It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse | Hacker News Reader

It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse

johnnygrubb.com

233 pointsJgrubb276 comments

> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Gabe Newell

And it's true. Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity. TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services.

Epic game store is paying a lot for exclusives to compete with steam. We should see a jump in games piracy.

Absolutely. Every major game forum I read appears to have an abundance of such sentiment.

Timed exclusives on a store that many people outright _hate_ is going to increase piracy, without a doubt.

I really don't understand the sentiment since having 2-3 game launchers has been the norm for digital games for years now. I can't buy any new Blizzard/Activision games or EA games through Steam that I know of, and these are some of the largest game companies and largest releases in the world.

Blizzard and Origin are reasonably good stores and launchers, and their exclusives are that of the publisher who runs the store.

Epic Store is... Not a quality experience and its exclusives are not solely from the publisher that runs the store.

Origin was also “not a quality experience” when it first came out, and it was also universally hated by fans of Steam.

So why do you think Epic can’t do the same thing?

Epic isn't doing the same thing. Origin's exclusives were EA games. Epic's exclusives are not all Epic games.

Does that make a difference? The end result is the same. Games that that you want to play are locked behind a particular launcher.

Of course it makes a difference. Epic isn't attempting to make their store succeed on its own merits, or on the merit of their own games; they are buying exclusivity in order to succeed.

That upsets people, and rightly so. Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.

> Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.

But this is the point: the fact that Epic is making "something worse" might be true now, but will change in the future. This is precisely what happened with Origin for example, at least in the perception of gamers.

So it's worse now. Why should I, as a consumer, silently accept that so a billion dollar corporation can get a foothold against another billion dollar corporation?

> or on the merit of their own games; they are buying exclusivity in order to succeed. [...] Epic is using their cash to complete, and are trying to replace something people love with something worse.

So? Guess how EA has so many "original" games to begin with? Sounds like people are disgusted because cash bribes sound icky.

It's true, many people have a dim view of those who accept bribes.

You seem to be very emotionally invested in this fight between two corporations. You make it sound that Steam succeed because of some heroic display of courage and selflessness while Epic would be a scheming thief set to destroy it out of spite. Poor Valve, let's start a GoFundMe to help them...

Steam popularized always-online DRM. They attempted to monetize mods. They wrote the book on in-game item trading with TF2 and CS:GO, even if it meant that a bunch of underage kids were effectively becoming gamblers. Steam is not your friend, Steam is a business selling videogames and offering online services.

Most importantly, Steam is more than perfectly capable of fighting back if they see EGS as a threat.

Steam is not our friend, correct. But they also had a quasi monopoly for a long time and didn't become outright evil. I give them a lot of credit for that. Hell they still allow Devs to sell on their own site but give steam keys (afaik for free). My biggest complaint against them is stagnation.

Epic's move worries me. They are spending a lot of cash for exclusives. How do you think they expect to earn it back? I doubt their plan will be in my interest.

That's a bizarre reading of my sentiments. Elsewhere in this thread I state that I prefer GoG.

If I'm going to suffer DRM, then at least the service should provide value adds that make it worthwhile to me. Reviews, cloud saves, good networking, mod management, et cetera.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19598465

When do you actually think that Steam introduced those features? Hint: not as long ago as you likely think.

And I’m not sure why you expect a new service to have all of Steam’s features from day one...

I'm an old man. I remember. I avoided Steam until cloud saves came along.

So it doesn't have Steam's features. I have no obligation to support a billion dollar corporation compete against another, at the expense of my own quality of experience.

Origin is still not a quality experience.

Steam itself was not very well received at first. Always online, resource hog, slow, buggy... They forced CS players to use it even though old versions worked without it. And then of course HL2 released and it was a Steam exclusive, which was a huge bummer for people like me who didn't have an internet connection at home at the time.

Gamers have a very short memory, although to be fair many are probably too young to remember Steam's launch. On the other hand they also seem to have very little impulse control so game and platform boycotts never seem to work. I expect that Epic's strategy is going to work perfectly.

Steam was building something new. Quite frankly it's harder to build a crappy platform since the space has already been pioneered. No one is hating on GOG Galaxy.

You have a fair point about many gamers having short memories. Many however do not have short memories. I suspect we're older though.

PC Gaming has really only accepted two major launchers: Steam and Blizzard. Blizzard's launcher is only majorly accepted in my group of friends as it's the only way for some of them to get their WoW fix.

Origin is actively avoided (to the point of avoiding EA's games completely), Ubisoft's Uplay will work with Steam, and Bethesda's launcher was immediately uninstalled after the debacle which was Fallout 76.

None of my friends (that will admit it, anyway) have the Epic launcher installed. They are all frustrated that games they're excited about ("The Outer Worlds" and "Borderlands 3") are timed exclusives on Epic's launcher.

Some of them are very hung up on the fact that Tencent owns a major stake in Epic Games (between 40%-50%). They have seen how China deals with games (WoW in China is the biggest one, game consoles not being legal in the county until recently) and the Internet (Great Firewall of China) and are in no way interested in allowing their software on the machine. Further, it has been observed that the Epic Launcher performs behaviors that behaviors they consider shady[1].

Personally, I won't play any games that are Epic Store exclusives. Not because I have any particular anger toward Epic (I've loved Unreal Tournament for a long time), but because I already have a large backlog of games on Steam, I'd like to keep everything in a single launcher, and by the time I have my backlog cleared, these games should be on Steam and a GOTY version will be out that has all of the DLC included, or if they're not, something else that I care about more will likely have come along.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

> Further, it has been observed that the Epic Launcher performs behaviors that behaviors they consider shady[1].

you mean behaviors entirely consistent with a browser process? https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

As we all know, everyone loves browser tracking and nobody ever uses that data in a shady way.

I'm all against tracking, but the whole post was framed as "epic launcher is doing [scary techno-sounding stuff]", when really it's "epic game launcher is using a webview".

There's no need for them to use a webview - launching a game, purchasing a game, and installing a game do not inherently need a webview. See the last thirty years of gaming history for examples that show this.

Yes, it's a webview. Yes, it's also making requests that are not transparent to the user. Yes, it's a bad thing and it is an issue no matter how many times apologists try to downplay it.

>There's no need for them to use a webview

alll the major ones use some sort of a webview. uplay and origin are essentially electron apps (js + chromium wrapper). steam uses a webview for its community/store page.

All that the rabblerousing gamer anger amounts to is that you and your friends have not yet had the new store successfully marketed to you. The companies involved have fixed their PR before, they'll do it again. Give it a few years.

I'm another person completely different than the OP the only two installers I'll allow on my machine are Steam and GOG. Why? Because Origin was garbage and EA is a terrible company to support. Ubisoft will not compel new to install a game. Rockstar and their stupid ass community requirements even in single player games have made be never want to play another Rockstar game and wishing I could get a refund on games that backported this to. Steam and GOG worked hard for user trust and built it over years, not by what games they have not but how they've constantly tried to listen to users. You can tell that the people running these companies are games themselves and probably use the same launchers. I can promise you there are people at EA who have never played a video game intentionally in their lives. It's a shame too as there are some really good games in their stables.

This is not the same as Netflix and competitors. No one is stopping a steam user from buying from epic store since its an one off purchase , but to watch an amazon exclusive you need an additional subscription.

Except that the store itself is a deterrent, for a whole laundry list of reasons you can seek elsewhere.

For me, the deal breakers are:

1. No user reviews.

2. Refund system is allegedly horrible and unreliable.

3. No cloud saves.

4. No mod workshop.

5. No forums.

6. No store-provided, NAT-punching, low latency networking.

The last three have made for many of my best gaming experiences in recent years

For me, one issue is the forty-something percent stake tencent has. Both in that I don't trust their software and that I have serious ethical concerns about directly supporting china. I know it's essentially impossible to not buy anything from them, but I would say videogames are definitely something people can easily stop buying.

You also can't buy a game for a friend.

That's just a matter of competition catching up though. From a consumer perspective multiple stores should have a positive effect. On the other hand streaming services are not benefiting the consumer directly.

Those things cost money. It's where a good chunk of Valve's cut goes.

Store closes shop. Your "purchases" turn out to be for a game licence that only works if the shop servers are up.

I've been burnt by this, most commonly with multiplayer games that only work with bankrupt company's server.

The Epic Launcher was recently caught datamining everything from running processes to root certificates. I would never install it personally. It wouldn't make me pirate either, games are easy to boycott, I did the same with EA and Ubisoft when they went rotten, havent looked back, even convinced some friends not to buy from EA and Ubi :)

>The Epic Launcher was recently caught datamining everything from running processes to root certificates

seems to have originated from here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

and is alarmist at best. see: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...

Game piracy still exists. There's subreddits dedicated to tracking when DRM schemes are broken. Also piracy of region locked and old, difficult to buy now, console games has never disappeared.

The games that are out of this are those that need online accounts to play.

FWIW, in terms of exclusivity, there have been games exclusive to EA's Origin. (e.g. the 2017 Battlefront II).

I'm not sure how significant "any added friction increases piracy" is in terms of numbers.

The difference is that people don't really hate exclusives on the publisher's own store unless the store is awful.

IMHO:

GFWL: awful and hated, dead now

UPlay: awful and hated

Steam: best in class and loved

GoG: second best in class and accepted

Origin: good and tolerated

Blizzard: good and tolerated

Epic: awful and hated

People hated Origin pretty bad, but EA stuck to their guns. IMO its a pretty awful experience. And to be honest Steam isn't exactly a great experience either. I noticed they're finally doing a face lift on their storefront soon, perhaps from the competition?

At least Origin didn't vacuum up exclusives from non-EA publishers. People who hated Origin probably already hated EA, too.

The Steam library update had been years in the making.

