Which streaming services for $50 total - your picks?

O

OldCorpse

Rockin the Boat
Currently I have HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Netflix. I still find myself chafing at the paltry choices of viewing material. So I thought, what if I put a cap on how much a month I want to spend - say, $50/mo for all my streaming.

My interests are both film and TV, but I do like old films and TV shows (“old” being anything before 2000), and I find most of these services don’t really do much other than the latest in any significan volume. I like a lot of the classics, and I also like - very much - international films and TV. So something like the Criterion streaming service looks very tempting. I also like documentaries and a few talk shows like Bill Maher.

What I can do without is reality TV, endless Marvel Universe spandex films, the whole Star Wars world and its many imitators, sports-related anything (live, films - anything to with sports NO THANK YOU) - not criticizng, just not my cup of tea.

So how would you structure a collection of services for $50/mo? Admittedly that’s not a lot. So if it’s slightly more, fine, but I really don’t want to go over into a whole ‘nother cable subscription service prices all over again. Definitely below $100/mo. Thx!
 
Definitely can recommend The Criterion Channel, they have a pretty diverse catalog of stuff to watch that updates monthly that I think is to your taste and the quality of the streams and prints is generally excellent.
 
If you have a library card I can't recommend Kanopy enough.

(and if you don't have a library card I can't recommend getting one enough)

Kanopy has some good indie, international and documentary stuff.
There is a limit to how many movies you can watch a month (set by your local library).

But... for free... it's worth it.

(I know I didn't really answer your question... but figured a free option would help stretch your $50 budget)
 
I would churn. You can have access to every streaming service catalog, just one at a time.

And I'll put in a good word for Paramount+ (formerly CBS All access). They have a lot of the Paramount catalog now. I've seen the Indiana Jones movies listed, minority report, mission impossible, godfather, etc. Paramount made a lot of good stuff
 
In the old, old days, a lawyer friend of mine got most of his entertainment via the peer-to-peer networks.

I will occasionally watch a film in Russian - most Soviet-Russian films are on YouTube legally, others are not - which is an interesting trip into the cultural/linguistic realm.

PS. For sports, ESPN+ is an inexpensive foray. It's also available as a bundle with Disney and Hulu. Paramount has the UEFA Champions League English language rights. Amazon Prime won the rights to the Thursday Nights NFL package beginning in 2023, I believe.
 
Criterion is great for movies—and I'm happy to give them my money.

You might also look into Mubi, which has a catalogue that you're unlikely to find via the other services.
 
Yeah definitely Criterion and as drboffa says - I'm glad to give them my money. But nobody beats Netflix for pumping out those serial killer docs. Sigh....
 
I just acquired a new Sony Blu Ray Ultra HD 4K. In the present political climate, I am seeing the wisdom of collecting soon to be banned pieces of plastic. If you rely only on streaming services,
what will you do when they acquiesce to the rantings of people who want to revise and shape history for their own ends? Birth of a Nation, The Manchurian Candidate, Gone with the Wind, the list goes on and on.
I predict these films and a good chunk of cinema will eventually become banned so I am getting ahead of the curve. I don't like my access to art being controlled by the rantings of lunatics and those who bend to their insanity.
 
OldCorpse said:
HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Netflix. I still find myself chafing at the paltry choices of viewing material.
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Wow, you must watch more TV than me, ha! I feel constantly behind with these services and unlikely to ever catch up. My back catalog of "shows & movies to watch" is just too long.

Maybe you need a PS5 or Xbox instead!

Have you seen Breaking Bad or This is Us? Polar opposite shows but plenty of content between them. I haven't seen them but if you liked Breaking Bad I guess people were into Ozark, also I heard good things about Westworld if you like the sci-fi meets Jurassic Park type vibe. Foundation is coming to AppleTV+ later this year.

Sorry, that's all new stuff. I'm too young. Indiana Jones is "old" to me (and I did just preorder the 4K box set finally come in June).
 
If you have cell service with Verizon, their top-tier unlimited data cell plan gives you Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+(even though you don’t care about sports) and Apple Music for free. The Disney catalog is deep and include National Geographic Channel content. Netflix is a great storehouse for docs and old shows. Amazon Prime also has maybe all of PBS’ back content. HBOMAX is great, because you not only get new movies and shows, but HBO’s back catalogue of series, as well. And I’ve been on a YouTube kick, lately. Honestly, there’s too much good content available. I can’t even decide what to watch some days.

And Abe brings up a good point about “churning”. The way it all works with streaming now, you don’t even necessarily have to time it out to when the shows drop. Wait until after they’ve all released and binge. But I just keep waiting for them to catch on and start locking people into contracts, so they don’t just subscribe for one or two months out of the year, binge everything they want to watch and drop them for 10-11 months, because all that’s going to do is make it less(or un) profitable for the networks and then the content will suffer when they have to dial it back. SOMEONE has to pay for it all.
 
Run&Gun said:
And Abe brings up a good point about “churning”. The way it all works with streaming now, you don’t even necessarily have to time it out to when the shows drop. Wait until after they’ve all released and binge. But I just keep waiting for them to catch on and start locking people into contracts, so they don’t just subscribe for one or two months out of the year, binge everything they want to watch and drop them for 10-11 months, because all that’s going to do is make it less(or un) profitable for the networks and then the content will suffer when they have to dial it back. SOMEONE has to pay for it all.
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I think the future is going to be paying a lower price-per-month if you buy a year (or, ideally, 6 months) at a time. Or a higher monthly price if you pay for one month at a time. That oughta make things work out for the streamers financially while offering a good option to customers.

