Show HN: Streem.io - Media Center on the Cloud | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Streem.io - Media Center on the Cloud

streem.io

82 pointsritikm54 comments

So…are you fishing for interest/validation?

I don't mind it, just put it upfront that I'm not getting anything in exchange for my email address. Thought I get to try out the product but I'm just on a waiting list.

Then I'm asked to share/spam it, something that I have not tried/vetted, with my social circle?

I'm very interested in the service, just tell me upfront you're only collecting emails for now.

A fantastic alternative is Plex (no affiliation). You can host your media on your own computer and watch it anywhere. Plex handles all the network nonsense (no ports to forward, etc...). Depending on the filetype and what your device can play, plex will either transcode on the fly seamlessly or just stream the exact original file.

Downside is you have to have a computer that is always on, connected, and potentially unusable for other purposes when transcoding. In my case it's a Acer Revo HTPC connected to the living room TV.

I've been running plex on an older Core 2 duo Mac Mini for a few years. Overall I love it. The downside is the Mac Mini takes a little longer when it's transcoding.

Yeah you definitely need the computing power to handle transcoding otherwise it's a frustrating experience.

Good point. I think the bigger downside is the speed -- most people's home internet upload speed is probably not fast enough (the average in the US is ~1.6mbps) to support you streaming your media from around the world and having someone at home use the internet simultaneously.

The use case that this would be useful for is if you don't want to worry about having a local media center at home and relying on your home internet connection to do the streaming (also Streem offers social integration, aggregated list of movies/TV shows to browse, etc.) :).

Yeah my connection is really good so that's not a problem for me (20 down, 4 up).

I think the aggregate location to find free content online is a great angle to pursue. Create a nice couch interface like YouTube Leanback and I think you're onto something.

Also no affiliation, and I couldn't recommend Plex more. My 2-year-old Mac Mini handles the transcoding and serving very well. It really is a great UI and seamless.

In fact this Streem looks a lot like Plex's web interface that I already use.

Is there a Plex client for Android?

I use AirVideo on iOS and it is flawless, but would like to find something similar for Android.

Yes and it's really good. 599 but totally worth it. Also works as a remote for the HTPC client.

Yes, there's an android and iOS app as well as a roku app. The Plex Media Server works on windows, mac, and linux.

The Android client has just got a complete rewrite that's made it better than its iOS counterpart (I use both regularly). However, it's still in beta and only available to Plex Pass users until the final release.

There's also an app for Samsung Smart TVs that I use a lot.

http://www.subsonic.org is a pretty cool alternative for music streeming from home as well. Especially with https://github.com/hakko/musiccabinet

I've been a beta user of Streem, and how fast my videos are ready to view is pretty incredible. Other services I've tried easily take an hour to transcode, but Streem gets it done in a few minutes. Really excited to see more folks using it.

With Flex and AirVideo transcoding is done in real time and works really well. Zero wait time for uploading and transcoding sure beats even a few minutes.

This looks cool - but what is the advantage of using this over something like Plex? With Plex - I'm hosting the files myself... so I don't have to upload something until I want to watch it remotely. I realize that could also be a negative (if my server goes down while I'm traveling - bummer). But surely with my own server, I can have much more storage, and my files are instantly available once they're on the computer. Also - Plex is free.

You nailed it -- we're useful for people that want to access their library from anywhere (at work, on vacation halfway around the world, etc.) on any device (phone, someone else's laptop, etc.) without having to lug around their DVD collection or an external hard drive. Having a server at home is also limiting because a) it uses your upload bandwidth, which clogs up your home internet connection, and b) your upload bandwidth probably isn't fast enough for instant streaming (the average is around ~1.6mbps these days), so buffering/seeking will slow you down.

The best way is to compare it to Dropbox -- Dropbox : USB :: Streem : Plex

I totally get it now. Love it!

Now, Can multiple devices (same login) stream at the same time?

Yep!

Your position overlooks the massive file uploads we'd have to do to use your service. That's a lot more content "clogging up your home connection".

That's true. The way we look at it is that it's a one-time hit that you take initially versus always having to keep a computer on at home for streaming using your home connection; we also let you transfer in files through other means, so if you already have some content stored online, you can easily transfer it in.

With most media like TV shows, you only watch it once - so watching it remotely from a home server is the same as your "one-time hit."

Just my two cents.

I have a 400 kb/s upload on my home connection. For streaming a bunch of standard quality TV shows/movies, it's fine, but the problems arise if you want to stream HD content or something poorly compressed.

