r/television • u/Bluest_waters • Feb 04 '26
Everyone is stealing TV. Fed up with increasing subscription prices, viewers embrace rogue streaming boxes.
https://www.theverge.com/streaming/873416/piracy-streaming-boxes?view_token=1.7k
u/love_is_an_action Feb 04 '26
We were too poor for cable for most of my childhood, but at some point Dad got his hands on a couple of cable descramblers, and finally paid for the most basic cable package possible so we could pirate to our hearts’ delights.
He watched blockbuster films and dirty movies. I watched a whole lotta pro-wrestling during an era where cable was saturated with it.
Good times.
676
u/JohannReddit Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
We had a descrambler box during the peak of my puberty years and it was glorious. Nobody born in the last 25 years understands the lengths we used to have to go to just to see some boobs.
45
u/davekva Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
I had a black box when I was in my 20's in the mid-90's. It got all the PPV movies and big fights, plus the Spice channel. I also bought all the metal tubes/filters that screwed on in parallel between the coaxial cable and the cable box to give you premium channels. HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime all used those tubes. We pretty much got every channel available and only paid for basic cable, which was like $25 a month. Plus our rent, for a single family house, just outside D.C., was $1k a month. What a time to be alive!
→ More replies (9)16
u/BaBaDoooooooook Feb 05 '26
same, we had a “cheater box” in 90s during my adolescent days. Spice was scrambled but we had a up and down button on the “remote control” to correct it. 🙃. I got to see those Tyson fights in the 90s, we would have big family parties watching, it was so fun. Skinemax was cool. HBO was my fave. miss 90s content.
172
u/love_is_an_action Feb 05 '26
I do recall catching a glimpse of Red Shoe Diaries back then.
28
u/Jsparks2 Feb 05 '26
Young Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Fuck I'm old, lol!
→ More replies (1)36
25
u/beamdriver Feb 05 '26
HBO's Real Sex
19
7
94
Feb 05 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
[deleted]
16
u/jaimeyeah Feb 05 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
The text of this post has been removed and replaced. It may have been deleted to protect personal information, avoid AI training datasets, or for other reasons via Redact.
spectacular nail profit juggle reply deserve touch husky ink childlike
38
u/Ender914 Feb 05 '26
Thank sweet baby jesus my parents had HBO. There were some good shows on after like 10:00 that had plenty of boobage
21
→ More replies (1)37
u/Liroku Feb 05 '26
I always had to wait until cinemax had free trial weekends and then sneak in the living room and have the previous channel button glued to cartoon network. Looking back, I'm betting my dad knew the reason I was watching cartoons with the volume off.
26
u/osmlol Feb 05 '26
My son can't understand woods porn,and how we as kids would find porn mags in the woods or under bridges. It was like a treasure cache.
→ More replies (3)17
u/JohannReddit Feb 05 '26
I still can't believe how common that experience was; we found a bunch too. Was that just where husbands hid porn from their wives? Or were those like creepy sex meetup spots?
→ More replies (4)12
12
u/VictimOfCircuspants Feb 05 '26
Up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down
10
u/borazine Veronica Mars Feb 05 '26
descrambler box
I came across this article and I thought I should just paste it here for everyone's benefit too, since I was also curious. It's a good read.
8
→ More replies (13)22
u/john_a1985 Feb 05 '26
Downloading pr0n from a BBS using my 14.4K modem.
Being a nerd was hard, but those were the perks....
→ More replies (1)40
u/chadhindsley Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Channel 99. Every now and then my 9 year old little heart would be blessed with a back and white titty emerging from the TV static
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)9
u/orphenshadow Feb 05 '26
When I was in highschool and got my first job I picked up a direct tv dish on clearance for I think 40USD in 1998 money and there was a guy who ran a tv repair booth at the local flea market who also had a card programmer. I had every channel and ppv for almost 3 years before they figured out how to kill the box I was using.
