The reason is that they refused to approve the 3.0 version of VLC, which meant that people were downloading a beta version from quite a long time ago, with lots of bugs. So I preferred to disable it instead of having more people load an old version.
The actual issue is that this precise version had a small database bug/issue that is very annoying to fix/work-around, and when you update, you lose the first audio playlist (video files, audio files, playlist files work fine). So, I'm not even sure that we can fix that in a correct way. But, for Amazon, they think it is a blocker. Sure, that meant that version is buggy, but that's even more the reason to not have more people download it.
Remember, we don't make any money from VLC, even if it is free, you are not the product (no ads, no spying, no telemetry).
Anyway, this is one of the reason why I dislike appstores: they make you lose a lot of time jumping through hoops, and the quality is not even there. All of those appstores have lots of crap in there. And, except the Google PlayStore (that has other issues), all the interfaces to upload/edit are very bad and buggy...
First of all I appreciate the work all of you put into VLC. This is my media player on desktop. I've tried lots of other players but always ended up going back.
In my respectful opinion as an outsider with no Amazon Fire device or association with Amazon, an update should not lose user bookmarks, playlists, documents, etc.
Users should feel confident clicking "update" on any software, ever.
I am sure you can empathize with your users if you consider what might happen if you updated Chrome or Firefox and lost all of your bookmarks. It is easy to see how users might feel the same way about playlists they put work into.
(Some users might even feel the same way about something much more trivial such as what page number they were on in each book in an ebook reader. If the ebook reader changes some internal structure it's easy to see how the new version might not migrate that stuff. I personally would find this okay, since I could find my old place within a few minutes.)
To try to empathize: how many hours might some of your users have spent making a custom playlist?
There is something big and important here: helping users feel confident always clicking "update" without a second thought.
Although the amount of work seems excessive in this case (and would be even more excessive in an ebook reader that has to export all of page numbers you're on, even if this is difficult technically) I think the secondary effect might be worth it.
I definitely see your point of view too, just thought I would offer this perspective.
Thanks again for all of your work, which I appreciate.
I'm waiting for your patch. I'm very happy for your volunteering.
The cost to fix the bug is currently too great for them to devote resources to fixing it correctly, so s/he is merely trying to economize scarce resources here. This is an open source project we are talking about here, not a paid product.
If the gp thinks they have time on their hands, then by all means, the project will gladly accept patches.
It's fine to say "We don't have the resources to fix this", but jbk's sarcastic remark is not the best way to convey this. Of course, jbk is welcome to phrase their comments however they want, but I don't think that the way they chose was the most effective way to invite patches (and the gp presumably already knew that a valid patch would be accepted).
@jbk's original phrasing was: I'm waiting for your patch. I'm very happy for your volunteering.
You probably think his first sentence is sarcasm but it is not for two reasons:
1. He followed it up with a gentler "I'm very happy for your volunteering."
2. I've been online long enough to know that his phrasing is a bit odd, a hint that the commenter is likely not a native speaker.
For a bit more context regarding #2, my suspicion is not unfounded. I remember the @jbk nickname from this highly upvoted post [0] last year, where he did something in the interest of the VLC project that a lot of people would find incredibly difficult to do under similar circumstances.
"Gentler" seems like a euphemism to me. I read it instead as passive aggression which is generally considered rude and not a productive way of communicating with people.
Normal communication:
1. X makes an unreasonable demand of developer Y. "Users expect Z, you devs should always do Z."
2. Developer Y counters X's unreasonable demand with simple-to-follow reasoning: "I understand where you are coming from, but there are important technical reasons why we cannot do Z. Unless you have the time to dive into the code to understand those technical details (and perhaps even become a developer yourself in the process), you're just going to have to trust us on this point."
Benefits: clarity, positive example, trollproof.
Costs: several sentences, restraint.
