299 karma · joined May 31, 2012
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Ultimately the goal of content protection (not just DRM) is to make it as inconvenient as possible to take content without paying. No security system is going to be perfect, but when you make it secure enough that people concentrate on weaker targets (or give up), then you're content.
The idealism of those who want to see the demise of DRM doesn't actually hold up in the face of reality. Even when we remove restrictions and give global access to content, for free, pirates don't give up. One of the reasons is that many pirate sites get ad revenue, piracy is a business for many folk and they get the benefit of not paying for the most expensive part. They also don't have legal/regulatory compliance, taxes and will often operate their infrastructure using stolen credit cards or accounts (we can see this).
Then you have people who are selling legitimately and trying to provide the best service for customers, but who have to pay for the content, competing with people who don't have any such responsibilities. So, customers take the cheap deal.
Some folk are also under the assumption that streaming services are money grabbing. Except when you actually look, most streaming services are running at a loss, or barely profitable.
I'm just working to protect our company and reduce losses, ultimately I am not preventing people getting access to fresh food or water. I am protecting premium goods from being illegitimately exploited and protecting the jobs of my colleagues when we're already under significant cost pressures.
One reason I post about these things on the internet is in the hope that one day we might have a constructive dialogue about how to balance freedoms AND enable commerce. But at the moment we have extremism, libertarian ideals against company lawyers.
I purchased a cheap "CCTV wireless bridge" from AliExpress and it works fine. Sure, I could be paranoid about the security, but honestly these devices are dumb and the goats in that village aren't astute at hacking obscure wireless signals.
I'm using it at less than 1km, but that's because we're on a mountain and there's lots of trees that I have to cut through. I've previously tried 5GHz Ubiquiti gear but there's a particularly big tree I can't get through. I swapped out the omni-antenna for some UHF directional antennas to make it more selective.
Looks like this product is just a reference design for their silicon, I can't see anywhere you can actually buy it.
Our bill is so big that no one engineer can significantly move the needle, but we have people going around and looking at costs (both Arch and FinOps) to identify what appears to be inefficient spend. We're also quite happy to tell AWS we want something zero rated or discounted if we don't like the cost of it. At a certain size the account team from the cloud provider are somewhat on your side when it comes to negotiations.
Generally architecture reviews and engineering peer reviews should avoid designs which cost a lot, but the most common cause of inefficient engineering practices is when time is more important than money. Then 6 months later someone looks at the cost and says "Why the hell are we doing search that way?", "Because you said you didn't have any time to change the API, so we just made it work this stupid way."
Any new engineer can join and find 5 ways of saving more than their annual salary within a week. But corralling all the teams to actually change the code? That takes leverage.
1) Customers want their service to be cheap, distribution costs for streaming companies are significant and every minute watched is a sink for the business. Streaming is not a massively profitable proposition, so it's not greed to want to ensure you're business is minimising delivery cost.
2) Most customers struggle to see the quality improvements, it's a law of diminishing returns to add higher quality encoding if so many people don't care. You might care, but if more customers actually noticed then it would be more of a driving force.
3) The lower the bitrate, the more people can get HD. Giving more people access to relatively good quality images drives a lot of innovation in compression, not just cost.
You could go to E1/PRI to get 2048kbps for €€€€.
In North America ISDN was 56k due to the slower T1 it was sent in and framing.
That's £20 per month for 8 movies? Not sure that's better value than Netflix.
The browser gives you a certain level of control on computers, although you have to deal with the oddities of Safari, but when you go to smart TVs it's the wild west. Netflix does provide their tested framework to TV vendors but it's still not easy, because media playback often requires hardware acceleration, but the rendering framework isn't standard.
Developing for set-top boxes, multiple generations of phones, and smart TVs comes with all sorts of oddities. You think it's easy because you haven't done it.
Live sports and VOD movies/TV are very different beasts.
I'm also not going to criticise my peers because they could recognise me and I might want to work with them one day.
Subtitles are also complicated because you have to deal with different media player frameworks on the +40 different players you deal with. Getting those players, which you may not own, to recognise multiple sub tracks can be a PITA.
Things look simple to a junior developer, but those experience in building streaming platforms at scale know there are dragons when you get into the implementation. Sometimes developers and architects do over complicate things, but smart leaders avoid writing code, so its an assumption to say things are being made over complicated.
They've also contributed significantly to open source tools for video processing, one of the biggest things that stands out is probably their VMAF tool for quantifying perceptual quality in video. It's probably the best open source tool for measuring video quality out there right now.
