I have just about the opposite problem, as someone who has been known to pirate in the past. I find there is so much content out there that it's harder for me to decide what to watch over where to go to find it.

Most evenings, I find myself stuck in this phase, during which time I am likely to cycle through something resembling the five stages of grief. There’s Denial (I swear I had a Paramount+ account); Anger (I cannot believe I have to pay for Paramount+); Bargaining (I promise I will cancel my subscription after the one-week Paramount+ trial period ends); Depression (I cannot believe I didn’t remember to cancel Paramount+ after the trial period ended); and Acceptance (Let’s just head to Netflix and watch Suits).

Do people not realize you can cancel your subscription immediately after registering. The cancelation just stops the automatic monthly renewal. No one wants to deal with the hassle of pro rating and refunding partial used monthly subscriptions, so cancelling renewal is all it does.

piracy is way more convinient, especially with apps like CloudStream.
Or transmission/qbittorrent + rss + jellyfin + findroid for a self hosted alternative.

I just subscribe to everything. Even a few niche services like britbox.

After taking into account credit card kickbacks, discounts from T-Mobile, and discounts from annual plans, I pay about 1/3 less than I did for cable with all the movie stations and DVR service back in the early aughts. And I'm even counting adding basic cable to my Internet (I use an app to stream that so no extra box). And I'm not even accounting for 20 years of inflation, with that it's about a 60% reduction.

So I pay 60% less after inflation for almost every movie and TV show ever made commercial free on demand on any device I own anywhere in the world (some programming changes apply) and live news and sports with the cable app (I don't think I've tried the cable app overseas though).

It used to be appointment TV with non-premium stations having 30-35% commercial time. Even when TiVo came out you had to buy it and pay a sub, and when cable started offering DVR you paid for a more expensive box rental on top of paying monthly for the ability to DVR, double-dipping fuckers.

I really don't understand complaints about streaming. Compared to what it's replacing it's an amazing upgrade in price, quality, and convenience. When do you ever get that? How hard is it to figure out what service something is on? Most boxes have a universial search and if your using a mobile device Google is right there. Yeah prices get higher on occasion, but inflation is a thing and now that content producers see the profit in streaming they're putting money into new content, which makes me think of another thing: content produced for streaming is vastly superior, even on streaming services from the old major networks. Stuff that wouldn't have gotten by the advertisers, let alone the censors for commercial broadcast, and no editing for time. A particular episode needs an extra couple/several minutes to be told correctly, no big deal.

As someone who loves the silver screen, and the small screen, for art and entertainment that can't be called art with a straight face, I love streaming. I can't understand how anyone who paid for cable/satellite in the past couldn't.

Sorry for the ramble, can't be bothered to edit for clarity or readability.

When lost for what to watch, goto /r/InterdimensionalCable

Just let me have my Stremio, and I'm a content man

I mostly just channel surf on Pluto or Roku for free lol

After just a few times of trying to watch something and not knowing which or if it was on any of my services I went straight back to the places I know will have exactly what I'm looking for in a couple clicks. Things have only gotten worse since then with the explosion of the number of streaming services.

It's always been, what should i watch. There just used to be the caveat of how.

I don't know much, but Stremio does a fairly good job listing streaming services for anything searched

I still use my DVD/Blu-ray by mail subscription from Netflix. Practically everything was available that way. I will be canceling Netflix for a while after that goes away at the end if the month. I plan to just rotate through which services I subscribe to.

"what do I want to watch" is stupid hard, cmon. I spend most of my time watching the roku screen saver.
How? If it's not on my plex it's probably on a friends.
I'm tired of this expensive fragmented bullshit.

Streaming services need to be federated, so there is a central search for content, and services are paid seamlessly for what's watched on their platforms. The customer barely needs to know who delivers the content.

Personally, that's one of the reasons why I haven't bothered to watch a TV series for almost a decade now. Between this, the constant crackdown on piracy, the outrageous prices for original media, and the constant moral issues from popular culture icons and media CEOs, I'd rather sleep in my free time