Passive Aggressive Communication:
1. X makes an unreasonable demand of developer Y. "Users expect Z, you devs should always do Z."
2. Developer Y tries to "teach" X not to make unreasonable demands by making a similarly unreasonable demand. If devs should always do Z, and if current devs are too busy to do Z, then it should be so obvious that X must become a dev that Y will imply it in the response: "Thanks for volunteering!"
Benefit: brevity
Cost: confusion, consequent anger/humiliation in X that makes it harder for them to learn the ostensible lesson, troll food, negative example for future devs to follow, scary to potential devs, etc.
Edit: typo
Nope, he was being sarcastic.
What he essentially said is: "We put in the actual work, so we can put out whatever crap, and you either chime in, or put up with it".
Which would be good, if they didn't also promote their project as good to people.
As with any open source volunteer project you are not a customer, you are a user, and no one has any obligation to do or correct anything for you or anyone else.
No one in such a project is beholden in any way whatsoever to meet the needs of any particular user or set of users. This particular point often causes spluttering disbelief and knee jerk reaction. Understand it carefully.
Yes, not meeting the needs of the largest set of users can cause the project to lose users or fail to grow. So what? Many open volunteer projects aren't out for glory and greatness, or millions of users. They're out just to build something _they_ need or are passionate about. All the better if others want to come along for the ride and benefit too.
There is nothing bad about telling users 'no we're not doing it' and by extension 'if you want that, build it yourself and we'll welcome it'.
It is quite staggering how many times 'users' will make demands or say 'do it this way' but feel offended when told 'do it yourself'. Users feel utterly entitled to make demands of project members and are utterly incredulous when such demands are turn back on them.
I completely accept that developers of open source volunteer projects have no obligation to fulfil any development request from any user, but the gp did not demand or even request any change. They gave their opinion about how software should work, and they asked a rhetorical question about data loss.
I just think that jdk could have made their point in a much more welcoming way, if they had been as polite and positive as the gp.
Oh come on. The parent is basically telling us what we should do and how we should do it. Maybe he's more skilled than us, maybe he has the time to fix, then a patch would be welcome.
VLC is a very small team, with around 10 developers, that maintain an open source B2C project, for free, on more platforms than so many (including huge teams or professional) projects, for > 10 years... Maybe, just maybe, we know how to evaluate the cost of a fix.
Amazon is being unrealistic by asking us to do a full migration of custom playlists, an option very seldomly used on Android TV (it's very hard to do in the UI of version they blocked us on, a contrario from the version we want to upgrade to), which we could not fix quickly without making sqlite crash.
But the point is: yes, there is a bug and we will get a bad vote from the people who rely on this. Sure. But that means that 99,9% of the millions of users will keep having the rest of the bugs, and there are a ton.
If an organization volunteers to give free food to people, they can't just give them any crap, or stale food, etc, and shun it with "hey, it's free".
I am constantly amazed that high-quality independent open-source projects like VLC are maintained so well, year after year.
You got both: file playlists and playlists in the database.
Got a link to an issue tracker for this? You're posting about a hard technical bug for an open source project to a community with "hacker" in the name. Maybe someone has a good idea.
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/19594
On desktop's at least it's generally not too terrible for the end user to manually rename things to work again. On mobile though, I'm not sure.
And they don't want us to update it without this issue fixed.
When you say "this specific version" as containing a bug are you referring to "this beta version" or "3.0.0"?
In regards to who he can blame, and can't blame, can we all decide to blame you if he decides he's sick of ungrateful users and just stops development all together?
But at the same time, the developer console is soo bad for Amazon Store, that this is possible...
They are likely trying to discourage app vendors from using batch-and-switch as a growth tactic.
However, not allowing an update because it deprecates features seems overzealous, they're not paying for the app.
What do they do about unfixable features?
“I don’t like app stores because they don’t have quality” and yet here they are trying to ensure quality, and you’re upset about it because they’re trying to stop users from having a bad experience by losing content they cared enough to curate? I’m not entirely sure the problem is in the review process here...
