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You know the traditional business model of Hollywood is well and truly broken when an open source application like Popcorn Time comes along and does everything

You know the traditional business model of Hollywood is well and truly broken when an open source application like Popcorn Time comes along and does everything right. What Popcorn Time has done by making accessing content on demand easier than ever before is nothing short of impressive. They're the Netflix of piracy and I think Hollywood can learn a lot from Popcorn Time (but as history has proven, they won't).

xasos 11y ago
> Hollywood can learn a lot from Popcorn Time (but as history has proven, they won't). This happened to the music industry with Napster, but they learned a little too late. Now Spotify is the dominant force in the music streaming business.
Narkov 11y ago
Everything right? Except of course monitize it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do. Making a business out of it is much harder.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> Everything right? Except of course monitize it. And funding/creating it. Anyone can take something they don't own and give it away for free. Investing in its creation and ensuring that investment is successful is much more difficult and limits your options for distribution.
- rkangel 11y ago
  Given the technical restrictions on sharing illegal content, due to copyright laws shutdown of websites etc., sharing illegal content isn't that easy to do. That someone has managed to do it in as user friendly a manner as they have, putting everything in the industry to shame (apart from Netflix) is in an indication of the failings of the industry. Netflix is a great product that falls down only in terms of content. If Netflix had more TV shows as box sets, and new episodes of currently being broadcast TV seasons, I would happily pay 10 times as much as I do (no exaggeration) and never use anything else legal or otherwise. The resistance that the established industry has to making deals to enable that sort of service is the reason that Popcorn Time can beat them.
  - eli 11y ago
    Hollywood isn't in the moving bits around industry. That was never the hard part. It's like saying you improved Photoshop by making a cracked version that's easy to download.... Users might be happy, but imagine you work at Adobe.
    - 1stop 11y ago
      That's not really true. The big studios are distributors of the content. They traditionally sold to Cinemas, and had DVDs made, etc. The fact they missed the boat on digital distribution is completely their fault...
      - k-mcgrady 11y ago
        They're also investors in the creation of the content.
      - eli 11y ago
        Sure and Adobe is distributor of Photoshop, but I wouldn't really say they're in the "downloading install files" business.
  - nonick 11y ago
    Netflix is great, I guess. I would know for sure if they were available in my country. Same as Pandora, Spotify etc.
    - Bladegunner 11y ago
      Try out a vpn, like hola. (note: only have hola active while you are using it, there are some security risks using it.)
      - Flimm 11y ago
        You still need a debit/credit card for that country.
- thomasfl 11y ago
  At least they have shown that it's possible to distribute movies on a massive scale with a minimum of infrastructure. When distribution cost is close to free, it could open up a lot of possibilities that could potentially benefit customers and film makers.
- smhg 11y ago
  Do you mean monetization and making a business are the main goals? I thought they were means? Means to accomplish progress in human society.
  - bsaul 11y ago
    Is that what your boss tells you whenever you ask for a raise ? edit : that's not just a snarky comment. i always find it amusing whenever people advocate giving other's people's work away for free.
    - rorykoehler 11y ago
      Do you say the same about Spotify?
    - tljr 11y ago
      Your time is worth exactly NOTHING to me. If all you're offering is a duplicated proof of your sunk time (software, movies, the list goes on), you're going to struggle for a share of the resource I use to primarily to get food for my kids. That's not just a snarky comment. I always find it amusing whenever people try to sell things with no real actual value and them complain it's hard.
    - cmiles74 11y ago
      I don't think anyone is advocating giving work away for free. Netflix has a large customer base and continues to grow it, but their library falls short for many people. It's also not available everywhere, and some work is only available in certain regions.
    - smhg 11y ago
      My comment was not meant to participate in the free vs paid discussion. That's indeed a whole other thing. Your question itself, snarky or not, makes me sad. Doesn't that imply you spend a large part of your day doing something you don't like just for the sake of making money?
      - bsaul 11y ago
- viraptor 11y ago
  Coinado will require payment after beta period. We'll see how it goes...
  - eli 11y ago
    The question isn't whether it's possible to charge anything. They're not compensating the content creators. If I steal cars and resell them for a fraction of their typical price, does that prove the car industry is broken?
    - viraptor 11y ago
      I think you want to argue with an answer to a different question. Gp asked about monetising - that's getting people to pay the service provider. What happens to the money later is a completely different issue of artist compensation, contracts, etc I'm not claiming it's legal or a valid business, only saying that the service will not be free soon. If they get paid afterwards, than it's probably something distributors should look at in the future.
    - xnzakg 11y ago
