Ex-Streamly Loud And Incredibly Shit: Ranking Our Wonderful And Cool Streaming Services :^)

 

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore. 

I’m tired of my streaming platforms being bad so I’ve decided to pit them against each other in a winner-takes-all, streaming tierlist battle royale. The participants have been picked based on two categories: do I have access to them, and have I ever used them, and they will all be evaluated fairly and objectively on their various merits by a panel of unbiased judges (me, changing costumes a lot and doing accents). Once the services have been graded, we’ll slap them into a tierlist at the bottom of the article so that their shame will be immortalised forevermore, or, at least, until they make screenshotting the main page a copyright-claimable offense. 

This is all tee-hee fun and games, what a goofy time, a tierlist - what a novel idea! But I have to be completely real with you for a second at the start here: these websites almost universally degrade the art they host, and their short-sighted business model is going to keep on bearing rotten fruit until they collapse and when they do they will take everything with them into the fire. Streaming platforms will kill the things you love just to show they have the right to do so, and they would rather no-one see something than someone else make any money or gain any type of capital whatsoever from it. These services need to be treated with extreme scepticism at the absolute best, the anti-art carrion scramble for films and shows has lowered the bar of acceptability, usability, and trust so far that they should be made to crawl through the acres of dvd graveyards before they are even allowed to beg to be given the chance to apologise (and also they should consider lowering prices somewhat). ANYWAY.

Prime Video 

All the joy of paying for a streaming service with half the benefits.

Easy D-tier, because we simply do not want to go lower than that. Prime Video feels like it was modeled on a scam website: you chase your media of choice by stumbling around fifteen different useless tabs that all attempt to upsell you shoddy cable plans. Video streaming but with a realtor’s aesthetic. 

What’s worse than the upselling is how dehumanising the whole thing feels, how genuinely degrading the experience is, like… “Thanks for your monthly tithe, you get nothing at all in return”. The entire thing is pretty close to unnavigable, it is, at absolute best, a placeholder that has stayed around for too long.
At worst, someone at Amazon is genuinely happy with how it works, how it looks and what it does. Terrifying. On top of that, while it performs the same core function as other streaming services in farming user information, it doesn’t even bother to maintain any kind of facade of improving the user experience, and will never act on any data gathered to recommend to you anything that could possibly reflect your established viewing habits. I can say with confidence that I have never been recommended a film or show by Prime that made any kind of sense to me - could my history potentially point me towards being interested in the Prime-exclusive Panty & Stocking 2? No, apparently I only want to watch Supercop International: The Makening or some equally anonymous film starring Frank Grillo doing his best alongside an endlessly rotating cast of borderline unwatchable actors. Terrible platform!

Further minus points because of your dogshit AI thumbnails and the constant feeling like every time I open the website I’m getting A/B tested to death, get a fucking life Prime Video god damn. 

Shudder

Goddamn what an all-timer front page. Took this screenshot today - two originals, Harmony Korine's Trash Humper, the mother fucking PUPPET MASTER series? Goodnight Mommy getting a spot on the big screen and an anthology film at the end there with the ABCs? Crazy stuff. 

 

You don’t have to give it to streaming platforms, but in this case I gotta hold up Shudder as a near-perfect example of what a streaming platform should be. Is it a bit janky? Yes. Does it have the exact same problems with slightly wonky dumb streaming service UI stuff? Yeah, sure. Does it work normally, for a super reasonable price? Absolutely. 

Shudder deserves recognition because it has a goal, it has a theme, it has things that it is clearly passionate about, and things that it wants to actually show you. When was the last time, do you think, that Disney + featured an interesting or confronting older film on the front page? Has it ever? 

Will it ever put something like Hundreds of Beavers on its front page, or relentlessly push Mad God? Will you ever see a splash screen encouraging you to try Audition, or one highlighting the recent acquisition of The Blood on Satan’s Claw, or the absurdly famous Silent Night Deadly Night 2? 

Shudder is a platform that is dedicated to a small but vitally important part of film culture and history, and it will share with you the fruit of its curation efforts with all sorts of pizzaz and panache and p...enthusiasm. It also has original films, new releases from both through acquiring new movies to distribute and in funding and cultivating a homemade library of post-streaming-era low-budget horror. For how comparatively cheap it is (in NZ dollar prices at least) Shudder is maybe the only one of these cursed websites I will go to regularly just to have a browse, because it's the only one interested in highlighting new additions without too obviously pushing you to go see whatever new Shudder thing is out. 

