Introducing Vdio | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Vdio

blog.rdio.com

164 pointschuckharmston105 comments

Rant ahead...

Am I the only one dissatisfied with the way media delivery has played out the past couple of years? We started with a rapidly developing delivery system (the internet) and content makers who couldn't see the value in capitalizing on this sales channel by making movies, TV shows, and songs available to consumers at reasonable prices (read: less than physical media costs), which led to piracy, global dissatisfaction, and decreased industry revenue.

Fast forward to 2013, where we have...

Ecosystems: iTunes, Amazon Video, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Blockbuster Ondemand, Android, Cinema Now, and Vdio

Which can be accessed on TVs, web browsers, smartphones, tablets, dvd players, bluray players, gaming consoles, media streaming devices (Roku, Apple TV, etc.), and HTPCs.

... all with different user experiences (most are poor), varying media coverage / depth, and a pricing system that only satisfies bulk consumers that want to watch a bunch of legacy content.

Larger companies that were first to build relationships with content makers have been the most successful, but the entire process still wreaks of bureaucracy, middle-men, and band aids. Netflix seems to be the only one that realizes this, and has started producing their own content (e.g. House of Cards and Arrested Development), and I think this is the only true catalyst that will change the industry for the better.

I don't know how Netflix producing content and making it exclusive to their subscription service is a win for consumers.

I'm not saying it's a perfect model, but the alternative is having to pay $100/month for a cable subscription to watch garbage you don't want to see, or $10+ to see it in a dirty movie theater, or $15 to "buy" a movie that was $15 in the 90's for a physical DVD. Even if there are 5 Netflixes competing against each other I would rather pay 5 x $7.99 a month to watch content I actually find relevant than pay for junk I don't use.

If anything, merging content with distribution sparks competition to produce content at reasonable prices. Netflix has also resorted to releasing content in a more enjoyable manner (all at once vs. weekly with commercials).

> Even if there are 5 Netflixes competing against each other [producing their own content] I would rather pay 5 x $7.99 a month

You've just described cable. If those subscriptions start to come in packages we're back to square one.

The difference between cable and having 5 Netflix competitors is that you don't have one company with a local monopoly setting your pricing.

The original point was that a "netflix" provides better content than cable to start with.

The argument against it was that the company providing the content would be exclusively providing that content.

The rebuttal is that it would be better to pay 5 companies that all produce exclusive content than to pay for cable, which "provides" mostly stuff you don't want to see (and frequently don't have the option to not watch, if you're viewing any of their content, ie: commercials).

And my rebuttal is that paying 5 (or 10, 20, 50) companies that all produce exclusive content is almost exactly what cable is, the only differences are you pay a middleman instead of the companies directly, and usually can't choose individual providers, they come in preset packages.

I'd rather see independent producers distributing their content over various netflix-like providers, otherwise we're just transplanting our current content production model to the web. That will suck for both consumers and producers.

"Netflix seems to be the only one that realizes this, and has started producing their own content (e.g. House of Cards and Arrested Development), and I think this is the only true catalyst that will change the industry for the better."

There's a big difference between a company like Netflix producing their own content, making it available for watching uninterrupted, whenever you like -vs- any of the content providers that charge cable companies for their content streams that include commercials and are generally not available "on demand", packaged together through a single company that won't give you just the content you want, when you want it, but charges you for some combination of provider's streams in a package.

Hence the argument of "the alternative is having to pay $100/month for a cable subscription to watch garbage you don't want to see". 5x7.99 is not the cost of cable. The only cable packages you can get for that price are extremely limited. Also, they will require another $4.99 a month for on-demand, on top of your regular cable fee, unless you're paying more than $100 a month, in which case, it's included. ¬.¬

In that scenario most of the content you are paying for multiple times. Or you can look at it as the redundant content is free and you're paying $7.99/month for House of Cards.

Wouldn't it be better if prices for the content you want were more reasonable? Like, if you could buy a season of House of Cards for $7. And buy an old movie for $0.25?

Like, if you could buy a season of House of Cards for $7

I'd like to buy a new porsche for $10k but that's not happening either.

