It is no longer news that we have more and more streaming services. What seemed like a revolution with Netflix is now a headache for those who want to consume movies and series. I always looked favorably upon these services due to the ease and reasonable cost of access; as much as international corporations fail to understand, this is the main factor that reduces piracy. Furthermore, buying physical media became something exclusive to collectors, since a season of The Simpsons on BluRay cost much more than a monthly HBO Max subscription. So subscribing was a good deal, right? Yes, but in 2025 this no longer exists. Today we have countless problems related to streaming:

• Number of services. Today we have N services that “force” you to subscribe to consume a specific type of content. Want to watch Severance? Subscribe to Apple TV. Stranger Things? Subscribe to Netflix. Andor? Disney+. Fallout? Amazon Prime. Etc. Etc. Etc.

• Variety of supply in a capitalist system generates competition and democratizes prices for the general public, was that it? Well, throw that basic economic theory in the trash, because what we have today are higher and higher prices. Not just price hikes, but even if the company doesn’t raise prices (hello Amazon!), they infest the service with ads. In other words, you end up (in the best-case scenario) paying the same amount for a service that gets worse, becoming increasingly freemium. Doing some back-of-the-napkin math, here in Italy if I wanted to subscribe to the main streaming services it would be €60 a month. €720 a year. In 5 years watching series I would have spent €3600. The absurdity here has gone completely off the rails, this price is unjustifiable.

• Want to watch in 4K? You’re on your own, buddy. When the service has this option, it becomes more expensive. And what disgusts me the most: quality drops during streaming. I recently invested in an OLED TV, I want to see quality and what I get is that 360p YouTube vibe interspersed with peaks of 4K.

• The Netflix formula of releasing a full season has ceased to exist, now it is weekly. Just to keep you paying monthly for their precarious service. I understand that this has always been the television formula (whether due to technological limitations or financial issues), but when you are paying for a streaming service for a single series, the price vs consumption factor skyrockets, you are paying more.

• Besides the shitty service, which stinks more and more, we have an availability problem. There are series that are not on any platform, series that have season AB on Service X and season CD on Service Y. The service doesn’t make the season available in 4K, even if you subscribe to the quality package. We have even reached the point where platforms are permanently deleting their own series.

• Subtitle quality. This infuriates me, you are paying for a service that offers a Polish or Swedish series. Obviously, I don’t know any of the languages spoken in those countries. Turning on subtitles on Netflix or HBO Max is a nightmare, poorly written sentences that make no sense. A translation done in one chapter is redone differently in another of the same season.

To not extend myself further, we have two solutions:

Put on the Jack Sparrow hat and explore the open seas vs The classic move of acquiring physical media

Yes, piracy is a crime, it is bad, it is the death penalty, they will hunt down your family eliminating them one by one, because how can you do this when we have such perfect and cheap services?! Everyone is responsible for their own acts. I am going to start a series of posts here explaining step by step how to create a homeserver. From making backups of physical media (BluRay) to configuring Jellyfin to watch series and movies having an experience much, much better than any streaming service. I couldn’t care less if you use the tutorial in the next steps for ends alternative to legality, that’s your own business.

See you in the next post!