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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

It's hilarious that after a decade of explosion in streaming the corps still can't (don't want to) beat the experience of torrents + mpv.

The latter is particularly interesting since there are no licensing issues. Every professional streaming service should have a better player than mpv. None actually do.

You could say that it's always like that because pirates get their content for free. However, Spotify and others managed just fine with music which used to be even more widely pirated than tv shows and movies.

(Survivor.S41E09.Whos.Who.in.the.Zoo is available on torrents in 1080p.)

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Let me know when mpv can run on a smart TV. Most people watch via smart tv/streaming box (roku, google tv, etc), so the players work for them there.

The real competition is Plex/Emby/Jellyfin allowing access to people's media libraries in a way that's mostly on-par with existing services, and the added benefit of having all content truly in one place. The issue is that there isn't a completely legal way to get media content as unencrypted files (since ripping blu-rays is legal, but breaking the software protections to do it isn't).

If you know how to install mpv you know how to hook up a laptop to a TV.

VLC can stream the playback to my chromecast plugged into the tv perfectly. Streaming to the smart tv device itself is more hit or miss.

Isn't that kind of exactly the complaint of ../../.? The fact that none of these smart tv options are actually better than mpv, in their eyes?

This isn't entirely the corps fault, but legacy legal licensing agreements on each. and every. piece. of content. Not to mention all the unions you ave to deal with to make sure all the talent in the content gets paid. Clearances AND tracking can be a nightmare. A lot of that has improved in the pat decade as digital/streaming agreements are now standard, but getting content (like the music in a show for example) cleared for all territories can still be a headache.

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