16 ms·

It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse

233 points by Jgrubb 8y ago

jbaiter 8y ago
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Gabe Newell And it's true. Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services.
- yvdriess 8y ago
  Epic game store is paying a lot for exclusives to compete with steam. We should see a jump in games piracy.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    Absolutely. Every major game forum I read appears to have an abundance of such sentiment. Timed exclusives on a store that many people outright _hate_ is going to increase piracy, without a doubt.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - TheGRS 8y ago
      I really don't understand the sentiment since having 2-3 game launchers has been the norm for digital games for years now. I can't buy any new Blizzard/Activision games or EA games through Steam that I know of, and these are some of the largest game companies and largest releases in the world.
      - dleslie 8y ago
        Blizzard and Origin are reasonably good stores and launchers, and their exclusives are that of the publisher who runs the store. Epic Store is... Not a quality experience and its exclusives are not solely from the publisher that runs the store.
        Cyph0n 8y ago
        Origin was also “not a quality experience” when it first came out, and it was also universally hated by fans of Steam. So why do you think Epic can’t do the same thing?
        dleslie 8y ago
        Epic isn't doing the same thing. Origin's exclusives were EA games. Epic's exclusives are not all Epic games.
        gruez 8y ago
        Does that make a difference? The end result is the same. Games that that you want to play are locked behind a particular launcher.
        dleslie 8y ago
        Of course it makes a difference. Epic isn't attempting to make their store succeed on its own merits, or on the merit of their own games; they are buying exclusivity in order to succeed. That upsets people, and rightly so. Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.
        Cyph0n 8y ago
        > Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse. But this is the point: the fact that Epic is making "something worse" might be true now, but will change in the future. This is precisely what happened with Origin for example, at least in the perception of gamers.
    - kyriakos 8y ago
      This is not the same as Netflix and competitors. No one is stopping a steam user from buying from epic store since its an one off purchase , but to watch an amazon exclusive you need an additional subscription.
      - dleslie 8y ago
        Except that the store itself is a deterrent, for a whole laundry list of reasons you can seek elsewhere. For me, the deal breakers are: 1. No user reviews. 2. Refund system is allegedly horrible and unreliable. 3. No cloud saves. 4. No mod workshop. 5. No forums. 6. No store-provided, NAT-punching, low latency networking. The last three have made for many of my best gaming experiences in recent years
        mises 8y ago
        For me, one issue is the forty-something percent stake tencent has. Both in that I don't trust their software and that I have serious ethical concerns about directly supporting china. I know it's essentially impossible to not buy anything from them, but I would say videogames are definitely something people can easily stop buying.
        cortesoft 8y ago
        You also can't buy a game for a friend.
        kyriakos 8y ago
        That's just a matter of competition catching up though. From a consumer perspective multiple stores should have a positive effect. On the other hand streaming services are not benefiting the consumer directly.
        dleslie 8y ago
        Those things cost money. It's where a good chunk of Valve's cut goes.
        Joakal 8y ago
  - krispbyte 8y ago
    Game piracy still exists. There's subreddits dedicated to tracking when DRM schemes are broken. Also piracy of region locked and old, difficult to buy now, console games has never disappeared. The games that are out of this are those that need online accounts to play.
  - rgoulter 8y ago
    FWIW, in terms of exclusivity, there have been games exclusive to EA's Origin. (e.g. the 2017 Battlefront II). I'm not sure how significant "any added friction increases piracy" is in terms of numbers.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      The difference is that people don't really hate exclusives on the publisher's own store unless the store is awful. IMHO: GFWL: awful and hated, dead now UPlay: awful and hated Steam: best in class and loved GoG: second best in class and accepted Origin: good and tolerated Blizzard: good and tolerated Epic: awful and hated
      - TheGRS 8y ago
        People hated Origin pretty bad, but EA stuck to their guns. IMO its a pretty awful experience. And to be honest Steam isn't exactly a great experience either. I noticed they're finally doing a face lift on their storefront soon, perhaps from the competition?
        dleslie 8y ago
        At least Origin didn't vacuum up exclusives from non-EA publishers. People who hated Origin probably already hated EA, too. The Steam library update had been years in the making.
      - indigochill 8y ago
        I'd personally put GoG ahead of Steam, and not just for "grr Steam" reasons. Steam has a habit of breaking in weird ways like telling me I can't view my own achievements because my profile is private or suddenly wanting to download 0 bytes for half the games in my library. GoG on the other hand has been totally rock-solid for me.
        dleslie 8y ago
        I prefer GoG, as well. I was attempting to express my understanding of the generally sentiment that I see from gamers I have a cron job that backs up my library every two weeks via lgogdownloader
  - sebazzz 8y ago
    Difference is that it doesn't cost you anything to use Steam, Epic game store, or Origin. You buy the game, you have the game. You can install 5 game stores on your computer and that's it. For movies or TV series you need to have a subscription. That is the thing that costs money, even if you don't use it. People don't want to have 3 or 4 subscriptions, so that is why they pirate. This is not a problem I see happening for games.
    - errantspark 8y ago
      It's still annoying to deal with any distribution platform that isn't Steam. I understand why things are this way, but it doesn't make it any better from my point of view. I hate having to add my friends on another platform to play Ape Legs or the new Unreal. I don't want to deal with another login, another stupid launcher that wants to be on all the time with incessant updates. I'm not going to end up pirating games because I mostly play F2P hat simulators, and the singleplayer games I care about are all available on GoG. It still all feels quite user-hostile. I can't think of a solution though.
      - meditate 8y ago
        The solution is to support single-sign-on and to allow data importing/export. These are solved problems, but companies don't receive enough pressure to do them because they are more interested in building moats.
- omg_ketchup 8y ago
  I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. These availability windows on shit is ridiculous. You wonder how pirates stay in business, it's because of availability windows and that region-locked bullshit. The Wolf of Wall Street came out like 10 years ago, and you're telling me the only way to watch it is to buy it for $15 on Amazon? Keep dreaming.
  - markbnj 8y ago
    > I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. I don't have an expert answer, but I'll bet the answer has "copyright holders" in it somewhere.
    - omg_ketchup 8y ago
      Sure, but why wouldn't they get paid based on streams of their copyrighted materials, or some other payment scheme? I mean, hey, it was good enough for video stores in the 90's, right? The equivalent of* Wolf of Wall Street sat on the shelf in Blockbuster for 15 years after it came out. They didn't have to hide it in the back because of an availability window.
      - secabeen 8y ago
        Well, part of that is that the price went down. When video stores were in their heyday, they often paid 5-6 times more for each tape in order to have public playback rights. The studios realized that they would make more money selling copies to individuals, but after that changed, the big rental chains changed to models where they paid the studios per-rental.
        infogulch 8y ago
        You don't need any special rights to rent out physical copies of movies. Video stores, Netflix, Redbox all could just buy disks and tapes from the local market and rent them out directly. Sure, they can make a business deal to get better pricing and cut out the middleman, but this effectively puts a cap on that negotiation because the local market is always a fallback. When streaming deals fail there is no fallback, see Netflix's depleting catalog. The problem is that the experience of watching a movie at home only shifted a little bit during the transition from physical to streaming, while the legal and licensing framework between the two are so different they are hardly comparable. Copyright holders took great advantage of the change to a new format allowing them to redefine the meaning of licensing so that they have more control and can extract more value.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Ironically, an increasing number of parties has been having dollar signs in their eyes as of late, trying to get some of Steam's pie. It's entirely possible that this fate will befall the PC gaming industry at some point.
- Razengan 8y ago
  Without piracy, many third-world populations may have never been able to really use computers until about 2005-2010.
  - eikenberry 8y ago
    You're off by 10-15 years as free software operating systems have been usable since at least the mid 90s. But there was a period before that which what you say was true which was one of the big reasons behind the GNU project.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  A subset of piracy, when I was a kid for instance, was not about service but clearly a pricing "problem" (the problem being: I was a kid)
- amelius 8y ago
  > TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services. We seem to be at an all-time low of #Bittorrent seeders though.
  - mruts 8y ago
    It’s unfortunate, even on private sites there aren’t as many seeders as they used to be. I have a hard time finding well seeded content from 90s, 80s, and 70s. 10 years ago, things were so much better.
- meditate 8y ago
  >Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. This is a cop out to me. I have never been a fan of DRM for this reason, because it requires an unassailable monopoly for customers not to notice that it's a problem. I am probably in the minority because I've never been happy with Steam's service because of this, but as long as they are the 800 pound gorilla in the room then they obviously never will listen to any of my complaints. If you take this line of thinking to movies, it leads to dangerous ideas like "everyone but my favorite streaming service should just close down" which is totally ridiculous, but still when I talk to friends about this issue they are quick to propose that as the solution! It really makes me try to avoid contact with the digital publishing industry as much as possible. What we see now is the movie studios' response to that which is: - To increase the size of the data dramatically (4K+ video) so that casual sharing requires hardware investment and thus remains difficult - To make things highly dependent on a very specialized backend to work correctly (Netflix's recent experiment with branching narratives) - To start bundling it with other things (Amazon Prime) - To offer streaming analytics as a better data platform than the traditional Nielsen ratings - And probably more I can't think of right now The thing is that these are all real value adds which I am glad to see them competing on. Right now all the downstream vendors are forced to invest in rolling their own DRM. I would rather see copyright holders offering a system where a proof of purchase can be transferred between services, but they would need to band together to actually do it and start putting that into their contracts. Can you imagine if we had that instead of DRM?
