Depending on the country, you'd be surprised.
I'm not sure why Disney has the hold it has in the US, but in most of Europe I know it's nothing special (to the point of being a "must have" brand). Kids can just sit in front of regular kids TV channels. And normal middle class families can and do pirate all the time...
Short videos maybe, but I don't think I know anybody, young or old, who cares of streaming full movies on mobile. Maybe some outliers who watch their series on their commute...
The vast majority watch movies when they are at home...
You make it sound like they waste some fortune on those, so it necessarily has to have a huge market to justify building one.
On the contrary, regardless of whether they have a big mobile watching userbase (and I'm wrong) or not (and I'm right), it still makes sense to have a mobile app.
First, the mobile app budget is a drop in the bucket compared to their operating costs (bandwidth, marketing, offices, license deals, etc). So there's not much of a waste even if nobody uses it, which makes making a mobile app available a no-brainer.
Second, it would bad (competition wise) not having one anyway, even if few really use it...
Third, even if it's just e.g. 10% that watches movies on mobile, why not get them too?
Fourth, it's note that they actually invest specially in their mobile apps to begin with. Usually they use some cross platform framework they use for their web and/or desktop version.
Fifth, do you have better numbers, or some other empirical observations from people you know? Do you see rampant movie watching on the go?
As far as the direction that video viewing is going.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-people-spend-more-...
The difference in time was even more pronounced for younger Americans, with people 18 to 34 spending 1 hour and 51 minutes on live and time-shifted TV and 3 hours and 25 minutes on the web or apps on smartphone and tablets in the third quarter of last year, Nielsen said.
Still, I don't see your problem. Given how good browsers are on mobile, a pirate streaming site isn't that much worse or less convenient on a phone than Netflix or YouTube app. You select the video you want to watch, tap Play, tap "full screen", and enjoy the show.
Also, it takes some amount of extra work to create an iPad app than an iPhone app. Once again, is the entire media industry delusional or should they be taking advice from HN users?
Just like I said....
- I type "fili.cc" in my Firefox on Android
- I don't like anything currently in suggestions, so I tap on the search box, type in "Avengers", and press Search
- I tap the first result, as it is the movie I'm looking for
- On the move page, I tap on one of the players listed
- A video box loads, I press its Play button, then Full Screen button, and watch the movie
It's literally one tap more than Netflix; since this is a site curating pirated streaming sources, I have to pick one of the "players" (each representing a movie source with a bundled JS player).
fili.cc is one of many of such sites; different people I know have their own favorites.
So do none of the "people you know" use iOS devices?
The US is like 4% of the planet. The world is much bigger than New York, North Platte, Dallas, and Des Moines combined, and there are many countries where what the parent said is common place...
To put it in perspective, Netflix has something like 151 subscribers worldwide. The other 7.3 billion people use something else, and it's not Hulu or Disney...
Do you really think the total addressable market for people who might buy a streaming service is 7.3 billion?
Anyway, I'm not sure what's your point here.
Or more relevant see Disney. Disney makes a killing with its resorts where the price per ticket is $100+ per day and most people pay for more than one day, but souvenirs, and stay at one of their hotels.
Groups like hardcore Disney fans, R. Kelly fans, and Evangelical Christians all share a very similar devotion and loyalty to their idols.
Your comment is a poorly disguised insult.
In either case, they're both almost a Cult of personality. The fans are so adorant of their object that they often overlook glaringly evil deeds. At the same time, the level of manipulation exhibited and the devotion demanded by the personality is extreme to the point that outsiders see it as absurd.
Idk, maybe it's just me but I find fanaticism to be very off putting in general. When the idol asks fans to make sacrifices to stay it in their favor, that's when it crosses a line into creepy.
Disney walks a fine line where it expertly cultivates that culture while simultaneously pretending it doesn't exist and remaining open and accessible to everyone.
This verges on the tautological though, given that "fan" is short for "fanatic"; you're complaining that fanatics are fanatics. Well... yeah, but so? I don't think you can directly impute the behavior of the fans on to the target of their fandom. (You can draw some indirect conclusions, but it involves at least a few steps of lower reliability and propositions people will find debatable.)
Eh, that's its (probable) origin, but I'd say the two have diverged in meaning; "fan" nowadays doesn't have the same connotation of extreme and uncritical zeal of "fanatic."
Disney has been accused of gross labor and environmental violations across the globe. So while R. Kelly has caused severe damage to a few, Disney has caused minor to moderate damage to a great number.
I'm not stating that a fan of a franchise, like Marvel Comics, specifically is accepting of Disney's scope of misdeeds or even considering them a Disney fan in this case. I'm speaking directly to the Disney fan, those people who specifically travel to Disney parks multiple times a year, go on the cruises repeated, and consume the Disney branded merchandise in volume.
