Tag Archives: television

Cancelling Amazon Prime

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I just don’t think it’s worth the cost — for me.

I joined Amazon Prime when it first started in 2005. Back then, it was $79/year and all it guaranteed was free 2-day shipping. I’m pretty sure that applied to all items on Amazon and that might be because back then when you bought from Amazon it was actually sold by Amazon and shipped by Amazon. (None of the “marketplace” crap there is today.)

Time went on. My subscription renewed annually. I lived in a little town in Arizona that had very little retail shopping other than groceries, hardware, and ranch supplies. Amazon helped me get good deals and quick delivery on the computer components, software, books, and other items I needed in my job as a freelance computer book author. I enjoyed the ability to order anything and have it shipped to me for free within two days.

Amazon added Prime video in 2011. It didn’t matter to me because I had super crappy Internet service at home and satellite TV so I didn’t need/want to stream video. Of course, that changed in 2013 when I moved to Washington State, got super fast Internet, and skipped the satellite or cable service. But I’m not big on watching TV so I really didn’t stream much on Amazon. I had Netflix. And a DVD player.

In 2014, the annual price for Prime membership increased to $99/year. They added Prime Pantry, Amazon Music, and Amazon Photos, none of which held any interest for me. Amazon Now was also added; it offered same-day shipping in metropolitan areas as far removed from my rural home as can be imagined. But Prime still seemed like a good deal for free shipping within 2 days.

Prime Day debuted in 2015. It basically conned Prime members into buying more crap they didn’t need — although I did get a smoking deal on a hybrid queen-sized mattress for my camper one year.

Prime Reading started in 2016, although I only discovered it last year. It offered a limited selection of books and magazines to read for free. I used this feature to read a few magazines I couldn’t get at the library.

When the Amazon Rewards Visa card came out in 2017, I got one. I earned points for my purchases and used those points to buy things on Amazon. No annual fee. I still have the card but I rarely use it; Chase (the bank that runs the card) has super shitty customer service so I now mostly use my Apple Card, which gives me “cash back” that I can spend anywhere. 2017’s Prime Wardrobe did not interest me in the least. And the special Prime benefits at Whole Foods were useless to me because there wasn’t a Whole Foods within 200 miles of my home.

When the Prime membership price went up to $119/year in 2018, I started wondering whether the free shipping — which was really the only feature I used regularly — was worth it. It’s around then that I started streaming video in an effort to get my money’s worth. But I didn’t stream much.

2020 and covid rolled around. All of a sudden, I wasn’t getting free 2-day shipping. I was lucky to get items I ordered within a week. It was the lockdown, of course, and I really couldn’t blame Amazon. It was temporary — or at least that’s what I thought.


Amazon will ship for free even if you aren’t a Prime member. Just buy at least $25 worth of eligible stuff.

Truth is, I haven’t gotten regular 2-day shipping on Prime items from Amazon since Covid lockdowns began. It’s been more than two years.

So this year, when Amazon announced that it was raising the price of prime membership to $149/year. I took a good, hard look at what I was getting for that. A lot of folks don’t realize it, but if you spend $25 or more on Prime eligible items, you get those items shipped for free even if you’re not a prime member. I just tested this by logging out and adding a $14.99 item to my shopping cart. See the screen grab here? Buy $10.01 more and it all ships free.

Then I started to explore my Prime membership settings. They offered this helpful graphic to show how much I used Prime features:


In 12 months, I had 80 free shipments — which I could have had without Prime membership — and watched just 14 movies or TV shows.

I concluded that Amazon Prime simply wasn’t worth $149/year to me. Frankly, it isn’t even worth $119. Maybe not even $99, unless I start watching a lot more television.

So with my membership up for renewal on March 12 at the new $149/year rate, I decided to cancel — or “pause,” which apparently removes features and stops billing but keeps my account on standby in case I want to fire it back up. Cancel is an option, too, and I suspect that I’ll use it if they start spamming me to come back.

It’s pretty obvious that Jeff Bezos — with his fancy new yacht — doesn’t need my money. And why should I spend my money on services I don’t need or use?

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You can read more details about the history of Amazon Prime from 2005 to 2020 in this article.

My Old TV: Rejuvenated by Roku

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I get a new Roku for my old TV and it’s like getting a new TV.

I’m not a big TV-watcher. I probably spend less than 10 hours a week in front of the tube, and a lot of that is watching late night TV hosts and educational content on YouTube. I don’t have cable or satellite TV and can’t bring in any over-the-air channels. I subscribe to Netflix and Disney Plus, have Amazon Prime video because I want free Amazon shipping, and recently added a one-year free subscription to Apple TV+ because it came with my new iPad.

