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Tonight I wanted to watch Spider-Man: Far From Home with my kids. I have subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Criterion, Apple TV+ and PBS. Yet, my

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• toyg 6y ago
  Dafuq is Starz, even? These days there is a new service every month, it’s hard to keep up. Absolute shambles.
  • bitbckt 6y ago
    Starz is a 20+ year old premium cable channel.
  • 1123581321 6y ago
    Starz is an add-on paid cable channel, like HBO. It’s been around for awhile. About ten years ago, Starz had a deal with Netflix to stream their content next day. I remember watching some of Party Down that way as it aired.
  • flanbiscuit 6y ago
    Starz has been around since the mid-90s. It has some pretty good programming but it just doesn't get the attention that maybe HBO or Showtime does. They had a really good short lived comedy series called "Party Down" that I loved. Had a great cast! https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1073507/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1073507/ I think Outlander might be one of its more popular series now. Based on a book series and brought to TV by Ronald D Moore who did Battlestar Galactica (which personally I am cautious about because the last season or 2 of BSG was not my favorite)
    • aaronbrethorst 6y ago
      Speaking of “dafuq” streaming services, RDM has a new series on Apple TV+ called For All Mankind which is an alternate history of the space race. It starts a little slow, but it’s worth your time.
    • caf 6y ago
      One of the creators of Party Down was Rob Thomas, the guy behind Veronica Mars.
      • briandear 6y ago
        The lead singer of Matchbox Twenty?
        • caf 6y ago
          No, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0859432/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0859432/
        • nkozyra 6y ago
          A different person with the very common name Rob Thomas.
    • toyg 6y ago
      Ah, it’s US only, that’s why I never heard of them.
    • amjd 6y ago
      Counterpart is another great series by Starz. Too bad they canceled it just after two seasons. It's one of the best shows made in the last few years.
    • c17r 6y ago
      If I remember correctly, Moore had the whole thing planned out but then the studio truncated his timetable so he had to speed things up to get to the end which is why the last two seasons are not stellar.
• balladeer 6y ago
  Yes all of that and one another reason I cancelled my Netflix account for was - it just won't let me successfully hide/remove the content I disliked, didn't finish because I didn't find it good enough, didn't want to see again, and even the content I had actually finished watching! It was almost mocking me everywhere! e.g. I explicitly disliked a show and anytime I'd open Netflix, for days/weeks, it be on top either a banner or one of the first in one or many categories. Felt almost like mocking :) If your libraries is shallow (which anyway consisted of mostly r trite subpar content) it's your problem - don't hit me with your pathetic dark pattern. Their support kept giving robotic answers. It was outrageous.
• dwild 6y ago
  In Canada it seems like it was possible to rent it on iTunes. That's so weird, that means that someone got some exclusive right on renting it? JustWatch tell me that AMC on demands had it to rent for 5.99$, is it possible that you missed that? It could be them that got the exclusive right for it... that had to be expensive for sure if it's the case.
• ahupp 6y ago
  So you had an option to watch it in your home for the price of a theater ticket and instead you decided to just take it? I regularly tell my kids no when there's a movie we have to pay full price for. They can wait a few months.
• nicbou 6y ago
  I tried to keep things legal for a year or two, but consistently ran into this problem. I rarely watch whatever's on. I prefer to watch specific movies from a list of recommendations. This was simply impossible. Sometimes I couldn't find the movies I wanted. Sometimes they weren't available in my country. Sometimes they weren't available in their original language, or with the right subtitles. Sometimes the streaming platform didn't like my hardware. Sometimes it didn't let me watch the movie over more than 24 hours. Paying to watch movies felt like paying for making the experience more grating. Piracy gives me any movie I desire in around 20 minutes. I get a file. I own this file for as long as I want. I can play that movie offline, put it on any device, share it with anyone, or transform it as I please. It's mine. I don't think I'll be paying for streaming again. Movie tickets absolutely, but not streaming.
  • m0xte 6y ago
    The thing that killed it for me was buying an Apple TV and then finding out half the content didn’t work because my TV didn’t support some particular fucked up combination of HDCP. I wasn’t about to buy a new TV just to get a copy protection upgrade so fuck ‘em. Torrents and a usb stick it is.
    • arghwhat 6y ago
      Technology like HDCP, which only serves to annoy legitimate users, should be illegal. One can get HDCP bypass solutions no money at all, but the technology should never have existed in the first place. Worse yet, despite failing so horribly, development is still going into it, with major players like Netflix pushing it as well.
      • DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
        I'll say there's one (and only one) good thing about HDCP: if a source/sink is HDCP compliant then it's a good indicator that it's DisplayPort or HDMI-compliant. Ever since the mid-2000s through to today there's a load of TVs, displays, etc on the market that claimed to be DP and HDMI compatible but failed on the edge-cases (e.g. pumping 4K@60Hz down a DisplayPort 1.2 pipe). In my experience the gear that was HDCP compliant tended to perform better (but by no means perfectly cough Philips...). Compare that to the mess of compliance and functionality with SCART connectors in the 1990s. I had a TV with a true RGB SCART input and a bunch of devices claimed to offer RGB SCART output, yet didn't actually support it (I assume because few consumers knew how to take advantage of RGB SCART, given the default was Composite-over-SCART and at SDTV it looks good enough).
• akerro 6y ago
  >I have subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Criterion, Apple TV+ and PBS WOW. I had netflix once for a few days, I paid for netflix just to watch House MD, a week into netflix, they removed House MD from my region, I cancelled subscription and moved to PT. Never came back to netflix, I just no longer trust them, too much effort and too much legal complications. I can imagine paying for one portal, but more than two? That's more expensive and less user friendly then cable TV.
  • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    ok not trusting them seems a little much on that example, surely they didn't promise you that House MD would be on in your region in perpetuity? Although there are probably lots other reasons not to trust them.
    • jstanley 6y ago
      Why wouldn't it be there? Netflix have the data, he has the money, what's the problem? The problem is "too much legal complications" and that problem does not exist on Popcorn Time.
      • thejynxed 6y ago
        Well, it does if you reside anywhere such agencies as the MPAA, GEMMA, or BREIN can send jackbooted S.W.A.T. through your front door.
      • m4rtink 6y ago
        Yeah, this really looks to me like someone still clinking to the long obsolete broadcast model, where you had no back channel to your customers from them to request what they want & to pay for it. And also broadcasts were regionally bound. So you sold a license to a local broadcasting company to for a time window and number of runs for a show. Not more you can do with no back channel for customers to request individual shows and pay for them. By only granting one license per are you can enforce some scarcity and get your money & hopefully users liked it. Channels could the compete who gets the best time based licenses, who gets the new hot stuff first, etc. Now here we are with a global network with basically any user being able to request any show and pay for it (or get a subscription for a channel carrying it) and yet the media companies still carry one like one had to win an auction to get one of the broadcast masters, drag in on top of a hill to broadcast it and then return it back to someone else to do the same thing.
• m12k 6y ago
  Imagine if there was some kind of central digital rights management system, that simply kept track of which shows and movies a consumer had purchased/leased the right to see, and then they got to legally see it from wherever they pleased, including bittorrent. Forcibly (by regulation I imagine) separating the "negotiating licensing deals with rights-holders" businesses from the "delivering video to the consumers" businesses. You could stick to whatever delivery platform you preferred, maybe get a marketplace to see the cheapest options to get to view the video you wanted if it wasn't already included in any of your current subscriptions.
  • trashburger 6y ago
    That sounds severely more dystopian than what we have now. I pray that this does not come to fruition. Don't give them ideas.
  • felipelemos 6y ago
    We could have the opposite. A system that just list in what streaming platform a specific movie/show can be found. In that way no private info will ever be leaked.
    • jedieaston 6y ago
      Google has this functionality in knowledge cards (if you are signed in, you can even tell it what you subscribe to), or https://justwatch.com https://justwatch.com is a non-Google service that does the same thing.
  • syshum 6y ago
    Personally as a Condition of copyright a person should be required to allow distribution of their work in a Fair and non-discriminatory way, there should not be a concept of "exclusive", a creator or publisher should put a price on the work, then anyone can distribute that work for that price
• lvs 6y ago
  Try as I might, I cannot subscribe to cable internet without a TV package. So I'm shelling out over $100/mo to a monopoly for both. On top of that. I pay at least $50/mo for several additional streaming services. What is the monthly cost I would have to pay to get general access to all streaming content? Twice that much? Ten times as much?
• a012 6y ago
  I came to the same conclusion, I can "buy" a movie with Amazon Video Prime, but they're DRMed so technically I didn't own anything. Nothing is like you buy a DVD with these streaming services.
  • catalogia 6y ago
    Even DVDs are DRMed, though it's easy to strip.
• Zren 6y ago
  I usually use https://www.justwatch.com/ca/new https://www.justwatch.com/ca/new to find what service a movie is on. US: https://www.justwatch.com/us/new https://www.justwatch.com/us/new and other countries are linked on their homepage at the bottom. Some minor Stylish/uBlock rules: .consent-banner { display: none; } ion-tab[tab="new"] .content-header { display: none; } ion-tab[tab="popular"] .content-header { display: none; }
  • danhanlon 6y ago
    Off topic from main thread, but how do you use those style rules in uBlock? I've tried looking but I can't find anything for rules like that.
