Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

al.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 188 posts

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#51

Post by dewey »

chii wrote: post #46
dewey wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not accounting for the important part of sourcing the pirated movies and running a Plex server though? That's what 99% of the people who only want to consume will be struggling with, not the playback client.

popcorntime still exists and works very well. No need to be running your own server.

In some countries (Germany) using public torrent trackers (like what popcorntime is doing behind the scenes) will result in 300+ Euros of fines pretty quickly. You also have to factor the legality in which is a pretty big factor for choosing to pay on top of convenience I‘d guess.

Now you also have to explain your non-technical guest how to use a VPN, pay for it and make sure it’s always running before starting popcorntime.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#52

Post by AngryData »

40acres wrote: post #22

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or lap…

I would agree in the past, you needed something like a dedicated media center PC. But these days it is cheap as hell for an old PC, or laptop or smart phone that can handle video just fine. Even a new computer device is pretty damn cheap to have just for your TV. Also, everyone is assuming people are downloading torrents for their media piracy, but everything you can find on a torrent website you can easily find on a streaming site. The only reason to torrent a show or movie over streaming an illegitimate copy is if you plan on watching it a dozen times over and you have limited bandwidth.

While legit streaming servers are a bit easier to use, illegitimate streaming websites are only just barely behind that and also contain pretty much every tv show or movie you could ever want to watch. The only real downside I see is the usual lack of closed captioning support. If my choice is to pay money for 4 different streaming services and having to hunt around through each one to find what I want to watch, versus clicking one extra link and closing a pop-up ad for an unlimited catalog, the choice doesn't seem that hard.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#53

Post by procinct »

torgian wrote: post #40

Piracy is alive and kicking in a lot of countries still, as I'm sure some of you know. Netflix is probably partially at fault for this. When I travel to different countries and pull up Netflix, I see shows available in that country that aren't available in another. It's annoying. Of course, a VPN takes care of this (to an extent).

I used to always use a VPN for Netflix but then they started cracking down and it stopped working. Are you still able to use a VPN to view content from a different region?

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#54

Post by rhino369 »

tw04 wrote: post #17
Causality1 wrote: post #2

For me it's a simple equation that has as much to do with time and hassle as it has to do with money. I'm not going to juggle five different monthly subscriptions. I'll pay Netflix for their decent original content and all my old favorites like Star Trek. I'll buy a month of Hbo every couple years to catch up with them. I'm not going to pay $200 for a cable subscription and I'm not going to pay for Netflix and YouTub…

>I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed. It amazes me they seem to be completely oblivious that this will be the the result. A percentage of someone else's revenue is still a bigger number than a percentage of nothing...

The majority of people either have a moral issue with 100% piracy or cannot easily figure out how to do it.

Public torrents lead to getting piracy emails from your isp. Private torrents are annoying and difficult. In general you have to deal with shady organizations and without experience it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what isn’t.

And I suspect the vast majority of pirates never stopped. And wouldn’t stop unless the price was well below fair value. Winning over pirates is shitty business strategy.

Also Netflix’s 12 bucks a month isn’t enough to fund all the media that’s created. Netflix would have to charge a lot more (indistinguishable from multiple services that charge less) or less tv/movies would get made. Netflix’s larger catalog of old was subsidized by network and cable companies. They sold rights for pennies on the dollar. But Netflix is killing those networks. The business method isn’t viable.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#55

Post by voidwtf »

aplummer wrote: post #26
chx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Chromecast because it worked with Netflix and stupid cheap. It is convenient! Then comes Amazon Prime and says I need to buy another dongle to watch them. I am so not interested. Grow up, work together with Google, I can't care less whatever petty competition you are playing, your problem not mine. I will just pirate the things I wanted from Prime.

“This is inconvenient and expensive which gives me the unilateral right to steal your intellectual property”. It’s an interesting take, that you get to steal anything you like if it isn’t priced and sold how you want.

This is the same old out of touch attitude that led to the “you wouldn’t steal a car would you” commercials.