Then maybe companies and enterprises shouldn't do all they can to be treated like men...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/corporations-are-people-a_b_5...
We don't even watch regular TV anymore at my home. It's either Netflix or Youtube.
The first 3 star wars films where important for their era, but most of the later ones are just forgettable sci-fi (for non-discerning fans). Not to mention letting down parts of the canon (e.g. the Solo movie, or "Kylo Ren", a hipster/teenage goth abomination that took Darth Vader's iconic status and pissed all over it).
Marvel too has movie diarrhea, with 1 in 10 movies being anything to write home about (eg. Logan).
I'd vote for less superhero movies and less Star Wars reboots and sequels/prequels, and more original stories. Plus, where's that Foundation series?
I really like the Star Wars universe, but the only good new movie was Rogue One. It worked because it was a completely separate story only loosely tied to the original films.
Personally I love both anthologies, and I love them a lot more than the new trilogy (I love Luke's role, but I have doubts about where the trilogy as a whole is going). I know Solo bombed, but for me it was the movie I'd been waiting 30 years for, and I wasn't disappointed.
That stuff takes balls, and I'm enjoying it a lot.
It's true that superheroes do dominate the current movie landscape maybe a bit too much. Nerds won and now everything has to be SciFi, Fantasy, Horror or Superheroes. I wouldn't object to dialing that back a bit, but only a bit.
There are at least a few of us out there who think the same as you. The one difference is I haven't watched one in the theater in years.
For the Legends storyline, I loved the X-Wings series of books (basically how the Rebels defeated the major parts of the Empire): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BJST00W . My favorite book in the series is The Bacta War, there's a lot of small ship action instead of the movies where huge fleets are the norm.
Also in Legends, try the Thrawn trilogy starting with Heir To The Empire https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WBXM80/ . It's a good set of books with a real threat to the Rebellion.
As for Disney canon, frankly a lot of the books are very meh at best - many of them are just to set up Disney World/Land Black Spire Outpost land. The only one I would recommend is perhaps the new Thrawn trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101967021/ - be warned that the second book in the trilogy (Thrawn: Alliances) gets rather slow at times, but the third book (Thrawn: Treason) is actually pretty fun.
Another X-Wings fan! Bacta War was awesome, I must've re-read it like 10 times :-D
(Not to mention that only maybe a quarter of these movies are worth seeking out, the rest are something I’d only ever watch for free on an airplane or something. But that’s just personal taste).
Also: tons of Pixar movies. And I still haven't seen The Lion King and Aladdin. Or pretty much any Disney movie other than Brave.
If it's not your thing, that's fine, but I've got two kids, and Netflix is a bit short on movies for the whole family that are fun for both kids as well as parents. They're great at stuff for just the kids or just the parents, but for the whole family is what Pixar and Disney are good at.
There are many options here. That's one of the upsides of pirating non-DRM media. Storage is stupid cheap and anybody on HN should be able to figure out how to get an arbitrary mp4 file onto an arbitrary screen.
HN users seem to be way out of touch with the average user.
Not to mention it greatly simplifies other matters. If you drop a bunch of movies onto your kids tablet, you no longer have to worry about being away from a cell tower or wifi AP. Furthermore, concerning this very article, there is the matter of too many streaming platforms existing. Maybe you only need Disney because you don't let your kids consume any other brand. But probably more likely, there are numerous desirable movies that are on one streaming platform but not another, or on none at all. And a movie that might be on a platform one year could be gone the next. A harddrive full of movies avoids all of this mess. Subscribe to two or three services a year and you'll be spending a lot more than $8 a month. Maybe it still seems trivial to you with an inflated tech salary, but I know a lot of people who think a single netflix subscription is too expensive so they share an account with other friends/family. This is pretty common.
> HN users seem to be way out of touch with the average user.
I am certainly not out of touch with my own friends and family!
Roku is the most popular streaming device and it only supports H.264 for attached storage and its very picky on what it will support.
The obscure edge-cases are things that HN users might be aware of, but simply aren't a practical concern in practice. DLNA is generally the case where you might run into issues, but a transcoding DLNA server solves that problem.
So now you've added even more complexity and a regular DLNA server/client has what is far from a user friendly interface like Plex.
If you drop a bunch of movies onto your kids tablet, you no longer have to worry about being away from a cell tower or wifi AP. Furthermore,
So now we have a streaming DLNA server, transcoding, bit torrenting, and copying the movie to the device as opposed to paying $8 a month and just click "download" to put it on the device?
