Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?(tedium.co)
tedium.co
Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?
https://tedium.co/2025/02/05/warner-bros-youtube-full-movie-releases/
482 comments
I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
>> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc.
Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.
Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc.
Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.
> Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max)
With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.
With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.
Gotta love how streaming torrents through shady debrid and indexing services with Stremio is a smoother experience than what these megacorporations with massive budgets manage to scrape together.
Shout out to all the devs who never sold their souls.
except all those "consumer friedly" torrent things are the definition of selling one's soul.
In what sense? Leeching?
most of the clients are ripped off open source and sold for profit/subscription. and filled to the brim with trojans and adware.
Stremio is (mostly) open source and doesn't cost a penny and AFAIK has no malware. It does sometimes have some ads, about which they are very open about.
Debrid and torrent indexing services are simple websites/APIs with some mostly proprietary hacked together backends. Some of them have subscriptions, but you know what you buy if you subscribe, and many don't even have recurring payments. Someone probably makes some profit out of those, but I'd guess the margins are quite slim, and there's a lot of competition.
There are surely a lot of scams out there too, but I'm quite well aware what my $3 per month buys and I know better what I'm installing or downloading than with any commercial services.
Majority of what's happening underneath is done by the saints of the scene, taking huge risks for zero pay.
Debrid and torrent indexing services are simple websites/APIs with some mostly proprietary hacked together backends. Some of them have subscriptions, but you know what you buy if you subscribe, and many don't even have recurring payments. Someone probably makes some profit out of those, but I'd guess the margins are quite slim, and there's a lot of competition.
There are surely a lot of scams out there too, but I'm quite well aware what my $3 per month buys and I know better what I'm installing or downloading than with any commercial services.
Majority of what's happening underneath is done by the saints of the scene, taking huge risks for zero pay.
Isn’t that the same as 99% of commercial phone apps?
(Not defending it; I’m just saying it compares favorably with whatever crap is in most non-pirate apps.)
(Not defending it; I’m just saying it compares favorably with whatever crap is in most non-pirate apps.)
>> With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use.
I agree -- if I could separate these out into 3 categories rather than 2, Netflix/YT would be in a class of their own, way ahead of the pack.
I am constantly surprised how Apple TV offers such a poor experience despite their excellence in Product Management in other product areas. I was watching Apple TV last night and my wife and I slogged thru the recap and intro because we were so afraid of the app chocking on the "Skip" button.
Aside from Apple, which seems to be a Product Management issue, I find other platforms to bucket into two areas:
1. Poor performance, probably due to bad threading and poor cacheing
2. Incompatibility with older TVs. TVs last 8-10yrs easily these days, and features have topped off so people do not upgrade. This means you have a LOT of target builds and compatibility to check and I dont think they test all the possible builds.
I agree -- if I could separate these out into 3 categories rather than 2, Netflix/YT would be in a class of their own, way ahead of the pack.
I am constantly surprised how Apple TV offers such a poor experience despite their excellence in Product Management in other product areas. I was watching Apple TV last night and my wife and I slogged thru the recap and intro because we were so afraid of the app chocking on the "Skip" button.
Aside from Apple, which seems to be a Product Management issue, I find other platforms to bucket into two areas:
1. Poor performance, probably due to bad threading and poor cacheing
2. Incompatibility with older TVs. TVs last 8-10yrs easily these days, and features have topped off so people do not upgrade. This means you have a LOT of target builds and compatibility to check and I dont think they test all the possible builds.
What device are you using? I use Apple TVs, and Apple TV+ is consistently extremely high quality streaming for me. YouTube is incredibly painful to use because their tvOS UI is garbage. Quality's OK, though.
I'm using an Apple TV (device) to stream Apple TV (the streaming service.) Streaming quality is great, so agree on that. It is the bugginess of the app.
For example, with the Apple TV native remote, the silly touchpad is super clunky, painfully lacking the exponential fast forwarding i'm so used to with better services. The experience with the Samsung remote is very buggy. For example, when the "Dismiss" or "Skip" button shows up, the focus isnt the button, so you press it and the show stops and goes back to the main screen.
The buttons dont properly highlight when scrolling, the difference is so subtle it is hard to know what you are selecting (or not)
With the remote, it is easy to over or underscroll because of the sensitivity of the touchpad.
For example, with the Apple TV native remote, the silly touchpad is super clunky, painfully lacking the exponential fast forwarding i'm so used to with better services. The experience with the Samsung remote is very buggy. For example, when the "Dismiss" or "Skip" button shows up, the focus isnt the button, so you press it and the show stops and goes back to the main screen.
The buttons dont properly highlight when scrolling, the difference is so subtle it is hard to know what you are selecting (or not)
With the remote, it is easy to over or underscroll because of the sensitivity of the touchpad.
I'm not defending the stupid touchpad because it is indeed awful, but I worry you're not taking advantage of literally its only feature, because you say "lacking the exponential fast forwarding". The only reason I keep that annoying thing enabled at all, or that I don't just have it learn a random "real" remote and use that, is how good the Apple remote is with FF/Rewind. Assuming your streaming app is using the correct "native" video player, you're meant to hit (Center button) to pause/bring up the scrubber, then swipe quickly horizontally across the touchpad to move the playhead in large chunks. It's very accelerated, and if you need to say, rewind a movie from the credits to the beginning, it's about 3 swipes if you're swiping fast and vigorously. If you swipe slowly, on the other hand, you can go a couple minutes at a time.
Finally, if you want to jump a few seconds instantly, like if you just missed a few lines of dialogue, the thing to do is to physically press down the left or right directional pad (the edges of the circle) while praying to the touchpad gods that you don't accidentally quiver by 0.2mm and be detected as a swipe which will do the wrong thing.
Of course, it's proof of Apple's poor usability that literally anyone reading this who owns the device doesn't already know how to do all three of those functions. But we're still at the peak of the fad of 'minimalism' instead of putting dedicated buttons for each of these in an ergonomic arrangement and printing labels on them.
Finally, if you want to jump a few seconds instantly, like if you just missed a few lines of dialogue, the thing to do is to physically press down the left or right directional pad (the edges of the circle) while praying to the touchpad gods that you don't accidentally quiver by 0.2mm and be detected as a swipe which will do the wrong thing.
Of course, it's proof of Apple's poor usability that literally anyone reading this who owns the device doesn't already know how to do all three of those functions. But we're still at the peak of the fad of 'minimalism' instead of putting dedicated buttons for each of these in an ergonomic arrangement and printing labels on them.
Honestly I turned the touchpad off within a few minutes of getting my Apple TV
When I got my second I decided to try again and that lasted all of five minutes.
I love my Apple TV otherwise (well after that and making the home button a home button instead of an Apple TV+ button!)
When I got my second I decided to try again and that lasted all of five minutes.
I love my Apple TV otherwise (well after that and making the home button a home button instead of an Apple TV+ button!)
Weird, I also can’t relate to this at all.
Do you have the old black remote that looks like a small elongated trackpad? The newer gray remote with the 4k Apple TV is excellent.
Do you have the old black remote that looks like a small elongated trackpad? The newer gray remote with the 4k Apple TV is excellent.
I don't get this, I love the touchpad on the Apple TV, makes using it so much nicer than anything else I have tried.
Apple TV+ is great on Roku (have an older 4K box that still has Toslink output). Also liked the experience on a newer Apple TV box that now has buttons for scrolling (only other Apple TV box I've used is the first generation which is touchpad only and I'm not a fan of)
I LOATHE peacock. I don't know what checks they do at the start of the stream, but they always peg me at 720p or lower resolution despite having over 300mb. Its not an issue on any other streaming app and they give you no option to set it manually. Streams look like a dog's breakfast on my 4k TVs.
Are you behind a CG-NAT? Not all companies have caught up to the fact that one IP is used by multiple customers now.
Things like throttling by IP Address which used to be a viable option is not effective anymore.
Things like throttling by IP Address which used to be a viable option is not effective anymore.
Don't think so. Does cgnat use private IP space? I'm not familiar with how it works.
Sorta. It's like NAT except it's at your carrier. Multiple customers share the same IP.
If an attack or abuse comes from a CG-NAT address they have to throttle the IP and all the customers behind it.
If an attack or abuse comes from a CG-NAT address they have to throttle the IP and all the customers behind it.
If it’s not a cgnat, your ISP could be throttling everyone that isn’t using a whitelisted site. Try using speedtest.net or fast.com just before streaming, and see if it fixes peacock.
Their 'seek' behavior is also horrendous. IIRC they don't support the standard "click to skip forward 10 seconds" behavior and instead it's either in fast-forward mode or it's not, and in that mode it's impossible to seek to an accuracy of ~1 minute.
Video player controls have been a solved problem for something like several decades. It's actually impressive that they managed to screw it up so badly.
Video player controls have been a solved problem for something like several decades. It's actually impressive that they managed to screw it up so badly.
I wonder if that's more an issue with them than you. I subscribed to peacock for one month during the Olympics, and it was terrible. Streams frequently were stuck at something super-low 320p, or just halted to that stupid sad cat error page.
Cutesy error pages are cute exactly once, then they're even worse than a minimally viable error page.
Cutesy error pages are cute exactly once, then they're even worse than a minimally viable error page.
Its just them being cheap. They probably set every one to a max of 720p, hope most people do not realise (cutting down bandwidth costs) and let them set max quality themselves.
They just need to look at their stock price vs NFLX to realize that people do indeed realize the difference across the stack.
Netflix has been most popular for a bunch of other rather obvious reasons.
On Roku (actual box not integrated) Peacock has been good quality. Definitely hits 1080P with a decent bitrate. I suspect the software teams only have the bandwidth to focus on a few of the more popular devices (so probably Roku and Apple TV boxes) and others suffer
Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res.
>Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res.
True, but that is why this is a hard engineering challenge -- there are a lot of variations on client-side devices which need to be supported well. Upgrade cycles for TVs is 3x that of phones, is my guess.
True, but that is why this is a hard engineering challenge -- there are a lot of variations on client-side devices which need to be supported well. Upgrade cycles for TVs is 3x that of phones, is my guess.
Except there are only 3 DRM providers, and as a streaming service provider you just wrap the 3 providers libraries and write a few config files.
'That' being DRM?
Its not that. I'm on a lg c2 with a modern Chromecast (or whatever name Google is calling it now) plugged in. Its all new stuff.
Maybe the issue is on their side. Their best outcome is you paying for 4k hdr and streaming 720p. Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.
I laughed.
Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever they do to it is just vandalism.
Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever they do to it is just vandalism.
4K doesn't really say anything about image quality, just the resolution of the picture, which tells you the theoretical maximum level of visual detail.
Focusing on resolution is like asking "how strong is one meter of rope" without talking about the composition of the rope.
With streaming video, image quality ultimately comes down to the codec and the bitrate. They probably use a relatively low bitrate regardless of codec.
Focusing on resolution is like asking "how strong is one meter of rope" without talking about the composition of the rope.
With streaming video, image quality ultimately comes down to the codec and the bitrate. They probably use a relatively low bitrate regardless of codec.
Bitrate can be massive with a low quality video so that also doesn't tell you much.
Bitrate, resolution, and codec are all of course critical, and not knowing all three makes it impossible to judge how good or bad it will look. Sadly the resolution is the only one of the three that's easy to describe to consumers, so here we are.
IME Netflix is a close 2nd best after Apple, which I don't think I can distinguish from a 4K BluRay. I've found that the quality depends on the platform a little -- for Netflix the native LG app seems to look best on my LG TV, while Apple looks best on the Apple TV app (perhaps unsurprisingly).
Amazon Prime 4K HDR on the other hand looks like garbage on every platform I've used -- the compression is unbearable in any dark scene.
Amazon Prime 4K HDR on the other hand looks like garbage on every platform I've used -- the compression is unbearable in any dark scene.
I would put Disney+ after apple. Both AppleTV+ and Disney+ consistently looks great to me. Netflix is strange as it generally looks good but whatever compression they use does something funny to the picture which makes it look fuzzy and sharp at the same time to me.
Netflix is actually the lowest bitrate offering.
Netflix: 15-18 Mbps Disney+: 25-30 Mbps Amazon Prime Video: 15-18 Mbps Apple TV+: 25-40 Mbps HBO Max: 15-20 Mbps
This is from an LLM but it tallies with what I remember reading. Apple TV is by far the best, followed by Disney+.
Netflix unfortunately seem to use any improvement in compression encoding efficiency to reduce bitrates, rather than improve PQ at the same bitrate. It's definitely got worse over time. I also remember reading that for content they deem more compressible they use a lower bitrate.