Nobody has to watch the content but they want to. You have fly-by-nights and unethical operations abounding that make everything only a google search away, sometimes with a single click. I agree that people should not be entitled to the intellectual property of others. However, like the war on drugs and sex education sometime the best answer is to recognize the reality and stop pushing teetotalism.

Content providers had a good thing going with Netflix and Hulu. Those two services had a recognized impact on content piracy. Yet here we are, repeating the mistakes of the past while the customer takes the path of least resistance. Right now if I pull up “Doctor Who” on my Apple TV I can watch all the episodes. I just have to switch between 3 different services, sometimes in the middle of a season, to do it. Yes I pay for those services, one included with my cable subscription.

But all of this is pretty silly to argue about to be honest. We’re absolutely spoiled with so much entertainment and media at our fingertips. The “us” of 20 years ago would wonder WTF were arguing about and pay out the nose for these capabilities.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#56

Post by [deleted] »

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #29

Most people dont know but you can get P4S (plex for share) where you pay (or free) someone to get added on their plex library. Some of these servers have CDN and have 90+TB storage with automated requests system. Thousands of shows and movies. You can also get IPTV, which is basivally cable TV through internet for 10$/month. 5000 channels. You ask how its possible? Basically fly by night companies redistributing cabl…

[deleted]

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#57

Post by bscphil »

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #29

Most people dont know but you can get P4S (plex for share) where you pay (or free) someone to get added on their plex library. Some of these servers have CDN and have 90+TB storage with automated requests system. Thousands of shows and movies. You can also get IPTV, which is basivally cable TV through internet for 10$/month. 5000 channels. You ask how its possible? Basically fly by night companies redistributing cabl…

Am I misunderstanding the idea behind the first thing, or is that just piracy that you pay for? If you're going to go to the trouble and / or risk of pirating things and have enough technical knowhow to setup Plex on your local device, I don't know why you wouldn't just go for an old fashioned approach ... which is usually free, better quality, more reliable, etc.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#58

Post by stevewillows »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #33
stevewillows wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its more likely that they already have a piracy workflow and the inconvenience isn't enough to disrupt that workflow, unlike their experience with Netflix / Plex with the Chromecast.

How is that different from the comment you're replying to? "...and sold how you want"

I'm just saying that for people who have no issues with piracy, the provider has an even more difficult time winning their business. For companies like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, it should be in their best interest to be available on all platforms like Chromecast, etc.

We're not debating the views of piracy from the parent -- that was already established.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#59

Post by bscphil »

AngryData wrote: post #52
40acres wrote: post #22

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or lap…

I would agree in the past, you needed something like a dedicated media center PC. But these days it is cheap as hell for an old PC, or laptop or smart phone that can handle video just fine. Even a new computer device is pretty damn cheap to have just for your TV. Also, everyone is assuming people are downloading torrents for their media piracy, but everything you can find on a torrent website you can easily find on a…

>The only reason to torrent a show or movie over streaming an illegitimate copy is if you plan on watching it a dozen times over and you have limited bandwidth.

Or you don't want to have to weed through half a dozen ad-filled sites that claim to have the film, but don't, and end up with a 200 MB rip for your trouble.

Re: Hollywood studios say they’re quitting Netflix – the truth is more complicated

#60

Post by flukus »

40acres wrote: post #22

I don't think piracy will come back as streaming becomes more segregated, people generally will go with the legitimate market over illegal means as long as the fiction is under a certain level. Most Americans would rather pay an extra $15 a month for streaming that to pirate content and go through the "hassle" of getting that pirated content on their TV. How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or lap…

> How many non-tech people do you know who can mirror a PC or laptop to their TV?

Very few, but they can get a portable drive via sneaker net, plug it into their TV (basically any TV made in the last decade) and have enough content to keep them going for months. Some of the slightly more advanced ones might be able to use a PC to copy shows from one drive to another for friends. Torrent streamers are a minority of pirates.

Post reply on HN