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Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

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Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#31

The instant I see the word "Unlimited" - I don't even bother to investigate further, as the project is either (A) Lying, (B) Unsustainable, (C) Rate limiting or otherwise bottlenecking you so you can't really use the service effectively. I've seen dozens (maybe more) references to the "Unlimited" service, and with only a few exceptions, they always fall into one of those categories. I'm wondering when other people co…

I imagine the 200mb limit per-file is to prevent their api/web servers from blowing up.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#33
post #22

Is there anything from preventing people from encrypting their hard drive and uploading it as 10 10GB avi files?

We have a few advanced techniques that inspect the file data and ensure that the file is valid. So even if you rename your encrypted backup to to My_Home_Video.avi, it wouldn't pass our check and would fail to upload.

And what about lossless image formats like .tiff or .bmp? These allow you to basically store any data in an image, and although the photo looks just like noise it's a completely valid image file with minimal overhead.

I do know some people that use that for backups on picasa and flickr, which have unlimited storage and 1TB respectively.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#34

How is this different/better than streamnation.com?

- Native desktop filesystem integration. We don't make you go to a website to access your content; everything is accessible as a regular file in Explorer/Finder and opens/plays in your native player (i.e. VLC).

- Instant adaptive bitrate transcoding. Videos you upload to Streem play instantly on any device, regardless of bandwidth (slow connections automatically get a lower quality; if your connection gets better, we auto-upgrade to a higher quality). Streamnation has a large wait time before the video is transcoded and ready for playback.

- Streamnation has illegal features built in to their app (i.e. auto-scraping and uploading YouTube videos), which makes them much more liable for shutdown.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#35
This looks like a much worse deal than OVH's new service Hubic. At 10 Euro a month ($13.80), they offer 10 TB (an essentially unlimited amount of space) with no restrictions on file size or file type. You can actually encrypt your files before uploading (which you should be doing) and host whatever you want.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#36
If they offer a video/audio streaming service, what happens if I upload an mp4 of a copyrighted movie, even if I own it? Do they check files to see if they are copyrighted? If they do, will files be deleted automatically or will notice be given?

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#37
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to clarify. We use convergent encryption ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_encryption ), which works with our de-duplication. Example: You and I both have a file A. Our software encrypts that file A with a unique key generated from the file (say, the MD5 hash of the file), which makes E(A). Every user that uploads file A will generate the same encrypted version E(A) because the encryption key will be th…

Does the de-duplication aspect of it have any impact on DMCA/copyright issues? For example, lets say somebody from HBO downloads Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay and then uploads it to Streem. We could assume that many other people on Streem also have that same copy of the episode uploaded. HBO then issues a DMCA takedown (could they?), would Streem delete the file for everybody? And does Streem then have to preve…

Since there's no way to globally "publish" a file, I don't see how DMCA takedowns could work.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#38
post #25

Can you explain how this is better than - for example - Google Drive with their 1TB for $10?

I have a library of media that is in the multiple terabyte range, and growing. The cloud storage services I've investigated have been wholly inadequate, or too expensive. For me, this one seems like the sweet spot, especially if I can get that early-user discount.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#39
post #14

Does anyone actually have experience with this? It sounds like one of those "there has to be a catch" type services. Any limits on filetypes? Is there a max size per file? How is the network speed? Do they fire any customers who use too much storage space and/or bandwidth? What is stopping my company from encrypting our database backups and uploading them to Streem nightly for permanent storage at a fraction of the p…

Perhaps they are doing some sort cap/peak on the inode count? Which IMO is not so bad, unless you need to store a lot of small files.

Re: Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month

#40
post #25

Can you explain how this is better than - for example - Google Drive with their 1TB for $10?

I want to know this as well. Google Drive also will stream your media, and allows files of any filetype for general storage. Also, easy sharing with anyone anyone on the web (even people who don't have a Google account).
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