'Netflix for piracy' Popcorn Time saved by fans
bbc.com
bbc.com
> "The next stage of piracy, and one rights holders need to be really worried about, is when the pirates start behaving like the rest of the internet and start making great user experiences."
Couldn't really disagree more, for a long time the user experience has been one of piracy's biggest selling points, second to (or possibly even above) affordability.
1. Price (well, duh). Netflix is cheap imo, Spotify is cheap, but piracy is still free.
2. Spread of content. Less an issue with Spotify which has just about EVERYTHING but more so with video services. Piracy has any movie, any TV show. Netflix (and other services) only have those they've signed up.
3. Availability. Netflix is great in the US, okay in the UK, tolerable in other places. HBO Go is only available in a few countries. BBC iPlayer only in the UK. It's patchy.
But: the signs are there than when content owners and distributions services can get their act together, legitimate distribution is a better user experience than piracy. That's only been the case for the last year, eighteen months. Mulligan appears to be casting aside many years of history when piracy was the only game in town. Popcorn Time has a great UI and is simple to use, but it's now playing catch-up with paid services when for a decade or more, piracy was streets ahead in ability and usability.
The only reason I ever pirated was/is availability. There was either not watching the content or piracy. One could argue that not watching is a reasonable alternative, but I wanted to see what this whole craze was about for example Doctor Who.
Even with a much worse paying job than what I have, I would pay much more than I currently do for hulu to have access to new movies, TV shows, music... I am fully aware that this might only be true for me.
More to the point: What ‘most of the Internet’ is in this instance is Click-on-vignettes; what you probably refer to as user experience is working codecs. Both are, with things lack of obtrusive ads -- let me guess: you use AdBlockPlus, so you never noticed how common web torrent sites are laced with them?
Personally, I wasn't talking about thinks like command-line interfaces, and in fact I don't use any adblocker (I make my money buying adverts, don't want to be too hypocritical). For me the key "user experience" pirated content offers is a.) availability - there's no georestrictions, no waiting for content to arrive, etc. and b.) Getting "ownership" of the files - no worries about DRM screwing up, no being locked into specific software, etc.
Sure there are areas in which pirating sucks, such as terrible adverts, misleading torrents, etc. It all comes down to balance. For me, I'll pay for content, but if I've paid for it I'll usually grab it illegally just to make its use easier. That may not make it legal, but at least ethical. For my parents, well my mother is reasonably tech-savvy (for a 60 year old, at least) and she prefers using stuff like Netflix, whereas my dad is completely un-tech savvy, yet has learned to torrent his favourite American TV shows so as not to have to wait for them to arrive in the UK.
- Lack of on-demand high quality (true 1080) option: Google Play is 480 and Amazon Instant is blurry on a big screen. Besides Amazon states in their TOC that they can change quality as they see fit at the time of a video being played.
- Insistence on specific playback tech. Amazon Instant mandates Silverlight and the playback is choppy on my media centre PC due to Silverlight's graphic acceleration issues.
- Lack of audio track (and often subtitle) options: in UK that's English only. I want to be able to watch films dubbed and have a selection of translations that are already available.
More generally I am opposed to the prepackaged nature of the paid service offered and lack of control over how and what I can watch.
Some alternative ways of viewing the content offer me great choice and full control over:
1. Title I choose to watch.
2. Video quality.
3. Audio quality.
4. Audio track.
5. Subtitles.
6. Streaming vs. download, so I can make the best use of my connection.
7. Hardware and software I am using for viewing.
I would really prefer to pay per view instead and retain a high degree of control over my hardware and software configuration as well as having a reasonable choice of options in terms of video quality, various subtitles and audio tracks.
Ideally I'd be able to buy audio track or subtitles separately to combine with the video content for viewing (plug-in), then there would be a robust market of competing translations.
I believe Google Play does offer up to 1080p [1] - most of the TV shows and movies that I've watched on there are either 720p or 1080p. I am in the US, so perhaps that is different in the UK.
My biggest beef with both Netflix / Google / Amazon is not the video resolution, which is almost always HD for me. The problem is the lack of multi-channel surround sound. It is pretty hit or miss which tv shows, or movies, have surround sound - on all of the services.
