Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Was wondering what you all think is the most frustrating or annoying things about streaming?

This is a pretty broad topic, but I can think of a few things off the top of my head that some here have complained about:

Way too many services

Content being sold is way too niche.

Content disappearing and appearing all the time

Video/Audio quality not up to par with physical media?

Content is way too spread out among multiple services

Too much streaming original content and not many of them are good


I mean what are some of the things that frustrate or annoy you about streaming?

For me, #1 Way too many services. I only have so much time and so much money to spend on entertainment and there seems to be more and more services coming. I just recently subscribed to the DC Universe service for their special 15 month promo because I like DC content. But, the threshold I have for getting more is getting pretty low now. And now Disney is getting their service ready for 2019.

Or do you have some pretty good self restraint and while stuff may interest you, you know that you'll never have the time to maximize it and choose not to subscribe?

I'm sure there's more frustrating and annoying aspects.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

I'm not a hardcore streamer and try to use free or low cost services when I do. I also find it nearly impossible to find things on the many services when I want to look at something. Heck even with Amazon Streaming, Hulu (w/commercials, it's cheaper) and AcornTV I have problems either finding stuff or remembering where I saw it. :)

Now with all the small Cottage services and YouTube channels I'm often lost. Sort of fun finding hidden gems but still..........

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

I've found that obscure and independent titles can be a little more difficult to track down.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Knowing when something is going to drop is my biggest complaint. I wish we could get more notice when something is going to drop. The Coming to "streaming service" in Aug 2018 press releases are nice, but it usually comes out a couple of weeks before.
I'd like to just know when something is going to drop after it completed airing. Original programming is released months in advance usually.

I keep a spreadsheet with all the shows I watch, what "app" they're on, premier date, season finale date, last episode watched, etc. And how many episodes they keep available since some are limited to a rolling 5 episodes.
That way I can keep watching for them to drop, then I change the premier date to the drop date and re-sort.

I agree there are too many platforms, but it doesn't bother me too much. I'm trying to be steadfast and I am only going to pay for the big ones I want, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon. The one I hate the most is CBS. I'm not planning on subscribing to it, but I would watch the Star Trek stuff. I did end up subscribing to Shudder since they offered me a ~$20/yr deal. And I have the Hulu $5 HBO limited time offer running now. I did one month free on Showtime and got caught up on shows I watch on there.
I'm considering going month to month with Netflix and/or Hulu. It seems we watch Netflix mostly in the summer months when a lot of shows are in hiatus, and watch mostly Hulu during the Fall/winter/Spring seasons.

And there are some shows that just never seem to hit the big 3 streaming platforms, or are years behind. Some of the shows on Discovery channel for example.
Justwatch.com is great for locating shows and where they are available.

Internet/wi-fi is annoying from time to time. Roku's losing connection, even though everything else is connected. Routers/modems need rebooting because speed drops.

We cancelled DirecTV last year and its been fine. Once you accept that everything is not going to be available and you have to wait for some to become available, and there is a lot of other things to watch, there's no problem.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

To massively simplify:
Too much stuff (good content, providers, etc), not enough time.

Details:
- The piecemeal aspect of it. Too many platforms
- Tough to find content across channels (although there are websites and my TV does a pretty good cross-format search)
- Items disappearing with little or no notice
- AV quality
- Too much stuff that is either great or really good to watch
- Too much crap to filter through
- Interface issues (Hey Amazon, i ONLY EVER want to see "Included in Prime" stuff, I will tell you when i'm willing to pay for something.)
- Not enough time to watch everything.
- From a personal style perspective -the prevalence of good "shows" vs Movies. Once i decide to watch a movie, I can watch it in 1.5-3 hours and be done. But each show I get into is 8-22 hours times however many seasons till I get bored of it or it jumps the shark.

Of course maybe i shouldn't complain. I've got Netflix (4 screen/4K plan, got my wife to cancel hers); Hulu (I only occasionally watch stuff on Hulu, but she watches a few things), Amazon Prime (mostly for shipping but they have some good content too - loved What We Do in the Shadows), we've got pretty much the max DTV plan, between purchases and GamePass I've got hundreds of hours of video games to finish, and the wall o' DVDs/BDs/now4ks that are primarily unwatched. And that's even without going into the more niche ones - Crackle, Crunchyroll, the one Moviepass partnered with, etc. I could pull the plug on 3/4 of this and never look back - but different people in the household enjoy different things in different ways on different distribution channels.

Thanks for the tip on Justwatch, that looks like a cool and very useful site.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Too many different platforms and it's impossible tracking what is coming out on each service. I'm sure there are good shows out there I would enjoy, but I am not hunting through the hundreds of different platforms to find a few enjoyable shows.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Buffering /especially with Direct TV Now

Trying too find something too watch-Since I have a big DVD/Blu ray movie collection trying to go through Netflix or Hulu or Amazon prime and trying too find something new is next too impossible. Maybe a master list would help matters because it's too time consuming the other way.

