Capitalism seeks the highest profit, but what that means depends on the customers.
With the Netflix password sharing crackdown risky bet, customers answered loud and clear: they are more than willing to pay more money to access the same content instead of standing their ground on the decision.
When there is actual competition and customers are demanding of what the offering should be, that's when we see prices go down.
There are an increasing number of markets where monopolies and deals between companies leave people without any choice to make at all, but I don't think the market of streaming services is an example of this.
In fact, consumers who bundle just a few streamers together in 2023 will find that the final cost is effectively the same as basic cable. Couple that reality with the introduction of ads into streaming and the end product eerily resembles on-demand cable.
I stepped away from having any home infrastructure other than a proper firewall about a decade ago when streaming was so affordable and content was so bountiful on the few streaming platforms that existed. Now I finds myself considering diving straight back into setting up a NAS and hosting locally at home again. Is Plex still a decent choice to stream from your collection while traveling?
Plex is still a good choice. I find that Jellyfin has better performance, recognizes and organized my media better, but it's more complicated to set up remote access on jellyfin.
I would prefer to move to Jellyfin long-term but I need to get access to port forwarding from my landlord first.
Thanks for the recommendation, I had not heard of that but it looks like a common solution so I may try that later! Here is a helpful looking guide I found in case anyone else is curious too.
https://www.ethanmad.com/post/jellyfin_remote_access/