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YouTube is the only service I've used that gets WORSE if you pay. Without paying I can watch one video on my TV while browsing other videos on my laptop to que

• dexen 8y ago
  They are following in the footsteps of the movie industry, which also provides worse experience to the paying customer. Pay for movie theater ticket, get served 30+ minutes of ads. (edit) Pay for DVD, get unskippable "antipiracy ads". Torrent the movie, and you'll be watching the movie in under 3 minutes of download.
  • Moter8 8y ago
    Almost instantly nowadays, because there are streaming torrent programs.
  • Already__Taken 8y ago
    They keep trying to make it more like TV. Seemingly oblivious to the generation using it exclusively because it's not TV.
    • mcintyre1994 8y ago
      I guess giant TV advertising budgets are sticky and they're trying to figure out how to shift them to YouTube?
  • pferdone 8y ago
    I wouldn't call an IMAX setup a 'subpar experience'
    • Maro 8y ago
      These days, when I have a movie ticket for time T, I plan to arrive at T+20 minutes. That's when the ads are over, roughly when the trailers are playing.
      • s0adex 8y ago
        It doesn't work well if the ticket has no reserved seat. You do that and the only seat available will be in the first row.
        • scient 8y ago
          Dont think thats really a thing outside of US (another thing the US is like awkwardly behind in).
          • sli 8y ago
            Assigned seating is gaining traction pretty quickly here. The theaters with good reputations all assign seats.
      • criley2 8y ago
        There are several "dining" theatres near me including one which only has full service prior to the films beginning, and all of them are low-occupancy theatres with online seat selection and generally very large, comfortable, sometimes rolling leather chairs. Pick your ticket online, show up a few minutes earlier, enjoy a decent appetizer, and get a drink or two while the movie is on. Whatever floats your boat. I find it's a much better experience and frankly not that much more expensive than sitting through hell my local multiplex
        • leesalminen 8y ago
          I’ve one of these locally as well. We used to like it until we went 3 times in a row to see a specific movie and were told that the online schedule was incorrect. What a waste of time.
        • elboru 8y ago
  • baud147258 8y ago
    Well, when the movie is in theather, there are rarely good quality (non-cam) torrents available and the screen is usually bigger than at home, but it might not be a factor, depending on the viewer or the movie. But it's true when it reach DVD, you'll still have to watch the anti-piracy ads.
    • Ntrails 8y ago
      Interestingly Netflix et al skip the anti-piracy garbage and excluding the miserable UI actually do a good job of making "pick movie -> watch movie" as convenient as torrenting. But still, I've torrented every DvD I own and the discs rot in the attic. I never cared about the extras anyway time to watch is ~a hundred times lower.
    • herbst 8y ago
      This might be different in the German 'market' but it rarely takes more than a few weeks to have a high quality copy of the cinema movie around. There are at least 2 sites that have a way better selection than any video store, amazon or Netflix ever will have. Except that some hosts force you to watch an ad (30 secs) it is literally the most comfortable way to consume anything.
  • culturestate 8y ago
    > Pay for movie theater ticket, get served 30+ minutes of ads. In Thailand, there is (was?) a 5-minute-long (literally) memorial video dedicated to King Rama IX before every movie. Everyone in the theatre is expected to stand for the video's entirety - after the 30 minutes of ads and trailers.
    • nklas 8y ago
      I like the memorial video and don't mind standing for it at all. Altough it would be a nice touch if they put subtitles on it.
      • aylmao 8y ago
        Chiming in real quick. Why the downvote HN? Let a guy have his preferences (:
        • Joeboy 8y ago
          I don't know for sure why the downvote, but maybe because Thailand is a place where you can be imprisoned or exiled for criticizing the (late) king. It's not hard to imagine somebody on HN might not be cool with somebody supporting that sort of enforced devotion.
          • apatters 8y ago
            Just to clarify, you can also be imprisoned for criticizing the current King, as well as any of the late Kings at all.