I'd personally put GoG ahead of Steam, and not just for "grr Steam" reasons. Steam has a habit of breaking in weird ways like telling me I can't view my own achievements because my profile is private or suddenly wanting to download 0 bytes for half the games in my library. GoG on the other hand has been totally rock-solid for me.

I prefer GoG, as well. I was attempting to express my understanding of the generally sentiment that I see from gamers

I have a cron job that backs up my library every two weeks via lgogdownloader

>UPlay: awful and hated

What's so bad about uplay?

It's not Steam. /s

In my experience, I'm unlikely to be able to play games due to issues with their auth servers.

* Reliability (both servers and client). Everytime I try to a play a uplay game I've had to screw around with getting a fresh installation of the uplay client.

* Client performance

* Similar to Origin, part of the motivation is so the games don't have to compete with the price of games on Steam, so end up being more expensive.

Battlefront 2 is a bad example, as it's a MP game which can't be effectively pirated.

Difference is that it doesn't cost you anything to use Steam, Epic game store, or Origin. You buy the game, you have the game. You can install 5 game stores on your computer and that's it.

For movies or TV series you need to have a subscription. That is the thing that costs money, even if you don't use it. People don't want to have 3 or 4 subscriptions, so that is why they pirate.

This is not a problem I see happening for games.

It's still annoying to deal with any distribution platform that isn't Steam. I understand why things are this way, but it doesn't make it any better from my point of view. I hate having to add my friends on another platform to play Ape Legs or the new Unreal. I don't want to deal with another login, another stupid launcher that wants to be on all the time with incessant updates.

I'm not going to end up pirating games because I mostly play F2P hat simulators, and the singleplayer games I care about are all available on GoG.

It still all feels quite user-hostile. I can't think of a solution though.

The solution is to support single-sign-on and to allow data importing/export. These are solved problems, but companies don't receive enough pressure to do them because they are more interested in building moats.

I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. These availability windows on shit is ridiculous. You wonder how pirates stay in business, it's because of availability windows and that region-locked bullshit.

The Wolf of Wall Street came out like 10 years ago, and you're telling me the only way to watch it is to buy it for $15 on Amazon? Keep dreaming.

> I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time.

I don't have an expert answer, but I'll bet the answer has "copyright holders" in it somewhere.

Sure, but why wouldn't they get paid based on streams of their copyrighted materials, or some other payment scheme? I mean, hey, it was good enough for video stores in the 90's, right? The equivalent of* Wolf of Wall Street sat on the shelf in Blockbuster for 15 years after it came out. They didn't have to hide it in the back because of an availability window.

Well, part of that is that the price went down. When video stores were in their heyday, they often paid 5-6 times more for each tape in order to have public playback rights. The studios realized that they would make more money selling copies to individuals, but after that changed, the big rental chains changed to models where they paid the studios per-rental.

You don't need any special rights to rent out physical copies of movies. Video stores, Netflix, Redbox all could just buy disks and tapes from the local market and rent them out directly. Sure, they can make a business deal to get better pricing and cut out the middleman, but this effectively puts a cap on that negotiation because the local market is always a fallback. When streaming deals fail there is no fallback, see Netflix's depleting catalog.

The problem is that the experience of watching a movie at home only shifted a little bit during the transition from physical to streaming, while the legal and licensing framework between the two are so different they are hardly comparable. Copyright holders took great advantage of the change to a new format allowing them to redefine the meaning of licensing so that they have more control and can extract more value.

Here's a story about Redbox employees buying DVDs from Walmart to stock kiosks.

https://www.businessinsider.com/redbox-employee-buys-100-dvd...

It seems like a wink-wink, hush-hush deal struck between Redbox employees and certain Walmart brick and mortar employees. I would venture as far as assuming that the three-copy-per-person limit was am arbitrary decision by another brick and mortar employee -- policies like these usually come from subjective decisions by well-meaning but uninformed managers in the retail world.

There's a similar scenario where the last Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon restocks its DVDs by buying at Walmart, but it's detailed in one of the documentary videos about it that the manager of said Blcokbuster has a special off-the-record arrangement with Walmart management.

I only mentioned it as a signal that Redbox was apparently unable to get a better deal with whoever licenses/sells the DVDs wholesale than from Walmart, even if they got a special deal from those particular Walmart stores.

I don't know about the US, but here in France they do need special rights.

From what I understand, the first sale doctrine protects them in the US

That is true, and established now, but in the early days of VHS rental, it wasn't so clearly established, and the movie studios did issue high-cost tapes that came with public performance rights.

Even now, any film display outside of the home still requires a public performance license, the studios have just decided to put their efforts into enforcement on the location and business side, rather than the supply/sales side.

>...That is true, and established now, but in the early days of VHS rental, it wasn't so clearly established, and the movie studios did issue high-cost tapes that came with public performance rights.

I don't think that is right. The first sale right is a limitation of the copyright holder's distribution right. This right was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 1908 and was clearly established by the time of video rentals. Video tapes were initially priced very high as the studios were selling to the rental stores, but eventually the studios simply found they could make more money selling copies to individuals and the prices came down.

The "availability window" is manufactured scarcity. Those tapes were physical objects that they couldn't recall once they left the building, but with digital goods they can decide how much of which title to make available in order to manipulate the demand curve.

That's the logic for high-demand titles. The reasoning for not making all the junk available at a fixed cost is the flip side: if users had a giant library of good-but-not-hit content, they'd be less likely to chase around their HBO or Netflix or whatever licenses.

The copyright holder isn't trying to make it scarce. The studio/distributor would really love it if NetFlix extended the licensing contract window instead of letting it expire. But, NetFlix will only pay to extend its availability if the content is attracting people to its platform and that's becoming less likely and necessary as NetFlix builds its own content that will remain on the platform forever.

Basically, we're going to end up with a streaming platform from every studio/distributor where you'll pay them directly instead of paying the broadcaster since the internet has made it so easy for studios and distributors to become "broadcasters" too. What seemed like a good thing at first is actually going to be worse in the end for consumers. We're going to be paying the same as before for each movie purchase/rental and then even more than before to license each show we want to watch.

Or, if we're lucky, we wind up with a "Spotify for Movies" that pays rights holders based on how much/frequently their content is watched. I'm certain we'll get there eventually, but it may take another decade.

You don't want that. The end result is a system that looks a lot like youtube where bots rule the platform and the numbers are constantly gamed.

I did have an expert answer, and tried to find it in my comments history on my mobile. But couldn't... alas, the gist is yes. Copyright holders and television channels and networks.

There is absolutely no incentive for a copyright holder to release their material on a global scale on a single platform for a comission or similar where one can sell dozens, if not hundreds, of times same material (sell, not comission) for a period of time and renew the contract every three years or so. In order to do that, tv stations wont touch material that everyone has accesss to, because people will opt to watch maybe there and then because of that advertisers will then opt out... It's a complicated circle.

And I can rent it (in SD) for $0.33 in India. Meanwhile, the only movie I have had a desire to watch in the last couple of months and I was willing to pay through the nose for, I couldn't, because its digital distribution was region locked.

Which movie? Just interested :)

I was really pissed off because I had forgotten what the movie even was. Luckily a reference to it popped up in my RSS feeds. I'm pretty sure it was https://www.hailsatanfilm.com/ this. Now it seems that Magnolia Pictures has picked it up and put it in theaters, but when I first heard of it there was no scheduled release.

Because they don't care about providing valuable services for the benefit of the customer. They're a monopoly that can easily get away with minimum effort and then price it as high as the market will bear.

Copyright holders either get paid a few sheckles per view with an unknown number of viewers, or a big lump sum wad of cash for an exclusive unlimited contract.

Exclusivity contracts can benefit the copyright holder in the former model by locking customers into a higher sheckle perview deal, or in the later model it can be used by the provider to gain customers.

Really though, when the Grinch Cartoon is only available on Comcast during Christmas you just pirate it for the first time in 10 years.

I think this comes from ossified committees making decisions. The concept of a world divided into "regions" is still strong in some people's minds, even though it stopped making any sense within the last two or three decades.

This idea of "regions" is infuriating if you happen to live in a non-first-class "region", meaning anything that is not the United States. Often you will be denied purchase, which is ridiculous in the context of discussions about "piracy".

Spotify has shown the right way to do it: just offer the stuff in a way that is convenient and let people pay for it. Their growth numbers speak for themselves.

> Spotify has shown the right way to do it: just offer the stuff in a way that is convenient and let people pay for it.

I don't think Spotify are a great example really. They're almost a 14 year old company, and last wuartet was the first time they were profitable. They've already stated they're expecting a loss this year. Is it sustainable?

I would also expect that we'll see a rift a la Netflix, over time we'll see different companies start to hold exclusives to their own streaming platform.

I'm not speaking of dvds specifically, but products in general including books, medicine, etc.

they still 'need' regions because they generally charge US customers more. more often then not, US has to pay cost + IP costs + margin, where as people in say India pay cost + margin.

I think this remains true for dvd/movies. Think about it, I heard the cost of a movie ticket for a hollywood movie is about 1$ in pakistan.

I'm in favor of getting rid of regions, and outlawing the practice of making mostly US consumers pay the bill for IP costs illegal, but until that happens they 'need' regions. how else are they going to charge people in china 2$ and people in the US 20$.

> This idea of "regions" is infuriating > Spotify has shown the right way to do it

Sorry but no. Spotify is not available anywhere but in a few selected regions.

Regions make complete sense if people in certain countries are making a few hundred dollars a month. Suddenly that $20 movie is over 5% of their monthly income.

If this is what you want just sign up for Netflix’s dvd service. Problem solved.

Or worse, the only way to watch it _is with a cable subscription_. What??? Spiderman Homecoming on Amazon straight up cannot be rented without signing up for a Starz subscription.

It's completely baffling. Amazon really dropped their 'customer obsession' on the video side.

Do you really think they have permission to rent it and choose not to? Starz uses Amazon for their HBO Go/Now equivalent, it's probably the only way Amazon can offer it for rent at all.