Internet failures. Since I have Spectrum that can be expected and since I don't have a bedtime a lot of times it will go out right after midnight(just when I get ready too watch something).

Services like WWE Network and Hulu who only allow one stream.

MILBTV-Minor League Baseball Games. The quality varies but geez could you all at least keep the score and the outs and ball's and strikes on the screen during the game.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

This:


Don't butt into ANY part of the content unless I hit something on the remote first. (Yes, I know you can pick up the remote and go back to the movie here, but I shouldn't have to do that. The ending is often ruined by that point anyways. When I ran this movie on film, we didn't even bring the lights up that early- we waited for that closing shot to finish.)

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

For the people that have trouble finding something on all the different services, this new Roku update sounds pretty cool.

Roku Now Offers Thousands of FREE TV Episodes from ABC, FOX, The CW, & More

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

My biggest pet peeve is the internet reliability.

My internet connect goes out about once or twice a day. It only lasts for 3-4 minutes, until my modem automatically reboots and fixes itself. Most of the time it happens when I'm not using the internet, so I don't even notice. But if it happens when I'm watching a movie, it's really frustrating.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Alan Smithee reminded me of another one. On Hulu after you finish all the available shows of a season, even if there was only 1 current one, it will just randomly pick something to start next.
It doesn't even pick something on your watch list. I turned it off, but then that's annoying if you are binging a season of something.
I still don't like the Hulu GUI after last year's debacle of an update.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Hulu overlays network logo "bugs" on most current TV shows (they aren't on the video itself, the system actually overlays them) so that was a deal-killer right there. I watched the movie "Mysterious Skin" on Hulu and it was free of bugs or commercials, but a menu popped up right when the end credits started- I saw the menu onscreen before I even realized the credits were starting. As the ending of that movie was VERY emotional (and pretty much that entire movie was) that really DID ruin it, and I cancelled right away.

BTW I'll give everyone here points for not saying "That doesn't bother me, I don't watch the credits anyways!" which has a common response to this elsewhere. I'm glad it doesn't bother you, but it kills the experience for me. I personally wouldn't mind if something else autoplayed after the thing I was watching was COMPLETELY over, but obviously that does bother some people. Point is that these things need to be CUSTOMIZABLE which would be easy enough to do and please everyone.

General thing I've found about subscription streaming is that there just isn't enough time for me to get my money's worth out of it. If Hulu were actually watchable I would probably use that a lot to watch new episodes as they come out, but I was paying for Sugar Instant for a while (yes, it's porn- I have no shame!) and was mostly happy with it but I just wasn't watching it enough. For $8 per month I would need to watch at least 4 features, so they each averaged out to $2, but for a few months I barely had time to watch one. When you have just one genre whether it's porn or horror or whatever, you have to be in the mood for that genre and many times I'm not. (I tried Shudder for free and that was OK aside from the lack of 5.1 sound, but when I'm in the mood for a movie I don't want to be limited to one genre.)

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Yeah, really annoyed by the thing with the end credits. Sometimes it's nice let the music transition you out of a particularly good story or maybe I just wanted to see who the extras were. If there's a setting for this, they need to make it known.

I don't like studios doing their own thing. Netflix and Hulu make more sense in that they can bring in stuff from multiple sources (I know Hulu is partly owned by ABC), so things like the CBSAllAccess and the upcoming Disney ones seem to narrow for me (though Disney does have the rights to a ton of stuff - if they put on stuff like the old 80's/early 90's cartoon series, that might get me to subscribe).

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

I wonder if this will show only the Free for Everyone episodes or also the "unlocked" episodes provided by logging in with a Cable subscription. I also wonder if any of the CBS freebies (non subscription episodes they have time to time or for example all seasons of "Elementary" are available via HULU w/o a CBS subscription) will be available via this new Roku gathering.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Now some of my annoying things about streaming.

One thing I dislike about going to each channel for this content is most of them do not keep your place so I had to keep a list next to my chair on what we had and had not watched yet. That alone was enough to make the 5.99 HULU worth it for us. Also even though HULU has commercials, the commercial segments seem to us to be much shorter than the main stream channels.

CW app was terrible video quality. I watched some previews lately and it may have improved, but it was literally less than DVD quality on our Roku 3.

Not all providers have same quality content. Different Aspect Ratios (not OAR) on some providers of the same movie. Different audio quality, etc. I wish every provider of content had the same master to provide (in HD or 4K with OAR and best audio possible to stream).

I have more and will come back here time to time to comment.

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UGH. This is definitely Category H-8. Wonder what is CatH8, just pronounce the H and the 8. Yep HATE it....

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

Didn't Amazon Prime used too do the above but I think they stopped it(too many complaints???)?

