A Netflix for Film Geeks? | Hacker News Reader

A Netflix for Film Geeks?

wsj.com

104 pointssmacktoward60 comments

This is brilliant. (Mubi is apparently similar, which I hadn't yet seen.)

From a user's perspective, this is ultimately the best case scenario for siloed content. The editorial perspective offered by the steaming service provides a value added that Netflix demographic research just cant -- it offers, to some extent, access to the canon. Also, this eliminates the awful feeling of browsing endlessly looking for something to find.

From the companies' perspective, this allows them to pick and choose which films they acquire the steaming rights for, and to do it for only a limited time, similarly to how TCM and Criterion operate in today's market. They're at a HUGE financial advantage to Netflix. They aren't trying to cater to tons of demographics, they're offering a critical perspective.

What would be truly interesting is if one of these smaller, more nimble streaming services started to get involved in the actual production of film (a la Netflix), rather than just film criticism.

Netflix Originals are great, and they've done amazing work, but ultimately they suffer from the same fatal flaw as the film studios, the same failure to produce mythology. Films produced through demographic research and testing ultimately can never transcend commerce; they can only tell viewers things they want to know.

I use Mubi a lot, but because it's curated and has a limited selection, and I really really miss curation by way of going down to the local video store and having my friends behind the counter, who I had gotten to know after years, make recommendations. With Criterion, I'm going to be overwhelmed. I own this stunning book:

https://www.criterion.com/shop_products/106-criterion-design...

I'm getting anxiety just thinking about where I'd start. But yes, amazing service and I'll probably jump on but I'll need to set up a system to make sure I get a good balanced viewing.

Mubi has its benefit. It is great for the "show me something new" / "surprise me" approach. Discovering new genres, new films, new directors.

But if you decide you want to watch all the Brian de Palma movies you haven't seen, then neither Mubi nor Netflix or any competitor will satisfy this demand. Right now only the Pirate Bay will (or Amazon if you are happy to wait a couple of days to receive a DVD, and if you still even have a device that plays DVDs).

unfortunately mubi, Netflix, etc have really bad quality. Netflix is ahead, obviously. specially in sound. buy any fast horizontal pan scene and compression ruins everything.

mubi sometimes has sound so badly compressed i just give up watching.

also, accessibility and original sound. Netflix decides if you're going to be able to hear the original language or not. some movies have all tracks, some have only the one in the language of whichever country you're at the time. some have subtitles in the local county language. some have deaf cc subtitles. mubi has zero regard for the deaf. Netflix has zero regards for the deaf overseas, in the US it's pretty good though.

bottom line is, all the talks that Netflix et al are the answer to piracy are wrong if the user is minimally self respecting. i will stop writing now because typing on mobile in this tiny box is also bad for self respecting me.

> Netflix has zero regards for the deaf overseas, in the US it's pretty good though.

Sure, because the National Association for the Deaf sued them to get them to do it. [0] It's an important case for online businesses because the judge concluded that the ADA applies to them, too (which is sort of on obvious conclusion but it hadn't be tested in court).

Captions already existed for the large majority of TV shows and movies Netflix was licensing, they just needed to get them from the studios though may have needed to be recreated if they weren't saved in text form, DVD and Blu-ray captions are stored as images on the discs. Of course for their original programming they would need to have them created, for a ballpark figure of $2/minute of content.

Outside the U.S., I assume it depends on what captions already exist and what local laws require.

[0] https://nad.org/news/2012/6/landmark-precedent-nad-vs-netfli...

I was assuming film geek is someone that likes unconventional, non-mainstream films rather than an videophile. I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but as a self-identified film geek audio/video quality is low on my list of priorities when watching a film (as long as it's at least DVD quality of course.)

I live in Japan and half of the Netflix content is inaccessible because for some reason they don't have English subtitles for Japanese movies. Does anyone know if this has to do with licencing? Does it cost Netflix more to add subtitles?

This is sad.

We are going to end up with something very much like what cable TV is - paying an aggregator service for a collection of different providers and premium channel subscriptions.

How different is that grid of ten different streaming apps in your device from a cable channel guide?