And go on the appstores: how many scams, fake VLC and so on, do you see? They claim to do reviews to get quality, and yet so many apps are fake, scams, and got approved nevertheless. It's the same on Apple, Windows, Android and Amazon.
What if the older, available version, which he just claimed had 2000 bugs, had 2000 bugs that resulted in data loss? How can you legitimately argue that he's not looking out for his users?
How about we shake the App Store for trying to decide that 2,000 bugs are better for their users than losing a playlist.
Think about it - they didn’t pull the app because of the bugs. They pulled the app because they don’t agree with Amazon (of all people) that releasing a major version update with a bug known to cause personal data loss is totally unacceptable.
They’d rather not provide an app for the platform at all than work out a solution to a “slight bug” that would cause their users on that platform from losing their playlists during an update.
It seems to me that this is a case of a diva developer getting his feelings hurt, not a reasonable decision based on an unconsistent approval process. I can’t imagine a more used-hostile attitude than that.
Edit: somehow got it in my head that they pulled VLC from the Google Play Store.
Even google shouldnt be above your reproach in a situation like this.
VLC is one of the shining beacons of the open source community, in my opinion. Just like every successful project that retains it's core values, compromise is key. The dude is all over this thread calmly explaining everything to anyone who asked. How does any of his behavior fit into any reasonable definition of diva?
You are placing the “shining beacon of the open source community” above approach reproach, without a hint of awareness of the irony. Having a calm demeanor when explaining that they pulled the plug on VLC for FireTV because they couldn’t be bothered with fixing a “slight bug” that causes data loss (and which Amazon views as a “blocker”) doesn’t make the decision any less diva-like.
Unless a core value of VLC’s dev team is “egos over users”, I don’t see how you could possibly argue that this is a compromise. A compromise would have been leaving the old, buggy version of the app up with a note in the description that it is no longer supported.
I find it really disheartening that this is even a contentious opinion in the HN community. If the developer had come right out and said, “we just don’t have the resources to dedicate to fixing a major issue with the way playlists are exported from the current version of our app for FireTV, so we are discontinuing the app, effective immediately”, that would have been perfectly acceptable.
Instead, he diminished the severity of the bug and blamed the removal of the app on Amazon’s uneven approval process, despite the fact that the app does not meet one of the most basic criterion of Amazon’s approval process: “Apps do not put customer data at risk once installed”.
It’s the developer equivalent of knocking the Monopoly board off the table because you lost a turn. I don’t care how highly regarded the VLC development team is, this kind of behavior should be scorned rather than excused.
I've also found that my ability to acknowledge this fact is linearly proportional to the time it takes to solve the bug.
My point is that the maintainers of VLC sit atop a mountain of software, used by tons of people with oodles of different use cases. The only methodology that ever allowed them to grow to their current stature has been to do whats right by the project. At some point, the large behemoths of Amazon, Google, et al, have to make compromises as well. If they hire enough support staff to have a personal relationship with every client, at the level of service you get from your local credit union, that becomes prohibitively expensive. In lieu of providing good service, they've settled for efficient service.
VLC is Kobe Beef. If Amazon wants to carry Kobe Beef, perhaps they should provide the level of service that Kobe Beef consumers demand. Lots of other folks love to advertise Kobe Beef, but balk at all of the transparency that an authentic Kobe Beef retailer has.
Amazon loves to throw its weight around, and claim its for the greater good. But to the extent they can't get what they want, they pull their top selling products from their shelves. They've even done this with books, the one of the markets they dominate to the highest degree.
But if we all demand that we be recognized as the one true expert in our fields, compromise becomes a four letter word.
App stores really are pretty terrible, I feel like the average palm pilot app had much more quality than the average smartphone app for any platform.
All of those appstores have lots of crap in there.
Also, same problem as lack of time as the rest.
That being said, if someone can point out to me where this code is in the source I can hack out a solution for the next week or two.