I can sort of get that on the lower plans, but its frustrating they won't improve PQ (or at least keep it the same) for the (expensive) 4K plan.
Netflix: 15-18 Mbps Disney+: 25-30 Mbps Amazon Prime Video: 15-18 Mbps Apple TV+: 25-40 Mbps HBO Max: 15-20 Mbps
This is from an LLM but it tallies with what I remember reading. Apple TV is by far the best, followed by Disney+.
Netflix unfortunately seem to use any improvement in compression encoding efficiency to reduce bitrates, rather than improve PQ at the same bitrate. It's definitely got worse over time. I also remember reading that for content they deem more compressible they use a lower bitrate.
I can sort of get that on the lower plans, but its frustrating they won't improve PQ (or at least keep it the same) for the (expensive) 4K plan.
> Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.
Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account. How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S. and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per Mbps."
Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.
Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account. How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S. and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per Mbps."
Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.
Who does 6Mbps for 1080p? I thought HD topped out at 3Mbps, and 4K was around the 6+Mbps
Twitch is typically 6Mbps+ and 1080p, though with more time to encode you can get the same quality out of fewer bits. Netflix can go up to about 20Mbps for 4K if my searches can be believed, but I didn't test it myself. When I've grabbed videos off Nebula they're a lot bigger than youtube; one here that doesn't even have much motion is 4Mbps at 1080p. And crunchyroll has a lot of 8Mbps at 1080p.
But acceptable quality can definitely go smaller. Especially if "acceptable" is judged by the significant compression artifacts I see on actual cable TV all the time.
But acceptable quality can definitely go smaller. Especially if "acceptable" is judged by the significant compression artifacts I see on actual cable TV all the time.
I'd be happy with 1080p.
Peacock is terrible. They are, as far as I can tell, the only mainstream service of this sort that actively block Linux users. I can use Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Disney+, Max, Prime Video, etc. from Linux with zero issues. But Peacock? Nope. Doesn't work, and given that it had worked in the past, it seems like they have taken active measures to block Linux and to close any workarounds that let you use their service from a Linux box. So fuck Peacock. They have some content I would watch, and that I'd be happy to pay for. But they actively reject my business, so fuck 'em.
I have about the same number of issues with Netflix as with Youtube (with Youtube being perhaps slightly better).
I agree that eg Disney+ is a bit rougher around the edges.
I agree that eg Disney+ is a bit rougher around the edges.
And incredibly badly designed. Like not supporting type-ahead, so after you hit -> to skip ahead, you have to wait until it streams the next 10 seconds of video to skip over, before hitting -> to skip ahead the next 10 seconds. Forces people to pirate content just so they can view it in vlc.
YouTube painful to use compared to Netflix ?
Last week I noticed my video froze on netflix while audio moved ahead.
> With the exception of Netflix,
Not sure where this come from, I have been unsubscribed for a few months so my experience is not current but back in mid 2024 I got video not showing up with some obscure error codes once in a while.
Not sure where this come from, I have been unsubscribed for a few months so my experience is not current but back in mid 2024 I got video not showing up with some obscure error codes once in a while.
Yeah; of those, Netflix has been the second least reliable for me.
It is a bit better now.
I think part of the problem is their dumb microservices architecture. They operate something like 10,000 microservices and different devices talk to different subsets of those.
On our old, cheap roku stick, they regularly would produce “could not stream” errors or fallback to screenshots instead of trailers (which was actually better!) more often than not. The website would be fine, and no one else I know noticed the outages.
The worst thing is that I’ve worked at places that have moron middle managers that actually decided to emulate this and moved to microservices. It wasted years of my life at work.
It is a bit better now.
I think part of the problem is their dumb microservices architecture. They operate something like 10,000 microservices and different devices talk to different subsets of those.
On our old, cheap roku stick, they regularly would produce “could not stream” errors or fallback to screenshots instead of trailers (which was actually better!) more often than not. The website would be fine, and no one else I know noticed the outages.
The worst thing is that I’ve worked at places that have moron middle managers that actually decided to emulate this and moved to microservices. It wasted years of my life at work.
The UK Channel4 app can't even get the ratio right for whole series of some programs. (Programs that were 4:3 but they warp it the wrong way, and still have big black bars at the margins {I think it's called overscan?})
>With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use.
Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying netflix to license their technology. The only feature I miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.
Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying netflix to license their technology. The only feature I miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.
>or paying netflix to license their technology
Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now. I get that their might be good options to license and that fewer companies should build crappy in-house products, but is Netflix one of them?
From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.
Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now. I get that their might be good options to license and that fewer companies should build crappy in-house products, but is Netflix one of them?
From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.
>> From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.
Apple and Amazon Prime and Youtube seem to enable other services via their platforms, presumably for a cut. If the cut is large enough, seems like a good business move for Netflix also -- let the content owners focus on their business rather than some random broadcasting company trying to hire AWS infrastructure engineers and 3rd party platform testing experts.
Apple and Amazon Prime and Youtube seem to enable other services via their platforms, presumably for a cut. If the cut is large enough, seems like a good business move for Netflix also -- let the content owners focus on their business rather than some random broadcasting company trying to hire AWS infrastructure engineers and 3rd party platform testing experts.
I don't know if they license it specifically, or if anyone has even approached them about it. I do think it's ridiculous that all of these companies are making their own solutions that are all terrible.
What they really should do is license their content to netflix for a fair price and just let netflix be the service people use.
What they really should do is license their content to netflix for a fair price and just let netflix be the service people use.
Why do you think Netflix wants to buy it?
There is no point buying everything as a streaming provider. It doesn't get you more customers and it costs money.
Heck, Apple will not even let you put up anything on the iTunes store to purchase - they have to be very confident it will recoup their costs for encoding, ingest time etc etc.
There is no point buying everything as a streaming provider. It doesn't get you more customers and it costs money.
Heck, Apple will not even let you put up anything on the iTunes store to purchase - they have to be very confident it will recoup their costs for encoding, ingest time etc etc.
>> There is no point buying everything as a streaming provider. It doesn't get you more customers and it costs money.
The way Amazon prime does it is much like a traditional cable provider -- you can opt into channels (e.g., Hallmark channel) for additional fees per month. Everything purchased appears on Amazon as a universal bucket of content, same UI same everything. Amazon appears to handle the tech and billing. As a consumer, it is beautiful -- you can subscribe and unsubscribe from services monthly, rather than waiting for some once-every-3-yrs renewal contract. You can do everything online rather than waiting an hour for customer service. And thank heavens you dont need to install some random half-baked streaming "App" via the Samsung TV App store.
I'm assuming Amazon takes a cut of the monthly fee. If the MRR of the monthly cut Amazon gets is higher than the cost to deliver, it is a first order win. I assume the marginal engineering work is trivial. I also assume the only marginal costs are the extra metered cost of bandwidth, storage, etc.
I do think there is an issue though -- if the cost of the bundler (Amazon in this case) gets too high, I can see consumers scared off by this ever-increasing bill (Imagine you had a $50/mo netflix bill for example.) Of course, for Amazon this isnt a problem since practically every human I know has a load of random Amazon Marketplace charges on their credit card already they cannot reconcile anyway.
The way Amazon prime does it is much like a traditional cable provider -- you can opt into channels (e.g., Hallmark channel) for additional fees per month. Everything purchased appears on Amazon as a universal bucket of content, same UI same everything. Amazon appears to handle the tech and billing. As a consumer, it is beautiful -- you can subscribe and unsubscribe from services monthly, rather than waiting for some once-every-3-yrs renewal contract. You can do everything online rather than waiting an hour for customer service. And thank heavens you dont need to install some random half-baked streaming "App" via the Samsung TV App store.
I'm assuming Amazon takes a cut of the monthly fee. If the MRR of the monthly cut Amazon gets is higher than the cost to deliver, it is a first order win. I assume the marginal engineering work is trivial. I also assume the only marginal costs are the extra metered cost of bandwidth, storage, etc.
I do think there is an issue though -- if the cost of the bundler (Amazon in this case) gets too high, I can see consumers scared off by this ever-increasing bill (Imagine you had a $50/mo netflix bill for example.) Of course, for Amazon this isnt a problem since practically every human I know has a load of random Amazon Marketplace charges on their credit card already they cannot reconcile anyway.
>Why do you think Netflix wants to buy it?
Because they previous had a lot of that content before those providers pulled it and created competing systems.
Because they previous had a lot of that content before those providers pulled it and created competing systems.
I don't know about Netflix specifically, but some companies do sell all-in-one package solution to create your own kinda Neflix on prem. Don't know how great these solutions are, but I imagine with sufficient budget they should work ok.
Some years ago I worked for a company creating streaming platforms for media companies, aka the clunky shit you complain about:-) My experience the clunkyness comes primarily from two things.
1: Every customer wants their own twist. It is not enough to create an awesome video player app and reskin it, no they all want to be special.
2: Getting the last 5% takes twice as much work as the first 95%. Probably even more.
It's quite doable for 'normal' engineers to make a steaming platform. You need to get the video files out there on some CDN, you need some service for the DRM keys (which needs to scale, and handle the different access packages), and you probably want some history and profile stuff. Easy enough. But for the best experience you want every video to start playing in less than a second. That means getting those starting video segments as close as possible to the customer, it means optimizing that DRM key delivery, and optimizing the player so it just gets that video pushed to the screen ASAP.
1: Every customer wants their own twist. It is not enough to create an awesome video player app and reskin it, no they all want to be special.
2: Getting the last 5% takes twice as much work as the first 95%. Probably even more.
It's quite doable for 'normal' engineers to make a steaming platform. You need to get the video files out there on some CDN, you need some service for the DRM keys (which needs to scale, and handle the different access packages), and you probably want some history and profile stuff. Easy enough. But for the best experience you want every video to start playing in less than a second. That means getting those starting video segments as close as possible to the customer, it means optimizing that DRM key delivery, and optimizing the player so it just gets that video pushed to the screen ASAP.
I can imagine that the DRM part is a difficult problem, however, why is DRM so important and require so much focus? I ask as the end goal of protecting the content is meaningless as I’ve yet to see content that does NOT end up on Pirate sites in perfect quality. (so why put so much effort into drm if it’s going to end up on pirate sites anyway.). Especially if DRM is causing UI issues or slowing down the experience.
(I could be wrong about some of this as I’m not in the streamin specific industry.)
> however, why is DRM so important and require so much focus?
Because the content owners demand it. No content = no customers. You could probably build out a public domain streaming service, if you really wanted to build out a non-DRM streaming platform, but it's going to be hard to find customers for that too, I'd imagine.
Because the content owners demand it. No content = no customers. You could probably build out a public domain streaming service, if you really wanted to build out a non-DRM streaming platform, but it's going to be hard to find customers for that too, I'd imagine.
This exactly.
I guess Netflix owns some of its concent, and could do as they pleases(?). But they still need a uber fast pipeline for the other stuff.
I guess Netflix owns some of its concent, and could do as they pleases(?). But they still need a uber fast pipeline for the other stuff.
> But for the best experience you want every video to start playing in less than a second.
Even Netflix and Disney+ do not have that. The TV also takes some time to respond.
Even Netflix and Disney+ do not have that. The TV also takes some time to respond.
Netflix is superior to Disney+ in this regard (at least on my TV).
And on my TV Netflix manages sub-second (at least sometimes). IDK how. Maybe they somehow give me the DRM keys ahead of time? Maybe everything in the "continue watching" is pre-approved? Maybe the first couple of seconds are handled differently, maybe they are not DRM protected? Maybe the netflix intro logo thingy is cached locally, and then stuff happends in the background? It is after all more pleasant to hear the intro sound that watch a spinning loading-thingy. Maybe as I move the selection across stuff they pre-emptively fetch the first seconds? In some cases it also seems to start auto-playing in the background, so the only thing that happends when I press a selection is that the GUI overlay dissapears.
And on my TV Netflix manages sub-second (at least sometimes). IDK how. Maybe they somehow give me the DRM keys ahead of time? Maybe everything in the "continue watching" is pre-approved? Maybe the first couple of seconds are handled differently, maybe they are not DRM protected? Maybe the netflix intro logo thingy is cached locally, and then stuff happends in the background? It is after all more pleasant to hear the intro sound that watch a spinning loading-thingy. Maybe as I move the selection across stuff they pre-emptively fetch the first seconds? In some cases it also seems to start auto-playing in the background, so the only thing that happends when I press a selection is that the GUI overlay dissapears.