Most of Netflix's shows cost over $4M an episode[1]. Taking that as a base you've got a cost of $48M a season (these are production costs not total cost, at $7 a season you need 7M subscribers just to break even ). Considering most shows have less then 4M viewers a night your pricing model pretty much is just throwing money away.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/netflixs-cost-for-house-of-ca...

If it were to be used, how would advertising factor into this? Not saying $7/season is viable but could a low price be buffered out by advertiser sponsorship?

It's at least a step up from how studios like HBO operate. If you want to watch HBO's content, there's no legal way to do so without being part of an expensive cable package. If you wanted to watch House of Cards and you weren't already a Netflix member, you could just pay the $8 (or get a free first-month trial) to essentially rent the entire Netflix catalog for an entire month. That's what you might have paid not too long ago to borrow a single scratched-up DVD from Blockbuster for a few days.

HBO's content is available on a number of outlets as individual seasons and/or episodes.

There is a hefty artificial delay during which you cannot get access to newer content that way. I don't see last weekend's episode of Game of Thrones available anywhere other than HBO Go and torrent sites, currently.

Check out Vhx.tv too. A really great new service. I think this is the first I have seen a place go in the right direction. Or at least in the direction I would like to see streaming/downloading video services to go.

"only available [...] in the US and UK"

Can anybody think of any geo-tarded service that successfully rolled out in other countries later?

Because as some not in the "chosen countries" I always feel that those services either a) never arrive, b) get beaten to the punch by local competitors or c) have to spend a shitload of money to conquer that market, sometimes by buying the aforementioned competitors.

Also, unless the likes of Google or Apple are behind it, option a seems to be the most common scenario. Not to mention the fact that it fosters a culture where everyone and their grandmother knows how to pirate content.

Netflix was originally only available in the US but came to Canada later

Netflix, Amazon, iTunes match, Rdio all took a while to come to Brazil and are doing great. Still waiting for Amazon Instant.

> ... all took a while to come to Brazil and are doing great

With the exception of iTunes, they still have big holes on the content available even after launching.

AFAIK we have the same amount of content in Netflix and Rdio as everywhere else, they are just not that good (one of the reasons I'm waiting for Instant).

Spotify comes to mind. Facebook started out even more locally restricted.

Spotify is originally Swedish, and for a long time wasn't available in the US, only in select European markets.

Spotify

RE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5479848

I'd love to think that software innovations would trickle down into larger markets, across borders, and into lower brackets of economic prosperity, but things like this just really frustrate me.

Canada is often treated like shit in terms of access to marketplaces and entertainment services online, and it needs to stop soon. USA, we are your closest partner, and we want to integrate with you to create and consume together. Our television and our theaters are full of american content, but our web is so fragmented in that respect. The content we can access on the tube is often blocked online.

What is it going to take to break these barriers?

Is there any chance that Canada is also responsible in this? I ask because of the very strict CRTC regulations which dictate how much foreign content can be served to Canadians.

It has nothing to do with the CRTC and everything to do with licensing agreements and the intransigence of the Canadian rights holders.

msbarnett got it -- the CRTC has nothing to do with this, and instead it is the regional rights holders. Most US television shows, for instance, are licensed to Canadian broadcasters. Most movie play rights sold to Astral Media (the Movie Channel). Etc. Even where it's a simple subsidiary of a US media company, it still leads to Canada getting screwed.

We're in the situation of being a big enough, lucrative enough market that they want to maximize revenues here, yet paradoxically we're small enough that they're usually in no rush to do so.

> Can anybody think of any geo-tarded service that successfully rolled out in other countries later?

Rdio, iTunes Music Store, iTunes Movie/TV Store, Netflix, Amazon's digital services, etc were all unavailable in Canada on launch and successfully rolled out later on.

Netflix? Hahaha, good luck with that anywhere outside Canada, USA or UK. Amazon? The same. No need to describe the rest of them. Same story everywhere. Other countries are just not on their globe.

Canada gets serviced fast compared to the rest of the world.

In (most of) Europe, Rdio has little impact. Same goes for iTunes video. Netflix and Amazon digital are still missing.

iTunes Music is the only exception, but only because of the full weight of Apple and the tie-in with Apple's playback devices.