How is this any different from the majority of other software release policies? It's fairly common to block a release which fixes numerous things because it includes a fairly visible regression.
Roku stick is a pretty solid option, with the remote it’s handy for travel / hotel rooms.
It has native apps for almost everything.
That said, Roku works fine and is a good product in the space. Neither has any real killer feature the other doesn't. But if you had to pick one for a novice user as a gift or whatever, Chromecast is a much cleaner experience.
When someone comes over to your house with an iPhone. Would you rather hand them a remote or your phone? Even if they have an Android phone, isn't it simpler to just hand someone a remote than ask them to install the individual apps?
The killer feature of the Roku is private listening. If I am watching something on TV and my wife is trying to sleep, I can listen to the audio on my phone. Of course the other killer feature is not to have to have my phone to control the TV. Even though you can - the Roku remote app is excellent.
I bought my dad a Roku TV for his birthday, installed all of the apps he needed and signed into everything for him using either his cable providers login or my account. I can't see him messing around with his phone to watch tv. He can use one remote for everything - including volume.
The only differences between the Roku TV and the stick are volume control and power on and off from the phone.
The two most popular video apps are Netflix and YouTube and they both support casting to the Roku.
> I can't see him messing around with his phone to watch tv.
And yet you don't see that for some this is in fact a "killer feature" in favor of the Chromecast? All this tells me is that you've never actually tried the product. Just count how many times you've had to hunt for a remote in the couch vs. how many times you've genuinely misplaced your phone to see how wrong your thinking is here.
The whole point of the Chromecast idiom, which it does really well, is to eliminate the fiddly "TV" interface. You just select the content on your phone, using exactly the UI that you normally use to select the content on your phone, and hit the Chromecast button. The device will turn the TV on, select the input[1], and just play. No remote needed.
As far as "private listening", that's cute, but collides with equivalent features already provided by most TV's these days. You certainly don't need a Roku to get that. Most TV's will pair with a bluetooth headset.
[1] OK, as long as you have a TV that understands CEC at a minimal level. This is sadly not as universal as you'd hope. Most ones I've looked at recently do OK.
With the Roku you can either use the remote or your phone with the Roku app. How is it an advantage by having only one option? You can also cast from the two most popular video apps - Netflix and YouTube. I won’t even mention that if you’re a subscriber to Amazon Prime - and there are over 100 million people who are - you can’t use Amazon Prime Video at all on the Chromecast.
Are you really going to say that a phone interface is “less fiddly” than a purpose built “10 foot interface” for watching tv with a purpose built remote for controlling the interface and having only to navigate through the compatible apps?
With private listening, you don’t need the tv to work with Bluetooth and that’s yet another “fiddly interface” you have to deal with and yet another device you have to keep charged - as opposed to using your phone you already have and either wired or wireless headphones. Depending on which Roku you have, you can plug your headphones directly into your remote.
If you really want to talk about “platform flammage”, I didn’t even mention my 4K AppleTV where you have the benefit of native apps, mirroring from Macs, Airplaying from iOS devices, and a remote app on iOS devices....
Uh, yes. Yes. I am really going to say that. Again, you either haven't tried a Chromecast, haven't ever played a Netflix[1] video on an Android phone, or both.
Again: yes, playing content on a phone is easier than a TV. And it isn't even close.
Did I mention the phone is easier? It's easier.
[1] Or Google Play, or Youtube, or Spotify, or pretty much anything except Apple or Amazon, which remain notable and regretful (if not unexplainable) holes in coverage.
Casting from my phone when I sharing a TV with other people who may not have the app installed, may not have an Android phone at all isn't more convenient than just handing over a remote - I'm not going to just hand my phone over silly nilly to let someone else control the TV while I'm out.
I'm not suggesting that most people get an AppleTV 4K - they are overpriced and I got one free with my DirecTVNow subscription - but at least with it, you can airplay Google Play and you have native apps (or Airplay) with Amazon Prime.
