What hoops? Payment?
I pay to stream La Liga and it's about as easy as hitting 'Watch Live'
Yeah, split payments across multiple streaming services can get tedious. Though I agree with you for the most part, piracy comes with more hurdles even with a fancy automatic setup.
But really the most important benefit of piracy is the one you're already taking advantage of. The cost would be significantly higher if they had a true content monopoly, instead they have to price with the idea that should the cost be too high, the inconvenience of piracy becomes increasingly worthwhile.
Shitty non-platform-integrated UI 8: my particular bug bear. I want a native Apple TV app using native controls if I’m to pay money for a streaming service. That said, I just don’t bother watching if that isn’t available.
Say I want to watch some specific movie right now.
How would you go about accomplishing this?
it's a serious question. I've tried hoarding subscriptions. It doesn't work.
I have the subscriptions and it works for me. I do resent on principle needing so many different services, but once set up, I haven't hit a film that wasn't covered.
My subscriptions: Hulu (with a bunch of premium channels), Prime Video (with MGM, Acorn and BritBox), Netflix, Max, Peacock, Apple TV, Criterion Collection, Fubo, ESPN+
In the off chance something is not available on one of the above (again, really hasn't happened), it is usually on PPV via either Prime Video or Play for 4.99.
To the point of piracy -- I don't like the poor UX argument, personally. But, if you're struggling to make ends meet and the above subscriptions are just unaffordable (which they are for many), I'm not going to think any less of anyone for perusing some torrents. The world is hard and entertainment can really help people through the bullshit. The very last thing people need when struggling is to be deprived of their escape.
It's a little harder to justify not paying for any reason other than inability to pay.
yeah, payment is too inconvenient for me. I am not going to give my CC info to every website that asks.
Maybe if we lived in a "HTTP 402" secure micro-transaction world, it would be a different story.