Category: Guides

Netflix on TV

Ads and higher prices: how to cope with a changing streaming landscape

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Streaming media pioneer Netflix set out to become the home of the cord cutting movement. Offer a better experience than Cable to a lower price.

Things have changed significantly since then. Now, there are numerous players on the market, e.g., Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV, Paramount, Prime Video, HBO Max and many more. All want a piece of the cake.

Things have turned for the worse for viewers. The rise of streaming services has spread films and shows across the networks. While most offer a core set of films and movies, including original productions, other content often moves between services.

It may happen that you watch Part 1 of a show using one service, but need to switch to another service to watch the second part. There is also little hope that you may watch all movies of an actor at a single service. Even worse, older content may not be available at all.

Ads and price jumps

Many streaming services have increased the price of a subscription in recent years or announced plans to do so. Netflix, for instance, increased the price in several regions in 2022 and may increase prices again according to reports.

The introduction of ad-powered plans is another recent development. Netflix and Disney launched plans with ads already. These cost less, e.g., Netflix’s Standard with Ads is available for $6.99 compared to $15.49 for its cheapest ad-free plan. Amazon will push advertisement to all Prime Video users, unless they subscribe to an ad-free option.

Ad-powered plans are cheaper, but they deteriorate the viewing experience, especially if ads are shown in the middle of streams. Still, they appear to be lucrative to streamers. First, because they unlock access to new viewers, and second, because it is highly lucrative.

In short: ads are being pushed and prices are increasing. Most streaming services will likely have introduced an ad-powered plan in the coming years.

What you may do about it

Internet users have one main option to deal with the development: to limit subscriptions. Instead of subscribing to a service for an entire year or longer, viewers could subscribe for only one or two months per year.

Streaming services hopping is a valid option to have access to all content, albeit not at the same time. This is not particularly problematic for most viewers. The majority of streaming services fail to release enough content to warrant a yearly subscription.

Subscribe to Netflix for one month and cancel afterwards. Subscribe to another service in the next month, and cancel again. It may not be as comfortable as having subscriptions for all services all the time, but you will save hundreds of Dollars per year doing so.

A full year Netflix Standard plan subscription sets you back $185.88 in the United States. Add yearly subscriptions to Disney+, Amazon Prime and some other services you like, and you pay hundreds of Dollar per year.

When you subscribe to a single month and then cancel, you end up paying a lot less.

There is also the possibility to completely dispense with subscriptions. Films and shows may be rented at public libraries, or from friends or colleagues. DVDs may not offer the best quality, but they are incredibly cheap on marketplaces such as eBay.

A problem looming at the horizon

Stream subscription hopping works only if the streaming services offer monthly subscription periods. There is a chance that this could change in the future to support only longer subscription periods.

No streaming service has announced plans of this kind though.

There is still the option to subscribe to none of the services, if that happens in the past. While the end of discs is also looming, it won’t happen in the coming years.

Closing Words

How to deal with Service Handler requests in browsers

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Most modern web browsers may display service handler requests when you visit certain websites. Chromium-based browsers display an icon in the address bar that shows two connected squares.

The mysterious icon displays “page wants to install a service handler” or a similar message on hover. A click displays an interactive menu.

You may allow, deny or ignore the request using it. There is also an option to manage existing service handlers.

What browsers like Chrome fail to do is explain what a service handler. Most users who never encountered the term before may not know what to do with the request.

Service Handler 101

Operating systems link file types and services with applications. This can be a local installed application, say an image viewer that is used to display photos and images, but also a web service.

Web applications like Gmail, Google Calendar and many others, may act as so called Service Handlers. It is just another term for an app that will load associated content. Note that protocol handler is used as a synonym.

Mozilla describes protocol handlers in the following way on its Developer Network website:

A protocol handler is an application that knows how to handle particular types of links: for example, a mail client is a protocol handler for “mailto:” links. When the user clicks a “mailto:” link, the browser opens the application selected as the handler for the “mailto:” protocol (or offers them a choice of handlers, depending on their settings).

Google Calendar, for example, may become the service handler for all calendar links on all webpages. When you click on such a link, Google Calendar is opened. The same principle works for other services, including email, image and video editing, 3D modelling, or conferencing.