>> I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team
Part of it is cost, but a lot is culture and leadership. Streaming (especially live) is one of the toughest areas to maintain a good user experience. I've led Streaming Product teams for years. Product teams almost always needs to deliver growth, which comes in the form of new features, monetization, and other changes. But the user cares most about the core experience - did the video start playing without a delay? Were there buffering issues? Audio playback out of sync? Issues are very noticeable, and sometimes very difficult to test proactively for. Product needs to find this balance, and can not go 100% all in on growth and neglect the not sexy stuff. If the whole Product/Engineering/Test org is not aligned on stability/QoE being a top priority, it can degrade very quickly after a few releases for a streaming app.
Part of it is cost, but a lot is culture and leadership. Streaming (especially live) is one of the toughest areas to maintain a good user experience. I've led Streaming Product teams for years. Product teams almost always needs to deliver growth, which comes in the form of new features, monetization, and other changes. But the user cares most about the core experience - did the video start playing without a delay? Were there buffering issues? Audio playback out of sync? Issues are very noticeable, and sometimes very difficult to test proactively for. Product needs to find this balance, and can not go 100% all in on growth and neglect the not sexy stuff. If the whole Product/Engineering/Test org is not aligned on stability/QoE being a top priority, it can degrade very quickly after a few releases for a streaming app.
I'd imagine the biggest cost might be not hiring a decent engineering team - since then you are probably spending a boatload more on server costs and bandwidth and losing customers due to bugs and glitches
Maybe this means they just fired a decent Engineering+Product+Test team.
YT is top tier? Oof.
The app is so full of click-me dark patterns, it feels more like an iffy porn site than the product of a major tech corp.
The app is so full of click-me dark patterns, it feels more like an iffy porn site than the product of a major tech corp.
don’t forget the burning paper bag of shit that is Paramount+ on PS5. There is no shame anymore.
It's gotten better over the past couple of years. Even Disney+ has a lot of issues like some kid shows will play like 10 minutes of end credits after an episode instead of going to the next one. Not sure if that is finally fixed. In general, Netflix is still light-years ahead of the competition.
Paramount+ on iOS was terrible the last time I used it, too. I tend to binge Star Trek on flights, so I like to download a bunch of episodes. Paramount+ had such a terrible experience (at least 10% of the time videos would be downright corrupted), I ended up cancelling my standalone subscription and getting it through Apple TV so I could use the Apple TV app.
The Apple TV app is 100% the only way to cope with Paramount+. Of all the streaming services I use regularly -- Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube -- it's the only one that doesn't work for me more often than not when using the app directly.
Yeah, “a decent video player” feels like something that should be table-stakes commodity stuff, there are certainly a fair number of good open source video player components and toolkits with customizable skins and support for tons of playback formats and protocols. But no, this is actually something billion dollar companies struggle with.
I'm surprised that there isn't a standardized open source web video player which all websites use so users have the same video player experience and features across the web. Usually commercial or "free" video players are bad like JW player or whatever freemium players there are.
There are open source HTML players tho but they are not as powerful and feature rich as YouTube player.
I remember watching IGN gaming videos on their website's player and the experience was horrible. Tbh idk what's the best open source video player out there right now.
There are open source HTML players tho but they are not as powerful and feature rich as YouTube player.
I remember watching IGN gaming videos on their website's player and the experience was horrible. Tbh idk what's the best open source video player out there right now.
Video.js does a pretty good job. Most of these places seem to choose to have a bad experience, by not understanding what they're doing and getting a terrible vendor solution. Often triggered by DRM panic.
Because the player is only the first step. Then you need all the other stuff like a CDN distribution to get it close enough to all your subscribers/able to handle all the subscribers pulling down video. I'd be shocked if the core player that just shows pixels on the screen is anyones' problem at this point.
I blame modern software development methodologies which value feature pushing and ceremonies above well working basic functionality.
Look at something like the CCC video streaming site. Hyper focused on its thing, works wonders, developed entirely by volunteers with the help of academia.
If volunteers can do something on a shoestring budget, why can't Disney or Amazon with close to unlimited budgets approach even a fraction of the usability?
Look at something like the CCC video streaming site. Hyper focused on its thing, works wonders, developed entirely by volunteers with the help of academia.
If volunteers can do something on a shoestring budget, why can't Disney or Amazon with close to unlimited budgets approach even a fraction of the usability?
Ah, FAST services as referenced by the parent are an entire genre of streaming services that might have slipped under the radar for most Hacker News readers.[1] They’d be off my radar too since I’m not interested in them per se, but for Jason Snell’s excellent Downstream[2] podcast (earlier episodes co-hosted by Julia Alexander) covering basically the business of Hollywood with an emphasis on streaming services and rights.
So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...
[2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream
So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...
[2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream
YouTube serving content with ads would be more AVOD (on-demand with ads) vs FAST. FAST typically means a linear feed programmed to play specific content at specific time just like tuning into a channel on OTA or cable networks.
That's how it started, as far as I know, but these services now offer lots of content on-demand as well.
if it is on-demand, then it is AVOD. A company that started as FAST might have pivoted or decided to release the content they used to program their FAST channel as AVOD as well.
I've personally been involved in doing this very thing, but just look at the apps for like Max where they have their linear channel offerings within the same UI as their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar concept.
I've personally been involved in doing this very thing, but just look at the apps for like Max where they have their linear channel offerings within the same UI as their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar concept.
Licensing is distinct for FAST and (A)VOD. That is, a service may have acquired the rights to show a specific title on FAST but not AVOD (or vice-versa).
With AI, this entire vast content library is about to be worthless anyway.
We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years.
And if you include short form content and slop, it'll be more content per second than entire years.
When faced with infinite content, people will reach for content currently popular in the zeitgeist or content that addresses niche interests. Hollywood never made Steampunk Vampire Hunters of Ganymede, but in the future there will be creators filling every void. There won't be much reason to revisit old catalogues that don't cater to modern audiences unless it's to satisfy curiosity or watch one of the shining diamonds in the rough.
There will be a few legacy titles that endure (Friends, Star Wars), but most of it will be washed away in a sea of infinite attention sinks.
We're about to hit post-scarcity, infinite attention satisfiability. We've already looked over the inflection point, so it doesn't take much imagination to reason what's next.
---
Edit: copying my buried comments from below to expand on this.
---
I have direct experience with this field.
I've written, directed, and acted in independent films. I've worked on everything from three person crews all the way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual production.
We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been starved for films, however. The studio production system only had so much annual capacity per year, and most creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of their own.
You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art, digital music, indie games, or writing.
Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at the studio level for far too long due to capital, logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's all changing now.
Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is that film productions are being offshored to Europe and Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was just a few years ago.
I also have friends who write and direct that are looking at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years.
And if you include short form content and slop, it'll be more content per second than entire years.
When faced with infinite content, people will reach for content currently popular in the zeitgeist or content that addresses niche interests. Hollywood never made Steampunk Vampire Hunters of Ganymede, but in the future there will be creators filling every void. There won't be much reason to revisit old catalogues that don't cater to modern audiences unless it's to satisfy curiosity or watch one of the shining diamonds in the rough.
There will be a few legacy titles that endure (Friends, Star Wars), but most of it will be washed away in a sea of infinite attention sinks.
We're about to hit post-scarcity, infinite attention satisfiability. We've already looked over the inflection point, so it doesn't take much imagination to reason what's next.
---
Edit: copying my buried comments from below to expand on this.
---
I have direct experience with this field.
I've written, directed, and acted in independent films. I've worked on everything from three person crews all the way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual production.
We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been starved for films, however. The studio production system only had so much annual capacity per year, and most creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of their own.
You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art, digital music, indie games, or writing.
Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at the studio level for far too long due to capital, logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's all changing now.
Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is that film productions are being offshored to Europe and Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was just a few years ago.
I also have friends who write and direct that are looking at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
Tell you what, let's make a bet. I'll bet you $100 that there will not be a successful long form (more than 20 minutes) AI production in the next 10 years.
By that, I mean something where either the dialog or the video (or both) is completely done by AI. By successful, let's say something that wins a non-AI award (For example, an Oscar or Emmy) or receives something like a 70% positive review on rotten tomatoes, IMDB, or some other metacritic platform that is not specifically made for reviewing AI art.
I do not believe the AI will live up to the hype of "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years."
I think we'll see long form AI, I don't think it will be high quality or even something that most people want to watch. The only people that will want to watch that sort of AI slop are AI enthusiasts who want AI to be amazing.
By that, I mean something where either the dialog or the video (or both) is completely done by AI. By successful, let's say something that wins a non-AI award (For example, an Oscar or Emmy) or receives something like a 70% positive review on rotten tomatoes, IMDB, or some other metacritic platform that is not specifically made for reviewing AI art.
I do not believe the AI will live up to the hype of "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years."
I think we'll see long form AI, I don't think it will be high quality or even something that most people want to watch. The only people that will want to watch that sort of AI slop are AI enthusiasts who want AI to be amazing.
> By that, I mean something where either the dialog or the video (or both) is completely done by AI.
I don't think LLMs can write nuanced character arcs, so let's not include them.
On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we need to be able to steer the video with more than just text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using motion capture performances, compositing, or other techniques?
I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I just think those performances will be human and the films will have a very human touch.
If you can make that adjustment, then I think we have a bet.
AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the tools that can get the job done.
I don't think LLMs can write nuanced character arcs, so let's not include them.
On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we need to be able to steer the video with more than just text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using motion capture performances, compositing, or other techniques?
I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I just think those performances will be human and the films will have a very human touch.
If you can make that adjustment, then I think we have a bet.
AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the tools that can get the job done.
> On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we need to be able to steer the video with more than just text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using motion capture performances, compositing, or other techniques?
Yes I exclude that, because the primary reason to say "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years." is that AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors. I'd accept a model trained on motion data or whatever, but I do not think something that augmenting that visual input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
I'd accept modifications to the bet that would still allow for rapid media production. If the human staffing is virtually identical to what it is today then that's not AI actually reducing costs. Hence, AI needing to do the majority of the labor.
For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above. I'd reject it if the film is "Watch ted go insane in this room" (I think for obvious reasons).
> I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I just think those performances will be human and the films will have a very human touch.
We already have that AFAIK. But again, I don't think that's a huge cost or time savings.
> AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the tools that can get the job done.
I agree, it is a tool. I disagree with claims of how much content it will ultimately enable to be produced.
Yes I exclude that, because the primary reason to say "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month than entire Hollywood production years." is that AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors. I'd accept a model trained on motion data or whatever, but I do not think something that augmenting that visual input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
I'd accept modifications to the bet that would still allow for rapid media production. If the human staffing is virtually identical to what it is today then that's not AI actually reducing costs. Hence, AI needing to do the majority of the labor.
For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above. I'd reject it if the film is "Watch ted go insane in this room" (I think for obvious reasons).
> I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I just think those performances will be human and the films will have a very human touch.
We already have that AFAIK. But again, I don't think that's a huge cost or time savings.
> AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the tools that can get the job done.
I agree, it is a tool. I disagree with claims of how much content it will ultimately enable to be produced.
> Yes I exclude that,
So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no Invoke, no articulated humans?
It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here. Text prompts are not the currency of AI film. Controllability levers are essential to this whole endeavor.
> I do not think something that augmenting that input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
You haven't spent much time on set, then. An animator can do a performance capture on their webcam and adjust the IK. That's way different than booking a sound stage, renting an Arri Alexa and lenses, and bringing out a whole cast and crew. Set dec, wardrobe, makeup, lighting versus the moral equivalent of a Kinect and a garage studio.
My 6 AM call times, early mornings climbing up to the top shelf of the prop house to grab random tubas and statues, and signing countless legal forms and insurance paperwork all beg to differ with your claims here.
> AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors.
I don't think it necessitates this at all. Kids are going to be flocking to the media to turn themselves into anime VTubers and Han Solos and furries and whatever they can dream up.
Artists want to art. They're going to flock to this. We're going to have to open up the tech for that reason alone.
I'm sure fast moving marketers and the cottage industry of corporate workplace training videos won't use humans, but the creative side will. ElevenLabs is great, but there's also a reason why they hired Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, and Jack Black in the Mario movie.
> For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above.
I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.
So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no Invoke, no articulated humans?
It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here. Text prompts are not the currency of AI film. Controllability levers are essential to this whole endeavor.