Amazon didn’t decide not to rent it. It’s up to the rightsholder.

But it is crazy that it is available for rent on iTunes but not Prime.

There's always ebay or Netflix disc by mail.

From my perspective everyone, especially the service providers, are completely missing the problem. Its portability between platforms and user friction.

In the era of VHS-DVD-BluRay one could buy movies, and they play in any player. When I get a new player, it just works.

Now, we need to juggle accounts, billing, subscriptions, and player authorizations. Having a FireTV and Roku plugged into each TV is an absolute pain in the ass.

What needs to happen is the establishment of a standard protocol for providing content and authorization. Each layer of the problem needs to be abstracted and compartmentalized. The Apple App world destroyed the server-client relationship.

First there needs to be a standard protocol for a service provider to deliver content after receiving authorization.

Next there needs to be a standard aggregation protocol. This is the step everyone misses. The best analogy I can think of is the Google Reader to Feedly-Innoreader relationship. I could set up Google Reader with my config, and then sign into ANY other compatible front end that supported Google Reader and use their product without setting it up from scratch. I want a place that combines MoviesAnywhere with billing management. One place to go to subscribe and cancel subscriptions. This place might just be an API with no client front end, the actual interfacing with the service could be handed off to the clients. People might reply Roku or Apple, but they still miss the point that if I set up a Roku, my config isnt portable to Fire or Apple or Google. I can access my same Gmail and Amazon account from Firefox and Chrome without rebuilding my profiles and losing my config. HTTP/HTML is what makes the Web Server/Web Browser relationship so beautiful, anyone can implement it.

Finally there needs to be an open way for anyone to write a client that connects to the aggregation services. Consumers should be able to have a Roku in one room and a FireTV in another, and an LG in another.

As long as each client vendor tries to suck people into their ecosystem, and as long as each service provider wants to handle subscriptions and billing themselves (or the client apps trying to take it over so Amazon/Apple/Roku manage my billing) people will continue to find the friction and lack of portability to be too big a pain in the ass. It sucks to have to commit to being an Apple or Google or Amazon or Roku house. It sucks that each service provider has to write a client side app for Apple, Google, Amazon, and Roku and that upstart services sometimes can only support some of them.

As long as Layers 1-3 are combined into 2 frankenlayers, consumers will continue to grow more frustrated as more services pop up, and become more trapped in ecosystems.

Layer 1: Video Provider - CBS, Netflix, Disney

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - ???

Layer 3: Media Player - anything the consumer wants, never trapped

Piracy Solves this problem.

Layer 1: Video Provider - Usenet, Torrents

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - Plex, Emby, DLNA, media servers

Layer 3: Media Player - Kodi, or any competitor.

Just like how I can sign into the same gmail account from any client, I pray for the day I can walk up to a media center, sign in, and load my lifelong profile, without needing the media player to be proprietary-compatible with each and every service provider, and without needing to sign into 20 services to see what's playing. Going to a friend's house and only seeing what they are signed into is infinitely more inconvenient that carrying a DVD to their house. And these companies wonder why password sharing is such a problem? It's cuz if I want to watch my shows I have to sign into my account on their device under their Amazon or Roku profile, and now that login is cached. At least Cable/sattelite worked in every room of a house, you add an HBO subscription and boom every box is instantly updated.

That's the solution, but the problem is that video providers are too dumb[0] to agree on Layer 2. Each of them wants to own the subscription management platform[1] for themselves. So instead of one service that would divvy up your money between relevant parties and let you watch whatever you want, we get balkanization of streaming space, with payment management pushed onto users. You won't have a Layer 2 protocol in this mess simply because none of the players want it.

[0] - Yes, I'm fully aware that they're following their economical incentives. But at some point we really should start calling out falling into short-term profit-maximizing traps like these as being dumb. And/or antisocial.

[1] - This is foretold by calling streaming services "platforms". As our industry proves time and again, whenever there's a need for a platform, everyone and their dog will develop one, hoping to become the winner that takes it all - in the process ruining the whole space for all users with their vendor lock-in bullshit.

Ideally yes. Practically I think consumers will be happy to choose between 1-3 providers. Think about it, up until now we were paying cable companies the price of all the 'all you can stream' services combined. Except in regions where selection is just not immediately available piracy will continue.

And now the cable companies own the content (Comcast/NBC Universal, ATT/DirecTV/WarnerTurnerHBO)

The cable companies are not an independent Layer 2 anymore.

It's about price discrimination. The first thing is finding out exactly how bad their customer wants the movie, so that's why there's availability windows, to see how a given customer's behavior changes based on availability of the product and substitutes. With that they can then maximize profit and charge $15, or $14, or $16, or whatever the exact maximum you're willing to pay for it is. And that's also why it's frustrating: your frustration is literally what they are trying to gage and measure and maximize.

Agreed. I would have no problem paying $100/month for a platform that let me stream any movie and tv show I wanted. Hell, give me packages instead (such as Disney content or Fox). The worst they can do is require 5 different accounts across 5 different services that all provide random content with overlap between services. Do you think folks would be fine with paying for 3 different cable boxes and subscriptions? No of course not, and the same applies here.

Yup. This balkanization of streaming is really dumb and I believe it will cause resurgency of piracy in the coming years. As a customer, I only want one thing: a hole I can drop money into at regular intervals, and get arbitrary movies and TV shows from it on demand. I don't care about brands, "originals", and other shenanigans - each of them is one more argument towards installing a torrent client again.

Ironically, an increasing number of parties has been having dollar signs in their eyes as of late, trying to get some of Steam's pie. It's entirely possible that this fate will befall the PC gaming industry at some point.

Without piracy, many third-world populations may have never been able to really use computers until about 2005-2010.

You're off by 10-15 years as free software operating systems have been usable since at least the mid 90s. But there was a period before that which what you say was true which was one of the big reasons behind the GNU project.

A subset of piracy, when I was a kid for instance, was not about service but clearly a pricing "problem" (the problem being: I was a kid)

> TV and Movies on the other hand are getting worse every year, with Netflix focusing on their originals and everybody else doing their own streaming services.

We seem to be at an all-time low of #Bittorrent seeders though.

It’s unfortunate, even on private sites there aren’t as many seeders as they used to be. I have a hard time finding well seeded content from 90s, 80s, and 70s. 10 years ago, things were so much better.

>Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity.

This is a cop out to me. I have never been a fan of DRM for this reason, because it requires an unassailable monopoly for customers not to notice that it's a problem. I am probably in the minority because I've never been happy with Steam's service because of this, but as long as they are the 800 pound gorilla in the room then they obviously never will listen to any of my complaints.

If you take this line of thinking to movies, it leads to dangerous ideas like "everyone but my favorite streaming service should just close down" which is totally ridiculous, but still when I talk to friends about this issue they are quick to propose that as the solution! It really makes me try to avoid contact with the digital publishing industry as much as possible. What we see now is the movie studios' response to that which is:

- To increase the size of the data dramatically (4K+ video) so that casual sharing requires hardware investment and thus remains difficult

- To make things highly dependent on a very specialized backend to work correctly (Netflix's recent experiment with branching narratives)

- To start bundling it with other things (Amazon Prime)

- To offer streaming analytics as a better data platform than the traditional Nielsen ratings

- And probably more I can't think of right now

The thing is that these are all real value adds which I am glad to see them competing on. Right now all the downstream vendors are forced to invest in rolling their own DRM. I would rather see copyright holders offering a system where a proof of purchase can be transferred between services, but they would need to band together to actually do it and start putting that into their contracts. Can you imagine if we had that instead of DRM?

Steam is not DRM though and they offer lots of DRM free games too[0]

https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games...

The issue I have is not that the vendor (Steam, Netflix, etc) is imposing DRM, but that the copyright holders demand it, and that there are cases where the vendor gives into these demands. You're right that Steam doesn't do this in all cases, but in some they do.

> If you take this line of thinking to movies, it leads to dangerous ideas like "everyone but my favorite streaming service should just close down" which is totally ridiculous, but still when I talk to friends about this issue they are quick to propose that as the solution!

Honestly, this is the solution I'd like. Because I don't care about who is serving the movies, I want the movies. All of them in one place.

There's probably some law in economics that amounts to this, but it seems to me that competition is only useful if the goods/services being sold are commodities. Movies, or games, are an extreme example of non-substitutable goods, so as long as providers can get exclusive rights to sell/license them only on their platforms, competition becomes against customer interest, and monopoly is a better option. People are rational to observe that they gain nothing by Origin existing next to Steam, just like they don't gain anything by Netflix existing next to HBO and Amazon.

That is exactly the problem I was addressing, which is that the reason monopoly looks good is because the current systems we're looking are so entrenched and require DRM, which is a tool that actively and deliberately prevents platforms from innovating. Following this, it's no surprise that Netflix and Amazon are turning to making their own films, and that Origin only exists because Steam's monopoly means that EA couldn't negotiate acceptable licensing terms with Valve. Get rid of the DRM and there is plenty of reason to compete in ways that help customers. Then give them a way to easily transfer ownership between supporting platforms and everybody wins.

There is a solution for purchased movies - Movies Anywhere. You can sync purchases between iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play Movies and Vudu.

Four of the six studios are in. Blame the other two studios.

>Pirating games has never been as unattractive as it has been today due to Steam's monopoly and ubiquity.

Hang around reddit's /r/crackwatch for some time and tell me how unattractive games piracy is.

>> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem [...]

>And it's true

Maybe I'm the exception, but given the choice of shelling out $60 (works out to just over 4 hours of work at median US pay), or waiting a few hours/days/weeks (depending on DRM strength) and getting it for free, I'm picking the latter every time.

edit: changed average pay to median

If you can afford it, please pay for it. I get that not everyone can afford $60 games, but if you would have actually purchased it if pirating wasn't an option, please support the game.