It's important to highlight this here (otherwise I'll just repeat myself a bunch), but a huge problem with how streaming websites operates currently is how callously they treat media that isn't Prime-branded, or Netflix-branded, or Disney-branded. How nakedly ugly it is to be able to painlessly access every minute variation of Star Wars while being locked out of decent subtitling or forced into completely fucked versions of other films. Shudder stands shockingly alone in its appreciation and promotion of other films, and I think it presents an opportunity to peep through the cosmic keyhole into another universe where this is the standard across all platforms. It should be the standard, Shudder should be a niche little oddity where you go to see Hellraiser 3 but it isn't - it is exceptional in its field and that's a little fucking sad, no?

Curation lends meaning to a library, and the gulf between a curated selection and an uncurated selection is extremely noticeable once you go out of your way to experience both. It’s like the difference between walking through a gallery and walking through a warehouse that just happens to have some pictures in it. A-tier, easy. 

Neon 

 

Tragic. Maybe even criminal, I don't know, I've heard rumours.

This is a bit of an odd one because for the most part I like Neon. I like the layout, I like the recommended, upcoming, and currently airing page, and I like the little icons they have for different users. The little bonus plans are a bit weird, but not super obtrusive, and the TV app sucks, but overall it’s pretty good. Neon’s most significant victory is that its presentation feels like a premium product where you can go watch prestige shows (or Adventure Time). It genuinely feels good to indulge in a legacy-brand streaming service, where you have unlimited access to a super specific series of libraries - the issues it has are mostly generic, the same kind of porcine laziness as the rest of the high-cost platforms, but there is a certain something about how Neon carries itself. Maybe it's the slightly more sober palate, maybe it's the good promotion of locally made stuff, I don't know exactly what appeals to me here but it works.

For non-OCE readers, Neon is HBO Max plus some other bullshit bundled together by Sky, so we’re blessedly free from the branding nightmare and the name-associated decisions that are tanking the service in the US. We do, unfortunately, still feel the effects of HBO/Discovery’s awful practises, as does everyone! It is difficult to have enthusiasm for a platform that is explicitly anti-film, anti-television, anti-art more generally - it's just a hard thing to know, and like most things that are hard to know, it's also nearly impossible to un-know. 

What's gonna get canned next, I wonder, as I queue up another episode of The Righteous Gemstones. What's gonna disappear and never come back. What kind of twisted economics are going to take place next week, and what piece of art will it stain forever. Fun thoughts, only on Neon! 

Also what the fuck do you mean ‘no Deadwood’? It’s literally your show, so where is it? What’s the point in having a branded distribution platform for your heavily protected brand if you’re not going to use it to distribute the things you made? Is there another, cooler HBO out there contesting the fucking rights?? Are we in the middle of a Deadwood land grab, is this the wild west for Deadwood specifically and am I allowed to stake a claim???

B… minus.

 

Disney + 

I'm assuming that the title means the zombies are for the dawn of the vampires. 

 

The young and popular prince of streaming platforms operating in the service of the old, decrepit and deeply evil king. Ah, sorry - the old, decrepit, deeply evil, and popular king.

I’m conflicted about Disney + for a couple of reasons: on the one hand maintaining a subscription here is feeding a large (!!) amount of money to a megacompany that will continue to be one of the most vile on the planet, but on the other hand it does have Andor. It also has super dope guilty pleasure shows Justified (lots of Timothy Olyphant cowboy stuff here, guy knows how to rock the hat, what can I say) and the X-files, so on balance who can really say if it’s good to feed money to the saccharine terror machine. 

D+ (not the grade yet, sorry if that scared you) is, like Neon, undeniably the real deal when it comes to looking and feeling like a premium service, but it is super uneven with regards to its treatment of different properties. I like that it curates Disney/Marvel/Star Wars media into fun little packages, I love that it wants to show you behind-the-scenes featurettes from major headliners. I do wish it had anywhere near that respect for literally anything else. 

You’ve got Aliens, but you’re telling me that you couldn’t find any extras to upload? In the nearly 40 years since release, you just couldn’t find a single piece of additional content to add colour to the film or to further feed the interest of an audience looking for more?

Wow Frog, what a hater, why don’t you have this energy for the other platforms you just don’t like Disney - this is true! I am a hater! I don’t like Disney! But I don’t think my standards are that high here: if you are the unlimited money company with the awfully expensive service, then, in my humble opinion, more should be expected from you. 

D+ (still not the grade, I'm so sorry I promise this is the last time) is very obviously angling to be Television 2, and in being the front-runner for this attitudinal shift from website-style thinking to TV-style thinking we're able to see a lot of Disney+ elements being adopted by Netflix et al. With the recent change to make ESPN available on the platform the future as spearheaded by D+ is also looking pretty clear - we're going to get the usual inter-platform jostling for position in an attempt to make it seem like there's competition in the market; major sporting events are split cleanly between Netflix, Disney, and Prime; this is likely followed by a weird period of quiet legislative pressure, and then this is in turn followed by mass sports betting app integration. You're gonna be able to tie your betting app to your TV app, so you can watch the Red Sox continue their dastardly winning streak and get an on-screen pop-up to tell you your bet progress on an NBA game, or on a Netflix UFC event, or on a Prime cricket match, or even a Prime/Twitch integrated esports event! 