A harddrive full of movies avoids all of this mess. Subscribe to two or three services a year and you'll be spending a lot more than $8 a month. Maybe it still seems trivial to you with an inflated tech salary,
And the people not in tech are going to jump through all of the hoops you are suggesting?
How poor do you think the average household in the US is that close to 50% are paying for iOS devices and not going to pay $25 a month for a few streaming services? Do you realize what they are already paying for cable?
I am certainly not out of touch with my own friends and family!
Your friends and family are not a representative sample....
And if my family can do it, I am quite sure your family can too. I think the attitude you're demonstrating here exemplifies a problem with the industry in general these days; giving non-technical people too little credit.
None of this stuff is complicated, but when a technical person such as yourself tells a non-technical person that they're incapable of wrapping their mind around something, it becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy as they're now scared of even trying. And without trying, neither of you will ever learn what their true capabilities are.
Running your own server, finding good torrents, risk getting emails from your ISP or paying for a VPN service, dealing with networking and making sure the correct port is open and then dealing with the crappy upload bandwidth that most Americans have....
If you prefer keeping everything on a thumb drive or your phone's SD card, do that instead.
Most people don't have phones with SD cards and the majority of middle class to upper middle class households in the US have iOS devices...
And if my family can do it, I am quite sure your family can too. I think the attitude you're demonstrating here exemplifies a problem with the industry in general these days; giving non-technical people too little credit.
There are plenty of people that can cook but that doesn't prevent them from eating out. Convenience beats cheap.
None of this stuff is complicated, but when a technical person such as yourself tells a non-technical person that they're incapable of wrapping their mind around something, it becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy as they're now scared of even trying. And without trying, neither of you will ever learn what their true capabilities are
It's not about what people can't do -- it's about what people don't want to do. My wife and I both have cars but when we want to spend a night out and go to downtown from the suburbs we take Uber for the convenience.
And if you define the “middle class to upper class”, by definition you get 50% to 60% (3-5 quintile) of the US - the exact population that streaming products are targeting.
Yes, but the overall market also doesn't jibe with taste, as Zappa would say...
Also, I may have to wait until my smart TV supports it. We never had these kind of problems when we just had cable. (Or did we?)
The Muppet Show seems to be missing, though there's lots of other muppet stuff. Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal are also missing, perhaps because Netflix made a new Dark Crystal show.
But what I’m talking about is if you scroll down this list, 8 of the top 100 are from Disney unless I’m missing a studio name, I’m counting BV and MGM. So those 5 are pretty much all the 2019 blockbusters you’ll get from the service in a few months.
If you're also the sort of person that considers popcorn an integral part of the movie watching experience then the streaming services is almost certainly cheaper even if you only watch those two movies a year.
It’s the same with video now. If I plan ahead, I will still pick up movies that fall off the back of a truck and put them on my Plex server, but often, we don’t even bother. We just rent from Amazon Prime or iTunes.
That’s even considering that I can just go to http://remote.vuze.com from anywhere on my phone and start a download on my home server.
I have never had a failure but I once had an issue with a purchase porting to Movies Anywhere from Google Play. Google was beyond useless in helping me out, I actually spoke with someone on the phone and it was as if they had never even seen the Play Store before. I emailed the seller about it and got an immediate email response with a couple suggestions to try before refund, the first suggestion worked.
Most people just buy a "fully loaded" android box which lists thumbnails for all the latest movies and TV shows on various file storage sites. They select a thumbnail and the movie plays. Nothing local at all, all streamed.
As hendersoon noted, nowadays, piracy is extremely low-friction.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2014/04/10/what-kind-...
https://gizmodo.com/want-to-appear-rich-buy-an-iphone-182743...
https://buildfire.com/ios-android-users/
Kodi is not available for non jailbroken ios devices.
- 5Movies4Free -- which then redirects me
- mobilevpn.download -- and then when I click on "Install and Register Now". It redirects me to
-"app.appsflyer.com" which then
- redirects me to the app store
- and then it just hangs
Is that really the user experience that people want as opposed to just paying $8 a month and they can stream movies to 4 devices, download on mobile so they don't have to worry about poor connectivity and they can stream to almost any device?
Not to mention your solution not only requires them to wade through shady sites, but they also would have to have a computer connected to their TV.
In the US, Apple has close to half the mobile phone market and a much larger share of the market of middle and upper income households. Do you think that people who are willing to pay Apple prices for hardware will even blink at signing up for Disney+ and Netflix instead of going through all of these contortions?
Edit: I forgot to mention that every major cellular carrier and MetroPCS (a sub brand of T-mobile) is bundling at least one streaming option as part of their family plan - except for Verizon.
