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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

#341

Post by octocode »

tombert wrote: post #279
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #159

No shit. Valve worked out the key to combating piracy in the early 2000s. To quote Gaben himself: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to y…

I've said this for years. Piracy, in many cases, offers a superior product to streaming. If I go to ThePirateBay, I'm virtually guaranteed to find whatever movie I'm looking for, in 1080p (or even 4k nowadays) quality, without any DRM, which can then be easily streamed from Plex or Emby on any of my devices with no regards to regions, often with more options for subtitles and audio tracks (if you're watching anime).…

I use an online service called JustWatch that searches through all of the platforms at once. Huge time saver.

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

#342

Post by fucking_tragedy »

MisterTea wrote: post #333

Perfect example. I have Netflix, Prime and Hulu. Thats already too many as most have a bunch of crap and a few shows I like, some have duplicate content. I watched One Punch man on Netflix and can also watch on Hulu. Season Two was released on Hulu. Well that works for me but what about people who had Netflix, Like OPM and now want to watch season 2? I've been binging Star Trek. I'd also like to watch the new series…

> I'd rather spend no more than $25/mo on tv and $50 for >=100mbit internet. Thats an ideal number considering I spend less on electricity each month.

Agreed. Other countries are able to do it, but cable companies and ISPs have monopolies in different regions of the US.

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

#344

Post by driverdan »

navigatesol wrote: post #190
eyegor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We bought a retired datacenter rack and everyone contributes a few bucks a month to cover running costs. Everyone does a bit of pirating here and there, and I think the media companies realize it's a cost of doing business. But something tells me they wouldn't look too fondly on an organised, multi-user pirated content distribution platform... Here in Canada there are some big chains (Best Buy, Staples) being sued…

It has become fairly common. I have multiple friends with large, shared Plex libraries. This isn't sharing with the public, it's sharing among known friends.

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

#345

Post by icebraining »

jerf wrote: post #250
cptskippy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear which you ascribe to but it's curious that you don't take offense to either being compared to Evangelicals. In either case, they're both almost a Cult of personality. The fans are so adorant of their object that they often overlook glaringly evil deeds. At the same time, the level of manipulation exhibited and the devotion demanded by the personality is extreme to the point that outsiders see it as absur…

"The fans are so adorant of their object that they often overlook glaringly evil deeds." This verges on the tautological though, given that "fan" is short for "fanatic"; you're complaining that fanatics are fanatics. Well... yeah, but so? I don't think you can directly impute the behavior of the fans on to the target of their fandom. (You can draw some indirect conclusions, but it involves at least a few steps of low…

> that "fan" is short for "fanatic"

Eh, that's its (probable) origin, but I'd say the two have diverged in meaning; "fan" nowadays doesn't have the same connotation of extreme and uncritical zeal of "fanatic."

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

#346

Post by therealdrag0 »

teeray wrote: post #317
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

Woah. Never thought about that for TV, but I think it'd work well for me at least!

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

#347

Post by fhennig »

navigatesol wrote: post #202
throwaway2048 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somehow doubt that streaming platforms will finally be the ones to end piracy once and for all via lawsuits.

There's a difference between pirating something, and distributing pirated content, both ethically and legally.

I'm interested in your view on how it is an ethical difference.

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

#348

Post by chriswwweb »

tombert wrote: post #279
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #159

No shit. Valve worked out the key to combating piracy in the early 2000s. To quote Gaben himself: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to y…

I've said this for years. Piracy, in many cases, offers a superior product to streaming. If I go to ThePirateBay, I'm virtually guaranteed to find whatever movie I'm looking for, in 1080p (or even 4k nowadays) quality, without any DRM, which can then be easily streamed from Plex or Emby on any of my devices with no regards to regions, often with more options for subtitles and audio tracks (if you're watching anime).…

I agree, the big difference between music streaming services and TV series or movies streaming services is that on every music streaming service you can find almost all the western mainstream songs by all the artists.

For TV series/movies it's very different, lots of shows, series and movies are exclusive to one streaming service and lots of shows, series and movies can't be found on any of them.

But still I don't think a majority of potential customers will be enough annoyed by the current content fragmentation to go back to piracy. Also because the piracy tools have become less and because it's still hard to find what you really want, even when using some simple as popcorn time. I just think customers will start to own more than just one subscription and will probably switch from time to time from one subscription to another to get access to the content that is exclusive to one of the streaming services that are available. The loser here is clearly the customer that will pay more for less, but it won't hurt enough to make piracy popular again.

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

#350

Post by coldtea »

scarface74 wrote: post #148
TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, it's not like there aren't pirate streaming services available. In fact, I can't think of anyone non-technical I know who torrents anything; they all stream movies from pirate player sites. It's easier, and also perfectly legal for the viewer.

It's not "easy" on mobile and definitely not easy when you have to depend on cellular connectivity to stream while on the road.

>It's not "easy" on mobile

Short videos maybe, but I don't think I know anybody, young or old, who cares of streaming full movies on mobile. Maybe some outliers who watch their series on their commute...

The vast majority watch movies when they are at home...

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