        • danso 8y ago
          The user is being downvoted because he brought up an unrelated argument that contributes little to the discussion. The original complaint was being forced to stand up and pay respects to the late king. Not whether people liked/disliked the memorial. It's akin to a debate about whether Apple was right to push copies of U2's albums onto all iTunes users [0], and someone chiming in with, "But I don't mind U2!" [0] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/15/u2-bono-issues-apology-for-apple-itunes-album-download https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/15/u2-bono-issues...
  • drdaeman 8y ago
    That's also if they provide any experience at all. You know, "not available in your region" is what a paying non-US non-EU customer should expect to occasionally see. Worse: even if there was something in "your" library last week, you can't expect it to be there tomorrow. If you're non-paying customer, with some services, you may get around with a VPN. If you're paying for the service - virtually everyone uses your billing address, so you're paying to have access denied. Just had that experience with GPM recently (other services are no better)
  • mkirklions 8y ago
    Ive been paying 1-2$ for a movie on amazon or whatever. Non issue
  • stinky613 8y ago
    Not just that--quality too. Enjoying your 4K computer screen? And you're paying for the highest-tier Netflix subscription to get 4K content? Well, unless you're using Microsoft Edge, you're capped at 720. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • thie8Lai 8y ago
      Plus streaming through the browser is always going to be an inferior experience compared to playing BD rips in a dedicated media player. mpc-hc + madvr simply does things no browser is doing, i.e. outputting 10bit HDR to compatible displays and doing color profile conversion to match your screen calibration. Not to mention framerate adjustments so your playback is judder-free.
    • aigen001 8y ago
      Theres a chrome extension to get netflix to stream at 4k. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-netflix/aioencjhbaolepcoappllicjebblphoc?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-netflix/aioe...
  • sli 8y ago
    If your client has a sequential downloading option and it's a healthy torrent with just the movie/show (i.e. not a split RAR file), you can effectively stream the movie/show.
  • peatmoss 8y ago
    > Pay for movie theater ticket, get served 30+ minutes of ads. Man, you aren’t kidding. I’m a spoiled Seattleite who can walk to two IMAX theaters attached to a non-profit science center, Paul Allen’s Cinerama, and an indie theater. I had the experience of going to a big name multiplex theater in another city recently, and I just had to shake my head at how awful the experience was for how much it cost.
  • circa 8y ago
    Not to mention the increase of product placement in movies these days too!
  • JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
    I love the movie theater and the previews.
    • dvlsg 8y ago
      I liked previews more when they didn't spoil the entire movie. Movie theaters are okay for louder movies. I regret watching a quiet place in a theater. The loud audience did their best to ruin the experience.
      • sirsar 8y ago
        Some theaters charge a little more and have a one-warning policy before ejecting customers for talking or using cellphones. I watched A Quiet Place in such a theater and thoroughly enjoyed the experience - the high-quality surround sound was great for a movie that relies so much on sound design.
  • ChildOfChaos 8y ago
    Pretty sure you pay a movie theatre to see it in the big screen, the experience and before it’s available elsewhere.
• Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Just one? At least Netflix was smart enough to give 2-4 or whatever.
• halflings 8y ago
  I also have YouTube Premium and use it from my workstation + my work laptop + my phone, and never had this issue. Maybe this is something TV specific if you use their TV web app (cannot control playback from multiple devices at the same time) ?
  • dbtqgoat 8y ago
    Yeah, I don’t have this issue. I enjoy no ads and the ability the play videos while using other apps.
• dawnerd 8y ago
  I’ve yet to see that and I use YouTube like that literally every day. I wonder if you’re in a test group or specific to whatever media you’re watching.
• 18973424 8y ago
  YouTube Red is the stupidest thing ever. It advertises as "youtube without ads", but the majority of ad content is embedded into the videos by the creators in the form of often undisclosed product placement.
