Yup, and this is just for a single show... another show can have a different combination of hoops. For a while it felt like streaming services were seriously competing with the convenience of torrents, but I just can't be bothered with the mess it's become, the dark UX patterns, the anti-linux... the anti-user. I realised that when I started torrenting shows again that i technically had paid for that the streaming services had lost it again.
Yeah I agree in general - torrents originally didnt even get big because people wanted things for free - it was just way easier. Click a few buttons, wait a few minutes, done.
Actually if you tell your client to load the pieces sequentially, and load the last piece first, and if you use a sane OS (like, not Windows) then you can skip the "wait a few minutes" part, you can start watching pretty much instantly.
Oh the hostility is definitely still present despite (perhaps because of) the CRTC’s regulations. For example, Bell successfully lobbied the CRTC to mandate that you can only buy TV from your ISP if watching on a home ISP cable package. This doesn’t apply to Crave/Netflix/OTT, but if you want to a-la-carte buy a Global TV channel you’ll have to buy it via your ISP, often Bell.
There is definitely a need for things to change yet even in the land of the free (USA), there are talks of trying to “bundle” together OTT streaming as the next wave of getting you to pay more to watch the same content.[1]
There is some good news though. Often when you subscribe to internet there are limited two-year promotions that offer streaming TV at no extra cost. Unfortunately, these plans often don’t include PVR function and also don’t include the ability to skip commercials when playing on demand, but luckily a number of on-demand streaming methods can still be tricked by adblock such as Pi Hole, in my experience. Not all of them, of course.
(the companies/pricing being customer hostile, not you of course)