> I do not think something that augmenting that input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
You haven't spent much time on set, then. An animator can do a performance capture on their webcam and adjust the IK. That's way different than booking a sound stage, renting an Arri Alexa and lenses, and bringing out a whole cast and crew. Set dec, wardrobe, makeup, lighting versus the moral equivalent of a Kinect and a garage studio.
My 6 AM call times, early mornings climbing up to the top shelf of the prop house to grab random tubas and statues, and signing countless legal forms and insurance paperwork all beg to differ with your claims here.
> AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors.
I don't think it necessitates this at all. Kids are going to be flocking to the media to turn themselves into anime VTubers and Han Solos and furries and whatever they can dream up.
Artists want to art. They're going to flock to this. We're going to have to open up the tech for that reason alone.
I'm sure fast moving marketers and the cottage industry of corporate workplace training videos won't use humans, but the creative side will. ElevenLabs is great, but there's also a reason why they hired Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, and Jack Black in the Mario movie.
> For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above.
I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.
> I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.
If that happens in the next 10 years and we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria. You would win the bet.
We on?
If that happens in the next 10 years and we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria. You would win the bet.
We on?
I think so.
> we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria.
Just to clarify, this would be an AI film or "tv show" winning at traditional awards: Emmys (The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences), SAG Awards, Oscars (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), etc. Or traditional film festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, eg. winning the Palme d'Or. I would even be happy setting a threshold whereby a film or long-format show must win more than one award from several such institutions.
Maybe a preponderance of praise (20 or more) from major film and media critics like Roger Ebert (RIP), Leonard Maltin, Richard Brody, et al. could also be a criteria that must be met. Though perhaps that's a necessary condition anyway.
This all sounds good to me.
> we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria.
Just to clarify, this would be an AI film or "tv show" winning at traditional awards: Emmys (The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences), SAG Awards, Oscars (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), etc. Or traditional film festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, eg. winning the Palme d'Or. I would even be happy setting a threshold whereby a film or long-format show must win more than one award from several such institutions.
Maybe a preponderance of praise (20 or more) from major film and media critics like Roger Ebert (RIP), Leonard Maltin, Richard Brody, et al. could also be a criteria that must be met. Though perhaps that's a necessary condition anyway.
This all sounds good to me.
Yup, with the small caveat that the category for the award isn't something silly like "best use of AI in a film". I'm fine if it's like best VFX or whatever, but I'd have a hard time if the awards committee created a new category specifically to give awards for AI.
Perfect. You're on! :)
No special category, and I'm even willing to bank on it being a category that isn't the moral equivalent of VFX.
Let's remember to check back.
No special category, and I'm even willing to bank on it being a category that isn't the moral equivalent of VFX.
Let's remember to check back.
> Do you remove the possibility of using motion capture performances, compositing, or other techniques?
These things are "not AI".
These things are "not AI".
By a whisker, I would bet you're right. But only because of your clause 'completely done by AI'. And I think that renders the bet kind of irrelevant.
I would also bet that sometime in the next 10 years, we'll have a masterpiece of cinema on our hands where the heavy lifting (visuals, sound, even screenwriting) was largely done by an AI, helpfully nudged and curated at important moments by human experts. Or, by just one person.
I would also bet that sometime in the next 10 years, we'll have a masterpiece of cinema on our hands where the heavy lifting (visuals, sound, even screenwriting) was largely done by an AI, helpfully nudged and curated at important moments by human experts. Or, by just one person.
I'm willing to modify the bet to "Just one person does all the labor with AI as the primary tool".
What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound, visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as the director of that AI.
In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the above success criteria. I won't accept some spam film that an AI magazine touts as being a masterpiece.
What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound, visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as the director of that AI.
In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the above success criteria. I won't accept some spam film that an AI magazine touts as being a masterpiece.
Is there such a thing as a "HN Vote" post? Because this would be a great vote to put on the front page. The question would be "How much of the production will AI be doing in the movie/TV industries in 10 years?" and these would be the choices:
1) Everything. A single prompt will generate a full-length, high quality movie.
2) One person will be able to spend a few weeks or months to produce a high quality movie using purely AI generated visuals and audio, with at least part of the script written by AI.
3) AI will never replace some aspects of high quality movies, although it's not quite clear yet which aspects. It could be writing, acting, directing, or something else.
4) AI will never replace most aspects of high quality movies.
5) Society will rebel against any form of AI in movies; it doesn't matter how good AI gets, nobody will watch movies touched in any way by AI.
My guess is 2.
1) Everything. A single prompt will generate a full-length, high quality movie.
2) One person will be able to spend a few weeks or months to produce a high quality movie using purely AI generated visuals and audio, with at least part of the script written by AI.
3) AI will never replace some aspects of high quality movies, although it's not quite clear yet which aspects. It could be writing, acting, directing, or something else.
4) AI will never replace most aspects of high quality movies.
5) Society will rebel against any form of AI in movies; it doesn't matter how good AI gets, nobody will watch movies touched in any way by AI.
My guess is 2.
#2, minus the part about AI script writing, and with a caveat that changes "purely AI generated visuals and audio" to something human-driven, AI-accelerated.
Wow, cool! Here's my poll. We'll see if anyone notices. :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955244
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955244
The bet is stupid.
David Lynch The Grandmother would be considered a "masterpiece" by this definition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y0rYWVcxF4
Anyone could make something along those lines right now with AI tools. The ratings is because of what the fame David Lynch achieved after making this.
AI video is going to stall bad because it is just too expensive and what we have now is complete trash. Sora is such a massive disappointment to anyone who was interested in doing exactly what is being described.
David Lynch The Grandmother would be considered a "masterpiece" by this definition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y0rYWVcxF4
Anyone could make something along those lines right now with AI tools. The ratings is because of what the fame David Lynch achieved after making this.
AI video is going to stall bad because it is just too expensive and what we have now is complete trash. Sora is such a massive disappointment to anyone who was interested in doing exactly what is being described.
Nope, the video isn't long enough and wouldn't qualify.
I also agree that AI will stall which is the point of the bet. I also don't think an AI recreation of the Grandmother would see critical acclaim. Lynch already did it.
I also agree that AI will stall which is the point of the bet. I also don't think an AI recreation of the Grandmother would see critical acclaim. Lynch already did it.
> The ratings is because of what the fame David Lynch achieved after making this.
Okay, so that's a risk of false positive success. It doesn't mean the bet is pointless, just that it's not the ultimate metric.
Okay, so that's a risk of false positive success. It doesn't mean the bet is pointless, just that it's not the ultimate metric.
> humans are just acting as the director of that AI.
My pro-AI director friends tell me this is ultimately what they've been doing with humans all along. Sometimes he humans don't give them what they're looking for, so they ask again. And they have to fit within logistical and budgetary constraints.
My pro-AI director friends tell me this is ultimately what they've been doing with humans all along. Sometimes he humans don't give them what they're looking for, so they ask again. And they have to fit within logistical and budgetary constraints.
This misses the forest for the trees.
It doesn’t need to win awards or prestige.
Someone needs to say “play me new episodes of the office or arrested development” and it needs to generate something that resembles the office or arrested development. People can have the noise on in the background, and it won’t matter if it isn’t quite coherent or super funny.
It doesn’t need to win awards or prestige.
Someone needs to say “play me new episodes of the office or arrested development” and it needs to generate something that resembles the office or arrested development. People can have the noise on in the background, and it won’t matter if it isn’t quite coherent or super funny.
>With AI, this entire vast content library is about to be worthless anyway
That’s just not how humanities work
That’s just not how humanities work
Yeah, even I, who is pretty bullish on AI in general, agree in doubting the premise that AI is going to make movies that are so good that people stop having any interest in older movies.
I think it's more likely that once Gen Z is the oldest surviving generation, maybe no one will watch any content longer than a TikTok due to attention span degradation and Hollywood just churns out vertical 2 minute videos direct to phones rather than release movies, and those would be some mixture of AI and human-created work.
I think it's more likely that once Gen Z is the oldest surviving generation, maybe no one will watch any content longer than a TikTok due to attention span degradation and Hollywood just churns out vertical 2 minute videos direct to phones rather than release movies, and those would be some mixture of AI and human-created work.
Art doesnt cease to be art when new forms of art are materializing. Its up to the viewer.
That wasn't the argument.
The argument is that few will watch the majority of WB's back catalogue, because their time is being spent with all the other attention sinks.
This places a monetary value on the content, not a social or cultural value.
The argument is that few will watch the majority of WB's back catalogue, because their time is being spent with all the other attention sinks.
This places a monetary value on the content, not a social or cultural value.
I don't agree with that argument. I am constantly finding new movies and TV shows to watch that I genuinely enjoy, but I still (reasonably often, even) watch or re-watch older content that I end up enjoying just as much.
Flooding the market with AI-generated content -- even if that content is good -- is not going to stop me from watching (or re-watching) older human-created productions.
I don't think I'm all that unique. I don't watch broadcast/cable television anymore, but I know people (especially those less technologically sophisticated, of any ages) who still flip through the on-screen TV guide, and are happy to tune in to watch a 1980s movie on some random channel, ads and all.
Flooding the market with AI-generated content -- even if that content is good -- is not going to stop me from watching (or re-watching) older human-created productions.
I don't think I'm all that unique. I don't watch broadcast/cable television anymore, but I know people (especially those less technologically sophisticated, of any ages) who still flip through the on-screen TV guide, and are happy to tune in to watch a 1980s movie on some random channel, ads and all.
I agree with that, although for me it's books that I really enjoy currently.
After quitting most of social media, the jump-cutting in a lot of shows and movies nowadays gives me headaches weirdly... maybe that's just me though.
Also, everyone that's at least a teenager has grown up on human produced content - most of this worry will only manifest if there's a generation that strictly prefers AI produced content instead of it just being a complement (e.g. the generated pictures in articles, or automatic clips from Twitch streams)
After quitting most of social media, the jump-cutting in a lot of shows and movies nowadays gives me headaches weirdly... maybe that's just me though.
Also, everyone that's at least a teenager has grown up on human produced content - most of this worry will only manifest if there's a generation that strictly prefers AI produced content instead of it just being a complement (e.g. the generated pictures in articles, or automatic clips from Twitch streams)
I’m not sure compelling & bountiful AI films and interest in older films are mutually exclusive.
A flood of high quality AI content might devalue it as it becomes too normal, familiar or expected. In a strange way, this might reinvigorate interest in back catalogs.
Also, some content is truly timeless regardless of its production quality. Our kids have the world’s content at their disposal and their favorite is currently Tom & Jerry episodes from the 1960s. Go figure.
A flood of high quality AI content might devalue it as it becomes too normal, familiar or expected. In a strange way, this might reinvigorate interest in back catalogs.
Also, some content is truly timeless regardless of its production quality. Our kids have the world’s content at their disposal and their favorite is currently Tom & Jerry episodes from the 1960s. Go figure.
A flood of content has actively devalued media even before AI.
In the era of "the cinema has fewer screens than an AI character has fingers", "big media" -- movies and TV -- were cultural touchstones. Everyone knows Luke Skywalker, the Brady Bunch, or the Jaws theme as baseline references, even if they've never seen the corresponding media.
Now, even before the AI boom, we've got so many choices that we're all in independent fandoms with less and less "common currency". If I made a joke at work about dressing up as a human-sized NEC PC-9801[0], what are the odds any of my co-workers will get it?
AI would accelerate that process. You'll have a thousand niche movies a week all sliding through the local cineplex. There might be fifteen people who ever pay to see "Dragon Locomotive Mechanic Samurai Warrior XVI: Return Of Admiral Becky", and will anyone want to talk with you about it after you leave the cinema?
[0] plug for 16-Bit Sensation
In the era of "the cinema has fewer screens than an AI character has fingers", "big media" -- movies and TV -- were cultural touchstones. Everyone knows Luke Skywalker, the Brady Bunch, or the Jaws theme as baseline references, even if they've never seen the corresponding media.
Now, even before the AI boom, we've got so many choices that we're all in independent fandoms with less and less "common currency". If I made a joke at work about dressing up as a human-sized NEC PC-9801[0], what are the odds any of my co-workers will get it?
AI would accelerate that process. You'll have a thousand niche movies a week all sliding through the local cineplex. There might be fifteen people who ever pay to see "Dragon Locomotive Mechanic Samurai Warrior XVI: Return Of Admiral Becky", and will anyone want to talk with you about it after you leave the cinema?
[0] plug for 16-Bit Sensation
I absolutely agree.
