At one point, Netflix was the premiere source for streaming video. Back in 2012, before they dipped their toe into media production, Netflix’s online library contained around 11,000 streaming titles. They had just killed their distribution deal with Criterion, who moved over to Hulu, but had distribution deals with major studios and TV channels to keep their library plentiful if not entirely fresh. Over time, Netflix would drop deals it had made with BBC, Epix, and Starz, all of whom maintained online streaming rights to hot commodities such as Doctor Who and The Hunger Games. Slowly, they began decimating their third party selections and offering indie movies for short periods of time. Currently, the Netflix library is about half of what it used to be (around 5,300), and every month it gets smaller.

This month, a lot of Netflix’s former “classic” studio titles (classic meaning 20+ years) have moved over to Hulu and Amazon. MGM’s James Bond and Rocky series, and a handful of former Paramount staples – The Addams Family, Election – have made their appearance in the database of both of Netflix’s competitors. In November alone, Hulu has 70+ movies coming in, and is only jettisoning around 30. Meanwhile, Netflix continues to shrink their vault catalog: 67 titles are going out, and 49 titles are coming in (not including 20 Netflix Originals and 5 Thomas The Tank Engine movies).

Trying to keep up with these changes is not only a fool’s game, it’s also costly. Hulu comes in at $7.99/mth and has a $4 add on for no commercials and a $9 add on for Showtime. Amazon Prime is $8.25/mth with a wide variety of add-ons from Starz to Lifetime Movie Club to something called Seeso (Amazon Prime is the king of “additional purchases”). Netflix is $10/mth. For everything so far, that’s $40/mth.

Meanwhile, there are other competitors on the market. SnagFilms and SundanceNow are competing against each other for the Independent movie market. SnagFilms features some of the most indie of indie movies and is actually a free service (but with commercial interruptions) with apps on a bunch of devices. They’re not well curated, but with some deep digging you can find gems (Bibliotheque Pascal was one of my favorites). SundanceNow is newer than SnagFilms, and features a more curated catalog of “indie” films and documentaries (currently, In the Company of Men is on their front page). SundanceNow is a commercial-less experience, but costs $6.99/mth, and is only available through mobile and laptop devices (they have plans to develop apps for Roku and gaming devices in the future).

Fighting for a similar market as SnagFilms and SundanceNow is the new venture from Criterion and Turner Classic Movies, FilmStruck. Coming in at $10.99/mth, FilmStruck is the most expensive of all these (if you want the Criterion collection; and you do as that makes up the bulk of their catalog). Their benefit is they come with Criterion’s bonus features on top of the movies themselves. Similar to SundanceNow, they are only mobile/laptop friendly, and do not feature gaming device apps yet.

To gain access to all of these various channels will run you a total of $56.22/mth (not including any number of Amazon add-ons), on top of your internet subscription…which is about as much as a cable television subscription. Which, ugh…

With a bunch of different channels each having independent content, what’s the best way to manage it? How do you deal with a streaming world where something is there one month and gone the next? Media becomes transitory instead of permanent. As somebody who used to browse a video store for an hour or two, the idea of having to go to a variety of sites is daunting.

How do you get your old school fixes in? Is there a decent way to navigate this broad landscape? How do you do it if you live in the far out suburbs or sticks where the video stores have been shuttered and this is your only choice? Is torrenting the only sane option left?

(A note on the above image: Major League has left Netflix, and is now available on Hulu and Amazon)