I got my wasband’s circa 2008 45″ Samsung HDTV in our divorce. (It’s a funny story how I got it, but I blogged about that in passing elsewhere.) At the time — 2013 — it was still a decent TV and it had a surround sound system that worked great when I watched DVDs. I used the Roku stick that I got with it to connect to the Internet for my content. It was slow — like push a button on the remote and wait for Roku to react — but good enough.

I eventually sold the surround sound system on Craig’s List, bought a Blu-Ray player for the TV, and got a Samsung sound bar. (The TV had terrible sound without it.)

Time passed.

After seeing bigger, better TVs in the local Fred Meyer’s electronics department for two years, I finally broke down and bought one. Fred Meyer sells previous years TV models for dirt cheap; I bought a 65″ Samsung UHD smart TV for less than $500 when I combined the sale price and the “senior discount” I got for buying it on the first Tuesday of the month. I felt that I got a pretty good deal on something I would use less than 10 hours a week.

New TV
My new TV — which is at least two years old at this point — sits in the corner of the living room. I had to swap the coffee table for the TV table to get it to fit; the legs have quite a spread. The reflection is my red leather sofa — also an unexpected divorce acquisition — with the pillows and dog bed on it.

What to do with that old TV? Well, I wound up putting it in my bedroom, right across from the brown leather sofa that had (ironically) been in my old house’s TV room. I had to buy a table for it that matched the furniture. I attached the sound bar I’d bought for it to the new TV so it had crappy sound again, but that didn’t matter. By that time, the Roku was so agonizingly slow — especially compared with the new TV — that I lacked the patience to use it. I should add here that other than the little black and white TV I’d had in my first apartment after college (circa 1982), it was the first time I’d ever had a TV in the bedroom so I wasn’t accustomed to watching TV in bed anyway. But what else would I do with it?

Time passed. I rarely used the TV in the bedroom. The Roku stick made it unbearably slow.

I started talking to a neighbor about giving it to her. Literally giving it to her. She had a TV in her guest room that was on the fritz. Although my old Samsung was a lot bigger than what she wanted/needed, she said she’d take it. We just needed to wait for her husband’s cousin to get into town to help us carry it downstairs.

But I started thinking about other possibilities. It seemed to me that the thing that was slowing the TV down and making it an ordeal to use was the old Roku stick that was now 13 years old. Maybe a newer Roku would speed it up?

I asked on Twitter. Some folks said it wouldn’t be any better. Someone else suggested the Roku Streambar, which combined a sound bar with a Roku receiver. I looked it up. It happened to be on sale for $109 (from a normal price of $129) with free shipping and a 30-day money-back guarantee. I had nothing to lose. I’d give it a try and if it was still slow, I’d return it and get rid of the TV.

Roku Streambar
The Roku Streambar and its remote. It’s actually pretty small and doesn’t sound nearly as good as my Samsung sound bar on my new TV, but it’s good enough for me.

It arrived last week. I set it up Thursday night.

And I was (eventually) amazed.

After a few tries, the Roku connected to my 5G wifi network. (I’d tried connecting it to the two other networks first and it apparently didn’t like them, even though the signals were stronger.) I went through the setup process. It worked great — super fast, too — and even configured itself with the same channels I’d had set up on the old TV. At first, it didn’t play sound through the speaker and I couldn’t figure out why. I fiddled with the TV settings and cables and other stuff, and then restarted the Roku by mistake (I pulled out the wrong cable). When it started running again, the sound came through the Roku speaker. It worked just as it should.

The TV could be controlled by the small Roku remote — although I assume I’ll have to change the source with the TV remote if I ever want to watch a DVD. The remote even has a push to talk voice controller for switching channels and changing the volume.

And did I mention that it was fast?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was like getting a new TV.

TV w/Roku
My old TV in the bedroom. Yes, I do have to clean up those wires. The reflection in the TV is the window behind the sofa; you can see the top of my head, too.

Unfortunately for Terry, I’m going to keep the TV, at least for a while. I suggested she check out Fred Meyer. They’re still selling great TVs for great prices and she’ll likely get a better one than mine.

My Thoughts on YouTube’s Mid-Roll Ads

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I think I respect my viewers a lot more than other creators respect theirs.

I’m officially what’s referred to as a YouTube Creator. That’s someone who regularly creates content for publication on YouTube, a platform that gets thousands, if not millions, of new videos a day. Much of that is junk but a lot is actually good, valuable content. And some is really high quality, useful/entertaining material. I like to think that my content falls into that middle category — better than junk but not as good as the really high quality stuff. I do what I can with the materials and skills I have. And unlike other Creators there, this isn’t my full-time job and I don’t have a bunch of corporate sponsors feeding me cash. I set priorities in my life and YouTube content creation isn’t at the top of that list.

