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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

#541

Germans/Europeans might feel with me: I had the pleasure of using Sky to watch Game of Thrones and a few movies and it was the most abysmal experience I have ever had. Your account is an email combined with a 4-digit NUMERIC-ONLY (!) "password" and once you are hyper-securely logged in the amount of usability pain a single piece of software can cause will immediately become apparent. How can anything paid by a big co…

Sky used to have a web client. Now you have to use their apps, even on the desktop, which come with a suite of monitoring services (Cisco Videoguard) to prevent people from streaming their content. On my Mac Mini the video player takes up easily 80-100% of the 6-core/12-threads i7.

It's almost unwatchable. Unfortuantely it's a requirement if you're into german soccer.

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

#542

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…

A subscription service wants to be paid to cause me endless anxiety over a service that could not work when I want it because, for example, I'm in the wrong country or on the wrong network and could be withdrawn at any time and without notice.

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy = Stealing From https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/piracy piracy (noun) The unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work. Synonymns: illegal reproduction, plagiarism, illegal copying, copyright infringement, bootlegging, stealing, theft Call things by the wrong name to make yourself feel better all you want, but it's still stealing.

You may attempt to influence behavior and ethics by redefining the meanings of words, or by confusing one meaning of a word with another, but I can't guarantee it will be successful. If I were to "pirate" an entertainment file, I would not alter my self-image to believe that I am now "a thief", just because you're quoting dictionary definitions at me. I may still feel vaguely guilty about it, but nowhere near the lev…

> You may attempt to influence behavior and ethics by redefining the meanings of words

I am not the one re-defining words here.

> When "theft" moves from the physical to the intangible, it becomes plagiarism or counterfeiting

I see. Please explain how counterfeiting is not stealing.

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

#544
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server But they probably have a friend who has a friend who put in the effort and is willing to share.

I like to quote John Siracusa when people complain about my Plex Server. "Do not expect five 9's from my Plex Server" ( https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-n... ) And you still have the abysmal state of upload bandwidth in the US and what are the chances that they will have all of the Disney movies?

So?

Not everyone in the US is starved for upstream. Not everyone is going to lose their mind if their friend's Plex doesn't have Five 9s availability -- and let's be real, with all the things that can and do go wrong between a user and a service on the Internet, Three 9s is optimistic for anything.

And whose subscription service has Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Saved by the Bell? Countless other shows and movies that aren't available with any of them?

Disney movies? Add a Trakt list to Radarr, done.

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

#546
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything's free when you steal. Lame argument.

People don't use Netflix et al. because they want to follow the law. They use them because they're a better service and experience than the alternatives (PVR TV and DVDs). When streaming services no longer offer a superior user experience, there's not much reason to use them. Maybe we'll see a new round of "You wouldn't download a car" ads. I would happily pay for a service that let me download content to my personal…

> People don't use Netflix et al. because they want to follow the law

This is true for some people. For others, it IS because they want to follow the law, and also for those other reasons.

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

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that all of the media streaming companies are wasting money creating mobile apps based on the "people you know"? Is the whole industry under the delusion that their apps are needed? Should they focus on just “people you know” or the entire mobile market?

> So are you saying that all of the media streaming companies are wasting money creating mobile apps based on the "people you know"? You make it sound like they waste some fortune on those, so it necessarily has to have a huge market to justify building one. On the contrary, regardless of whether they have a big mobile watching userbase (and I'm wrong) or not (and I'm right), it still makes sense to have a mobile app…

Well seeing that there is no “cross platform framework” to support AirPlay, integration with the TV app, integration with cable providers single sign on authentication that’s built into the OS (you add your TV provider to iOS and most apps use that with your permission) that’s obviously not the case.

As far as the direction that video viewing is going.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-people-spend-more-...

The difference in time was even more pronounced for younger Americans, with people 18 to 34 spending 1 hour and 51 minutes on live and time-shifted TV and 3 hours and 25 minutes on the web or apps on smartphone and tablets in the third quarter of last year, Nielsen said.

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

#548
post #515
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you using to run this code-wise? I was thinking of making something similar.

Freenas + plex, deluge and openvpn for torrenting (inside a container), iris to host the web front-end, scripts are all just python. I'm sure there are more legit solutions for web scraping but I just parse the html and it hasn't broken on me so far. One set of sites to query for "top x sites", pass titles along to torrent aggregator searches when there are no magnets. Then the important practical step is a backgroun…

Sonarr & Radarr + torrent client and come kind of front end for users to request content are the typical go-tos for Freenas + Plex setups.

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

#549
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to quote John Siracusa when people complain about my Plex Server. "Do not expect five 9's from my Plex Server" ( https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-n... ) And you still have the abysmal state of upload bandwidth in the US and what are the chances that they will have all of the Disney movies?

So? Not everyone in the US is starved for upstream. Not everyone is going to lose their mind if their friend's Plex doesn't have Five 9s availability -- and let's be real, with all the things that can and do go wrong between a user and a service on the Internet, Three 9s is optimistic for anything. And whose subscription service has Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Saved by the Bell? Countless other shows and movies that are…

I have gigabit up and down via AT&T, most Americans get their internet via their cable company - cable companies always have crappy upload bandwidth around 30Mbps.

People want a reliable service and will pay for it. I have no idea why this concept is forum. Hulu and Netflix publish their numbers every quarter and about 60% of households have Amazon Prime Video (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-perce...)

76% percent of households use Netflix (https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-hav...)

It’s also estimated that 40% of households will get Disney+ by 2022 (https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-...)

It doesn’t take too much to understand that enough of the American public values convenience over price to make paying for a service over the hassle of piracy worthwhile.

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may attempt to influence behavior and ethics by redefining the meanings of words, or by confusing one meaning of a word with another, but I can't guarantee it will be successful. If I were to "pirate" an entertainment file, I would not alter my self-image to believe that I am now "a thief", just because you're quoting dictionary definitions at me. I may still feel vaguely guilty about it, but nowhere near the lev…

> You may attempt to influence behavior and ethics by redefining the meanings of words I am not the one re-defining words here. > When "theft" moves from the physical to the intangible, it becomes plagiarism or counterfeiting I see. Please explain how counterfeiting is not stealing.

I will not. Counterfeiting is more like stealing than copyright infringement.
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