Canadian bitching about US services being unavailable is a bit of joke if you consider the rest of us are still waiting for Netflix for over a decade. There aren't even any decent alternatives because the copyright mafia makes it impossible.

Canada has Amazon's digital services? I was surprised to see Rdio on this list as well, but it does look like they now work in Canada.

"Can anybody think of any geo-tarded service that successfully rolled out in other countries later?"

As someone living in the US, I can only imagine the frustration people must feel not having access to content in their home countries. It would drive me nuts as well.

But as someone working at a company who also tries very, very hard to make services available to people around the world (the goal is 100% coverage) I also know how hard/impossible it is to negotiate with the rights holders in every nation simultaneously.

So services like Rdio or Vdio need to make a very tough choice: delay their launch, perhaps for years, perhaps forever, to negotiate the rights in all ~200 countries and territories in the world, or launch in the biggest markets first, and hope and try to iterate from there.

I don't know if there even is a right answer. But I do know for sure that it's not Rdio/Vdio's choice not to launch globally. They want it the other way, too.

(As an aside, the phrase "geo-tarded" doesn't sit well with me. Perhaps use "geo-challenged", which says the same thing without the additional connotations.)

I think geo-tarded is OK; something retarded is delayed. Geo-limited is probably more realistic in many cases though.

Strip is rolling out to other countries.

TBH there is no reason for a company to not roll out so long as it is financially worth it.

I notice that there's quite a few things Amazon still doesn't let you buy if you're in Australia. Many physical products, it seems.

I can only guess this is because of distribution rights for certain products in this country. For example, my partner tries to buy nail polish but often she can't. It wouldn't surprise me if a certain distributor has that product stitched up via a distribution contract for all of Australia, therefore allowing them to monopolise price.

Really, if you're not in the US it's often a completely different world for all kinds of e-commerce - anything from physical goods e.g.: off Amazon not being available for arbitrary reasons (even when others are), to media such as Pandora which has only relatively very recently become available here again after being withdrawn for literally years.

I hope this means Rdio is going to be a more sustainable long-term business, and not that Rdio is pivoting away from music; Rdio seems to be the best of a shaky lot when it comes to subscription music services, and I'd hate for it to get worse.

Its pretty hard to beat Spotify unless you have some specific taste in music they dont cover well. But overall I have a hard time seing a better service than theirs.

It just works, is fast and has a large db of content.

I've tried both and have stuck with Rdio. The social aspect is superior. I love being able to see playlists and recommendations from random people beyond my Facebook friends. Spotify's desktop app is definitely faster, though I find Rdio to be better designed.

Completely agree. The UX of Rdio is far superior, IMHO.

totally agree as well. its above and beyond better.

But there is a BIG difference here if we're talking about the free services of both. Spotify is always free, and rdio is only free for 6 months. Yes it's probably a good thing to pay for a service that you like (I do), but some people don't, and that's going to be where they prefer Spotify.

http://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/faq/#!/article/How-...

http://help.rdio.com/customer/portal/articles/187730-rdio-fo...

I'd rather be cut off honestly than hectored into subscribing by having my music continuously interrupted with advertising.

> Yes it's probably a good thing to pay for a service that you like (I do)...

It's also good to pay for a service that you want to stick around.

Spotify uses peer-to-peer (http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/O...) which makes it bad UX for me.

I've been using Mog for a while, but had I run into Rdio first, I might have picked them instead.

When you don't pay for it, Spotify interrupts your music with shitty commercials for country music, while Rdio just cuts you off after awhile. Hence, Rdio was the one I ended up using long enough to decide to subscribe.

Grooveshark doesn't do any audio ads and never cuts you off.

Can I ask why you used the word pivoting instead of moving? To pivot is to swing around a fixed point. What is the fixed point in this context?

Pivot is a term of art popularized by Eric Ries and the lean startup movement.

Pivots frequently keep a large part constant, thus the word makes sense.

Frankly I think that it is nonsense and an attempt to sound like you are saying something cleverer than you are. What would be meaningfully different in what he had said if he used the word move?

