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Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

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Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#311

Post by merlinsbrain »

on_and_off wrote: post #280
sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

It has already happened to me as well. Look, I want a convenient way to watch movies. I would even be ready to pay more than I do right now to Netflix to have a library of ALL the movies I want to watch. 1 library, not 10, especially if they may or may not contain the movie I want to see. My honeymoon period with Netflix and co is over. - I feel that their original content has dried out : there is even more of it, bu…

If you’re willing to pay, why not rent from the iTunes Store / Amazon Prime?

Pick one, they’ve had all the movies / TV shows I wanted to watch, which are not all mainstream.

If there’s an exception and there’s something you don’t find it there - well, do you, but I really don’t understand how piracy is the default answer to convenience with people claiming they have the willingness to pay.

Someone else commented about the local video store - also an option, if not something I’d do myself (does redbox count?)

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#312

Post by pwg »

lostgame wrote: post #237
pessimizer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. I don't know anything about Plex, but torrenting is pretty effortless compared to figuring out which streaming service what you want to watch is on, figuring out how to get that, evaluating other content it has trying to justify the price, figuring out how to get it to your tv, and figuring out how to use it. The only thin…

>> torrenting is pretty effortless compared to figuring out which streaming service what you want to watch is on, figuring out how to get that, evaluating other content it has trying to justify the price, figuring out how to use it, and figuring out how to get it to your TV Damn. You just nailed this. In fact, hearing it this way makes me confused as to why anyone would ever use a streaming service to start. I live i…

The infographic that Cory Doctrow links to from the page below, which was created back in the "DVD" days, is also still quite relevant to the current "which service is it on" world we are entering.

Replace the "unskippable 'you criminal' you" DVD previews with the descriptions of determining where, what, when, etc.

https://boingboing.net/2010/02/18/infographic-buying-d.html

The 300 separate streaming services need to understand that they need a friction level very close to the "if you are a pirate" box at the top in order to prevent their customers from returning to the pirate route. And having 300 separate services, with disjoint content, is not at all near the friction level of the "if you are a pirate" box at the top of the infographic.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#313

Post by mrlala »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #110
apexalpha wrote: post #105

People forget you don't need to pay for all of them yourself. About 5 people share the Netflix I use. I suppose someone else will get Disney and give me access.

That's true. But streaming services are also heavily underutilized. My Netflix subscription is used by 5 to 6 people - that's why I actually pay for the highest tier, to minimize the chance that somebody will be locked out because others wanted to watch something else at the same time. Even 5-6 people, I doubt my Netflix account is used for more than 10-15 hours a week in total.

>But streaming services are also heavily underutilized

?

>Even 5-6 people, I doubt my Netflix account is used for more than 10-15 hours a week in total.

Err, you seem to be under the impression that 2 hours/person/week is the norm for someone with a streaming service.. Narrator: It's not.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#314

Post by hos234 »

JustARandomGuy wrote: post #266
hos234 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any recommendations?

For Star Wars, the storyline is now split into Legends (pre-Disney acquisition) and the new canon Disney Star Wars storyline. For the Legends storyline, I loved the X-Wings series of books (basically how the Rebels defeated the major parts of the Empire): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BJST00W . My favorite book in the series is The Bacta War, there's a lot of small ship action instead of the movies where huge fleets a…

Thanks I'll check them out! There are so many books I had no idea where to start.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#315

Post by raydev »

qaq wrote: post #28

That the funny thing I have HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime but sometimes it's easier to watch something on a pirate site than searching for which service has what.

My cable provider had an crazy discount on their HBO+OnDemand offering, so I bought it and I had complete access to nearly every HBO show and more for 2 years. I ended up torrenting either entire seasons or torrenting last night's episode because:

- The interface was painful to use. If I watched 2 eps of a show one night, and returned the next night, the box didn't remember where I was, so I would have to search up the show using the remote without a keyboard, scroll through an extremely slow UI of giant show posters that looked exactly the same and didn't show the episode number until I selected it. And that list would lead to another list, and every time I selected something, it took approximately 5-10 seconds to load the next page.