  - petetnt 8y ago
    Steam is not DRM though and they offer lots of DRM free games too[0] https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games...
    - meditate 8y ago
      The issue I have is not that the vendor (Steam, Netflix, etc) is imposing DRM, but that the copyright holders demand it, and that there are cases where the vendor gives into these demands. You're right that Steam doesn't do this in all cases, but in some they do.
- ohithereyou 8y ago
  >Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. Hang around reddit's /r/crackwatch for some time and tell me how unattractive games piracy is.
- gruez 8y ago
  >> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem [...] >And it's true Maybe I'm the exception, but given the choice of shelling out $60 (works out to just over 4 hours of work at median US pay), or waiting a few hours/days/weeks (depending on DRM strength) and getting it for free, I'm picking the latter every time. edit: changed average pay to median
  - ihattendorf 8y ago
    If you can afford it, please pay for it. I get that not everyone can afford $60 games, but if you would have actually purchased it if pirating wasn't an option, please support the game.
- screye 8y ago
  We are seeing this happen as you speak. With game developers going back to proprietary launchers and platform exclusives, piracy of such games is rising again. I predict the new Metro and Borderlands games will be heavily pirated. When the epic launcher lacks more than half of the essential features of Steam, people will boycott your platform for forcing them to use it.
- karmakaze 8y ago
  The Steam thing makes sense. However I don't see how Netflix Originals is different than Steam.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
This is what the original post author is looking for: MoviesAnywhere https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome You can add your Amazon Prime, iTunes, and other accounts and access all the movies you bought. I use this to stream my iTunes movies on Roku
- tootie 8y ago
  Yeah, this is it. And you can thank Disney for it. You can also buy $5 digital copies of movies you own on DVD.
  - ownagefool 8y ago
    Are we actually happy we get to rebuy media we already own?
    - tootie 8y ago
      More convenient delivery and higher quality. So, yes. I paid a small price for more value.
chewzerita 8y ago
That's the cost of drm...
e1ven 8y ago
The author doesn't have a comment form on the blog, but since the username looks like he was the one who submitted here, I wanted to reply and offer that there may be a solution- The companies that offer digital movies came together last year in order to try to solve this problem. If you go to moviesanywhere.com you can link your accounts, it will make those movies available across all of the different platforms, including YouTube which is available everywhere. It only works with movies, not TV shows or audiobooks or music, so there are still a lot of places we need to get better. But I think the specific problem that you are having may be solved.
- andybak 8y ago
  Nice idea. Shame the damn thing is US only. (also - are people still enforcing silly password complexity rules? I thought we'd got over that? My x character all-one-character-type passwords are perfectly secure thanks very much. I did the maths...)
  - josteink 8y ago
    > Shame the damn thing is US only. And no surprise there. I honestly don’t expect anything else at this point.
- Jgrubb 8y ago
  Thank you! I just tossed a random thought out and here it is on the front page 2 hours later, but this is exactly it!
  - awinder 8y ago
    I’d suggest updating the blog because while it’s not super intuitive as you found out, everyone should know about moviesanywhere :D. It really makes me feel like we surpassed vhs vs betamax because once you connect all your accounts, you really have a ton of redundancy and it can help with platform lock-in. It also completely flipped the piracy argument in my mind. If you’re consuming a new movie per month you’re basically at $20 a month in expenses to house a digital warehouse of movies. Keeping large libraries of pirated movies is not cheap, you’re powering a machine 24/7, etc. MoviesAnywhere removing lock-in and stuff like iTunes upgrading past purchases to 4K made me a “true believer” on what’s going on with digital movies
DuckConference 8y ago
He might get his wish, given that apple currently seem to be trying to get their content services everywhere The streaming wars are probably going to make for a lot of strange partnerships and conflicts going forward though. I wouldn't have expected Apple to get close with Amazon (supporting Apple Music and Apple TV on amazon devices), and I never would have expected Netflix to start firing shots at apple (disabling Airplay 2 support).
lttlrck 8y ago
I can access all the movies I bought in iTunes inside my Prime account. Works in the browser and works in the Prime app. I don’t know if it works the other way around; I never bought a movie in Prime. I’m not sure how that connection was made... but the Roku Amazon app ought to do the same. Note: per comment elsewhere, this is due to https://moviesanywhere.com/ https://moviesanywhere.com/
tyingq 8y ago
I wonder if Netflix will end up buying Roku, since Netflix's competitors have TV boxes. I suspect that might make things even more fragmented.
- tbranyen 8y ago
  That makes no sense. Roku was born out of Netflix. Why would they buy them now after making the decision years ago not to entire the consumer hardware market?
  - tyingq 8y ago
    It appears to be the only notable player not owned by a competitor. I assume Netflix talks internally about whether that's an issue or not. Perhaps the market is different now than it was when you say they decided to forgo the space.
    - cwyers 8y ago
      The reason they spun off Roku was precisely because of this reason, though: they realized that being tied to a platform could hinder Roku's adoption, so they spun it off so it could be independent. And in my opinion, being independent and focused entirely on the user experience is why Roku has been as successful as it has been.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Netflix spun off Roku for exactly the opposite reason. They wanted other vendors to distribute the Netflix app and didn’t want to be seen as competitors with hardware vendors.
  - e1ven 8y ago
    I don't think Netflix will buy them, unless they need to as a defensive move. That said, I could see an argument where originally they didn't want to own a hardware platform, so that they wouldn't be competing with other hardware companies that they are trying to convince to integrate their service. At this point they are ubiquitous enough they might be more comfortable with it.
InTheArena 8y ago
You need to check out the movies anywhere service. It seems your entire library across multiple library’s. My understanding is that Disney another’s force this on the vendors and exchange for 4K media rights. It really is one of the best things to come out of technology in quite a while, And it’s remarkable how few people actually know about it.
- andybak 8y ago
  It's currently US-only which means it's no use to me.
  - NullPrefix 8y ago
    >movies anywhere >US-only Anywhere that matters, it means.
  - ASalazarMX 8y ago
    moviesinsusa.com didn't have the same ring, though.
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  Movies Anywhere is nice, but Apple is still throwing their anti-consumer bullshit around, i.e. you can't play 4K iTunes movies in 4K on anything but an Apple TV, they get limited to 1080p. Edit: And Apple is misleading consumers I would say, since when you buy 4K movies via iTunes, they don't make it obvious in the slightest that you need an Apple TV for 4K. Edit 2: I just looked and it looks like they do state you need an Apple TV 4k now but I don't think they always did, and I have no doubt a lot of people like me bought movies off iTunes thinking they were getting a 4K experience since the Apple TV disclaimer is almost just that.
  - test6554 8y ago
    This is why I never purchased any digital media from Apple. Amazon has DRM-free mp3s, so I purchase a couple of my favorite songs from them each year, and I can load them onto my iPhone without much fuss. But I don't buy digital copies of movies, because it's a waste of money as things stand today. But maybe I'm just not one of those so called "experiences over ownership" millennials.
spectramax 8y ago
I don’t think the analogy of “VHS vs Beta” works here. It is click-baity. The author has chosen to purchase various “formats” and then expecting it work across systems. Just the way you can’t play an Xbox game on PlayStation - the physical format being the same. VHS and Beta, Blu-ray and HDDVD, etc were battles about the Universal standards. It’s a shame your car has a DVD player, if it had a HDMI port, you damn can play anything you want. What a useless rant!
- ddorian43 8y ago
  Come on, why you gotta be that guy ? You mean you can't render a `jpeg` but only `png` ?
  - JudgeWapner 8y ago
    The point system on HN is really a tally of how many ackchuallys the user has declared.
- echelon 8y ago
  To a degree, VHS vs Beta was about lock-in, which is exactly the issue we face with steaming services.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    Yes, but the author wants to burn those movies into a really old format - DVD and then complaining that he/she can’t. I am not defending the DRM bullshit, but this rant is making an analogy to formats and the whole discussion is framed incorrectly. It bothers me when people title their post with a hook to lure you in but then you’re sorely disappointed that it’s not about what the title said. Click bait. Edit: DVD burning is a hack to get around the fact that the car doesn’t have an HDMI port.
    - omg_ketchup 8y ago
      That's pretty nitpicky. The DVD-burning is a hack to get around the lock-in, not their actual problem.
shmerl 8y ago
If you don't want such kind of mess, demand DRM-free video. There is no valid reason for media execs to oppose it.
- e1ven 8y ago
  They did transition from selling DRM albums, to unencrypted music, so this does seem possible.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine. But they are too beholden to their backwards ways to do anything about it. See: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
    - gruez 8y ago
      >Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine. What are those "major film publishers"? All the movies in your link are niche.
      - shmerl 8y ago
        They didn't list them, but they said quite explicitly: IWI and myself spoke to most of the major studios in the U.S. and Europe. We spoke to 8 out of the 10 most famous studios out there. By studios I assume they actually mean publishers, who control the copyright. The huge ones. They admitted, DRM is pointless: We met lots of interesting studio executives, who totally understood our pragmatic arguments. Many of them even admitted that there is no DRM that can prevent a title from being pirated and that some of their movies sometimes even got pirated before release, just like games unfortunately. But failed to do anything about it: We even got one offer approved by the business folks of a major studio, but the deal eventually got cancelled because lawyers were worried that it would give the impression that majors are giving up the fight agains piracy. Also, most of the major studios told us, each with almost the very same words: "we like your ideas, but we neither want to the first studio to say yes, nor the last one. Please let us know when one of the other major studios says yes, we will then probably consider following".
grawprog 8y ago
