They do like money, it's why they're doing this. They lost money on serving you that family plan. At least with the pirate ones they don't have to host them and stream them to you.

It's part of thst dumbass move fast break things mentality tech has. Usually what you're gonna break are your own bones.

No random drops to lower quality either!

You can get cheap shared (99p per month) or private netflix (with PIN) by checking out https://payhip.com/chillzone

Message me if you wanna test it out. it works so far worldwide,

Got that IPTV and Sonarr/Radarr setup already cooking ;)

Right there with you! Though I must be honest, I spent a lot more time and energy on automating the thing than I expected. Now that it's up and running, it's bulletproof and very low touch. I'm now permanently out of the streaming ecosystem. Which is really testament to how badly these companies screwed up. I still subscribe to Spotify because I get access to everything for a fair price. Visual media streaming could have been the same thing, but no. They created 10 different competing services, constantly switching where content could be located. All the apps are different and many suck. They're full of DRM so I struggle to watch them on planes or car trips, depending on the service. They gave us a terrible experience and continue to jack up the prices. I'm out.

@blackstampede any guides you would recommend? Asking for a friend

Hey @blackstampede now that is impressive!!

Edit: Also wondering if there are any guides, for a friend also.

Interesting, do you mind elaborating? I’ve been contemplating something similar but not sure where to start.

Does your VPN cost $5 a month (Nord/Express)?

A couple of people have asked for more info about my setup, so here's what I did. I'm on mobile, so forgive any typos:

1. I bought a refurbished Dell mini PC from some website or other - if you Google "refurbished Dell mini PC" it'll probably be the top result. It doesn't need to be fast or have too much memory, but I've got a 2TB hard disk in mine, which is surprisingly cheap. Also needs at least one HDMI port.

2. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, and made a single user with no password, then set it to boot straight to the desktop. Plugged it directly into the t.v. with an HDMI cable.

3. I bought a cheap wireless keyboard with a roller ball in it that (barely, need a better one) can be used from my couch.

4. Installed Jellyfin and set it to run as a background service on boot. It has two directories it cares about: ~/Videos/Film and ~/Videos/Television

5. Set up ssh so that I can use scp to push files from my personal laptop to the server without having to dick around with thumb drives etc. I also have a script that checks how much disk space is available on the media server so I don't run out (that 2TB drive fills up fast).

6. Got a NordVPN subscription and use Transmission on my personal laptop to download anything I want to see, push it to the server.

For a while, I also had an external domain name and IP so I could watch my videos on my phone while travelling, but I switched routers recently and something broke. I haven't set this back up, but there are services that will give you a static IP and route requests to your actual IP so you can have a static domain name without having to pay your ISP for a static IP.

EDIT: also, you can set commands to run at login, so it boots directly to Firefox running in kiosk mode on the Jellyfin web app. The end result is that on boot, I get the Ubuntu symbol, a brief flash of desktop, and then I'm browsing my media library full screen.

You can get cheap shared (99p per month) or private netflix (with PIN) by checking out https://payhip.com/chillzone

Message me if you wanna test it out. it works so far worldwide,

I was with them for over ten years. Cancelled when they said I could share an account with my mom. Sorry, it's just not that good anymore and the prices have gone way up. It was time to get out of the pot.

Me, I cancelled my account. Not that recently I guess its been a year or so by now. Their content quality and quantity dropped so I ditched them. I have a large archive of hard copies of movies anyways.

Or even better the megathread linked on there for direct info: https://rentry.co/megathread

Why Canada? The artice says Netflix also used Canada to test its password sharing changes as well so it seems Canadians are a testing ground for Netflix for some reason

Well, Canadians have many biological similarities to humans, so they’re good candidates for a variety of experiments

I had noticed this as well. My theory is, they see us as a demographically similar market to the US but significantly smaller. So they can test their plans on us to get an idea of response before rolling it out to a larger American audience while taking a much smaller financial risk.

Canada (or some specific cities here) has long been used as a test market for all manner of things.

Probably because viewing habits are similar to the US, but not as large. So if the "testing" doesn't go well, they don't lose out as much as the bigger markets.

Why Canada

Corporate test markets are always in areas where the demographics cover many different targets. If you test in an area that leans heavily towards one demographic, mostly old people for example, then you don't get any data about how other groups view your change, like teenagers.

Canada is incredibly diverse but also small and with well defined boundaries.

Maybe we're too nice to REALLY complain so they do it here first to prepare U.S.A. Americans for it

Smaller sample size but similar enough culture to the states. Sometimes we gets apps first too before they try pushing it to 300+ million

Sorry, we are quiet and don't cause much of a fuss.

Cause statistics don't lie.

Same here. It's the same reason we dropped cable about 10 years ago.

Not enough value to justify the cost.

I used to be a farmer.

Thanks for letting me know I can download the new season!