General discussion about movies and TV shows.
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Why do they keep giving the word "streamers" new meanings??
A streamer is someone who streams, as in Twitch streamers.
But for some reason they started using it about the streaming services and now it's also the people using streaming services to watch stuff..?
Breaking: Streamers renamed Ribbons, totally unrelated streamers are up in arms
What’s up, streams. You been streaming today? I stream every day, stream on brother
Did you know that the word "Run" has hundreds of definitions? Like, more then 600 depending on who you ask.
I agree, I've always known them as subscribers, not streamers
Using it to describe streaming services isn't new. For example, here's a Variety article from 2019 that uses it that way.
Let's discriminate the term further by calling the producer the "stream source" and the consumers the "stream sink".
We now have "sourcers" and "sinkers". Thank me later. Or don't.
Ha! Jokes on them! I'm middleaged, tired and depressed. I just watch the same shows over and over again.
My wife is also like this and I honestly think the algorithm is geared towards this pattern. It constantly offers a ton of stuff you've already watched.
"Hey you liked The Stranger, well i have the perfect movie for you, it's called The Stranger"
My wife always goes back to the same things over and over. Sometimes it's Band of Brothers, and I'm like "Awesome, but there's only so many times I can watch Toye and Guarnere get their legs blown off."
But then she'll put on New Girl for the 15th time through (I don't even think I'm exaggerating) and I want to put a gun in my mouth. I want to punch every one of those characters in the face. Except for Winston, he's cool.
Same! What are your shows? I'm always playing Seinfeld, Office, Arrested Development.
Mostly car restoration shows.
Since I had my daughter I dont have whole weekends to spend armpits deep in engine bays swearing at spanners.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot is pretty great
Looks good! And it's got 13 seasons. Thanks!
Bojack Horseman is good.
Sure it's not Ibsen but it's a perfectly serviceable depression re watch.
Time to put The Office on for the 150th time!
Same. Star trek is always there for me.
i started to watch shows that i was too busy to watch when i was younger... ie: i just finished watching the oc, i watched scrubs and degrassi for the first time during covid. i'm thinking of watching skins (uk) now.
Please stop calling streaming services, "streamers". That term already refers to people who livestream. It's not cute and it's very confusing and annoying to hear about how the MPAA or SAG-AFTRA rail against "streamers" when the average streamer probably makes below $1k a year (if they're making anything), has no employees, and is likely doing their best to entertain a small group of viewers for 3+ hours, live, and without a script.
Oh wait, you're not talking about that kind of streamer, you're talking about the one that serves other people's videos on demand and makes billions a year, all while paying their employees like shit, pledging the bankrupt unions and driving people to piracy.
As someone who thinks a lot of twitch streamers are funnier and more entertaining that 90% of the trash released today, please don't dirty the term.
I honestly thought the headline was about a new twitch stream trend at first. It definitely seems like watching someone pick out movies on Netflix could be a Just Chatting trend.
This is the same issue i seem to have with Game Pass. All scrolling, no playing.
Same issue with my Steam library
It begins before you even open the streaming service, since you gotta also decide what the hell service it's on
I joke that I pay 15 dollars a month to watch thumb nails of movie box art scroll by from right to left. I've thought a lot about this, why was it easier to find a movie to watch when you drove to a video rental store? I think it's because there was a shift in how descriptions of movies were being done from Tape/DVD era to streaming. You'd get a few paragraphs and a few pictures on the back of a DVD or Tape, but on streaming you get one MAY BE two sentences. Plenty of times I passed by a movie on netflix called "The Devil's Rock" the box art look like cinemax T'n'A garbage, and the description made it sound very run of the mill shitty horror relying on tits and shitty monster effects. I ended up watching the movie and I was really impressed on how well it was done and how god damn poor the description was.
I also think the move toward algorithms deciding every single fucking aspect of what we see across all platforms has had a huge part in this trend. When combined with the shitty non-helpful descriptions, the algorithm just randomly picks a fraction of whats available to show you in weird, always different categories. When you'd go to a video store, they had back stock, which was organized by genre. So you could walk in and just be in the mood for a horror movie, or a sci-fi movie and browse based on that interest. It's a lot harder to browse based on genres on most streaming apps, Netflix used to let you look at a full list of genres but most streaming services have moved away from that.
So in summary, shitty descriptions for movies, ever shifting categories where you have little control in what you get presented. This makes the total available list of movies feel amorphous. No way to, or not easy to find genres to help narrow down based on a general mood. It's ironic, we have more access to just about any movie you want, but it's harder to actually settle on anything in particular. Also, the move toward streaming has meant that if a movie isn't carried by any major platforms, it for all intense and purposes, doesn't exist. For many years, it was very difficult to find Dogma any where to stream, as an example.
I could make suggestions on how to fix this, but I don't know, maybe they'd help, maybe they wouldn't. It doesn't matter because all tech companies are in fucking love with their algorithms to steer users.