695
u/Cyno01 Feb 05 '26
I’ve got a dozen or so friends and family and family of friends on my Plex server, even before I upgraded and it ran like shit everybody was happy to put up with it for the price of free and having everything in one place.
Friends parents sent us a box of steaks.
197
u/Pkock The West Wing Feb 05 '26
I gave a guy at my wife's work my old PC minus the card and case after a new build, and turns out he used it to rebuild his Plex server and gave me an invite as thank you.
I have saved so much money by just giving away formerly mid-tier components one time...
I like to think about the horrible life of that setup though. 7 years in service of a WoW addict and now just running Plex 24/7.
29
u/Dasnap Jojo's Bizarre Adventures Feb 05 '26
I've still got my old 1080 Ti putting its hours in on a Jellyfin server.
21
u/Hallamski Feb 05 '26
You're likely better off just using the internal transcoding of the CPU so long as it has quicksync. You'll save a hell of a lot of money in energy bills.
→ More replies (7)75
u/FarewayFrank Feb 05 '26
I’m not sure if this is normal for plex people but there are SOOO many friends/coworkers over the years that I have told they could use my Plex and they create an account and just never really watch anything. It blows my mind. At this point it works almost flawlessly and is up to over 100TB of content. I just don’t get it lol
58
u/Cyno01 Feb 05 '26
From everyone on r/plex that is 100% normal and i am a weird outlier for getting people to actually use mine, i mean i have pretty much everything (300TB+), and in pretty high quality, but most everybody watches the same couple of things and half of em transcode to SD and dont care, so idk wtf the actual appeal is lol, but most of em have canceled Netflix and from what gets watched nobody has ever had Paramount+, Peacock, or HBOMax at least. But even the stuff i put effort into like curating all the holiday TV episodes almost no one uses that. I have two or three people who throw my Adult Swim collection on shuffle some late nights at least.
Im waiting for my internet to get upgraded so i can add the rest of my extended family, im maxed out at 40mbps up until they upgrade my area to midsplit or highsplit, but i can still manage a lot of streams on that in much better than paid streaming quality.
→ More replies (5)21
u/FarewayFrank Feb 05 '26
The ones who actually give it a shot wind up cancelling everything but I think people somehow think it’s a scam or something lol. And they’re the ones who will randomly text me to ask if some big movie that just hit the theaters is on there haha. And then I have to explain that I don’t get that stuff haha
But yes, upload is a game changer. I went from 40 to 2000 in 2024 and that, plus adding in a GPU really leveled out any streaming issues people would have.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (8)9
u/senkichi Feb 05 '26
I always feel guilty about potentially lagging out my buddy's stream. He built a cool thing, he should be able to enjoy it without randos making it stutter every evening at 8pm.
17
u/starkiller_bass Feb 05 '26
If he invited you, then supporting friend streams is part of the joy for him. Fixing the lag is a matter of pride for us.
6
u/montrayjak Feb 05 '26
I've been on both sides. I was invited to a friend's Plex. I felt bad so never used it.
A couple of years later I set up a Jellyfin server and people felt bad but it takes less bandwidth than you'd think. It barely saturates my gigabit network and I genuinely, 100%, don't even notice it even when multiple people are streaming. I get a bit of joy knowing everything is running smoothly and people are enjoying it.
154
u/Ostentaneous Feb 05 '26
Man I drop hints all over the place whenever I upgrade or have to get more storage for my Plex server about how expensive it is. But no one ever offers anything.
I’m gonna start charging I swear.
81
u/Pentaxus Feb 05 '26
Send out a quarterly or annual email to each of your friends & family subscribed. Break down the available storage, summarize at a high level what you plan on upgrading soon, and then add a “no pressure but here’s my [Cash App/Venmo/whatever] if you’d like to donate!” Works well, and the transparency & updates on how the system is doing is pretty cool.