      Except when you steal a car, the owner doesn't have it anymore. If you would manage to clone a car and then resell it for a fraction of its price, it would mean the car industry is broken.
      - dash2 11y ago
        If the price of a movie were composed out of the cost of the materials for the DVD, this argument would be correct. But the price is needed to compensate the people who made the movie. (I don't say that current movie pricing is equitable.) Content creators deserve to be paid for their work. Taking it without payment and without their agreement is stealing.
        _lce0 11y ago
        > Content creators deserve to be paid for their work. Taking it without payment and without their agreement is stealing. I wonder how much Hollywood share its revenue with the content creators, not actors but more like writers, filmmakers, and all those that _create_. are there numbers somewhere? EDIT: s/studios/filmmakers -- thanks icebraining!
- unicornporn 11y ago
  All achievements can't be judged by their ability to make money. /The Swedish socialist
  - eli 11y ago
    Is it not reasonable to judge a course of action by asking, What would it look like if everyone tried to act like me? In this case I think the Hollywood blockbuster goes away.
- tljr 11y ago
  So because it's not a business it's not 'right'?
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  You've fallen into the classic trap: No one is obliged to give you money. Finding a business model that works is your problem, not your customers. Forced lock-in is a model, but it's a violent one that makes people want to leave, and it's entirely predicated on there never being an escape hatch for your trapped customers. There is now an escape hatch for content customers. They're no longer beholden to the choice of cinema or TV for their content, and haven't been for years. Whining about how much more money you made in the old days when people couldn't escape the cage really doesn't enamor you to people. It's on hollywood to find a new business model that works in a post-cage world. If they can't, they'll go bankrupt and vanish, and I won't care. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of good content out there that's either low investment (think Primer) or can pay for itself in box office and/or merchandising alone (marvel, star wars, lord of the rings). If your content creation is predicated on selling DVD's or subscriptions, and your DVD/subscription mechanism is so bad people are willingly buying VPN's to other countries to avoid using it (netflix in aus), that's not your customers problem in any fashion, it's yours.
  - dmarg 11y ago
    >>No one is obliged to give you money. Finding a business model that works is your problem, not your customers.<< This struck a chord with me and is exactly the reason why Hollywood and the Music Industry are flailing. They are trying to continue their business model that worked for so long into this new day and age. Adapt or die essentially.
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      You mean you don't like watching all those unskippable previews and commercials on your blu-ray, or "downloading" the included digital drm file off your disney DVD so you can take your copy of cinderella with you anywhere, anytime.* Or what about renting that great movie and having a 24 hour window to watch it. *Maximum of 2 downloads. Approved devices only, Void where prohibited
    - untog 11y ago
      But what is that new model, exactly? If "paying money in return for receiving goods" doesn't work, how will they make these multi-million dollar cultural phenomenons? I agree that the current system is broken, but saying you'll pirate until the studios work out it feels like an irresponsible point of view, to me.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  > Except of course monitize it. And, you know, create it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do, especially if it's somebody else's stuff :-)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tomjen3 11y ago
  People pay for netflix, which has a worse catalog. As a minimum people would pay for this instead of netflix (and I would certainly be willing to pay more).
Ollinson 11y ago
The problem with streaming film services is distribution rights not software. Even netflix, the poster child of film streaming, struggles with this same problem.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  But that is only a problem that the movie industry itself keeps alive because it refuses to move past the idea of creating false scarcity.
  - bsaul 11y ago
    Oh no, not that price <=> scarcity theory again.... A van gogh isn't more expensive than my drawing because they're rarer or built with rarer materials. Intrinsic value is much more complicated and subtle than that... Giving money for something is also a mean to encourage people to produce more content, for example. It's also a way to say "thank you, keep going on please". edit : or maybe that's what you meant too, in which case i'm sorry for the comment.
    - orbifold 11y ago
      I'm pretty sure if it were possible to create atom for atom identical copies of every van gogh the value of the "original" would plummet. Of course in the real world we have no-cloning theorems, so that isn't possible, information however can be copied at (almost) zero cost and therefore the value of a copy should approach its share of the production cost, which rapidly approaches zero as more copies are made.
      - eli 11y ago
        I disagree. People would still pay more for the one Van Gogh laid his hand upon. After all if you just wanted to look at the painting you can buy a very high quality reproduction today -- you'd need an expert to know it's a fake. Even experts can be fooled by good forgeries.
oliyoung 11y ago
… and Netflix is smart enough to consider them competition, because they actually understand that the market isn't defined by paying for content
Tenoke 11y ago
