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To rent or Tubi
Aug. 31st, 2023 07:35 amWhen Netflix shutters their DVD service in a month, members can keep what they have at home and some will randomly receive up to 10 extra discs from their queue. I've planned it out so I'll have Weekend at Bernie's 2 at home, and the extra 10 if I were to get them would be Shocker and all the Halloween movies they have. Weekend at Bernie's is one of my favorite movies and I don't remember part 2 being good at all, but it's not cheap to get or watch, so I may as well take a free copy while I can.
Part of me mourns the loss of DVD Netflix. As of right now, I've rented 2,357 titles on DVD and my account has been active nearly the whole 19 years I've had it. But for the last couple of years, Netflix has proven it's not interested in being a place to borrow DVDs of stuff that's hard to find. Mostly they want to provide DVDs of stuff that's in demand but not included in any service's streaming plan. Not super useful. That made it easy to whittle down my queue that was once around 180 titles down to almost nothing.
The good news is that Tubi is stepping up to make all kinds of old, great stuff available. We decided yesterday we'd like to see a lot of '80s sitcoms again, and as I updated our spreadsheet, I found that four of the eight shows we were looking for were on Tubi. And it's free. A lot of people wonder why Tubi doesn't have a paid option without commercials, but I really hope they don't try that. It seems like the sorry state of streaming services has its origins in trying to get as many paid subscribers while trying to pay as little as possible for the content, which has led to horrific practices like canceling shows quickly, negotiating away residuals, and even deleting shows off services altogether right after canceling them, forcing people to pay to see if they weren't caught up.
If I could only have one streaming service, it'd be Tubi. I've been saying it a long time, and with DVDs by mail becoming a thing of the past in less than a month, it's more true than ever.
Part of me mourns the loss of DVD Netflix. As of right now, I've rented 2,357 titles on DVD and my account has been active nearly the whole 19 years I've had it. But for the last couple of years, Netflix has proven it's not interested in being a place to borrow DVDs of stuff that's hard to find. Mostly they want to provide DVDs of stuff that's in demand but not included in any service's streaming plan. Not super useful. That made it easy to whittle down my queue that was once around 180 titles down to almost nothing.
The good news is that Tubi is stepping up to make all kinds of old, great stuff available. We decided yesterday we'd like to see a lot of '80s sitcoms again, and as I updated our spreadsheet, I found that four of the eight shows we were looking for were on Tubi. And it's free. A lot of people wonder why Tubi doesn't have a paid option without commercials, but I really hope they don't try that. It seems like the sorry state of streaming services has its origins in trying to get as many paid subscribers while trying to pay as little as possible for the content, which has led to horrific practices like canceling shows quickly, negotiating away residuals, and even deleting shows off services altogether right after canceling them, forcing people to pay to see if they weren't caught up.
If I could only have one streaming service, it'd be Tubi. I've been saying it a long time, and with DVDs by mail becoming a thing of the past in less than a month, it's more true than ever.