We are seeing this happen as you speak.

With game developers going back to proprietary launchers and platform exclusives, piracy of such games is rising again.

I predict the new Metro and Borderlands games will be heavily pirated.

When the epic launcher lacks more than half of the essential features of Steam, people will boycott your platform for forcing them to use it.

The Steam thing makes sense. However I don't see how Netflix Originals is different than Steam.

For me, this whole thing has had a positive experience on my life. I can't be bothered dealing with the different streaming services and incompatible devices, I decided a while back I wasn't going to pirate things any more, so I just end up not watching things.

I used to watch a lot of things. Even if it was just to have something on in the background. I haven't really done that for years now and my interest is pretty much gone now.

Reading people's experiences with these services and devices just sort reaffirms my decision to just not bother with movies and tv shows any more.

Same for me. Hardly watch anything nowadays. I used to watch prime in kodi when that still worked reliably in 2014(?) and stopped bothering after they put an end to this. I actually still have prime but never use it for anything but free shipping. Should I feel the urge to watch a movie at home once a year or so I just pirate it so I can play it back on kodi.

Yep. Good audiobooks and podcasts are better for you, anyway.

Better for you in what way? Why should removing the video component implicitly improve things?

If you're talking content; presumably a documentary can be just as enlightening as a podcast or an audiobook...

If you genuinely want an answer to this, read Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman presents a very convincing case that the medium (tv, book, radio, etc.) has a very strong influence on the content that is presented, and the discourse that ensues. I don’t think that all television is worthless, but neither do I believe that all information forms are equivalent in their ability inform and enlighten.

I'll read that. I have no doubt that medium tends to have a dramatic effect, but I don't see how a medium that requires more attention (say a documentary) is worse than a medium that requires less (a podcast). Of course a book requires the most attention; but that also presents the largest obstacle -- especially if you don't have the time/energy to invest but are otherwise interested in the subject. I guess I don't disagree with you, I just disagree with the people that think not watching things is some sort of badge of honor.

I'd also point out that the Postman book was written in 1985, and TV/Movies then vs now with the choices and streaming and the improvement in the medium, I mean, it's not even close to the same thing.

> I'd also point out that the Postman book was written in 1985, and TV/Movies then vs now with the choices and streaming and the improvement in the medium, I mean, it's not even close to the same thing.

Very true. And that is part of what makes the book so impressive. It is the most prescient piece of writing that I have ever read, in how well it predicts our current politics, and to a lesser degreee, society.

The book does not argue that tv is dumb, and watching it makes you dumb. The argument is more that the structure of tv tends to favor the types of content that aren’t good for society. Even though social media wasn’t around when the book was written, the analysis can easily be extended to provide a lot of insight into its effects on society.

I’m not saying not to watch tv - I watch plenty of it myself. I’m just (poorly) trying to answer your question about why a documentary would be any worse than a podcast.

I find it amusing that this approach will likely be classified as "sales lost to piracy" in whining reports from the media industry :-)

I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism of you, because you should spend time how it best suits you, but I feel like there's this meme that watching things is a waste of time. To me, I don't buy it. Certainly some things are a waste of time, but there's also absolutely a lot of excellent things that are entirely worth watching and will better you. I guess I just get annoyed by the, somewhat smug, "I don't watch TV crowd". If that's your jam that's fine, I just don't think it's implicitly a good thing or a bad thing.

there's also absolutely a lot of excellent things that are entirely worth watching and will better you

Name two. I'm very sceptical of the idea of being bettered by watching in general.

I watch movies with my wife and we talk about the good ones for years. Watching good content is stimulating and makes you think about it for the rest of your life.

I could name far more!

Cosmos? Planet Earth? Or what about the myriad of documentaries you can find? Or shows about history?

I suppose this also depends on if you think fiction betters you as a person (I don't think the medium you receive it in matters all that much; so I don't think you need to read a thick russian novel). If you don't; I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you, and in a way, I almost feel sad on your behalf. Almost all of human morals and values, not to mention deep life lessons, have historically been taught through fiction. If you do, then obviously there's a lot of EXCELLENT fiction on TV, shows like Breaking Bad, or Mad Men. Or recent shows like Barry. Those shows rival even large novels in the amount of time it takes to consume them and what they can say, and they even have the advantage of being able to take advantage of music and filmography to set moods and make points that books cannot (books of course also have their own set of advantage, I'm not trashing them)

Planet Earth is an example of the medium used well I think - amazing footage of reality that would be very expensive, time consuming and difficult to observe first hand, presented with fairly light editorializing.

I personally haven't got the same value from TV fiction. Mad Men is good example - I watched it because it was widely praised and I got somewhat caught up in wanting to know what happened next but in retrospect I really don't feel I got anything much out of it and I would like those hours of my life back. I feel the same about almost everything I watched while I had a Netflix subscription.

I've got nothing against pure entertainment. I've found Game of Thrones entertaining and will likely watch the final season with my fiancé. I continue to watch the occasional popcorn movie at the cinema. There's very little TV and only a few movies that feel they rise beyond entertainment to something like literature however.

If you get value out of TV and movies I've got no problem with that. As someone who used to watch a lot of both and now feels that was largely a waste of my time though I just no longer see much value there.

I guess it's not for everyone -- to me, Mad Men was a really interesting commentary on consumer culture and suburbia; along with giving a much more realistic view of a period of time that has been extremely influential yet usually reflected in a pretty one dimensional way. If someone asked me to read an essay about the values on 1950s/1960s america, I really don't think I'd care, but by giving me interesting characters and presenting their values in concrete situations, it made learning about that time a lot more interesting and relevant. I think with fiction, when it works, you learn a lot without even realizing it. That can make it seem like it's not valuable because sometimes you don't even realized it planted a seed in your mind. I mean, how much more effective was a novel like 1984 versus someone talking about the dangers of government surveillance? I'd argue 1984 had much more impact (unfortunately, probably not enough), even though it was entirely fiction.

I'm not saying there is no value in fiction. Does Mad Men belong in the same conversation as 1984 though? I don't think so.

Does any TV show deserve to stand next to the greats of literature? I'm not convinced. The closest I can get to a TV show that felt it paid off the time investment with saying something worthwhile is probably The Wire. There's probably a handful of films that I can say the same for.

For any activity I think it can be useful to look back and ask if it was time well spent. For me personally I can answer yes for many ways I spend my time. That includes some fiction. It includes very little TV. Maybe there was actually some hidden value but I'd rather spend time on things I don't feel ambiguous about the value of.

OTOH, I often see young people on reddit asking "Was business in the sixties really like Mad Men? Did they really smoke and drink that much - even AT WORK? Were they really so sexist? Seriously?"

So I think those kids learned something that wasn't in their history books.

I'll name: anything even temporarily culturally or socially relevant?

I'm probably going to blow your mind wide open here. Sometimes, and stick with me here, talking to people _about_ movies/shows/music/entertainment[x] can be a fun byproduct of seeing entertainment form [x].

That's, or course, for us normies, though. For you iamverysmart people who can't conceive of exstracting any value from movies, I assume I similarly won't be able to understand your side, where you work on big, big, Big important things in your spare time.

Hearing about movies/shows/music/entertainment from people is almost always more fun when I don't know the piece they're talking about.

And it's not about doing big, big, important things in your spare time. It's about doing vs watching. You can hit the gym and, while doing nothing original, smart, or important, actually better yourself.

If you don't know what they're talking about are you really contributing much to the conversation? I used to have a roommate that would make fun of me for being really excited about watching Breaking Bad; and when it was on he'd start asking me about a million questions. But it was less of a conversation than just being peppered with a bunch of annoying questions. I had to tell him, look man, if you're interested in the show just watch it, and if you're not stop interrupting it. Talking about the show with other people following it was really fun, but talking about it with people that didn't care was draining.

With regards to doing vs. watching, if you're in any sort of creative field, how can have enough inspiration to draw on if you never actually fill your reserves by consuming things? And, as I presume, even if you're not in a creative field, there's still the non-fiction aspect.

I'm not saying you need to go watch things, but virtue signalling that you're better by not consuming anything is pretty counterproductive to yourself.

Chinatown and Shoplifting Family. Both are beautiful, life changing movies.

I’m curious how you feel about reading. If you just have a generally nihilistic view that art in general doesn't better people, that kind of makes sense. But if you think there is something deficient about the video medium in particular, what is that?

You walk away different from great art whether its film, television, books, music, painting/plastic arts, etc. Box office pablum like the latest superhero movie is largely forgettable, but great culture will give you new perspectives on identity, relationships, morality, society, etc.

Then you don't seem to be looking very thoroughly. Films and series are just another form of art and similar to any other category the highlights are naturally harder to find.

But dismissing them outright seems very narrow-minded.

It's not just a question of whether there is some value in TV and movies, the question is whether it's a better use of time than other alternatives. Maybe it's partly just getting older but over time I've found subjectively the quality / value of TV and movies seems to have declined relative to other ways I could be spending my time.

Well, it probably depends on what you're doing. I'm interested in creating fiction and comedy, so, to me when I'm watching shows I'm entertained, but I'm also studying them to see what works and what doesn't; how they approached certain problems, etc. But realistically, a lot of people aren't interested in creative fields, and in that context sure, watching fiction can just be hedonism in a sense. I like to think good fiction and comedy actually teaches you something, though, but in a way where it doesn't feel laborious. For instance, standup comedy might just seem like laughs, but the comedians that are really good at it almost always have a kernel of truth in what they're saying, and comedy is one of the best ways to say something controversial without getting crucified.

Another entirely valid reason is escapism. The world can be a really crappy place. I can say the certain movies/shows have absolutely helped me through some bad times. I've got terminal cancer, sometimes the only way you can really escape the constant malaise of having to forcibly work towards another day is by borrowing strength from the characters on screen.

