I’d seen rumours online but got the email this morning.
EDIT: seems like there won’t be ads for everyone straight away.
- Live events, such as sports, and content offered through Amazon Freevee will continue to include advertising. Customers in the Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man won’t see ads in their experience at this time.
You don’t actually have to pay Amazon anything. I suggest you consider this.
And I just cancelled. Fuck them. This is 1990’s pay TV repeating itself. I’m not playing that part of history again.
I cancelled Prime as soon as I got this email. It was set to renew in February so perfect timing. I also sent them an email to provide some feedback about the change:
I cancelled my membership as soon as I received notification that you would be including ads to a PAID streaming service. I cannot believe that you think asking for more money per month to have an ad free experience is ok. The world is going to shit because of greedy corporations like you. I hope you go bankrupt and Jeff Bezos goes looking for the Titanic in a poorly made submarine.
Options:
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Pay no extra and suffer annoying adverts in all movies and shows.
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Pay an extra £35.88 a year to get the same awful experience you had before.
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Save £95 a year and cancel it. Spend your savings on a VPN, and look into Jellyfin, Radarr and Sonarr. BEST VALUE
Is there a guide for dummies you’d recommend. PVR and etc are unknown terms for me. I used to torrent under vpn but that was in the Limewire days… hoping for some help in the safest ways to return to the seas.
There’s plenty of guides for Linux, but with Windows you’re a bit more reliant on installers and reading some of the guides about setting all the bits up.
Off the top of my head, you need:
qBittorrent (for downloading, turn on the web interface, and you can configure it to do nothing if not connected to your VPN)
Prowlarr (this scrapes torrent data from websites and collates it all together for the other parts of this system, add some sources once you install that)
Radarr (browse movies and pick which ones you want, link it to Prowlarr and qBittorrent, give it a folder e.g. D:\Movies to download into)
Sonarr (same as Radarr but for TV, again link it to Prowlarr and qBittorrent, give it a different folder e.g. D:\TV to download into)
Jellyfin (an open source Netflix, allows you to play the stuff you downloaded in a pretty web UI, or through a client program you can get for a couple of platforms, add the folders you told Radarr and Sonarr to download to)
Then you tweak everything that annoys you. By default it’s quite happy to grab full 60GB+ Blu-ray releases, which is fine if you’re on a fast connection and have lots of storage, but if a movie is over 10GB or so, it all looks the same to me. Depending on how you watch, you might have to mess with Jellyfin clients to figure out why certain videos won’t play. It’s pretty good but it’s not perfect.
How does a VPN give you access to shows on Amazon that require Prime? Or do you mean it’ll just give you access to more shows than you’d have otherwise?
like the other poster said it doesnt give you access to amazon’s shows on amazon’s site. Helpful pirates all over the world tirelessly upload “amazon’s” content to the grand line. When I tell people about a show I’m loving it’s always an interesting conversation when they ask me ‘what service is it on?’ and i straight up have no idea.
perhaps you already know this, but if you don’t, MOST pirate streaming sites have everything from every service right there in a searchable webpage that looks like (usually a discount version but sometimes superior) a paid streaming site.
It’s not even cope to say they are generally easier to navigate and search than the services you have to PAY for. All you need is ublock origin <—(non-negotiable) and you have access to a superior service IMMEDIATELY.
Probably meant in the context of hiding your piracy activities.
The VPN is to shield yourself from DMCA (in the US, of course) while you sail the high seas.
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I only have Netflix left, for the kids. Everything else I obtain “elsewhere”.
Yo ho yer scallwags we sail the high seas🌊🏴☠️🦜
I dropped Prime before any of this happened. I was paying mostly for the two-day shipping, which became increasingly longer than two days.
What made me quit it was when I ordered two of the same item from the same seller, but one shipped from the seller and one direct from Amazon. Both were listed in stock. The one shipped by the seller arrived in three days. The one shipped by Amazon had not yet shipped after the first week. I even contacted the seller, who suggested I cancel, but Amazon wouldn’t accept my cancelation, so I had to wait more than two weeks for it to ship.
Turns out I was a fool to be paying Amazon all that time for a sub-optimal service. And I’ve saved so much money ever since when I can’t just buy things with free shipping. In fact, I rarely buy anything from Amazon at all anymore.
So this? This tracks with the direction they’ve been heading for a long time, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Funny that it’s 2.99 no matter what currency you’re using… I’m saving money by living in Canada!
Just means it’s all bullshit.
Won’t help with live events, but over time, a NAS & a VPN is cheaper than streaming.
You mean the lip sync concerts?
Or the sports which can easily cost over 100 to watch some sweaty guys make millions while you scream at your tv?
that looks to be almost all steaming services adding an ad-supported option, you now pay to not have ads.
Back to the high sea’s to watch anything then
Edit: ignore this. They actually do offer an adfree sub
But Amazon is not doing this. They show ads on the one subscription they have, that they already recently have raised the price for. This is higher price for lower quality and no option to upgrade or downgrade. They leave you the option to stay or leave
It says in the email that you can pay extra for ad free.
Sorry. I missed that
We need to show you ads for your sake. It’s so that we can make more and better content for you, so that you and even more, stay subscribed, even though we also just raised subscription fees. It’s not because we want the money. It’s for your sake we’re doing this!
Indeed, they are so charitable and selfless, always looking out for us, I cannot hold back the tears of thankfulness any more. It’s too much for me. I feel like I am taking too much advantage of them without ever being able to give enough back. For their sake I will stop exploiting them and cancel my subscription to help them save themselves.
Maybe they should ad a donate button or patron so that we can show our gratitude
Can someone tell me what the point of prime is at this point? I don’t remember the last time a package arrived in under a week and now there are ads of a shitty streaming service?
I’m one of them libural pansy hippies who occasionally gets (slightly more) humane meat/dairy at whole foods. Did the math and begrudgingly, the prime exclusive discounts covered the costs. The alternative for me is going full vegan, or spending even more at a similar store, either of which would just suck.
Dealing with a restricted diet sucks less than living with the guilt of the absolutely cruel abuses that you’d be enabling by buying meat. Those animals feel fear and pain just like you do.
I’ve had prime since almost day one. Lately I’ve been trying to reduce my dependency on Amazon which isn’t easy when you’re already paying them in advance for shipping just to keep prime video and a few free games and ebooks. This was the push I needed to finally sever that tie and release myself from their trap. This could be the start of a good thing for a lot of people. Prime has been an effective competition blocking lock-in scheme for too long. It’s end result is it’s ability to keep prices high because they are the sole gatekeeper. Good riddance Amazon.
Yeah, had it for years. They ruined their default Music sub earlier in the year so I got Spotify out of spite instead of upgrading it.
When I heard about this change a few months back I cancelled on the spot.