It's also absolutely true that in any streaming service, the orchestration, account management, billing and catalogue components are waaaay more complex than actually delivering video on-demand. To counter one thing you've said: mouse movement... most viewing of premium content isn't done on web or even mobile devices. Most viewing time of paid content is done on a TV, where you're not measuring focus. But that's just a piece of trivia.
As you said, you just don't like them, but they've done a lot for the open source community and that should be understood.
With the cloud, that DDoS can bankrupt you by causing you unconstrained bills instead.
A little knowledge can be dangerous, that's not patronising, it's that accurately describing your network topology to all customers is hard and easy to misunderstand. Some segments of the network will be heavily contended, and others will be under utilised. Being heavily contended might be undesirable but it's pragmatically going to happen.
Where it breaks down with customers, is where the segment is over-contended to the point where they consistently can't meet the product description. But that's not a service description issue, it's an investment problem and if it's not being dealt across the board by the provider, then that provider will be crap.
The bigger issue in this case is a lack of effective competition which drives vendors to have a decent quality of service. Being more transparent won't help with an under provisioned network if you have no choice. In markets with poor competition, poor service provision and capacity usually follows.
2) I've designed a system like this for a TV rental company, although legally a general retail TV manufacturer wouldn't want to do this because it causes reputational damage.
3) There's material cost for the modem and then there's a subscription cost for the connectivity. Either of which would reduce their profitability.
I spent a decade working in consumer electronics, working with all the major brands you know well, many of the white companies who make the components and the ODMs who make the boxes that will get a brand stamped on them by whoever is buying it.
Ultimately the TV business is barely profitable, most big brands sell TVs as something of a loss leader so that they can sustain their brand name. You spend each night with a Samsung, LG or Sony remote in hand looking at their product? Then they're winning in their eyes. Also because of the relatively high value of the TV it sustains their overall turnover without actually contributing to profitability. When a manufacturer launches a new TV they get about 8 months to make a profit on it, after that they're probably losing money because of downward pressure by retailers to drop the price. That's driven by consumer demand for cheaper rather than better products by the way, consumers have some responsibility for the state of the market.
The Smart apps systems cost the TV manufacturer, they have to supply the servers and infrastructure. They may make a small commission if a customer signs up to a streaming service on their device, but otherwise your general use of Smart technology costs them money every day.
Ultimately, most TV manufacturers have zero interest in spying on you. LG's biggest blunders can all be traced back to a lack of care and due diligence in their handling of data. Most of the time the 'mass data collection' is just accidental, someone in the development team thought it would be a good idea to collect data and some researcher is horrified by how much data gets sent back. Sometimes, someone gets the idea that viewing data could be used to put ads on the product, but ultimately they're not interested in what you watch, they're interested in grouping you into an advertising bucket so they can suggest you watch another movie with a Hemsworth in it.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be oversight, and that these companies don't do stupid things for money, but ultimately there's never malice, or a desire to spy. Most of the overreach is incidental to the overall goal.
If someone doesn't want to use smart TV tech, then I'd advise them to not connect the TV to the network. There are set-top boxes out there that can do the job easily enough, and some of them might not even spy on you. One thing to remember is that many Android boxes you buy online, especially the "IPTV" ones, are riddled with malware. So don't think that by disabling Samsung and going to Kodi, you're making yourself safer.
You have a finite downlink capacity and a finite uplink capacity, users are not just competing for the same time on the wire, they're competing for spectrum. If everyone was on Ethernet to the home then you'd be right, but FTTH and Cable are in physically contended spectrum in the cabinet/cable itself. Proper fibre ethernet costs more per user than FTTH/Cable because each user needs a port on a switch, instead of using TDMA and everyone being on the same wire at the other end.
If AMD and Intel want to compete, they need to think about the early years of computer software development. When people would say "Oh, we're not going to port our software for Amiga, PCs are now more popular." There is some portability in games for new GPUs, but it's CUDA in scientific and enterprise where they should have broken the CUDA stranglehold.
The issue is that Disney and others pay per TB/PB delivered. So if they want to deliver double the bandwidth they better make money doing it. Disney+ is barely breakeven and a year ago was burning nearly $600m in debt.
Netflix has their own CDN nodes inside ISPs which helps them keep costs down, but then we now have ISPs like DTag demanding money from content platforms for peering bandwidth and lobbying legislators to tax content delivery to pay for their networks.
Add to that, most customers don't care enough about 4K* to actually pay what it costs to make and deliver. There's zero incentive for content platforms to increase spending to deliver high bandwidth streams.