Don't really agree. The video rental store forced you to make a decision because you spent time to go there and the social pressure of actually chosing something instead of awkwardly shuffling away huffing something about forgetting to buy milk. For streaming there is no such pressure or urgency. You'd have something to watch every time if the app forced you to make a decision via say a time limit before it refuses to open and/or some rewards for consistently making fast decisions on what to watch.
I do think the descriptions are very poor, but movie box art and synopsis have always been pretty shit, it's just more shit now.
Regarding your algorithm rant it obviously doesn't fit you but on the whole it helps guide people towards choices they'd enjoy. People tend to lock up when overwhelmed with choices so they try to narrow it down. You on the other hand would prefer to slowly peruse a giant genre based category, but that isn't the norm. However I do agree that they should provide the option, because we're all different and it's good to cater to all types.
I think it depends on how much of the content you have already watched. I've personally watched a lot of Netflix in the past year and it keeps suggesting stuff to me that I've already watched. And I don't mean the "watch again" category. Literally every category on the main page contains stuff I've already watched recently and rated.
I also rate every title I watch, in hope of feeding the algorithm. It does offer me new releases which fit, but anything older is completely hidden behind recommendations that never really change (no way to hide away content i don't want to watch).
I get your point about it being good to guide people towards things they might like, but evidently from the article we are commenting on it's not really helping on the whole.
I can appreciate how algorithms might be helpful with seeing what you like and helping you find other stuff similar for you to enjoy. I think the issue comes when you end up getting pigeon holed and only see certain things, despite maybe wanting to see something completely different. I noticed this when I saw what my Dad's Netflix looks like compared to mine. He had all sorts of movie suggestions I've never seen before due to his different watching patterns.
We're both in agreeance that they could do a better job with movie descriptions though.
The quality of shows they are outputting is quite worrying. They think they can get away without writers continuous input and it shows.
Netflix in particular I’ve gone from following many shows to only a few.
Well, yeah, there is just so much junk "originals" on streaming services since the studios think the best way to gain subscribers is quantity over quality.
Back in the day, random bad movies are FUN to watch, but now, they are just bad in a boring way.
I don't think anybody wants to attach their name to a bad show, people usually want to be proud of what they worked on. But of course, if the ones insists on pushing out as much """"content""""" as possible at the cost of people's passion, treating people as disposable metrics to pump up the number of shows on your streaming service, then passionless """"content"""" that nobody wants to watch is what you are going to get.
Support the strike, so that there is a possibility that after all this, people can refind their passion and make good, sincere, and human things again.
you know, I've got 2K movies on my jellyfin server, along with about 6K episodes. it takes me FOREVER to find something. Endless entertainment, and i still can't find shit to watch.
I use a program called The Hat in which you can add text entries to a list and then randomize their order. When I want to play a game, for instance, I'll throw in 3-5 that I'd be okay with playing, and then let fate decide.
As long as you don't allow yourself to veto the randomization and second guess, I'd say that method works pretty well. If I only have two choices sometimes I flip a coin
Plex has a random button for movies and TV so often my friends/family and I will play a game I like to call the random game.
Everyone gets 1 veto, and any movie can be skipped by majority vote. Just keep hitting the random button until something sticks. Eventually you'll hit a movie to watch, and it's never failed to be a good time.
Bonus game is try to guess the movie first - unfortunately I usually win because I put the movies on there so I know the approximate list of options.
How much storage space do you have??
20TB. Small by comparison to some people.
This is why I like star trek. Finished watching TNG? Better watch DS9 again. Finished watching DS9? Well I haven't seen Voyager in a while. Done with Voyager? Well I haven't seen TNG in a while
I have spent literal hours looking for something to watch.
No I'm not. I have a list of hundreds of movies to watch and I can almost always find what I want.
Sure, here at sea I don't need to wait some stupid service to decide what I can watch and when. The open sea welcomes me and provides for me.
This makes it sound like you float out a wishlist of movies into the sea and it floats back the DVDs you want like some kind of Poseidon's Netflix.
Poseidon's Netflix will now enter my daily vocabulary for piracy. Thank you.
Well not anymore. I cancelled most of them, and I suspect more people will do the same eventually.
In other news, record amounts of filler & dreck being endlessly firehosed onto streaming services.
That's why I don't have any subscriptions running atm. I sub one month and watch the thing I want to. After that I'm tone again.
Just wait and see how streaming services will give special discounts for 24 month subscriptions in the near future. After VPNs and password sharing the monthly subscriptions will be the next thing that falls. Then we'v gone full circe to cable.
Rather do that than waste time watching commercials on cable every day
Does anyone have a tool they recommend for choosing a movie to watch with friends? We usually spend ~30 minutes trying to find something everyone's interested in watching that none of us have seen before.
I use a tool called Series Guide (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelancer.seriesguide) to track the various series i am already watching/interested in. But for movies generally we add the to the list and then choose from it if we fancy a film. But I suspect as it's usually just the two of us that's an easier decision.