>