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I don't know a single person who is satisfied with the status quo on streaming services where you have to subscribe to multiple ones. Everyone is complaining that the landscape is 1) more fragmented than cable was, 2) costs more, 3) has even more ads than cable

by bko11 hours ago|

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I think people forgot how bad it was. It was much more fragmented before but instead of services it was fragmented by time. Sure you have access to Seinfeld, but you can watch one or two Seinfelds a night at 8pm and 11pm.

I also remember base cable without any movies was around $60 or something and with some movie channels is >$100. And that's not inflation adjusted. You can easily get 3 or 4 of the top services for $100 today.

Finally claiming there are more ads on these services is a joke. There was ~20m for every 30m of programming, meaning 1/3 of the time you're watching commercials. And not just any commercials, the same commercials over and over. There was even a case of shows being sped up on cable to show more commercials.

I get it, everyone wants everything seamlessly and for next to nothing, but claiming that 90s cable was even comparable is absurd.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-networks-spee...

by co_king_511 hours ago|

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[dead]

by bko10 hours ago|

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Seinfeld way syndicated. It aired for a long time on TBS. But also Comedy Central after 2021, Nick at Nite briefly and TV Land more recently.

I'm not sure what your point is.

by galleywest2009 hours ago|

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Seinfeld only ran until 1998. Not sure what people buying the rights in 2021 has to do with the OP's comment.

by hodder11 hours ago|

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Not that it is particularly relevant to agentic coding but how can anyone truly argue streaming costs more? Average cable packages were exceeding 125-150 USD a month (in 2000 dollars). Under no circumstances would I be sympathetic to the argument that streaming costs more.

You can get all 7 of the major streaming subs for less without even shopping out deals. That is 100s of times the volume and quality of content that was delivered on cable for far less. It is so much content realistically that no one I have ever met has subscribed to all of them at once.

The argument really is empty. The fragmentized experience is annoying, but it isn't more expensive...And it DEFINITELY has fewer ads.

by 63stack11 hours ago|

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I'm in central europe, atm 70 TV channels is $15/month.

by ladberg11 hours ago|

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You can't seriously claim points 2) and 3) if you've ever actually paid for and watched cable

by 63stack11 hours ago|

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I'm in central europe, atm 70 TV channels is $15/month.

by vel0city2 hours ago|

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I'm in North Texas and get more channels than that OTA.

I still almost always prefer the streaming services I pay for than the linear, ad-supported old TV format.

by glimshe11 hours ago|

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Its just amazing how people on HN can say the most absurd things with total conviction. No wonder LLMs do the same, it's in the training data.

I literally see no ads on my streaming subscription for close to a tenth of the price of cable.

by bdangubic11 hours ago|

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you have just one streaming subscription?

by glimshe10 hours ago|

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I do. I rotate every few months among different services. I don't keep a single service permanently.

by bdangubic6 hours ago|

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I think “streaming is more expensive now than cable before” crowd are people like my wife that have 8-10 of them

by whynotmaybe12 hours ago|

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I'm using copilot on vscode and the agent is "Auto" which cost 10% less.

The results are enough for me and I'm not doing things that allow me to differentiate the output between ChatGPT, Claude and, the others.

The agents are more like the radio in my car, whenever I want music, I switch channel until I find something good enough.

If I'm really in need of something special, I'll use Spotify on my phone.

And sometimes, I just drive with the radio off.

by kzahel12 hours ago|

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I agree. I spend a lot of time working from my phone so I had to make my own workflow that works for me. I've been following all these bans and drama with the subscription keys and custom harnesses etc. I think there's room for a "universal control plan" that lets you leverage the CLI providers (and whatever crappy interfaces / apis they give you).

There's a comparison of the approaches as I see them here https://yepanywhere.com/subscription-access-approaches