Paramount+ streaming service is surprisingly decent!

Let's wrap up with this, Lewis

Paramount Plus has announced they have nearly 40 million subscribers. Now, the reason this was surprising to me is because I didn't even know that, well, I didn't

know how long Paramount Plus has been around and I didn't know anyone was using it

It's like kind of like this obscure little service. And the only reason I signed up for is because they have been having tons of free trials

And unlike other services, even Apple, they just keep extending the trial

So you'll use the service. They had a three-month free trial, which I signed up for

And then I was like, yeah, there's not really a whole lot here that would keep me here

And so I canceled it. And they said, oh, wait, if you want, we'll give you another two months for $3

And I was like, oh, shoot. Like, it's definitely worth $3. And then I canceled that

And they said, oh, do you want another month for free? It's like they just keep giving it to me for free. They don't want you to go, yeah

Yeah, and when they say that they have added 6.8 million subscribers last quarter, I kind of

wonder how many people are these people are actually paying them for the service

Yeah. You're a part of the service, right? Because you're a part of the service, right? Because you've signed up, you've given them your credit card number, but you're not actually paying for anything yet

But I thought this was interesting because we have all of these streaming services now. We have

obviously Netflix. We have Apple TV Plus. Now we have Paramount Plus. And what I noticed is

Paramount Plus pulled all of their content from all the other services

I used to watch Star Trek the next generation, which is one of the best shows of all time. And it was on Netflix forever

And then all of a sudden, it wasn't. And they moved all of the Star Trek episodes

to Paramount Plus. So now if you want to watch Star Trek, you either have to buy it or you have to subscribe to Paramount Plus

They have the new Star Trek series. They actually have, the surprising thing is

the Paramount Plus app sucks. It needs to be completely rewritten, not a great experience at all

But they have a huge library. I had no idea. They've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of movies and shows

I mean, you can just sit there and scroll through. My wife hates this. Whenever I go to a new streaming service

I will literally just sit there for like 30 minutes and scroll through their entire library just to see what they have

And Paramount has a lot of stuff. They also have a ton of older movies, like tons of westerns and stuff

So they have a pretty big library. Time, yeah. And they've got

they've got the new Halo series. They've got the new Picard series

which Lewis was saying was not great enough to keep him there. They've got Star Trek Discovery and as a huge Star Trek fan

I'm like, that's kind of appealing, like all the new Star Trek stuff, even though I haven't watched it because I heard it was awful

But it's interesting because we have all of these subscriptions now, right

And I know I was mentioning this to you earlier, Adam. It's like, what do you think about all this

We have Netflix now. If you want Netflix content, you got to go to Netflix. If you want AT&T content or Warner Brothers, I should say, you have to go to HBO

Now, oh, you want to watch Star Trek? Better go get a Paramount Plus subscription

And we have all these like individual silos now where they're all pulling their content off of all the other platforms

And now you have to purchase their platform if you want to watch it. Like are you subscribed to any of these services

What do you think about all this? Well, I'm subscribed to Apple Plus, right

But I don't use it for their actual, their exclusive content. I'm not into the shows

It's just they don't, they're not my personal, they're not pulling me in yet. But I purchase movies on Apple TV all the time

on my Apple subscription all the time. And I have Disney Plus for my kids

And I have Netflix. And I will occasionally subscribe to a random app temporarily

if there's a movie that I can only access in a certain place. But how do I feel about that at the beginning

I'm saying, they're going, oh, boy, here it comes. you know, it's now they're inflating the market with all of these different apps

There's pros and cons. I think that, yeah, it could get a little bit out of hand. They might have, it's just like you end up paying for 20 different services

But different studios kind of have their own brand of films very often

And I actually don mind the fact that I know if my kids go on Disney Plus they getting access to this certain type of content It already curated for them to a certain degree

and there's already a certain set quality to it. And Paramount have a selection of films

that might cater to a certain demographic, a certain age group, in which case, there's a much higher likelihood

that that demographic is going to appreciate that content, right? Yeah. And they don't have to do the whole Netflix thing

where you sit there, like you said, and scroll for half an hour looking to see, finally find something there

I guess we can watch that. Movie night on Netflix with my, every Friday night

my girlfriend makes her homemade pizza, which is amazing. Everybody loves Fridays for that

And then one of the kids gets to choose the movie for that night

And if it's Netflix, we're done dinner before they pick a movie. That's hilarious

Yeah. Same here. And this happens in a week, right? Nobody can settle on a bloody movie to watch

And that's, because it's kind of, it's kind of another. a pulperie of everything

which makes it a little bit watered down and hard to find anything good. And that's been the trend of Netflix

ever since its inception. It's just that you can spend forever looking for something to watch

where maybe with the Paramount app, maybe it's a little bit more exclusive

a little bit more curated. So I don't know. Well, it depends on what you're into, like you say, I mean, like, if you like Star Trek stuff

so I mean, I love pretty much all things Star Trek. And I, and next generation is like

some of the most beloved content that's out there to me. Although, as I was mentioning before, Apple just had a sale on the entire series of Next Generation