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2528768?hl=en
$7.99 per month and they don't even have the last half of season 5 - Breaking Bad.
Many movies are unavailable to US viewers, as services such as https://hola.org/ have shown us.
Large selection? It seems like every movie I want to watch is "Unavailable for streaming..." or is viewable for an additional $10 fee through their DVD service.
I like Popcorn!
I like what Netflix does, but as long as region locks exist (not Netflix' fault, of course) there won't be a service that's both good and legal.
I assume these people would rather receive money for their content, but it sure doesn't seem like it.
I'd happily pay $30/month if it worked on my TV -- I'd just buy a digital antenna for local OTA broadcasts.
Even $50/month wouldn't be too horrible. I believe that $30 is the "sweet spot", though.
Netflix in America: Price (7.99 $) over 14.000 movies
Makes no sense
Netflix is cheap, has a large selection, is available in several countries and its geo-block is easy to bypass with a Chrome plugin meaning you can get full selection from any country. There are also other streaming services in various countries. Not to mention the large number of countries iTunes Movies are available in. Obviously new releases can only be viewed in the cinema but if you really want to see something that's not too big of an ask - or you can wait a couple of months.
There are always people trying to justify piracy and although I disagree with it I can see their frustration at times but movies are incredibly convenient and cheap to access. Is there a 'valid' reason to use something like Popcorn Time?
If someone for ids me to use/buy content, and I do that anyway, then it's pirating.
They check whether you do this or not through DNS geolocking. Then you use technical means to deceive those checks and violate the contract.
This is fraud. You are intentionally deceiving a contracted party in order to violate your obligations under a contract. If netflix asks the police to prosecute, you could go to jail for this.
Morally, it's also an abomination. You enter into an agreement with the explicit intent to violate it. Yes, it's good for netflix and it's good for you (which means the studios will react against it as soon as netflix has credible competition, and if takes too long they will create credible competition. One studio might go lone wolf against them though, and get a large conviction).
How is this different from using a fake bank card in the store to make the payment terminal say "accepted" while paying only 10% of the listed price ? It's not. (except for the much lower chance of punishment)
The Popcorn Time or XBMCTorrent experience is so much better. You get a huge selection of movies and series in high definition, with subtitles and audio in any language at a distance of a click.
I would pay many times what Netflix charges for a legal service like this. So would many other people.
This is by no means a good solution, and perhaps still illegal, but it does work. I used to do that for Pandora:
You can run a VPN client on your router connected to a server in the US and add routes for Netflix to go through that connection. That way all devices on your home network should be able to connect to Netflix.
Or some other geo-ip-restricted service. You just need to sniff out their IP blocks.
You set it to reconnect automatically and it's not even that inconvenient. Although you do have to pick networking up as a hobby.
I am happy to pay for Netflix; the selection, partial where I am now, justifies the price. However, if they won’t sell me anything more up to date… well, I won’t buy it.
- don't use Chrome (and won't change that)
- don't own an iOS device (and won't get one)
Netflix doesn't exist here for all I can tell and all alternatives are utterly broken. I haven't even looked at Popcorn Time for now (to avoid 'Ah, you just want to defend your decision' arguments), but there is no way to watch movies or tv series here¹. None.
The best potential option: Buy DVDs or similar media. They usually tend to come with just a bit of sillyness (really? unskippable parts?) and include the original audio most of the time. That means that you wait aeons to get your hand on the content though and you generate garbage. Because .. usually I watch a movie/series once.
1: With my requirements being: Original version (not dubbed), more or less recent (i.e. not gazillion years behind the US, just because) and accessible on my devices (can be streamed to my xmbc setup for example).
As I said in a different comment, bypassing the geo-block is against Netflix' TOS, so is not legal either. Ideally you could say "but my money goes to the rights holder eventually, so it's better than nothing", which I think it's ok. However, given that you are still liable for watching the movie illegally, you are literally giving money to the studios and getting nothing in return: you already have the movie for free but you lack the license to watch it, and bypassing the geo-block means you are not getting that.