For me, this whole thing has had a positive experience on my life. I can't be bothered dealing with the different streaming services and incompatible devices, I decided a while back I wasn't going to pirate things any more, so I just end up not watching things. I used to watch a lot of things. Even if it was just to have something on in the background. I haven't really done that for years now and my interest is pretty much gone now. Reading people's experiences with these services and devices just sort reaffirms my decision to just not bother with movies and tv shows any more.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  Same for me. Hardly watch anything nowadays. I used to watch prime in kodi when that still worked reliably in 2014(?) and stopped bothering after they put an end to this. I actually still have prime but never use it for anything but free shipping. Should I feel the urge to watch a movie at home once a year or so I just pirate it so I can play it back on kodi.
  - alecco 8y ago
    Yep. Good audiobooks and podcasts are better for you, anyway.
    - overgard 8y ago
      Better for you in what way? Why should removing the video component implicitly improve things? If you're talking content; presumably a documentary can be just as enlightening as a podcast or an audiobook...
      - richk449 8y ago
        If you genuinely want an answer to this, read Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman presents a very convincing case that the medium (tv, book, radio, etc.) has a very strong influence on the content that is presented, and the discourse that ensues. I don’t think that all television is worthless, but neither do I believe that all information forms are equivalent in their ability inform and enlighten.
drngdds 8y ago
It sucks that we got DRM-free music downloads a decade ago but it just stopped there. If you want to download a TV show and watch it on any device you want (which would solve this problem), your one option is piracy.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  Other option (which is technically illegal I guess but we’ll within my moral parameters) is to buy the physical box set and rip everything then add metadata manually. It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages.
  - edgarvaldes 8y ago
    You can also have Plex installed. It will add metadata for you.
  - cf498 8y ago
    >With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages. It has been a while for me, but it wasnt uncommon that it was the other way around.
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    > It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages. That's not my experience. There's always a clean bluray rip with good bitrates and the original DTS(-HD) audio track available. There's actually no need to rip the media yourself. Compared to legal streaming options piracy releases offer a far better quality and technical fidelity. In fact, I was complaining in another comment some time ago how surprisingly poor my cinematic experience with Netflix' critically acclaimed "Roma" was. Their official clients weren't able to adjust the refresh rate to the correct 24 fps the film was shot in (as are most movies). A process the viewers had to do (and guess) themself unless they were ok with micro stuttering and frame interpolation. Apparently this issue is also very common among Netflix apps on thrid party hardware like Smart TVs and other boxes. Meanwhile it's a non-issue with any decent software video player. And that's before we even discuss bitrate or audio formats.
random878 8y ago
Maybe the first step would be to stop financially supporting proprietary software/hardware and buying DRM'd media.
azinman2 8y ago
Apple TV is coming to Roku already: https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/rokus-ceo-talks-about-why-the-apple-tv-app-is-coming-to-roku-players-tvs/ https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/rokus-ceo-talks-about-why-th...
- Jgrubb 8y ago
  I googled for this news using every combination I could think of, because the services event last week or whatever, but couldn't find this. That was also the paragraph I left out - that I'm sure as soon as I relent and buy a new Apple TV they'll release an iTunes app for Roku. Anyway, thank you :thumbsup:
madeofpalk 8y ago
> Can Apple please just relent and let Roku have an iTunes app? They did. An app will be coming later this year for Roku, Amazon Fire TV and a bunch of smart TV platforms.
- rch 8y ago
  How about Chromecast compatibility?
  - omg_ketchup 8y ago
    I miss being able to cast things to my Fire Stick. Like a lot.
  - kylec 8y ago
    Apple's working with a bunch of TV makers to add AirPlay 2 support to their TVs
    - rch 8y ago
      I prefer having my own portable device that I can plug into any display.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    My guess is that Apple is trying to get their stores in front of as many eyes as possible. Because Chromecast is just a receiving platform, and you can't buy any content from it directly, they're not interested in it.
- test6554 8y ago
  It seems like there is a roku app you can install on your iOS devices that let you stream to a roku player on your TV. Is this different?
jetgirl 8y ago
Same goes for why you should still buy print copies of books: https://jetgirl.art/2019/04/05/misprints-news-53-charging-by-the-pixel/ https://jetgirl.art/2019/04/05/misprints-news-53-charging-by...
pier25 8y ago
You can't buy a book on iBooks and read it on an Android device. I will never buy/rent content from Apple because of this reason and the author knew this before buying his movies on iTunes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
js2 8y ago
I have that same TCL. I bought it because it was the cheapest model on Amazon at the time. But I quickly got fed up with the built in Roku. It was clunky and underpowered and some of the apps barely worked. The final straw was when I learned TCL was spying on my watching habits. So I plugged an Apple TV into it and unplugged the TCL from my network. I’m much happier now. Our Honda Odyssey with DVD system also had an aux input in the back. I used that to play my Apple purchased content, originally via an iPod and then later via various iOS devices. It’s a trade off. I’m not thrilled by “buying” my content from Apple but I think of all the providers I can “purchase” from they are least likely to leave me high and dry. It’s a risk not owning the physical media, but if I had to guess, I’ve probably lost or had more physical media damaged (VHS tapes, DVDs), than lost access to streaming content I “own”.
- tssva 8y ago
  As a counter annecdote, I can't stand Apple TV. The user interface is a disaster compared to Roku and the remote made me want to throw it against the wall everytime I used it. I bought a TCL Roku TV as a secondary TV. It is fast, the interface makes sense and the apps are easier to navigate because the remote actually has a variety of buttons which can be used. The remote also doesn't change the channel or cause inputs on the TV to switch because someone accidentally grazed it. Based upon my experience with the Roku TV I replaced the Apple TV on my main TV with a Roku Premiere + and sold the Apple TV on eBay for over twice what I paid for the Roku box. My TV viewing experience is much more enjoyable. As an added bonus when I have house guests they can actually figure out how to use the TV without a 30 minute training session.
  - jslabovitz 8y ago
    Apple TV is about 1000% better when you ditch the supplied remote and instead pair a normal querty-style Bluetooth keyboard. Nearly everything in the UI works with the combo of arrow keys + return key, and you can actually type text for searching instead of stabbing around with the crappy remote, or trying to make Siri work. Probably not so true for tvOS games, but for the usual use case of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, settings, etc., a keyboard works great.
MayeulC 8y ago
The ideal answer here is a federated platform for media entity to provide their content trough. If you're not sure what I mean with federated, you can check out PeerTube. However, the same scheme would work with books, audio content, movies, games, etc. Each media company could provide an API on their site to redeem content (login on their system, process payments/keys/coupons one way or another), and multiple clients could access all of these libraries, while offering their own added value on top of this. Well, maybe not federated but distributed instead. The nice thing about federation is that it provides you with a portal for single-sign-on and discoverability is less of an issue without search engines. I'm convinced that something like this could be built quite simply on top of existing technologies like ActivityPub or the Matrix protocol. However, "app stores" or media portals are sooo lucrative that everyone wants to keep the biggest possible pie to themselves without sharing development cost with others. One way I could see such a solution appear is if the government(s?) were to subsidize its development and started hosting public-domain (old, government-funded) videos on it.
- omg_ketchup 8y ago
  Library of Congress?
  - bo1024 8y ago
    That would be interesting but I think a lot of people would be nervous about mandating that all streaming is controlled by a government entity/site. However, one related reform I would love to see to copyright is that to get an extension (say past 10 years), we require mandatory deposit of the copyrighted work with the library of Congress, which begins seeding the content on Bittorrent at the conclusion of the copyright term.
renholder 8y ago
>...or licensed, fuck you Hollywood Pretty much landed the blame where it should fall but it's not the only one. Take a look at PDFs with DRMs and what happens when those companies no longer exist or the like. It's chasing the almighty <insert currency here> that locks you into licensing to watch, instead of ownership. Long live the VHS days... (...damn the man, save the Empire.)
egypturnash 8y ago
> we've only recently discovered that the headphones that came with the car for the DVD player not only work, but will let Michelle and I listen to Wait, Wait without the loud protestations of the kids (since they can watch a movie while we listen to podcasts) I don’t have kids and this guy can raise his kids however he pleases as far as I’m concerned but: it strikes me that letting the kids always consume Kid Media feels like a bad idea. There’s exposure to adult concerns and concepts they’re missing out on. There’s probably something they’re missing in learning about sharing. There’s a variety of input they’re lacking. They’re sitting there in a little bubble of media created for kids, designed in part to exploit kids to make money - “buy all our play sets and toys”, as one Homestar episode out it. Whenever I was in the car as a kid, it was Mom’s hand on the radio dial. Mostly the local classical/NPR station. I didn’t always like it but sometimes I was surprised by what I did. I dunno, something about media bubbles, something about the vast task of passing on some measure of your values to your kids, also something about getting the little bastards to STFU and let you drive on a long trip too.
- Jgrubb 8y ago
  > I don’t have kids I used to think all kinds of things about how we'd raise our kids before we had them, but I'm pretty satisfied with the job that we're doing overall - they're outside catching the first frogs of spring in the creek that goes by our house at this very moment. However, sometimes when you're driving for hours to somewhere they get a little bored and want to watch a movie. And sometimes you get bored of listening to the dialog from Hotel Transylvania and want to listen to a podcast and then you discover how handy those headphones actually are. edit: I mean, this is constructive feedback and I do appreciate it. And you should absolutely think about your parenting strategy before you have children as well. It's just that, well, sometimes your opinions on things soften as you age and gain domain experience is all...
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    I am pretty sure I am never going to have kids. :) That part about letting the kids watch movies while the parents listen to adult things, without the context of "on a multi-hour drive", just struck me and I wanted to interrogate it a bit.
aerotwelve 8y ago
I hate to be that guy, but there's a reason I have a closet full of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and physical games for modern consoles. Digital downloads weren't ready ten years ago, and the author's post is a great reminder of why they still aren't ready. Buy physical media; opt-out of this vendor-lock-in-masquerading-as-copyright-enforcement scam.