Edit 2: I would have never gone through the entire process on my computer, too much of a risk of drive by downloads. I knew that it probably wouldn't do too much damage on iOS.
This is somehow more convenient than just paying $8 a month?
Even then, I would still need to pay for a VPN and no VPN provider provides the bandwidth to keep up with my gigabit internet.
Actually adding on to that, the timing of this piracy boom is really unfortunate, as the cryptoboom made it advantagous again to target home computers with malware for cryptominers. It's frustrating having to go setup shit like sandboxie for pirated software again like it's the early 2000s
Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home?
Asking this question is close to the old Slashdot meme “I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years, do people still watch TV?” Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade.
I’ve settled on buying physical media and ripping. The physical media serves as your backup in case of HD failure.
> Of course people watch video on mobile devices and they have for over a decade.
I suppose there are people out there who want to watch a full length movie on their 5 inch phone on a bus, but is that really a mainstream use case? I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though!
EDIT (rather than replying because apparently HN doesn’t let you post more than 5 replies a day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Your points are taken and I guess I’m just out of touch! :-)
Do you think most people are going to do that?
I’d bet the vast majority of movie/show watching takes place in one’s home sitting in the sofa. More than willing to consider that I’m just an out of touch old guy though!
Yes, you are an old out of touch guy -- no offense the 74 in my name is the year I was born.
But kids especially watch a lot of movies on mobile. Most middle class adults prefer convenience over cheap and a combination of Disney+, Apple Arcade, and a $329 10.2 inch iPad in a ruggedized case or hand me down phone is a great babysitting device.
Fun fact. Disney, ilm and other studio animators used to pirate the shit out of 3d software in the past. They couldn't afford a 30k license for personal learning and use.
No need to worry about your home network speed or configuring your router, it's about the price of 1 or 2 subscription services, and I get to curate my collection of TV shows I watch so I just log in and see which new ones are available.
I suppose the setup could be onerous of you find technology intimidating, but once it's working it's an absolute breeze to use.
I do agree, however, that Disney's target audience is the 'I need a faux baby-sitter' type.
Yes that’s a grand total of 6 TVs. I have a Plex server setup.
But I know none of this is normal.
For example, I learned about PopcornTime from a single parent who ran it on a laptop connected to their TV. The guy is bus dispatcher.
When I need a recommendation for a streaming site or tracker, I ask my old neighbor who works as a lab tech.
I've found that I'm generally ignorant of such things because everyone in my IT circle just pays for streaming services.
Ask all of the money losing Android OEMs about how profitable it is in a commodity market trying to serve people who aren’t willing/able to spend money.
But they probably have a friend who has a friend who put in the effort and is willing to share.
"Do not expect five 9's from my Plex Server" (https://player.fm/series/accidental-tech-podcast/ep-309-do-n...)
And you still have the abysmal state of upload bandwidth in the US and what are the chances that they will have all of the Disney movies?
Not everyone in the US is starved for upstream. Not everyone is going to lose their mind if their friend's Plex doesn't have Five 9s availability -- and let's be real, with all the things that can and do go wrong between a user and a service on the Internet, Three 9s is optimistic for anything.
And whose subscription service has Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Saved by the Bell? Countless other shows and movies that aren't available with any of them?
Disney movies? Add a Trakt list to Radarr, done.
People want a reliable service and will pay for it. I have no idea why this concept is forum. Hulu and Netflix publish their numbers every quarter and about 60% of households have Amazon Prime Video (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-members-59-perce...)
76% percent of households use Netflix (https://www.bestappletv.com/news/more-u-s-households-now-hav...)
It’s also estimated that 40% of households will get Disney+ by 2022 (https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/a-lot-people-are-planning-...)
It doesn’t take too much to understand that enough of the American public values convenience over price to make paying for a service over the hassle of piracy worthwhile.
That's the thing. Needing more subscriptions to access the content everyone in a household wants to view is going to lower convenience and raise the (collective) price. Disney+, next is Peacock, and who knows what's next after that.
Nobody's suggesting a mass piracy uprising. But more people will look in that direction and decide that piracy can substitute for another subscription or replace all of them.
Running my own Plex server costs substantially more than subscribing to the major streaming services. I'm paying for the convenience -- it pretty much runs itself, new content appears "by magic" (Radarr/Sonarr/Trakt lists), content never goes away, I have content that no streaming subscription offers, and there's only one place to look for content.
In some ways it's better than Netflix/Amazon offline mode since I know my files will always work in VLC whereas I don't know ahead of time which streaming content allows offline mode or not.
In 2003, people said that the iTunes music store was going to be a disaster. Who would pay to download music when they could get it for free. That worked out pretty well.