It’s also a silly to believe that because it’s old it’s culturally significant. There’s plenty of ancient dross in the back catalogues.
It’s also a silly to believe that because it’s old it’s culturally significant. There’s plenty of ancient dross in the back catalogues.
"Culturally significant" is the wrong metric, and shows that you don't really understand why people watch what they watch.
People watch all sorts of things, from all different time periods, because they enjoy them. Sometimes those things are "culturally significant", but I'd expect that's not the most common case. Sometimes those things are B-movies from the '70s or brain-candy sitcoms from the '90s.
People watch all sorts of things, from all different time periods, because they enjoy them. Sometimes those things are "culturally significant", but I'd expect that's not the most common case. Sometimes those things are B-movies from the '70s or brain-candy sitcoms from the '90s.
> because they enjoy them
The premise is that there is so much good AI content that if you just pick something you enjoy, no other criteria, 90% of the time it'll be an AI work.
The only people that would be watching a significant amount of older work are the people that have a reason beyond that.
The premise is that there is so much good AI content that if you just pick something you enjoy, no other criteria, 90% of the time it'll be an AI work.
The only people that would be watching a significant amount of older work are the people that have a reason beyond that.
100%.
The back catalogue will have a few scattered gems that you can find amongst the sea of mass media that appealed to its audience at the time. Most of that content no longer relates or makes sense to us. There's also a massive load of dreck and garbage.
People should be realistic about this instead of emotionally invested against AI as the news media has tried to sway this. It's just a tool, and artists are starting to use it productively.
The back catalogue will have a few scattered gems that you can find amongst the sea of mass media that appealed to its audience at the time. Most of that content no longer relates or makes sense to us. There's also a massive load of dreck and garbage.
People should be realistic about this instead of emotionally invested against AI as the news media has tried to sway this. It's just a tool, and artists are starting to use it productively.
This was already true irrespective of any emerging media.
It seems most of the things Netflix produces is optimized by the algo for attention. When I feel it directing me gives me the ick. Looking at you Squid Game.
It's part of the same phenomenon we see in social media. The first waves of social media and YouTube were predicated on the idea that you either seek out content yourself or view a feed of content you'd already taken action to subscribe to/follow. Services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pivoted to go from "pull" where users select content or stay within their own networks, to a "push" model where the algorithm predicts and autoplays content, mostly from strangers, based on highly accurate predictions of virality and eyeball-retaining potential.
Things like Netflix realized it too and buried the "Continue Watching" at a randomized index in an endless carousel, added Autoplay and even starts autoplaying something different after you finish a series. And of course, newer things like TikTok have always been this way. All these things are, I'd argue, user-hostile in that they're optimizing toward, in the extreme case, complete addiction.
Things like Netflix realized it too and buried the "Continue Watching" at a randomized index in an endless carousel, added Autoplay and even starts autoplaying something different after you finish a series. And of course, newer things like TikTok have always been this way. All these things are, I'd argue, user-hostile in that they're optimizing toward, in the extreme case, complete addiction.
No need to suspect, they are advertising that openly and are proud of it. Famously, years ago they invented House of Cards TV show by looking at the most popular search tags and picked the most popular ones to select a genre and theme of a new show. It was a story of many articles about Netlix back then.
No, that's not at all what happened. House of Cards was a highly regarded UK TV series from BBC (made in the early 1990s). Like many UK TV series, it was ripe for an American adaptation. Netflix won the bidding war for that adaptation.
Making up "famous" examples doesn't make your case stronger, but the opposite.
Making up "famous" examples doesn't make your case stronger, but the opposite.
> Famously, years ago they invented House of Cards TV show by looking at the most popular search tags and picked the most popular ones to select a genre and theme of a new show
This does not appear to be true based on any articles I can find. I do believe they heavily follow the trends from their analytics in what the shows they buy and what they cancel, though.
This does not appear to be true based on any articles I can find. I do believe they heavily follow the trends from their analytics in what the shows they buy and what they cancel, though.
Yeah, just like how the Odyssey became worthless when people started writing things down, the bible fell into obsolescence with the printing press, and Ulysses was usurped by the internet.
Silicon Valley Brain Rot claims another victim. Sad to see.
I have direct experience with this field.
I've written, directed, and acted in independent films. I've worked on everything from three person crews all the way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual production.
We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been starved for films, however. The studio production system only had so much annual capacity per year, and most creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of their own.
You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art, digital music, indie games, or writing.
Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at the studio level for far too long due to capital, logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's all changing now.
Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is that film productions are being offshored to Europe and Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was just a few years ago.
I also have friends who write and direct that are looking at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
I've written, directed, and acted in independent films. I've worked on everything from three person crews all the way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual production.
We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been starved for films, however. The studio production system only had so much annual capacity per year, and most creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of their own.
You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art, digital music, indie games, or writing.
Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at the studio level for far too long due to capital, logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's all changing now.
Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is that film productions are being offshored to Europe and Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was just a few years ago.
I also have friends who write and direct that are looking at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
> Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
It is already starting too. Click on some random 'read a sci-fi story' and your YT feed will be full of AI pictures with moderate coherency (depending on what AI tools they are using). Sometimes it will be very short videos with moderate in scene and poor inter scene coherency. It was utterly garbage a year ago with most of them sticking to static pictures. Voice clone is like 98% there and hard to tell at this point. If you listen to the story structure you can tell an AI probably wrote the story too.
There are services out there were you can say 'write me the lyrics to a metal song about ducks and chickens' and then take that paste it into another service and say 'make a metal song with these lyrics' then paste the results into another service and put an AI voice of darth vader over it using the lyrics. That this is coming to video is not that big of a leap. That has gone from random limbs popping out of peoples foreheads to weird little janky things.
I can today just use chatgpt and say 'write me a SCP memo on a man eating couch that stalks elephants of keter class' It will. I can add some small details and it will be an acceptable waste of my time. Written form is today being consumed quickly by the likes of chatgpt. The other types are next in line.
People are already doing this. It is all over YT and tiktok.
It is already starting too. Click on some random 'read a sci-fi story' and your YT feed will be full of AI pictures with moderate coherency (depending on what AI tools they are using). Sometimes it will be very short videos with moderate in scene and poor inter scene coherency. It was utterly garbage a year ago with most of them sticking to static pictures. Voice clone is like 98% there and hard to tell at this point. If you listen to the story structure you can tell an AI probably wrote the story too.
There are services out there were you can say 'write me the lyrics to a metal song about ducks and chickens' and then take that paste it into another service and say 'make a metal song with these lyrics' then paste the results into another service and put an AI voice of darth vader over it using the lyrics. That this is coming to video is not that big of a leap. That has gone from random limbs popping out of peoples foreheads to weird little janky things.
I can today just use chatgpt and say 'write me a SCP memo on a man eating couch that stalks elephants of keter class' It will. I can add some small details and it will be an acceptable waste of my time. Written form is today being consumed quickly by the likes of chatgpt. The other types are next in line.
People are already doing this. It is all over YT and tiktok.
In the same way AI will replace bland techno and run of the mill lofi hop hop, it’ll do the same for all the cgi crap Dreamworks puts out twice a year.
AI can copy things that are already copied, but you’ll never get something as paradigm shifting as Toy Story 1.
AI can copy things that are already copied, but you’ll never get something as paradigm shifting as Toy Story 1.
Yeah I can't wait for "Forest Gump 2", The Simpsons Live Action starring John C. Reilly as Barney, and "Lord of the Rings But It's A Wes Anderson Movie". AI distilling the absolutely worst and most cynical Hollywood trends into full length motion pictures. I've yet to see anything remotely approaching non-slop from AI-generated video.
This already happens without AI, it's just that studios can only produce so many films given the budget, labor, and time constraints.
Tell me that any of the "Jurassic Park" films beyond the first were necessary. Or the "Lord of the Rings" films and shows beyond the original trilogy. These are products of the classical studio system. They keep trying to remake "Back to the Future" and as soon as Zemeckis dies, they'll have their way.
There will be amazing art made using AI, and AI will enable extremely talented creators that could have never made it in the classical studio system.
Don't be so pessimistic.
We're going to have "Obra Dinn" and "Undertale" equivalents in film soon. Small scale auteurs sharing their mind's eye with you.
Tell me that any of the "Jurassic Park" films beyond the first were necessary. Or the "Lord of the Rings" films and shows beyond the original trilogy. These are products of the classical studio system. They keep trying to remake "Back to the Future" and as soon as Zemeckis dies, they'll have their way.
There will be amazing art made using AI, and AI will enable extremely talented creators that could have never made it in the classical studio system.
Don't be so pessimistic.
We're going to have "Obra Dinn" and "Undertale" equivalents in film soon. Small scale auteurs sharing their mind's eye with you.
Seems like we should have seen these groundbreaking creative works that have been totally inaccessible to create without AI by now rather than a million "X as a Wes Anderson Movie" trailers. Filmmaking has not been an inaccessible creative endeavor since like the 1910s. Budget price cameras have been with us for a long time. It's a weird AI company invention to suggest there are people who've been shut out of this pursuit for some reason. Creators don't need to wait around for AI to generate slop out of prompts, they can make movies.
You've got the cart before the horse.
The technology has to exist first. The technology is first picked up by early adopters: hustlers, marketers, hypsters. Not by practicing professionals.
It takes time for the new tools to work their way into the creative field. It first gets pushback, then it happens a little, and then all at once.
We're still super early days into this tech. Give it more time and it'll be all-capable and everywhere.
The canary in the coal mine is all the young people playing with it.
The technology has to exist first. The technology is first picked up by early adopters: hustlers, marketers, hypsters. Not by practicing professionals.
It takes time for the new tools to work their way into the creative field. It first gets pushback, then it happens a little, and then all at once.
We're still super early days into this tech. Give it more time and it'll be all-capable and everywhere.
The canary in the coal mine is all the young people playing with it.
I suppose the point here is that although the tech may become ubiquitous, it can't make people creative. Previous young people had access to cheap digital video cameras, and the best they could do was Blair Witch. The bottleneck when it comes to good movies is not the technology, it's creatives being any good. There's not a bottled-up reservoir of creative juice waiting to surge forth as soon as friction is reduced, any more than in previous decades.
Which, to be fair ... considering the past, we always have one or two notable indie films inspired by access to tech, so we'll probably see one or two more in years to come, amid a sea of slop.
Which, to be fair ... considering the past, we always have one or two notable indie films inspired by access to tech, so we'll probably see one or two more in years to come, amid a sea of slop.
I'd argue there is a lot of cost-scale issue.
Blair Witch was achievable not just because it was low-tech but because the premise can be done cheaply.
If I want to make (for example), a globe-trotting spy film, locations and travel are expensive. If there's going to be car crashes, props are expensive. If I do it on a hobbyist budget, it will look the part.
To be honest, I expected to rise of the "all CGI" film more than the AI-gen film. You still have full artistic control rather than wrestling the gacha on specifics, but now you can afford to level Paris and rebuild it in the next scene, and you don't have to worry about the lead actor gaining 10kg before the sequel.
Blair Witch was achievable not just because it was low-tech but because the premise can be done cheaply.
If I want to make (for example), a globe-trotting spy film, locations and travel are expensive. If there's going to be car crashes, props are expensive. If I do it on a hobbyist budget, it will look the part.
To be honest, I expected to rise of the "all CGI" film more than the AI-gen film. You still have full artistic control rather than wrestling the gacha on specifics, but now you can afford to level Paris and rebuild it in the next scene, and you don't have to worry about the lead actor gaining 10kg before the sequel.
Birdemic 3, deathstalker 4, star wars episode N, star wars episode N+1, star wars non-episode A, star wars non-episode [...]
Yeah, boy, I'm glad humans are making novel stuffs.
Yeah, boy, I'm glad humans are making novel stuffs.
Deathstalker 2 is a classic... of sorts...
Yeah that is literally all the movies being made by people, unlike AI which has produced groundbreaking creative works.
Thanks, I hate it. Can you point me to any examples of AI-generated content that's actually worth reading/watching/listening to?
It's super early, and a lot of artists have issues with controllability that make the tools hard to incorporate. This is quickly changing.
Here's a really small scoped short film made with the limited tools available half a year ago. It accomplished simple storytelling with limited tooling:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgA6ymPuc
You're going to see more and more ambitious stuff soon. We're beginning to have the ability to control characters, have consistency, block, and steer.
Here's a really small scoped short film made with the limited tools available half a year ago. It accomplished simple storytelling with limited tooling:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgA6ymPuc
You're going to see more and more ambitious stuff soon. We're beginning to have the ability to control characters, have consistency, block, and steer.