Even barring monetization aside, Popcorn Time is far from doing everything right. Have you tried watching a show/movie that isn't among the most popular? Chances are there wouldn't be enough seeders to get a decent experience.
- belorn 11y ago
  I can only guess here, but availability of content must surely be one of it. In 2015, a brick and mortar store for renting physical videos still have content which online services do not, including some movies that was in the cinema over a year ago.
  - dagw 11y ago
    In 2015, a brick and mortar store for renting physical videos still have content which online services do not In 2005 or even 2010 I would absolutely have agreed with you. However in 2015 all those really great independent brick and mortar video rental places I used to go to anywhere near me are long since bankrupt and closed down.
    - bluedino 11y ago
      Family Video is growing pretty well. They are the only video store in my area.
      - jonlucc 11y ago
        I've always suspected that was due to their porn selection. A few years ago, I knew someone who worked in a video rental store in the heart of Kansas City that had an extensive "back room". It always seemed to me that the back room was the only area to get traffic. Somehow, the internet hasn't killed porn disc rentals, and I think it shows for both that small shop in Kansas City (which is still open) and Family Video.
        brathouz 11y ago
martingordon 11y ago
How does this differ from iTunes? There's a business model that works, and the experience is pretty much exactly like Popcorn Time, except iTunes has those pesky Rent/Buy buttons.
- cmiles74 11y ago
  The comment compared Popcorn Time to Netflix; I don't think you can really compare iTunes to Netflix (or Popcorn Time). Netflix provides broad access to a range of work for a fixed monthly cost, iTunes is more of a storefront where you can purchase rights. Popcorn Time seems like what many people want from Netflix: a much larger library. Something more like Spotify, but for movies and television.
  - npizzolato 11y ago
    Yes, people want a library of every tv show and movie, and they want it for free. I'm not sure that's ever been untrue.
- mlrtime 11y ago
  Where is the rent/buy button to watch Seinfeld on itunes? Its not just about price, piracy also doesn't care about where the content comes from.
- driverdan 11y ago
  There is something very wrong when buying a movie on iTunes costs more than buying it on Bluray.
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    And don't forget that despite paying more, you get less, since on iTunes it doesn't come with any of the extras on the Blu-ray.
    - enraged_camel 11y ago
      This is incorrect. For most movies there's an iTunes Extra section that comes with the movie when you buy it.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
What exactly can Hollywood learn here? When Popcorn Time produces it's own content and distributes it in a consumer friendly way, then I think Hollywood has something to learn. Until then, this is just theft.
- Ntrails 11y ago
  UI, UX, speed, efficacy, control? Quit with the shitty release schedules, regional locking/delays, etc etc. There's a lot to learn about what people want to use, now they have to work out how to do something that's as easy but monetised/legal. Netflix did it, and people are willing to pay. Not, perhaps, as much as they'd like though. That's where the real rub is. I won't pay £4 to rent a movie from iTunes. I won't pay £12 for a DvD (full of extras I don't want, unskippable shit and general inconvenince). Of course, they can always just choose to carry on as before, and assume they can scare people out of doing the easy thing instead of the "right" thing. The larger the gap between the two though - the less likely that is.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Popcorn Time didn't do ANY of that. Do a Google search for intitle:index.of mkv -html -htm -php -asp -txt. Popcorn Time is THAT with a pretty UI. That's it. It in no way addresses any of the complication with releasing a movie in a consumer friendly way without theft. Yes, the movie industry needs to change. But one cannot compare the hurtles they have to jump (and figure out how to eliminate) with a site that does nothing but put a pretty image on content theft. There's whole catalogs of movies I bet the movie industry would love to make available but can't simply because they can't get streaming licenses from some now defunct band that did the musical score for it (for example). You cannot just gloss over these kinds of challenges by saying, "Well, some thief who knows PHP can do it!".
zuron7 11y ago
The west at least has apps like Netflix to legally watch movies. In countries like India, the only legal options we have are YouTube and a bunch of smaller companies with a small collection of Hindi Movies (<10000 movies). You want to watch Hollywood? You're best off buying a DVD for 6$, which for a country like ours is a lot of money.
- what_ever 11y ago
  Seriously? $6 is a lot of money in India? A ticket in a movie theater costs more than that in India these days.
fweespeech 11y ago
> You know the traditional business model of Hollywood is well and truly broken It isn't just Hollywood, even HBO Go/HBO Now is so fenced in I can't just pay them to get streaming access but have to go through Apple which won't allow me to sort it out unless I actually have an iDevice None of these companies make it easy besides Netflix. And for what? It doesn't even help them substantially [even tho they clearly think it does] it just drives me to wonder why I ever talked myself out of pirating things on moral grounds.
tomjen3 11y ago
They have painted themselves into a corner, because they have sold exclusive rights to so much of their content - e.g friends can only ever be on netflix - so they can't make what people want: spotify for movies (which is what netflix isn't).