  • IshKebab 8y ago
    Good point. I wonder if Google will start banning that to make YouTube Red/Premium more attractive.
    • mathieuh 8y ago
      As far as I know they do keep track of videos that have undisclosed product placement, I'm fairly sure I've read that videos that do that are getting demonetised.
    • propogandist 8y ago
      If they do this, their content creators will leave for another platform.
      • digi_owl 8y ago
        What other platform?
        • kiaulen 8y ago
          A bunch left for twitch after the demonetization scandal. A few use exclusively Patreon, but there's no discoverability there. I will agree there's not a lot of options, though.
    • pavel_lishin 8y ago
      How do you ban something like that? If I make a video in which I happen to be drinking a Mr. Pibb, how do you tell the difference between it being undisclosed product placement vs. me being thirsty?
  • 8y ago
• hknd 8y ago
  So I'm use red simultaneously on my TV (androidtv), my laptop, my phone and my tablet. All without any issues.
  • damontal 8y ago
    i i'm playing music on google play and go to watch a youtube video, i get a warning that i'm listening on another device. doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen.
• reificator 8y ago
  Yep. I used to be able to play a non-music youtube video on my phone while playing music in the background. Now it's one or the other, and I can't even get around it by playing music on another device since I use Google Play Music. Shame Google Play Music is going away, it does some cool things. It lets me upload my own music so I can actually listen to Tool on a streaming service.[0] It lets me build up a collection of music without necessarily endorsing it with a positive rating. And of course it has most albums I go looking for. But it's a Google product, so of course once it's made its way into your routine it gets canceled. I had hoped that the payment model would delay that a bit longer... [0]: Tool is super pretentious and says they don't make songs, they make albums. So their music is not available on any services that would allow for buying singles, even if you could also buy the album. It's only available (last I checked) on Pandora where you're going to get nothing but singles and have no ability to listen to the full album.
  • bryogenic 8y ago
    > Shame Google Play Music is going away What makes you say that? From the linked blog: > If you are a subscriber to Google Play Music, good news, you get a YouTube Music Premium membership as part of your subscription each month. And if you use Google Play Music, nothing will change -- you’ll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.
    • reificator 8y ago
      > What makes you say that? Years and years of experience with cloud-hosted products and anything that requires official support to continue to function.
      • Antimachides 8y ago
        Could you elaborate?
        • pavel_lishin 8y ago
• giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Not sure I've ever run into this problem but I pay to have my fiancée added to my subscription.
• userbinator 8y ago
  Does it still do that if you logout? I don't have a YouTube account, and don't plan on creating one either.
  • frodprefect 8y ago
    Nope. That's the workaround. I usually just open an incognito window and watch the video I want. Most of the time even if I pause my Google Play Music and open a new Youtube tab to watch a video I get the you can't watch two things at once notice. Very annoying.
• dchuk 8y ago
  They also have the worst Apple TV experience (unless I'm an idiot) where you can't queue anything. Their phone app plus a chromecast lets me load up a ton of videos to watch, I can't for the life of me figure out how to queue things using just the Apple TV however.
  • todd_chavez 8y ago
    Just as an fyi, with an iPhone at least, you can get this same behavior of queuing with the apple tv youtube app + iOS youtube app. Not sure if this functionality is available with android, as the apple tv shows up as a cast option.
• cobookman 8y ago
  I disagree. My YouTube experience greatly improved with red. No more ads. Ability to download videos for a long commute / plane ride.
  • starshadowx2 8y ago
    You can do all of that easily without paying though, and without having the two screens issue.
    • Scottopherson 8y ago
      Adblock or youtube-dl does not allow the video creator(s) to be paid for their content. I tried patreon to support creators I like but not all of them use it and their pricing changes awhile back turned me away. Youtube red has been a much better alternative.
      • techer 8y ago
        Yes. But not available in the UK so I use patreon etc for few and the rest I complain to my friend at Youtube in the hope it will arrive here! Background play and offline is essential...