Opinion: The Disadvantages of Streaming

In the 21st century we can stream almost anything. From music to TV shows, we can watch anything and everything on the go. We have started moving away from traditional cable TV to watching shows and movies on other streaming services such as Hulu or Netflix. Paid subscriptions now allow us to have access to a large library of shows and movies. We often don’t mind paying extra because we enjoy not having to wait, either for the show to be broadcasted or waiting for that miracle rerun.

With Hulu and Netflix we get the freedom to watch whatever they offer when we want, how many times we want. These services are slowly taking business away from cable companies and could possibly lead to the end of cable. New technology has made it easier for the masses to stream things on the go instead of having to wait weeks for a show and run the risk of missing it. Unfortunately, this technology also allows the use of illegal websites, which allow viewers to stream for free. Consequently, because of illegal streaming, legitimate streaming services and produces alike lose profit. That said, is it more advantageous to have streaming apps as opposed to cable?

Although having many streaming apps may be beneficial because you’ll have the freedom to choose what you want to watch, each app offers only a certain set of shows and movies. This in turn, encourages people to subscribe to both Hulu and Netflix in order to view twice the amount of entertainment and original content from each provider.

Yet, having to so this is a burdensome struggle. No one wants to explore multiple and costly streaming sites to find what one wants to watch. However even with multiple streaming services there are still some shows that can’t be found on any, the more unpopular shows or movies.

Cable fixes this because it can be an alternative to paying to Hulu, Netflix, and say Crunchyroll because cable shows all sorts of movies and shows that can be watched on demand by anyone who pays and those shows can also be kept of payed. Your also able to record up and coming shows that you may want to watch and later delete it to record other shows. Cable also gives access to sport channels and DirecTV now offers an app which allows the user to sign in to their account and watch shows whenever they want as well.

Although it is nice to be able to have a large collection of shows streaming sites such as Netflix don’t offer the newer seasons or episodes. This means that you have to wait a couple months later to see the “new” episodes. Cable lets you watch the newest episodes when they first come out. This is another plus to having cable.