xasos 11y ago

> Hollywood can learn a lot from Popcorn Time (but as history has proven, they won't). This happened to the music industry with Napster, but they learned a little too late. Now Spotify is the dominant force in the music streaming business.

Narkov 11y ago

Everything right? Except of course monitize it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do. Making a business out of it is much harder.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
>> Everything right? Except of course monitize it. And funding/creating it. Anyone can take something they don't own and give it away for free. Investing in its creation and ensuring that investment is successful is much more difficult and limits your options for distribution.
rkangel 11y ago
Given the technical restrictions on sharing illegal content, due to copyright laws shutdown of websites etc., sharing illegal content isn't that easy to do. That someone has managed to do it in as user friendly a manner as they have, putting everything in the industry to shame (apart from Netflix) is in an indication of the failings of the industry. Netflix is a great product that falls down only in terms of content. If Netflix had more TV shows as box sets, and new episodes of currently being broadcast TV seasons, I would happily pay 10 times as much as I do (no exaggeration) and never use anything else legal or otherwise. The resistance that the established industry has to making deals to enable that sort of service is the reason that Popcorn Time can beat them.
- eli 11y ago
  Hollywood isn't in the moving bits around industry. That was never the hard part. It's like saying you improved Photoshop by making a cracked version that's easy to download.... Users might be happy, but imagine you work at Adobe.
  - 1stop 11y ago
    That's not really true. The big studios are distributors of the content. They traditionally sold to Cinemas, and had DVDs made, etc. The fact they missed the boat on digital distribution is completely their fault...
    - k-mcgrady 11y ago
      They're also investors in the creation of the content.
    - eli 11y ago
      Sure and Adobe is distributor of Photoshop, but I wouldn't really say they're in the "downloading install files" business.
- nonick 11y ago
  Netflix is great, I guess. I would know for sure if they were available in my country. Same as Pandora, Spotify etc.
  - Bladegunner 11y ago
    Try out a vpn, like hola. (note: only have hola active while you are using it, there are some security risks using it.)
    - Flimm 11y ago
      You still need a debit/credit card for that country.
thomasfl 11y ago
At least they have shown that it's possible to distribute movies on a massive scale with a minimum of infrastructure. When distribution cost is close to free, it could open up a lot of possibilities that could potentially benefit customers and film makers.
smhg 11y ago
Do you mean monetization and making a business are the main goals? I thought they were means? Means to accomplish progress in human society.
- bsaul 11y ago
  Is that what your boss tells you whenever you ask for a raise ? edit : that's not just a snarky comment. i always find it amusing whenever people advocate giving other's people's work away for free.
  - rorykoehler 11y ago
    Do you say the same about Spotify?
  - tljr 11y ago
    Your time is worth exactly NOTHING to me. If all you're offering is a duplicated proof of your sunk time (software, movies, the list goes on), you're going to struggle for a share of the resource I use to primarily to get food for my kids. That's not just a snarky comment. I always find it amusing whenever people try to sell things with no real actual value and them complain it's hard.
  - cmiles74 11y ago
    I don't think anyone is advocating giving work away for free. Netflix has a large customer base and continues to grow it, but their library falls short for many people. It's also not available everywhere, and some work is only available in certain regions.
  - smhg 11y ago
    My comment was not meant to participate in the free vs paid discussion. That's indeed a whole other thing. Your question itself, snarky or not, makes me sad. Doesn't that imply you spend a large part of your day doing something you don't like just for the sake of making money?
    - bsaul 11y ago
viraptor 11y ago
Coinado will require payment after beta period. We'll see how it goes...
- eli 11y ago
  The question isn't whether it's possible to charge anything. They're not compensating the content creators. If I steal cars and resell them for a fraction of their typical price, does that prove the car industry is broken?