Still haven't been able to find that Roku Channel that has all the free channels.

I guess this would be considered streaming but I can't get the Roku Media Player to play all with it's USB feature.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

to be honest...i don't find too many things annoying. i have Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, do Vudu, all those premium channel Go's and Now's or whatever, so i have all the stuff i need. too much actually and i don't really watch anything i want, but it's there and usually is so i am content with that and will watch when i can. i do find Vudu the easiest and best, fastest interface for sure. the others take a bit to get to what want, but Vudu is simplest and i prefer it above all else, but i'm not always gonna pay Vudu for what i can get for free on other sites (talking series mostly) in HD. i never lose connection and all services have been pretty good to me.

plus, having digital copies is so much more appealing than using all the space i have for my 3,500 DVDs/Blus. it really has been the bane of my existence and probably an addiction in many regards, a bad one at that. i don't even touch my DVDs anymore and are stacked in crates in my storage room. hard to get to, much less sift through to find something. would rather just get blu or digital and i have upgraded on most my favs, which is a lot, but whatever...

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Buffering is a big problem for me. My Xbox One is a much balkier streamer than my PS3/4 so I'm glad they joined Movies Anywhere so I can watch on Vudu instead. :D

There was an earlier comment about not wanting to see non-Prime selections on Amazon. I dunno. I kinda like still finding stuff and putting it on my watchlist instead of Netflix's pretending it doesn't exist. :shrug:

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I think Amazon Prime is the easiest too find stuff too watch while Netflix is the hardest.

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Yep, I had the same complaint while watching The Handmaids Tale. There were several gut-wrenching episodes that faded into credits with some awesome songs, but Hulu immediately popped some crap onto my TV screen. I guess this type of BS is OK for low-IQ reality shows but it really kills the mood when watching serious drama.

Isn't Netflix also guilty of this?

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Yes, on the newest devices. I'm leeching off my parents' subscription and using an older Roku which still has the old interface so I can watch in peace. I would have my own subscription and pay for 4K, but not when they do that.

If you care, please sign this petition (not mine) : https://www.change.org/p/netflix-we-...netflixcredits

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

I agree with this. Hulu has gotten easier to find stuff too.

Re: Most frustrating/annoying things about streaming?
 

For those of us who buy digital on a regular basis, I would think this would be frustrating. For me personally, I had to laugh at the whole thing. Apple is working on it, but apparently many Warner Bros movies on iTunes have reverted from 4K to simply HD on iTunes. This includes titles that customers have already purchased. Though I don't think this affects physical media as of now.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/14/itunes-warner-bros-4k/

Movies from many studios revert to HD instead of 4K on iTunes, including already purchased titles

[Update #2: Apple appears to be

resolving this issue

.]

[Update: It seems that the issue is

affecting more than just Warner Bros movies

. Users report that 4K titles from Columbia, MGM, 20th Century Fox, and others have also reverted to HD. This suggests it’s likely a bug on Apple’s part.]

Over the last several days, many Warner Bros movies on iTunes have reverted from 4K to simply HD on iTunes. This includes titles that customers have already purchased. At this point, it’s not explicitly clear whether this is an issue on Apple’s part or Warner’s.

Users have taken to

Twitter

and https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=16403276#post16403276 about this problem. Essentially, numerous Warner Bros titles that were at one point 4K quality, have been inexplicably downgraded back to HD. In some instances, the Warner Bros films are even still included in 4K collections on iTunes, despite the fact that they are no longer available in 4K.

If you head to the iTunes Store listing for an affected film, such as Harry Potter, you’ll see that Apple no longer lists it as 4K, but rather HD. A user on the Blu-Ray forums has compiled a growing list of affected Warner Bros films:

1. 22 Jump Street (2014)
2. About Last Night
3. Aloha (2015)
4. American Sniper
5. Annie (2014)
6. Batman vs. Superman
7. The Brothers Grimsby (2016)
8. The Equalizer (2014)
9. Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
10. Ghostbusters II (1989)
11. Goosebumps (2015)
12. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011)
13. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (2010)
15. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
16. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
17. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
18. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
20. Hercules (2014)
21. Hitch (2005)
22. Hotel Deluxe (2013)
23. Matrix Reloaded
24. The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
25. Risen (2016)
26. Spaceballs (1987)
27. Taxi Driver (1976)
28. Unforgiven (1993)
29. The Walk (2015)
30. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Apple support has told at least one user that this issue is due to changes by Warner Bros, but support agents aren’t always the most reliable source of information for these sort of problems. We’ve reached out to both Warner Bros and Apple for comment and will update if we hear back. It’s possible that other studios besides Warner Bros are affected as well, which would suggest an issue on Apple’s side.

Apple first announced that 4K content was coming to iTunes in 2017. At the time, Apple said it would upgrade existing purchases to 4K for free and sell 4K for the same price as HD.