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Most streaming services have two levers when it comes to increasing profitability on the customer side. Major streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime Video introduced ad-supported plans only recently. These are cheaper, but the downside is that ads are shown regularly. Pricing varies from region to region, but if you take Netflix in…
Disney announced the rollout of extra member slots option in many regions today. The company follows Netflix’s example, which cracked down on password sharing and introduced extra member slots some time ago. Good to know: Extra member slots allow subscribers to gift a membership to a non-household viewer. The details: Disney is also starting to…
All publicly hosted Invidious instances are blocked from playing YouTube videos. When you try the third-party solution right now, you receive error messages with no option to bypass it. Note: this may impact other YouTube frontends as well. Good to know: Invidious is an open source solution to play YouTube videos on publicly or self-hosted…
If you use the official YouTube TV app without a premium subscription, then you are in for another ad-treat. Google has been testing Pause-Ads on YouTube since April of this year. These ads show up when you hit the pause button, e.g., to get something to drink or go to the bathroom. Now, pausing will…
Disney just announced that it will increase the price of Disney+ in the United States again. The company will charge $15.99 per month from October 2024 onward. Here are the details: Disney has more than doubled the price of its ad-free plan since its launch in 2019. Back then, customers paid $6.99 per month for…
Amazon’s Prime Day is a major shopping event. Even if you are not an Amazon customer, you may notice that another Prime Day is about to happen when all of your favorite sites suddenly start to list deals. While it may be tempting to shop at Amazon during Prime Day, it is usually better to…
If you use an app like SmartTube or NewPipe, you may have received error 403 messages when trying to play videos on YouTube recently. This happened to me on two occasions in the past days. SmartTube was the app that I used on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. I could browse YouTube and run searches, but…
One of the things that I really, really dislike when it comes to watching media is ads. Unfortunately, it appears that the trend is more ads, not less. This does not happen only in streaming. Microsoft, for example, is pushing ads like there is no tomorrow in Windows. Streaming, however, seems to be inclined to…
Netflix customers who still have a Basic subscription will soon receive word from the company about it. Basic is going away. Netflix began by pulling the plan from its website and apps. New users could not sign-up anymore for the plan, but the company did not touch existing subscriptions. Now, it is targeting these subscribers….
Streaming, which once set out to replace classic TV, is slowly but steadily turning into the very thing it set out to replace. Those who still do not believe it may have a change of heart when they hear this: Netflix is apparently considering launching a free plan in some countries. The plan will be…