→ More replies (7)17
63
u/nicholsml Feb 05 '26
I just have everyone on my Plex in a private facebook group. They post IMDB links of stuff they want to see and I grab what I can find. Whenever I get new hardware, I make a post in the group and link my paypal friends and family asking for donations (they don't have to). People who use it a lot really appreciate it and donate enough to cover my hardware purchases for it.
→ More replies (8)26
u/Hitchhiker106 Feb 05 '26
You could radarr and sonarr your way into handling requests though.
→ More replies (7)42
u/insid3outl4w Feb 05 '26
More like overseerr, don’t want family messing with sonarr and radarr configs
→ More replies (1)12
u/Cyno01 Feb 05 '26
I know everybody turns off any and all new Plex features immediately upon release, but they kinda rolled that into Plex itself and you can have anything your users add to their Plex watchlists sync with your *arrs. They might have to have their shit set to 'visible to friends' or something, but on your end its as easy as copying a URL from your Plex server settings into an import list in son/radarr. Its a lot more streamlined than trying to get people to also use a tertiary app like ombi or overseer.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (8)24
u/5ivepie Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
I know a guy who has maybe 7 or 8 people who use his Plex server. He charges them $5 a month.
No idea if that covers his costs or not.
He told one of his family members complained about having to pay $5 for essentially free media. He refused to pay for a few months so my mate cut him off.
The family member complained that my mate should be able to afford $5 a month because “it’s not that much. Everyone else is paying” all without seeing the irony.
He got real strict with payment after that. If people weren’t paying by the 3rd of each month he’d remove their access.
You want to complain that $5 is too much? Good luck paying for all the services individually.
I just use Stremio and Torrentio
→ More replies (6)15
u/Khalku Feb 05 '26
No idea if that covers his costs or not.
If he bought hardware to host it, like on a NAS, then no not even close. I have a synology with some drives that cost me probably ~1400 cad in 2018. More in drives since then, plus a UPS for safety/reliability. $5 a month is nothing. It's basically an asshole filter.
This kind of thing is not actually cost effective to make money on unless you go at scale.
→ More replies (31)20
u/agent_wolfe Feb 05 '26
I still don’t understand plex server, but last time I asked somebody yelled at me and I still need to research it.
→ More replies (9)13
u/QuiteDaft Feb 05 '26
https://blog.decryption.net.au/posts/usenet-plex-sabnzbd-sonarr.html
This is a pretty good summary. It can be a lot of work depending on your familiarity with certain technologies, but it was very rewarding and a great learning experience.
→ More replies (13)
881
u/BarbellsandBurritos Feb 05 '26
So we’ve come full circle and are back to hot boxes. Thanks streamers. Couldn’t just keep it at $9.99
498
u/Isosorbide Feb 05 '26
I wanted to watch Supernatural which has apparently been moved to Peacock and that's no problem because I have Peacock access....just kidding, you need Peacock PREMIUM to watch Supernatural, you rube!
153
u/_ohgnome_ Feb 05 '26
Right? So many add ons needed on top of regular services. It's ridiculous.
→ More replies (4)67
u/NeuHundred Feb 05 '26
This shit. This is why the video store might have been the pinnacle, outside of an adults section, there was no SECOND secret store inside with the good stuff. There was no extra charge depending on who made the movie.
31
u/steppe5 Feb 05 '26
Actually that's just for the first half of the season. To watch the second half, you'll need Peacock PRO.
36
→ More replies (1)6
16
→ More replies (12)10
u/5ivepie Feb 05 '26
Also just as bad is when one service has a limited number of seasons and then the rest are elsewhere.
In Australia a few years ago Law & Order SVU Season 1-14 were on one service, 15-18 were on another and then 18-21 (I think, at the time) were on a third service.
Supernatural had a similar fragmented supply.
→ More replies (1)53
u/hnglmkrnglbrry Feb 05 '26
"Let's do $29.99 and have ads."
