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Comment by unabst | Hacker News Reader

This. There is no contest. Right now there are only two options. An inconvenient pay to watch model with a horrible catalog, and a convenient free to watch model with an infinite catalog.

The simple logistics of how a video gets on Netflix vs gets on torrents should make the difference obvious. Netflix is one company negotiating and buying content. Torrents are uploaded by the people "when they feel like it".

I really wish there was something in between. What would it take for a Popcorn Time with a payment option? If payments were anonymous (difficult but what if) and movie studios began to see more money than they got from Netflix, I wonder if minds would begin to change. At the end of the day, all they want is to get paid, which is not an unfair proposition at all.

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"This. There is no contest. Right now there are only two options."

Only two options for you. And for people tech-y enough to find and understand PopcornTime, or be introduced to it by someone that is. Do your parents or grandparents know how to download torrents? I agree that torrenting is a better solution. Netflix is legal, well-advertised, and comes with almost every media device these days. It appears to be the only option for a large number of people. That illusion is the reason it's at a $40B market cap.

Well, Popcorn Time proves the value of an interface if anything, and has definitely made the second option more accessible (threatening those serving the first). No learning curve. No new words to learn. Better interface. Better selection. Run for and by the community. Free, but with many who would pay. There really is only one thing wrong with it.

Honestly, I've looked at the interface and hate it. This mantra of "developers know best" in OSS is killing software. Consult a junior UX designer and you'll end up with something much much better.

After reading this in the paper edition, and cloning the repos from popcorntime.io, I actually found the UI rather pleasant. Certainly easier to find something than on Netflix -- and the recommendations seemed more relevant (even without any "profile").

Anyway, I wasn't aware that the underlying streaming torrent thing was a stand-alone project -- so if you have a source of torrent/magnet-links (say a folder, rss...) you can actually stream straight to vlc/mplayer quite easily.

https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-stream

I believe the old excuse is OSS never has the money to hire someone. But considering Netflix is paying oodles to a senior UX designer and has ended up with what many hate (and for good reason), maybe UX really is just a harder problem than it is made out to be? Seeing how Firefox keeps leaning closer and closer to Chrome and how Windows managed to butcher usability with a hybrid interface, money does not appear to solve this problem.

At least with OSS we are free to alter the program to our liking. Not that we always could or should, but with Netflix not even that option exists, and Netflix is the paid option.

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