Not all web users want web services to become Service Handlers. If you use a local calendar app, you may not want Google Calendar to handle these links.

Managing Handlers in Browsers

All Chromium-based browsers, including Google Chrome, Brave, Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi, support service handlers. Mozilla’s Firefox web browser and browsers that use its source support similar functionality.

The feature is enabled by default and the browser displays the icon in the address bar whenever the webpage supports it.

A click on the icon displays the interactive menu. You may block the icon by selecting ignore or deny. It is unclear how these two differ, but ignore may be temporary.

Allow, on the other hand, makes the web app the protocol handler for the listed item(s).

Chrome Protocol Handlers management

Load chrome://settings/handlers in the browser’s address bar to manage existing options.

The page lists options to change the default behavior. Websites and apps may “ask to handle protocols” by default. You may switch that to “don’t allow sites to handle protocols”, if you never want to see these requests again.

All allowed, blocked or ignored websites and apps are also listed here. You may remove them from the listing to reset their status.

Closing Words

All browsers give users a choice when it comes to service handlers. The requests may be handled on a case-by-case basis, but there is also an option to disable it entirely. Which choice is best for you depends on how you use your computer and Internet services. If you, for example, use Gmail on the Web, you may want mailto links opened in Gmail. This is configured using service handlers.

How to bring order to Google Photos Takeout exports automatically

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google Photos Takeout is a straightforward option to export all Google Photos to a local computer system. It is an excellent option to create a local backup of all photos uploaded to Google Photos or moving to a different provider.

A big problem with the takeout is that the photos are stored in multiple zip files, often hundreds of them. The number of folders depends largely on activity and time. Each zip file contains photos and a JSON file.

While it is possible to extract individual folders or all at once, doing so still leaves the photos in a disorganized state.

Google Photos Takeout Helper

Google Photos Takeout

The open source application comes to the rescue. All it takes is to point the app to a downloaded Google Photos takeout folder for it to do its magic. The application extracts all zip archives, sets timestamps correctly and will put all photos in a single folder or in monthly folders.

You need to download the photos from Google Takeout in the first step. This is done by visiting the Google Takeout site, signing-in, activating “deselect all” at the top to uncheck all export options, and checking the box next to Google Photos on the page.

Select “Next step” to continue and keep all other settings. Activate “create export” and wait for Google to inform you with an email that your download is ready.

A click on each of the download links opens the download page. You may need to authenticate yourself again before the download starts.

Extract all Zip archives. You may need to move them into a single root folder first, if there is more than one archive. The easiest way to do so is to copy all additional Google Photos folder into the first folder, so that all folders are under the same structure (Takeout\Google Photos).

Once all photos have been downloaded and all archives extracted, it is time to switch to Google Photos Takeout Helper.

Using the Helper app

Yearly folders for all photos exported from Google

First step is to download the application from the project’s GitHub repository. Visit it with a click on this link. The app is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. I downloaded the Windows version for this guide.

Run the downloaded file once it is on the local system. Note that you may get a “Windows protected your PC” prompt. This is thrown by SmartScreen, a security feature. The app is not dangerous, but SmartScreen does step in if an app is new or unrecognized by it.

Select “more info” and then “run anyway” to continue. A command prompt window opens with instructions. Press the Enter-key and use the folder browser that opens to pick the Takeout folder.

Once done, press Enter again to select the output folder. This is the folder that all sorted photos are put into.

All photos may be put into a single folder or sorted into year/month folders. Press 1 or 2 to make the selection.

Select what Google Photos Takeout Helper should do with albums in the final step:

  • 0 Shortcut — links album folders to original photos.
  • 1 Duplicate-Copy — puts photos into album folders as well.
  • 2 JSON – puts all photos into a single folder and creates a json file with album information.
  • 3 Nothing — ignore albums, which will ignore archive and trash photos altogether.

If the target folder is not empty, you need to select (1) to delete all files inside, (2) to place photos next to existing files or (3) exit the process.

The process may take a moment to complete. Press the Enter-key to finish the process and close the program window.

Once closed, open the target folder. You should see a folder structure based on your selections. Check the ALL_PHOTOS folder to access them all.

Closing Words

Google Photos Takeout Helper is a useful open source tool to quickly sort all exported photos. While not needed per-se, it may save users lots of time.