I subscribe to half a dozen video streaming services and, in my opinion, not one provides a decent menu system.
I’m not sure if it’s just me but I find the majority of these streaming services’ menu systems unintuitive and tedious. I won’t go into detail because I’m sure you’ll each have your own pet peeves. Suffice it to say that I suspect these menu systems must have been designed by an out-and-out sadist.
Sorry, You Can’t Watch That Here
I have multiple issues with these menu systems but the latest and greatest is listing content that is not available via the streaming service I’m connected to. For example, I connect to Amazon Prime, see a show that I’m pretty sure I will enjoy, so I click to view and am advised that I can only watch this show on Paramount+ or some other streaming service.
This type of misleading listing, I assume to bulk up content, is now rife across all streaming services.
Free Or Pay-For-View?
Then there’s the habit of listing content that requires payment mixed in with all the free content. Same situation, I click to watch a show that sounds interesting only to discover that it costs an often exorbitant amount of money to watch.
For goodness sake, I wish these companies would list only what is available to view through their own particular service, and why they cannot separate free content from pay-for-view content is beyond me.
By far the worst offender in both cases is AppleTV+, but they’re all at it to some extent. In fairness, Amazon Prime is one that does at least mark its pay-for-view content with a little yellow dot to distinguish same from the free content.
Content Fragmentation
I’ve written previously about how the advent of multiple streaming services has created content fragmentation. That is, you can watch some seasons of a show on one streaming service and other seasons of the same show only on a different streaming service.
So now, apparently, they have all taken to listing each other’s content. That’s fine, but please separate that content from your own content, is that too much to ask?
The Old Switcharoo
New content is scarce with most streaming services, with the possible exception of Netflix. But then, most of Netflix’s new content is foreign. Amazon Prime is not too bad for new content either, but new content on most is as rare as hen’s teeth.
So, I’ve adopted a system, “the old switcharoo”. What I do is subscribe to a service for (say) 3- 4 months and once I’ve completed everything I want to watch, I cancel that subscription and subscribe to a different service, repeating that cycle every 3- 4 months or so. By the time I go back to a service (after 3- 4 months), there is usually a good selection of new content to watch.
I’m guessing many of you might employ a similar system.
Okay, so that’s my rant over. How about you? Any pet peeves about streaming services and/or their menu systems? Let us know in the comments.
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I have one service that lists about every show ever put on any streaming service and you have NO IDEA if you can actually watch the show until you click on the Start button and of course then it says NOT AVAILABLE on any of your services. PLEX
Then there are the devices themselves. Now I have pretty good luck with the Amazon Cube, but there are devices and services like TABLO who are producing such garbage that they seldom work and the customer service refuses to assist or if they do they make up BS like you have to use approved third party devices like the no longer mainstream Western Digital for an added recording ability. Sorry if I offend anyone with my disdain for a failing manufacturer like WD> The Tablo offers such a small bit of storage for recorded shows and when I plugged in a top-of-the-line 1T Samsung (NVME M2) storage drive it is seldom even seen by the device. Of course, Samsung (not my favorite name) is among the top-of-the-line manufacturers of NVEMe M2 drives. If their device can’t recognize the approve protocols of the industry across the board then they shouldn’t be offering ANY such options.