Posted December 07, 2023
BlueMooner
Blue User
Registered: Jun 2012
From United States
KeoniBoy
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From French Polynesia
BlueMooner
Blue User
Registered: Jun 2012
From United States
HunchBluntley
language geek
Registered: Jul 2014
From United States
Posted December 07, 2023
Sorry in advance for the following wall of text. I just kind of added points as I thought of them, and edited them into shape later.
Since I already posted in this thread last year, and only a little has changed since then, let me elaborate on some of the services I mentioned there, with some addenda.
I should also point out that I exclusively use all these services via a web browser on my laptop, and furthermore, I sometimes have to fiddle with script blocker settings to allow the main site features to work and the content (and at least some ads) to play. YMMV when it comes to user experience in dedicated apps for different devices. Tubi has the all-around best, most responsive in-browser video player of all the purely free services I've tried, hands down. (This is not counting sites like YouTube or Twitch, whose primary focuses are not on traditional film and television.) Freevee's player might have an edge in terms of features, and be neck-and-neck otherwise, but Freevee is just a subsection of Amazon Prime Video, which is mostly focused on subscriptions and rentals, and has been around awhile to boot, so they bloody well should have a good player by this point.
There are a handful of annoyances with Tubi's player. For one, while there are both skip forward and skip back functions (with keyboard shortcuts!), they are only (AFAIK) in 30-second increments. This is way too long to be useful as the only skip option.
Secondly, when the video gets to the end credits, a rather large, semi-transparent "playing next" panel pops up covering a large proportion of the bottom of the player--and even if you close it in time to avoid the recommended next thing autoplaying, this closed panel still takes up roughly the bottom quarter of the screen. (Unfortunately, autoplay iitself is nearly unavoidable on most of these free streaming services.)
One more issue is that, as long as I watch while logged in, it does more or less save my progress in a given video, if I close a video in progress and come back to it later, it will usually only continue approximately where I left off. Like, sometimes I'll have to skip forward at least two minutes to get back to a point that I know was the last part I watched. Not a big deal, but something I've only encountered elsewhere in isolated instances of technical difficulties. But at least it always seems to err on the side of dumping me into a part I already watched, rather than skipping me ahead and possibly spoiling part of the story for me, so that's something.
And tangentially related to the above is that, while it does track which episodes of a show I've watched and preserves my place in the series overall, this info is on a timer, and it stops remembering my saved place in a particular film or series a few months, at most, after the last time I watched some of it. Not at all unreasonable for a service that has no user-facing monetization, mind you, but still worth noting.
FoxCorp-owned Tubi also seems to have one of the largest libraries, so there's plenty of obscure and semi-obscure gems (and lots and lots of questionable straight-to-streaming chaff, as well as a lot of FOX's recent reality & contest show garbage).
While I haven't used it all that much, the live side of the site seems to work about as well as the main on-demand side. Good player (which, as with the Prime Video player, it damn well should be by now). Unfortunately, at least some of the movies available "free with ads" are censored/edited-for-TV versions, though I have no idea how prevalent this is.
I'm also not sure how large the free-with-ads selection is at any given time.
hudfreegamer: Freevee - previously imdb.tv. Freevee is owned by Amazon. I had to set up an Amazon account in order to use it, but it was free. Works well on Roku, but on the PC it seems to be part of Amazon Prime, but doesn't require payment unless you want to watch something that requires it, but a lot is still free. I didn't enter any payment info or personal info, just registered with an e-mail address and a name. I already more or less covered Freevee's video player (a.k.a. Prime's video player) in comparing it with Tubi's.
I will say that Freevee's content selection seems to be pretty decent (especially if you don't just care about newer and/or very popular stuff), but the tight integration into the Prime Video section (and Amazon in general) can sometimes be annoying, as on the individual movie/show pages, the recommendations are a mix of whatever--some free, some included with a Prime sub, some available as a rental or streaming "purchase". This means that discoverability (in terms of "only free-with-ads stuff") isn't great--but that's probably by design. They want people to find stuff to spend money on, even if only a one-off rental.