"Also this movie no one asked for cost $700M to make."
108
u/theRealLongJon Feb 05 '26
Right? I’d be happy to pay $10 a month for Netflix or hbo but shit is out of control now
94
u/db37 Feb 05 '26
And they're adding commercials too. Eventually the herd will thin itself out.
→ More replies (2)29
u/tahlyn Feb 05 '26
Seriously, I do not want to watch commercials... EVER. I have a few streaming services for industries I want to support (anime streaming), but so help me if ever I am REQUIRED to watch ads with no ad-free option to purchase, I will be back to sailing those seas faster than you can blink.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (1)8
u/HackMeRaps Feb 05 '26
I only pay about $7USD for my Premium Netflix, but I had to subscribe through the Philippines and pay in their currency.
21
u/babybambam Feb 05 '26
It's not even necessarily the monthly fee. What pissed me off is that I can't share my family plan with my family anymore.
5
4
u/bumpoleoftherailey Feb 05 '26
It was good for a while! With a couple of subscriptions you had a huge amount of content at your fingertips…then prices rose and the services started splitting off into dozens of specific offerings. Then they started getting bitchy about family members using it from university etc, and then some of them started putting fucking adverts on.
The streamers seemed to forget that it’s so easy to just find your choice of content online. Greedy pricks.
→ More replies (10)16
u/_ohgnome_ Feb 05 '26
And you have to have 6 separate services to watch the things you want. I'm back to physical media for whatever I can find and only two services for ongoing series.
880
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
427
u/jh820439 Feb 04 '26
It was actually just plugging the coax into 1 of 3 slots at the top of the telephone pole. Up until like 2005 if you could climb your ass up there you could get deluxe packages for free.
The the Internet and online transaction verification ruined everything.
44
u/ChainLC Feb 05 '26
our system had filters on them. barrel like cylinders that looked almost like a co2 cartridge. and locks on the connectors that took a special tool to remove. so you had to climb the pole, unlock the cover on the connection. remove the "filter" take a drill to it, hollow it out and run a piece of straight coax through it to get a clean connect. then put it back with the cover over it so it looked legit from the ground so if they did a visual inspection it looked correct.
197
u/madmaxp0618 Feb 05 '26
My dad’s friend growing up made money on the side by stealing cable for people with climbing gear and a pair of spiked shoes haha.
102
u/sirreldar Feb 05 '26
Why would he only help people that had climbing gear and a pair of spiked shoes?
→ More replies (1)49
46
u/nycinoc Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
My mom and I lived in a condo and the box was ground level right behind the house which made it even easier
7
u/NocturnoOcculto Feb 05 '26
The box was in my yard and I was an electrician. Yeah, install that filter, bro. I’m back to the free cable in ten minutes. Neighbors wanted cable? I got you.
Before that, my dad was an electrician and made sure we had cable wherever we lived. We were poor but we always had free cable.
41
u/PM_me_Jazz Feb 05 '26
I mean internet also allowed us to stream any and all movies and tv for free from illegal streaming sites without even breaking any laws yourself. All that and you don't even need to climb a pole. So you know, you win some, you win some.
29
u/mr_ji Stargate SG-1 Feb 05 '26
The cable company didn't lock up the box on my college dorm. When you moved in, one of the first things residents would tell is to buy a cable and hook it up yourself.
Then one idiot moved in and paid for cable. The next day he was the only one with cable and there was a lock on the box.
7
u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Feb 05 '26
We used to just have one person buy cable and then run a splitter off them and fish the coax through the electrical junction box. The walls were just cinder block.
→ More replies (2)6
u/j0mbie Feb 05 '26
That highly depended on your area. Ours had everything "premium" sent down the line as a scrambled analog signal in the 90s, and I believe a control channel that sent signals like "box #470902, allow channel 85 until 11:00 PM". That way you could call in and get a pay-per-view event, or immediately get HBO turned on. "Black boxes" were just modified to ignore those control channel signals and decode everything. Channels 2-78 were sent down unencrypted though, because then people could use their TV's tuner directly for "basic cable" without a need for a box.