    • hadrien01 6y ago
      You can create rules to hide something by right-clicking on the page and choosing 'Block an element', or by adding a rule like justwatch.com##.consent-banner in your filter parameters.
    • aspenmayer 6y ago
      Not OP, but open the uBlock Origin Dashboard and put them in the section for rules. uBlock Origin is not the same as uBlock. I prefer Origin. How to open the Dashboard https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard
  • NewDimension 6y ago
    Anyone know where such websites get their data? I'm looking for an API for Netflix that would let me list all movies that have specific subtitles available. Netflix.com/browse/subtitles only shows a limited amount of movies.
    • pcmaffey 6y ago
      Netflix closed their API some years ago. Only a few grandfathered sites still have access. eg. I use instantwatcher.com
• null0pointer 6y ago
  It's even worse if you watch stuff that's not popular. Hollywood is not really my thing so I usually watch more arthouse or vintage movies. Eg. 60's French or Italian cinema, or 80's/90's Asian cinema. Not only are these simply not available on most streaming/rental platforms, torrents can be incredibly hard to find without access to a private tracker. And even if I can find a public torrent it usually doesn't have many seeds. It's really quite saddening to me that some classic cinema is essentially dead, completely inaccessible. I eventually found Mubi, which is a relatively cheap arthouse movie streaming/rental service. So at least I have that for now. Until they go out of business because they're not popular enough.
  • tluyben2 6y ago
    > Hollywood is not really my thing I have that issue as well and i'm happy I see more and more vintage stuff (shows and movies) on Archive.
  • toyg 6y ago
    A friend of mine is their marketing manager, they are doing ok. The long tail is really long ;) and services like Mubi have a pretty good (and often wealthy) niche to get money from.
    • Krasnol 6y ago
      Please tell them that their homepage is shit. At lest the German version that I get to see. I want to know how much that costs but it only offers me a 7days free subscription. Even when I go to the gift option it asks me to sign in...this is terrible.
      • eythian 6y ago
        When I click through "Try 7 days free", it then gives me some info and says "Start free trial version", when I press that button it tells me: maandelijks €9,99 per maand jaarlijks €7,99 per maand Afgeschreven in één betaling van €95,88 When seems sufficiently accessible to me. The next step is creating an account. Might have to give this a try.
• syshum 6y ago
  I was recently rewatching a popular show from the 00's on either Netflix or prime, I was 1/2 through the show when one day I woke up to find it completely gone from all services i am member of... Guess what, it does not just disappear from my Plex/Emby server... Online stream services was suppose to resolve the CableTV problem of paying for 1000 channels to watch the 5 you want. Now Every network, every media company, every one is creating their own streaming service with all of their content "exclusive" so I would need to sign up for like 20+ services to get access to about 60% of the content that I want to watch as the other 40% is simply not on any streaming service at all it is either too new or too old Justwatch.com has more than 85 Streaming Services in their database... that is crazy
  • andromeduck 6y ago
    Yeah we're basically back to Cable.
• tobyhinloopen 6y ago
  Yesterday I wanted to buy a specific brand of chocolate. It wasn’t sold in any of the stores I usually go to. It was only sold in some other store for 2 times the price of other similar types of chocolate. It’s only available at this store because I assume greed. So I stole it instead. +100 upvotes. Just buying a DVD on the second-hand market is too hard?
  • effingwewt 6y ago
    This analogy fails on every level. There are points to be made against pirating, you made zero of them. Chocolate bars are consumed and digested, digital media is not,it can be resold, rented infinitely. There is also the point GP may have already seen the movie in theaters, why should he have to pay to watch it again. Also gp wanted to rent the movie, not purchase it,and on top of that has multiple streaming services he is subscribed to, none of which offered the movie. People are tired of having to hunt down what they want to watch, and many would happily pay for one service that had the full catalogaavailable regardless of region. Until this happens the MPAA will never win by greed and shooting themselves in the foot.
    • IanCal 6y ago
      > why should he have to pay to watch it again. Because that wasn't included in the ticket price. If it was, cinema tickets would be more valuable and they would charge more.
    • nkrisc 6y ago
      When the movies I want to watch are not available I just don't watch them. Movies are a luxury, it's not like steeling bread to free your starving family.
  • skoskie 6y ago
    I haven’t needed a DVD player in a decade. And, yes, I would download that chocolate bar. Especially if i was already paying three different services to to deliver chocolate bars to me on demand.
