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Imagine how awesome it would be if you could search for a movie choose the service that current has the best cost/byte ratio for your location (they can make th

by noxer 5y ago

Imagine how awesome it would be if you could search for a movie choose the service that current has the best cost/byte ratio for your location (they can make this variable to manage load). Then you start streaming. No registering needed. Not even a login. After 10 min you notice the film sucks so you stop the stream. You only payed for the first 10 min. Totally friction-less ofc. You could watch on a random TV anywhere and stream the money from your phone. Sounds like sci-fi but we have all the key tech needed for this.

arcticbull 5y ago
It sounds not very compelling. Id rather give Netflix $50/mth and not worry about any of that. [edit] not to mention, content creators don't price their movies in dollars per byte haha, they price it based on what they think people will pay. This is part of the reason all you can eat is much more enjoyable.
- noxer 5y ago
  I think you didn't get the bigger picture. Its not for streaming a movie is for everything on the web. Why would you pay 50 for Netflix if you can just consume content wherever you want for 50 bucks instead. They can still offer you a flat rate if they want. The option to pay what you use doesn't take the option to pay upfront or whatever away. There is no doubt they will lure you into using the same service somehow but that's kind irrelevant. The goal is to have the choice and that you can pay/support the small fishes too. The one you would never make a subscription for. Same with donation. You probably dont have Wikipedia or hacker news subscription. But leaving a few cents for free content ever month would probably be a good idea to keep it free. Its not "all you can eat" is "you can eat where you want" you never missed that because it was always like that you never needed a subscription for certain food or restaurant chains. You just go and eat wherever you want and they all expect you to pay what you ordered or whatever deal they offer. This system makes it far more likely you go eat somewhere new and far more likely that you eat spaghetti where you like it the most and pizza somewhere ease. Web content should work the same.
  - zaphar 5y ago
    This conversation is odd. Someone says there are no real world use cases. Someone else says yes there is and poses one. Former person points out that in fact that example just makes their point for them. The counter is well there has to be some use case because there are theoretically an infinite number of them. We just have to find one from that set. This example right here. It presumes that content creators will happily just bypass distributors like Netflix. I find that unlikely because it ignores what Netflix actually provides for content creators. 1. Funding in some cases. 2. Discovery and a ready audience. 3. Availability of content to your audience. Content creators have little motivation to not use Netflix or Disney+ or whatever other service. Those services have little motivation to use crypto streaming payments. And frankly most consumers don't care enough to create an incentive for the creators by voting with their wallet.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’t want them. There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit. People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.
      - noxer 5y ago
        >People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content. Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the content sucks you leave because obviously you want the money to go to something you like. But that's already the default behavior anyway.
lottin 5y ago
"Streaming money" doesn't sound like sci-fi at all. It just sounds like something I absolutely would try to avoid at all costs.
- noxer 5y ago
  Well there can still be option to pay full at once. Not quite sure what you gain from this but if you can stream you can also stream all once.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    IMO people don't want to pay piece by piece, and content producers are not going to produce media for a flat rate $/byte. That's not how it's metered.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
this sound great. I'd cancel my Netflix sub and go for this in an instant. Now go pitch it to the 50+ copyright owners that you'd need to convince to make this happen. Strong hint: it's not going to happen. The people who own the content you want to stream like this have no incentive to make it work like this. If they could go back in time and say "no" to Spotify, they would.
- reedjosh 5y ago
  > Now go pitch it to the 50+ copyright owners that you'd need to convince to make this happen. How about instead I pitch it to people that make content I _actually_ want to see. The Netflix/Spotify thing was just an analogy. Before youtube became big brother, the majority of content I watched was there. I'm personally sick of the `50+ copyright owners` homogenizing our culture into bland idiotic sludge. My hope is the `50+ copyright owners` lose all power and wither away.

by noxer 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago

It sounds not very compelling. Id rather give Netflix $50/mth and not worry about any of that. [edit] not to mention, content creators don't price their movies in dollars per byte haha, they price it based on what they think people will pay. This is part of the reason all you can eat is much more enjoyable.

noxer 5y ago
I think you didn't get the bigger picture. Its not for streaming a movie is for everything on the web. Why would you pay 50 for Netflix if you can just consume content wherever you want for 50 bucks instead. They can still offer you a flat rate if they want. The option to pay what you use doesn't take the option to pay upfront or whatever away. There is no doubt they will lure you into using the same service somehow but that's kind irrelevant. The goal is to have the choice and that you can pay/support the small fishes too. The one you would never make a subscription for. Same with donation. You probably dont have Wikipedia or hacker news subscription. But leaving a few cents for free content ever month would probably be a good idea to keep it free. Its not "all you can eat" is "you can eat where you want" you never missed that because it was always like that you never needed a subscription for certain food or restaurant chains. You just go and eat wherever you want and they all expect you to pay what you ordered or whatever deal they offer. This system makes it far more likely you go eat somewhere new and far more likely that you eat spaghetti where you like it the most and pizza somewhere ease. Web content should work the same.
- zaphar 5y ago
  This conversation is odd. Someone says there are no real world use cases. Someone else says yes there is and poses one. Former person points out that in fact that example just makes their point for them. The counter is well there has to be some use case because there are theoretically an infinite number of them. We just have to find one from that set. This example right here. It presumes that content creators will happily just bypass distributors like Netflix. I find that unlikely because it ignores what Netflix actually provides for content creators. 1. Funding in some cases. 2. Discovery and a ready audience. 3. Availability of content to your audience. Content creators have little motivation to not use Netflix or Disney+ or whatever other service. Those services have little motivation to use crypto streaming payments. And frankly most consumers don't care enough to create an incentive for the creators by voting with their wallet.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’t want them. There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit. People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.
    - noxer 5y ago
      >People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content. Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the content sucks you leave because obviously you want the money to go to something you like. But that's already the default behavior anyway.

lottin 5y ago

"Streaming money" doesn't sound like sci-fi at all. It just sounds like something I absolutely would try to avoid at all costs.

noxer 5y ago
Well there can still be option to pay full at once. Not quite sure what you gain from this but if you can stream you can also stream all once.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  IMO people don't want to pay piece by piece, and content producers are not going to produce media for a flat rate $/byte. That's not how it's metered.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

this sound great. I'd cancel my Netflix sub and go for this in an instant. Now go pitch it to the 50+ copyright owners that you'd need to convince to make this happen. Strong hint: it's not going to happen. The people who own the content you want to stream like this have no incentive to make it work like this. If they could go back in time and say "no" to Spotify, they would.

reedjosh 5y ago
> Now go pitch it to the 50+ copyright owners that you'd need to convince to make this happen. How about instead I pitch it to people that make content I _actually_ want to see. The Netflix/Spotify thing was just an analogy. Before youtube became big brother, the majority of content I watched was there. I'm personally sick of the `50+ copyright owners` homogenizing our culture into bland idiotic sludge. My hope is the `50+ copyright owners` lose all power and wither away.