With Roku you have native apps for everything except Apple's stuff and you can cast to it.
With the Nvidia Shield - you have access to the entire Android ecosystem, Amazon Prime, and ChromeCast support.
The ChromeCast is the least capable alternative.
This isn't even an anti Android thing. The Nvidia Shield is Android based and just much better.
I've had a Chromecast plugged into my TV and running for probably 2 years now and for some reason it basically never gets used. Maybe it's just me, but my phone is just as likely to be charging in the kitchen as it is to be in my pocket when I want to watch something on TV. And even when I have my phone on me I've just never managed to get into the habit of using it. Also I'd rather not hand my phone to my kids or house guests every time they want to watch something.
I tried to solve this by having a dedicated Chromecast tablet, but somehow it also kept wandering off around the house.
The remote for the Playstation on the other hand is always either on the coffee table in front of the TV or lying on top of the Playstation next to the TV, so that is what gets used every time.
I'm sure the Chromecast is great for many people and I honestly thought it would be great for me when I bought it, but so far it's been a waste.
For me that is the feature which kills the Chromecast.
My mother's manual dexterity and mental state are degraded enough that working a smartphone is out of the question. The touchpad Apple TV remote is also too challenging.
Until this past Christmas, my girlfriend's children had no tablets of their own with which to control the television.
I want to watch something in living room but I left my phone charging in the kitchen.
The great thing about a Roku TV is that it works just like a regular TV but with a better UI. My mother could work it after a 30-second explainer -- here's your remote, there's DirectTV Now, there's Plex, press the Home button to get back here. The girlfriend, kids, and random houseguests just grab the remote and go.
Everything else the Roku can do via App / Casting is gravy and I could live without any of it. I do appreciate Private Listening tho because it works with whatever output device(s) are available to the device the app is running from -- no extra Bluetooth pairing steps and doing the Which BT device will my headphones end up connecting to when I turn them on? dance.
That said, when I decided to pick up a Chromecast device, I wasn’t aware that Roku supported it at all. I wish I would have looked into it.
The play/pause/stop buttons on my TV work just fine with the Chromecast, and I have an old 2009 TV that was bought well before the Chromecast was a twinkle in Google’s eye.
I have a PS4 Pro, which provides for all my entertainment needs, including Amazon Video, Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube, and whatever else, and seems to sidestep all the annoyances and limitations. Snappy UI? Check. 4K video? Check. Frequent upgrades and ongoing support? Check. Storage, if you need it? Check.
I suppose there's a pretty large market of people who don't have current gen consoles hooked up to their TVs for whom these kinds of peripherals are more appealing.
She's also seriously addicted to Netflix's Marvel offerings which I find somewhat hilarious.
The risks are removed and the options are clearly laid bare. I feel deeply that we should look to this for how to build societal infrastructure - tax, legal, health, finance - not just entertainment.
Its not that hard to look up the sales of consoles and imagine that not everyone has a console. Besides, most households have more than one TV. Would you suggest they buy a PS Pro for every tv in their house?
No, not really.
Sigh. Again, no.
So you “don’t see the point” of a Cheap streaming stick to stream videos over a $400 PS Pro?
What would you suggest for a cord cutter with multiple TVs - for them to spend $400 for each TV?
For perspective, for the price of PS 4 Pro for someone who only wants a streaming video solution, you can get a 55 inch 4K TCL Roku TV.
After the recent consolidation of all the streaming video options onto a single screen, the additional clicks and loading time has basically made me envy my mom’s roku.
And the login requirement gets on my nerves from time to time as PSN will occasionally sign you out for no apparent reason, and of course my password isn't one that's easy to remember. (Although definitely file the latter under first world problems.)
That has changed. Both PDP Media Remotes for PS4 can turn a PS4 on. Still proprietary, but they're technically not PS4 controllers.