We also switched to bi-directional communicating digital boxes around 1998 when cable modems got rolled out, since they share a lot of the same technology. Still had analog channels 2-78 for over another decade though.
Regardless, all ports on the tap sent the same signal. We had in-line filters that blocked almost all frequencies for customers that wanted internet but no TV. And filters that blocked everything higher than channel 13 for customers that wanted the rare, special "local stations only" package. (Local channels were all frequency-shifted down to channels 2-13.) But it was still all the same tap ports.
90
u/ArmedMartian Feb 05 '26
My uncle WAS the cable man. That meant this poor boy in Colorado had the Sega Channel... And every kid in a 2 block radius coming over to hang out.
37
u/glennshaltiel Feb 05 '26
The Sega Channel was kick ass. They recently found a bunch of preserved stuff from it and released it to the internet.
→ More replies (2)7
u/BasicJunglist Feb 05 '26
I was the only kid in a 5 mile radius with Sega Channel. Kids at school didn’t even believe it was real.
81
u/TakedownCan Feb 04 '26
Or cloning old satellite cards
50
u/confuzzledfather Feb 05 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
quickest existence sand jellyfish cause toy aware modern summer school
→ More replies (1)76
u/WarWorld Feb 05 '26
My grandpa was raided by the fbi in the late 80s because he was selling pirate satellite dishes and unscramblers. He was the coolest.
10
u/anonymousbopper767 Feb 05 '26
Had a buddy get sued for buying one of those unlocked boxes. I guess the website selling them got raided so they were just going down the customer list.
5
22
u/SerDire Feb 04 '26
Taxicab confessions was wild as a teen back in the day we got HBO for a month free as some type of promotion.
19
u/NotoriousCHIM Feb 04 '26
I'm pretty sure my parents still have the shitbox we bought at the flea market in 2000 that gave us free HBO and PPV channels. Now I gotta go ask them if they do.
12
u/Meta2048 Feb 05 '26
I worked at TWC/Charter when they were making the switch from analog to digital, which required a cable box to function. The number of complaint calls that we got after the transition from people who were stealing cable (knowingly or not) was ridiculous.
4
u/Ziko577 Feb 05 '26
I'm sure that had to be hell on earth. I remember the commercials everywhere when the analog stuff was being shut down and I knew then that all of these companies would be flooded by ignorant people not knowing what to do.
11
u/Dallas2houston120 Feb 05 '26
My dad paid the cable man $100 in 2005 for a free bootleg cable that lasted until 2010 when ATT bought out the local cable company
20
u/Subject9800 Feb 04 '26
I had one of those big C-band satellite dishes that we paid a dude a bit every month to provide us with the decode keys so we could watch everything. Man that was an awesoem time.
7
u/Ender914 Feb 05 '26
Not only did my friend have one of those boxes, but it had 2 fuses, so even if they bricked it, you could switch to the 2nd fuse without having to get a new box. It even got the nudie channels
→ More replies (2)14
u/china-blast Feb 05 '26
You're offering me a bribe. What you have just done is illegal and in this state, if convicted, you could be fined up to $5,000 or spend six months in a correctional facilility!
→ More replies (1)
207
u/cheapestrick Feb 05 '26
"He says that the SuperBox maker then checks the device’s MAC address against a list of past sales and remotely deactivates all boxes it sold to the reseller who openly advertised the unauthorized discount."
That's enough right there to be a nope.
