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Comment by _uhtu | Hacker News Reader

Amazon has lately been putting ads on prime video for other prime video shows. I have a feeling we're rapidly going towards most paid services having ads.

Also, on prime video, occasionally, pressing the fast forward button won't skip the ad. I'm sure it's one of those "bugs" that just happens to force the user to do something the company wants but the user doesn't but I have a feeling it might just stop working all the time and we'll be forced to sit through the whole ad on a paid service.

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This is infuriating. I'm paying for the service--that's supposedly what's sustaining it--why are there ads? If you (Amazon) decide you want more money, let me decide to pay more to eliminate ads.

Similar things abound with Hulu. Even the more expensive "ad free" version has some ads for certain shows/movies due to "licensing agreements" (read: Hulu wanting more money).

Once these companies decide their best path to new profits doesn't include new or improved products or growth it's just a question of who they are going to fuck, their employees or users.

What do you mean "or"?

This is hardly new. Cable TV, magazines and newspapers have always cost money and had ads included.

I beg to disagree. I remember a golden age when cable tv was known to be better because it didn’t have any ads.

Slowly they became as ad infested as open channels.

What are you talking about? cable TV has always had ads in the very beginning in the 1950s and 60s on through the 1970s when the first cable TV stations came out.

Nope. local channels continued to have ads but cable did not. Cable TV was advertised as being ad free because you were paying for it. It was part of the sales pitch.

My household was a subscriber in those early days and I remember the concern that ads were coming. I remember that they started by putting the ads between shows and only advertising upcoming shows on that channel. Then it moved to general ads about shows on that channel, then to ads about shows on other channels. At that point I knew the cause was lost and sure enough soon it was normal TV ads interrupting shows.

Here is a newspaper article from around that time asking how much longer cable TV will be ad free

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

Now when I hit "guide" I get a modal popup serving me an ad, that I then have to exit.

Soon it will be two, then three, then.... The same thing happened to "previews" when you go to the movies.

Will Cable TV Be Invaded By Commercials? [1981]: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

Its not new whatsoever. I'm sure double dipping predates newspapers who combine recurring billing and ads in between the articles. Cable TV today is a really obvious offensive case of it because unlike with the papers you aren't as constrained by recurring distribution costs.

Newspaper subscriptions mostly pay for the delivery costs... the printing costs are largely from the ad revenue.

Also, Cable is a bit of a mixed bag as the cable company you pay doesn't pay for ALL the content on 100+ channels. Even if you only want like 10 of them. That's where ads pick up the slack.

That said, the ever shrinking runtime is really annoying... late 70's hour long programs had around 48-50 minutes of content... today, it's inching under 42 minutes of content (and overlays on credits most of the time).

Wow, glad to hear about that Hulu situation. I used Hulu for a while, then dropped it when they added ads to my paid account. When I heard they had an ad-free version again I thought I might come back - but if the ad-free version is not ad-free then I'll just keep my money.

The option I subscribe to is ad-free, at least for the shows I’ve been watching.

Depends on the program source... some have an ad in front of the episode even for the ad-free tier. The "live tv" option sometimes keeps you from skipping some ads as well. Most frustrating to me is they have an updated app on the fire tv devices, but won't update the android tv app (NVidia Shield TV).

Netflix is going down the same route. They are not interrupting continuous playback yet but they are already promoting their Originals with autoplay ads (sometimes even with sound) in some clients. Luckily their clients' range of functions is horribly inconsistent, so I can still chose different clients to avoid this.

This is why I cancelled Netflix.

I've switched almost entirely to watching content I own, whether its iTunes purchases or ripped DVDs. I control the entire experience, I don't have to worry about content suddenly vanishing, I don't have to deal with anyone trying to steal my attention.

I feel the same way about dropping Netflix now as I did about dropping cable TV 5 years ago. I'm never going back.

I think it was one of the Barbershop DVD's which had over 20 minutes of unskipable previews on it.

I feel like we're diluting the atrocity of shitty ads when we refer to anything and everything as an ad.

Netflix's above-the-fold, skippable "Now Showing" preview on the homepage can't be compared to the unskippable videos that Amazon and Hulu force you to watch. Hell, it even remembers that you muted it. And it only plays if you sit there staring at it.

Since almost all of Netflix's competitors force you to watch ads after you click play, I'm pretty happy with what Netflix does. Seems like a perfectly fair trade-off to me.

If you don't like it, just add ".billboard-row" to your content blocker. I bet you haven't. I bet you kinda like it. ;)

If it's not aiding me in navigating directly without delay or distraction to what I want then it's an ad. Whether it looks interesting or not is irrelevant.

That's.. not a definition of "ad" in common usage.

>we're rapidly going towards most paid services having ads.

Cable TV model isn't dead after all.

Also means piracy won't be dying anytime soon.

Amazon can get away with it so long as Prime remains worth it for the free next-day delivery alone, and the video service is an added bonus on top.

If Netflix introduces any mid-show ads, I suspect there'll be a sharp rise in illegal downloads...

It's free 2-day delivery for me, and I don't always get that. Funny how when you order it will say "guaranteed delivery by <date>" but if they don't make that all you get is a "sorry" email. Not much of a guarantee.

For me it was free two-day shipping on Prime-eligible items until Amazon at some point decided to make only some Prime-eligible items eligible for Prime shipping. In effect they’ve silently and somewhat arbitrarily changed the definition of “Prime”.

If you contact support, they will give you a free month of Prime in exchange for missing the delivery guarantee.

Sort of makes sense. Those who have paid for a service are the most lucrative.

Vote with your wallet.

I have a feeling we're rapidly going towards most paid services having ads.

This is why I won't subscribe to Hulu. If I'm paying for it, I'm not going to watch ads unless I absolutely have to. And "absolutely have to" is why I pay for satellite TV. Can't wait until I move to a place with OTA TV again. I don't mind watching ads on broadcast TV because it's free.

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