stusser
2733
They aren’t, but Safari content blockers work on YouTube ads too. You just need to watch YT in the browser, not the app.
On Android just install an alternate YT app like NewPipe.
But which version of that (question for anyone)? I see a couple on the Google Play store and I don’t want to install something dodgy.
It’s such a bummer that the YT Vanced people had to go and get involved in an NFT. :-(
stusser
2735
Best practice is to use F-droid to install/update open-source stuff on android.
Houngan
2738
I’ve started watching The Shield again, and man, it’s pretty good. It’s not The Wire, and it’s not The Sopranos, but it’s really close to both. The defining feature of the show is that the protagonist has to lie every second of every day to cover up so many different things, and Michael Chiklis does a great job at that. He’s exactly the immoral bastard that is believable and it sells. Plus, Walton Goggin’s main entre to the world.
Downside, I guess there’s a lot of threads that can be distracting, it certainly isn’t as focused as The Wire and let’s face it, it’s a B+ to The Wire’s A+ in that department. A lot more Soprano vibe as they do bad things for seemingly good reasons and it plays out. I’m finishing up my rewatch at season 2, my recollection is that they do bring it home by the end, but it’s got tons of grit and chicanery and tough guy whatnot, give it a try.
Oh, and CCH Pounder in her defining role. Her character is Claudette but I can’t ever see her as anything but CCH Pounder. She’s so damned good. I’m still at a bit of a loss that it wasn’t her voice as the DJ in The Warriors, she just sounds so good.
Sharpe
2739
Having recently re-watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars on Hulu, I believe the issue with The Shield is that it is a very good show but the 22 episode per season system inevitably meant that many episodes were filler, even if the overall arc was excellent. Veronica Mars Season 1 is a bit of an exception to this but even in that awesome season there were half a dozen episodes that could have been cut. The Shield is a very good show but if its overall episode count was cut by half (the right half, of course) it could have been a truly great show. It’s still worth watching b/c despite the filler and meandering it really sticks the landing with one of the great TV endings. In fact, I think there’s an argument that The Shield has the best pairing of First Episode / Last Episode of any TV show - at least in the top 10 IMO. The premier is incredibly strong and the finale is even better.
Houngan
2740
I agree 100%, that lack of focus I mentioned it absolutely at the feet of the format. And I also appreciate that other people appreciate that first/last thread that they maintain, it was remarkable. Plus side, even the filler episodes have lots of good frisky cop stuff, even if they don’t really help the meta.
The Shield was 13 episodes per season.
Sharpe
2742
Hmm, I still remember a fair amount of meandering and filler between the strong start and the strong finish. Maybe the issue wasn’t so much the number of episodes per season as the number of seasons? I have a recollection of at least a couple of season arcs that seem extraneous in the larger context.
Still a very good show.
I feel like this issue of balancing amount of content versus quality of content is one of those meta issues that is being experimented with during this Streaming Era.
One aspect of these subscriber services that still gets to me sometimes is being caught unaware that a movie is leaving the service. I started watching Despicable Me with my son on Wednesday, because poor little guy is sick (possibly Covid?) and had little energy to play games. So he was really enjoying it on Wednesday, and he was feeling even worse on Thursday so I went back on Hulu to continue Despicable Me from the point we left off the previous night.
But nope. It’s not on the service anymore. You see Wednesday was August 31st. And Thursday was September 1st, so it turns out Wednesday was the last night they had the Despicable Me movies on there.
We had the same thing happen with (I think) The Repair Shop and discovery+ - we subscribed to it specifically to watch that show, and after a couple of weeks the show disappeared. No announcement, no nothing (I suppose they don’t want to announce shows leaving since it may encourage people to drop the service). Pretty aggrivating.
Scott123
2747
Anyone else been enjoying Netflix games lately? I know this is the TV forum but the games are really grabbing my attention as much as shows these past few weeks. It’s a differentiator now that I’ve tried them.
jsnell
2748
If I understand correctly, the complaint is that Paramount sold their movie streaming rights to Epix in a sweetheart deal, 5 years ago, and then recently licensed them back from Epix for Paramount+ for similarly under-market value in exchange for extending the deal.
ANOTHER PLUS!
(and I may be one of the 47 people in the world with an Epix subscription)
A dude on an RPG-design-focused Discord I’m a part of spoke this into existence last night.
Wait, why did I think Amazon bought MGM?
