“executives have said that some content will be missing from the ad tier at launch”
Well, that makes it even less tempting, because I don’t want to have to check what’s included vs what’s missing every time I’m interested in watching something.
Broadcast OTA TV is free though.
That’s honestly not bad at all.
5 seconds of ads is too many for me. But if it works for y’all, go for it.
I think I’m probably at that same space now. Maybe. I guess I do watch enough live sports that I still have some commercial tolerance left. But I wonder if that’d be the case for a scripted show.
Sharpe
2718
I loathe and hate ads and have been avoiding them, but on the issue of a tier of service with 4 minutes of ads per hour, I do have some recent comparative experience. Amazon is now running “Freevee” a “free” ad-supported service which has some shows not available on regular Amazon Prime. I recently watched an Aussie crime/detective show called “Troppo”, which was quite good, and I experienced Freevee which also has something in the range of 4 minutes of ads per hour (I didn’t time it, but that’s what it seemed like).
And… it was tolerable. For a free service letting me watch a show I couldn’t otherwise watch, it was acceptable. Would I want that as a regular part of my viewing habits? Hard to say. Maybe 4 minutes per hour is sufficiently low key I could tolerate it long term, or maybe not.
The bigger issue really is the “subjective annoyance factor” of the commercials and for me that has a lot to do with volume, and also style. In regular US TV, the commercials are just so fucking LOUD (my understanding is that they don’t have higher “peak” volumes than regular shows but US commercials are basically all peak volume all the time - it feels like they are shouting at me.) On Freevee, they felt less loud, and the commercials they chose to show felt relatively innocuous to me. Even so I didn’t love the experience, merely tolerated it. But it WAS tolerable to me, which is a big change from regular commercials.
I suspect each viewer and family will have different reactions.
My current view is that I will continue to avoid commercials unless there’s a good reason like the Troppo show, but I don’t view a lower priced commercial tier of service as complete assery either. It’s an option. The devil of course is in how they present the option.
Yeah Freevee used to be IMDB.tv and honestly they had the best ad implementation I’ve ever seen on a streaming service. There aren’t a ton of them, they aren’t super repetitive, they kick in at the right time (unlike other services in which the ads kick in a second or two late so you see like, a second of the show returning and THEN get the ad) and they always tell you how many ads and how long the ad break will be, which is nice.
YMMV because I had exactly the opposite experience while watching Fringe seasons using IMDB.tv last year. The ads were (1) as frequent as broadcast TV (2) dropped in at random times by algorithm and with the issues you mentioned (3) terrible Alexa narrated ads for generic white label string-of-consonant Amazon clone products.
My god what? I had none of those issues using IMDB/Freevee with several shows. Hell, with the Australian show Sea Patrol, I barely got any ads at all. Which device are you using? I’m wondering if that’s the big difference. I have a Fire Stick.
I was using the Prime app on Apple TV 4k. Dunno if it would have been different if I’d used an IMDB.tv app directly. It hadn’t occurred to me since it’s theoretically same ownership & back-end content anyways so why would you expect it to be different?
Oh I used the specific app on the fire stick. I wonder if that’s the difference.
Watching it in a browser on my PC I don’t have any of the issues @dgallina describes either, thank goodness. That sounds seriously awful.
Weird! I wonder how we have such differing experiences with the same service.
It could be the front-end (which app we use to reach the service). It’s maybe also possible that my privacy settings are more extreme than yours & so that front end app doesn’t “know” me as well and sends me a smaller selection of low quality / bottom-feeder ads. For sure I’ve got the Apple TV and its apps set to disallow tracking (where that’s possible) and then also my Amazon / Netflix / etc web privacy settings tuned for less tracking (where that’s possible). I’m NOT currently using a PiHole or similar to redirect ad traffic to /dev/null though. So 🤷♀️
If I get the same content on Netflix no matter which service I’m paying for, I’ll go for the ads. I’d rather save the money. Like Sharpe I watched Troppo on Freevee and the ads didn’t really bother me. If the volume is too loud I just hit the mute button. The Freevee ads were bathroom break time or check something on my iPad time or just do something else time.
One of the nice things Freevee did, if I remember correctly, was show a timer counting down until when the ad break was over. So I immediately knew I had a two minute break, long enough use the restroom.
I’m the sort of person who pays for Youtube premium just so as not to have ads when I watch it on my TV, so there’s no way in hell I’m going to watch ads on Netflix.
I miss YT premium so much. I had to cut costs recently and that one hurts the most to lose.
On an Android phone anyway, Firefox + Ublock Origin works pretty well, although it’s not as nice. Don’t know if non-Safari browsers are allowed on iOS phones, though.
Wait, you can install extensions for mobile browsers on Android? I had no idea. /me googles
Ok, it looks like Firefox and Chromium-based browsers allow it, but not Chrome itself. Is that right? Score one for Firefox there.
JonRowe
2732
The question is, how will they handle ads on movies?
If there are commercial breaks for movies, it is a non starter. I think paramount plus and maybe peacock show a long set of ads before the movie, and then it is un-interrupted.
Woof though.