Searching is also a pain for a similar reason: even if you search from a specifically Freevee page, the results will default to Prime Video content in general. You can then check a box on that initial results page to further narrow it to just relevant Freevee results (if there are any). This is an annoying extra step that has to be done every time one wants to check if something specific is currently on Freevee.
Your watchlist can also become a jumbled mess over time, as things that were free with ads when you "watchlisted" them leave the program (sometimes just for a few months, sometimes indefinitely), but the entries remain visible in the list, with no way to filter for Freevee-only content, included-with-Prime content, or rental-/purchase-only content--or even just to hide stuff that's not currently available at all. Your options are to leave them in the hope that they'll come back to Freevee someday (and, if they do, that it'll be under the same catalogue entry), or to remove them from your list, meaning you might forget about them if they do come back...though this can also happen even if you leave an item in your list, since there's no way to quickly see at a glance which things are in which availability category without hovering over each individual "tile"/thumbnail. On the plus side, you can show just the movies or just the TV shows in your watchlist, which isn't something any other service (that I've used) does.
Finally, this is the only free service I've used in years which saves my specific subtitle preferences between browser sessions, which doesn't have non-optional autoplay, and which actually has a watch history I can access (again, all these things are likely because it's part of Amazon; they're still nice).
I can't say I've tried to properly watch anything on one of the "live" linear TV channels yet.hudfreegamer: Roku Channel - Lots of free stuff. Some things require payment. No registration required unless you want to save your progress. This is the most recent free service I've tried. Content-wise, there's a lot of overlap with some of the other free streamers (I've noticed certain shows and movies are on almost all the services I've used), but they currently have some shows that none of the others I've used currently do (e.g., House, NewsRadio, and a handful of Syfy original series from 10-12 years ago). I have, however, noticed that there are differences in the stated length of some films available here vs. the same film on Tubi and Freevee -- the couple cases I noticed were shorter on The Roku Channel. Could just be an error, but the films could well be "trimmed for TV" editions, too. (To be fair, I noticed a free-with-ads film I had "watchlisted" on Prime Video became unavailable, and I recently found it free with ads again as a distinct catalogue entry--one about two minutes shorter than the previously available version.)
On a technical level, their video player (at least the browser version) is not great. It's not the worst I've seen recently--that honor goes to Pluto TV's player--but it's got issues with maintaining stable video quality (unlike Tubi and Prime/Freevee, which both have quality options, The Roku Channel is of the "We'll decide what video quality you get based on what your connection & system can handle right at this moment" persuasion), it craps itself and falls down a flight of stairs every time I try to put it in fullscreen mode (meaning I have to remember to put my browser into fullscreen instead, which Roku's web player doesn't seem to mind nearly as much), and it's the most reluctant to play the ads it's supposed to play of any ad-supported streamer I've yet used. Seriously, even if I've gone out of my way to temporarily enable some scripts that video ads on the Roku site seem to require, sometimes a planned ad break will only "go off" belatedly, when I pause and unpause the video.
Much like with Amazon's Freevee, Roku's The Roku Channel is a free subsection of a larger subscription-/purchase-based business. Consequently, non-free videos tend to be mixed in with the free-with-ads ones while browsing and searching.
I haven't tried the "live" linear TV side of the service at all yet.
To be continued...
Since I already posted in this thread last year, and only a little has changed since then, let me elaborate on some of the services I mentioned there, with some addenda.
I should also point out that I exclusively use all these services via a web browser on my laptop, and furthermore, I sometimes have to fiddle with script blocker settings to allow the main site features to work and the content (and at least some ads) to play. YMMV when it comes to user experience in dedicated apps for different devices. Tubi has the all-around best, most responsive in-browser video player of all the purely free services I've tried, hands down. (This is not counting sites like YouTube or Twitch, whose primary focuses are not on traditional film and television.) Freevee's player might have an edge in terms of features, and be neck-and-neck otherwise, but Freevee is just a subsection of Amazon Prime Video, which is mostly focused on subscriptions and rentals, and has been around awhile to boot, so they bloody well should have a good player by this point.
There are a handful of annoyances with Tubi's player. For one, while there are both skip forward and skip back functions (with keyboard shortcuts!), they are only (AFAIK) in 30-second increments. This is way too long to be useful as the only skip option.