As to what you're saying about studying the shows I do that too. Gone Girl is a movie that realistically is pretty easy to figure out the twist. But the way that it's written and acted is stunningly wonderful. It's rare to see solid stories elevated.

Comedians have always been and will always be about holding a mirror to society and pointing out the flaws in a way that makes people realise societies flaws, but make the solutions seem comically trivial. I'd wager it's a highly undervalued skill.

No. I've watched a lot of tv. I realized one day just how many hours of my life i'd spent just watching entire series straight through, watching and rewatching movies, my entire childhood watching cartoons and tv shows. It's definitely at least a few years of my life cumulatively.

That's time I could have spent getting better at hobbies I enjoy, learning things, going out and doing things, making things.

I started thinking about it around the time I realized time is pretty much the only thing any of us has ever and once it's gone it's gone. I decided I'd devoted enough time in my life to passively watching things.

Don't get me wrong. I'll still watch things occasionally and I don't think people who spend their time watching things are wasting their time.

It's just for me, I didn't like the way it took up my attention and time, I didn't like the way my head was full of knowledge about countless tv shows and movies and I made a choice, helped along by the increasing lack of quality in content and complication of services, to just detach from it all, watch the odd thing that comes along that really appeals to me, and just avoid the rest.

> Don't get me wrong.

One of these days one of those social studies dudes is going to hit on the idea that shoving stories/ideas into other people's brains is wrong.

Wonder if he'll manage to tell the world. Perhaps they did and did not.

This has pretty much been my response at this point too. I was an early DVR adopter, then an early cable cutter and Netflix user, now I have no TV and no subscriptions to any of these services and am happier for it.

The author doesn't have a comment form on the blog, but since the username looks like he was the one who submitted here, I wanted to reply and offer that there may be a solution-

The companies that offer digital movies came together last year in order to try to solve this problem.

If you go to moviesanywhere.com you can link your accounts, it will make those movies available across all of the different platforms, including YouTube which is available everywhere.

It only works with movies, not TV shows or audiobooks or music, so there are still a lot of places we need to get better. But I think the specific problem that you are having may be solved.

Nice idea. Shame the damn thing is US only.

(also - are people still enforcing silly password complexity rules? I thought we'd got over that? My x character all-one-character-type passwords are perfectly secure thanks very much. I did the maths...)

> Shame the damn thing is US only.

And no surprise there. I honestly don’t expect anything else at this point.

Thank you! I just tossed a random thought out and here it is on the front page 2 hours later, but this is exactly it!

I’d suggest updating the blog because while it’s not super intuitive as you found out, everyone should know about moviesanywhere :D. It really makes me feel like we surpassed vhs vs betamax because once you connect all your accounts, you really have a ton of redundancy and it can help with platform lock-in.

It also completely flipped the piracy argument in my mind. If you’re consuming a new movie per month you’re basically at $20 a month in expenses to house a digital warehouse of movies. Keeping large libraries of pirated movies is not cheap, you’re powering a machine 24/7, etc. MoviesAnywhere removing lock-in and stuff like iTunes upgrading past purchases to 4K made me a “true believer” on what’s going on with digital movies

Updated, thanks for the suggestion :thumbsup:

cheers!

The author's mistake (IMHO) was not treating his TV as a dumb pixel rectangle and nothing more. Not getting a Roku-integrated TV has the same arguments for not getting any other kind of "smart" TV:

- Getting prompted in the middle of content that "the Terms of Service have been updated"

- Getting prompted to accept the ToS

- Companies deciding to inject ads into your content

- Interoperability issues

- Being able to upgrade your (cheap) set-top box without upgrading your (expensive) TV

- Smart TV apps are typically worse than the best box apps (although this doesn't really apply to Roku-equipped TVs I guess)

- Bugs in the software degrading or disabling your viewing capabilities. Worst case with a box? Buy a new one ($100).

Seriously. Don't even connect your smart TV to the Internet. Leave the Wifi unconnected. Don't plug in an Ethernet cable. Leave that to whatever box or boxes you choose.

TVs aren't expensive anymore. He says he got a TCL from Costco. I just checked their website and the 43" model costs $239.

No platform has more and better apps than Roku. A box is a closed platform just like Roku. Any of the things you're worried about are just as likely with a separate piece of hardware running smart TV software as with the software running on the TV itself.

Especially if you’re going to go with Roku.

Roku is the most open platform out there. It’s easy enough to write and use “private channels” using their SDK. Roku doesn’t have to approve a private channel.

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view...

> we've only recently discovered that the headphones that came with the car for the DVD player not only work, but will let Michelle and I listen to Wait, Wait without the loud protestations of the kids (since they can watch a movie while we listen to podcasts)

I don’t have kids and this guy can raise his kids however he pleases as far as I’m concerned but: it strikes me that letting the kids always consume Kid Media feels like a bad idea. There’s exposure to adult concerns and concepts they’re missing out on. There’s probably something they’re missing in learning about sharing. There’s a variety of input they’re lacking. They’re sitting there in a little bubble of media created for kids, designed in part to exploit kids to make money - “buy all our play sets and toys”, as one Homestar episode out it.

Whenever I was in the car as a kid, it was Mom’s hand on the radio dial. Mostly the local classical/NPR station. I didn’t always like it but sometimes I was surprised by what I did.

I dunno, something about media bubbles, something about the vast task of passing on some measure of your values to your kids, also something about getting the little bastards to STFU and let you drive on a long trip too.

> I don’t have kids

I used to think all kinds of things about how we'd raise our kids before we had them, but I'm pretty satisfied with the job that we're doing overall - they're outside catching the first frogs of spring in the creek that goes by our house at this very moment.

However, sometimes when you're driving for hours to somewhere they get a little bored and want to watch a movie. And sometimes you get bored of listening to the dialog from Hotel Transylvania and want to listen to a podcast and then you discover how handy those headphones actually are.

edit: I mean, this is constructive feedback and I do appreciate it. And you should absolutely think about your parenting strategy before you have children as well. It's just that, well, sometimes your opinions on things soften as you age and gain domain experience is all...

I am pretty sure I am never going to have kids. :)

That part about letting the kids watch movies while the parents listen to adult things, without the context of "on a multi-hour drive", just struck me and I wanted to interrogate it a bit.

You need to check out the movies anywhere service. It seems your entire library across multiple library’s. My understanding is that Disney another’s force this on the vendors and exchange for 4K media rights.

It really is one of the best things to come out of technology in quite a while, And it’s remarkable how few people actually know about it.

It's currently US-only which means it's no use to me.

>movies anywhere

>US-only

Anywhere that matters, it means.

moviesinsusa.com didn't have the same ring, though.

Movies Anywhere is nice, but Apple is still throwing their anti-consumer bullshit around, i.e. you can't play 4K iTunes movies in 4K on anything but an Apple TV, they get limited to 1080p. Edit: And Apple is misleading consumers I would say, since when you buy 4K movies via iTunes, they don't make it obvious in the slightest that you need an Apple TV for 4K. Edit 2: I just looked and it looks like they do state you need an Apple TV 4k now but I don't think they always did, and I have no doubt a lot of people like me bought movies off iTunes thinking they were getting a 4K experience since the Apple TV disclaimer is almost just that.

This is why I never purchased any digital media from Apple. Amazon has DRM-free mp3s, so I purchase a couple of my favorite songs from them each year, and I can load them onto my iPhone without much fuss. But I don't buy digital copies of movies, because it's a waste of money as things stand today.

But maybe I'm just not one of those so called "experiences over ownership" millennials.

Your information is badly out of date. Apple has had drm free for quite a while, and actually forced he issue with labels(which ironically opened the door to their competitors)

Almost (over) a decade too

Apple TV is coming to Roku already:

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/rokus-ceo-talks-about-why-th...

I googled for this news using every combination I could think of, because the services event last week or whatever, but couldn't find this. That was also the paragraph I left out - that I'm sure as soon as I relent and buy a new Apple TV they'll release an iTunes app for Roku. Anyway, thank you :thumbsup:

It sucks that we got DRM-free music downloads a decade ago but it just stopped there. If you want to download a TV show and watch it on any device you want (which would solve this problem), your one option is piracy.

Other option (which is technically illegal I guess but we’ll within my moral parameters) is to buy the physical box set and rip everything then add metadata manually.

It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages.

You can also have Plex installed. It will add metadata for you.

>With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages.

It has been a while for me, but it wasnt uncommon that it was the other way around.

> It’s far from convenient but I feel it’s the best compromise, especially since you get the full quality in whatever end format you want. With pirated copies, they often are missing surround tracks, higher quality encodings, CC, and languages.

That's not my experience. There's always a clean bluray rip with good bitrates and the original DTS(-HD) audio track available. There's actually no need to rip the media yourself.

Compared to legal streaming options piracy releases offer a far better quality and technical fidelity. In fact, I was complaining in another comment some time ago how surprisingly poor my cinematic experience with Netflix' critically acclaimed "Roma" was. Their official clients weren't able to adjust the refresh rate to the correct 24 fps the film was shot in (as are most movies). A process the viewers had to do (and guess) themself unless they were ok with micro stuttering and frame interpolation. Apparently this issue is also very common among Netflix apps on thrid party hardware like Smart TVs and other boxes. Meanwhile it's a non-issue with any decent software video player.

And that's before we even discuss bitrate or audio formats.

I hate to be that guy, but there's a reason I have a closet full of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and physical games for modern consoles.

Digital downloads weren't ready ten years ago, and the author's post is a great reminder of why they still aren't ready. Buy physical media; opt-out of this vendor-lock-in-masquerading-as-copyright-enforcement scam.

Worry not, physical media will be a thing of the past soon enough I'm sure. That being said, I do a lot of shopping at old record stores for cheap 2 for $1 CDs

To present an equally valid but totally opposite viewpoint:

Digital downloads were ready 20 years ago, and they are still the best choice for consoles and pcs.