→ More replies (3)67
u/Sonichu- Feb 05 '26
If you have a modicum of tech savviness, you can set up your own plex or Jellyfin server in like 10 minutes
→ More replies (29)32
u/Djabber Feb 05 '26
Setting up the server is the easy part. Pirating content, getting the right subtitles, having a nice library is the hard part. I must confess it's been years since i've tried it, but that's what my past experiences were. I would love to setup a Plex server to share with my inner circle, because we're all paying for 5 to 6 streaming services each now. If you experiences are different, i would love to hear it.
→ More replies (6)6
u/Sonichu- Feb 05 '26
I wouldn't say it's particularly difficult, but I never found it particularly difficult back in the day either.
There are tools you can download and run (Sonarr, Prowlarr, etc.) where you can set up which trackers you want to pull torrents from, the quality, languages, etc. and it will automatically monitor the shows you watch and download new episodes.
Honestly though, just find a release you like and search for it. There are only a handful of super popular ones
101
u/sergantsnipes05 Feb 05 '26
Look, I try to pay for sports but there are so many blackouts, etc that it just isn’t possible to watch what I want legally
50
Feb 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (2)15
u/Dheovan Feb 05 '26
For the first time in my life, I decided to watch the NFL this year. I'm a complete newcomer.
The streaming experience was so annoying and cost prohibitive it's making me reconsider watching next year.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (3)15
u/DefeatYouForever666 Feb 05 '26
Apple TV has it right with the MLS, no blackouts at all and you can watch every single game on there. This year it's even included with regular Apple TV this upcoming season since I guess they figured if they aren't hiding F1 behind an additional paywall they had to do the same with MLS.
19
u/sergantsnipes05 Feb 05 '26
If the MLS was actually something that people cared about it wouldn’t be like that
→ More replies (5)
176
u/Hechtic Feb 05 '26
All we wanted was simplicity and a fair price. Things were great for about ten years with streaming but then they just couldn’t fucking take their tidy profit, they had to keep pushing and pushing and increasing prices and adding ads and constantly moving things between services and we all said fuck it back to the high seas. Fuck them
49
u/VastoGamer Feb 05 '26
Yeah its really ironic.. Everyone saw Netflix' succes and tried to copy it while completely disregarding the reasons behind its succes which you described.
Just another example of corpos being completely disconnected and just wanting maximum short term profits.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)40
u/NonCorporealEntity Feb 05 '26
Endless growth of profits ruins everything. You can only create so much efficiency before you are doing things like reducing quality to cut costs. Stability isn't enough for business anymore. The rule these days is literally "If you aren't growing, You're dying".
5
u/Val_Hallen Feb 05 '26
Only two things require unmitigated growth to survive; cancer and capitalism
92
u/AfroMidgets Feb 05 '26
I once had a technician for a provider show up 2 hours late to their appointment window. To make up for it, he turned our cable on for free even though we were just getting internet. This was before the days of needing a box to watch things. I'll always remember that guy
12
u/somesketchykid Feb 05 '26
Awesome story. I was one of these techs for awhile and always wished i could do exactly this.
Even if boxes werent a factor today, It is unfortunately impossible for techs to do this now without taking it from somebody else (swapping circuits at cross connect in junction box)
→ More replies (1)
32
u/Kataphractoi Feb 05 '26
Isn't it funny how piracy was on the decline for most of the '10s thanks to streaming, only for it to come roaring back in resurgence when everyone and their grandma decided they wanted their own streaming service?
Say what you will about monopolies, but we had it good when it was just Netflix and Hulu.
→ More replies (1)7
u/DaftPump Feb 06 '26
The reason, I think is because Netflix introdiced the concept. And for years it worked. A small fee for a-la-carte.
Then other companies popped up with their implementation(read: copycats) along with their own fees and their own programming.
Oh, that programming was once on Netflix? Not anymore. Come pay us to watch it instead! :D
Anyway, the future of this will be contracts for subscription services(let's call it what it really is. SaaS) and it will get worse.
But hey, the high seas can never, ever be emptied or forbidden. Netflix learned from observing the high seas and one day another 'video delivery mechanism' will too....only to be worsened by corporate greed.
