I have a lifetime and am glad to hear existing user won't get cut at least. Still, users with a yearly subs shouldn't be cut to 15 downloads a month imo. There can't be major churn with yearly subs after all. I mean who's gonna wait a year to watch a scene? That's in the monthlies. So, if you have to cut downloads for churn I'd say cut them in monthlies and give people a reason to buy a yearly / longer sub by keeping download rates intact there.
I think moving to 50mb/s streaming and downloads is great, that's all 99% of the user here have been asking for on all these threads over the years. Video quality increases and new bit rates and codecs are needed to keep pace with innovation.
Also, paying 7-12 euro for a HBR download I would never do (I'm assuming that's the original and not the 50mbs mentioned as that would be extremely disappointing). Even just out of principle tbh. All I want is to be able to download at a good bitrate without constantly worrying about how many downloads I have (I hardly ever hit my limit). But sometimes you download more sometimes not at all. For reasons like a studio leaving etc. I just don't want that to change but I always dread the next announcement like this and wonder when things becomes unusable.
I still don't get why AV1 is mentioned in the same breath as original master downloads. It's a codec. That's it. Just better compression. No visual quality differences when the bit rate is high enough. It's just there to replace h265 and reduce file size. Why is that a feature? That would be saying you can only download in h264. Just doesn't make any sense.
Anyways, I just hate that people who want to download are constantly under attack. I love SLR but it annoys me a lot that I constantly get the idea I should use it only in the way they envision it. There will always be people who want to download over streaming for various reasons. You say that that amount is low so that should only make it easier for SLR to keep it intact.
I do get the argument of people getting a monthly and downloading everything and leaving. But I think this can be fixed by reducing monthly downloads and enticing people to upgrade to yearly or lifetime like I mentioned before.
Anyways, guess my point is, why can't SLR just keep a good thing going? Give us competitive bitrates and decent download limits. Stop constantly reducing them and try forcing people into something they don't wanna be forced in please