He would no longer be referring to Lean Startup. He would no longer be implying that part of the business model was being held constant.

None of the streaming music companies are sustainable in the long term.

Do you have a basis for this statement?

The profit margins are too slim. Their revenue barely covers the operating costs and onerous licensing fees.

When their licensing fees are barely paying the people who produce the content then I don't think onerous is the right way to describe it. Spotify produce far too much consumer surplus and in return underpay artists and themselves. I'm guessing the backers think this is OK, but inorder for low cost low margin to work you need massive scale which may work for spotify, but is not really sustainable and ends up being another example of silicon valley shitting on content producers.

I've never bought a single song on iTunes, but I went out of my way to pay Spotify $5 a month.

Before that I relied on grooveshark, last.fm, youtube, and, a long time ago kazaa and napster. I can't be the only one. There are just too many 'free' alternatives.

When the 'barely paid' content producers would have gotten zilch if it weren't for Spotify, I wouldn't say that they're being shat on.

On another note, few would bemoan the plight of ISPs being paid less per bits transferred than they were a decade ago, why should we consider it a bad thing that per unit prices of content have dropped? Are the top artists of today any poorer than their counterparts from the 80s? Would the smaller artist even exist if it weren't for the proliferation of these cheap and convenient content delivery services?

Yeah, it's one industry I'm very familiar with. It's what dublinben said, there is no profit. It's even a bit worse than that - there are significant losses involved. The sites are expensive to run and the labels can charge whatever they want for licensing fees.

The problem that no one is solving is ownership. If I pay $15 for movie from vdio, what happens if that company goes away? Why can't I switch my collection from iTunes to amazon, etc...

Ultimetly that is the top reason I avoid buying digital content. It's a frustrating issue, and legislation should be passed to guarantee consumer protection on their digital goods.

While this is most certainly a good point (and I'm in the same boat), considering we don't even have protections on a lot of physical goods in this space, I don't see it coming along any time soon.

I could see protection happening on the digital landscape. With the physical merchandise it was tougher for a consumer to understand their lack of rights, but sadly I agree it will be tough.

It's odd though. I bet there are huge groups of "horder collectors" that exist and are holding back only because of the clear lack of ownership rights. I know my digital collection would be 500+ strong by now, instead of the mear 4 or 5 shows I've purchased for a quick fix.

This gets brought up every time anyone talks about any media streaming services, but has it ever been shown that consumers care?

The real problem lies in the fact that most consumers don't realize that it's an issue. It only hits them when it actually happens. Those of us in the tech community are more forward thinking when it comes to this sort of stuff. Would you care if you paid $15 for a movie, then a few months later the service shut down and you couldn't watch it anymore? I bet you would. Would your mom/dad/grandparents/etc care? Most likely.

They don't care pre-emptively, but it only takes getting burned once after sinking hundreds or thousands into a dead platform that they start to get skeptical.

I'm sure any customers of Walmart Music are reluctant to fall for this again.

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/09/wal-mart-latest...

Sad to say, but I think it's a simple matter of enough people getting burned for the scales to tip on non-DRM content.

Nobody is solving the problem because for many many people it isn't a problem. I subscribe to RDIO and it doesn't concern me in the slightest that i don't own any of the music i listen to. I subscribe to netflix and it doesn't concern me that i don't own the TV shows that i watch. Content exists to be enjoyed, not to be owned. For a long time, owning a copy of the content was the best way to be able to enjoy it, that isn't necessarily the case any more.

If ownership is important to you, buy DVDs. Paying $15 to "own" a movie on VDIO (or iTunes, or amazon) seems pretty stupid to me. we don't need legislation to protect consumers from this sort of business, consumers are generally smart enough not to pay the equivalent of 2 months of netflix in order to watch a single movie.

The keyword you used is "subscribe". I also enjoy subscription music like Rdio (I previously used Zune) and movies with Netflix.

But the problem is that Vdio, like iTunes or Amazon, is not subscription based. Rather you pay one-time for a lifetime (of the service) license to the content (with an exception being rentals) and access to the stream and/or DRM-laden content.