  - viraptor 11y ago
    I think you want to argue with an answer to a different question. Gp asked about monetising - that's getting people to pay the service provider. What happens to the money later is a completely different issue of artist compensation, contracts, etc I'm not claiming it's legal or a valid business, only saying that the service will not be free soon. If they get paid afterwards, than it's probably something distributors should look at in the future.
  - xnzakg 11y ago
    Except when you steal a car, the owner doesn't have it anymore. If you would manage to clone a car and then resell it for a fraction of its price, it would mean the car industry is broken.
    - dash2 11y ago
      If the price of a movie were composed out of the cost of the materials for the DVD, this argument would be correct. But the price is needed to compensate the people who made the movie. (I don't say that current movie pricing is equitable.) Content creators deserve to be paid for their work. Taking it without payment and without their agreement is stealing.
      - _lce0 11y ago
        > Content creators deserve to be paid for their work. Taking it without payment and without their agreement is stealing. I wonder how much Hollywood share its revenue with the content creators, not actors but more like writers, filmmakers, and all those that _create_. are there numbers somewhere? EDIT: s/studios/filmmakers -- thanks icebraining!
unicornporn 11y ago
All achievements can't be judged by their ability to make money. /The Swedish socialist
- eli 11y ago
  Is it not reasonable to judge a course of action by asking, What would it look like if everyone tried to act like me? In this case I think the Hollywood blockbuster goes away.
tljr 11y ago
So because it's not a business it's not 'right'?
Sir_Substance 11y ago
You've fallen into the classic trap: No one is obliged to give you money. Finding a business model that works is your problem, not your customers. Forced lock-in is a model, but it's a violent one that makes people want to leave, and it's entirely predicated on there never being an escape hatch for your trapped customers. There is now an escape hatch for content customers. They're no longer beholden to the choice of cinema or TV for their content, and haven't been for years. Whining about how much more money you made in the old days when people couldn't escape the cage really doesn't enamor you to people. It's on hollywood to find a new business model that works in a post-cage world. If they can't, they'll go bankrupt and vanish, and I won't care. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of good content out there that's either low investment (think Primer) or can pay for itself in box office and/or merchandising alone (marvel, star wars, lord of the rings). If your content creation is predicated on selling DVD's or subscriptions, and your DVD/subscription mechanism is so bad people are willingly buying VPN's to other countries to avoid using it (netflix in aus), that's not your customers problem in any fashion, it's yours.
- dmarg 11y ago
  >>No one is obliged to give you money. Finding a business model that works is your problem, not your customers.<< This struck a chord with me and is exactly the reason why Hollywood and the Music Industry are flailing. They are trying to continue their business model that worked for so long into this new day and age. Adapt or die essentially.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    You mean you don't like watching all those unskippable previews and commercials on your blu-ray, or "downloading" the included digital drm file off your disney DVD so you can take your copy of cinderella with you anywhere, anytime.* Or what about renting that great movie and having a 24 hour window to watch it. *Maximum of 2 downloads. Approved devices only, Void where prohibited
  - untog 11y ago
    But what is that new model, exactly? If "paying money in return for receiving goods" doesn't work, how will they make these multi-million dollar cultural phenomenons? I agree that the current system is broken, but saying you'll pirate until the studios work out it feels like an irresponsible point of view, to me.
throwawaykf05 11y ago
> Except of course monitize it. And, you know, create it. Giving stuff away is pretty easy to do, especially if it's somebody else's stuff :-)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 11y ago
People pay for netflix, which has a worse catalog. As a minimum people would pay for this instead of netflix (and I would certainly be willing to pay more).

