I evaluated my streaming subscriptions, and it completely changed how I watch movies

After a long time away from watching movies, I recently decided to make the effort to start watching again.

In the process, I had the depressing realization that the many and various streaming services I already subscribe to are largely pointless.

Here’s what happened, why it’ll change how I watch films in the future, and how it’ll teach me to take more notice of the value of my chosen subscription services.

Related

I found a VPN trick that fixes my biggest streaming frustration

No more 'Not available in your country' worries

Posts 2
By  Faith Leroux

Film before the days of streaming

But TV series after

Before getting into the details, context is important. Film was a big part of my life, but almost solely before the advent of streaming. I got my film fix from buying VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, and renting from video stores.

For various reasons, my film watching slowed down after around 2010, and from 2015 until today, I barely watched any movies at all. TV series became more important, as they fit into my lifestyle better.

Over the years, I’ve maintained subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, and had access to Paramount+, Discovery+, and other TV-based services in the UK, where I live.

In the back of my mind was the thought I had all those films I’d missed waiting for me, when or if I wanted to see them.

Wanting a recent back catalog

It shouldn’t be this hard

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the itch to return to watching movies. I kept getting signs that it was time, and for the first time in a decade, I was actually keen to do so.

Seeing as I already subscribed to a host of streaming services, I thought I was perfectly set to jump into a world of movies that had passed me by until now. Sadly, I was very wrong.

I decided to prepare my return by researching lists of the best movies from around 2010 to today, making a note of the ones that appealed or I’d heard about, with the goal of working through them over time.

I ended up with a preliminary list of 50 films I wanted to see, none made before 2011, and only a handful that wouldn’t be considered mainstream. I don’t think any of them would be considered truly obscure either.

My next step was to find where they were streaming, and for that, I used JustWatch. To my surprise, only 18 of the 50 titles were available to stream on subscription services. That’s 36% of the movies I’d selected.

Surely I wasn’t looking for mainstream movies, right?

Decide for yourself

The remaining 64% of movies I wanted to see I had to rent or purchase through Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, or other similar services. Add up the additional costs, and suddenly the streaming services look like poor value.

What can’t I watch without paying for outside a streaming service? The titles include Oppenheimer, Interstellar, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Boyhood, Under the Skin, The Hateful Eight, Parasite, Bridge of Spies, Contagion, The Big Short, and Nope.

The rest of them may not be what I’d consider big names, but I took them from lists of best films from the last decade, making them, at the very least, critically acclaimed, and therefore likely candidates for streaming services to pick up.

Was it really too much to expect at least half of the movies on my top 50 list, assembled from a variety of top movie lists, to be on a streaming service I already paid for? Apparently so.

What is available to stream?

A decent choice

The 18 available were better than nothing, and included plenty of big names, such as The Martian, Gone Girl, Dunkirk, A Quiet Place, Dune: Part Two, and Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

I also found less well-known titles, including Weapons, The 4:30 Movie, and The Substance. However, I was soon going to run out of titles to watch that were included with my monthly subscription services. What then?

Why was I about to rent, or be forced to buy, movies while my “packed” subscription services sit idle?

If I wanted to watch a TV series, Star Wars for the 100th time, movies made 20 years ago I’d already seen, or anything superhero-related, I would be entirely set.

But if I wanted to broaden my horizons? Not so much.

It’s a streaming world

That doesn’t always work

Any streaming service is only as good as the content it contains, and if it doesn’t hold the things you want to watch, it becomes redundant.

My sudden desire to return to watching movies exposed the holes in them.

Whether it’s due to licensing, consumer data, or a reliance on family-fare and binge-worthy series, modern streaming services seem to underserve the film fan.

It gave me a wakeup call, too. I’ve been paying for these subscriptions for years, yet when I want to really use them, the things I want to watch aren’t there.

It made me wonder if it had always been this way, and I’m only now noticing because I made an actual list to illustrate it so starkly.

A subscription wake-up call

I should have done my audit a while ago

I was left with no choice but to take my streaming subscriptions more seriously.

I plan to work through the titles available on Disney+, Netflix, and Now (a UK service with films shown on cable), cancel them, and use the saved money to rent the titles they don’t contain. Which is a lot.

Sounds simple, right? It is, but the thing is, if I hadn’t gone into what’s available and where, so deeply, I am certain I’d continue paying for the subscriptions for the few times a month I may watch a series or two.

A regular audit of subscription services, regardless of what they do, is probably something we should all do to ensure the value that encouraged us to sign up in the first place still remains. I can’t say it is for me.