CBS All Access is a terrible streaming service, and I wish it ill | Hacker News Reader

CBS All Access is a terrible streaming service, and I wish it ill

theverge.com

19 pointshrasyid12 comments

I wish everyone would just stop with this. I haven’t had a single problem with the service and neither have my friends, so unless you have reason to think these technical issues are widespread, who cares.

Discovery is an excellent show and well worth $6/mo to watch. If that’s not true for you, don’t pay it and watch the show later via some other medium.

The app isn’t even the worst streaming app: HBO Now has a significantly worse UI and in typical HBO fashion has 1.5 minute commercials at the beginning of EPISODES of TV (and lots of other awful UI issues).

CBS All Access was a bad idea but at the end of the day there isn’t anything to complain about: either the service is worth it or it isn’t. The only reason you see stuff like this article is that Star Trek fans are a bunch of whiners. A woman at the SF Star Trek convention was complaining that she couldn’t afford the service and felt excluded. While she was at a Star Trek Convention.

No paid subscription service should include and force commercials. Period.

“Should” in the sense that it’s a bad business model? I agree but CBS isn’t forcing commercials: I pay $10/mo to get no commercials.

HBO lets you skip the commercials. Also, they occur before the show, not during.

>> unless you have reason to think these technical issues are widespread

I don't know how widespread it is, but I don't think it's that rare either. From personal experience, once in a while my "let's relax and watch [a show that I like]" plan turned into "arghh why is the damn thing not working"

> Discovery is an excellent show

But we agree the writing is comically bad, right?

WatchESPN app (Included with a standard cable subscription) has probably been the absolute worst streaming platform I've used from a performance standpoint.

Now - the interface is probably not a huge priority for Disney/ESPN due to it being a sidecar to what is the normal ESPN format (Television). Having said that though - they have been making moves to push/advertise people to use the app and have offered content exclusive to the app itself (Huge simulcast during the CFB National Championship) yet the application is littered with inconsistent video quality, frequent drops, crashes, and overall poor UI.

Could just be me or my platform of choice or even my internet but i've tested the app/website on a desktop PC (win10), XboxOne, Android TV, iOS. All shit.

/Rant

I don't understand why you would pay money to put up with this when it is incredibly easy to pirate. Given that it's available overseas on Netflix, a service I already pay for, pirating Star Trek is the moral equivalent of using a VPN to bypass region locking.

Available overseas on Netflix? Guess I’ll reinstate the VPN.

I don't think Netflixs works with VPN IP that is out of country where the account holder resides. When using ExpressVPN with overseas ip location, I get "Whoops, something went wrong... You seem to be using an unblocker or proxy..."

It works overseas, or at least it used to. My account has a billing address in the United States, where I live most of the year, but when I'm in Europe if I log into Netflix it works but only provides the titles available to Europe. The "Whoops" message is probably because it is detecting that your IP is on a block where a lot of VPS services reside (e.g., a known VPN or AWS).

If you're using a major VPN provider with an IP address block, they probably block them.

But otherwise...if you have your own VPS with it's own IP address.... How can Netflix detect that VPN?

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