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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#601

Post by fragmede »

mandarax8 wrote: post #594
Robin_Message wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My three biggest pet peeves are: - You can't turn your queue into a playlist (and you can't see previous queue as part of the queue, only as limited history.) - Clicking a song or album sometimes clears your queue and starts playing that instead (I know there is a logic to it, but a mistake or mis-click is easy). - There is no shortcut to add to queue, just long press then find the menu item. It's possible everyone e…

> - There is no shortcut to add to queue, There is, just swipe the song to the right.

that's neat! totally not discoverable though

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#602

Post by maccard »

gtvwill wrote: post #544
maccard wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therefore, subscriptions for games are not a big thing yet (I doubt it will ever be) World of warcraft has had a subscription for 20 years and is wildly successful. PSN has a monthly subscription where you get 2-3 games per month added to your account that you can play as long as you're still subscribed. Gamepass has 25+ million subscribers [0] > I'm not OK with paying $70 a month Honest question, why not? That's w…

$840 a year just on watching TV is heaps. $4200 over 5 years. That's a fair wack cash.

It's not just TV though, it's TV & movies. I used to go to a blockbuster equivalent with my parents most Fridays, and we would rent 3-5 movies. Usually it would be 1 new releasae and some from the back catalog. I was only about 14 so I don't know exactly how much it cost, but the "New Release, only €5.25" poster is etched into my brain. I'd guess we did that 3 out of 4 weekends, spending probably €10 each time, which is about half of that cost.

> That's a fair wack cash.

I never said it wasn't, but (I would wager) it's most households primary form of entertainment. It being ~2% of the median household's income it's good value.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#603

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fragmede wrote: post #573
data-ottawa wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Prime Video, and when searching for content I would get told to subscribe to some channel within Prime. Now Crave (in Canada) does the same thing. Netflix doesn't bother integrating with Apple TV's search or aggregation features to try and drive you into the app. The end result is searching for legitimate content is a terrible experience. If it's a result from Prime, I just pass. If it's from Crave, I pass. If…

If HBO and all the other content houses would all go to Netflix and say we'll close down our streaming service and license you all our content, and take our share of a household $60/month, everyone would all make more money, but there's negative infinity chance of that happening; on top of Netflix making their own content, so what's the way forwards? He government could step in and say that online distribution platfo…

> McDonald's vs Burger King

Yum! Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc.) is slightly larger than Restaurant Brands International (Burger King). McDonald's is larger than both of them put together. Or if you want brands rather than corporations, there are a zillion burger chains.

> CVS vs Walgreens

Rite Aid and Walmart, among others.

> AT&T vs Verizon

The US wireless carrier with the largest market cap is T-Mobile, with only slightly fewer users than Verizon. There are also many smaller ones.

> Democrats vs Republicans

This isn't a result of consumer preferences, it's a result of the first past the post voting system creating a powerful incentive for the most similar parties to merge until there are only two left. (Score voting fixes this.)

> Apple vs Google

This is the only real market duopoly here, and it's the one they have to worry about.

Either they can license their content to multiple services so it's convenient for customers to subscribe to one service and get everything, or those two companies will eventually figure out a way to get the same effect and most likely end up sucking in 30% of their industry's revenue in the process.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#604

Post by 130e13a »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #572
machomaster wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Spotify's biggest problems is their terrible UI, lacking even the basic functionality. I don't understand how they haven't been able do the bare minimum for 15 years now.

Like what?

most of the views (in the iOS app at least, idk about android) are asynchronous, in that they will always prefer to load data from their servers over using locally cached stuff.

meaning that, if you have a bad internet connection and tap on eg an album, it'll open the view for that album and you just have to look at the progress indicator for in some cases up to 20+ seconds, even if you have downloaded that album and all the info is there in the local cache.

this happens annoyingly often, e.g. when leaving an area where you're connected to wifi and your phone hasn't yet switched over to celluar data.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#605

Post by justsomehnguy »

Jochim wrote: post #484
mike_hock wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your eyesight is a lot better than mine but I can't discern pixels at sub-1080p resolution, especially in a movie where everything is kinda smudged out and individual pixel values don't matter as much.