Secondly, when the video gets to the end credits, a rather large, semi-transparent "playing next" panel pops up covering a large proportion of the bottom of the player--and even if you close it in time to avoid the recommended next thing autoplaying, this closed panel still takes up roughly the bottom quarter of the screen. (Unfortunately, autoplay iitself is nearly unavoidable on most of these free streaming services.)
One more issue is that, as long as I watch while logged in, it does more or less save my progress in a given video, if I close a video in progress and come back to it later, it will usually only continue approximately where I left off. Like, sometimes I'll have to skip forward at least two minutes to get back to a point that I know was the last part I watched. Not a big deal, but something I've only encountered elsewhere in isolated instances of technical difficulties. But at least it always seems to err on the side of dumping me into a part I already watched, rather than skipping me ahead and possibly spoiling part of the story for me, so that's something.
And tangentially related to the above is that, while it does track which episodes of a show I've watched and preserves my place in the series overall, this info is on a timer, and it stops remembering my saved place in a particular film or series a few months, at most, after the last time I watched some of it. Not at all unreasonable for a service that has no user-facing monetization, mind you, but still worth noting.
FoxCorp-owned Tubi also seems to have one of the largest libraries, so there's plenty of obscure and semi-obscure gems (and lots and lots of questionable straight-to-streaming chaff, as well as a lot of FOX's recent reality & contest show garbage).
While I haven't used it all that much, the live side of the site seems to work about as well as the main on-demand side. Good player (which, as with the Prime Video player, it damn well should be by now). Unfortunately, at least some of the movies available "free with ads" are censored/edited-for-TV versions, though I have no idea how prevalent this is.
I'm also not sure how large the free-with-ads selection is at any given time.
I will say that Freevee's content selection seems to be pretty decent (especially if you don't just care about newer and/or very popular stuff), but the tight integration into the Prime Video section (and Amazon in general) can sometimes be annoying, as on the individual movie/show pages, the recommendations are a mix of whatever--some free, some included with a Prime sub, some available as a rental or streaming "purchase". This means that discoverability (in terms of "only free-with-ads stuff") isn't great--but that's probably by design. They want people to find stuff to spend money on, even if only a one-off rental.
Searching is also a pain for a similar reason: even if you search from a specifically Freevee page, the results will default to Prime Video content in general. You can then check a box on that initial results page to further narrow it to just relevant Freevee results (if there are any). This is an annoying extra step that has to be done every time one wants to check if something specific is currently on Freevee.
Your watchlist can also become a jumbled mess over time, as things that were free with ads when you "watchlisted" them leave the program (sometimes just for a few months, sometimes indefinitely), but the entries remain visible in the list, with no way to filter for Freevee-only content, included-with-Prime content, or rental-/purchase-only content--or even just to hide stuff that's not currently available at all. Your options are to leave them in the hope that they'll come back to Freevee someday (and, if they do, that it'll be under the same catalogue entry), or to remove them from your list, meaning you might forget about them if they do come back...though this can also happen even if you leave an item in your list, since there's no way to quickly see at a glance which things are in which availability category without hovering over each individual "tile"/thumbnail. On the plus side, you can show just the movies or just the TV shows in your watchlist, which isn't something any other service (that I've used) does.
Finally, this is the only free service I've used in years which saves my specific subtitle preferences between browser sessions, which doesn't have non-optional autoplay, and which actually has a watch history I can access (again, all these things are likely because it's part of Amazon; they're still nice).
I can't say I've tried to properly watch anything on one of the "live" linear TV channels yet.
On a technical level, their video player (at least the browser version) is not great. It's not the worst I've seen recently--that honor goes to Pluto TV's player--but it's got issues with maintaining stable video quality (unlike Tubi and Prime/Freevee, which both have quality options, The Roku Channel is of the "We'll decide what video quality you get based on what your connection & system can handle right at this moment" persuasion), it craps itself and falls down a flight of stairs every time I try to put it in fullscreen mode (meaning I have to remember to put my browser into fullscreen instead, which Roku's web player doesn't seem to mind nearly as much), and it's the most reluctant to play the ads it's supposed to play of any ad-supported streamer I've yet used. Seriously, even if I've gone out of my way to temporarily enable some scripts that video ads on the Roku site seem to require, sometimes a planned ad break will only "go off" belatedly, when I pause and unpause the video.