Wow - I can't wait! I'm thinking Positive Thoughts!!

 

Anyway you get a B… barely. Same problems: where’s the extras, what’s the point in your library of older films, and why is your shit the only streaming platform that consistently desynchs audio and video, please cost less etc. etc. etc.  

 

Netflix 

It's kinda sad how all these websites look exactly the fucking same lmao

Ah Netflix, I return to your endlessly disappointing lukewarm embrace.

There’s not a lot of novelty to squeeze out of this so I’m just going fast forward to the good parts, but if you’re picking up on a somewhat negative vibe outside of the Shudder containment zone then prepared to be surprised! Surprised by how un-surprising my opinion is about a company that has recently partnered with the odious CTE merchants at the UFC and WWE! 

Pointless library, awful communication, disorganised, often just straight bad versions of good movies, general weirdness - it’s all happening here on Netflix, the everything app. Same poor user experience, same seemingly endemic problems, but with the added bonus of the worst subtitling to ever grace online video streaming. 

Netflix is also littered with anemic Netflix Original movies and series, the new and trending splash screens acting like the gibbets that hung outside towns and cities as a warning - don’t bring or make anything good, lest this be your fate. It’s depressing. The Netflix Original was the difference maker in the battle between television and streaming, this tantalising dream that an online service can deliver the same (or better!) than a traditional distribution structure with traditional guardrails, audiences, and advertising. We’re exciting, we’re new, we’re not going to make you wait weeks for a whole show! We’re online, we’re relying on communities, our word of mouth is to do with quality rather than simply having a captive audience at 6pm! All these promises, now just echoes and bones in the desert. 

Also a fair amount of Frank Grillo here too - nothing against him, cash those cheques dude. He’s such a genuinely watchable actor as well, a lot of real old-fashioned charisma - for Netflix subscribers I’d check out Cop Shop to see what I mean. 

One big point in the favour of the big N - the recommendations are pretty congruent, and will often appear under the category “because you watched x”. Glad to see at least one site is using my data to pretend to improve my experience! 

 

Crunchyroll

Words? On a streaming website?? Well I never, what ever will they think of next.

Crunchyroll has a huge advantage over the major players because Crunchyroll is still fundamentally stuck with the visual attitude of a website that people are supposed to use instead of a glorified storefront. We’ve got readable information here, and a scrollable page that actually ends instead of endlessly refreshing with new products. Big mistake, pal - better fix that immediately.

You can navigate it, you can see gross comments from 2014, you can read articles, you can even buy merch, but it’s all focused around a single thing: anime. 

One single thing made up of lots and lots of smaller things called 'genres'. 

Crunchyroll has a shocking amount of tools and options that remind me of different, better times where consumption and building communities were tied together as part of discrete pockets of fan culture. It’s neat, and if you can stomach seeing some criminally bad isekai garbage on the front page there’s still a lot of room to find some incredible shows. That's the end of the assessment and a new, great tagline - Crunchyroll: It's Alright!

There is also something really, really interesting about Crunchyroll that is maybe... less alright. 

See, Crunchyroll is maybe the number one example of a streaming service you can see tumbling down the cliff in real time from multiple angles, Hot Rod-style. You can feel it when you go into Prime Video and are asked to activate a Crunchyroll extension, which is a separate payment from Crunchyroll and (in OCE) doesn’t communicate at all with Crunchyroll itself. You can sense it when you can’t quite remember if they did anything to advertise Mob Psycho 100 season 3, and then find articles about them union busting and paying extremely poorly. You can smell it with every new fuck-up, with every small reminder that this website used to honestly be a bit better four or five years ago, with every added inconvenience, every additional step users need to take, every jitter, every pause. 

It might sound like I’m positively salivating at the thought of Crunchyroll getting worse; I’m not. It’ll morph into a sub-par streaming service shorn of any prior internet identity and fansub history, and it’ll then get folded into a larger platform - that’s just what’s happening, and it is getting worse as progress continues. We just get to witness each slow, seemingly inevitable step as it happens. 

C tier, would be higher but you can’t possibly behave like you’ve been behaving and expect any better C-dog.

 

What are we doing here? What sort of bad, rancid vibes are we putting out into the world by continuing to humour platforms that show such raw contempt for both the users and the art? Shudder probably has problems that I'm glossing over, but at least it wants me to give Puppet Master a go, and I can't remotely say the same for any of the others. 

Puppet Master? Weird that comes up so many times, probably should go check out this other thing I wrote about puppets.