Spend your money on games (they've never been cheaper) with the understanding that hey, maybe 40 years from now you won't be able to dig them up. But by then we'll have 40 years of more games, and the current titles will get scooped up into museums, vintage shops, and other platforms.

Or they won't, and you'll lose them forever, which is ok. Accept the impermanence, enjoy the experiences you are having today. Don't let the past be an anchor, find new things that give you joy and play them then set them down.

> they've never been cheaper

But that's the thing. They're not "cheaper" when you account for the fact that you're basically renting them from an unreliable platform that may go down at any time or perhaps deny you "availability" for unknown reasons. And games are actually one of the best cases since DRM-free platforms are reasonably well-established. Other sorts of media are a lot worse off from that POV.

You are right that the games I buy have an N year shelf life. I estimate N to be 'longer than I'm likely to care about a game'.

I don't want NES cartridges around my house despite growing up with one. Nor an SNES or PS2 discs. Every year there's more fantastic media produced than I have time to enjoy, why lock myself into the past when I can pick up a pile of cool indie games and the occasional AAA title every year and just enjoy those experiences?

Who knows, maybe I'll be eating my words someday. I've been buying games for the better part of 30 years and it hasn't happened yet, but maybe you'll be right in the end. I don't spend a lot of mental energy worrying about it.

> Accept the impermanence

I think this is key no matter what formats you decide to go with. Don’t fool yourself into believing your Blu-Ray movies are going to bring you joy for the rest of your life just because you retain a physical copy.

My childhood VHS collection isn’t of any value to me. Even if VHS looked good on modern TVs the tapes have degraded. My DVD collection looked OK up until 4K TVs, but even they look pretty rough now and DVD players won’t be made forever. Surely we’ll see a shift where Blu-Ray doesn’t have a place in a modern entertainment center at some point.

Imagine if home depot went out of business and all the lumber and nails and screws and tools you purchased from them instantly stopped working.

Or if JcPenney's went out of business and all of your older outfits disappeared.

Sure, things wear out and break over time, but it should not be dependent on the store who sold you the goods.

I totally agree with you, but the author's post is film-specific. For other mediums the situation is much brighter (but a long way to go), for example:

- bandcamp.com - once purchased, download music anywhere in any format you choose FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, etc.

- GOG.com - purchase and download completely DRM-free, offline playable games.

- Some e-book publishers now sell DRM-free e-books, including Tor books

While Bandcamp is indeed the best music purchasing option in my opinion, I'd like to add that music is available without DRM pretty much anywhere these days, regardless of which store you use. It's not something limited to Bandcamp, but an industry-wide common practice.

Thanks, great point.

> Can Apple please just relent and let Roku have an iTunes app?

They did. An app will be coming later this year for Roku, Amazon Fire TV and a bunch of smart TV platforms.

How about Chromecast compatibility?

I miss being able to cast things to my Fire Stick. Like a lot.

Apple's working with a bunch of TV makers to add AirPlay 2 support to their TVs

I prefer having my own portable device that I can plug into any display.

My guess is that Apple is trying to get their stores in front of as many eyes as possible. Because Chromecast is just a receiving platform, and you can't buy any content from it directly, they're not interested in it.

It seems like there is a roku app you can install on your iOS devices that let you stream to a roku player on your TV. Is this different?

>...or licensed, fuck you Hollywood

Pretty much landed the blame where it should fall but it's not the only one. Take a look at PDFs with DRMs and what happens when those companies no longer exist or the like. It's chasing the almighty <insert currency here> that locks you into licensing to watch, instead of ownership.

Long live the VHS days... (...damn the man, save the Empire.)

I don’t think the analogy of “VHS vs Beta” works here. It is click-baity.

The author has chosen to purchase various “formats” and then expecting it work across systems. Just the way you can’t play an Xbox game on PlayStation - the physical format being the same.

VHS and Beta, Blu-ray and HDDVD, etc were battles about the Universal standards. It’s a shame your car has a DVD player, if it had a HDMI port, you damn can play anything you want.

What a useless rant!

Come on, why you gotta be that guy ? You mean you can't render a `jpeg` but only `png` ?

To a degree, VHS vs Beta was about lock-in, which is exactly the issue we face with steaming services.

Yes, but the author wants to burn those movies into a really old format - DVD and then complaining that he/she can’t.

I am not defending the DRM bullshit, but this rant is making an analogy to formats and the whole discussion is framed incorrectly.

It bothers me when people title their post with a hook to lure you in but then you’re sorely disappointed that it’s not about what the title said. Click bait.

Edit: DVD burning is a hack to get around the fact that the car doesn’t have an HDMI port.

That's pretty nitpicky. The DVD-burning is a hack to get around the lock-in, not their actual problem.

I feel your pedantry is misplaced on this occasion. While you do technically have a point, the blog article was about was about his frustrations with platform incompatibility. In many ways his arguments is more valid now than its ever been because the incompatibilities are entirely self-serving with each platform being conceptually the same as the last. Where as in the Betamax days it was at least down to differing hardware standards- each offering their own distinct advantages over the other.

I agree with some of the things about today's digital distribution and the DRM enchilada, my gripe with articles like this is about the title.

I believe if the author talked about DRM, we'd have a better discussion than falling back to VHS vs Betamax in a clickbait article.

I kid you not, I wrote and posted this whole thing in less than 5 minutes this morning after having bought the TV yesterday. The word "clickbait" is giving me too much credit, yet here we are.

Naming things is hard - that goes for blog posts as well as a software projects. If all you’ve got to contribute is an ad hominem attack on an article you ostensibly agree with anyway then you really need to ask yourself who is more in the wrong here.

But this isn't worse. Roku and Fire TV are much cheaper than VHS and Betamax players were. And you can still stream all the services supported by these devices on/from your phone/laptop/tablet.

But AppleTV isn't. There's no lock-in for Roku or Fire TV... You can't buy anything from Roku, and Amazon has apps out for all TV boxes.

Apple is Sony here, one company that won't allow interoperability. Just like betamax, it often has superior specifications, but won't let anyone else play in it's walled garden.

Apple might sell more than any other single competitor, but it's still losing the war. The brand is built on "quality costs more", which is great for companies that don't need to interoperate, like watches and knives and even cars... It can't compete on price because it will hurt the brand... So they're stuck making more money than they can spend, while losing the war.

Not a bad place to be in, better than betamax, but their tech will suffer the same fate, unless they open their walled garden.

Apple does allow interoperability. You can sync movies purchased from iTunes to other providers - Amazon, Google Play and Vudu through Movies Anywhere. Four of the six major studios allow it. Blame the other two studios.

Apple is already supporting a few TVs with AirPlay and announced support for the Roku.

I have an old TV that I was given because it had a black band down the screen. I fixed it by wiggling some cables, and it became my main TV. I could afford to replace it, but I don't see why I need to. One peculiar thing is that it has DVI rather than HDMI. I have a YouView digi box which I use to stream. I can't use my Amazon Fire stick with the TV because this would require a device to extract the sound from the HDMI and these are silly expensive. I can't watch BluRay from an Xbox because of DRM, and not being hdmi (There is a hack, but still). I subscribed to Netflix and Prime, but Prime didn't work properly on my box. I wanted to watch GOT, and subscribed to another service that had an app on my box, but the app only showed a selection of that providers content and not GOT. The same provider won't play on Linux at all (no DRM app), and the only Windows machine I had wouldn't play the sound loud enough. So south a myriad of devices I couldn't watch the show I subscribed to see. Kodi had it, and works on Linux....

So I could send my TV to landfill, buy a new one, get multiple digi boxes and subscribe to everything...or use Kodi. I can't be bothered, I cancelled my subs except Netflix. I only keep that for the kids.

If you don't want such kind of mess, demand DRM-free video. There is no valid reason for media execs to oppose it.

They did transition from selling DRM albums, to unencrypted music, so this does seem possible.

Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine. But they are too beholden to their backwards ways to do anything about it.

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

>Even major film publishers agree, that selling DRM-free video is fine.

What are those "major film publishers"? All the movies in your link are niche.

They didn't list them, but they said quite explicitly:

    IWI and myself spoke to most of the major studios
    in the U.S. and Europe. We spoke to 8 out of the 10
    most famous studios out there.

By studios I assume they actually mean publishers, who control the copyright. The huge ones. They admitted, DRM is pointless:

    We met lots of interesting studio executives, who
    totally understood our pragmatic arguments. Many of them
    even admitted that there is no DRM that can prevent a
    title from being pirated and that some of their movies
    sometimes even got pirated before release, just like
    games unfortunately.

But failed to do anything about it:

    We even got one offer approved by the business folks of  a
    major studio, but the deal eventually got cancelled
    because lawyers were worried that it would give the
    impression that majors are giving up the fight agains
    piracy.

    Also, most of the major studios told us, each with
    almost the very same words: "we like your ideas, but
    we neither want to the first studio to say yes, nor the
    last one. Please let us know when one of the other major
    studios says yes, we will then probably consider
    following".

> Many of them > even admitted that there is no DRM that can prevent a > title from being pirated and that some of their movies > sometimes even got pirated before release, just like > games unfortunately.

I don't see that as being indicative of anything. They were only pitching to release classics, and even then, only 1 studio was willing to sign up. The most optimistic interpretation of this is that studios are okay with DRM-free releases for their classics, but not for their newly released blockbusters.

Whether you see that or not, the market is not addressed, whether because of fear of doing something first or simply backward thinking mentality of lawyers and others in that mostly legacy industry.

I.e. instead of selling video DRM-free, they are losing sales to piracy which provides these DRM-free options already. Smarter execs would have started competing by providing legal DRM-free buying options. Whether it's recent blockbusters or old classics is irrelevant. The issue applies to both equally.

The reason GOG started with classics when addressing these execs, is to have easier time overcoming common stereotypes and fears. Not because DRM-free is only relevant for classics. What they discovered is that even with classics, the backwards thinking is too entrenched there.