Much like with Amazon's Freevee, Roku's The Roku Channel is a free subsection of a larger subscription-/purchase-based business. Consequently, non-free videos tend to be mixed in with the free-with-ads ones while browsing and searching.
I haven't tried the "live" linear TV side of the service at all yet.
To be continued...
HunchBluntley
language geek
Registered: Jul 2014
From United States
Posted December 07, 2023
...And now, for the thrilling conclusion...
Pluto TV
Unlike the services mentioned above, Pluto's "live" linear TV channels are the main focus of the site. In terms of what's on offer, it definitely blows Tubi's and what I've seen of Prime Video's live free-with-ads channels out of the water. (This sort of makes sense, since Pluto TV was acquired by Paramount a few years ago, and has access to its vast library of entertainment and news properties going back decades.) Quite a bit of the stuff that airs on these channels is also available on the on-demand side of the site, but there's also a fair bit that's only available "live" (including episodes of select seasons of original shows--some pretty recent--from corporate siblings like Paramount+ and Showtime, as well as from unrelated partners like AMC/AMC+).
The technical side of things is less rosy, with the player--obviously developed with "livestreaming" in mind (though not in the sense we usually think of it)--being fairly ill-suited to VOD playback. It has most of the same problems as The Roku Channel's on-demand video player, but worse.
(It's also the worst when it comes to playing nice with script blockers. It's the only streamer where what I'm trying to watch--be it live or on demand--might require different permissions than the last channel or video I watched, and I might have to play trial-and-error with allowing scripts from potentially dozens of different domains in various combinations to try to get what I want to watch to actually play. And the "getting ads to work" part of Roku is present here as well, though I think at least this is a little less common for me on Pluto. Shit, I've even had fairly basic site features--like saving progress in videos on demand between sessions--stop working because they changed something about which domains scripts needed to load from.)
One interesting feature is that not only does Pluto not require registration to watch stuff, when using it in a browser, it actually allows you to save live channels to a favorites list and on-demand vids to a separate watchlist, and saves these between sessions (I presume with cookies--obviously making this only useful for those who neither purge all cookies regularly nor severely restrict cookies in the first place).
Honestly, even with the amount of major movies and shows that are on the service either long- or short-term, I tend to avoid using it much--and when I do, it's most often to browse the live channels to see what's on. The only VODS I normally watch on Pluto are shows that I really want to see and which are only available for free there (that I know of). But if you don't care about script blockers (or are okay just doing an "allow all on this site/page"), or are going to use a standalone app, the experience is probably a fair bit better.
Max
I just started subscribing to this on Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend (taking advantage of the discount promo), so I don't have a ton of experience with it yet. My general impressions so far are that the player is pretty good (probably somewhat worse than Netflix's but definitely better than The Roku Channel's--unfortunately, like both of these, it also has no in-video picture quality/resolution options), the catalogue leans heavily on HBO's original content and lots of the DC superhero shows and movies from over the decades. I basically only care about the former, and anything else I find that interests me is a bonus.
The biggest demerit I have for this service so far is that there is seemingly no warning at all when things in your watchlist are about to leave the service. There's no warning along the lines of "leaves in so many days" or "on such-and-such date" on the individual movie or series page. They do have a "Last Chance" (i.e., leaving soon) section on the front page, but I learned the hard way that it's not comprehensive (there are only 33 items shown there presently), and there's no option to "see all". This is, frankly, bullshit. One of the reasons I finally dropped Netflix late last winter was that it had degraded subscribers' ability to see which films and series were leaving soon, and when. But even Netflix a year ago was better than this. I know the former HBO Max isn't that old as a standalone streaming service, but it's plenty old that it should have this most basic feature of customer-friendliness.
EDIT: Max also doesn't seem to have a user-facing watch history. This is much less of nuisance than the lack of detailed knowledge about what's leaving when, but it's still annoying, and there's likewise no reason for it.