I normally download TV-SD releases, so I don't have too many issues at home. What I am watching now is currently reading data at a rate of 300 kb/s. I just checked the TV-HD version (which is at 720p) and I'm getting around a 1400 kb/s read rate.

Seems like a souped-up alternative to what I've been using for the last six months: https://put.io/

Part of what I love about Plex (which has worked great at home; not so much remotely) is that it aggregates a lot of online video sources inside the app. This looks to do about the same. Very cool. Best of luck to you guys.

Do you anticipate any legal repercussions?

Interesting title but the site doesn't display correctly on the iPad, which is the only device I have handy…

Yeah I found this too, like some weird side effect of overflow hidden on the viewport perhaps? (disclaimer: not a great CSS dude...)

Sorry about that, should be fixed.

I just upload things to my s3 bucket and streams perfectly. Takes a little more management as I'll maybe delete a season and upload a season or movie at a time, but its really minimal amount of work for the times that I do know I'll want to watch something when away.

Interesting. Are you able to access your content on the go with a mobile device ?

This needs an about section to show who is behind the service.

I am a big fan of Put.io. This seems like a contender to replace it, although there is a long way to go. One of the wonderful things about Put.io is that it is so versatile. I use their Boxee app, Android App, iPad app, as well as the web version regularly. That's a lot of work to replicate.

What sorting of pricing/space requirements are you planning on offering? I run a boxee server with several NAS devices on my home network and it works great - but it would be nice to watch something at my girlfriend's place without loading it up on a USB drive and carting it over.

I use Subsonic to solve that particular problem. Works well if you have enough upload bandwidth.

Plex and MyPlex is also a pretty good solution to watching your media library away from home. And Plex is really a great media center on its own.

Iam using only a raspberryPi, a usb-hd, a port forwarding for ssh and Dyndns. I open that file via sftp and watch it on my IPad or PC

Collect the email then give the "sorry". That shit is dirty. Be straightforward upfront.

So what is the catch on this? I am guessing there are legality issues and/or they extremely limit your library. No company can afford to offer what they claim to be offering without some serious cash behind them.

It'll be through limiting your library -- free users will get a certain amount of space and streaming bandwidth for free, paid tiers get more as you scale up the price ladder (Dropbox style).

Additionally, we have a completely free collection of movies/TV shows aggregated from Sidereel, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, NBC, etc. At the very least, you can use this as your one stop to browse all the movies/TV shows you can stream through other services (for free, or if you have their subscription), receive recommendations, track with friends, etc.

Are those limits established yet? There isn't any place on the page that would indicate any limits or even the existence of paid tiers. This stuff should be visible before requiring a user to signup.

Wow pretty cool splash page. To bad I can't even check out the service.

The homepage mentions you can use your account here to stream content to any device, including consoles. How does that work? Can we connect to it as a network file server?

You can use our webapp using the console's web browser.

Is this running on Node.js? The favicon looks like Express's.

The website is on Node.js; the webapp itself is on Meteor.js

Is it safe to assume this isn't exactly legal? Why haven't Apple or Netflix done this? (because licensing deals suck!)

On the legal front it's like Dropbox -- storing your personal media collection online and letting us transcode and organize it is fine, especially because the content is private (like Dropbox) and not publicly listed (we're not like Grooveshark). Of course, we're DMCA compliant and take down files if they're deemed illegally obtained.

I see, thanks for that.

So does that also mean you have to store every file? or more like iTunes Match where if the file exists on the server, everyone gets served the master, instead of storing duplicates from millions of users.

You don't really have to answer that. it's not an end-user concern.

We're actually storing a single copy of every unique file. i.e. if you upload a completely identical, MD5 hash duplicate copy of something we already have stored, we'll just give you a pointer to that file. This way, we don't have to store every file, and we're not like iTunes Match (which actually requires licensing) because we're not giving you a master file (iTunes Match gives you a master file that plays at 256kbps, even if you upload the same song at 128Kbps -- they can do this through licensing; we can't give you a master 720p video file even if you upload a 360p version because we don't have those licenses). Legally, doing the MD5 hash duplicate technique was deemed legal after MP3Tunes' case (not referring to their entire case, just the part about the MD5 hash duplication) because it's just like any other method of compression.

So if I know the MD5 digest of some content I would like, all I have to do is generate a collision and then "upload" it?

Why do you have to sign up to browse? Seems barbaric, or at least Medieval.

What is the backend?

It seems a lot like the defunct wixi.com

How much can I upload 1GB? 10GB? 30TB?

Another alternative is Tonido. Install Tonido in your computer and stream music and videos to iOS and Android devices. No need to port forwarding. It simply works. You can even stream your iTunes playlist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com