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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

torrentfreak.com

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

#651

Post by wraptile »

wackget wrote: post #31

I have one point which I really feel exemplifies the entire Netflix experience: before you sign up, they do not give you a list of what's available to watch. Seriously, check out their website. It's basically a landing page which says "give us your money". The prices aren't even displayed. There is no list of shows, save for a few measly screenshots of featured/well-known titles. There is a search box which lets you…

Content hiding has become a really popular technique. Recently I reviewd Google's app of 2023 called Imprint and it purposefully hides all content counts to the point where some courses end abruptly with "get notified when next chapter is released". I emailed the team for content counts and got a firm no on that.

Just like with Netflix you can't browse the entire lists of content. All you have a is a search bar and some curated lists which give an illusion of content breadth. Not a fan of these dark patterns to say the least.

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

#652

Post by Mindwipe »

dehrmann wrote: post #287
jowea wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if mandating content licenses being non-exclusive and separating media distributors from producers would help.

It's mostly working for music. Spotify and Apple aren't competing on their catalogs.

Spotify loses money (which is why they keep trying to do things that are not music to keep the company afloat), and while Apple doesn't split out Music it's fairly unlikely that is a profitable business either.

Music is literally a textbook example of why it doesn't work.

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

#653

Post by zogrodea »

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…

I think fragmentation is a legitimate problem for end-users but I don’t know how to solve it exactly, because the most obvious alternative is a monopoly where everything is on just one service (and we all know about the bad effects a monopoly can have).

Maybe a system where multiple different services offer the exact same content library or something similar, but a good solution will require some thought I think.

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

#654

Post by BlueTemplar »

wkat4242 wrote: post #356
radley wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 500-ish MB per hour of content for decent quality. That's still YIFY-quality video, which is a few steps below HBO/MAX, which happens to be among the lowest quality paid streams. ATV+ is killing it with 30Mbps 4K HDR+ video (it used to be as high as 48Mbps). Disney+ is close. The Netflix 4K plan serves up high 1080p bitrates, 2x better than their 1080p plan. Worth paying for.

Meh not everyone has a 4K 120Hz TV :) I still have an old 1080p 32" LG from 10 years ago and it looks fine. In fact I find the motion upscaling weird, it gives this creepy uncanny effect. I still download H264 too because not all of my devices support H265 yet. I was thinking about something new but they're just too expensive.

Yeah, same issue. Though I use Raspberry Pi as a backup when the playback doesn't work (it's not just H265, though others formats failing to work on the TV happens much more rarely).

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

#656

Post by jpsouth »

crashingintoyou wrote: post #587
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.

I've been hoping to Spotify to go out of business since they went and took Rogan's podcast and a few others as Spotify-exclusive. Not always a Rogan fan, but he's occasionally had some interesting guests. However the Spotify experience was so bad I abandoned podcasts that required me to use their client. (Suppose I should think of dialing back my Spotify hate a little now that apparently in the renewal they're no lon…

You hope they go out of business because they bought the rights to some podcasts?

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

#657

Post by dathinab »

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…

if I look around to people who did pirate videos or games in the past it always was because of one of following reasons:

- unavailability of the product in the right form in the market they live in (e.g. no OV and terrible translation, no good quality video/audio, not available at all, etc.)

- moon prices (e.g. Anime DVDs at least 10+ years ago where I lived), or being thigh on money (e.g. as a 16 year old)

- it being easier to pirate then to buy ...

- buying the product (in a reasonable convenient way) forces other unwanted things onto you, like automatic self-extending subscriptions or tracking to a point where I can't understand anymore how it's not classified as espionage

All of this except being tight on money hint to a mismatch between products provided and what consumers want/find acceptable. If the movie industry I think it would auto self correct, but it isn't and you could say piracy (on larger scale) is natural marked effect caused by the absence of a proper free market.

But what is I think most important to realize is that outside of the situation of piracy being more convenient then buying in all other cases the actual losses piracy creates is quite limited to a point where it's quite questionable how reasonable the drawbacks users have to suffer because of piracy prevention mechanism/laws are.

Natural if piracy would be fully unconstrained it likely would then cause huge monetary losses. A free market is still a marked so a product produced with some investment (e.g. creating the movie) still should be sold for some value.

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

#658

Post by Aeolun »

inversetelecine wrote: post #269
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…

And now prime wants another $2.99 to stream without ads. Something I had previously included. Nickle and diming also drives customers away.

You can make the ads go away by paying more? How? Seeing ads on my paid for service is driving me absolutely crazy.

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

#659

Post by goosedragons »

interestica wrote: post #299
patrickaljord wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was paying for Netflix 10 years ago in France for a short while, wanted some English subtitles for my wife for some US shows but there were only subtitles in French so had to download the same show elsewhere if you know what I'm saying... with English subtitles readily available. I also remember watching some shows like the first two seasons but then only to find out the third season was licensed by another streami…

I was living in the only english-speaking country in South America. Netflix wouldn't give me French subtitles or secondary audio because apparently south america=spanish for their divisions. I don't see how subtitles would fall under the broader licensing agreements. The subs/langs were available for the same titles in Canada. (More absurd because France is a part of South America via French Guiana).

They do. Somebody had to produce the dubs/subs and it wasn't necessarily the content creator especially if it wasn't the language it was originally created in. Those French subs or dubs could have easily been created by a Canadian firm who got the Canadian rights and wanted to use it in French Canada, then that got licensed off to Netflix. It may have had little involvement with the original creator and they don't necessarily hold all the rights over the translation effort to spread it worldwide.

What's more absurd is when you can't get CC for the same language as the show.

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

#660

Post by Aeolun »

Mindwipe wrote: post #652
dehrmann wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly working for music. Spotify and Apple aren't competing on their catalogs.

Spotify loses money (which is why they keep trying to do things that are not music to keep the company afloat), and while Apple doesn't split out Music it's fairly unlikely that is a profitable business either. Music is literally a textbook example of why it doesn't work.

Spotify can just raise prices by 50% and make money? If they tell me the choice is between Spotify disappearing and me paying more, the choice is extremely easy.
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