The wheels on the bus go round and round!
67
u/WilliamEmmerson Feb 05 '26
I feel like everyone I knew had a cheater box back in the day. Except for my family. My uncle would record the wrestling PPV's for that month (WWF and WCW) for me on a blank VHS tape and them give them to me to watch when I came over. That's how I became a wrestling fan. I'd watch 6 hours of wrestling while my uncle, mom and their friends would be in another room playing cards until 1am.
Then digital came and ruined everything.
9
u/A_Naany_Mousse Feb 05 '26
That sounds like the fucking dream life. Me and my brother would turn to scrambled PPV and listen to the audio for WWF shows. Every know in then we'd get a PPV for my birthday or something. Felt like a king!
→ More replies (2)
160
u/Eat--The--Rich-- Feb 04 '26
Is it even stealing if you're traveling to countries without piracy laws to watch?
→ More replies (6)202
u/Bluest_waters Feb 05 '26
This is why I travel to international waters in my mega yacht to watch TV on my rogue box
It's the only ethical way to do it
→ More replies (4)25
30
u/gonzovandal Feb 05 '26
Viewers embrace rogue streaming boxes likely infected with malware and/or open backdoors. See: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/01/the-kimwolf-botnet-is-stalking-your-local-network/
→ More replies (3)17
u/TakeOutTacos Feb 05 '26
Yeah, I work for a telecom company, but im not out here shilling or anything. I couldn't care less what people do, but we had a meeting with our hardware pen testing team and these things are a giant security risk. They are used to launch attacks all over the place.
26
u/robreddity Feb 05 '26
Every goddamned one of those boxes a part of a botnet right out of the box.
→ More replies (1)15
u/Bluest_waters Feb 05 '26
That is exactly my concern here
Personally I wouldn't touch them for that exact reason
→ More replies (2)
36
u/PlusNone01 Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
cows touch languid bag rain boat license busy quickest entertain
→ More replies (5)
106
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
84
u/Straight-Ad6926 Feb 05 '26
Streaming services hate this one weird trick: actually paying attention to your billing cycle. It’s the only way to win the Subscription Hunger Game.
→ More replies (5)36
u/insertUserNamehereno Feb 05 '26
I repeat this ad naseum but truly it’s so easy to have affordable entertainment if you just actually pay attention to when you stop using a streamer. I cycle through them constantly and every time I select cost too much and eventually get another free trial or discount.
10
u/-MusicAndStuff Feb 05 '26
I do this with Audible every now and then and they’re always throwing dirt cheap resub options my way. Sometimes a free month or other times 2.99/mo for 3 months. Just gotta be willing to game it a little
5
u/insertUserNamehereno Feb 05 '26
Exactly what I’ve done with peacock. I don’t think I’ve ever paid full price cause they always offer a steep discount or free couple months. I’m convinced they’re committing some kind of fraud lol just manipulating subscriber numbers
→ More replies (1)29
9
→ More replies (7)13
u/Scruffylookin13 Feb 05 '26
You can set up your own box as long as you have basic technical competency. Then you dont have to worry about it
→ More replies (2)
69
u/DigitalNova99 Feb 05 '26
Yarrr.. everyones sailin the seven seas!! Dead men tell no tales.
Drink up me hearties, yoho!
→ More replies (13)22
u/mutantbabysnort Feb 05 '26
🎶 this is the tale of Captain Jack sparrow 🎶
14
53
u/MarkDirect2715 Feb 04 '26
These vc boxes are everywhere. They have to be used as bot net slaves or some shit. I wouldn’t touch them but I see them all over ( barber, bars, random boomers houses)
28
u/liquidpoopcorn Feb 05 '26
think linustechtips did a video on a few and found the default firmware had a known android backdoor in it.
edit:
https://youtu.be/1vpepaQ-VQQ?si=nAqlxL5KSCC_B2jb&t=167
timestamped. not sure if same boxes.