Netflix
As mentioned, I no longer subscribe to this one, and I dislike both a lot of their original content and some of the changes to user-facing info about when things are leaving, but I don't really have any major gripes with the video player. The worst thing I can say is that you can't change the picture quality setting on the fly in-video (I don't remember if there's such an option in the account settings). There's also the [non-video-player-related] problem that the lowest ad-free subscription tier (which is what I subscribed to in later years) only allowed standard-definition video, a limitation which I don't think any other service has imposed. I don't know if this is still a thing, as I know they quietly implemented some other changes to how sub tiers were laid out last fall or winter, including finally adding the cheaper, with-ads tier that the head honcho for years had insisted they would never do. (Dunno if he's still in charge, though.)
EDIT: Not only does Netflix have a watch history you can access from your account menu, they actually allow you to download a backup copy! So that's one point in their favor, I guess.
I also forgot to mention Youtube quasi-alternative Vimeo in my older post. I almost never go there just to look for stuff, but I sometimes follow a link to a video there, and there are some sites that use Vimeo embeds in lieu of YouTube embeds. (In both cases, it's probably either because it's something--usually short films and music videos--with content that the creators thought YouTube might have a problem with, or because they didn't want viewers to have to deal with ads.) Vimeo's is a pretty functional player. I can't say I've run into any major issues in most of my probably scores of instances of using it.
There seems to be lots of short films (some rather arty) on there, and I think a good number of music videos from independent music acts, but, again, I haven't really had more than a cursory look around.
--- Not sure about outside the U.S., but unless I'm missing something, there's no longer any free option on Peacock--it's now just a regular, subscription-based streaming service. Though I'm sure there are still ads at certain tiers, and maybe with certain content regardless of tier.
Pluto TV
Unlike the services mentioned above, Pluto's "live" linear TV channels are the main focus of the site. In terms of what's on offer, it definitely blows Tubi's and what I've seen of Prime Video's live free-with-ads channels out of the water. (This sort of makes sense, since Pluto TV was acquired by Paramount a few years ago, and has access to its vast library of entertainment and news properties going back decades.) Quite a bit of the stuff that airs on these channels is also available on the on-demand side of the site, but there's also a fair bit that's only available "live" (including episodes of select seasons of original shows--some pretty recent--from corporate siblings like Paramount+ and Showtime, as well as from unrelated partners like AMC/AMC+).
The technical side of things is less rosy, with the player--obviously developed with "livestreaming" in mind (though not in the sense we usually think of it)--being fairly ill-suited to VOD playback. It has most of the same problems as The Roku Channel's on-demand video player, but worse.
(It's also the worst when it comes to playing nice with script blockers. It's the only streamer where what I'm trying to watch--be it live or on demand--might require different permissions than the last channel or video I watched, and I might have to play trial-and-error with allowing scripts from potentially dozens of different domains in various combinations to try to get what I want to watch to actually play. And the "getting ads to work" part of Roku is present here as well, though I think at least this is a little less common for me on Pluto. Shit, I've even had fairly basic site features--like saving progress in videos on demand between sessions--stop working because they changed something about which domains scripts needed to load from.)
One interesting feature is that not only does Pluto not require registration to watch stuff, when using it in a browser, it actually allows you to save live channels to a favorites list and on-demand vids to a separate watchlist, and saves these between sessions (I presume with cookies--obviously making this only useful for those who neither purge all cookies regularly nor severely restrict cookies in the first place).
Honestly, even with the amount of major movies and shows that are on the service either long- or short-term, I tend to avoid using it much--and when I do, it's most often to browse the live channels to see what's on. The only VODS I normally watch on Pluto are shows that I really want to see and which are only available for free there (that I know of). But if you don't care about script blockers (or are okay just doing an "allow all on this site/page"), or are going to use a standalone app, the experience is probably a fair bit better.
Max
I just started subscribing to this on Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend (taking advantage of the discount promo), so I don't have a ton of experience with it yet. My general impressions so far are that the player is pretty good (probably somewhat worse than Netflix's but definitely better than The Roku Channel's--unfortunately, like both of these, it also has no in-video picture quality/resolution options), the catalogue leans heavily on HBO's original content and lots of the DC superhero shows and movies from over the decades. I basically only care about the former, and anything else I find that interests me is a bonus.
