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Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

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Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#141
post #22

I don't understand Netflix's decision, but I'm long past caring about things like this. I've had PCs hooked up to all of my televisions for the past 15+ years because of how limiting and frustrating using any other device to play media from can be.

BitTorrent → Local Media Player App Still the best way to watch movies and shows. Even if we pay $100 dollars every month to streaming services they will never not be too dumb to know how to make a convenient player that isn't hostile to its users.

What is your local app of choice? Do you sync between devices?

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#142
post #22

I don't understand Netflix's decision, but I'm long past caring about things like this. I've had PCs hooked up to all of my televisions for the past 15+ years because of how limiting and frustrating using any other device to play media from can be.

Same - I've been using an Intel NUC with Windows 10 for many years. It does everything I want:

- Netflix

- Youtube without ads via Firefox+uBlock Origin

- Ripping DVDs and converting to .mp4

Those Small Form Factor PCs have only gotten cheaper over time - the most powerful PC I've ever owned in 30+ years is a $300 Minisforum (16 Cores, 16GB RAM) that's doing similar duty in the garage.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also rather shit, unless you're using a prescribed browser and operating system. We've rebuilt cable boxes, but somehow they're even shittier than before.

Always assuming every single thing can be improved - and expecting huge corporate entities to do it - seems like a recipe for failed expectations. Cable TV wasn't perfect, of course, but it was pretty damn good, especially in allowing everybody to have access to just about every show that was produced. That the "replacement" model is disappointing and a worse experience, really shouldn't come as a surprise.

It's interesting to hear your perspective, but I totally disagree about Cable TV. It's the worst paid service I've ever seen. 100+ channels of almost pure garbage that insults my intelligence at every turn. 1/3 of the time was ads, and of the remaining 2/3, much was taken up by "when we return..." and "before the break...". Plus most of the content was targeted towards morons.

These days, you'd have to pay me $20+ per hour to watch cable TV.

I did have basic cable for a few years in the early 2000s, and I did enjoy watching Star Trek TNG reruns. Because there wasn't any good alternative back then in the dark ages.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#144
post #53

I remember the time when smart homes used to feature in sci-fi literature and concept videos. Being able to walk around your house while having everything seamlessly synced and tailored to your preferences was clearly the future. TV, movies and music automatically playing in whatever room your enter. Files and all other data seamlessly synced between all your devices. Not having to think about how to make the tech wo…

It's notable that often we have protocols to tie things together. UPnP/DLNA/Miracast have existed for a long time now & have included standards for media playing, light control, others. And many TV's have even implemented!!

I feel like what has always been trickier is control and coordination. There haven't been many people to step up and own the higher level, the thing that coordinates devices.

It's notable to me that recent successful cast protocols (like Netflix+YouTube's original DIAL, Chromecast) have really simplified. Are bottom up flows. They have allowed the phone (second screen) apps to have a direct way to cast, inside the app. To one other screen, to such an extent that multi-room audio works by first making a group that then presents in the app as one device. (Sonos' proprietary casting is the notable exception.) Where-as historically casting was possible but often used dedicated apps, a UPnP Control Point, that talked to a different UPnP Media Renderer to point it at various UPnP Media Servers. A tri-part system, with control as the third point.

Netflix hypothetically could have used the UPnP to do casting. Phone acts as a Media Server (but serves up one-time-use URLs on the net for actual media) to the movie on question. Then act as a UPnP control point to control media playback. But they made DIAL, which reduced it to a two system network. And to have more resident native apps running (with rest channels open between the devices).

It's interesting seeing what folks do with Google Home and Home Assistant. Orchestrating routines and triggers and what not is kind of neat, in some ways wildly hard to imagine from "back then", but also feels so short in other ways. Is such a primitive level of control. It feels like the task of making actual systems coordinateable and orchestrateable, the real dream of ubicomp, is indeed quite far away, unowned, even though in many cases we have advanced computer protocols afforded to us.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#145
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about paying them $100. They aren't dumb. They've realized that a large section of people will not bother, and aren't capable of sailing the high seas. Hostile behaviors won't change until it hits their bottom line, and because they are an extremely profitable company, it won't happen for a very long time.