What would you prefer instead? Everything to be available via Netflix?

That would be really bad for competition.

I'm thinking we should have a different distribution model. One without gatekeepers. But with fair payment of content producers. Perhaps the government should step in because the market doesn't seem to be able to sort this out (see also Uber, App stores, Amazon, with their internalized non-free markets).

I don't think we need the government to step in. What we should be aiming for are solutions based on decentralised apps. The groundwork for this has already started to emerge.

The solution would be for the content to be decentralized and simply available through an API with licensing fees for each program you want to watch, and stores would basically talk to each API and would be dissociated from the content distribution. That way stores could compete on the better UI and payment systems and everyone could have access to the same movie collection.

I don't think this is going to happen, though. Companies love walled gardens too much.

It might even be a tenable system if exclusives were permitted for a limited period. That way Netflix or any competitor could invest in their own content and attract customers with it for, say, eight years after release. After that period, the content becomes available to all services, and Netflix gets paid royalties.

Right now the closest you can get is paying one of the content services (often Netflix) their monthly tribute and treating it as such a hypothetical service. For any content not offered there you simply sail to any old bay of pirates that does have it. It may be illegal, but I find it morally defensible at this stage.

It doesn't make a lot of sense from a consumer standpoint. Any royalties 'owed' to anyone for watching some thirty year old film could easily be covered by a reasonable flat monthly fee (like Netflix' $10/€10), but the content owners seem afraid to make any rational steps toward a system that would actually gain them a steady income on their back catalogues!

If you want the pay-per-view model, Google, Apple, and Amazon all feature this today with a much larger library of films than are on the subscription streaming services.

But the prices are ridiculous.

The prices for "purchasing" often seem absurd -- as much as buying a DVD, with no guarantee that the service will have the movie forever. But rental is typically only $2-$3 dollars -- basically what renting a movie from a video rental store used to cost, so not that unreasonable

If this appeals, check out Mubi. They're basically an arthouse Netflix.

I can't say enough about Mubi. I find its best to start at the expiring films and work up, one or two at a time.

I'll say that I've heard of about 30% of the films that come up (maybe a little more). Not every film is mind-blowing, but there have been plenty of gems.

I'm still upset that they changed from The Auteurs to Mubi...

So was Agnès Varda, but she got over it and you can too!

As a non-US citizen, the Mubi website is annoying. They have a single list with the thirty "now showing" movies, yet they say in the FAQ that each country has its own unique line-up, so I'm left wondering what would actually be available here.

It's actually fun going on mubi when you are travelling. They allocate the movie list based on your IP not your account, so you can see what these alternative lists are when you travel.

Basically similar with more local movies.

Have a look on https://www.justwatch.com in the country you want to know and filter for Mubi!

Disclosure: I'm Cofounder there :)

Your site recognizes that I'm from Switzerland and even displays the price in CHF, however, Switzerland is no where to be found on justwatch.com. How am I supposed to find out your current line up?

Hey, sorry for that, we're out in 26 countries already, but Switzerland isn't launched yet. It's one of the next countries on our list though, bear with us!

That sounds like good service, thanks! Unfortunately, you don't have my country yet :|

Also, according to your service, Mubi only has 22 films in Spain, and 25 in the US. Is it possible you're missing some, or does their claim that there are always 30 films available not hold up?

For legal and technical reasons, our actual possibly copyrighted content (posters, descriptions, ...) is currently pulled from the free TMDB - and titles are only displayed when we both have an entry there AND it's correctly matched (which also isn't perfect, yet).

TL;DR: Mubi's right, but we're working on it.

this looks really useful. I like the clean UI.

Maybe I missed it but is it possible to look for TV shows or documentaries or is it just movies.

For the U.S. at least, there are filters for TV and Movies and within the Genres filters there is one for Documentaries.

TV shows are in there, there's a 'TV' icon in the top right of the cover to distinguish. There's 'Movies' and 'TV series' filters on the left of the filter bar too.

Your service is fantastic and I use it frequently since I have so many streaming options. Have you ever considered releasing an API or your dataset for use by other developers? I have been interested in scraping all of the streaming services but would love to leverage existing work.

