Comment by Unosolo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Unosolo | Hacker News Reader

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The reasons why existing video services do not work for me and I've tried Google Play and Amazon Instant so far:

- 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.

In other words these matters are decided based on demand, instead of someone's opinion of what the demand should be.

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

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

If you're concerned with quality, why not "purchase" the movies in a marketplace like iTunes or Google Play?

"Purchase" doesn't quite reflect modern TOC, I believe the more exact term would be "pay a premium for a longer term license to view video content that is revokable at vendor's will; neither continued availability nor immutability of the initially licensed content is guaranteed".

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.

That's why I put "purchase" in quotes... as it doesn't mean what most think it means.

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