- Zarath 8y ago
  Worry not, physical media will be a thing of the past soon enough I'm sure. That being said, I do a lot of shopping at old record stores for cheap 2 for $1 CDs
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  To present an equally valid but totally opposite viewpoint: Digital downloads were ready 20 years ago, and they are still the best choice for consoles and pcs. Spend your money on games (they've never been cheaper) with the understanding that hey, maybe 40 years from now you won't be able to dig them up. But by then we'll have 40 years of more games, and the current titles will get scooped up into museums, vintage shops, and other platforms. Or they won't, and you'll lose them forever, which is ok. Accept the impermanence, enjoy the experiences you are having today. Don't let the past be an anchor, find new things that give you joy and play them then set them down.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    > they've never been cheaper But that's the thing. They're not "cheaper" when you account for the fact that you're basically renting them from an unreliable platform that may go down at any time or perhaps deny you "availability" for unknown reasons. And games are actually one of the best cases since DRM-free platforms are reasonably well-established. Other sorts of media are a lot worse off from that POV.
    - Pfhreak 8y ago
      You are right that the games I buy have an N year shelf life. I estimate N to be 'longer than I'm likely to care about a game'. I don't want NES cartridges around my house despite growing up with one. Nor an SNES or PS2 discs. Every year there's more fantastic media produced than I have time to enjoy, why lock myself into the past when I can pick up a pile of cool indie games and the occasional AAA title every year and just enjoy those experiences? Who knows, maybe I'll be eating my words someday. I've been buying games for the better part of 30 years and it hasn't happened yet, but maybe you'll be right in the end. I don't spend a lot of mental energy worrying about it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jccalhoun 8y ago
When you buy drm'ed digital files you get what you pay for: nothing. I never "buy" drm'ed material if I can't break the drm.
cletus 8y ago
The author's mistake (IMHO) was not treating his TV as a dumb pixel rectangle and nothing more. Not getting a Roku-integrated TV has the same arguments for not getting any other kind of "smart" TV: - Getting prompted in the middle of content that "the Terms of Service have been updated" - Getting prompted to accept the ToS - Companies deciding to inject ads into your content - Interoperability issues - Being able to upgrade your (cheap) set-top box without upgrading your (expensive) TV - Smart TV apps are typically worse than the best box apps (although this doesn't really apply to Roku-equipped TVs I guess) - Bugs in the software degrading or disabling your viewing capabilities. Worst case with a box? Buy a new one ($100). Seriously. Don't even connect your smart TV to the Internet. Leave the Wifi unconnected. Don't plug in an Ethernet cable. Leave that to whatever box or boxes you choose.
- bobbyi_settv 8y ago
  TVs aren't expensive anymore. He says he got a TCL from Costco. I just checked their website and the 43" model costs $239. No platform has more and better apps than Roku. A box is a closed platform just like Roku. Any of the things you're worried about are just as likely with a separate piece of hardware running smart TV software as with the software running on the TV itself.
  - c256 8y ago
    Especially if you’re going to go with Roku.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Roku is the most open platform out there. It’s easy enough to write and use “private channels” using their SDK. Roku doesn’t have to approve a private channel. https://sdkdocs.roku.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view/1611307 https://sdkdocs.roku.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view...
pontifier 8y ago
The court is killing innovation. Look up VidAngel. Copyright holders were compensated via the purchase of physical media, and only the owner of a particular disk had access, but they have been sued by powerful media conglomerates. Disclaimer: I invented the system they used and carefully crafted what I thought was a system compliant with copyright law, but as always the party with more money wins in court. I also have a lot of their stock.
mindslight 8y ago
The doldrums of Gimmick Land is where you end up when you keep falling for all that advertising trying to sell you gimmicks. Roku iTunes SmartTV Chromecast Netflix blah blah blah and a thousand other temporary dead ends all grappling for your disposable income. Anything being pushed at you is being done so by someone who stands to have an outsized payday if you accept. The age old truth is that unless you want to be a mark, you have to do a bit of self-actualization and decide what makes sense for yourself rather than just choosing between the options being pushed at you. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't change this dynamic - it actually just makes you a bigger mark. A TV is something that displays an HDMI input, with the quickest power up time possible. A movie is a file, preferably mp4 and x264 or x265. A movie player is something that can pick and play those files. If this just implies a NAS and torrents, then that is still the state of the art! If you can find more convenient options that still respect your autonomy, please feel free. But don't buy into something that promises convenience when its real "value add" is lock-in.
Leader2light 8y ago
Any tech guy should be pirating all their stuff and just using a media server. Emby or Plex work great. I can watch my stuff from anywhere in the world.
mmaunder 8y ago
If they have their way, 'posession' of a film in DVD or other portable format will become a crime.
agumonkey 8y ago
It's interesting in the mathematical sense, a variable is a variable and when you add constraints, whether the size of a tape, the gap between tracks or software channels .. you get incompatibilities. Also, whenever a shift occurs, it helps shed light about the value of what we add (in this case the DVD player). A tech version of aging.
kmfrk 8y ago
I really hate how the experiment of redeemable codes for physical copies died out - and wasn't even an option in most countries. Now we have to choose between availability or convenience (online video) versus annoying physical discs with higher quality.
gwern 8y ago
'Commoditize your complement' https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
loudtieblahblah 8y ago
This is what you get for buying digitally locked media in iTunes, Google play or Amazon. Don't buy shit you're never going to own. I've had a roku dominated house for years. If I want to control content, you have two choices: 1.buy thw dvd/bluray 2. Pirate it Don't buy stupid stuff that's tied to a platform or storage locker. Easy
- veridies 8y ago
  One added point: while I don’t personally have any moral problem with piracy, if you DO, then buy a digital copy wherever and then pirate a DRM-free version. People like the author are willfully locking themselves down.
  - errantspark 8y ago
    This is basically my MO, I don't always have internet service and frankly with storage being as cheap as it is there's really no excuse for me not to have a seamless experience where I can just go watch/listen/play anything I want to whenever I want. I like supporting content creators but DRM (and ads) have no place in my life.
test6554 8y ago
It would be nice if all the major hollywood studios shared a ledger (not necessarily blockchain) showing who legally purchased what media. And then required all of the downstream digital platforms (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google) to grant you access to any movies you already purchased. Additionally, it would be great if you were able to sell your access of one movie to another party for cash or swap content. Movie studios would like it because they could sell directly to consumers and cut out the middle man. Digital platforms wouldn't like it, but would otherwise lose access to the content they wish to sell. Consumers would like it because their library of content would be permanent and would tear down the garden walls. They could also resell or swap their purchases, possibly for a small fee.
- c256 8y ago
  Most content industries (definitely including movies, tv, books, music, and games) vary between “dislike” and “loathing” of secondary markets, because it gets them nothing and costs them a “potential sale”, even more than piracy, because the person paying for a “used” copy has demonstrated that they’re willing to part with money for the product. Where the right to resale still exists, the way to bet is that it exists because of major lawsuits that the industry has lost (or “lost”). Don’t worry about the shareholders, though - they’re still chipping away! (Damn, I’m gloomy lately. Sorry.)
- scarface74 8y ago
  Sounding like a broken record, but you don’t need “blockchain”. It’s already available and supported by four of the six studios and Apple, Amazon, Google and Vudu. It’s Movies Anywhere.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
> "I don't give a shit about games or 4K or an internal drive, I just want to watch the fucking movies I bought (or licensed, fuck you Hollywood)." He's fucking right.
clintonb 8y ago
Folks have mentioned Movies Anywhere. Some physical discs also include UltraViolet (UV) codes that are redeemable for digital copies. UV is going away, but the codes will still be available. This meets all of the authors needs...assuming the disc includes the code.
aczerepinski 8y ago
This hits home for me. I bought 100+ albums on iTunes, and accidentally did so on two different accounts that can never be merged. Every time I buy a new device (which feels like all the fricking time), remembering passwords and trying to get access to two different accounts is a PITA. I most certainly don't feel like I own the music in the way I did with CDs. So now I stream and haven't bought an album in over a year. That sucks for the artists who make essentially nothing from the streaming services, but buying doesn't feel like a legitimate option.
- scarface74 8y ago
  That’s easy. They are all DRM free. You can use Apple Match for $25 and it will go through all of your music no matter where you got it from and register it as purchased. Once you pay one time you can cancel it.
mnm1 8y ago
The author should learn how to torrent and stop complaining. After all, he already purchased a license for the content so we're simply talking about getting a backup copy that can work on all his hardware which is perfectly legal.
jimnotgym 8y ago
I have an old TV that I was given because it had a black band down the screen. I fixed it by wiggling some cables, and it became my main TV. I could afford to replace it, but I don't see why I need to. One peculiar thing is that it has DVI rather than HDMI. I have a YouView digi box which I use to stream. I can't use my Amazon Fire stick with the TV because this would require a device to extract the sound from the HDMI and these are silly expensive. I can't watch BluRay from an Xbox because of DRM, and not being hdmi (There is a hack, but still). I subscribed to Netflix and Prime, but Prime didn't work properly on my box. I wanted to watch GOT, and subscribed to another service that had an app on my box, but the app only showed a selection of that providers content and not GOT. The same provider won't play on Linux at all (no DRM app), and the only Windows machine I had wouldn't play the sound loud enough. So south a myriad of devices I couldn't watch the show I subscribed to see. Kodi had it, and works on Linux.... So I could send my TV to landfill, buy a new one, get multiple digi boxes and subscribe to everything...or use Kodi. I can't be bothered, I cancelled my subs except Netflix. I only keep that for the kids.
ezoe 8y ago
So he brought DRM-protected videos and complains that it has DRM in it. He totally deserve it.