So I got it for $30, which is crazy because I don't know if you all have tried to buy next generation, like the entire series

You could get it on a DVD set. It's like $150. It's really expensive, right

So being able to watch it, especially because it was pulled from Netflix

And so now people are like, oh, they don't think it exists anymore, but they don't know that it's sitting on Paramount Plus

So I've been enjoying Paramount Plus for that reason. Funny enough, they have a lot of older content

Just like Disney Plus, like a lot of the stuff that I end up watching is like older stuff, even though they have some new shows, like all the Marvel stuff obviously and stuff that I like too

But like the value of the Disney catalog is like their massive back library

And that's one of the things I didn't realize about Paramount Plus that they have as well is they have tons and tons and tons of movies that I remember watching years ago

Like I really wanted to watch. oh gosh, interstellar, right? Yeah. And I couldn't find it anywhere

Paramount Plus has it. It must be a Paramount movie. I didn't realize that, right? And it's funny that you should talk about Netflix

about like the Infinite Scroll because that's exactly what happens to me. I feel like every time I go to watch something on Netflix

I spend my entire dinner just scrolling through, waiting to find something

and then I end up just leaving Netflix and going to watch HBO Max or something

which I think might be my favorite streaming service right now. Lewis, favorite streaming service right now

I can pick one man watch everything all the time yeah are you watching Apple TV plus the most now

I wouldn't say the most but uh they've definitely got some shows I'm watching these days

I mean just sort of watching Shining Girls which is their latest you know hit I mean

this is one of the things that uh it's kind of interesting about the whole Apple TV Plus thing

they've actually in the past you know six months or whatever they've actually had some hits

yeah like they're showing up up in the top 10 of all things streaming online

Show that just finished called Severance, which I'm just waiting for a good time to watch that

I mean, I've heard great things about that. I can't wait to watch it. That's been in the top 10 for the past month or whatever

Yeah. Or two months. I don't know. I'm not exactly sure of the time frame, but it's weird because, I mean

Apple TV Plus started out. It was just kind of a joke, right? It's free. Here's all this, you know, weird mishmash

stuff but what they've slowly been building out all these categories of of

entertainment and i mean yeah it's still nowhere near the back catalog of like a you know

a tv studio like uh cbs that is on paramount or what you know a bc on disney but uh you know

they just keep adding they just keep adding and the thing that cool about it now is they i mean the thing that i really dislike the most about apple tv plus is the way they drip stuff out like old school TV One show one episode a week One episode a week

I've got to keep you there. Yeah, it's, I mean, I understand why they do it

I just don't like it. It's very hard. It's so easy to get sidetracked, right

Like in a week that goes by, like, oh, some other series that you start watching and then you watch all that

And next thing you know, you can't even remember what happened, which is a problem of mine anyway. Yeah

It's, they've got some good stuff. And by the way, you mentioned, you know, kids programming

They got a lot of kids programming. Really? I've never even checked. Yeah, me either

A lot of it. And they've got a bunch of nature documentaries and stuff

There's one show that I've mentioned to, you know, on the show before. It's called Tiny World

It's unbelievably great. That is like the most amazing stuff I've seen

And I mean, all those, anytime I watch a nature document. I'm kind of, you know, this is awesome

Me too. I'm addicted to. Yeah. Amazing. They got a new one coming out pretty soon called prehistoric planet that is about dinosaurs and

supposedly like people in, you know, writing, watching the trailers for cult of Mac and writing

about him and say, wow, this is really awesome and really, you know, yeah, it does look pretty cool

They're saying, a lot blows away like Jurassic Parks sort of dinosaurs

Graphics look kind of... I don't know if I saw the right trailer, but the graphics looked very dated to me

I don't know if I saw the right thing. The graphics look kind of like old school dinosaur graphics

Oh, really? I saw one. I mean, dinosaurs is like... Maybe ILM was busy for that..