The key here is "selling." You won't get DRM-free rentals or a la carte video; we didn't with audio. Yes, if you buy an album, it's DRM free. Spotify still has DRM in it.

The problem is lack of buying options. Music has many stores to buy it DRM-free. Video used to be sold on optical disks, but with transition to digital (who buys disks today?), there are no options to buy video DRM-free. The lack is naturally filled by piracy, since media execs don't care to address the market.

Apart from DRM, if you stream or "buy a download" of an Album, many have watermarks which in some cases are audible and may detract from the listening experience.

Bandcamp sells good quality FLAC. I've never heard any audible watermarks there.

Who sells music with audible watermarks?

AFIAA, all/most releases on labels owned by Universal Music Group, and possibly some Sony releases.

https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/08/universal-to-t...

https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermar...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Audible-w...

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/18472-audible-water...

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/is-universal-music-gr...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5580197

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,112052.0.html

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,117462.0.html

https://rec.music.classical.recordings.narkive.com/Nh7Ya8vd/...

https://hardforum.com/threads/audible-watermark-umg-digital-...

etc.

> Spotify still has DRM in it.

Of course. How else would a subscription service work? That's the whole distinguishing point between renting and buying content. Do you suggest being able to subscribe to Spotify for a month and downloading half their catalogue for you to keep forever?

Jobs argued in his “Thoughts in Music” essay over a decade ago that the best way to achieve interoperability was to allow all stores to sell drm free digital music since they were already selling drm free physical disk.

From almost the beginning, there was copy protection on videos even the analog days - macrovision.

Why didn't he push for the same idea in video then? DRM in video disks was always obsolete and removable, so for all practical purposes (besides DMCA-1201 and similar anti-circumvention junk) they are DRM-free.

There is a longer story.

Around 2006, everyone trying to sell digital music was failing because it wasn’t compatible with the iPod. The music industry was trying to get control back from Apple. They wanted Apple to license FairPlay. Apple refused and Jobs posted his alternative to Apples home page - let everyone sell DRM free music.

The music industry wanted Apple to allow variable pricing, sell albums only, pay a license fee on each iPod sold to them, and pay a deposit to insure against piracy.

Apple refused all of their demands.

So the music industry started licensing every other competitor to sell DRM free music that did acquiesce to their demand in 2007. Only one publisher was on board with Apple from day one -EMI.

That was the same year the iPhone came out. Apples license didn’t allow them to sell music over cellular. That’s why you could only by music on the phone when it was connected to WiFi the first year.

The next year, Apple did come to an agreement with the other labels.

The movie industry didn’t make the same mistake. They license movie rental and purchases to all comers from day one. Besides, unlike the days of the non connected iPods. You could buy a movie from anywhere (except Apple) and stream to any device.

I don't see DRM-free options as a mistake though. I suppose it's good that Apple played a role in forcing one DRM obsessed segment into adopting DRM-free approach, but video could learn from music industry, which successfully profits despite the absence of DRM, and do the same thing.

Streaming doesn't replace DRM-free purchasing, thus the issues in the parent topic itself.

By the same mistake I meant letting Apple be the dominant force in video like it was in downloadable music. It could dictate terms.

Right, which I guess highlights that DRM is really about the classic urge for control, rather than tool against piracy and etc.

But how does this relate to DRM or explain the lack thereof? If every platform can offer DRM-free movies, similar to the music I can buy everywhere, how does that put Apple in a dominant position? Sounds more like an equal playing field to me.

The music industry getting rid of DRM was never about the customer - it was the only way that the music industry could both reduce Apple’s stranglehold on digital music and let competitors sell music that was compatible with Apples dominant devices.

The movie industry doesn’t have that issue. Anyone can license and sell video that works on Apple devices via an app an Apple is not dominant in the video delivery devices market like it was in the music market during the iPod era. Apple can’t dictate terms.

Getting rid of DRM was suppose to give the music industry back its power (and then Spotify happened). Getting rid of DRM doesn’t do anything for the movie industry. But most studios are happy to be a part of Movies Anywhere that let you sync purchases between Apple/Google/Amazon/Vudu.

> Getting rid of DRM doesn’t do anything for the movie industry.

In the sense of paranoid control, it doesn't. In practice it will increase their profits, since they'll address the market that they currently ignore, switching some users from pirating to buying the same thing legally.

The number of people who don’t buy movies because of an ethical concern over DRM is minuscule compared to the number of people who would share movies if they could easily.

The population of people who wouldn’t buy DRMd video because it was inconvenient or wouldn’t play on their desired device is larger. The answer to that is make your player ubiquitous across all devices - and even Apple is starting to do that.

The other answer is to make your purchase shareable across providers. Movies Anywhere is doing that with 4 of the major studios.

Whether it's ethical or pragmatical, this number is not small. Either case, it's not zero, so they are losing profits clearly. While they continue ignoring it, people will continue pirating it.

Making DRM ubiquitous if futile. And costs a lot more than simply releasing DRM-free video. So it's the worst way to address the issue, since it doesn't even address it.

Are the number of people who won't buy media because of DRM > the number of lost sales due to casual piracy for people who don't know how to torrent?

And if you are looking for something that's not recent and/or popular, trying to find a seeded torrent can be prohibitive.

Add to that the number of people who won't pirate because of getting one warning letter and people who don't want to bother trying to figure out how to get a movie to their device.

Heck, I know how to do all of that, have a Plex server set up etc. But these days it's not even worth the hassle. I'll just spend the 3-6 bucks on a rental.

I'd say number of those who can't torrent is negligent in comparison to those who can. I.e. what you call "casual piracy" is simply a rounding error. Those who can't, also quite easily can find those who can, and "casually" copy it from them without torrents. So DRM does nothing there, while only costs money to those who use it.

Overall, some sizable amount of those who do pirate would rather buy, if there were DRM-free options available. Games use case demonstrated it quite clearly.

Warnings and whac-a-mole types of methods are completely pointless, it was proven over and over. They don't do anything besides wasting resources. So DRM proponents should unstick their heads from their backwards mentality, and should start selling DRM-free video. That's the only positive thing they can do about it.

You really think that people would spend $10-$20 on a digital movie if they didn’t have to?

So the entire movie industry worth billions of dollars a year should take advice from a few random posters on HN?

These are the probably the same people who declared in 2001 on Slashdot that no one would buy the iPod - “Less space than the Nomad. No Wireless Lame” and that poo poo’d Dropbox (the only YC company that has gone public) right here on HN saying they could do the same thing with a few shell scripts...

Ask those who buy games on GOG, and stopped pirating games once DRM-free stores became available. That's commonplace. Someone should learn from good examples.

Film industry for the most part is extremely backwards thinking, driven by all kind of crooked business practices and often simply stubborn stupidity of those who are in charge. It's the same industry which for years was proclaiming that cord cutting isn't a thing, until they were literally forced to admit that it's inevitable. Same thing with DRM. They'll be stuck up until who knows when, while DRM-free market won't be addressed with legal options.

So I won't take its size for the indicator of anything positive apriory. It's just a legacy behemoth, scared to admit obvious falsehoods it's sticking to.

Here is also an insider view for you on the issue of DRM stupidity: https://web.archive.org/web/20150812051508/http://www.lexi-a...

Gog is not a great example of a successful drm free store....

https://kotaku.com/facing-financial-pressures-gog-quietly-la...

GOG is successful and their financial status is good and is indicating their investment in their growth (instead of lining their pockets while doing nothing). I doubt Kotaku has more info than their own shareholders.

How is a company doing well that laid off 10% of its workforce?

One person who was laid off from GOG last week offered a different perspective, saying that laid-off staff were told that this was a move made by a company in dire straits. That person estimated that the layoffs had hit 10% of GOG’s staff.

I can access all the movies I bought in iTunes inside my Prime account. Works in the browser and works in the Prime app.

I don’t know if it works the other way around; I never bought a movie in Prime.

I’m not sure how that connection was made... but the Roku Amazon app ought to do the same.

Note: per comment elsewhere, this is due to https://moviesanywhere.com/

This is what the original post author is looking for: MoviesAnywhere

https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome

You can add your Amazon Prime, iTunes, and other accounts and access all the movies you bought. I use this to stream my iTunes movies on Roku

Yeah, this is it. And you can thank Disney for it. You can also buy $5 digital copies of movies you own on DVD.

Are we actually happy we get to rebuy media we already own?

More convenient delivery and higher quality. So, yes. I paid a small price for more value.

This hits home for me. I bought 100+ albums on iTunes, and accidentally did so on two different accounts that can never be merged. Every time I buy a new device (which feels like all the fricking time), remembering passwords and trying to get access to two different accounts is a PITA. I most certainly don't feel like I own the music in the way I did with CDs. So now I stream and haven't bought an album in over a year. That sucks for the artists who make essentially nothing from the streaming services, but buying doesn't feel like a legitimate option.

That’s easy. They are all DRM free. You can use Apple Match for $25 and it will go through all of your music no matter where you got it from and register it as purchased.

Once you pay one time you can cancel it.

The doldrums of Gimmick Land is where you end up when you keep falling for all that advertising trying to sell you gimmicks. Roku iTunes SmartTV Chromecast Netflix blah blah blah and a thousand other temporary dead ends all grappling for your disposable income.

Anything being pushed at you is being done so by someone who stands to have an outsized payday if you accept. The age old truth is that unless you want to be a mark, you have to do a bit of self-actualization and decide what makes sense for yourself rather than just choosing between the options being pushed at you. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't change this dynamic - it actually just makes you a bigger mark.

A TV is something that displays an HDMI input, with the quickest power up time possible. A movie is a file, preferably mp4 and x264 or x265. A movie player is something that can pick and play those files. If this just implies a NAS and torrents, then that is still the state of the art! If you can find more convenient options that still respect your autonomy, please feel free. But don't buy into something that promises convenience when its real "value add" is lock-in.