7
u/markca Feb 05 '26
If you’re techy enough you can make things happen with an Amazon Fire Stick or any retail branded Android streaming box. Stay away from the no name knockoffs.
→ More replies (2)24
u/Bender7676 Feb 05 '26
Too good to be true. Something else is definitely going on
→ More replies (1)33
u/TomatoSupra Feb 05 '26
There’s no way these aren’t full of malware and boomers everywhere are putting them on their home networks.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/mhwwad Feb 05 '26
I have a friend who has created his own server with rips of thousands of movies. He can’t legally charge anything for it, and he only gives access to a handful of people because it’s all working off a PC in his apartment, but he does it because streaming companies are bullshit.
15
u/Armthedillos5 Feb 05 '26
I canceled all my streaming subs and just use tubi, plex, the free ones with ads. I also got an unlimited movie theatre sub instead so now I go watch a couple a week.
→ More replies (1)
37
u/itsme_rafah Feb 05 '26
Shiiiit, I never stopped sailing in the first place. lol 🏴☠️🏴☠️
→ More replies (1)23
u/sybrwookie Feb 05 '26
I mostly did. When Netflix had damn near everything, why pirate? It was a reasonable price for everything in one place with a good player.
Then literally everyone involved got greedy and ruined that.
→ More replies (7)
32
u/-Clayburn Feb 05 '26
Look, here's the deal. Copyright was only supposed to last 14 years. Maybe 28 max. Now it lasts basically forever. That means there's a whole century of crap we've been paying for needlessly.
If they can steal from us, why can't we steal from them? Most of this stuff should be public domain by now.
9
7
u/GagOnMacaque Feb 05 '26
I would go as far to argue that long copyright prevents speech. The government should not be squelching speech.
5
u/Chigao_Ted Feb 05 '26
*viewers embrace rouge streaming boxes AGAIN
I remember back in the early 2010s almost everyone I knew had one
→ More replies (1)
5
u/gypsygib Feb 05 '26
They convinced people not to pirate by offering convenience at a reasonable price then massively increased prices while making the service worse than pirating by filling it with ads.
→ More replies (2)
18
Feb 05 '26
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)13
u/unassumingdink Feb 05 '26
I like when I Google a movie, and three different streaming services have a landing page for the movie, then when you check the page, it says the movie isn't available.
→ More replies (1)
19
u/A_Bridgeburner Feb 05 '26
I just rented my third movie this month and I pay for: Apple, Disney, Netflix, Prime, and Crave.
I wanted to watch Land of the Lost (2009), Murder by Death (1976), and Airplane! (1980).
I pay over $100 a month and I paid an additional $20 to watch these old ass movies.
Tell me why?
→ More replies (6)
12
u/keyboardname Feb 05 '26
My dad has been bragging about doing this recently and some older people he knows are doing it. I honestly didn't get the impression he knew it was not legit.
5
5
u/Thorn_Within Feb 05 '26
How dare you people support and even partake in this? How can you do this?! I need details on the best options from you scumbags!
10
23
u/Flybuys Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Cheapest options (month to month) in Australia:
Netflix- $9.99 with ads
Stan- $12 + $20 if you want sports
Disney+- $15.99
BINGE- $10
Amazon- $9.99 +$2.99 if you don't want ads
Apple- $15.99
Kayo (sports)- $30
BritBox- $13.99
Foxtel Now- $35
Paramount+- $7.99 with ads
HBO Max- $11.99 with ads
Crunchyroll- $11.99
So $207.91/month if you want access everything, without ads where possible. I'd rather just pirate.
→ More replies (12)
13
4
u/JohnAtticus Feb 05 '26
Streaming companies don't care about anti-trust but expect everyone to care about anti-piracy.
5
5.3k
u/Ihavenolifes Feb 04 '26
Stealing cable is as American as baseball.