Ollinson 11y ago

The problem with streaming film services is distribution rights not software. Even netflix, the poster child of film streaming, struggles with this same problem.

ThomPete 11y ago
But that is only a problem that the movie industry itself keeps alive because it refuses to move past the idea of creating false scarcity.
- bsaul 11y ago
  Oh no, not that price <=> scarcity theory again.... A van gogh isn't more expensive than my drawing because they're rarer or built with rarer materials. Intrinsic value is much more complicated and subtle than that... Giving money for something is also a mean to encourage people to produce more content, for example. It's also a way to say "thank you, keep going on please". edit : or maybe that's what you meant too, in which case i'm sorry for the comment.
  - orbifold 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure if it were possible to create atom for atom identical copies of every van gogh the value of the "original" would plummet. Of course in the real world we have no-cloning theorems, so that isn't possible, information however can be copied at (almost) zero cost and therefore the value of a copy should approach its share of the production cost, which rapidly approaches zero as more copies are made.
    - eli 11y ago
      I disagree. People would still pay more for the one Van Gogh laid his hand upon. After all if you just wanted to look at the painting you can buy a very high quality reproduction today -- you'd need an expert to know it's a fake. Even experts can be fooled by good forgeries.

oliyoung 11y ago

… and Netflix is smart enough to consider them competition, because they actually understand that the market isn't defined by paying for content

Tenoke 11y ago

Even barring monetization aside, Popcorn Time is far from doing everything right. Have you tried watching a show/movie that isn't among the most popular? Chances are there wouldn't be enough seeders to get a decent experience.

belorn 11y ago
I can only guess here, but availability of content must surely be one of it. In 2015, a brick and mortar store for renting physical videos still have content which online services do not, including some movies that was in the cinema over a year ago.
- dagw 11y ago
  In 2015, a brick and mortar store for renting physical videos still have content which online services do not In 2005 or even 2010 I would absolutely have agreed with you. However in 2015 all those really great independent brick and mortar video rental places I used to go to anywhere near me are long since bankrupt and closed down.
  - bluedino 11y ago
    Family Video is growing pretty well. They are the only video store in my area.
    - jonlucc 11y ago
      I've always suspected that was due to their porn selection. A few years ago, I knew someone who worked in a video rental store in the heart of Kansas City that had an extensive "back room". It always seemed to me that the back room was the only area to get traffic. Somehow, the internet hasn't killed porn disc rentals, and I think it shows for both that small shop in Kansas City (which is still open) and Family Video.
      - brathouz 11y ago

martingordon 11y ago

How does this differ from iTunes? There's a business model that works, and the experience is pretty much exactly like Popcorn Time, except iTunes has those pesky Rent/Buy buttons.

