Netflix and Hulu, etc. Have left a bad taste in my mouth as well. Was a member when Netflix began and was only a DVD rental service.

They had so much good content and if it wasn't available for streaming you could almost always just rent the DVD, they had a pretty decent DVD rental program for a while.

Wow, that all changed rapidly. Took a hiatus from streaming and only came back a couple years ago. Subscribed to Netflix again like "yeah! Gonna be 100× more shit than before!"

No, much of the best content was gone. The entirety of Netflix only provided less than a handful of shows I was even "meh" about. No more DVD rental either.

I watched squid games and that was pretty much it. Let that trial expire and began to explore different services.

Sheesh, wtf. Just to catch up on some old stuff and watch a few new things I'd been hyped about I realized required me to basically subscribe to damned near everything. AMC+ for TWD, Hulu for iirc workaholics, Netflix again for don't remember, Amazon prime solely for The Boys and Omniman or whatever it's called HBO max for iirc mortal Kombat Paramount for old south park And I'm positive I got at least two more.

That's 8 subscription services a MONTH I'd have to pay, just to watch the equivalent of what I used to get on cable.

Of every single one of those trials, I don't think I watched any more than the one show/movie I'd initially signed up for. Forgot I even had a few just because they didn't have anything else I liked anytime I checked.

Then discovered a great site that I'm not sure if I can name here. This isn't an ad for it because I don't want to see it shut down.

Was everything that those services should be. Just have EVERYTHING I can think of to watch including older movies. Anytime I remember a show I used to like I just type it in and it's always there, never had a search that didn't yield results.

All that and the interface is even better. No ads with a blocker ofc, no subscription reminder Bs, no promoting their own originals, no promoting what companies have paid them to.. they just show the most watched stuff in the feed but you can easily find whatever you want.

Even Netflix last I checked couldn't keep up with that. They have a search function but 99% of the time what you're looking for isn't available. Their categories are also just.. horrible. It's just a hodgepodge of stuff they want you to watch, they aren't really categorized well.

I really wish that we could rewind 20 or so years to back when Netflix first became successful and instead of just creating umpteen streaming companies competing against each other maybe.. just maybe we had one single streaming platform with everything people actually want to watch..

But that would likely mean $100+ monthly subscription fees.. worse than the cable we ran from, and then ofc they'd just have ads anyway like Hulu unless you pay even more.. it's ridiculous. If they'd just consolidate and ask a reasonable price pirating wouldn't be so prevalent at all. Problem is, it's now so much easier to pirate and in my case I get even better service that way.

It'd be a monopoly ofc, but isn't it basically just a big Monopoly anyway? A select few companies basically run the entire industry in the U.S. sure they're technically different companies but they have made it almost impossible for smaller companies to start up. How can you compete with Disney, for example?