this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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Have you heard of cable? Broadcast? Satellite? This already existed. That was the experience. Flip channels to find a show that's good enough and find something new along the way.
But that's the real thing that happened. It was never about tech "disrupting" TV any more than it was Uber "disrupting" cabs.
It was just tech going, "hey we want to be in cable, let's take over and replace cable."
Swapping one base technology for another, and price-dancing the whole way there, so when your streaming service costs $300/mon, it has been so long that you forgot $80/mon cable used to exist. Read-only services that couldn't serve you dynamic ads every 3 seconds while profiling your home network and watching your cat through a webcam to figure out what litter coupons to e-mail you next week.
The cable guy screaming in the middle of the street on the streaming service South Park was spot on.
No? I didn't forget anything. There were things I liked about cable - but the ads and the not being able to watch what you wanted sucked.
Something like tv channels, but with no ads and you can go pick and watch what you want like you always have sounds great. There's a reason there are so many tutorials to set up that experience on services like plex or jellyfin.
And you can say we are going to slippery slope ourselves up to $300 but people are getting better at saying no to higher prices, look at game pass or doritos for two recent big examples
This just feels like netflix giving users something they have been asking for forever and everyone is making the same OMG THEY REINVENTED CABLE LMAOZ comment and I wanted to point out the other side.