233 points by Jgrubb 8y ago

> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Gabe Newell And it's true. Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services.

yvdriess 8y ago
Epic game store is paying a lot for exclusives to compete with steam. We should see a jump in games piracy.
- dleslie 8y ago
  Absolutely. Every major game forum I read appears to have an abundance of such sentiment. Timed exclusives on a store that many people outright _hate_ is going to increase piracy, without a doubt.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheGRS 8y ago
    I really don't understand the sentiment since having 2-3 game launchers has been the norm for digital games for years now. I can't buy any new Blizzard/Activision games or EA games through Steam that I know of, and these are some of the largest game companies and largest releases in the world.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Blizzard and Origin are reasonably good stores and launchers, and their exclusives are that of the publisher who runs the store. Epic Store is... Not a quality experience and its exclusives are not solely from the publisher that runs the store.
      - Cyph0n 8y ago
        Origin was also “not a quality experience” when it first came out, and it was also universally hated by fans of Steam. So why do you think Epic can’t do the same thing?
        dleslie 8y ago
        Epic isn't doing the same thing. Origin's exclusives were EA games. Epic's exclusives are not all Epic games.
        gruez 8y ago
        Does that make a difference? The end result is the same. Games that that you want to play are locked behind a particular launcher.
        dleslie 8y ago
        Of course it makes a difference. Epic isn't attempting to make their store succeed on its own merits, or on the merit of their own games; they are buying exclusivity in order to succeed. That upsets people, and rightly so. Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.
        Cyph0n 8y ago
        > Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse. But this is the point: the fact that Epic is making "something worse" might be true now, but will change in the future. This is precisely what happened with Origin for example, at least in the perception of gamers.
  - kyriakos 8y ago
    This is not the same as Netflix and competitors. No one is stopping a steam user from buying from epic store since its an one off purchase , but to watch an amazon exclusive you need an additional subscription.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Except that the store itself is a deterrent, for a whole laundry list of reasons you can seek elsewhere. For me, the deal breakers are: 1. No user reviews. 2. Refund system is allegedly horrible and unreliable. 3. No cloud saves. 4. No mod workshop. 5. No forums. 6. No store-provided, NAT-punching, low latency networking. The last three have made for many of my best gaming experiences in recent years
      - mises 8y ago
        For me, one issue is the forty-something percent stake tencent has. Both in that I don't trust their software and that I have serious ethical concerns about directly supporting china. I know it's essentially impossible to not buy anything from them, but I would say videogames are definitely something people can easily stop buying.
      - cortesoft 8y ago
        You also can't buy a game for a friend.
      - kyriakos 8y ago
        That's just a matter of competition catching up though. From a consumer perspective multiple stores should have a positive effect. On the other hand streaming services are not benefiting the consumer directly.
        dleslie 8y ago
        Those things cost money. It's where a good chunk of Valve's cut goes.
      - Joakal 8y ago
- krispbyte 8y ago
  Game piracy still exists. There's subreddits dedicated to tracking when DRM schemes are broken. Also piracy of region locked and old, difficult to buy now, console games has never disappeared. The games that are out of this are those that need online accounts to play.
- rgoulter 8y ago
  FWIW, in terms of exclusivity, there have been games exclusive to EA's Origin. (e.g. the 2017 Battlefront II). I'm not sure how significant "any added friction increases piracy" is in terms of numbers.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    The difference is that people don't really hate exclusives on the publisher's own store unless the store is awful. IMHO: GFWL: awful and hated, dead now UPlay: awful and hated Steam: best in class and loved GoG: second best in class and accepted Origin: good and tolerated Blizzard: good and tolerated Epic: awful and hated
    - TheGRS 8y ago
      People hated Origin pretty bad, but EA stuck to their guns. IMO its a pretty awful experience. And to be honest Steam isn't exactly a great experience either. I noticed they're finally doing a face lift on their storefront soon, perhaps from the competition?
      - dleslie 8y ago
        At least Origin didn't vacuum up exclusives from non-EA publishers. People who hated Origin probably already hated EA, too. The Steam library update had been years in the making.
    - indigochill 8y ago
      I'd personally put GoG ahead of Steam, and not just for "grr Steam" reasons. Steam has a habit of breaking in weird ways like telling me I can't view my own achievements because my profile is private or suddenly wanting to download 0 bytes for half the games in my library. GoG on the other hand has been totally rock-solid for me.
      - dleslie 8y ago
        I prefer GoG, as well. I was attempting to express my understanding of the generally sentiment that I see from gamers I have a cron job that backs up my library every two weeks via lgogdownloader
- sebazzz 8y ago
  Difference is that it doesn't cost you anything to use Steam, Epic game store, or Origin. You buy the game, you have the game. You can install 5 game stores on your computer and that's it. For movies or TV series you need to have a subscription. That is the thing that costs money, even if you don't use it. People don't want to have 3 or 4 subscriptions, so that is why they pirate. This is not a problem I see happening for games.
  - errantspark 8y ago
    It's still annoying to deal with any distribution platform that isn't Steam. I understand why things are this way, but it doesn't make it any better from my point of view. I hate having to add my friends on another platform to play Ape Legs or the new Unreal. I don't want to deal with another login, another stupid launcher that wants to be on all the time with incessant updates. I'm not going to end up pirating games because I mostly play F2P hat simulators, and the singleplayer games I care about are all available on GoG. It still all feels quite user-hostile. I can't think of a solution though.
    - meditate 8y ago
      The solution is to support single-sign-on and to allow data importing/export. These are solved problems, but companies don't receive enough pressure to do them because they are more interested in building moats.
omg_ketchup 8y ago
I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. These availability windows on shit is ridiculous. You wonder how pirates stay in business, it's because of availability windows and that region-locked bullshit. The Wolf of Wall Street came out like 10 years ago, and you're telling me the only way to watch it is to buy it for $15 on Amazon? Keep dreaming.
- markbnj 8y ago
  > I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. I don't have an expert answer, but I'll bet the answer has "copyright holders" in it somewhere.
  - omg_ketchup 8y ago
    Sure, but why wouldn't they get paid based on streams of their copyrighted materials, or some other payment scheme? I mean, hey, it was good enough for video stores in the 90's, right? The equivalent of* Wolf of Wall Street sat on the shelf in Blockbuster for 15 years after it came out. They didn't have to hide it in the back because of an availability window.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      Well, part of that is that the price went down. When video stores were in their heyday, they often paid 5-6 times more for each tape in order to have public playback rights. The studios realized that they would make more money selling copies to individuals, but after that changed, the big rental chains changed to models where they paid the studios per-rental.
      - infogulch 8y ago
        You don't need any special rights to rent out physical copies of movies. Video stores, Netflix, Redbox all could just buy disks and tapes from the local market and rent them out directly. Sure, they can make a business deal to get better pricing and cut out the middleman, but this effectively puts a cap on that negotiation because the local market is always a fallback. When streaming deals fail there is no fallback, see Netflix's depleting catalog. The problem is that the experience of watching a movie at home only shifted a little bit during the transition from physical to streaming, while the legal and licensing framework between the two are so different they are hardly comparable. Copyright holders took great advantage of the change to a new format allowing them to redefine the meaning of licensing so that they have more control and can extract more value.
GuiA 8y ago
Ironically, an increasing number of parties has been having dollar signs in their eyes as of late, trying to get some of Steam's pie. It's entirely possible that this fate will befall the PC gaming industry at some point.
Razengan 8y ago
Without piracy, many third-world populations may have never been able to really use computers until about 2005-2010.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  You're off by 10-15 years as free software operating systems have been usable since at least the mid 90s. But there was a period before that which what you say was true which was one of the big reasons behind the GNU project.
agumonkey 8y ago
A subset of piracy, when I was a kid for instance, was not about service but clearly a pricing "problem" (the problem being: I was a kid)
amelius 8y ago
> TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services. We seem to be at an all-time low of #Bittorrent seeders though.
- mruts 8y ago
  It’s unfortunate, even on private sites there aren’t as many seeders as they used to be. I have a hard time finding well seeded content from 90s, 80s, and 70s. 10 years ago, things were so much better.
meditate 8y ago
>Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. This is a cop out to me. I have never been a fan of DRM for this reason, because it requires an unassailable monopoly for customers not to notice that it's a problem. I am probably in the minority because I've never been happy with Steam's service because of this, but as long as they are the 800 pound gorilla in the room then they obviously never will listen to any of my complaints. If you take this line of thinking to movies, it leads to dangerous ideas like "everyone but my favorite streaming service should just close down" which is totally ridiculous, but still when I talk to friends about this issue they are quick to propose that as the solution! It really makes me try to avoid contact with the digital publishing industry as much as possible. What we see now is the movie studios' response to that which is: - To increase the size of the data dramatically (4K+ video) so that casual sharing requires hardware investment and thus remains difficult - To make things highly dependent on a very specialized backend to work correctly (Netflix's recent experiment with branching narratives) - To start bundling it with other things (Amazon Prime) - To offer streaming analytics as a better data platform than the traditional Nielsen ratings - And probably more I can't think of right now The thing is that these are all real value adds which I am glad to see them competing on. Right now all the downstream vendors are forced to invest in rolling their own DRM. I would rather see copyright holders offering a system where a proof of purchase can be transferred between services, but they would need to band together to actually do it and start putting that into their contracts. Can you imagine if we had that instead of DRM?
- petetnt 8y ago
  Steam is not DRM though and they offer lots of DRM free games too[0] https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games...
  - meditate 8y ago
    The issue I have is not that the vendor (Steam, Netflix, etc) is imposing DRM, but that the copyright holders demand it, and that there are cases where the vendor gives into these demands. You're right that Steam doesn't do this in all cases, but in some they do.
ohithereyou 8y ago
>Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. Hang around reddit's /r/crackwatch for some time and tell me how unattractive games piracy is.
gruez 8y ago
>> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem [...] >And it's true Maybe I'm the exception, but given the choice of shelling out $60 (works out to just over 4 hours of work at median US pay), or waiting a few hours/days/weeks (depending on DRM strength) and getting it for free, I'm picking the latter every time. edit: changed average pay to median
- ihattendorf 8y ago
  If you can afford it, please pay for it. I get that not everyone can afford $60 games, but if you would have actually purchased it if pirating wasn't an option, please support the game.
screye 8y ago
We are seeing this happen as you speak. With game developers going back to proprietary launchers and platform exclusives, piracy of such games is rising again. I predict the new Metro and Borderlands games will be heavily pirated. When the epic launcher lacks more than half of the essential features of Steam, people will boycott your platform for forcing them to use it.
karmakaze 8y ago
The Steam thing makes sense. However I don't see how Netflix Originals is different than Steam.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

