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Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

I don't use Apple TV much, but one of the things I like about it is how it lets me download the video file locally. The quality is so, so crisp. I pay for the more expensive version of Netflix, but it's not quite the same start to finish.

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Yeah, I hate watching 15 minutes of something at low quality because one TCP packet was dropped. Paranoia leads to the most user satisfaction ("at least the show didn't freeze") but I would rather buffer the thing locally and watch in uninterrupted 4k @ 50Mbps or whatever. (Also, what's the point of gigabit internet if I can't watch a measly 50Mbps stream?)

Most players that use adaptive bit rate allow you to set it at a constant one instead, with the buffering and all.

I feel the same way and often click a specific rendition and then let it buffer locally.

But Netflix (which GP was talking about implicitly by the comment they replied to) doesn't.

Sure, but Netflix uses HLS, I assume, and doesn't have segments that are 15 minutes in length. So if you did drop a tcp packet, you're more likely to have lower quality for 10-20 seconds, not 15 minutes.

HLS to Safari/iOS and Dash to everything else.

Sure, if you wanna pay the DASH tax to a hundred patent holders. DASH doesn't even really hold much of a technological benefit anymore now that their's finally a standard for HLS-LL.

> what's the point of gigabit internet if I can't watch a measly 50Mbps stream?)

Revenue from ricer "networkophiles", like the audiophiles before them.

At least packet loss and ping stability can be measured, unlike "sounds fuller".

Buffferbloat is a thing - and it's not [generally] good

>Also, what's the point of gigabit internet if I can't watch a measly 50Mbps stream?

Just because your connection is "gigabit" doesn't mean everything in between is gigabit

Nor does it mean that you haven't happened to have a hit a very busy sending server[farm|datacenter]

Piracy is also great for this

Agreed

Yeah and I hate pirating. Don't get me wrong, I do it, but only because Disney+ isn't available in Cyprus while I'm traveling or what have you. I make triple what would put me in the 1% in Canada. I can easily afford to pay for content. It's only UX issue for me, not a resource constraint. I'm happy to fund creators, but please just make things easy, transparent, reliable, and high quality.

I can't count the number of times I've tried to pay for something legitimately only to have to resort to piracy because of one flaw or another. Disney (and similar) should be hosting weekly Ask HN posts to fix their cyber issues they're so obvious.

There's no reason to need to take a "moral" stance here. Our rights as consumers to have and hold things without third-party DRM are being systematically ignored, and we are being forced into a bullshit rental model where no one provider holds everything you want. Piracy solves this problem.

You should be proud to pirate, proud of sticking it to the assholes that want to control us and our entertainment, proud of wounding an industry that tries to wriggle out of compensating the real artists as much as it can through shifty accounting, predatory contracts. and laughably low royalties payouts.

Steal music and buy concert tickets

>but only because Disney+ isn't available in Cyprus

That's not [always] the vendor's fault (sometimes it is - often enough, however, it's varying levels of government interference)

Also: VPNs are a thing

Netflix mobile apps allow you to download most content, too, so you can compare the quality to streamed content. However, then you are limited to phone/tablet screen size for comparison.

Many Android phones work with USB-C monitors. Just plug it in and your phone screen is mirrored on the monitor.

Netflix disables HDMI out on it's Android and iOS apps with downloaded content, this won't work.

Yet a pirated copy plays fine.

The Windows app allows downloads, too.

I want to opt out Adaptive Streaming entirely from all services. It's better to have buffering time (actually rarely happen) than seeing fucking 480p video.

What? No, I'd much rather see a few seconds of low quality than the stream simply stopping to buffer.

I only wish their Apple TV hardware allowed you to do this.

I thought it does—we rented a movie with Apple TV at one point a couple years ago and waited for it do download to local storage before it was played. Unfortunately, I had opted for highest quality at a time when our network connection was being really flaky and it took a day to do so.

You cannot unfortunately: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211825

Maybe certain streaming services allow you to download as well though their app on the Apple TV, but most of the big ones don’t (Apple, Netflix, HBO, etc.)

I really don’t like it because, besides wanting to pre-download something for higher quality, there are often certain shows and movies my kids want to watch over and over and they might as well just live on the hard drive.

So I have a 64GB Apple TV and most of the storage is empty. Theoretically it’s for games, but ATV games are limited to 100MB and then anything else has to be downloaded after the game has installed. (In practice there aren’t any games near that big). I suppose device might also progressively download the video in the background and that would use storage, but that’s all an implementation detail and entirely up to the heuristics of the device.

Ooh, I hadn't thought about the streaming services. I was really annoyed to discover that a movie I'd downloaded to my iPad from Disney+ would not play if the iPad was connected to a TV which was damned obnoxious. This was a rental from the Apple TV store and not an Apple+ stream, so maybe that's where the difference comes in.

It wouldn't play to a TV via AirPlay? Or via cable?

You used to be able to for HD, you've never been able to for UHD.

Does it download it in Blu Ray quality? (~10GB per movie)?

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