It's usually blocky compression artifacts that show up at 720p and some 1080p encodes. They're most noticeable in dark or fast moving scenes. On Netflix, The Sandman looked abysmally bad at 720p. The complex backgrounds became a garbled mess and the dark scenes were filled with banding.

> blocky compression artifacts that show up at 720p

It's just the shitty compression, not the mark of 720p.

This is extremely evident on YouTube now, for a couple of years if the source content is 4K native, they downgrade it to 1080p (so you can stream it with a comfortable bitrate), but despite a good enough resolution (1080p! 2K!) and the need to just downgrade the resolution (yes, double re-encoding, but) the 2K version looks abysmal. Especially evident on live videos with a contrast lights.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#606

Post by saiya-jin »

izacus wrote: post #495
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

Yeah, also pirated content has: - 4K HDR video, not whatever the heck the buggy client delivers. - Atmos/TrueHD audio track that actually works, not whatever the broken app delivers (I'm looking at you Sky and rest of the ilk that still deliver HBO content with stereo). - Subtitles for ALL the languages, not just one or two. And those languages don't disappear when I go on a vacation, leaving me stuck with german aud…

Agree 100%, my tiny 10TB collection of literally everything I like in 1080p and selected (and actually available) 4k hdr stuff is enough.

Same for music for me, radios where I live are just tons of talk I don't care about and little (weird) music, so my rock & metal collection from usb key is enough.

If I ever want that randomness that comes with say radio I just let it on or use ad-infested youtube, and probably soon turn it off in disgust from adverts. With small kids, not much time for that anyway which is a good thing.

And all gained legally. I am not losing sleep for poor artists (those I listen/watch are fine, guys in their 40s-60s living in castles or big mansions), I am not type of person what bought 100s of CDs of DVDs before (just to feel like a complete idiot now).

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#607

Post by souenzzo »

A while ago, I tried to watch the "Jurassic Park" series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park#Films

Jurassic Park is a cinema classic with ~6 films.

It is simply not possible to do this in any legal way. besides expensive, it is hard to understand if the film is available in each platform. I ended up paying for an extra streaming service and after login & pay, it said "this film is not available in your region".

please grow Netflix. Stop complaining about the "competition" and start working to provide a good service.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#608

Post by mkl »

quenix wrote: post #600
mkl wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1080p = 2k; both are 1920x1080p. p is rows in the vertical dimension (p for progressive, as opposed to i for interlaced; e.g. NZ terrestrial TV is 1080i). k is columns in the horizontal direction, and comes from film making and visual effects (1920 rounds up to 2k and 3840 rounds up to 4k).

Wow, I thought K stood for thousand (as in 4K=4,000)! Nice piece of trivia if true.

Yes, k stands for thousand. Historically, 4k meant 4096 pixels wide in the context of digitised film or digital visual effects, and 2k meant 2048 pixels wide. TVs ended up 1920 pixels wide, which is "close enough" to use the same term, 2k. I think "4k" is used for marketing TVs as it's easier to remember and say than "2160p", so now we mix the terminology.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#609

Post by HKH2 »

fbdab103 wrote: post #233
skeaker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This video is played for laughs but I was shocked to learn how much of it was true and not just satire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhv7bgmz64 Content being fragmented and constantly coming and going is a massive problem for users. Netflix used to be the go-to to find just about any given show or film, but has become a mystery box where the contents change on a near-daily basis. Piracy is reliable and simpl…

That Pokemon distribution was insane. This was the site I think he was showing in the video: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...

Wow, I thought that had to be a joke.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#610

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

This will push streaming services to lobby governments to crack down harder on pirating.

The issue is that the service users don't exist in a cohesive and aligned bloc, whereas rights owners, rights licensers and streaming service providers sort of do.

Anyone that attempts to change licensing laws will experience way more friction than those who advocate for using the existing infrastructure of law enforcement to reduce pirating.

Things will only get better if streaming companies lobby for changing the way licensing works to support delivery to end users and/or government departments advocate for end user experience.

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