The biggest demerit I have for this service so far is that there is seemingly no warning at all when things in your watchlist are about to leave the service. There's no warning along the lines of "leaves in so many days" or "on such-and-such date" on the individual movie or series page. They do have a "Last Chance" (i.e., leaving soon) section on the front page, but I learned the hard way that it's not comprehensive (there are only 33 items shown there presently), and there's no option to "see all". This is, frankly, bullshit. One of the reasons I finally dropped Netflix late last winter was that it had degraded subscribers' ability to see which films and series were leaving soon, and when. But even Netflix a year ago was better than this. I know the former HBO Max isn't that old as a standalone streaming service, but it's plenty old that it should have this most basic feature of customer-friendliness.
EDIT: Max also doesn't seem to have a user-facing watch history. This is much less of nuisance than the lack of detailed knowledge about what's leaving when, but it's still annoying, and there's likewise no reason for it.
Netflix
As mentioned, I no longer subscribe to this one, and I dislike both a lot of their original content and some of the changes to user-facing info about when things are leaving, but I don't really have any major gripes with the video player. The worst thing I can say is that you can't change the picture quality setting on the fly in-video (I don't remember if there's such an option in the account settings). There's also the [non-video-player-related] problem that the lowest ad-free subscription tier (which is what I subscribed to in later years) only allowed standard-definition video, a limitation which I don't think any other service has imposed. I don't know if this is still a thing, as I know they quietly implemented some other changes to how sub tiers were laid out last fall or winter, including finally adding the cheaper, with-ads tier that the head honcho for years had insisted they would never do. (Dunno if he's still in charge, though.)
EDIT: Not only does Netflix have a watch history you can access from your account menu, they actually allow you to download a backup copy! So that's one point in their favor, I guess.
I also forgot to mention Youtube quasi-alternative Vimeo in my older post. I almost never go there just to look for stuff, but I sometimes follow a link to a video there, and there are some sites that use Vimeo embeds in lieu of YouTube embeds. (In both cases, it's probably either because it's something--usually short films and music videos--with content that the creators thought YouTube might have a problem with, or because they didn't want viewers to have to deal with ads.) Vimeo's is a pretty functional player. I can't say I've run into any major issues in most of my probably scores of instances of using it.
There seems to be lots of short films (some rather arty) on there, and I think a good number of music videos from independent music acts, but, again, I haven't really had more than a cursory look around.
--- Not sure about outside the U.S., but unless I'm missing something, there's no longer any free option on Peacock--it's now just a regular, subscription-based streaming service. Though I'm sure there are still ads at certain tiers, and maybe with certain content regardless of tier.
Post edited December 11, 2023 by HunchBluntley
KeoniBoy
New User
Registered: Jul 2018
From French Polynesia
hudfreegamer
hudfree 4 life
Registered: Dec 2012
From United States
Posted December 11, 2023
rtcvb32
echo e.lolfiu_fefiipieue|tr valueof_pi [0-9]
Registered: Aug 2013
From United States
Posted December 11, 2023
So we're revived. Hmmmm...
Well YT, though i don't so much browse as have a set 50 profiles i go to for news primarily (Adblocker, they try to stop the adblocker i block harder...), otherwise Bitchute.
I WOULD be going for some of the local free digital broadcast stations, but the toted 50-Mile range antenna isn't getting anything (or it's defective). So i'm SOL on that.
Personally i'd recommend not paying for any streaming content at this time. I'm hoping for a resurgence of physical media at lower prices.
Mhmm...I can understand that.
If i could find everything i wanted elsewhere i probably would too.
Well YT, though i don't so much browse as have a set 50 profiles i go to for news primarily (Adblocker, they try to stop the adblocker i block harder...), otherwise Bitchute.
I WOULD be going for some of the local free digital broadcast stations, but the toted 50-Mile range antenna isn't getting anything (or it's defective). So i'm SOL on that.
Personally i'd recommend not paying for any streaming content at this time. I'm hoping for a resurgence of physical media at lower prices.
Mhmm...I can understand that.
If i could find everything i wanted elsewhere i probably would too.