Wonderful service! How do you keep it accurate and updated? The problem I have seen with other similar services is that they aren't accurate. They will say it's on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu when it's not.

Also, maybe you could add Funimation as one of the services?

We're operating a quite large, custom built scraper - this, together with extensive monitoring, continuous engineering effort and topped with some manual checking of the most popular content & providers keeps our users happy.

It's a pretty large topic actually and we're planning to blog about it - but for some first insights on our technology, see these two links:

https://www.justwatch.com/blog/post/debugging-postgresql-per...

https://prometheus.io/blog/2016/10/12/interview-with-justwat...

Woah! This is awesome.

Selection by country, and also filtering by services that I subscribe to in one place is amazing - and also of course allows me to see what extra I'd get by subscribing to X.

Love it.

You're overthinking it, MUBI was built as a global streaming from day 1 (I am the co-founder). The films you see are the films available to your current country. Your subscription is portable, so if you live in Europe it's very good for traveling. The subtitle selection is limited unfortunately, we're working on it, but the rights issues at play are fairly intractable.

Just curious, did you even read the article? Mubi is mentioned in essentially the same context as your comment.

FilmStruck is the service I am waiting for the most. As someone who used to pirate terabytes of films from Karagarga and other "good film" trackers, I'm happy to be able to support Criterion and Turner in this endeavor.

This used to be the DVD form of Netflix! The community function especially. I still miss it :(

It's so sad what they've become, I plan on cancelling in a bit, as amazon prime is free 2 day shipping + a batch of binge watching crap as well.

There's also Fandor [1], which has a ton of indie/art house content and covers the major festivals (though lagging by >1 year -- they have almost nothing newer than 2015). They have apps for AppleTV, iOS and probably other systems.

But I'm definitely looking forward to FilmStruck launching. Criterion access alone is worth the subscription price.

[1] https://www.fandor.com

I just want a netflix of the Turner Classic Movies catalog.

I was so pissed when Comcast dropped TCM and left me with 100 other garbage channels I don't watch.

http://www.filmstruck.com/ is the streaming service in question.

Great to learn about all the other services in the list of competitors. Some years ago, I did an Ask HN about why there wasn't a specialized "Netflix" (akin to an indie movie rental store). It only got a few answers but they all said, if memory serves, it wouldn't happen.

Fandor is pretty good.

Shame I'll have to go through proxy from UK to get this.

You don't have to. Click the "web" link on top of this page, and then click the first google result.

Update: oh sry, you meant the movies...

It will be perfect if they don't repeat every movie in every category listing, a la Netflix.

On the complete other-side of the spectrum we used to have Cinemageddon. :P

Canadian availability?

mubi.com

Archive.is for those who can't get past the paywall using the usual tricks:

http://archive.is/5ZmFH

FYI This link (from outside the US) was requiring a subscription. I copied the URL into Google and was able to read it in its entirety with this method.

This is what the "web" link below the HN headline does.

Or just use the web button under the link above.

I thought the Netflix for film geeks was Mubi.com ...

If they target geeks, they should start releasing films DRM-free.

Different kind of geek. There is the film buff geek and there is the burn-your-DRMbra computer geek, and while there is some crossover the Venn diagram is far from a total eclipse.

GOG tried to cater for both. But the effort was stalled by retarded paranoia of control freaks.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...

Two years on... No one wants to be the first.

This is depressing - because it has the exact flexibility that so many people want.

For example, one of the first questions I get asked when introducing an older person to Netflix is, "Can I play it on X?"

Sure, if it can run the app. Oh, just a TV? Let me get you Y hardware so it will.

Yet, pirates provide this flexibility of DRM-free films for years already. So not competing with them is simply dumb as anyone understands. This "no one wants to be first" just doesn't make any logical sense, since they aren't first by any means - they are very late. As you can see from that story, even studio execs admit all that. But their lawyers just can't admit how dumb this is. It's some kind of mind sickness of those who are obsessed with control.

I think the crossover part of the diagram pretty much consists of Creative-Commons film producers, who are few and far between.

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