71–80 of 103 posts
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If you want a free vpn, veepn is pretty good.
Can't ever trust a free VPN. If it's free, then you are the product being sold!
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Huge swaths of Los Angeles are completely unable to watch Dodgers games on TV because of the way the cable companies have packaged and delivered the content. You know, one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world, makes total sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_blackout...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(broadcasting)
If I'm understanding that right then the games are available to watch legally, it's a problem self-inflicted by the customers who choose not to get the service they're available on. Because it's not their preferred service.
I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services. The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming…
Every league should offer something akin to a season ticket "firehose" (all games streamed live with hosted replays) like MLS does on Apple TV or Gallagher rugby on the Rugby Network.
I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services. The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming…
They've already crossed the threshold where this is no longer profitable. The next licencing deal will likely be so expensive, no Norwegian or Scandinavian company could possibly be able to turn a profit from it.
Of course, the CEO of the company has been in the media talking about how IPTV funds criminal networks and such nonsense*, calling for bans, yadda yadda. They're not listening to the market at all. Just using illegal streaming as a scapegoat. And I've decided, as long as this is how it's gonna be, they're not seeing a single dime of my money.
* I find the concept absurd. No matter where we spend our money, some of it ends up with criminals and various other despicable people, who will use it for evil. No one has the ability to prevent this. There's no reasonable expectation in current societal and economic structures for the consumer to somehow keep track of all their money once it leaves their wallet. This is no more the case for IPTV than it is when I buy a burger from some hole in the wall, which unbeknownst to me is a money laundering front. Or when I buy some chocolate and most of the money ends up with some white rich guy and not the children in Africa who harvested the cocoa. The whole argument is so intellectually dishonest and morally pathetic it pisses me off. And I don't even pay for IPTV.
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> You're talking about two different things. No, you've actually missed his point entirely. He is alluding to the fact that over the last decade or so, consumers have unwittingly slid down the slope of "not having true control over personal electronic devices". Iphones are already there, Android devices are a few years behind, as are most desktop PCs. Once there's critical mass, it would not be a stretch for ISPs to…
iPhones have always been able to access web pages. Web pages run on general purpose computers, and basically have to, because they're made of site-specific content and site-specific code. To get rid of "piracy" you would not only need to prevent users from having access to their own phones , you would need to make it impossible for anybody to have their own web page. That level of dystopia is the sort of thing that c…
last time I checked, China didn't force users to give in their IDs and turn on webcams to authenticate themselves on the internet. France does.
dystopia is never far away in France, and ppl always agree
How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.
I still believe Gabe Newell was right when he said that piracy is a service problem. This case doesn't seem to be any different.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(broadcasting)
If I'm understanding that right then the games are available to watch legally, it's a problem self-inflicted by the customers who choose not to get the service they're available on. Because it's not their preferred service.
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I still believe Gabe Newell was right when he said that piracy is a service problem. This case doesn't seem to be any different.
It's entirely true. I've canceled all of my streaming services because of the fragmentation and poor quality of the apps compared to my own Plex server. A few years ago I was happy to just pay $10 or $20 a month for nearly everything I wanted to watch.
The only streaming service I have left now is Netflix, which does work remarkably well, though how long they stay "ad free" remains to be seen. The first time they show me an ad, will also be the last time they show me an ad.
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It's entirely true. I've canceled all of my streaming services because of the fragmentation and poor quality of the apps compared to my own Plex server. A few years ago I was happy to just pay $10 or $20 a month for nearly everything I wanted to watch.
Same (though s/plex/jellyfin/g). I was a long time subscriber to CBS (now Paramount+) and many others, but I've slowly cancelled them all as their quality is utter shit, and now they've started rolling ads even at the high paid tier. Using an unmodded Chromecast w/ Google TV on a stock TV, I couldn't get Paramount+ to stream any of the newer Star Trek without falling back into a horrifically obnoxious constant shift…
I still have Prime as a "bonus", though I wouldn't pay if it was removed because I only use it for The Grand Tour. Netflix was the first to go, as it was where I found the removal of content most annoying. It also decided to geoblock me on a 2019 trip to Japan: I had downloaded some shows, on my Canadian wifi, to my unrooted phone with a Canadian SIM card, with Canadian taxes paid on the subscription, and it still blocked access as soon as I was in Japan. That will never be an issue with self-hosting.
Disney+ is the one I'd like to cancel next - it's my partner's account and has just blocked her dad's access, but there's a lot of content I would need to self-host. I'm inspired to by a really annoying quirk of their app: if you put on a show, then fall asleep, reopen the app and the top choice will be "continue watching" which takes you straight back to playing where the app paused with the "are you still watching?" message. So to get back to the episode list, you need to fast forward through the entire episode and then choose "back to episode listing" in the 15 seconds before it goes to the next ep. Why the "continue watching" button doesn't just bring up the episode list is a mystery to me.