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TV: Now What?

commonsware.com

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Re: TV: Now What?

#91
There's a Canadian company that tried to do this a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/user/YouiLabs

Not sure what's come of it since their cert at https://youi.tv is broken at the moment.

My experience with it was working at a big tv network who was trying to port all of their native tv apps over to this platform.

From what I recall:

It was a pain for designers because they had to retool their Sketch workflow to Adobe After Effects, which nobody liked. The idea was that the designer would design the view layer in AF and pass it along to the dev for integration. In retrospect, I think this was a mistake: developers should have been doing that from the beginning, as the workflow was similar to VBA or Storyboards and required intimate knowledge of how the view would be integrated into the code.

Most developers who worked with it loved it or hated it. It bridged the gap between platforms, but came at the cost of losing out on unique native platform features without writing complicated C++ bridging code on each platform.

The idea sounds solid at first, but you're really just trading one massive problem for another.

Re: TV: Now What?

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You agree with the fact that iOS developers must go through the App Store? Would you want it to be illegal for you to distribute any content you produce and for you to have to go through a middle man? I have no opinion on this as it is not currently a problem and it is not relevant. > Does that also mean if that I wanted to create my own Indy movie I couldn’t sell it on my own website? Just like you can create your…

So you are saying that producers should not be able to distribute their own content? Are you saying that no one should be able to produce their own video and sell it themselves? So I can distribute my own video on my own website. So what if I get together with a group of college friends and we decide to sell our movies on a website we jointly own, should that be illegal? If I am a news organization and do a show of r…

Ignoring your irrelevant hypotheticals for which I am not arguing, why is having distribution channels controlled by the content owners beneficial? At this point there is no way for a third party to license content from enough content owners because of cross licensing deals and their ownership of competing platforms. So there can be no place where one can watch a diverse selection like netflix used to be. Is this good for consumers? Do you think the content owners even want it?

Re: TV: Now What?

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that producers should not be able to distribute their own content? Are you saying that no one should be able to produce their own video and sell it themselves? So I can distribute my own video on my own website. So what if I get together with a group of college friends and we decide to sell our movies on a website we jointly own, should that be illegal? If I am a news organization and do a show of r…

Ignoring your irrelevant hypotheticals for which I am not arguing, why is having distribution channels controlled by the content owners beneficial? At this point there is no way for a third party to license content from enough content owners because of cross licensing deals and their ownership of competing platforms. So there can be no place where one can watch a diverse selection like netflix used to be. Is this goo…

It’s not a hypothetical. You are saying that the government should outlaw content producers from distributing their own content.

How do you define content producers and are you going to force them to allow anyone to distribute their content?

Are you going to apply the same standards to all content producers?

There was never a time that Netflix had the majority of the top content - especially movies

Sure you can watch all of the content you want just like you always did - you pay for it.

Re: TV: Now What?

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since all of these streaming platforms are available on the browser, it should be trivial to run this through a pc/pi even without API support, if a little cumbersome. SHould also run faster than the ad-ridden software on Firestick/Chromecast/Apple-tv.

A PC will work fine for general viewing but might be a problem for those looking for more advanced features, e.g. Dolby Vision. Apple TV has a few things one may consider “ads”, but they’re limited to promotion of Apple’s own shows (no third parties) and can be done away with by simply ignoring the stock TV app and moving it off the top row of the home screen where it’ll never get highlighted. They haven’t bothered m…

I've been looking into Apple TV 4K boxes as an alternative to Roku --- I'm sick of their ads baked into the UI --- and I've read in a couple places online that if you put the Photos app in first position of the top bar you'll get a slideshow of whatever photos are in there instead of promos for a particular app's shows.

Is that so?

It'd definitely put me across the line into switching. With Jellyfin now supported with the native Swiftfin app it'd have everything I need.

Re: TV: Now What?

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume any of that? So it’s easier to dismiss the notion?

So which content producers are you going to tell it’s illegal to distribute their own content on their own website?

Film and tv studios. Selling is fine, but no rental or subscription streaming. Basically the same as the no-owning-movie-theaters rule. Idea’s to force streaming services to compete on service quality, not content exclusivity.