Reading from Amazon reviews, also the PDP PS4 IR Receiver For Logitech Harmony Remote Control Devices can turn a PS4 on. But I can't confirm this as I don't own one.
Yet Amazon keeps raving about how they are "consumer-obsessed". It's like they don't test their own devices.
I love my Fire TV. Great apps, and easy to add a bt keyboard and install Kodi for torrent streaming. I don't think you can do that with a Chromecast. Best media center I've ever had.
A Chromecast is $35...
It’s a major release after all, so breaking changes are to be expected.
And still, I’d rather wait a few weeks with a release myself before I’d ever release a version that deletes a user’s settings, or, much worse, their actual data.
If I have time once I’m done with my releases, maybe I’ll be able to take a look at the issue you’re having in VLC, and maybe I can fix it.
For instance, it’s impossible to stream content from recent Amazon tablets to Fire TV’s unless you hack some sort of DYI solution.
Returned mine pretty quickly. By comparison my 5 years old Apple TV works like a charm.
For now, Google v Amazon a fight between two anticompetitive proprietary systems, neither of which should be supported by any consumer.
I’m not talking about the open cast standard, which Amazon spearheaded (and Roku and many apps support), I’m talking about the actual Chromecast protocol, which according to Google, you are not allowed to reverse or implement receivers for.
From what I understand it's using DIAL which was developed by Netflix and YouTube. Chromecast devices have changed to using mDNS now, but the clients still seem to support both.
https://www.howtogeek.com/214943/how-to-use-your-roku-like-a...
- DIAL - Chromecast use to support DIAL and it's still supported by the YouTube app and Netflix. Chrome also supports DIAL from computers.
-Miracast - both Android and Windows support it for screen mirroring.
So all of this time I thought it was the "Chromecast" protocol it's actually two other protocols that do the same thing(?)
Once upon a time, you could use the Netflix app on a Kindle to stream to a FireTV or a Chromecast, or the Netflix app from Android to stream to Chromecast or FireTV.
Google has been fucking with the protocols to prevent that for a while, and it caused lots of trouble for open source devs (and Amazon).
If you are in the Android ecosystem, you get a device like the Nvidia Shield that does support Chromecast and Amazon Prime and native apps. On top of that, you get a stand-alone Plex Server that supports transcoding.
If you don’t care about Chromecast support and you own an Android device and you want something cheap, get something on the Roku platform and you get most of the same benefits of a Chromecast and every streaming platform supports the Roku.
So why fool with either the Amazon Fire Stick or Chromecast?
When the 9 year old computer that I’m using as a Plex server gives out on me, I’m thinking about just getting a Shield to replace it.
Because I want to receive streams with my own software, and I want to stream from all kinds of devices.
Having many competing standards sucks.
A common use case is that I play a game and want to stream it, but also want to have music in background, and control that from my phone.
So currently I use YouTube TV mode in a browser elemnent integrated into OBS as audio-only stream, with the youtube app’s cast mode to control it.
But obviously I’d like to make this nicer.
And I also want to stream music to my raspberry pi, so it can play it on my sound system (which is dumb speakers with custom amp and setup)
Chromecast, the protocol, could – if Google wasn’t banning developers from using it.
It doesn’t support Miracast, and recent Android phones have removed Miracast support.
Ughhh
and even got uninstalled from the sticks, where it was installed previously through the store.
In the physical world, it would be like giving to the companies of everything you bought, permission to enter your house and remove or modify its products at any time. It's perfectly reasonable to stop offering a product or broadcast recall notices, but IMHO going beyond that is overstepping a boundary.
I recently sold my Roku sticks purchased two fire sticks (with voice) just tu use VLC for playing my DLNA files.
Sadly yerterday, when plugged them in and tried to install VLC, it doesn't shows anymore on AppStore.
Searching I found this news about it being removed due to burocratic issues.
Is there any way to install it manually?
Kind Regards and thanks in advance!!!