That's what Mubi and Criterion are doing - I just looked into it and they both offer like a 40% discount if you buy a year's subscription. And then even a skinflint like me starts considering the bulk discount package. Of course, I have the opposite problem of OldCorpse and can't get to all the things I want to watch, so I won't be getting Mubi or Criterion right now, as cool as they look. I still haven't even seen Mandalorian, Rogue One, Raised by Wolves, season 2 of Altered Carbon... And there's some other cool scifi I've heard of (the expanse, can't remember what else...) I'm not even churning right now, I've had Paramount+ for over a year and have mostly been rewatching '80s-'90s Trek. We have Amazon Prime and I'm not sure I've seen anything on it yet.
 
puredrifting said:
I just acquired a new Sony Blu Ray Ultra HD 4K. In the present political climate, I am seeing the wisdom of collecting soon to be banned pieces of plastic. If you rely only on streaming services,
what will you do when they acquiesce to the rantings of people who want to revise and shape history for their own ends? Birth of a Nation, The Manchurian Candidate, Gone with the Wind, the list goes on and on.
I predict these films and a good chunk of cinema will eventually become banned so I am getting ahead of the curve. I don't like my access to art being controlled by the rantings of lunatics and those who bend to their insanity.
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A smart move, or it looks like one … :)
 
I have the roku channels and have been much more productive without any Subscription streaming services. Not a matter of finances but just less temptation. Hard to believe I had time many years ago to see ten plus films a week with audiences.
 
I will mention that although it sounded like you wouldn't be keen on Disney Plus offerings, they added STAR to their service which features 20th Century Fox's back catalog of movies and tv shows.
 
Thank you folks, a ton of great suggestions, and I’m listening carefully.

puredrifting, I hear you, and those are words of wisdom. Keeping politics completely out of it, I just think as a matter of principle, it’s better to aquire a big content library yourself, simply because you then have assured access. I agree, totally.

filmguy - yes I have seen Breaking Bad, and Ozark (even started a thread here) and like them a lot; ahalpert in a similar vein, it’s not that I watch all that much TV and am running out of things to watch - rather, it’s that I have very stringent criteria on what I’ll watch. That leaves me with a problem that not many shows (or movies) reach my standard. I’m not claiming somehow “my taste is better than yours”, rather simply that mine restricts me. I love The Wire, Breaking Bad, Ozark and a few others, but there are a ton of shows that everyone seems to love that I just cannot stomach - prominent examples are Six Feet Under, where I couldn’t even finish the first episode, and - I know this might just get me banned from dvxuser - but *to my taste* The Sopranos is unwatchable junk, fakety fake, badly done, obvious, tenth rate Italian Mafia drama with a lame premise, or unoriginal junk like The Walking Dead (and all other zombie shows - I’ve been over zombies for 20 years now, and I think George Romero said all there was to be said about zombies with his two masterpieces Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Living Dead). So tons and tons and tons of popular shows do absolutely nothing for me. Or they have one good season and then are unwatchable (Stranger Things, Schitt’s Creek etc.). So it’s a taste issue.

But I love the suggestions so far and I’m taking it all in!
 
As the competition for subscribers heats up -

The bad

While active subscriptions to Disney+ improved by 8.7 million to reach 103.6 million, that growth marks the slowest pace of quarterly additions since the streaming service launched in the final quarter of 2019. The market didn't see that slowdown coming, either, with forecasters expecting a head count of around 109 million. Notably, the slowdown coincides with the service's first-ever price increase. The monthly retail cost of Disney+ jumped from $6.99 to $7.99 in late March, just days before the quarter ended.

Less apparent, yet more concerning, is that despite the price hike, the average monthly revenue per Disney+ user now stands at $3.99, down from $5.63 in the comparable quarter a year earlier.
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https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/05/14/good-bad-and-ugly-from-disney-q2-earnings/
 
Netflix's subscriber growth is showing signs of a slowdown as the streaming giant reported 4 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2021, after projecting in January that it would pull in 6 million new customers.

... the age of "peak" streaming may have arrived and may be having an impact on the longtime streaming leader. The recent 15th annual Deloitte media trends report surveyed 2,009 U.S. consumers in February on their entertainment preferences. The data revealed that the average subscriber has four paid video streaming services – that is down from five in October.
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/netflix-shares-plunge-on-subscriber-slowdown

The Netflix stock is down from $586 on Jan, 19th to $493 as of last Friday or an approximate 16% drop. Its P/E is 58.
 
After using Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, and HBO Max for a month, I'm convinced Netflix could lose its crown
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/using-netflix-hulu-disney-plus-121800174.html


Report: Netflix Lost 30% U.S. Market Share in 2020

Ampere, per The Wrap, contends Amazon Prime Video has 16% market share in the U.S., followed by Hulu (13%), Max (12%) and Disney+ (11%). Apple TV+ matches Peacock at 5%, followed by ESPN+ (4%), Starz, Paramount+ and Starz at 3%, respectively. YouTube TV, Sling TV and BritBox each have 1% market share.

Notably, the research firm suggests Prime Video has 54 million active users from a paying base of 150 million Prime members. Amazon has not updated Prime Video streaming metrics. Overall, the average U.S. household spends $40 monthly on streaming services — up 17% from an average of $34 spent monthly in early 2020.
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https://www.mediaplaynews.com/report-netflix-lost-30-percent-us-market-share-in-2020/
 
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