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TV: Now What?

commonsware.com

101–110 of 168 posts

Re: TV: Now What?

#101
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…

> 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?

So do you have a YouTube, Spotify, and an apple music sub?

When it comes to music, I'm not sure I've once thought "which app?"

The only reason the consumer has to think about it is greed.

For something like this, I'm not sure I'll ever buy a streaming device with a JavaScript interface. Steam has one, and it's slower than the old one by far.

Who am I kidding, I'm not gonna buy it because I don't need Amazon "sidewalk"

Re: TV: Now What?

#102
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn’t it been found (In the US) that making a digital copy of a DVD you own totally okay?

Correct. Personal archival is protected under fair use. [1] 1. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23...

Personal archival isn't exempt anymore, that dropped some years ago. The only archival exemption now is for "qualifying institutions".

Re: TV: Now What?

#103
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn’t it been found (In the US) that making a digital copy of a DVD you own totally okay?

Correct (as long as you don't distribute it), but not all content is available on DVDs, and many things come to DVDs much later than they are available elsewhere. That said, there is a _less legal_ solution to those problems...

Unfortunately not. The exemption dropped some years ago.

Re: TV: Now What?

#104
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don’t agree with forcing anyone to do anything with something they have created.

It just seemed like that’s what they were asking for as a consumer.

Re: TV: Now What?

#105
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…

> 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? So do you have a YouTube, Spotify, and an apple music sub? When it comes to music, I'm not sure I've once thought "which app?" The only reason the consumer has to think about it is greed. For something like this, I'm not sure I'll ever buy a streaming device with a JavaScript interfa…

The 2nd and 3rd generation AppleTV “apps” were just web pages running on the WebKit engine. They were really responsive and better standardized.

Re: TV: Now What?

#106
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one says you have to subscribe to ALL of the streaming platforms at once. If cost is an issue, pick 1 or 2 services, watch the shows you’re interested in, then cancel those and pick 1 or 2. Rince and repeat. You have choice with this approach and you don’t need every service offered.

While perhaps a nominal iteration of improvement, cable was this way too. You didn’t have to have the $100 /month service package. There was always the $30 /mo basic cable (no guide box). The industry simply recycling its business model in new delivery methods is a valid complaint/perception.

But you couldn’t just choose a single channel aside from the premium channels.

Re: TV: Now What?

#107
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices have been creeping up (and Netflix is the worst offender). But, if you can live without live TV and can do without that one show on such and such a service, it's still a pretty good deal relative to the cable TV bundle especially if you also had one or two premium stations/streaming services like HBO.

$7.99 in 2010 is $11.27 today. The remaining $4.22 delta is reasonable given that their business model has changed from purely licensing with zero competition to being locked out of popular content and forced to produce their own.

And now the actors unions and writers unions are going to get more money from streaming.

Re: TV: Now What?

#108
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…

I'd love to see the feds step in and force content providers to make their content available to anyone willing to make a compliant (sorry, DRM likely required)frontend. I should be able to buy content from, say, Paramount using Hulu and not be forced to use Paramount's app.

It’s called a web browser.

You are free to connect a PC to your TV now.

Re: TV: Now What?

#109

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…

[deleted]

Re: TV: Now What?

#110

Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. You can run them on practically anything and there are Tiny PCs, stick-form-factor Raspberry Pi devices (like CM4 TV Stick), and other silent small boxes you can attach to a TV for a thin client interface or just a shared media library / TV experience. It'd be nice if Amazon, Apple, Netflix…

The Jellyfin user experience would be a ton better if the client app for the iphone/ipad actually took advantage of local playback instead of relying on transcoding. Random seeks, rewinds, and especially subtitles timing are all better if the client is just accessing a file stream. This is especially true as the codecs change and the on-NAS GPUs fall behind due to the lifecycle differences.

Can you not disable transcoding on the iOS version of Jellyfin?
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