This is what the original post author is looking for: MoviesAnywhere https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome You can add your Amazon Prime, iTunes, and other accounts and access all the movies you bought. I use this to stream my iTunes movies on Roku

tootie 8y ago
Yeah, this is it. And you can thank Disney for it. You can also buy $5 digital copies of movies you own on DVD.
- ownagefool 8y ago
  Are we actually happy we get to rebuy media we already own?
  - tootie 8y ago
    More convenient delivery and higher quality. So, yes. I paid a small price for more value.

chewzerita 8y ago

That's the cost of drm...

e1ven 8y ago

The author doesn't have a comment form on the blog, but since the username looks like he was the one who submitted here, I wanted to reply and offer that there may be a solution- The companies that offer digital movies came together last year in order to try to solve this problem. If you go to moviesanywhere.com you can link your accounts, it will make those movies available across all of the different platforms, including YouTube which is available everywhere. It only works with movies, not TV shows or audiobooks or music, so there are still a lot of places we need to get better. But I think the specific problem that you are having may be solved.

andybak 8y ago
Nice idea. Shame the damn thing is US only. (also - are people still enforcing silly password complexity rules? I thought we'd got over that? My x character all-one-character-type passwords are perfectly secure thanks very much. I did the maths...)
- josteink 8y ago
  > Shame the damn thing is US only. And no surprise there. I honestly don’t expect anything else at this point.
Jgrubb 8y ago
Thank you! I just tossed a random thought out and here it is on the front page 2 hours later, but this is exactly it!
- awinder 8y ago
  I’d suggest updating the blog because while it’s not super intuitive as you found out, everyone should know about moviesanywhere :D. It really makes me feel like we surpassed vhs vs betamax because once you connect all your accounts, you really have a ton of redundancy and it can help with platform lock-in. It also completely flipped the piracy argument in my mind. If you’re consuming a new movie per month you’re basically at $20 a month in expenses to house a digital warehouse of movies. Keeping large libraries of pirated movies is not cheap, you’re powering a machine 24/7, etc. MoviesAnywhere removing lock-in and stuff like iTunes upgrading past purchases to 4K made me a “true believer” on what’s going on with digital movies

DuckConference 8y ago

He might get his wish, given that apple currently seem to be trying to get their content services everywhere The streaming wars are probably going to make for a lot of strange partnerships and conflicts going forward though. I wouldn't have expected Apple to get close with Amazon (supporting Apple Music and Apple TV on amazon devices), and I never would have expected Netflix to start firing shots at apple (disabling Airplay 2 support).

lttlrck 8y ago

I can access all the movies I bought in iTunes inside my Prime account. Works in the browser and works in the Prime app. I don’t know if it works the other way around; I never bought a movie in Prime. I’m not sure how that connection was made... but the Roku Amazon app ought to do the same. Note: per comment elsewhere, this is due to https://moviesanywhere.com/ https://moviesanywhere.com/

tyingq 8y ago

I wonder if Netflix will end up buying Roku, since Netflix's competitors have TV boxes. I suspect that might make things even more fragmented.

tbranyen 8y ago
That makes no sense. Roku was born out of Netflix. Why would they buy them now after making the decision years ago not to entire the consumer hardware market?
- tyingq 8y ago
  It appears to be the only notable player not owned by a competitor. I assume Netflix talks internally about whether that's an issue or not. Perhaps the market is different now than it was when you say they decided to forgo the space.
  - cwyers 8y ago
    The reason they spun off Roku was precisely because of this reason, though: they realized that being tied to a platform could hinder Roku's adoption, so they spun it off so it could be independent. And in my opinion, being independent and focused entirely on the user experience is why Roku has been as successful as it has been.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Netflix spun off Roku for exactly the opposite reason. They wanted other vendors to distribute the Netflix app and didn’t want to be seen as competitors with hardware vendors.
- e1ven 8y ago
  I don't think Netflix will buy them, unless they need to as a defensive move. That said, I could see an argument where originally they didn't want to own a hardware platform, so that they wouldn't be competing with other hardware companies that they are trying to convince to integrate their service. At this point they are ubiquitous enough they might be more comfortable with it.

InTheArena 8y ago

You need to check out the movies anywhere service. It seems your entire library across multiple library’s. My understanding is that Disney another’s force this on the vendors and exchange for 4K media rights. It really is one of the best things to come out of technology in quite a while, And it’s remarkable how few people actually know about it.

andybak 8y ago
It's currently US-only which means it's no use to me.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  >movies anywhere >US-only Anywhere that matters, it means.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago
  moviesinsusa.com didn't have the same ring, though.
RandomTisk 8y ago
Movies Anywhere is nice, but Apple is still throwing their anti-consumer bullshit around, i.e. you can't play 4K iTunes movies in 4K on anything but an Apple TV, they get limited to 1080p. Edit: And Apple is misleading consumers I would say, since when you buy 4K movies via iTunes, they don't make it obvious in the slightest that you need an Apple TV for 4K. Edit 2: I just looked and it looks like they do state you need an Apple TV 4k now but I don't think they always did, and I have no doubt a lot of people like me bought movies off iTunes thinking they were getting a 4K experience since the Apple TV disclaimer is almost just that.
- test6554 8y ago
  This is why I never purchased any digital media from Apple. Amazon has DRM-free mp3s, so I purchase a couple of my favorite songs from them each year, and I can load them onto my iPhone without much fuss. But I don't buy digital copies of movies, because it's a waste of money as things stand today. But maybe I'm just not one of those so called "experiences over ownership" millennials.

spectramax 8y ago

I don’t think the analogy of “VHS vs Beta” works here. It is click-baity. The author has chosen to purchase various “formats” and then expecting it work across systems. Just the way you can’t play an Xbox game on PlayStation - the physical format being the same. VHS and Beta, Blu-ray and HDDVD, etc were battles about the Universal standards. It’s a shame your car has a DVD player, if it had a HDMI port, you damn can play anything you want. What a useless rant!

ddorian43 8y ago
Come on, why you gotta be that guy ? You mean you can't render a `jpeg` but only `png` ?
- JudgeWapner 8y ago
  The point system on HN is really a tally of how many ackchuallys the user has declared.
echelon 8y ago
To a degree, VHS vs Beta was about lock-in, which is exactly the issue we face with steaming services.
- spectramax 8y ago
  Yes, but the author wants to burn those movies into a really old format - DVD and then complaining that he/she can’t. I am not defending the DRM bullshit, but this rant is making an analogy to formats and the whole discussion is framed incorrectly. It bothers me when people title their post with a hook to lure you in but then you’re sorely disappointed that it’s not about what the title said. Click bait. Edit: DVD burning is a hack to get around the fact that the car doesn’t have an HDMI port.
  - omg_ketchup 8y ago
    That's pretty nitpicky. The DVD-burning is a hack to get around the lock-in, not their actual problem.

shmerl 8y ago

If you don't want such kind of mess, demand DRM-free video. There is no valid reason for media execs to oppose it.

e1ven 8y ago
They did transition from selling DRM albums, to unencrypted music, so this does seem possible.
- shmerl 8y ago
  Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine. But they are too beholden to their backwards ways to do anything about it. See: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
  - gruez 8y ago
    >Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine. What are those "major film publishers"? All the movies in your link are niche.
    - shmerl 8y ago
      They didn't list them, but they said quite explicitly: IWI and myself spoke to most of the major studios in the U.S. and Europe. We spoke to 8 out of the 10 most famous studios out there. By studios I assume they actually mean publishers, who control the copyright. The huge ones. They admitted, DRM is pointless: We met lots of interesting studio executives, who totally understood our pragmatic arguments. Many of them even admitted that there is no DRM that can prevent a title from being pirated and that some of their movies sometimes even got pirated before release, just like games unfortunately. But failed to do anything about it: We even got one offer approved by the business folks of a major studio, but the deal eventually got cancelled because lawyers were worried that it would give the impression that majors are giving up the fight agains piracy. Also, most of the major studios told us, each with almost the very same words: "we like your ideas, but we neither want to the first studio to say yes, nor the last one. Please let us know when one of the other major studios says yes, we will then probably consider following".

grawprog 8y ago

For me, this whole thing has had a positive experience on my life. I can't be bothered dealing with the different streaming services and incompatible devices, I decided a while back I wasn't going to pirate things any more, so I just end up not watching things. I used to watch a lot of things. Even if it was just to have something on in the background. I haven't really done that for years now and my interest is pretty much gone now. Reading people's experiences with these services and devices just sort reaffirms my decision to just not bother with movies and tv shows any more.