• lucasverra 6y ago
  Thanks to MPAA taking out popcorn in the last couple of days, I discovered in the HN post the next big and marvellous torrent thing : https://www.stremio.com/ https://www.stremio.com/ Its like PT on steroids with add-ons. The only caveat is taking 5 additional minutes to install add-ons (TPB+ can be your first choice to get you going) There is one that list IMDB TOP 250, in order, ready to stream I have Netflix and Disney+ just to buy moral credit; but since ~1y torrent at will again. Thank you MPAA for enlightening me
  • uncletammy 6y ago
    It's like whack-a-mole but the moles keep coming back with armour
  • carlhjerpe 6y ago
    Read their TOS, It's really quite.... Iffy. When you decided you don't give a damn, the Torrentio plugin is where It's at, scrapes way many public trackers.
    • lucasverra 6y ago
      What do you mean ?
      • carlhjerpe 6y ago
        Actually it seems like this has changed since last I checked it. "IMPORTANT: We do not collect any history or logs of what addons/sources you use for streaming! Furthermore, if you login as a Guest User, no personal data will be collected whatsoever." - https://web.archive.org/web/20200514142904/https://www.stremio.com/privacy https://web.archive.org/web/20200514142904/https://www.strem... (Their own privacy page doesn't load for me) That clause has not always been there.
• meddlepal 6y ago
  > So I downloaded it off Usenet instead. Let's reword that as: "I couldn't get this thing for the price I wanted so I stole a copy" Seriously? Imagine going into a box store and doing that. You would face a high probability of being arrested for theft.
  • muldvarp 6y ago
    But he didn't steal anything. He copied it (illegally).
    • meddlepal 6y ago
      Oh you got me! What a fine technically correct and utterly useless distinction you've made that only the techno-elite of HN accept as a valid defense. Even if he was authorized to make the copy he would have still needed to pay to use the copy. He's not authorized to make or use the copy.
      • muldvarp 6y ago
        > What a fine technically correct and utterly useless distinction It's not a useless distinction though. One can argue that stealing is bad because when I steal your car, you don't have access to your car anymore. If I were to copy your car I wouldn't harm you. That doesn't mean it's okay to illegally copy something, but comparing it to theft is unhelpful at best and misleading at worst.
  • cs02rm0 6y ago
    Imagine going into a box store and taking a copy of a box. It's not theft.
  • ubercow13 6y ago
    It's more like reading the magazines in the magazine aisle and then not buying anything
  • kdtsh 6y ago
    Clearly words don’t have meaning to you if you’re happy to reword what they said like that. Digital piracy is not and never has been theft. No one has been deprived of their property. It’s illegal, yes, and you can argue about the ethics surrounding it all you like - but the fact remains, stealing a CD and downloading an album rip are materially different things. Speaking of CDs: the music industry (maybe RIAA was involved, I don’t know) seems to have figured out digital content delivery. I’ve got exactly one subscription for music: Spotify. I can get all the music I want to listen to with this, more than I could ever get when I used BitTorrent (public trackers were sometimes limited, and seeding on ADSL was hard). If they were to raise the price, I’d still use it. There are issues with how artists are remunerated for their work, but the problem of distribution is basically solved. Why can’t the film industry do this?
• m-p-3 6y ago
  I found this some time ago to find where I can watch something https://www.justwatch.com https://www.justwatch.com Yhis is just a service that fills yet another gap from all this fragmentation, but in a way it's better than some media company having a monopoly on anything we can watch.
  • saityi 6y ago
    Unfortunately, on the Canadian JustWatch, I find the answer is frequently 'this is totally unavailable for you to legally view or purchase digitally in Canada', at which point I end up pirating it.
• xapata 6y ago
  Funny, I was able to watch that on some streaming service not long ago. Sucks that it rotated off.
• raiyu 6y ago
  This is absolutely true and this is what Netflix and Spotify have proven. If you provide an easy to use digital platform people will subscribe. Now Netflix has a higher market cap than most Hollywood Studios, and Spotify has a higher market cap than most if not all record companies. But this is the classic case of not listening to your customers and innovators dilemma. Old models of business are very slow to change and it has happened time and time again. Movies, music, newspapers, and so forth.
• parliament32 6y ago
  Netflix was great when it first came out, but as the providers fragment into their own streaming services it's killing the model. I'm not interested in paying >$100/mo cable-tv-channel-package-style, at this point I'd rather drop that cash on a VPN and seedbox and still have $80 left over.
• tehwebguy 6y ago
  You are an adult, with kids, who pays bills and thinks the cost of a rental justify your piracy. All of the convenience arguments are gone now, it’s just about $15 you didn’t think you should have to pay. Super weird thing to admit! I get doin it, but I don’t get defending it.