He might get his wish, given that apple currently seem to be trying to get their content services everywhere

The streaming wars are probably going to make for a lot of strange partnerships and conflicts going forward though. I wouldn't have expected Apple to get close with Amazon (supporting Apple Music and Apple TV on amazon devices), and I never would have expected Netflix to start firing shots at apple (disabling Airplay 2 support).

The court is killing innovation. Look up VidAngel. Copyright holders were compensated via the purchase of physical media, and only the owner of a particular disk had access, but they have been sued by powerful media conglomerates.

Disclaimer: I invented the system they used and carefully crafted what I thought was a system compliant with copyright law, but as always the party with more money wins in court. I also have a lot of their stock.

The ideal answer here is a federated platform for media entity to provide their content trough.

If you're not sure what I mean with federated, you can check out PeerTube. However, the same scheme would work with books, audio content, movies, games, etc.

Each media company could provide an API on their site to redeem content (login on their system, process payments/keys/coupons one way or another), and multiple clients could access all of these libraries, while offering their own added value on top of this.

Well, maybe not federated but distributed instead. The nice thing about federation is that it provides you with a portal for single-sign-on and discoverability is less of an issue without search engines.

I'm convinced that something like this could be built quite simply on top of existing technologies like ActivityPub or the Matrix protocol. However, "app stores" or media portals are sooo lucrative that everyone wants to keep the biggest possible pie to themselves without sharing development cost with others.

One way I could see such a solution appear is if the government(s?) were to subsidize its development and started hosting public-domain (old, government-funded) videos on it.

Library of Congress?

That would be interesting but I think a lot of people would be nervous about mandating that all streaming is controlled by a government entity/site.

However, one related reform I would love to see to copyright is that to get an extension (say past 10 years), we require mandatory deposit of the copyrighted work with the library of Congress, which begins seeding the content on Bittorrent at the conclusion of the copyright term.

Maybe the first step would be to stop financially supporting proprietary software/hardware and buying DRM'd media.

I have that same TCL. I bought it because it was the cheapest model on Amazon at the time. But I quickly got fed up with the built in Roku. It was clunky and underpowered and some of the apps barely worked. The final straw was when I learned TCL was spying on my watching habits. So I plugged an Apple TV into it and unplugged the TCL from my network. I’m much happier now.

Our Honda Odyssey with DVD system also had an aux input in the back. I used that to play my Apple purchased content, originally via an iPod and then later via various iOS devices.

It’s a trade off. I’m not thrilled by “buying” my content from Apple but I think of all the providers I can “purchase” from they are least likely to leave me high and dry.

It’s a risk not owning the physical media, but if I had to guess, I’ve probably lost or had more physical media damaged (VHS tapes, DVDs), than lost access to streaming content I “own”.

As a counter annecdote, I can't stand Apple TV. The user interface is a disaster compared to Roku and the remote made me want to throw it against the wall everytime I used it.

I bought a TCL Roku TV as a secondary TV. It is fast, the interface makes sense and the apps are easier to navigate because the remote actually has a variety of buttons which can be used. The remote also doesn't change the channel or cause inputs on the TV to switch because someone accidentally grazed it.

Based upon my experience with the Roku TV I replaced the Apple TV on my main TV with a Roku Premiere + and sold the Apple TV on eBay for over twice what I paid for the Roku box. My TV viewing experience is much more enjoyable. As an added bonus when I have house guests they can actually figure out how to use the TV without a 30 minute training session.

Apple TV is about 1000% better when you ditch the supplied remote and instead pair a normal querty-style Bluetooth keyboard. Nearly everything in the UI works with the combo of arrow keys + return key, and you can actually type text for searching instead of stabbing around with the crappy remote, or trying to make Siri work.

Probably not so true for tvOS games, but for the usual use case of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, settings, etc., a keyboard works great.

Siri actually works pretty well for me on tvOS, unlike iOS where I find it worse than useless.

“Siri, play the song X in Spotify.” “I’m sorry, I can’t do that right now.”

I don't think this was meant to be but this is a more damning indictment of the Apple TV than my original post. If your TV viewing solution requires connecting a bluetooth keyboard to be functional than you are doing something wrong.

I won’t win any argument over price or the remote, although a case for the remote makes it at least tolerable.

I wonder how much this has to do with the apps we use and the generation of Roku. I mostly use a few apps: Plex, Netflix, Prime, Tablo and iTunes. On the TCL I have, the Roku is clearly underpowered. The UI is sluggish and both the Plex and Tablo apps struggle with 1080p content. During the Olympics, the NBC app barely worked.

Anyway: choices are good.

I have had a completely opposite experience. My TCL Roku TV is interface is fast and can easily handle 4K HDR content.

I have three Roku TVs. The main one we use also has an AppleTV connected to it. The Rokus interface is slow, advertising takes up half the screen and the hard coded buttons on the remote get sold to the highest bidder. We have one with the defunct Rdio channel and another with CBS News. Who would ever choose CBS News?

On top of that, the CEO of Roku outright said on a podcast that they aren’t trying to make money on hardware- they want to make money by selling your data.

All that being said, they are great, cheap TVs and the Roku app with renote control and remote listening is nice.

Roku is still the best smart tv platform.

Same goes for why you should still buy print copies of books: https://jetgirl.art/2019/04/05/misprints-news-53-charging-by...

You can't buy a book on iBooks and read it on an Android device. I will never buy/rent content from Apple because of this reason and the author knew this before buying his movies on iTunes.

> "I don't give a shit about games or 4K or an internal drive, I just want to watch the fucking movies I bought (or licensed, fuck you Hollywood)."

He's fucking right.

'Commoditize your complement' https://www.gwern.net/Complement

I wonder if Netflix will end up buying Roku, since Netflix's competitors have TV boxes. I suspect that might make things even more fragmented.

That makes no sense. Roku was born out of Netflix. Why would they buy them now after making the decision years ago not to entire the consumer hardware market?

It appears to be the only notable player not owned by a competitor. I assume Netflix talks internally about whether that's an issue or not. Perhaps the market is different now than it was when you say they decided to forgo the space.

The reason they spun off Roku was precisely because of this reason, though: they realized that being tied to a platform could hinder Roku's adoption, so they spun it off so it could be independent. And in my opinion, being independent and focused entirely on the user experience is why Roku has been as successful as it has been.

Netflix spun off Roku for exactly the opposite reason. They wanted other vendors to distribute the Netflix app and didn’t want to be seen as competitors with hardware vendors.

I don't think Netflix will buy them, unless they need to as a defensive move.

That said, I could see an argument where originally they didn't want to own a hardware platform, so that they wouldn't be competing with other hardware companies that they are trying to convince to integrate their service.

At this point they are ubiquitous enough they might be more comfortable with it.

It's interesting in the mathematical sense, a variable is a variable and when you add constraints, whether the size of a tape, the gap between tracks or software channels .. you get incompatibilities.

Also, whenever a shift occurs, it helps shed light about the value of what we add (in this case the DVD player). A tech version of aging.

This is what you get for buying digitally locked media in iTunes, Google play or Amazon.

Don't buy shit you're never going to own. I've had a roku dominated house for years. If I want to control content, you have two choices:

1.buy thw dvd/bluray

2. Pirate it

Don't buy stupid stuff that's tied to a platform or storage locker. Easy

One added point: while I don’t personally have any moral problem with piracy, if you DO, then buy a digital copy wherever and then pirate a DRM-free version. People like the author are willfully locking themselves down.

This is basically my MO, I don't always have internet service and frankly with storage being as cheap as it is there's really no excuse for me not to have a seamless experience where I can just go watch/listen/play anything I want to whenever I want.

I like supporting content creators but DRM (and ads) have no place in my life.

Folks have mentioned Movies Anywhere. Some physical discs also include UltraViolet (UV) codes that are redeemable for digital copies. UV is going away, but the codes will still be available. This meets all of the authors needs...assuming the disc includes the code.

I really hate how the experiment of redeemable codes for physical copies died out - and wasn't even an option in most countries.

Now we have to choose between availability or convenience (online video) versus annoying physical discs with higher quality.

The author should learn how to torrent and stop complaining. After all, he already purchased a license for the content so we're simply talking about getting a backup copy that can work on all his hardware which is perfectly legal.

It would be nice if all the major hollywood studios shared a ledger (not necessarily blockchain) showing who legally purchased what media. And then required all of the downstream digital platforms (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google) to grant you access to any movies you already purchased. Additionally, it would be great if you were able to sell your access of one movie to another party for cash or swap content.

Movie studios would like it because they could sell directly to consumers and cut out the middle man. Digital platforms wouldn't like it, but would otherwise lose access to the content they wish to sell. Consumers would like it because their library of content would be permanent and would tear down the garden walls. They could also resell or swap their purchases, possibly for a small fee.

Most content industries (definitely including movies, tv, books, music, and games) vary between “dislike” and “loathing” of secondary markets, because it gets them nothing and costs them a “potential sale”, even more than piracy, because the person paying for a “used” copy has demonstrated that they’re willing to part with money for the product.

Where the right to resale still exists, the way to bet is that it exists because of major lawsuits that the industry has lost (or “lost”). Don’t worry about the shareholders, though - they’re still chipping away!

(Damn, I’m gloomy lately. Sorry.)

Sounding like a broken record, but you don’t need “blockchain”. It’s already available and supported by four of the six studios and Apple, Amazon, Google and Vudu. It’s Movies Anywhere.

When you buy drm'ed digital files you get what you pay for: nothing.

I never "buy" drm'ed material if I can't break the drm.

If they have their way, 'posession' of a film in DVD or other portable format will become a crime.

So he brought DRM-protected videos and complains that it has DRM in it. He totally deserve it.

That's the cost of drm...

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