What subscription services do you like or not like?

I don’t like that many companies, particularly ones large enough to have some ability either alone (e.g. Microsoft) or in groups (e.g. car manufacturers) to compel people to subscribe to things as services that can/have/should be(en) ownable for a one-time affordable purchase. Having to subscribe to things is a way to get people to re-buy things over and over and have a nebulous and theoretically unlimited price.

i.e. a lot of it is an attempt to sneakily siphon as much cash away from as many people as possible.

MS Office is a great example of this – really, we could all use the 1995 version of MS Office to do most of what most people need and use MS Office for, pretty much as well as the latest version (or perhaps better because there are probably less complicated options and they’ll tend to use written words on the menus instead of strange icons). But by making new versions all the time and making them not compatible, they create a situation where many companies will want to have the latest version so it will be able to read files saved by the latest version… sigh.

It’s also a way car manufacturers are getting people even more regularly giving them money. Built-in obsolescence wasn’t evil enough, because it created jobs for independent mechanics. But by computerizing their cars up the wazoo in proprietary ways, if something breaks, the main thing to do is replace the module (or lease or buy a new one before the warranty expires). Next up is the dream of self-driving cars “so people won’t have to drive, and they won’t have to own cars” – well if/when that catches on, it also means they can eventually price the drive-able own-able cars for the very rich, and charge every one else per-use, or via subscription. At least in that model, the manufacturers might possibly have some incentive to actually not perpetrate built-in obsolescence.

I still have a subscription to the newspaper. I get both the print and the online versions. It is a bit expensive but I figure it’s worth it. I am supporting journalism.

The news, yes. I have the on line subscription to one of the local papers. I stopped getting the paper copy a few years ago. In day of yore I got lots of magazines. Now I get only The New Yorker weekly and it has a great mix of news, fiction, features, reviews, and of course the cartoons. Often whatever is in The New Yorker one week will be a topic everywhere else the next.

Gosh, considering that we’ve been battling with Cox for three weeks, my #1 subscription hate is them. Today the football game comes on, and if the streaming works like you guy said, Cox is getting cancelled Tuesday (the day after New Year’s day.)

I like Netflix.

I generally dislike subscription models. I loathe Cable TV and if I lived alone, I would have cancelled it by now. Same with our cell phones. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter love them, so I pay, pay, pay.

I also dislike the Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft 365, but I need them for work. Luckily, I get them for free from where I teach.

The only two I subscribe to that are a really good value are Netflix and Marvel Unlimited. All the movies/television and comics you could possible watch and read for $10/month each.

Funny how monthly prices vary. My daughter, who lives 20 miles from me, pays $19.99 for Netflix. I pay $7.00. She thinks it has something to do with the fact that they’re even more rural than I am.

We get most of our entertainment through Netflix, Sling TV and Hulu. We’re done giving our money to Comcast or Direct TV.

We also enjoy having Amazon Prime.

?? I don’t think Netflix varies by location (within the US). I think that $19.99 must include a charge from the Internet provider.

They have Basic, Standard & Premium at $7.99, $10.99 and $13.99

Some states & locales have a tax on streaming. It’s 9% here in Chicago. That would $1.25 on Netflix’s premium plan.

Oh she said they’re paying $200 a month for all the shit @Call_Me_Jay. Internet, cable, Netflix, home phone (which they don’t even have but it makes the overall shit cheaper.)

A little frustrated. He tried to stream the game on Sunday but the NFL site said, “Start your 30 day free trial,” but I wasn’t able to figure out how much it was after the free trial ended…..

WE CANCELLED CABLE!!! W00T!! Using Roku / Netflix / Amazon Prime / Hulu for our stuff now. Actually, we don’t have a subscription to Hulu yet.

Also some shows are available free from the networks. I think most PBS show are free for a limited time, and more if you are a member. I’ve been watching The Orville online at Fox for free.

I have CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, the NFL channel all for free through Roku. There is no time limit of how long they’ll be free. And a lot of other stuff too. But some of them are not available unless you subscribe to Hulu, or whatever, and then you pay a flat rate of $10 for Hulu and the shows are free.

I’m sure not against people making money, so when we tuned in to CBS last night, I was kind of relieved they have commercials. If they didn’t, they’d have to find some other way to make money, probably through a subscription.

Still not finished finding out all the stuff we have. We’ve had the Roku box for a year and a half. Had no idea how much was locked up in that little box until my 17 year old grandson came over to set it all up for us so Rick could watch the Superbowl.