Maybe the buccaneers need to up their marketing. Whatever happened to the media players that had built-in torrent searching and streaming?

There is nothing at all to be gained by advertising piracy, especially to the streaming companies.

Let them enshittify their apps and just tell your friends and family offline how to have a sane video viewing experience.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#146
post #68
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OS do you run? I was thinking of doing this with SteamOS.

If it's going to be primarily a gaming device then that makes sense, but if not, what do you gain from SteamOS? And why do you want Steam to start on boot? I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone). Sadly, I don't know of any nice o…

I use a Logitech K400 BT keyboard+touchpad for remote control of a PC I have connected to my TV. But, it's not used as a streaming device - it's a file share + home automation hub, so the keyboard makes sense.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#147
post #130

A big part of why marketplaces like Netflix and Steam got so popular is because they provided a low-friction way to consume that was even easier than piracy. It seems like the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction now- it's often easier to copyright infringe than to watch something the legit way, even if you pay for a subscription that grants you access. Great example of something that's illegal but no…

I wish there was a service like steam for videos: not subscription but high confidence purchase of video content available "forever" (even if they remove it from the purchasing options, license would remain). Personally I watch so little tv/movies that any subscription was always overpaying. I still did it for a while, because the price wasn't high enough to push me to seek out other options. I'm no longer subbing an…

> I wish there was a service like steam for videos: not subscription but high confidence purchase of video content available "forever" (even if they remove it from the purchasing options, license would remain).

In general, iTunes content purchase licenses are owned in perpetuity.

You do need to download the bits and have the files on hand, as (a) Apple may lose the right to re-deliver the bits to you, or (b) you may change regions (e.g., move from Australia to Canada) and find the re-download isn't available in the new region.

A good deal of stories were published in 2018 about Apple revoking or removing content, but when threads are pulled, the examples generally fell into these two camps. If you had kept the content yourself, you got to keep enjoying it.

> Personally I watch so little tv/movies that any subscription was always overpaying

Agree there's a good chance many households could purchase their preferred shows for less than the "watch throwaway stuff" subscriptions -- and then own them. This suggests a more ideal pairing is purchasing, plus something like Pluto.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#149
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Admittedly this is where Apple's naming on the Apple TV has been really bad). In this particular situation I am referring to the Apple TV App not the OS or Hardware. The ability to find shows and movies to watch across all (except netflix) of your streaming services. According to the article they dropped support for Airplay a while ago.

Why would the Apple TV app play other streaming services? I know the Amazon Prime app supports some partner streaming services, but I don’t know of any other streamer that plays its competitors videos in their app? Every service requires using their app and only plays its own videos in that app.

To add some additional context to the other comment, the Apple TV App launched before the Apple TV+ streaming service. About 3 years before.

The point of the app was to consolidate all of your watching across various services to a single source. It could work with third party apps and can sign up for various streaming services from within the app. This is a major way it differentiates from the Amazon Prime app that you can still use the third party apps.

So it playing third party content was always the point of the app, Apple TV+ just fit nicely within that app. Less them being competitors and more just why it exists in the first place.

Netflix to my knowledge is the only one that is resistant to using this service, I have not seen any other not work with it. The app is very convenient for keeping up with what I watch across services.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BitTorrent → Local Media Player App Still the best way to watch movies and shows. Even if we pay $100 dollars every month to streaming services they will never not be too dumb to know how to make a convenient player that isn't hostile to its users.

What is your local app of choice? Do you sync between devices?

IINA on Mac, free & open source, has been perfect for everything for years:

https://github.com/iina/iina

While traveling I was so pissed with the Apple TV player's performance on less-than-lightspeed internet connections, I ragecancelled my subscription and just yo ho ho'ed the last couple episodes of Severance

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