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HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

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Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#21

Anyone else annoyed with how buggy the HBO Max apple tv software is? vs binging on Netflix, the experience has way more weird UI bugs and hangs. Finding we're constantly restarting the app/apple tv because it keeps hanging or erroring out.

Early on it was buggy on Roku, but I haven't had crashes in a while. However, the UI is really sluggish and painful to use. Have a Roku Ultra.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#22

Anyone else annoyed with how buggy the HBO Max apple tv software is? vs binging on Netflix, the experience has way more weird UI bugs and hangs. Finding we're constantly restarting the app/apple tv because it keeps hanging or erroring out.

Yes. I have spotty internet but Netflix and Prime do great at buffering (on smart TV), so not an issue. Max is terrible at buffering. I don't think it buffers more than a few seconds at a time. I had to keep an additional HBO channel activated on my Prime account just to watch some HBO stuff.

I know I can save offline with an iPad and cast to the TV but too inconvenient. Will probably cancel soon.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely devil's advocate would be someone along the lines of -- just because it isn't for sale now doesn't mean it might never be. Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future. Pretty flimsy, imo.

I've upvoted you because this point needs to be countered and stopped. Something that was pirated does NOT equal a lost sale. I might enjoy Charlie Chaplin films, I would never pay for the ability to watch them. I don't feel it is worth my money. It doesn't matter if it becomes available at some-point in the future, I won't ever pay for it. If anti-piracy measures were 100% effective and reasonable and I couldn't get…

Radio broadcasts in US territories do not pay the performer, but they do pay a fee to the songwriter.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#25
post #2

Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+. I’ll pay a monthly fee for your entire back library. Otherwise, no thanks. Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale? I’d love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music. That way, people could legally torrent everything currently missing from these streaming platform…

A lot of content is not available as streaming flat rates but via various rental or purchase platforms (iTunes, Amazon Video, etc.)

There’s no (and there should be no) obligation to make things available for bargain dollars. If the publisher things the movie is worth a $15 dollar purchase or $8 rental, they can charge that. It’s our right not to watch it if we don’t think it’s worth that.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#26
post #7
post #2

Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+. I’ll pay a monthly fee for your entire back library. Otherwise, no thanks. Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale? I’d love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music. That way, people could legally torrent everything currently missing from these streaming platform…

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book. Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided that's more convenient…

Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with people that create shows/content etc.

But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS worth money.

If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing up torrents, I will fire up torrents.

Its not like pirating a show is free, there are hidden 'costs' involved (time == money). You have to manually track episodes you watch, and if interrupted, where you stopped mid episode. You have to get the right version/quality etc etc... All of it is some effort that you have to put in.

When you are young or dont have much spare cash, that cost feels much smaller.

Watching via Netflix et al. have none of those inconvenience 'costs'.

Start netflix -> continue watching. Done. I am now watch it.

However the moment that actual subscription costs and hassle of managing subscriptions exceedes 'cost of inconvinience' of piracy. I will pirate it. If I want to watch show X and netfix have only season 1-5 in EU and 1-7 in US, i will pirate it. I pay for netflix and I pirate its shows cuz for some reason even tho EU pays more for Netflix subscriptions we get reduced catalog!

I am not sure why this seems so hard for business people to understand. You will never get all people to pay for the 'digital goods'. And thats ok.

But the moment that you start throwing obstacles in the way of people willing to pay... well, thats just pushing your customers into BitTorrent arms.

I myself only use Netflix at the moment, I am not going to buy disney+ just to watch mandalorian.

Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care. I am a customer, you make an effort.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#27

these seem like oddly specific complaints. personally i am impressed with the huge back catalog of old hanna barbera cartoons on the service it's pretty fun watching jetsons and seeing how far off some of their predictions were, but then other things are spot on.

Totally agree, and I also generally find the article poorly written. I would reduce it to the following statements: 1. HBO is not showing the entire Tom and Jerry collection, which is bad because even though some episodes contain offensive stereotypes the show is culturally significant and unavailable elsewhere. 2. HBO streaming has bad UX.

Most of the article seems devoted to 1 and focused on the 'cancel culture' reasons why HBO might not be showing the full catalog while also admitting that there is also a large amount of the catalog not on HBO that is not plausibly part of the several episodes that would be targeted for being cancelled. Seems like the premise of the article kind of falls apart at that point, a little self-refuting.

Having the Jetsons and Flintstones on streaming has been a blast for me as well.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll pirate book if it’s not available in DRM-free format for reasonable price.

Do you have a right to everyone's IP who doesn't fit your expectations for reasonable access and price?

Legally, no. Ethically...maybe? The United States does have a long tradition of allowing grey areas when rightsholders become unreasonable. Oftentimes these wind up being formalized as right-of-ways, easements, or other access rights.

In the case of online streaming, its clear that the rightsholders are consolidated and engaged in monopolistic, anti-consumer behavior. Piracy is a natural response to that type of behavior, so is it really wrong for consumers to fight back?

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#29
post #19
post #9

I propose the following paradigm which I'll call "RickRoll UIs." The developer builds a beautiful interface for searching, curating, and organizing media in a given genre. Everything down to the moment of streaming works as you'd expect, at which point some boring public domain content is looped for the given duration of that stream. Users would get the benefit of having the curated data accessible through the GUI--…

Building the interface itself is the trivial part of this exercise. How are you going to source the database of metadata of every media item produced in the last century?

what.cd did it just fine for music and that was a tiny community.

There are a several longstanding open projects out there to compile metadata databases that are free to use like: https://musicbrainz.org/statistics (33 million tracks)

Music is less than 100 million items, Movies fewer than 1 million, TV somewhere in between and books are a few hundred million. I'm sure they all have mostly-complete metadata databases available already.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#30
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll pirate book if it’s not available in DRM-free format for reasonable price.

Do you have a right to everyone's IP who doesn't fit your expectations for reasonable access and price?

Personally I don't think that anything intangible can be property. And whenever I purchase something digital I consider the act to be a donation and/or payment for a service of delivery.
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