There was a Mario Brothers music video set in a swampy trailer park, actually watched that to the end.
Couldn't work out if this channel is the creator but there a bunch of them - https://m.youtube.com/@demonflyingfox/videos
If the singing is ML-generated then I think that's pretty impressive too.
Looks like the channels started out as still images with Ken Burns Effect only 2 years ago. That's some progress.
Couldn't work out if this channel is the creator but there a bunch of them - https://m.youtube.com/@demonflyingfox/videos
If the singing is ML-generated then I think that's pretty impressive too.
Looks like the channels started out as still images with Ken Burns Effect only 2 years ago. That's some progress.
you completely misunderstand what it means to enjoy a film experience.
Don't let the cloud providers fool you. Bandwidth is cheap, especially for Googles, Netflixes and Cloudflares of the world which peer with every ISP that matters.
Cloudflare wishes it peered with everyone and steers its own astroturfing pressure groups hoping to achieve that. The economics are similar though; their major product remains DDoS sinking, so driving down the marginal cost of traffic is Cloudflare’s strategy. The difference is that the content they mediate is thereby an incentive towards peering and not the core business proposition.
Astroturfing pressure groups is a crazy way to describe the bandwidth alliance lol.
The reality of these relationships is more complex especially in some markets. It's also not hard to be at the IX and benefit yourself.
Yeah and that is their point. And it's actually highly problematic just how much discount the large giants get on traffic - it effectively blocks any competitors not backed by some very deep pockets.
Google owns a large percentage of the backbone and does not pay for traffic. It owns not just its own fiber, but also leases dark fiber and right of way.
Google has been buying railroad for access to right of way to lay fiber since the early 2000s. Peering agreements using their networks give them transit for free on other networks.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-li...
Google has been buying railroad for access to right of way to lay fiber since the early 2000s. Peering agreements using their networks give them transit for free on other networks.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-li...
Is Comcast still charging content providers and CDNs for peering?
Yes.
And peering with Comcast is almost the same price and transit.
deutsche telekom, Telstra and the Korean Telcos also do this.
And peering with Comcast is almost the same price and transit.
deutsche telekom, Telstra and the Korean Telcos also do this.
Yep. I worked for Viaplay, the Swedish streaming "giant". Viaplay chose to "sell out" to Akamai, Level3 and Amazon in return for less CDN staff.
Viaplay went -95% a month after my intuition made me leave. The problem was that the more users used the platform the more the users cost, linearly. They limited many streams to 720, which is a joke in 2020s.
Netflix has openconnect, essentially a CDN in every big ISPs network, they can do 100g HTTPS per port!
Viaplay went -95% a month after my intuition made me leave. The problem was that the more users used the platform the more the users cost, linearly. They limited many streams to 720, which is a joke in 2020s.
Netflix has openconnect, essentially a CDN in every big ISPs network, they can do 100g HTTPS per port!
Damn man, what is going on at Viaplay now? My former team lead used to work there and went back after he left the place where we worked together.
This was my intuition as well, unless you are doing B2B (with billing proportional to the streaming) you have to do the hosting yourself.
This was my intuition as well, unless you are doing B2B (with billing proportional to the streaming) you have to do the hosting yourself.
I don't know much anymore, I know they run more ads than content and that they're running very lean. A lot of people had to go when the stock tanked. I have some conspiracy theory that "they" wiped the stock harder than deserved to be able to buy back ownership on the cheap...
I had to deal with Viaplay HR recently to get some documents out, took a month to get ahold of someone who could do it...
I had to deal with Viaplay HR recently to get some documents out, took a month to get ahold of someone who could do it...
Jeez that sucks, was it all due to the decision to offload streaming to 3rd parties? How could they not do any cost estimations? It must have been a huge project that lasted months.
Viaplay started as a side gig to Nordic Entertainment Group so they started in the cloud and never questioned the decision again, I also got the impression that leadership didn't trust the tech competency and they didn't hire to fix it either. CDN providers are arguably better at CDN than we were, but it's just so expensive.
Regarding why the company tanked, I think it was just a part of a bigger problem with inefficient operations, bloat and also going all-in investing in sports without acquiring enough customers.
The Viaplay app(s) are quite bad so people find other ways to watch what they want.
Regarding why the company tanked, I think it was just a part of a bigger problem with inefficient operations, bloat and also going all-in investing in sports without acquiring enough customers.
The Viaplay app(s) are quite bad so people find other ways to watch what they want.
Bandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze.
Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.
Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.
There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access.
Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.
Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.
That's why companies doing streaming at less than Google's scale can pay Aakami or a company like them to do that, caching copies at datacenters around the world close to the people doing the watching.
> But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money
Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming.
Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder
Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming.
Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder
It’s actually not harder thanks to HLS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static files and can be very low latency.
If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes harder, but everything else is thankfully solved.
The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0 views in one second and millions in the next. Even with static content delivery that leads to all kinds of issues.
Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static files and can be very low latency.
If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes harder, but everything else is thankfully solved.
The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0 views in one second and millions in the next. Even with static content delivery that leads to all kinds of issues.
> but everything else is thankfully solved.
well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at Netflix as they can't figure it out.
well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at Netflix as they can't figure it out.
> they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming
And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window.
Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead of you it's not spoilt).
And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window.
Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead of you it's not spoilt).
I agree with parent that the bigger issue is distribution. Installing random apps sucks. YouTube has distribution. If they can make more money off esoteric movies by using YouTube then that makes more sense than having an extremely long tail of content in your app that probably no one will discover.
I don't think it's a "hit" for Google. They'll optimize ads to always ensure they make a profit from a view. It's a win/win.
Google laid fiber cables across the ocean, they already own the whole infrastructure and rent it out. It's a cost only in the sense that they potentially can't sell as much capacity as without their own traffic going down the pipes.
Don't forget the cost of storage. In the days before streaming, WB used to store (digitized) movies on LTO tapes, which are dirt cheap. The programming software would load up a tape the day before broadcast and transfer the contents to disk.
A streaming service needs to have all offered content available on disk. I can absolutely see WB offloading the storage cost to Google.
A streaming service needs to have all offered content available on disk. I can absolutely see WB offloading the storage cost to Google.
Biggest cost is generating an ad platform that can get enough data to serve relevant ads to people increasing the effectiveness of the ads. You can't beat googles ad platform in terms of data and targeting.
If they just wanted to throw this stuff out there at minimal bandwidth costs, a page of .torrent files and a seedbox would get it done for pennies.
"Streaming", who gives a hoot, just download it like everything else. "Service" can take a hike, video player software already exists and all the UI work is done. That part is utterly superfluous.
"Streaming", who gives a hoot, just download it like everything else. "Service" can take a hike, video player software already exists and all the UI work is done. That part is utterly superfluous.
Don't underestimate how cost conscious and inept copyright holders are.
content is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service
"good" content that people want to watch is by far the biggest cost. you can find content for pennies on the dollar, but your viewers will not make it worth the expense as no advertisers will want to spend money with your low viewer count
Actually it seems like region-specific copyright deals are still very much in play. If I visit that playlist from Australia then 14 of the full movies are unavailable and hidden. But VPN'ing through the US shows me the whole set.
It would be really nice if YouTube could give uploaders the ability to schedule ad slots, rather than them appearing randomly.
Unless they do this already and stuff I watch just does it badly, of course.
Unless they do this already and stuff I watch just does it badly, of course.
I'm pretty sure this is a feature that's available at least to big creators – I remember a Tom Scott video doing a bit involving scheduling an ad at a particularly fitting moment.
You might have to be a YouTube partner or something like that to make use of this stuff, though.
You might have to be a YouTube partner or something like that to make use of this stuff, though.
You need to be in the YouTube partner program, but that's not just available to big creators.
You need at least 1000 subscribers and a certain amount of video watch time per year to qualify, but even fairly small channels can meet this bar. When people talk about getting monetized on YouTube, this is what they mean.
You need at least 1000 subscribers and a certain amount of video watch time per year to qualify, but even fairly small channels can meet this bar. When people talk about getting monetized on YouTube, this is what they mean.
Yeah, YouTube's UI lets you set where the ads go. The creator tools let you set how many, and where midroll ads will play. However, most creators just click the "insert automatically" button.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006
> However, most creators just click the "insert automatically" button.
That seems like a good opportunity for a neural net feature that's smarter than simple scene cut detection. While most theatrical films lack many good spots for commercial breaks, there are certainly a lot of "less bad" spots. Sadly, I doubt YT will bother since they no longer seem to care about viewer experience in recent years.
That seems like a good opportunity for a neural net feature that's smarter than simple scene cut detection. While most theatrical films lack many good spots for commercial breaks, there are certainly a lot of "less bad" spots. Sadly, I doubt YT will bother since they no longer seem to care about viewer experience in recent years.
This is absolutely already a feature of YouTube for creators.
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They do.
It takes a lot of YouTube views to add up to a Apple/Amazon/etc rental.
But it also takes very little effort or cost... It's effectively free money at their scale.. no bandwidth fees, no storage, no user membership, etc... it's hard to sell a pile of junk no one wants to watch in a subscription too -- okay that might be harsh, but a LOT of old stuff is do do hard to watch nowadays... So there's certainly some great classics.. but also a lot of stuff that most people would never watch outside a class assignment
My cousin worked at a major network porting programs for rebroadcast (they did some minor updates). They got surprised when a few shows they posted on YouTube got some traction (they became news worthy), getting a decent numbers of views and a check appeared..
That's also true of Apple/Amazon/etc.
If you want to make money from a movie, that seems a much better option.
If you want to make money from a movie, that seems a much better option.
> Youtube also shows ads
Not on my devices :)
Not on my devices :)
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South Park has been available on their website free to stream with ads.
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Used to be completely free
I've always assumed there was a lot more "more trouble [i.e. time/money] than it's worth" associated with putting up old content in whatever form. As you say, there are a lot of potential complexities and figuring those out for something that is never going to bring in much revenue may not be worth it, however fervent some niche fan base may be.
I don't have any expertise here but my assumption would be the studios have a better way to manage digital content and rights compared to previous. It could very well be they have content available, free of rights, that can be uploaded to YouTube for monetisation. As others have mentioned, there are effectively no hosting or bandwidth costs associated.
Inb4: not my area of expertise, but I worked with a company that was providing data on movie rights. The way I understand it is that it's a Cartesian explosion of complexity under the hood. There are at least rights to a version of the movie and the soundtrack/theme song. They can function independently in a region and are granted exclusively or non-exclusively in a region based on timing.
As a bit of a contrived example, you want to distribute Superman 4 in China for a year. You have to secure rights to the film, but you cannot secure rights to the score from the US version as the license is not compatible. You have to get a license-compatible score and make sure the movie complies with the Chinese censorship. And the licensing periods have to overlap.
Multiply that by however many regions you want to distribute the movie in and add accounting complexity for each region.
As a bit of a contrived example, you want to distribute Superman 4 in China for a year. You have to secure rights to the film, but you cannot secure rights to the score from the US version as the license is not compatible. You have to get a license-compatible score and make sure the movie complies with the Chinese censorship. And the licensing periods have to overlap.
Multiply that by however many regions you want to distribute the movie in and add accounting complexity for each region.
There have been one or two very popular TV series (e.g. Northern Exposure) that the owners were able to eventually get the music rights sorted on. But I'm sure there are a gazillion random TV shows that a handful of people care about for some nostalgic reason that no one is going to go to the trouble to work out.
I'm sure they've got more mature systems in place today. But there's still some threshold of income vs. effort at any company. I freely admit to having no idea what that threshold looks like for a lot of old content--a lot of which was never digitized--at various studios.
It didn't take them this long.
Several studios have done this for years. Paramount literally did it more than a decade ago.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...
Several studios have done this for years. Paramount literally did it more than a decade ago.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...
I'm not so sure Paramount are doing it anymore, though. The link in that article leads to Paramount Scares which just has some clips and some rent-or-buy movies.
But they're doing it in such an unceremonious way... No real curation, no promotion, just an unorganized content dump.
Does YT offer more revenue than something like Tubi?
I’d like to note that older movies have often been “live streamed” in an ad-supported format for many decades.
You were even able to use your own equipment to “download” these movies to local “storage” and keep a collection with enough determination. The resolution was often terrible, somewhere around 240i and 360i.
/s
You were even able to use your own equipment to “download” these movies to local “storage” and keep a collection with enough determination. The resolution was often terrible, somewhere around 240i and 360i.