* HDR has way more impact than UHD in customer testing.
One of the bigger issues for us, was getting enough backhaul capacity from the wholesaler (BT OpenReach) at smaller regional locations. Also we were obligated to pay for multicast traffic on a delivered bandwidth basis per user, even though multicast isn't unicast and so the overall network traffic was only individual on the last mile!
I have absolutely no issue with contention as long as it doesn't substantively affect my experience. Some users get very upset about "ping times" but there's also evidence that the numbers in games aren't actually practically useful to a point (unless they're objectively large). ISTR one game developer fudged the ping numbers to stop people complaining about competitiveness.
I started testing the modules but then discovered that there are companies on AliExpress selling the same thing as "Wireless CCTV IP bridge", but they can be used for any kind of data if you accept the losses.
I've more recently seen old Ubiquiti 900MHz kit turning up on AliExpress, I'm tempted to try it instead but I am also concerned about counterfeiting and/or if the firmware has been tampered with.
Some ISPs have been lobbying governments and the EU to ask them to tax the "significant traffic generators" based on the traffic volumes and then use that to pay for the telco infrastructure. But that's an argument I am not convinced by, I think the ISPs will take the money, just reduce their own investments and make more profit.
I think the CDNs (including Google) need credit for the infrastructure they build.
Heck, in many companies I have encountered that they don't even know who is using API keys they've issued to third parties, especially over generations of systems. I am impressed that after getting email approval for an app a decade ago, Yelp still had contact details enough to let the O/P know!
None of that negates the issue of 4-days notice and Yelp shooting themselves in the foot by removing access to an app which redirects people to their website. But someone in executive management made a decision on the basis that they wanted revenue from the API overhead, wanted a slice of other people's pie and that's that.
To the O/Ps point about subscription, there was a UK food app which gave you restaurant food safety scores taken from the food safety agency "Scores on The Doors" it's gone now but I paid a few £ a year for it and never had an issue. If the Yelp pricing is sustainable at that level it's not a bad idea to pay for API access, Yelp has to pay for their servers and a portion of the API calls won't be converted to traffic. Who knows if Yelp still has a sustainable business? Maybe that API thing doesn't pay for itself? I don't know.
So the cloud providers tend to be the one's paying and consequently their legitimate customers pay.
My experience is pretty positive overall. Internet speeds are fairly fast, not exceptional and not cheap, but widely available. The interesting thing with the internet is how there can be a certain envy when it comes to internet speed, both with individuals and between countries. But even as someone who has a >1Gb internet connection in the UK, I don't have a big problem changing to slower speeds in Greece. Ultimately, when you have good broadband coverage, there's a certain law of diminishing returns to increasing the speed. I totally don't need 1Gbps speeds, I do fine with Pappous' ~45Mbps VDSL and actually the house we use when we visit has only a 15Mbps link to my father in law's house. My wife and I work from there, and when the internet works, it's just enough. It's too easy for me to say "ah, but you don't need gigabit" but lets also be pragmatic and ask if Greeks all need superfast broadband? Probably not.
I do have problems with the broadband reliability in the mountains of Greece, or rather my father in law does, we know there's a bad line-card but getting OTE to permanently sort it out and not just reboot the line-card when we complain is annoying. One day they'll actually fix the line card and we'll get reliable VDSL, again, in a village with more goats than people.
One thing that annoys me more than anything is that the 5G tariffs could definitely be more competitive. Instead of borrowing my FIL's broadband using a questionable WiFi link, I'd like broadband. Getting a VDSL connection for a holiday home is relatively expensive and for some ridiculous reason, OTE don't want to run the cable anyway. So, 5G? Except I want continuous connectivity through the year, but when we're there I want a lot of data just for a month at a time. Nope, all or nothing. And the PAYG tariffs don't accumulate allowances each month, so I can't get a 5GB tariff, save up the GB allowance to use at Easter/Summer/Christmas/etc). The PAYG tariffs are weirdly now just subscriptions without an annual commitment and flexible payment options.
We looked at Starlink, but again, as this is a holiday home but one which is connected, I don't want to pay full-rate all the time, but there's not a way of turning the connection down, to say 4Mbps, when you don't want full service. Same as the incumbent broadband providers, they need to recognise that a holiday home is now an IoT home and provide something more than on/off provisions.
One day I might like to work on infrastructure in Greece, perhaps I'll get a job there one day or start a business there one day.
Added to that, you can comfortably overload an ISP's peering and send infrastructure costs rocketing.
Practicalities, things might work on an individual scale, but when you have millions upon millions of users, it creates problems.