And now for a shameless plug…

If you like helicopters and/or flying and want to watch videos about helicopters/flying without a lot of hype, I hope you’ll try my channel, FlyingMAir. Many of the videos put you in the cockpit with me as I fly around and talk about what I’m seeing and doing. If you like it, subscribe and tell your friends.

That said, I am fortunate enough to be allowed to monetize my channel. I have 63,000+ subscribers (as I type this), a number that has been climbing steadily for the past few years. I’m not sure if the requirement is 1,000 subscribers or 10,000 subscribers for monetization, but I’ve met it. That means that I get a teeny tiny cut of whatever YouTube gets for placing ads before, after, and possibly during my content.

How teeny? It’s currently hovering around $3 per 1,000 views. So yeah — when 1,000 people watch one of my videos, I currently get about $3. Not exactly a wealth building opportunity for me. Sunday’s video, which has been out for 48 hours as I’ve typed this, has earned me about $5. (Thanks, viewers!)

Of course, one of the reasons this number is so low is because I only allow three kinds of advertising on my content and I allow them in only two places. Yes! Creators can specify what kinds of ads appear and when they appear! There are five kinds and three locations and this image from one of my video’s settings pretty much explains them:

YouTube Ad Types and Locations
This is how I normally set options for my videos.

YouTube’s advice — which apparently lots of Creators heed — is to turn on all ad options. YouTube wants the opportunity to sell ads everywhere, even though it does not display ads on all videos. (It’s about 60% for mine and I only make money on my videos when ads are displayed on them.)

My school of thought is this: I need ads on my videos to monetize them. (Yes, I know I’ve got Memberships and Patreon set up for my channel but not everyone can or wants to chip in with real money. Honestly, without monetization, I would not be motivated to create content regularly.) But I don’t want ads to ruin the viewing experience. So where can I put them to be the least obnoxious? The answer is before and after the video using ads that don’t obstruct or interrupt the content. That’s the settings you see above.

Some of my older videos might have Overlay ads and Sponsored cards selected, so don’t be surprised if you see some of those for content published before mid 2019. I don’t think I have During video turned on for any videos. And that’s what this post is about: mid-roll ads that appear during the video.

I’m a big YouTube viewer. I don’t have regular TV in my home. No cable or satellite, no antenna to pick up local broadcasts. I have whatever my smart TV or laptop can pick up through a wicked fast fiber Internet connection: Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and a variety of other channels I subscribe to or get for free like PBS, Lynda.com, and the Great Courses. I use YouTube to learn new things — even things I don’t need to know — and get ideas. To keep my brain going.

And, as a YouTube viewer, there is one thing I absolutely cannot stand: mid-roll ads. You know what I’m talking about. The ads that appear suddenly and without notice, sometimes in the middle of an onscreen sentence, disrupting the video with something you absolutely do not care about.

Mid-roll ad announcement
This “card” appeared in my YouTube Studio dashboard about a month ago and is still there.

Until recently, mid-roll ads were only available on videos 10 minutes long or longer. But recently, YouTube announced to creators that the ads were now available to videos 8 minutes long or longer. And oh, by the way, this feature will be turned on by default for all your new videos unless you change it by a certain date. (I immediately changed it for my channel.)

I need to point out something important here. Creators who enable mid-roll ads have the ability to specify points where the ads may appear. So say a Creator has made a video that shows a 4-step process with cuts between each step. Logically, a good place to put a mid-roll ad would be at one of those cuts. This is less intrusive in the content. But what I’ve seen lately as the number of mid-roll ads grows on YouTube is that Creators aren’t bothering to set up ad locations. They’re just letting them appear wherever YouTube puts them. The ultimate in annoying for viewers.

To me, allowing mid-roll ads to interrupt your content in such an annoying way is the ultimate way to tell your viewers that you don’t give a damn about their viewing experience. The only thing that matters to you is the fractions of pennies of ad revenue you’ll get by allowing that ad to appear.

And I think there’s something seriously wrong with that attitude.

I’ll admit it here: I’ve begun leaving comments on videos with disruptive ads asking the Creator to turn off mid-roll ads. And I think you should, too.

Of course, there is a way to get rid of all ads on YouTube — and it doesn’t necessarily hurt Creators. You can sign up for YouTube Premium. My understanding is that for $11.99/month, in addition to adding features to YouTube, it also removes ads from content. If you watch enough YouTube, you might find it worthwhile. I don’t watch that much YouTube and I’d rather see my money go directly to a Creator via Membership or Patreon support.

The only thing I’m really left wondering about is this: because I have disabled some YouTube ad options — rather than turning them all on as YouTube recommends — am I triggering some sort of penalty that keeps my videos out of search results? Is there some under-the-hood activity in the bowels of YouTube that will punish me for not flooding my videos with ads by simply limiting the number of potential new viewers? That’s something I’ll likely never know.