iforgotpassword 8y ago
Same for me. Hardly watch anything nowadays. I used to watch prime in kodi when that still worked reliably in 2014(?) and stopped bothering after they put an end to this. I actually still have prime but never use it for anything but free shipping. Should I feel the urge to watch a movie at home once a year or so I just pirate it so I can play it back on kodi.
- alecco 8y ago
  Yep. Good audiobooks and podcasts are better for you, anyway.
  - overgard 8y ago
    Better for you in what way? Why should removing the video component implicitly improve things? If you're talking content; presumably a documentary can be just as enlightening as a podcast or an audiobook...
    - richk449 8y ago
      If you genuinely want an answer to this, read Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman presents a very convincing case that the medium (tv, book, radio, etc.) has a very strong influence on the content that is presented, and the discourse that ensues. I don’t think that all television is worthless, but neither do I believe that all information forms are equivalent in their ability inform and enlighten.

drngdds 8y ago

It sucks that we got DRM-free music downloads a decade ago but it just stopped there. If you want to download a TV show and watch it on any device you want (which would solve this problem), your one option is piracy.

geerlingguy 8y ago
Other option (which is technically illegal I guess but we’ll within my moral parameters) is to buy the physical box set and rip everything then add metadata manually. It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages.
- edgarvaldes 8y ago
  You can also have Plex installed. It will add metadata for you.
- cf498 8y ago
  >With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages. It has been a while for me, but it wasnt uncommon that it was the other way around.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  > It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages. That's not my experience. There's always a clean bluray rip with good bitrates and the original DTS(-HD) audio track available. There's actually no need to rip the media yourself. Compared to legal streaming options piracy releases offer a far better quality and technical fidelity. In fact, I was complaining in another comment some time ago how surprisingly poor my cinematic experience with Netflix' critically acclaimed "Roma" was. Their official clients weren't able to adjust the refresh rate to the correct 24 fps the film was shot in (as are most movies). A process the viewers had to do (and guess) themself unless they were ok with micro stuttering and frame interpolation. Apparently this issue is also very common among Netflix apps on thrid party hardware like Smart TVs and other boxes. Meanwhile it's a non-issue with any decent software video player. And that's before we even discuss bitrate or audio formats.

random878 8y ago

Maybe the first step would be to stop financially supporting proprietary software/hardware and buying DRM'd media.

azinman2 8y ago

Apple TV is coming to Roku already: https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/rokus-ceo-talks-about-why-the-apple-tv-app-is-coming-to-roku-players-tvs/ https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/rokus-ceo-talks-about-why-th...

Jgrubb 8y ago
I googled for this news using every combination I could think of, because the services event last week or whatever, but couldn't find this. That was also the paragraph I left out - that I'm sure as soon as I relent and buy a new Apple TV they'll release an iTunes app for Roku. Anyway, thank you :thumbsup:

madeofpalk 8y ago

> Can Apple please just relent and let Roku have an iTunes app? They did. An app will be coming later this year for Roku, Amazon Fire TV and a bunch of smart TV platforms.

rch 8y ago
How about Chromecast compatibility?
- omg_ketchup 8y ago
  I miss being able to cast things to my Fire Stick. Like a lot.
- kylec 8y ago
  Apple's working with a bunch of TV makers to add AirPlay 2 support to their TVs
  - rch 8y ago
    I prefer having my own portable device that I can plug into any display.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  My guess is that Apple is trying to get their stores in front of as many eyes as possible. Because Chromecast is just a receiving platform, and you can't buy any content from it directly, they're not interested in it.
test6554 8y ago
It seems like there is a roku app you can install on your iOS devices that let you stream to a roku player on your TV. Is this different?

jetgirl 8y ago

Same goes for why you should still buy print copies of books: https://jetgirl.art/2019/04/05/misprints-news-53-charging-by-the-pixel/ https://jetgirl.art/2019/04/05/misprints-news-53-charging-by...

pier25 8y ago

You can't buy a book on iBooks and read it on an Android device. I will never buy/rent content from Apple because of this reason and the author knew this before buying his movies on iTunes.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

js2 8y ago

I have that same TCL. I bought it because it was the cheapest model on Amazon at the time. But I quickly got fed up with the built in Roku. It was clunky and underpowered and some of the apps barely worked. The final straw was when I learned TCL was spying on my watching habits. So I plugged an Apple TV into it and unplugged the TCL from my network. I’m much happier now. Our Honda Odyssey with DVD system also had an aux input in the back. I used that to play my Apple purchased content, originally via an iPod and then later via various iOS devices. It’s a trade off. I’m not thrilled by “buying” my content from Apple but I think of all the providers I can “purchase” from they are least likely to leave me high and dry. It’s a risk not owning the physical media, but if I had to guess, I’ve probably lost or had more physical media damaged (VHS tapes, DVDs), than lost access to streaming content I “own”.

tssva 8y ago
As a counter annecdote, I can't stand Apple TV. The user interface is a disaster compared to Roku and the remote made me want to throw it against the wall everytime I used it. I bought a TCL Roku TV as a secondary TV. It is fast, the interface makes sense and the apps are easier to navigate because the remote actually has a variety of buttons which can be used. The remote also doesn't change the channel or cause inputs on the TV to switch because someone accidentally grazed it. Based upon my experience with the Roku TV I replaced the Apple TV on my main TV with a Roku Premiere + and sold the Apple TV on eBay for over twice what I paid for the Roku box. My TV viewing experience is much more enjoyable. As an added bonus when I have house guests they can actually figure out how to use the TV without a 30 minute training session.
- jslabovitz 8y ago
  Apple TV is about 1000% better when you ditch the supplied remote and instead pair a normal querty-style Bluetooth keyboard. Nearly everything in the UI works with the combo of arrow keys + return key, and you can actually type text for searching instead of stabbing around with the crappy remote, or trying to make Siri work. Probably not so true for tvOS games, but for the usual use case of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, settings, etc., a keyboard works great.

MayeulC 8y ago

The ideal answer here is a federated platform for media entity to provide their content trough. If you're not sure what I mean with federated, you can check out PeerTube. However, the same scheme would work with books, audio content, movies, games, etc. Each media company could provide an API on their site to redeem content (login on their system, process payments/keys/coupons one way or another), and multiple clients could access all of these libraries, while offering their own added value on top of this. Well, maybe not federated but distributed instead. The nice thing about federation is that it provides you with a portal for single-sign-on and discoverability is less of an issue without search engines. I'm convinced that something like this could be built quite simply on top of existing technologies like ActivityPub or the Matrix protocol. However, "app stores" or media portals are sooo lucrative that everyone wants to keep the biggest possible pie to themselves without sharing development cost with others. One way I could see such a solution appear is if the government(s?) were to subsidize its development and started hosting public-domain (old, government-funded) videos on it.

omg_ketchup 8y ago
Library of Congress?
- bo1024 8y ago
  That would be interesting but I think a lot of people would be nervous about mandating that all streaming is controlled by a government entity/site. However, one related reform I would love to see to copyright is that to get an extension (say past 10 years), we require mandatory deposit of the copyrighted work with the library of Congress, which begins seeding the content on Bittorrent at the conclusion of the copyright term.

renholder 8y ago

>...or licensed, fuck you Hollywood Pretty much landed the blame where it should fall but it's not the only one. Take a look at PDFs with DRMs and what happens when those companies no longer exist or the like. It's chasing the almighty <insert currency here> that locks you into licensing to watch, instead of ownership. Long live the VHS days... (...damn the man, save the Empire.)

egypturnash 8y ago

> we've only recently discovered that the headphones that came with the car for the DVD player not only work, but will let Michelle and I listen to Wait, Wait without the loud protestations of the kids (since they can watch a movie while we listen to podcasts) I don’t have kids and this guy can raise his kids however he pleases as far as I’m concerned but: it strikes me that letting the kids always consume Kid Media feels like a bad idea. There’s exposure to adult concerns and concepts they’re missing out on. There’s probably something they’re missing in learning about sharing. There’s a variety of input they’re lacking. They’re sitting there in a little bubble of media created for kids, designed in part to exploit kids to make money - “buy all our play sets and toys”, as one Homestar episode out it. Whenever I was in the car as a kid, it was Mom’s hand on the radio dial. Mostly the local classical/NPR station. I didn’t always like it but sometimes I was surprised by what I did. I dunno, something about media bubbles, something about the vast task of passing on some measure of your values to your kids, also something about getting the little bastards to STFU and let you drive on a long trip too.

Jgrubb 8y ago
> I don’t have kids I used to think all kinds of things about how we'd raise our kids before we had them, but I'm pretty satisfied with the job that we're doing overall - they're outside catching the first frogs of spring in the creek that goes by our house at this very moment. However, sometimes when you're driving for hours to somewhere they get a little bored and want to watch a movie. And sometimes you get bored of listening to the dialog from Hotel Transylvania and want to listen to a podcast and then you discover how handy those headphones actually are. edit: I mean, this is constructive feedback and I do appreciate it. And you should absolutely think about your parenting strategy before you have children as well. It's just that, well, sometimes your opinions on things soften as you age and gain domain experience is all...
- egypturnash 8y ago
  I am pretty sure I am never going to have kids. :) That part about letting the kids watch movies while the parents listen to adult things, without the context of "on a multi-hour drive", just struck me and I wanted to interrogate it a bit.

aerotwelve 8y ago

I hate to be that guy, but there's a reason I have a closet full of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and physical games for modern consoles. Digital downloads weren't ready ten years ago, and the author's post is a great reminder of why they still aren't ready. Buy physical media; opt-out of this vendor-lock-in-masquerading-as-copyright-enforcement scam.

