Why do “too good to be true” streaming alternatives still feel so uncommon?
Posted by Electrical_Side_8225@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 57 comments
Streaming services keep getting more expensive, so I can understand why some people look for “alternative” ways to watch content online. But those options always seem almost too good to be true to me. If they really worked perfectly with no downsides, why aren’t they way more common?
glytxh@reddit
Google ‘HYFM’
You’re welcome.
poshbakerloo@reddit
They're probably illegal
Familiar_Swan_662@reddit
Illegal but free
cable-wrangler@reddit
the best ones aren't free, though. the best ones are VERY cheap compared to legit.
nohairday@reddit
Because they don't have to bother with things like licencing costs. But they do have to pay for storage and bandwidth.
KaylinT01@reddit
Movies123 was the best back in the day
poshbakerloo@reddit
The illegal part is why they're not promoted so much
Familiar_Swan_662@reddit
True, they probably wont have ads and promotions the same way major streaming services do
IDKBear25@reddit
"Probably" isn't a real word.
SpudFire@reddit
Illegal and require some degree of tech literacy to setup and occasionally troubleshoot. The average person lacks that.
ross-dirext-words137@reddit
I found legitimate streaming has become a joke. TV shows are coming out on about 6 platforms now. No one is going to pay for them all it's just crazy.
As a individual I just recommend using a VPN and a strong add blocker if your browsing free options. There full of scam adverts and generally no rules.
Right now there seems to be no consequences other than for the people selling t he devices or running the website.
But that could change. In the past there used to be legal action taken against a few people as an example. It really sucked for them.
So if you own a houses have a private pension and lots of assets Vs someone with renting with no savings. There is a very different risk profile.
kaedesam@reddit
The too good to be true ones are exactly that, they'll be full of ads or actually need a subscription or will buffer like hell. To set up a proper alternative that doesn't have those problems takes a little bit of time and know-how so it probably puts off a casual viewer.
Hour-Acanthaceae995@reddit
Soap2day was my go to site back in the day but the online communities where u need a password to get high quality stuff is great too especially the British ones
jimmybiggles@reddit
if by alternative you mean a dodgy streaming site, they're probably not so popular because they're illegal and full of ads?
obviously plenty of ways around it, but i think a lot of people use them (you probably just don't hear about it), but they're usually riddled with porn ads and spam popups. lots of ISPs are cracking down on it too so finding a new site is hard.
TheShroudedWanderer@reddit
That and the video quality is a toss up and it's also a coin toss if the video will still work a month down the line.
cable-wrangler@reddit
Man peoples assumptions about modern piracy are so so out of touch.
I have a completely seamless experience and I don't need to touch a web browser, with exceptional quality and absolutely no adverts. Costs about 3 quid a month.
ReasonablePin7244@reddit
Because it is illegal. On the 1st May 2026, 5 defendants were ordered to pay the premier league £3.75m from profits they made providing streaming “alternatives” I use free streams to watch football but whilst it’s low, there is always a risk it can backfire due to consuming pirated content being a crime.
Special-Audience-426@reddit
They only go after the people selling it or providing streams
shadowedfox@reddit
Almost all of them will likely be illegally re streaming content. Inherently you’ll get a lower quality stream as it’s been reencoded. They won’t care about quality so they’ll give you whatever costs less.
If you’re not afraid to sail the seas, you can get most of it free. (By no means am I recommending anything, merely throwing it out there in response to pirates reselling)
Hour-Acanthaceae995@reddit
Depends on the sites u find. I got some better quality vids on them than on amazon prime and was shocked
cable-wrangler@reddit
I can assure you that the quality I get is the same if not better than streaming services.
PhobosTheBrave@reddit
Assuming you mean dodgy streaming sites for TV and film, they aren’t common because:
They’re hard to find, and get shut down regularly, meaning you need to find new ones.
You have to wade through pop-up ads, often for gambling or porn.
You get plenty of fake streaming sites that will play 10 seconds of a “20th century fox” intro before asking you to sign up.
They’re not always HD quality (although this is more a thing of the past)
They can lag and buffer more than standard streaming options.
If you know what you’re looking for and can mitigate those issues with ad block and persistence, you can watch nearly anything you want in HD+ for free online. But those issues filter out Th r majority who just want it to simply work.
Visual-Froyo@reddit
r/fmhy is made for this. Best resource on the internet
cable-wrangler@reddit
Or you could use one of the good services, using a debrid and something like Stremio. Very quick setup, none of these issues, perfect performance and arguably better than the legit services.
Sounds like its been a while since you've been in the space if 'dodgy websites' is where you go.
pdp76@reddit
Re dodgy streaming sites. They do occasionally get blocked. Not shut down. Then they may spend a few days reworking the code to bypass the block and it’s back up again.
stuuuj@reddit
Because they aren't advertised for obvious reasons. It's a bit like finding a drug dealer - you can't just look them up on yellow pages. You have to know someone that knows someone etc.
What I presume you are referring to is paid for IPTV. They are incredibly popular now as most of them offer every channel under the sun for less than £100 per year. The best ones even provide UHD content, catch up and VOD etc.
The providers of these services obviously want paying customers to provide an income, but they don't want to get so big that they end up attracting unwanted attention. Although given the Internet in this day and age, with the ability to host on servers all over the world, enforcement is very difficult.
