Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #318

scarface74 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bit Torrent “consistent”? Having to worry about the quality of rips, whether there is a complete seed, titled correctly, has the right language, hard coded subtitles in another language, etc?

This is somehow more convenient than just paying $8 a month?

Even then, I would still need to pay for a VPN and no VPN provider provides the bandwidth to keep up with my gigabit internet.

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

#372

Post by MrMember » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

Between the service fragmenting, hostile UX, and price increases I had no issue going back to piracy. I don't have a problem paying for content, but when it's significantly easier and more user friendly to just download what I want, and I can watch it on any device I want, that's what I'm going to do.

I used to pirate music because that was the easiest and most straight forward way to get what I wanted. Now I buy it from Amazon because with one click I can pay for it and get a direct download link to the DRM-free mp3s.

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

#373

Post by thedaemon » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #178

xfitm3 wrote: post #82

I will always pirate shows. I cut the cord 11 years ago due to my objection of cable company billing practices. The entire industry is greedy. I was a netflix subscriber for awhile but I burned thru all the good stuff and left.

I don’t even know if I’m “pirating” or not. There’s pretty much nothing on Netflix anymore, and I can’t even figure out how to sign up for HBO streaming (I think I have to get a code from cable provider first?) if I even cared enough to do so. I have found a few ad-supported/free streaming sites like Tubi and Popcornflix, plus some public domain streaming sites like publicdomainflix and archive.org. Are they legitima…

HBO has 2 streaming apps. 1 for cable / satellite owners and 1 for HBO's own streaming service. You should look for HBO Now!

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

#374

Post by raslah » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

I was never patient enough for piracy as it takes diligence to find reliable sources. One thing that does irritate me is this general antipiracy attitude on the web today. It's like the entire population works for Big Tech. It used to be if you did enough searching, you could find pretty much anything you wanted, but now everyone acts like the piracy police and gets all offended if you even insinuate piracy. Probably sounds rather antisocial, but I think that attitude is dangerous as it gives corporations way too much influence, beyond what we've yielded them already. Maybe it's just the places I frequent.

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

#375

Post by fucking_tragedy » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #18

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…

“Your circle” unless it includes families with small kids, isn’t Disney’s primary audience. Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a…

I suggest you step outside of your circle. When I did, I found that many lower and middle class parents were using pirating setups that I didn't even know existed.

For example, I learned about PopcornTime from a single parent who ran it on a laptop connected to their TV. The guy is bus dispatcher.

When I need a recommendation for a streaming site or tracker, I ask my old neighbor who works as a lab tech.

I've found that I'm generally ignorant of such things because everyone in my IT circle just pays for streaming services.

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

#376

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

ProZsolt wrote: post #306

coldtea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just so many Star Wars movies, and so many Marvel movies, and while I've seen most in theaters, they are basically juvenile blockbuster cookie cutter crap. The first 3 star wars films where important for their era, but most of the later ones are just forgettable sci-fi (for non-discerning fans). Not to mention letting down parts of the canon (e.g. the Solo movie, or "Kylo Ren", a hipster/teenage goth abominat…

Logan not even Marvel Studios it's 20th Century Fox so that makes it 0 in 10 :P For me, it went from I want to see every Marvel movie in the cinema to stream it from Netflix to I won't pay any extra if it's not on Netflix. I really like the Star Wars universe, but the only good new movie was Rogue One. It worked because it was a completely separate story only loosely tied to the original films.

Seeing that Disney bought Fox, it is a Disney movie now.

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

#377

Post by durnygbur » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #275

"Choice" here is just a euphemism for "yet another $10.99/month subscription". The more services, the less content I want each has. The more services/apps/etc I have to engage with, the less I want to engage with any of them. That is to say, it's not just as expensive as corded packages, it's harder to actually use. It's the opposite of what it should be. Content needs F/RAND licensing, possibly with a temporary bloc…

> just wait until Disney starts flexing.

They will savage or at least sue everyone alive until no other service will remain in the internet of the Western world, all these while hired actresses making cute faces will be throwing pink glitter at everyone involved.

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

#378

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

partialrecall wrote: post #309

mcv wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about 20 Marvel movies, 11 Star Wars movies, and 2 Star Wars TV shows. This is not about watching them when they come out, it's about being able to watch the entire backlog whenever I want. (Assuming they make their entire backlog available, which they should.) Also: tons of Pixar movies. And I still haven't seen The Lion King and Aladdin. Or pretty much any Disney movie other than Brave. If it's not your t…

If you throw in the rest of Pixar and Disney animated stuff, you're still probably talking about under 100 movies total, right? One cheap usb hard drive and an afternoon on the public library's wifi and you could own non-DRM copies of all of these movies.

And you still have to get the movies to the mobile devices and TVs....

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

#379

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #375

scarface74 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Your circle” unless it includes families with small kids, isn’t Disney’s primary audience. Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a…

I suggest you step outside of your circle. When I did, I found that many lower and middle class parents were using pirating setups that I didn't even know existed . For example, I learned about PopcornTime from a single parent who ran it on a laptop connected to their TV. The guy is bus dispatcher. When I need a recommendation for a streaming site or tracker, I ask my old neighbor who works as a lab tech. I've found…

Well, which should I give more weight to -- your anecdotal experience or the published number of subscribers for Netflix, Hulu, etc?

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

#380

Post by FussyZeus » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #307

FussyZeus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on this, I wonder how much money all these supposedly "struggling" companies are burning building data centers and the required backbone to support all these stupid streaming services for the various walled gardens of content? I mean they could just host their stuff on Netflix/iTunes/Amazon but no let's build an entire new server farm doing the exact same work, likely on the exact same hardware and the exac…

If all use Amazon or Google to stream then there is not that much extra expense. IMO I prefer to buy a game from the developer and get it cheaper or give the money to the creator but this days most games are on stores and not on the dev website, a good example is Minecraft ,it would probably be more expensive if it would have been on Steam and I would have to install the Steam client to play the game, and I could not…

Well Minecraft always had it's own launcher since it left beta. I think they've mostly just kept the same system for the Java version because it's what people are used to, and there's a huge community around modding it.

There is a version of Minecraft on the Microsoft Store but it's not nearly as popular.