cmiles74 11y ago
The comment compared Popcorn Time to Netflix; I don't think you can really compare iTunes to Netflix (or Popcorn Time). Netflix provides broad access to a range of work for a fixed monthly cost, iTunes is more of a storefront where you can purchase rights. Popcorn Time seems like what many people want from Netflix: a much larger library. Something more like Spotify, but for movies and television.
- npizzolato 11y ago
  Yes, people want a library of every tv show and movie, and they want it for free. I'm not sure that's ever been untrue.
mlrtime 11y ago
Where is the rent/buy button to watch Seinfeld on itunes? Its not just about price, piracy also doesn't care about where the content comes from.
driverdan 11y ago
There is something very wrong when buying a movie on iTunes costs more than buying it on Bluray.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  And don't forget that despite paying more, you get less, since on iTunes it doesn't come with any of the extras on the Blu-ray.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    This is incorrect. For most movies there's an iTunes Extra section that comes with the movie when you buy it.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

What exactly can Hollywood learn here? When Popcorn Time produces it's own content and distributes it in a consumer friendly way, then I think Hollywood has something to learn. Until then, this is just theft.

Ntrails 11y ago
UI, UX, speed, efficacy, control? Quit with the shitty release schedules, regional locking/delays, etc etc. There's a lot to learn about what people want to use, now they have to work out how to do something that's as easy but monetised/legal. Netflix did it, and people are willing to pay. Not, perhaps, as much as they'd like though. That's where the real rub is. I won't pay £4 to rent a movie from iTunes. I won't pay £12 for a DvD (full of extras I don't want, unskippable shit and general inconvenince). Of course, they can always just choose to carry on as before, and assume they can scare people out of doing the easy thing instead of the "right" thing. The larger the gap between the two though - the less likely that is.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Popcorn Time didn't do ANY of that. Do a Google search for intitle:index.of mkv -html -htm -php -asp -txt. Popcorn Time is THAT with a pretty UI. That's it. It in no way addresses any of the complication with releasing a movie in a consumer friendly way without theft. Yes, the movie industry needs to change. But one cannot compare the hurtles they have to jump (and figure out how to eliminate) with a site that does nothing but put a pretty image on content theft. There's whole catalogs of movies I bet the movie industry would love to make available but can't simply because they can't get streaming licenses from some now defunct band that did the musical score for it (for example). You cannot just gloss over these kinds of challenges by saying, "Well, some thief who knows PHP can do it!".

zuron7 11y ago

The west at least has apps like Netflix to legally watch movies. In countries like India, the only legal options we have are YouTube and a bunch of smaller companies with a small collection of Hindi Movies (<10000 movies). You want to watch Hollywood? You're best off buying a DVD for 6$, which for a country like ours is a lot of money.

what_ever 11y ago
Seriously? $6 is a lot of money in India? A ticket in a movie theater costs more than that in India these days.

fweespeech 11y ago

> You know the traditional business model of Hollywood is well and truly broken It isn't just Hollywood, even HBO Go/HBO Now is so fenced in I can't just pay them to get streaming access but have to go through Apple which won't allow me to sort it out unless I actually have an iDevice None of these companies make it easy besides Netflix. And for what? It doesn't even help them substantially [even tho they clearly think it does] it just drives me to wonder why I ever talked myself out of pirating things on moral grounds.

tomjen3 11y ago

They have painted themselves into a corner, because they have sold exclusive rights to so much of their content - e.g friends can only ever be on netflix - so they can't make what people want: spotify for movies (which is what netflix isn't).