/s
> The resolution was often terrible, somewhere around 240i and 360i.
It's gotten better, though! The digitization of broadcast TV added a bunch of new channels, which are in HD. They have decimal channel numbers.
It's gotten better, though! The digitization of broadcast TV added a bunch of new channels, which are in HD. They have decimal channel numbers.
I was referring to VHS recording which is limited to less-than-broadcast resolutions.
DVD and HDD PVRs for analog broadcasts did capture at 480i but were wildly expensive.
Subchannels are an interesting concept, but suffer from compression loss from packing in multiple streams into a single 6 MHz slice that would otherwise be a single channel.
Don’t get me started on the fact that we are limited at 1080i as well.
DVD and HDD PVRs for analog broadcasts did capture at 480i but were wildly expensive.
Subchannels are an interesting concept, but suffer from compression loss from packing in multiple streams into a single 6 MHz slice that would otherwise be a single channel.
Don’t get me started on the fact that we are limited at 1080i as well.
> Anyway, Waiting for Guffman still holds up, and you can watch it on YouTube, for free.
On top of that it never was released outside of the US before! As a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally be able to see this film.
Also: no mention of The Mission, which is also in the list? That's quite a critically acclaimed one. Just look at these opening paragraphs from its wikipedia page:
> The Mission is a 1986 British historical drama film about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th-century South America.[4] Directed by Roland Joffé and written by Robert Bolt, the film stars Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi, and Liam Neeson.
> The film premiered in competition at the 39th Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or. At the 59th Academy Awards it was nominated for seven awards including Best Picture and Best Director, winning for Best Cinematography. The film has also been cited as one of the greatest religious films of all time, appearing in the Vatican film list's "Religion" section and being number one on the Church Times' Top 50 Religious Films list.
Oh, and the score is by a certain Ennio Morricone.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IpNXw6Y05M&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mission_(1986_film)
On top of that it never was released outside of the US before! As a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally be able to see this film.
Also: no mention of The Mission, which is also in the list? That's quite a critically acclaimed one. Just look at these opening paragraphs from its wikipedia page:
> The Mission is a 1986 British historical drama film about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th-century South America.[4] Directed by Roland Joffé and written by Robert Bolt, the film stars Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi, and Liam Neeson.
> The film premiered in competition at the 39th Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or. At the 59th Academy Awards it was nominated for seven awards including Best Picture and Best Director, winning for Best Cinematography. The film has also been cited as one of the greatest religious films of all time, appearing in the Vatican film list's "Religion" section and being number one on the Church Times' Top 50 Religious Films list.
Oh, and the score is by a certain Ennio Morricone.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IpNXw6Y05M&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mission_(1986_film)
I discovered the Mission through an Ennio Morricone playlist, and didn't regret it.
Not a religious person but it made me aware of who the Jesuits were and read up on them. Truly a fascinating part of the Catholic Church, they're like crack Navy Seals in religious terms, or 10x engineers of the Vatican :)
I sometimes program whilst listening to "Gabriel's Oboe" on repeat for hours and hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIna_nXFxM
Not a religious person but it made me aware of who the Jesuits were and read up on them. Truly a fascinating part of the Catholic Church, they're like crack Navy Seals in religious terms, or 10x engineers of the Vatican :)
I sometimes program whilst listening to "Gabriel's Oboe" on repeat for hours and hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIna_nXFxM
What is the similarity between the Dominicans and the Jesuits?
Both were started to fight heresy: the Dominicans the Cathars, the Jesuits the Protestants. Both were started by soldiers. Both have unique spiritual disciplines.
What's the difference? Meet any Cathars lately?
Both were started to fight heresy: the Dominicans the Cathars, the Jesuits the Protestants. Both were started by soldiers. Both have unique spiritual disciplines.
What's the difference? Meet any Cathars lately?
Jesuits are usually ordained priests. Dominicans are usually not. The difference is black cassocks vs. white tunics.
To be fair, the Protestants had the printing press and significant political support on their side
Luther also showed up just as the HRE's centralization was beginning to show major major cracks. Luther wasn't the first "heretic" to challenge the catholic church, but he was the first one with major political support (a duke or a prince, I can't recall which).
There's also the Moravians and Lolards. Everyone knew Catholicism needed to change but it wasn't until the Reformation the pressure existed for the Counter-reformation to overcome the obstacles within the Catholic church.
I went to a Jesuit high school but am not religious now. But I still have a soft spot for the Jesuits. They tend to be liberal (relatively speaking) and taught extensively about social justice, and generally are very education-oriented.
10 out of 10. Would guffaw again.
> As a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally be able to see this film.
You're in for a treat. While somewhat similar, Waiting for Guffman is a bit different than Spinal Tap. It has layers to the satire that are even more subtle. Not as many call back lines destined to live in memes forever (eg "It goes to eleven"). It's more of a character study that's willing to simply bask in the absolute vacuum of unself-awareness long enough to let it wrap back on itself and evolve into sincere charm. Eugene Levy is a treat as always and Fred Willard's performance evokes echoes of his legendary work on Fernwood Tonight.
You're in for a treat. While somewhat similar, Waiting for Guffman is a bit different than Spinal Tap. It has layers to the satire that are even more subtle. Not as many call back lines destined to live in memes forever (eg "It goes to eleven"). It's more of a character study that's willing to simply bask in the absolute vacuum of unself-awareness long enough to let it wrap back on itself and evolve into sincere charm. Eugene Levy is a treat as always and Fred Willard's performance evokes echoes of his legendary work on Fernwood Tonight.
Waiting For Guffman is a great movie...Christopher Guest has done quite a few in this vein but IMO Guffman is the best.
Waiting For Guffman is perfect, up there in my Mount Rushmore of comedy films.
The true genius is that where it would be really easy to be mocking these small town people and their hokey play, the movie toes the line flawlessly of making sure the viewer isn’t really laughing AT them all that much. It’s also worth noting that the play itself at the end isn’t a disaster but actually a wonderfully produced show that the audience and town love.
I think Guest’s more recent films went a bit too far into the “mocking” part of the Mocumentary, but Guffman doesn’t.
Also worth mentioning Catherine O’Hara drunk in the Chinese restaurant might be one of the most realistic portrayals of being drunk I’ve seen in a movie.
The true genius is that where it would be really easy to be mocking these small town people and their hokey play, the movie toes the line flawlessly of making sure the viewer isn’t really laughing AT them all that much. It’s also worth noting that the play itself at the end isn’t a disaster but actually a wonderfully produced show that the audience and town love.
I think Guest’s more recent films went a bit too far into the “mocking” part of the Mocumentary, but Guffman doesn’t.
Also worth mentioning Catherine O’Hara drunk in the Chinese restaurant might be one of the most realistic portrayals of being drunk I’ve seen in a movie.
> Video unavailable
> The uploader has not made this video available in your countryFor some reason I thought the Eurythmics single "Missionary Man" which came about at the same time was the film tie in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Man_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Man_(song)
This is wonderful news. My Waiting for Guffman dvd was lost at some point and I often open its case wanting to watch and remember again and get disappointed like Corky.
There was a time fairly early in Netflix's streaming era when all the studios were just dumping their old back catalogs on Netflix to get some revenue from 'dead content' that I thought "Wow, someday soon pretty much all the old content will just be available on a central streaming service. The future will be good."
Then the stock market started inflating the value of streamers because of ARR projections and studios adopted a gold rush mentality, pulled back all their content and each tried to launch their own service. Of course, this quickly fragmented the streaming market as few consumers would subscribe to more than one or two services at a time. As stock valuations dropped back to reality, the server plus bandwidth costs started piling up and the also-ran streaming services became break-even boat anchors for most studios.
Now we're left with the cultural 'worst of all worlds'. A dozen inaccessible walled gardens each neglected by their owners and no easy, central way to find and watch an old, low-value film.
Then the stock market started inflating the value of streamers because of ARR projections and studios adopted a gold rush mentality, pulled back all their content and each tried to launch their own service. Of course, this quickly fragmented the streaming market as few consumers would subscribe to more than one or two services at a time. As stock valuations dropped back to reality, the server plus bandwidth costs started piling up and the also-ran streaming services became break-even boat anchors for most studios.
Now we're left with the cultural 'worst of all worlds'. A dozen inaccessible walled gardens each neglected by their owners and no easy, central way to find and watch an old, low-value film.
Most things are on Amazon if you’re willing to pay for them individually. It’s more buffet style streaming services that splintered.
Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.
Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.
I don't like buying DRM-encumbered digital copies. I'm OK with streaming subscriptions because their catalogues are fundamentally ephemeral, but if I buy a movie I want to know I can keep it forever, even if the platform I bought it from disappears entirely.
To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next year and still provides better image quality than your typical 1080p stream.
To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next year and still provides better image quality than your typical 1080p stream.
I get you, but to be clear I was referring to renting movies rather than purchasing them.
It’s not a service I use, but it’s surprisingly close to the anything anywhere anytime ideal.
It’s not a service I use, but it’s surprisingly close to the anything anywhere anytime ideal.
we're trying to cut back to only Disney+ for kids and we use prime video for us. Amazon's genius "take this prime video credit for slow shipping" has us renting movies maybe once a week and it's much better value for us than all subscriptions services that get no playtime.
Apple has a rental model like this as well, dating back to the iPod Video days. It still exists for the AppleTV.
For people who only watch a couple movies per month, this is cheaper, with more variety, than any streaming service. While also avoiding the trap of forgotten subscriptions that aren’t being used.
For people who only watch a couple movies per month, this is cheaper, with more variety, than any streaming service. While also avoiding the trap of forgotten subscriptions that aren’t being used.
I had thought that, until recently I went to watch Spinal Tap with my son, and it's not apparently on Prime Video, even for pay. Which is odd, because I'm pretty sure I previously "bought" it there.
I think I would rather eat glass than rent a movie on Amazon Prime for $3.99. I'm so sick of those polluting the search on there.
Yep, we really went from "everything will be available in one place!" to "good luck remembering which service has what, if it's even still there"
> ...soon pretty much all the old content will just be available on a central streaming service. The future will be good.
I'll buy a TV once any show ever made is available right now for $1 dollar.
During the '00s, I thought surely that'd be in the '10s. Oh well. The '30s aren't so far away.
I'll buy a TV once any show ever made is available right now for $1 dollar.
During the '00s, I thought surely that'd be in the '10s. Oh well. The '30s aren't so far away.
i’ve heard that another reason every studio started their own service was to make it easier to cook the books with profits and losses between the content and the costs of the service
I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.
The only 2 companies that made money during the “streaming wars” were Netflix, which had the infrastructure in place already and didn’t need to build anything from scratch, and Sony, which decided not to build any streaming service and just license all its content out. Seems WBD is following the lead of a winner.
* https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-...
* https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-...
Is it really following the lead of a winner if you started by building your own failing streaming service, then buying another streaming service and merging them, and only then starting to license out content?
Warner Bros didn't buy out Discovery, other way around really. In return for taking on loads of debt, Discovery got ownership of WB.
HBO Max was an incredibly lean org, around 200-300 engineers at launch, 1/10th the size of its competitors but we launched a similar scaled service (tens of millions of domestic users, followed up by international launches one after another).
IMHO once COVID ended and HBO Max just became a streaming destination instead of having movies "launched" on it, they'd be just fine in terms of profit (and indeed iirc the successor Max service is profitable). First releasing big block busters doesn't drive enough user growth to pay for the movie, but if you have an existing content pipeline then having a streaming service as another delivery platform becomes reasonable.
HBO Max was an incredibly lean org, around 200-300 engineers at launch, 1/10th the size of its competitors but we launched a similar scaled service (tens of millions of domestic users, followed up by international launches one after another).
IMHO once COVID ended and HBO Max just became a streaming destination instead of having movies "launched" on it, they'd be just fine in terms of profit (and indeed iirc the successor Max service is profitable). First releasing big block busters doesn't drive enough user growth to pay for the movie, but if you have an existing content pipeline then having a streaming service as another delivery platform becomes reasonable.
Agreed on all counts, Discovery is the company I was referring to and Discovery+ was the 'failing' platform, not HBO Max. Though to be fair my recollection was hazy and the story around Discovery+ is not that simple given that it has stuck around post merge and is profitable according to Zaslav. I don't really trust his definition of profitable given his general love for accounting fuckery but the fact that its running is something.
As an aside, props to the team. It's been a while but I remember being pleasantly surprised after getting shuffled over from HBO GO. It's even more impressive to know it was such a small team compared to other services.