Yes, i understand that subscription services are different to "ownership" type services. But i'm saying that subscription services are the solution to the "ownership problem". you never really own digital content, so rather than demanding laws to pretend we own digital content, let's all just stop pretending. if you want to consume digital content, a subscription service is the solution.

I don't listen to very much music, do Rdio and Spotify get the new albums as soon as they are released? With movies and TV there is usually a very long waiting period before they appear on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm not sure what a subscription service would cost that had all of the newly released movies but I'm pretty sure it's more than any person would be willing to spend.

Rdio and Spotify do typically get albums the day they are released (assuming the appropriate contract is already in place with the artist and label).

Movies and TV shows are completely different beasts. For Movies, you typically can only see them in Theaters long before buying, renting, netflix, pay-per-view, etc. TV shows aren't available until after their broadcast date, and sometimes not until months later. And the completeness of the catalog for TV shows on hulu/netflix/etc is EXTREMELY thin compared to the music catalog of Rdio/Spotify; even if you only consider current TV shows.

UltraViolet solves this problem, but it's only being embraced by marginal services. (Vudu and Flixster? Sorry, never heard of them.)

UltraViolet is only a solution as long as the studios behind it consider it viable. When they move onto the next platform, your 'ownership' of a digital copy will be worthless.

AFAIK the central UltraViolet registry has a business model that will let it survive for years without any help from Hollywood.

The aspect of Rdio which most appeals to me is their subscription model. Vdio doens't have that, so I'll stick with the Appleverse thankyouverymuch. Has better integration into my life.

My thoughts exactly—minus the Appleverse, which to me, is still not good enough.

Not Good Enough—I want a subscription to all TV shows, delivered to my television when they air or after, on-demand, at any price. I will pay over $100 per month for this subscription, if it's a good user experience.

No one does this yet. Pirating is not a cheaper alternative, it is a higher quality alternative. People are still paying to pirate television, not because it's cheaper than cable, but because it is far better than cable.

Come on networks! Get with it. People want this.

I'm with you, but given that no one does this yet, if I am going to be paying $3-$6 to watch something, I'd rather do it on my Apple TV.

So...its another pay per item video service? Odd coming from rdio, which I've come to associated with unlimited streaming. Not cheap either, at $15 to buy a movie

they seem to be competing with itunes and not netflix.

$15? I'd rather buy the DVD.

How much does it cost to rent?

For the ones I've seen, $3-5, which is reasonable enough

Thats not bad. I can't wait to try this tonight. If I can rent out a whole season of some show for 3-5, then we have something.

I'm looking up and down here for the differentiator that would get iTunes or Amazon Instant Video customers to switch to Vdio, and all I'm seeing is a lack of living-room device partnerships plus customer library lock-in on the Apple and Amazon platforms. How on earth will Vdio compete?

I agree. What is unique here? I really hope they have some advantageous licensing deal that nobody else can get or plans to do something, anything, different... otherwise this is a waste of time and investor money.

I love that there's motion in this industry, but I don't have any reason to use this instead of iTunes via Apple TV. And I really want to, because I love Rdio.

But as others have said in this thread, the main seller for Rdio is that I pay a set price every month and I can listen to anything I want.

I would gladly pay upwards of $10-20/month for full access to more TV shows than Netflix gives me. And maybe a movie rental or two per month.

I'm not really sure what this service is. Their explanation was pretty ambiguous, and they never clarified whether this was a subscription service, an a la carte rental service, or just a social layer on top of other content providers. The first two are relatively unremarkable; this is a crowded market and they are several years behind. Social viewing is only attractive is there is something to view, and, at least initially, their library is almost certainly going to be inferior to those of Amazon, Netflix and Apple.

Only the US and UK - that's disappointing seeing as how Rdio served Canada early, and that's part of the reason I gave them a shot, and really love them now.

But it doesn't look like it'll be the unlimited streaming variety, so i'm not sure how this can compete with Netflix.

Honestly, why would I choose this over iTunes? I love Rdio (I'm a former Zune pass subscriber, and Rdio far better replacement than Spotify), but in what way is this better or different than the competition? The price and catalog appear to be pretty much identical.

Vdio is web-based. iTunes is app-based.