Nimble_Natu177@reddit
Nothing sums it up better than this green text
TachiH@reddit
Thats for clueless people. Anyone doing it properly just streams the torrent through a media player. Click the film and it loads faster than Netflix and in higher quality 🤣.
Nimble_Natu177@reddit
Doesn't even have to be a torrent tbf, I'm a physical media enjoyer, if I had more time I'd rip as many discs as possible, but its just so time consuming.
I dumped all of my GameCube discs during lockdown, and I wish I'd done discs for other platforms while doing that, god knows if I'll ever have that much free time again to carry out that mammoth task.
cable-wrangler@reddit
Because most people cant be bothered with even the most basic technical setup beyond 'turn something on and put a password in' and because some people have a thing about pirating stuff being illegal.
My setup gives me any film any tv show and much more, with a much better UI than any of the actual services do with all their content, subtitles, remembering episode progress, recommendations etc.
It's less than 40 quid a year.
It's not too good to be true, it's way way way better than a legit alternative.
Minimum_Airline3657@reddit
If buying isn’t owning, then pirating isn’t stealing
cable-wrangler@reddit
Couldn't agree more!
LuinAelin@reddit
Not everyone knows dodgy Dave who sells dodgy fire sticks down the local
Only_Quote_Simpsons@reddit
I invite the right honourable gentleman to withdraw that adjective he used a moment ago...
bobtheboffin@reddit
OrdAAAARRRRRR
EdibleBeans-on-Toast@reddit
The usual downsides of 'alternative too good to be true' are that it is illegal!. the rest are either expensive or dont have a lot of options.
the free/cheap/legal ones have ads
Master-Trick2850@reddit
If you used them for any long periods of time you'd know how often they get taken down and you have to find a replacement
popcorn time...
Otherwise_Living_158@reddit
Had many systems on the go for many years and none of them are as reliable or user-friendly as the real thing.
I only use it (IPTV) for watching football now and it’s the best I’ve had it but it’s still long enough behind that I get texts from mates about goals before I see them.
Years ago a mate had a fairly complex setup that had everything, the problem was that when he went away his Mrs couldn’t watch anything because she had no idea how to work it.
bearwithmebuddy@reddit
Look up on google for buytelly, you won’t struggle anymore with streaming services.
tordyjay@reddit
Streaming services run at a loss to gain customers and kill competition. Then they jack up the prices, enshittify the platform so its cheaper to make money without the xompetition that already died and now you are locked in
Fit-Mistake-4390@reddit
If you know where to look, and have an ad block that works, some sites are fantastic. I haven’t subscribed to anything in years
AvinItLarge123@reddit
I've got a firestick with iptv loaded. Pay £60 a year and it gets me absolutely everything. Latest films, all seasons of most shows, ppv events, all sports channels..it's even got a porn section.
It's got multiples of each channel so if a stream goes there are alternatives.
Minor downside is that occasionally my sports commentary is chinese. Occasionally it doesn't work at all but that's very rare.
I think they're very popular tbf and are getting more so
Sam__@reddit
Have you heard of torrenting?
walkthelands@reddit
do they exist anymore? almost all my music mp3 were from torrent, tried recently to use the old ones i used to and they just dont have what i am looking and simply dont have any seeds to allow downloading. I used to always be able to find what i wanted regardless of how obscure it was.
TachiH@reddit
Most dodgy streaming services are actually just torrent clients that pull down the media.
Reppin-LDN@reddit
Most people don't know how to, and others think a swat will smash through there windows. I use stremio you can even have the app on most art TVs nowadays without fire stick and plays anything in 4k.
OddlyDown@reddit
iPlayer? The fact that non licence fee paying freeloaders can use it for free is a good deal for them. Too good, I’d argue. However, it’s hard to beat for a legal and free steaming service.
ponytoaster@reddit
and there is way much more than people expect too, not just catchup.
Often random films, and lots of box sets on there too.
shak_0508@reddit
Idk about dodgy sites, but I just host my own content on a media server now.
azlan121@reddit
Because the costs for the streaming services are
If a site is legit, they are fighting against the big expensive players for the same rights, and paying the same amount, so a challenger can't keep their cost down, or can't win the content that gets views/subs
Server upkeep and bandwidth don't scale linearly, if you own your own fibres, CDN and data centers, it's a lot cheaper per unit of video than it would be for a startup renting space on AWS
Marketing is pretty critical to attract customers at scale, but you need a decently large warchest, and the library to back it up for your marketing spend to convert
A lot of small streaming sites either choose to focus on a spesific niche they can excel in (for example, historyhit), or take a bit of a lax attitude towards copyright law and need to kind of fly below the radar
ToeIndependent19@reddit
Yeah, it’s weird how those 'too good to be true' options just never catch on. If they were legit, everyone would be using them, right? Guess there's always some catch.
mattymattymatty96@reddit
A question for r/piracy
AmphibianNo8598@reddit
Because they’re illegal mate
Lynvor@reddit
I've started to revert back to physical media for some films. Whenever I do a food shop I always see what's in the £1dvd section if I feel like sticking a film on, beats paying £4.99 renting something for 48 hours on a sevice I already pay like £90 a year for.
dweedman@reddit
People are useless with navigating technology
If anyone wants a tip though the torrentio plugin for stremio has replaced all streaming services for me, it has quite literally everything on it.
bearwithmebuddy@reddit
I’m sailing the high seas long time ago, and it works flawlessly. Google buytelly and thank me later :)
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