71–80 of 219 posts
"One Reddit user said customer service explained that devices with remotes can no longer cast, claiming the decision was made to improve the customer experience." How can this improve the customer experience?
I remember the time when smart homes used to feature in sci-fi literature and concept videos. Being able to walk around your house while having everything seamlessly synced and tailored to your preferences was clearly the future. TV, movies and music automatically playing in whatever room your enter. Files and all other data seamlessly synced between all your devices. Not having to think about how to make the tech wo…
A lot of it was in the postwar period. You had a booming population that offered the opportunity for easy corporate revenue growth. If you wanted to make more money, you just sold your good or service to a person who didn't have it yet. That was simple enough because there were people - a lot of them - aging into your market. Let's say that the microwave was the smart home appliance of the late 60s/early 70s. You want to sell them. Well, that's easy, because there are a bunch of people building first homes who want to update their kitchens. Make the case that your microwave belongs in it due to the convenience it brings.
You're a futurist. What would that microwave look like in the future? Well, surely it would just be purchased, you'd put it in your home, and it'd have all sorts of features to make your life even more convenient.
These stories were written with the assumption that, at least in the West, that would continue forever. The Baby Boomers would have enough kids to justify the same sort of marketing strategy. And then those kids would have enough kids. And so on and so forth.
That didn't happen. The birthrate began to plummet in the 1970s and hasn't increased meaningfully since. There are fewer people naturally aging into your market, to say nothing of resources becoming more scarce as time goes on.
So what do you do if you are charged with providing shareholders ever-increasing returns on their investments by selling goods and services? Well, you try to extract more sales - or value - out of a smaller number of people. You don't just sell a smart home device; you require it to be tied to a subscription that must be paid monthly, and make the person using it buy a new one every so often to keep the revenue coming in. You could also collect the data on how they use the device and sell that to people looking to influence the purchase of further goods and services.
The microwave is now a "smart" device that will do all sorts of things... but you'll need to keep paying for it, over and over.
Same with music players, lighting fixtures, televisions, laundry machines, and everything else we've seen get the "smart home" treatment.
Growth must be maintained. Value must be created. The futurist never took into account that part. It was about the consumer, not the supplier, but the consumer can only be made to consume so much based on organic growth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody on HN wants to hear this, but REG-U-LA-TION. The glorious free market is consistently failing to solve the growing problem of cloud-tethered and app-tethered products being nerfed by their manufacturers after the point of sale.
Sorry, but it's CUS-TO-MERS. They buy stuff that can only be controlled via an app talking to the cloud. They buy stuff that cannot be repaired. They buy stuff that openly lies about its specs, for an "unbelievably good price". The customers go for the cheapest, all else be damned. Education in general, and about critical thinking in particular, could help.
Over here in the EEA, governments using regulations to create the market pressures I want to see has a fair amount of success, FWIW
I don't understand Netflix's decision, but I'm long past caring about things like this. I've had PCs hooked up to all of my televisions for the past 15+ years because of how limiting and frustrating using any other device to play media from can be.
BitTorrent → Local Media Player App Still the best way to watch movies and shows. Even if we pay $100 dollars every month to streaming services they will never not be too dumb to know how to make a convenient player that isn't hostile to its users.
They aren't dumb. They've realized that a large section of people will not bother, and aren't capable of sailing the high seas. Hostile behaviors won't change until it hits their bottom line, and because they are an extremely profitable company, it won't happen for a very long time.
This is going to be painful for people in a way which I haven’t seen discussed here yet. A year ago I went on vacation with my family, and the kids wanted to watch Netflix on VRBO‘s TV and so I logged in to my account on the tv. And of course I forgot to log it out when I left - so, predictably, the next people decided they hated my taste and went through and deleted all my likes and dislikes, and rated I swear 100 t…
As of Nov 10, Netflix removed the ability to cast at all for anybody on the ad-supported tier. A hostile move, but understandable money grubbing. This is less understandable.
like you said, money grubbing. they need to grow this quarter, remember?
This and refusing to work with the Apple TV app are the 2 big examples that come to mind but there are likely others.
I am not really sure what this solves though since you would still be using their app.
Them refusing to work with the Apple TV app was one of my biggest reasons for canceling. They really need to get knocked down a few pegs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What OS do you run? I was thinking of doing this with SteamOS.
If it's going to be primarily a gaming device then that makes sense, but if not, what do you gain from SteamOS? And why do you want Steam to start on boot? I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone). Sadly, I don't know of any nice o…
If you use Kodi then you could try Kore (their remote app). I tried it once a long time ago and it was alright, but it's hard to beat a keyboard. I think similar apps exist for VLC and other media players, but I haven't looked into a solution that allows controlling the entire computer via a phone.
shit like this is why I've recently totally given up on everything except Bandcamp and torrents, I really wish I could just pay for the 50gb mkvs with the 10bit color, atmos and film grain like I can for flacs but good damn is life nice when you just have files, a network and zero drm and limitations
I loved the service but now its literaly unusable for me. whoever came up with these new policies should be "voluntarily" relocated to gaza.
I've resorted to piracy now. Its hard to imagine a company going through so much effort to not take my money.