And why would I choose that over Amazon Prime's pay-per-view services?

It'd be great if they had a subscription plan like Rdio or Spotify (similarly to Netflix), but it seems there are too many copyright and profitability issues involved.

I believe where iTunes differentiates itself from the streaming services is offline. The video you get is prefetched, so you don't need access to a large bandwidth pipe in order to view your content, and you can also store them on an iOS device or iPod and view the content anywhere. I'm not personally aware of other digital video services that work like this.

This looks really neat! However, I'm going to echo a lot of other people on this thread and ask if we really need another pay-to-watch video service? Amazon Prime, iTunes and Netflix are already very big players in the market, and though I'd love for Rdio/Vdio to race ahead of the competition, I don't think a pay-per-item business model is the way to do it. A subscription service with unlimited streaming is what got me hooked on Rdio in the first place; I hope they are able to apply the same model to Vdio soon.

That being said, I immediately loved the interface for Vdio. I wish they had the grey/yellow interface for Rdio also, looks a whole lot better than the Blue on White they have right now.

The UI is really pretty but I don't see why I would use this over iTunes. It seems about the same price (maybe slightly more expensive for rentals) and I'm locking my content up with a company I'm not sure will be around 15 years from now - I have more confidence iTunes will. I'll definitely try it though with the generous £20 credit.

If they can move this to a subscription model where I can pay £20 per month for full music, film, and TV streaming I will pay in a heartbeat. Netflix definitely has the jump on them though, especially now that they are getting into original content and based on House of Cards, they are doing a very good job of it.

Re profile visibility, I think they need to separate Rdio and Vdio. I might want to share the music I listen to, but not the movies I watch. Currently you can set both public, or both private, but not a mix.

Even if you set it "private", the opt-in seems a little "scary". They seem to want you to consent repeatedly that they're not violating the Video Privacy Protection Act[1] regardless of what they do?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

I have a hard time justifying TV or Movie prices since I am going to watch once or twice VS music that I will listen to forever. Interestingly enough they offer plenty of music services to stream audio and very few for video where (at least for me) it would make far more sense as I am only going to watch once and I don't care much about owning the rights to it.

Just like Rdio, I love everything about the look and feel of the product. Like many others have pointed out, this is different than Rdio's monthly subscription plan in that you have to buy individual items. Though a lot of engineering work seems to have gone into this feature, I hope it isn't set in stone and that the unlimited streaming will come for videos.

For those of you with a US or UK credit card who are located outside the US or UK, contact me and I'll set you up with an account on a spare Linode I have in the US or UK so you can use that as a SOCKS5 proxy (via SSH). I'll let you kick the tires for a bit and after that it's $20/yr. otbdto [at] gmail. Please include your SSH public key.

Definitely an impressive selection. And I love Rdio's interface, so porting it to video is pretty cool by me.

All the interviews I've seen say they want to get to the subscription model in the long run, but for now content selection was more important.

They seem to be having some load problems though :-/.

> Vdio is only available to Rdio Unlimited subscribers in the US and UK

I'm tired of this crap. This is the internet, why does my country f* matter? I pay in dollars like everyone else.

You need to weave better partnerships with your content providers, or you lose me to The Pirate Bay.

I think this is great!

I'm getting this http://d.pr/i/UqZn every time I try to play a preview though.

Hopefully this will also be available on mobile!

The MPAAfia can't complain about piracy in "all those stupid little countries out there" (i.e. everyone but US, Canada, UK) until they can actually make these paid services available to everyone.

The reason I like this is because it is browser-based (vs itunes must be used as an app). At the very least, if you are a Rdio subsciber, you get $25 free credit for Vdio.

Looks like they beat Spotify's rumored service to the punch. I am curious how Spotify will one-up this, and how this service will do compared to existing competitors.

Oh, thanks again for limiting region availability. I think I'll have to stay in permanent vpn state:(

Sigh, I'm on Ubuntu and it's not loading video. Why does this not surprise me.

If this were a Netflix of Hulu price model they could really be a threat but I don't really know what to say about this. I'm an Rdio subscriber, I bought subscriptions for my family for Christmas but I'll never use this.

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