netflix on an imac

Fuck Streaming Services!

I have been blogging regularly about my TV viewing and streaming services over the last few months. In short, I stopped pirating and switched over completely to streaming services. Till last month, I was subscribed to Apple TV+, Prime Video, Disney+Hotstar & Netflix. All combined, I was paying approximately ₹20000 ($250) a year on them. I was subscribed to all English TV streaming services possible in Thailand. Why, then, was I still not able to watch my favourite shows? These:

  • Fargo (FX On Hulu, not available in Thailand)
  • True Detective (HBO, not available in Thailand)
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, not available in Thailand)
  • Young Sheldon (CBS, not available in Thailand. Available on Indian Prime, but not Thai Prime)
  • TVF Aspirants (Available on Indian Prime, but not Thai Prime)
  • Futurama (Hulu, not available in Thailand)
  • The Office (Indian version) (Available on Indian Hotstar (even there, censored), but not Thai Hotstar)

Nor can I hope to watch upcoming series I am looking forward to:

  • Alien (FX, not available in Thailand)
turned on flat screen smart television ahead
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

As yo can see, most of the services are US-only. Also, FX is a separate service, Hulu is a separate service and FX on Hulu is also a thing? What bullshit. Even if I was in the US, I would be paying 10x the cost of basic cable to watch all these shows. On top of this, all of these services have a separate selection depending on the country, a Prime exclusive show like Aspirants is not available on Prime Thailand. A Hotstar exclusive show like The Office (Indian version) is not available in Thailand.

Watching movies on these services is not great either. If I want to watch some specific movie, I have to open each app one by one and search for that movie till I find one which has said movie. More often that not, no service has that movie that I want to see and I have to end up renting or buying anyways.

So I say, fuck these services. If they are actively trying to keep from from buying their services, I would rather pirate. So this is what I switched to

  • ShowRSS : I get the RSS feeds of my shows from here
  • Put.io : I import these RSS feeds (One time) in this boutique cloud storage service. It also provides helpful APIs, ftp and WebDAV access to access the storage using other means.
  • Infuse Pro : I connect this app to my Put.Io account on all my devices to access my Library of TV shows. This is optional, you can use Put.io’s own app to do the same, but I really like the Infuse user experience. It also syncs your shows to Trakt
  • Trakt: To track my TV shows

Now to catch up on all the shows I missed.


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