- It was "HD" meaning it was outputting 1080p to my TV, but there was a ton of color banding, dark scenes had really obvious compression squares, etc.

- Newly aired shows would usually not appear until the next day, and sometimes they would appear, then disappear for a few hours, then reappear. The stated goal was to have the shows available right away, but something about the infra prevented them from reliably doing it.

- Once in a while I would be going through an old season, and some random episode, like the second episode of the season, would simply disappear from the list for a day or two.

- Maybe this is a Canada-only/CTV problem, but there were several CTV shows I tried to watch that had rewind/fastforward COMPLETELY DISABLED, presumably to prevent commercial skipping (because they had commercials in their OnDemand shows). If you watched a show halfway, and decided to come back and watch from that point, CTV said "f* you, watch the whole thing again."

In cable company's defense, the interface to all this was very pretty. They were iteratively updating it too and very slowly making the OnDemand menus just a little more easy to use, so it wasn't some old garbage that never changed.

But the sheer number of actions I had to take to watch a single episode made me join a private TV tracker, where I reliably got extremely high quality video immediately after airings, and entire seasons neatly packaged in folders.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#316

Post by icebraining »

theelous3 wrote: post #185
Snoddas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden at least "non payment" is not a valid way to cancel a service. You could end up with late fees and debt-collectors after you instead.

You pay for access, not for use, so there is no way of incurring debt.

So they just don't suspend your account even if billing fails, then after a year or so they can go after the price for 12 months of access.

Alternatively, they can do the same as the ISPs around here: jack up the sticker price, then give a large discount - conditional on your permanence as a client for X months. If you decide to cancel, you have to pay them back the discount accrued.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#317

Post by teeray »

eitland wrote: post #14

No surprise. Even we (HN) predicted this the moment the first content company withdrew their content from Netflix. Two reasons: 1. People only have so much money. 2. When people compare it to what they used to payit seems unfair. People complain when gas prices increases by a few percent, no wonder they complain when they suddenly have to pay twice or even three times for the same content they used to pay one low mon…

> hybrid approach where you pay for a number of monthly credits

We can call this the Audible model if you like

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#318

Post by jeromegv »

scarface74 wrote: post #146
viraptor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds terribly complicated. You know you can google "watch ... online free" and get a streamable version in the first two pages of results, right?

And I just did that for Avengers on my iPad. The first result takes me to: - 5Movies4Free -- which then redirects me - mobilevpn.download -- and then when I click on "Install and Register Now". It redirects me to -"app.appsflyer.com" which then - redirects me to the app store - and then it just hangs Is that really the user experience that people want as opposed to just paying $8 a month and they can stream movies to…

Agree with you. The only consistent experience for me is BitTorrent. But trying to google watching a movie for free? Does someone actually do that? It's always hundreds of popup, fake links, fake ads, and can never really get to the actual content.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#319

Post by anewguy9000 »

eyegor wrote: post #123
sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

This is why in my circle we set up the town pump plex server. Originally it was for streaming older movies (pre 1970) which you can't stream from any major service but the new era of fragmentation has drastically expanded it. We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Then we have scripts scraping the top x movies/shows from torrent sites once a week and a…

that is an awesome grassroots solution :)

btw if anybody wants to add some goodies to plex, i created browser extensions that add trailers and random sorting. check them out!

https://github.com/conceptualspace/metatrailer-for-plex

https://github.com/conceptualspace/shuffle-for-plex

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#320

Post by UserIsUnused »

Freak_NL wrote: post #136
probably_wrong wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is an imbalance in the market, though. You just have to add the hidden costs of each alternative. Pirating has costs: financial, legal (chances of getting caught times expected fine), and personal (hassle of hunting down the right torrent). Netflix managed to strike a balance point: you had a higher monetary price, but the legal and personal costs were now gone from the equation. With all the new competitors,…

Quite. Legality is really not that relevant when you look at the problem from pure market theory. The legality aspect does mean the piracy as a competitor has a weakness that can be exploited by other competitors — e.g., by lobbying for stricter laws or suing individuals, or by appealing to morality — but it is a competitor nonetheless, and acts as one.

Market theory must accommodate things like piracy, just like google considers fines just some risk in their practices.
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