HunchBluntley
language geek
Registered: Jul 2014
From United States
Posted December 11, 2023
Not sure about outside the U.S., but unless I'm missing something, there's no longer any free option on Peacock--it's now just a regular, subscription-based streaming service. Though I'm sure there are still ads at certain tiers, and maybe with certain content regardless of tier.
And another free service that I've recently become more aware of, but haven't yet used: Plex. A quick look shows that it has some features that none of the bigger services have (AFAIK), like an integrated service that works like JustWatch or Reelgood (allowing you to create a unified watchlist for many--though definitely not all--streaming services in one place), as well as offering apps specifically for playback of local media.
Like many of the already-mentioned free streamers, one can watch stuff on it without an account.
CMOT70
New User
Registered: Oct 2011
From Australia
Posted December 11, 2023
I've never paid for any, I just don't watch much TV or movies. However, I'd love a subscription to DailyWire+ right now so that I could watch their new documentary, "Lady Ballers".
In the past I've used Stan a few times when my Xbox gave a free code for one month. It's a Netflix Australian alternative. It's not very good due to lack of content.
I also used a free month from my Xbox for Paramount+ to watch the Halo series...I wish I didn't.
Oh yeah, I just remembered, I did pay for one service over 10 years ago. I subscribed to the NHL streaming service when the A$ was stronger than the US$- making it really cheap. It was awesome- allowing me to watch every NHL game live because Australia is out of market, so no lockouts. I'd love to still use that one, but the A$ collapsed again, making it twice as expensive.
I use Youtube for free recently, after discovering some excellent sources of non-Hollywood movies- such as Mosfilm for some Russian moves, like the excellent "On the Road to Berlin".
In the past I've used Stan a few times when my Xbox gave a free code for one month. It's a Netflix Australian alternative. It's not very good due to lack of content.
I also used a free month from my Xbox for Paramount+ to watch the Halo series...I wish I didn't.
Oh yeah, I just remembered, I did pay for one service over 10 years ago. I subscribed to the NHL streaming service when the A$ was stronger than the US$- making it really cheap. It was awesome- allowing me to watch every NHL game live because Australia is out of market, so no lockouts. I'd love to still use that one, but the A$ collapsed again, making it twice as expensive.
I use Youtube for free recently, after discovering some excellent sources of non-Hollywood movies- such as Mosfilm for some Russian moves, like the excellent "On the Road to Berlin".
kai2
New User
Registered: Jun 2013
From United States
Posted December 12, 2023
I mainly watch YouTube and Tubi from time-to-time.
I refuse to pay money to Netflix, Amazon, etc.
But having a library system that purchases almost every tv show and movie on DVD helps.
I refuse to pay money to Netflix, Amazon, etc.
But having a library system that purchases almost every tv show and movie on DVD helps.
Bernadettey
New User
Registered: Dec 2023
From United States
Posted December 12, 2023
Well YT, though i don't so much browse as have a set 50 profiles i go to for news primarily (Adblocker, they try to stop the adblocker i block harder...), otherwise Bitchute.
paladin181
Cheese
Registered: Nov 2012
From United States
Posted December 12, 2023
Tubi, Pluto, FreeVee, and Samsung TV.
kenadrian
No longer a new user
Registered: Aug 2020
From Indonesia
Posted December 13, 2023
Netflix, YouTube Premium (if it counts), Catchplay (only the free version, the available movies rotate from time to time).
I'd love Tubi but sadly it's not available in my country. I could've sworn it was accessible around 2-3 years ago, but now its not. Does anyone from another country experience this too?
I'd love Tubi but sadly it's not available in my country. I could've sworn it was accessible around 2-3 years ago, but now its not. Does anyone from another country experience this too?
vv221
./play.it developer
Registered: Dec 2012
From France
Posted December 13, 2023
I use almost exclusively PeerTube instances, the two main ones being:
- https://skeptikon.fr/
- https://video.blast-info.fr/
I never watch the videos in my Web browser, I download them then watch the local copies (usually after a pass of volume normalization). I then keep these local copies, exactly like I do for game installers.
- https://skeptikon.fr/
- https://video.blast-info.fr/
I never watch the videos in my Web browser, I download them then watch the local copies (usually after a pass of volume normalization). I then keep these local copies, exactly like I do for game installers.