Zarath 8y ago
Worry not, physical media will be a thing of the past soon enough I'm sure. That being said, I do a lot of shopping at old record stores for cheap 2 for $1 CDs
Pfhreak 8y ago
To present an equally valid but totally opposite viewpoint: Digital downloads were ready 20 years ago, and they are still the best choice for consoles and pcs. Spend your money on games (they've never been cheaper) with the understanding that hey, maybe 40 years from now you won't be able to dig them up. But by then we'll have 40 years of more games, and the current titles will get scooped up into museums, vintage shops, and other platforms. Or they won't, and you'll lose them forever, which is ok. Accept the impermanence, enjoy the experiences you are having today. Don't let the past be an anchor, find new things that give you joy and play them then set them down.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > they've never been cheaper But that's the thing. They're not "cheaper" when you account for the fact that you're basically renting them from an unreliable platform that may go down at any time or perhaps deny you "availability" for unknown reasons. And games are actually one of the best cases since DRM-free platforms are reasonably well-established. Other sorts of media are a lot worse off from that POV.
  - Pfhreak 8y ago
    You are right that the games I buy have an N year shelf life. I estimate N to be 'longer than I'm likely to care about a game'. I don't want NES cartridges around my house despite growing up with one. Nor an SNES or PS2 discs. Every year there's more fantastic media produced than I have time to enjoy, why lock myself into the past when I can pick up a pile of cool indie games and the occasional AAA title every year and just enjoy those experiences? Who knows, maybe I'll be eating my words someday. I've been buying games for the better part of 30 years and it hasn't happened yet, but maybe you'll be right in the end. I don't spend a lot of mental energy worrying about it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jccalhoun 8y ago

When you buy drm'ed digital files you get what you pay for: nothing. I never "buy" drm'ed material if I can't break the drm.

cletus 8y ago

The author's mistake (IMHO) was not treating his TV as a dumb pixel rectangle and nothing more. Not getting a Roku-integrated TV has the same arguments for not getting any other kind of "smart" TV: - Getting prompted in the middle of content that "the Terms of Service have been updated" - Getting prompted to accept the ToS - Companies deciding to inject ads into your content - Interoperability issues - Being able to upgrade your (cheap) set-top box without upgrading your (expensive) TV - Smart TV apps are typically worse than the best box apps (although this doesn't really apply to Roku-equipped TVs I guess) - Bugs in the software degrading or disabling your viewing capabilities. Worst case with a box? Buy a new one ($100). Seriously. Don't even connect your smart TV to the Internet. Leave the Wifi unconnected. Don't plug in an Ethernet cable. Leave that to whatever box or boxes you choose.

bobbyi_settv 8y ago
TVs aren't expensive anymore. He says he got a TCL from Costco. I just checked their website and the 43" model costs $239. No platform has more and better apps than Roku. A box is a closed platform just like Roku. Any of the things you're worried about are just as likely with a separate piece of hardware running smart TV software as with the software running on the TV itself.
- c256 8y ago
  Especially if you’re going to go with Roku.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Roku is the most open platform out there. It’s easy enough to write and use “private channels” using their SDK. Roku doesn’t have to approve a private channel. https://sdkdocs.roku.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view/1611307 https://sdkdocs.roku.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view...

pontifier 8y ago

The court is killing innovation. Look up VidAngel. Copyright holders were compensated via the purchase of physical media, and only the owner of a particular disk had access, but they have been sued by powerful media conglomerates. Disclaimer: I invented the system they used and carefully crafted what I thought was a system compliant with copyright law, but as always the party with more money wins in court. I also have a lot of their stock.

mindslight 8y ago

The doldrums of Gimmick Land is where you end up when you keep falling for all that advertising trying to sell you gimmicks. Roku iTunes SmartTV Chromecast Netflix blah blah blah and a thousand other temporary dead ends all grappling for your disposable income. Anything being pushed at you is being done so by someone who stands to have an outsized payday if you accept. The age old truth is that unless you want to be a mark, you have to do a bit of self-actualization and decide what makes sense for yourself rather than just choosing between the options being pushed at you. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't change this dynamic - it actually just makes you a bigger mark. A TV is something that displays an HDMI input, with the quickest power up time possible. A movie is a file, preferably mp4 and x264 or x265. A movie player is something that can pick and play those files. If this just implies a NAS and torrents, then that is still the state of the art! If you can find more convenient options that still respect your autonomy, please feel free. But don't buy into something that promises convenience when its real "value add" is lock-in.

Leader2light 8y ago

Any tech guy should be pirating all their stuff and just using a media server. Emby or Plex work great. I can watch my stuff from anywhere in the world.

mmaunder 8y ago

If they have their way, 'posession' of a film in DVD or other portable format will become a crime.

agumonkey 8y ago

It's interesting in the mathematical sense, a variable is a variable and when you add constraints, whether the size of a tape, the gap between tracks or software channels .. you get incompatibilities. Also, whenever a shift occurs, it helps shed light about the value of what we add (in this case the DVD player). A tech version of aging.

kmfrk 8y ago

I really hate how the experiment of redeemable codes for physical copies died out - and wasn't even an option in most countries. Now we have to choose between availability or convenience (online video) versus annoying physical discs with higher quality.

gwern 8y ago

'Commoditize your complement' https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement

loudtieblahblah 8y ago

This is what you get for buying digitally locked media in iTunes, Google play or Amazon. Don't buy shit you're never going to own. I've had a roku dominated house for years. If I want to control content, you have two choices: 1.buy thw dvd/bluray 2. Pirate it Don't buy stupid stuff that's tied to a platform or storage locker. Easy

veridies 8y ago
One added point: while I don’t personally have any moral problem with piracy, if you DO, then buy a digital copy wherever and then pirate a DRM-free version. People like the author are willfully locking themselves down.
- errantspark 8y ago
  This is basically my MO, I don't always have internet service and frankly with storage being as cheap as it is there's really no excuse for me not to have a seamless experience where I can just go watch/listen/play anything I want to whenever I want. I like supporting content creators but DRM (and ads) have no place in my life.

test6554 8y ago

It would be nice if all the major hollywood studios shared a ledger (not necessarily blockchain) showing who legally purchased what media. And then required all of the downstream digital platforms (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google) to grant you access to any movies you already purchased. Additionally, it would be great if you were able to sell your access of one movie to another party for cash or swap content. Movie studios would like it because they could sell directly to consumers and cut out the middle man. Digital platforms wouldn't like it, but would otherwise lose access to the content they wish to sell. Consumers would like it because their library of content would be permanent and would tear down the garden walls. They could also resell or swap their purchases, possibly for a small fee.

c256 8y ago
Most content industries (definitely including movies, tv, books, music, and games) vary between “dislike” and “loathing” of secondary markets, because it gets them nothing and costs them a “potential sale”, even more than piracy, because the person paying for a “used” copy has demonstrated that they’re willing to part with money for the product. Where the right to resale still exists, the way to bet is that it exists because of major lawsuits that the industry has lost (or “lost”). Don’t worry about the shareholders, though - they’re still chipping away! (Damn, I’m gloomy lately. Sorry.)
scarface74 8y ago
Sounding like a broken record, but you don’t need “blockchain”. It’s already available and supported by four of the six studios and Apple, Amazon, Google and Vudu. It’s Movies Anywhere.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

> "I don't give a shit about games or 4K or an internal drive, I just want to watch the fucking movies I bought (or licensed, fuck you Hollywood)." He's fucking right.

clintonb 8y ago

Folks have mentioned Movies Anywhere. Some physical discs also include UltraViolet (UV) codes that are redeemable for digital copies. UV is going away, but the codes will still be available. This meets all of the authors needs...assuming the disc includes the code.

aczerepinski 8y ago

This hits home for me. I bought 100+ albums on iTunes, and accidentally did so on two different accounts that can never be merged. Every time I buy a new device (which feels like all the fricking time), remembering passwords and trying to get access to two different accounts is a PITA. I most certainly don't feel like I own the music in the way I did with CDs. So now I stream and haven't bought an album in over a year. That sucks for the artists who make essentially nothing from the streaming services, but buying doesn't feel like a legitimate option.

scarface74 8y ago
That’s easy. They are all DRM free. You can use Apple Match for $25 and it will go through all of your music no matter where you got it from and register it as purchased. Once you pay one time you can cancel it.

mnm1 8y ago

The author should learn how to torrent and stop complaining. After all, he already purchased a license for the content so we're simply talking about getting a backup copy that can work on all his hardware which is perfectly legal.

jimnotgym 8y ago

I have an old TV that I was given because it had a black band down the screen. I fixed it by wiggling some cables, and it became my main TV. I could afford to replace it, but I don't see why I need to. One peculiar thing is that it has DVI rather than HDMI. I have a YouView digi box which I use to stream. I can't use my Amazon Fire stick with the TV because this would require a device to extract the sound from the HDMI and these are silly expensive. I can't watch BluRay from an Xbox because of DRM, and not being hdmi (There is a hack, but still). I subscribed to Netflix and Prime, but Prime didn't work properly on my box. I wanted to watch GOT, and subscribed to another service that had an app on my box, but the app only showed a selection of that providers content and not GOT. The same provider won't play on Linux at all (no DRM app), and the only Windows machine I had wouldn't play the sound loud enough. So south a myriad of devices I couldn't watch the show I subscribed to see. Kodi had it, and works on Linux.... So I could send my TV to landfill, buy a new one, get multiple digi boxes and subscribe to everything...or use Kodi. I can't be bothered, I cancelled my subs except Netflix. I only keep that for the kids.

ezoe 8y ago

So he brought DRM-protected videos and complains that it has DRM in it. He totally deserve it.