Re: TV: Now What?

#96
post #15

The fragmentation is both a flaw and a feature. It means we have diversity in media vendors, at the cost of a pretty high cognitive load to just watch something… which app is it on? What’s the account login? Search the device main search, then go to each app and do its own individual search. All while dodging ads and autoplay and “what’s new” and “for you.” It sucks for users. But it also sucks for developers, who ha…

The fragmentation is a phase until the industry matures. Take a look at other industries, like woodworking. They have established practices which don’t change much. The software industry has so much potential I don’t expect it to mature for another hundred years. Although some patterns are emerging, like strong typing and universal cross-platform runtimes (most notably Web).

There's enormous incentive for somebody to create a tool that actually lets you "write once, run everywhere" by automatically compiling your code to the right format for every platform. This would dramatically reduce development time for companies that have to support multiple platforms which means they'd be willing to pay a substantial sum of money for it.

You already kind of have something along those lines with game development where (I believe) the most popular engines like Unreal and Unity can export to every popular gaming platform. Web development also allows that which is why everything is becoming a web site. But native apps have significant performance advantages over something like Electron that bundles a web site and a browser. Currently, there is no way that I'm aware of to generate a true native app with the correct look and feel for the platform and reasonably optimized for every platform from the same code but there should be.

Re: TV: Now What?

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better for consumers if productions were available through more outlets rather than fewer, so yes.

You didn’t answer the question , are you really saying that it should be illegal for any content producer to distribute their own content on their own website? I’m assuming you would apply those same standards to software developers, writers, song writers and any video content?

Seems like the easy answer is not to remove anyone’s ownership over their own content or their rights to distribute it on their own or however they want, but rather to also force them to release on something central as well.

Re: TV: Now What?

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which content producers are you going to tell it’s illegal to distribute their own content on their own website?

Film and tv studios. Selling is fine, but no rental or subscription streaming. Basically the same as the no-owning-movie-theaters rule. Idea’s to force streaming services to compete on service quality, not content exclusivity.

So what qualifies as a studio is any content producer a studio? And now you’re going to make a law that says content creators can’t sell subscriptions to their content? Does this also count for OnlyFans?

Why is video special? Why only say video producers can’t have subscriptions to their own content but writers can?

And the law that you are referring to is no longer a thing

Re: TV: Now What?

#99
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t answer the question , are you really saying that it should be illegal for any content producer to distribute their own content on their own website? I’m assuming you would apply those same standards to software developers, writers, song writers and any video content?

Seems like the easy answer is not to remove anyone’s ownership over their own content or their rights to distribute it on their own or however they want, but rather to also force them to release on something central as well.

Would you also “force” software makers to distribute their content - including GPL software?

Also who determines the terms for which licensing agreements have to be made? Does that apply to all video producers?

Re: TV: Now What?

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PC will work fine for general viewing but might be a problem for those looking for more advanced features, e.g. Dolby Vision. Apple TV has a few things one may consider “ads”, but they’re limited to promotion of Apple’s own shows (no third parties) and can be done away with by simply ignoring the stock TV app and moving it off the top row of the home screen where it’ll never get highlighted. They haven’t bothered m…

I've been looking into Apple TV 4K boxes as an alternative to Roku --- I'm sick of their ads baked into the UI --- and I've read in a couple places online that if you put the Photos app in first position of the top bar you'll get a slideshow of whatever photos are in there instead of promos for a particular app's shows. Is that so? It'd definitely put me across the line into switching. With Jellyfin now supported wit…

Yeah, that’s correct. Only apps in the top row that are highlighted can display content on the home screen and the leftmost app is highlighted at boot/wake.

I don’t have any experience with Jellyfin+Swiftfin but Infuse has worked well with my Plex server.

As a sidenote, to test this I woke the the old 2015 Apple TV HD that the 4K model replaced and to my surprise it’d updated itself to the latest tvOS and still runs smoothly. Not bad for an 8 year old device, and no doubt in better shape than most competitors of a similar age.

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