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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

#441

Post by scarface74 »

partialrecall wrote: post #426
scarface74 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people on HN that care more about saving $8 than the headache of both finding pirated media, lugging around an external hard drive, making sure that the movie is a supported format or converting it to a supported format. HN users seem to be way out of touch with the average user.

Virtually anything you pirate these days will be supported on virtually anything you might want to watch movies on these days. The obscure edge-cases are things that HN users might be aware of, but simply aren't a practical concern in practice. DLNA is generally the case where you might run into issues, but a transcoding DLNA server solves that problem. Not to mention it greatly simplifies other matters. If you drop…

Virtually anything you pirate these days will be supported on virtually anything you might want to watch movies on these days.

Roku is the most popular streaming device and it only supports H.264 for attached storage and its very picky on what it will support.

The obscure edge-cases are things that HN users might be aware of, but simply aren't a practical concern in practice. DLNA is generally the case where you might run into issues, but a transcoding DLNA server solves that problem.

So now you've added even more complexity and a regular DLNA server/client has what is far from a user friendly interface like Plex.

If you drop a bunch of movies onto your kids tablet, you no longer have to worry about being away from a cell tower or wifi AP. Furthermore,

So now we have a streaming DLNA server, transcoding, bit torrenting, and copying the movie to the device as opposed to paying $8 a month and just click "download" to put it on the device?

A harddrive full of movies avoids all of this mess. Subscribe to two or three services a year and you'll be spending a lot more than $8 a month. Maybe it still seems trivial to you with an inflated tech salary,

And the people not in tech are going to jump through all of the hoops you are suggesting?

How poor do you think the average household in the US is that close to 50% are paying for iOS devices and not going to pay $25 a month for a few streaming services? Do you realize what they are already paying for cable?

I am certainly not out of touch with my own friends and family!

Your friends and family are not a representative sample....

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

#442

Post by josteink »

> given the effort it took to migrate users away from piracy and toward legitimate services in the first place. The primary lesson learned during that experience is you need to compete with . It's not really a choice. It's real, it's impossible to stop.

This lesson seems utterly forgotten.

The fatigue is real, and more often than not I’m not finding anything I’m looking for on any of the subscription-based streaming services I’m paying for.

So I’m cancelling all of them.

My fallback: iTunes on my AppleTV has good choice in movies I can buy, and I usually find what I’m looking for there.

What’s not quickly meets the Plex.

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

#443

Post by TeMPOraL »

scarface74 wrote: post #430
TeMPOraL wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think them making apps implies they're used a lot? It's enough that they're used some of the time by some subset of users to make it worth it to them - they get to have more control over experience, more ability to scoop data, and they can offer the ability to locally cache whole movies, which they can't do in a browser.

So in other words people pay for the convenience of streaming services and most people don’t want to carry around hard drives, use torrents, etc. Just like I said....

Yes, and I keep telling you that mainstream movie piracy nowadays isn't torrents but streaming websites operated by pirates, that look and work similarly to YouTube or Netflix, except all the videos are pirated.

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

#444

Post by criddell »

zainhoda wrote: post #403
criddell wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Netflix still do DVDs by mail? That might be a good option as well.

Yes. About a year ago, I resubscribed to Netflix DVDs because the library is so much better than what's on streaming. I feel like people have forgotten that the DVD library is enormous and has basically every movie you'd ever want -- and now that fewer people use it, you don't have long wait times anymore.

I've never bothered to resubscribe to Netflix DVDs because I've always been able to find what I'm looking for as a rental from Amazon or iTunes.

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

#445

Post by CivilianZero »

katbyte wrote: post #384
dfxm12 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to call switching libraries "inconvenient". We're talking about opening a new tab or switching an app. A few finger budges for ~2hr of entertainment. I don't know what to say if you find that so inconvenient, especially compared to the effort it would take to go to a torrent site, find a high quality stream, make sure it has the right special features you're looking for, or what have you, to pirate…

> A few finger budges for ~2hr of entertainment. It's more like: check sites 1-5 looking for the movie, can't find it (or it a PPV download, OR the app/site doesn't support 5.1 DDS, its quality is bad) get frustrated go onto $torrentsite, sort by size, download one with most seeders & a larger file size wait 30-60 min and done. Netflix used to make it easier as their app UX and quality are high so it was a one stop s…

This is incredibly disingenuous. Before you download that movie you need to make sure it’s not being tracked, make sure it’s the format you want (which may be a lie), possibly setup a VPN (another service you’re now paying for and which are never simple), possibly convert the movie to a file format which your chosen video player can stream to your chosen device (both of which you’ve definitely tinkered with in the past) and if any of these steps are off/not done properly, you have to just go find another valid copy which is not always easy. Also, some of the best torrenting libraries are not free and often require you to seed a certain amount which eats up bandwidth and may just not be an option if you have a data cap/slowdown at certain times of day (most ISPs do one or both of these).

Most Smart TVs and Apple TV (or your iPhone/iPad/Mac) let you do a search across all streaming platforms and their library and if it’s available you just click to open the app and start playing. It takes exactly 15 seconds.

Piracy is not “the most convenient answer” and considering the shocking lack of familiarity with everyday technology in these comments, it’s laughable that anyone would claim it is. It’s greed, plain and simple.

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

#446

Post by scarface74 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #443
scarface74 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words people pay for the convenience of streaming services and most people don’t want to carry around hard drives, use torrents, etc. Just like I said....

Yes, and I keep telling you that mainstream movie piracy nowadays isn't torrents but streaming websites operated by pirates, that look and work similarly to YouTube or Netflix, except all the videos are pirated.

Is this what you call “working similarly”?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21005204

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

#447

Post by fragmede »

switch007 wrote: post #397
missosoup wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delete this.

Oh Come on, it’s the second result on google for “Plex reddit”.

Sure, but unless you use Reddit on a regular basis, why would you even consider adding "reddit" to the search query?

To be fair, just searching for "plex" does return Reddit results, though not on the first page (for me anyway, Google personalizes search results). It's no longer the Wild West of Internet, and it turns out information doesn't want to be free, it wants to live in invite-only areas who's members are vetted before invitation. DMCA take-downs can't be sent if the material can't be found.

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

#448

Post by CivilianZero »

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…

“It’s easier to setup and purchase and manage a shared server, write and manage scripts, and develop a frontend for managing the content than it is to search an app/a couple apps.”

Can you just admit you don’t want to pay services out of spite? No one could possibly rationalize this as being easier.

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

#449

Post by CivilianZero »

I really have to ask: Is everyone in the comments apart of an organized troll? Because I feel like I’ve lost my mind reading most of these comments.

It seems like everyone here thinks torrenting is as easy and simple as using streaming services actually is, and that streaming is as complicated as torrenting actually is.

I used to torrent stuff all the time. Constantly. I have several HDs laying around filled with torrented movies and tv shows. Why? Because I was in college and couldn’t afford them.

The day I started making enough money to just sign up to services and buy copies of the movies I wanted I stopped torrenting forever. It’s easy and I’m not stealing.

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

#450

Post by jerf »

icebraining wrote: post #345
jerf wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

Hence the "verges", rather than simply saying it "is". It's as close to a complaint about it as you can get without quite 100% being there.
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