During that season, yeah. But I don't know. I think that thing comes out like next month or something

but it's, you know, they're making all... They're trying to make a big splash with it

Yeah. Like a dinosaur week or something. something they're going to release it uh i think it's the first week of june um but yeah i i mean

honestly if you've already got apple tv plus subscription you know check it out it i i don't know i mean

i don't watch the kids stuff but i know they have a lot of kids shows and uh they've got you know

all the peanut specials and new peanut specials and uh peanuts jim henson stuff i'm like you know

i mean yeah i don't know the peanut stuff might be too i just feel like you

It's just so funny. It's like Tim Cook added in his, like the shows that he liked when he was a kid

Because like who watches peanuts? Like that, that show used to be really popular

but kids don't watch peanuts these days. It's way too slow, right

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's literally been so long since. I mean, even peanuts was even kind of old school when I was a kid, right

And they're still trying to push it. But the one thing I went out with new ones too

They're coming out with new episodes of peanuts. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I don't, I've got a cartoon background

Don't don't even talk about new versions of old shows. Like the new Looney Tunes, I watch that stuff and I get, I feel violent

I get violently angry. I go, this is such garbage, right? The new stuff is usually horrible

I prefer the old stuff a thousand percent. That's how I feel about Star Trek, honestly

It's like, we could do a whole episode just on that. Yeah, it's like, it's very difficult

You just have the ball rolling was. Sorry, it's just, it's very difficult to remake the magic

And when you have something that's truly special, The cast is right

The crew is right. The writers are good. And then you try to recreate that

It's very hard to do. So the one thing I wanted to mention before we wrap up here because we've been going for six and a half hours at this point is I mentioned ILM

industrial light and magic. I mean, talk about a cool business name, man. Like that's like one of the coolest ever

Based on the wall, by the way, where I am. What's that? Oh, they are? They're based in my hometown from Montreal

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought that they were based in San Francisco. They are now

That's Lucas film, I guess. here in Montreal. I did not know that

Wow. I mean, when you look at how prevalent they are even now

across all of cinema and shows and stuff, they're so ubiquitous. And their work is so much better than I feel like anyone else's

I saw this documentary on Star Trek I think five the Final Frontier And the guy was talking about the special effects and how they weren great And he was like the reason they weren as great as they were in previous Star Trek is because ILM was working on a different project

So they couldn't get them to work on this specific movie. And it shows because the special effects are in as good

And when you see, when you see like CGI and stuff with ILM quality and then you see other CGI, you really notice a difference

and there's been a leap in advancement with like CGI. I don't know if you guys watched The Mandalorian

or you watched the Boba Fett shows on Disney Plus. I won't spoil anything here

But there were some CGI scenes that looked really bad in The Mandalorian

And they were cool because it was like a nostalgic moment, but they still didn't look great

and then in the book of Boba Fett, the news show, they had a similar scene

and it was like, it was like one of the most incredible CGI scenes I'd ever seen

And I looked into it, there was this guy on YouTube that was really adept at deep fake technology

So he would take pictures, movies, and recreate, uh, CGI based on the way those people looked in the past in films and pictures and stuff

And he was so good that there was a rumor that, industrial light and magic hired him

and turns out that's actually the case and I don't know what this guy did for them

but he there were some some reprisals some character reprisals in some of these shows

and the difference in quality was staggering like it looked like a real person was there

even though it was completely CGI like do you remember like when they when they showed like young scenes of Princess Leia

and like the old Star Wars movies and they kind of looked fake it was like that except it looked like her

it looked like the young version of her It was incredible. I kept churning my wife

I'm like, do you see how amazing this is? Like, this is the most, this is the

like the biggest leap in CGI investment that I have ever probably noticed in my lifetime

And it was all because this YouTuber was really adept at CGI using deep fake technology

which I don't know if you ever follow any like deep fake channels, but they use a machine

I was just watching something. You were, yeah. I mean, it's actually really scary what they're able to do now

because they can create videos that look so real, but they're completely fake

and they'll have like politicians and like famous people saying things that they didn't actually ever say

And it's all just deep fake technology. It's actually really, really spooky. But anyway

I think we should go ahead. That's the fact that using deep fake to recreate old

like bring back old classics, I would love to see them redo Tron with that

Because when I saw their, their updated CGI version of Flynn, because I grew up

Tron was a childhood movie for me. That was a monumental movie when I was a kid

I knew those characters well. And then you see Flynn's face and he goes

I love it to you, son. And I went, oh, God, no, why? I know so bad

It ruined a movie for me. And for that, every single time you'd see him on screen

it's in a guy, oh, man, really? It's so bad. It's just like, it's just like cutting pasting a plastic face

It looked like he had too much plastic surgery or something like that. It was perfect. I was just what you were talking about it

I was watching all the Bill Hater videos where he's doing impressions, Tom Cruise and

Yeah, yeah, I saw those. It blended in smoothly. Yeah. Wow. Yeah

That's so convincing. Yeah. I should send you some of this guy's videos, Adam, so you could check it out

As an artist, you might appreciate these. Oh, yeah. Because I mean, I mean, the artistry that has to go into this, except he's using, you know, machine learning to rebuild these scenes

Yeah. Using a computer generated face drawn from AI technology. It's like really, it's really amazing

And I think this is going to be the future. And Disney Plus, and I, I'll am. I mean, they're going to be

way ahead of everyone else now. I mean, they were already far ahead. But now, they're able to

recreate, like, the young faces of old actors and make them look like they're actually there acting

It's really incredible