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Popcorn Time in Your Browser

popcorninyourbrowser.net

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Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#41
post #12

You know the traditional business model of Hollywood is well and truly broken when an open source application like Popcorn Time comes along and does everything right. What Popcorn Time has done by making accessing content on demand easier than ever before is nothing short of impressive. They're the Netflix of piracy and I think Hollywood can learn a lot from Popcorn Time (but as history has proven, they won't).

Everything right? Except of course monitize it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do. Making a business out of it is much harder.

All achievements can't be judged by their ability to make money. /The Swedish socialist

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never used either, so I'm genuinely curious: what does Netflix lack, from that list?

Availability and content. I'd be very happy to use Netflix if a) it were available around here* b) if it provided the same selection as in the US *: random country in the EU

As somebody in the same predicament and locale, I often find myself wondering whether it is any less objectionable to rent a VPN connection through the States.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to streamline something when you don't have to follow any of the rules. The movie industry has to think of distribution agreements, localising content and maximising profit - just like any other business. When you have nothing to lose you can do what you want. I guess they've gotten close to this with Netflix. There are still geo-restrictions there and not all content is available but for most people…

> People have the option of not paying so a lot of them won't. But a lot of them will. They will pay for ease of access, legal access, and a good user experience. If the industry had focused its energy on those willing to pay instead of those not willing to pay, maybe the UX Popcorn Time provides today would have been available as a legal subscription based service. Just look at Spotify. Yes, a lot of people still do…

>> Just look at Spotify.

They lost over €150m last year and their losses have been growing. Content creators seem to dislike them and want an alternative. Just because you can do something and some people will pay doesn't mean it makes business sense.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#46

Popcorn Time has succeeded in streamlining the delivery of content, providing a smooth and fast experience for sorting through a list of movie and start watching instantly. I really wonder why the movie studios cannot take a cue from this and build something that people actually want to use.

It's much easier to streamline something when you don't have to follow any of the rules. The movie industry has to think of distribution agreements, localising content and maximising profit - just like any other business. When you have nothing to lose you can do what you want. I guess they've gotten close to this with Netflix. There are still geo-restrictions there and not all content is available but for most people…

Lack of legal pathways to content are the only reason I watch any pirated content at all. Plenty of TV shows that I want to see are made in foreign countries and don't come to my country at all or come years late, and even when they do require me to sit behind a TV screen at a particular hour, or remember to program a recorder to write it to a hard drive, which is impossibly archaic. Ofcourse, the best shows are behind pay-walls, but even if I pay the hundreds of euros per month to get past all the paywalls of all the services, the combined offering is quite poor.

It's quite simple: give me spotify premium or give me itunes, but for video content. I want to have everything ever made, as soon as it is made (none of that "it's in the theatre so you have to wait" B.S.), either for a fixed reasonable monthly rental fee, or for a fixed reasonable purchasing price. I want that content on every device I have, on-demand, in the best possible quality. I'm ok with DRM for rental as long as it does not prevent access on the devices I own (ipad, windows tablet, laptop, apple tv, etc...). I'm not ok with DRM for purchasing, because when I buy something I want to own it forever. Give me that and I'll gladly pay for it, but the movie and TV industry simply doesn't want my money it seems. I pay for netflix, because that's basically the best I can get, but it's not even close to what I want.

The music industry eventually figured this stuff out and I don't pirate any music at all anymore. I still hold out hope that eventually the movie and TV industry will stop refusing to take my money.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#47
post #4

Seems to be getting the file from: https://coinado.io So with this, i really question the "privacy" and legality of this service and coinado.io.

Popcorn time never pretended to be legal. It just provided great user experience to "old" torrenting.

Of course, i don't think i even mentioned Popcorn.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#48
post #6

This reminds me of joker[1], with the benefit of not expecting you to feed it a torrent (or expecting you to know what a torrent is). I genuinely wonder, though, if these services are published just to annoy the copyright owners or for some benefit to the author that I sadly cannot see. edit: They also do not seem to serve ads. Maybe an experiment for a potential legal version? Who knows... [1]: currently out of serv…

Because fuck media conglomerates, that's why. Sorta like Google Chrome: because fuck Microsoft, that's why. When an entity achieves dominance they only innovate in order to keep it. The difference between this situation and the one I compared it to is that there's no way to legitimately compete. Even in the contrasting example it took an entity the size of Google to revive competition. In this one they control the content and dictate the platform. The most competitive platforms, in terms of user preference, can be starved of content and displaced by alternatives only the media conglomerates could desire. Do you honestly think we'd have gotten Netflix without torrents? The people who desire progress or otherwise to actually do things have two choices. They can either repress that desire or they can out-hack the regressive empire builders who desire only to have things.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is only a problem that the movie industry itself keeps alive because it refuses to move past the idea of creating false scarcity.

Oh no, not that price scarcity theory again.... A van gogh isn't more expensive than my drawing because they're rarer or built with rarer materials. Intrinsic value is much more complicated and subtle than that... Giving money for something is also a mean to encourage people to produce more content, for example. It's also a way to say "thank you, keep going on please". edit : or maybe that's what you meant too, in wh…

I'm pretty sure if it were possible to create atom for atom identical copies of every van gogh the value of the "original" would plummet. Of course in the real world we have no-cloning theorems, so that isn't possible, information however can be copied at (almost) zero cost and therefore the value of a copy should approach its share of the production cost, which rapidly approaches zero as more copies are made.

Re: Popcorn Time in Your Browser

#50
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything right? Except of course monitize it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do. Making a business out of it is much harder.

Coinado will require payment after beta period. We'll see how it goes...

The question isn't whether it's possible to charge anything. They're not compensating the content creators. If I steal cars and resell them for a fraction of their typical price, does that prove the car industry is broken?
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