There's Never Been a Better Time to Cancel Your Streaming Subscriptions
Posted by Brandon Pyle on December 15, 2023
Categories:
Blog
Docker
Jellyfin
Homelab
Home Server
There are more streaming services than ever today, and they have the power to remove movies and shows whenever they want whether you like it or not. According to FinanceBuzz, 78% of households have either Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu (or a combination of all three). In addition, over 25% of households spend over $75 on streaming services each month.
Just four years ago, streaming services cost an average of $8.53 per month according to Forbes, however, the price has almost doubled as Netflix now costs $15.49 (and that's just for the 1080p only version), Amazon Prime costs $11.58, and Hulu costs $14.99 without live TV. If you are subscribed to all those services (and there are many more I didn't even mention), you are paying at least $42 dollars a month before tax. Frankly, that's an outrageous amount of money.
With the same amount of money you could buy 3-4 moves each month and create a massive collection of movies and shows you actually want to watch. And the best part is you probably already have a number of movies and shows on disk that you enjoy watching, and once you get most of the movies and shows you like, you won't need to spend nearly that much on a monthly basis.
You might be saying to yourself, why would I go out and buy DVDs or Blu-Rays just for them to collect dust and take up space? First off, because you'll save money in the long run. Second, if you get movies you actually enjoy watching, you'll put them to good use. Finally, my recommendation to save space is to set up a Jellyfin, Plex, or Emby streaming service for yourself and your family in order to be able to watch all your favorite movies and shows over the cloud on any device all without a DVD player.
You might be thinking this seems too good to be true, and your right, there are some drawbacks. It takes time to figure out how to set this all up, and it takes even more time to rip your DVDs, convert them to the right format, and transfer them to your media server. However, it's not as complicated as you might think, especially once you get the hang of things. If you have an old laptop lying around, you can easily turn it into the ultimate personal media server to stream all your shows and movies.
Everything today is a subscription service from renting an apartment to streaming movies to video games and much more. These companies can take away many of the services they provide without ever consulting you. It's time to take control of your life and start owning the products you pay for!
If you don't know where to get started, just look up how to make a Jellyfin (I prefer it over Plex and Emby) server on Youtube. That's what I did. There are tons of tutorials out there. Maybe sometime I'll even make my own tutorial.