As an aside, props to the team. It's been a while but I remember being pleasantly surprised after getting shuffled over from HBO GO. It's even more impressive to know it was such a small team compared to other services.
Max has gone to crap since the merger though. They cancelled a lot of the quality content and added a bunch of cheap and awful crap like reality shows to the service. It's like someone bought a Rolls Royce and riced it out.
It was ATT that fired all the old HBO bosses that curated for quality. They just dumped their failed experiment onto Discovery to squeeze out whatever was left.
Sure - that's why Sony is the winner. Other companies tried other things and lost. Now they see what the winner did and they're following their lead.
When WB started all this it wasn't clear what the winning strategy was going to be. Now that it is clearer, they're just following.
When WB started all this it wasn't clear what the winning strategy was going to be. Now that it is clearer, they're just following.
Sony built Crackle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackle_(service) but it's failed at this point.
Much like Spotify; it took them many, many years to achieve only a 7% profit margin. Meanwhile, UMG runs at 16%.
The only company that actually makes good money from being a content middleman is, somehow, YouTube. I don't know how they do it. YouTube is among the greatest businesses in human history.
The only company that actually makes good money from being a content middleman is, somehow, YouTube. I don't know how they do it. YouTube is among the greatest businesses in human history.
How they did it: economy of scale, and mingling businesses.
Google had the infrastructure, expertise, experience, and an army of top tier coders to execute on any engineering challenger, all of that even before it acquired YouTube.
Google is mainly an ads business. An expertise edge not only in engineering at large scale, but also in the delivery of web ads. And, given their ads business perform on profiling people, YouTube consumption habits feed the rest of the beast.
If these didn't skip your kind, yet still wondering how did they do it, the following were crucial to make Google unique in their ability to succeed with YouTube (and the rest)
- An engineering first company. They hire wagons of product people and managers, but when things don't turn out positive they switch back to their roots. As an anecdote, on day the CEO felt things were going south. Fired all (probably just most) managers and tasked engineers to figure things out.
- A coherent vision. Google doesn't jump on where's the hype. Their position in A.I recently perhaps couldn't resist the pressure. It sticks to the core competencies while building experimental products on green fields that fit in growing the core business.
- Long term. Clearly Google has so far resisted to make a quick buck. The no evil slogan is gone, but the spirit remain in building long term value. That kept them from tarnishing their reputation while reaping the amounts of profits once everyone could only swear by their products (mail, drive, YouTube, of course search, Android thriving as now the only remaining competitor to iOS, if any other company had acquired Android in that shape when Google swooped it, it would have given up on it seeing how long the road was about to take to make it a viable mobile consumer product)
How did they do it? Google is in the top 5 of all companies that have ever existed. Takes more than a genius and plenty of humbleness to achieve this feat.
Google had the infrastructure, expertise, experience, and an army of top tier coders to execute on any engineering challenger, all of that even before it acquired YouTube.
Google is mainly an ads business. An expertise edge not only in engineering at large scale, but also in the delivery of web ads. And, given their ads business perform on profiling people, YouTube consumption habits feed the rest of the beast.
If these didn't skip your kind, yet still wondering how did they do it, the following were crucial to make Google unique in their ability to succeed with YouTube (and the rest)
- An engineering first company. They hire wagons of product people and managers, but when things don't turn out positive they switch back to their roots. As an anecdote, on day the CEO felt things were going south. Fired all (probably just most) managers and tasked engineers to figure things out.
- A coherent vision. Google doesn't jump on where's the hype. Their position in A.I recently perhaps couldn't resist the pressure. It sticks to the core competencies while building experimental products on green fields that fit in growing the core business.
- Long term. Clearly Google has so far resisted to make a quick buck. The no evil slogan is gone, but the spirit remain in building long term value. That kept them from tarnishing their reputation while reaping the amounts of profits once everyone could only swear by their products (mail, drive, YouTube, of course search, Android thriving as now the only remaining competitor to iOS, if any other company had acquired Android in that shape when Google swooped it, it would have given up on it seeing how long the road was about to take to make it a viable mobile consumer product)
How did they do it? Google is in the top 5 of all companies that have ever existed. Takes more than a genius and plenty of humbleness to achieve this feat.
Because YouTube has found a way to monetize the work of it's content creators. Online influencers are incentivized to make videos to get paid and YouTube has reduced their costs enough to make it worthwhile.
In addition to that, whenever users are just starting out, their videos still get ad rolls but the creator doesn't get any money. That's millions of new videos every day that Youtube can monetize until those creators are eligible to collect the checks for themself (if ever).
Also, YouTube does aggressive caching of very old videos that have very few views. You might need to wait 10 seconds for YT to fetch the video from cold storage before watching, but in the grand scheme of things, it's worth it to them.
In addition to that, whenever users are just starting out, their videos still get ad rolls but the creator doesn't get any money. That's millions of new videos every day that Youtube can monetize until those creators are eligible to collect the checks for themself (if ever).
Also, YouTube does aggressive caching of very old videos that have very few views. You might need to wait 10 seconds for YT to fetch the video from cold storage before watching, but in the grand scheme of things, it's worth it to them.
Disney has been profitable lately.
Also odd to say that Netflix had the infrastructure already. They built it from scratch.
Also odd to say that Netflix had the infrastructure already. They built it from scratch.
I meant they had the infrastructure already when the streaming wars started roughly around Covid.
I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services.
I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.
I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.
"I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited."
There's a lot of "indies releasing things to YouTube directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with, like sketch comedy or (perhaps a bit surprisingly to me) science documentaries, like Veritasium or Practical Engineering.
These are basically indie filmmakers doing a very indie thing that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Movies are, after all, as affected by their release technology as anything else. There's a reason they're all 80-130 minutes, and they have their own genre restrictions as a result of it, especially if you think of it in terms not just of binary possibility but how popular things are. It isn't reasonable to expect a very different distribution method to result in "movies" you'd recognize from the cinema any more than it is reasonable to expect that television would only ever have run "movies" and never developed its own genres that don't work in cinema. Taking into account the need for the content to match its distribution there's a ton of indie stuff on YouTube. What I would say you are really seeing is the restrictiveness of "The Algorithm", and that is an interesting question to ponder on its own.
There's a lot of "indies releasing things to YouTube directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with, like sketch comedy or (perhaps a bit surprisingly to me) science documentaries, like Veritasium or Practical Engineering.
These are basically indie filmmakers doing a very indie thing that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Movies are, after all, as affected by their release technology as anything else. There's a reason they're all 80-130 minutes, and they have their own genre restrictions as a result of it, especially if you think of it in terms not just of binary possibility but how popular things are. It isn't reasonable to expect a very different distribution method to result in "movies" you'd recognize from the cinema any more than it is reasonable to expect that television would only ever have run "movies" and never developed its own genres that don't work in cinema. Taking into account the need for the content to match its distribution there's a ton of indie stuff on YouTube. What I would say you are really seeing is the restrictiveness of "The Algorithm", and that is an interesting question to ponder on its own.
In a similar vein, I remember reading somewhere that creating shows for direct-to-streaming is liberating because, although it is quite similar to TV in that it's telling a story in chunks (usually 30 to 60 minutes) without a guarantee of continuation (renewal), you don't have the primary constraints of traditional television: fitting into a specific time slot, saving time for commercials, and creating hooks that lead neatly into each ad break to get the audience to stick around.
You see this often with Apple TV+ shows. Some episodes are only 40~ minutes while the very next one might be 70. They can scope the episode to only include the content that is required for that story and extend the runtime when they need to include extra details or scenes to make everything flow nicely.
For most viewers, the discretion is worthwhile for better storytelling.
For most viewers, the discretion is worthwhile for better storytelling.
Part of this is that YouTube makes this viable only for creators whose inbound viewers are likely to stay to watch a majority of the content; otherwise, the algorithm penalizes your content for every "bounce." A comedy short that'll attract people who like comedy shorts, and will be over before many people bounce? A long-form science documentary that's likely only going to be clicked by someone who wants to watch a long-form science documentary? Both meet this criterion. But any kind of traditional filmmaking with longer character arcs will be penalized, and that's a really hard thing to see for your creation's primary distribution channel.
Vimeo has tried to prioritize indie feature discovery from what I can tell. Not sure what its ownership or business is. Also not sure how it compares to (in music) soundcloud's or bandcamp's approaches.
I would think this is creating discovery effects specific to indie filmmakers who are doing "a very indie thing that doesn't fit anywhere else" like GP comment said
Rooster Teeth (of "Red vs Blue" and "RWBY" fame) did the "indie filmmaker on youtube" thing pretty successfully. Eventually they moved to their own site, then fell apart after a lot of drama and internal differences.
Also vaguely guestures at all of youtube. Most youtube creators are independent, and a lot of them have higher production value than indie movies. You just don't recognize them because of how the algorithm and monetization favor regular installments of ~10 minute episodes, causing most content to take that form. A documentary simply works better on youtube as a Tom Scott video than as a 45 minute piece (though there are plenty of those too)
Also vaguely guestures at all of youtube. Most youtube creators are independent, and a lot of them have higher production value than indie movies. You just don't recognize them because of how the algorithm and monetization favor regular installments of ~10 minute episodes, causing most content to take that form. A documentary simply works better on youtube as a Tom Scott video than as a 45 minute piece (though there are plenty of those too)
Apparently one of the original Rooster Teeth guys bought the rights back and is going to do something ...
Movie rights will be a big factor also. Events like TIFF, Cannes etc, while being a platform to show films is also where deals are done, distribution rights are signed always for different territories etc.
YouTube is essentially international which may invalidate some pre-existing licence and distribution agreements.
Have you never gotten an error about something being unavailable in your region on Youtube?
Kung Fury would be my go-to example of "viral indie release".
Movies are capital intensive, a movie is less likely to go viral than a video that is made to be viral. Thus, doing this is risky. Also, people wanting to create viral movies probably do not want to make viral videos.
These old movies have already made their money. Anything they can get now is just gravy.
It’s a Wonderful Life is popular because the copyright expired and TV stations could play it for free. Playing it so much got people to watch, and now it’s a classic. It bombed originally.
Putting old movies on YouTube gives them a chance at a second life, and the studio doing it, means they can still earn some money on something that would otherwise just sit in a vault somewhere.
It’s a Wonderful Life is popular because the copyright expired and TV stations could play it for free. Playing it so much got people to watch, and now it’s a classic. It bombed originally.
Putting old movies on YouTube gives them a chance at a second life, and the studio doing it, means they can still earn some money on something that would otherwise just sit in a vault somewhere.
I don’t disagree with you, but the original commentor posed the qeustion Why don’t indie film producers choose to premier on YouTube?.
I'm surprised a lot of things aren't more accessible.
So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE.
I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?
So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE.
I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?
I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD.
The problem is once the rights for a title end up in a library, the accessibility considerations operate at the library level, not the title level. So if some company owns the rights to "n" titles en masse, they're negotiating for the distribution rights to that library.
You can't really pull a Taylor Swift or Def Leppard "re-record for rights" move with movies.
UPDATE: Happy to be wrong about my cited example.. Thanks @andsoitis !
The problem is once the rights for a title end up in a library, the accessibility considerations operate at the library level, not the title level. So if some company owns the rights to "n" titles en masse, they're negotiating for the distribution rights to that library.
You can't really pull a Taylor Swift or Def Leppard "re-record for rights" move with movies.
UPDATE: Happy to be wrong about my cited example.. Thanks @andsoitis !
>
browningstreet 43 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD.
It IS available to stream! See https://www.halhartley.com/amateur
I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD.
It IS available to stream! See https://www.halhartley.com/amateur
Tou-freakin'-che
Not sure how obscure you are willing to go, but a quick look on private trackers do list the movie.
At a finer grain than general "permission", a lot of the issue is with the music. For many pre-streaming movies, the original soundtrack will have been licensed in a way that supported resale but didn't foresee streaming. Making those movies available for streaming would involve tracking down the copyright holders for every piece of music (often the estates or successors of the original composer, but often non-determinate) and renegotiating a licensing deal.
Abandonmedia. They've been posting abandoned software for decades now — without a peep as far as I know.
Yeah there are just a lot of titles with weird rights situations that no one cares about resolving. Maybe you lost clearance on a song in the movie, or one of the actors has a clause in their contract, or some company bought the distribution rights for a certain territory and then went out of business.
Lots of situations where resolving the rights issues is going to cost more than you expect the movie to bring in, especially once you start talking about splitting the revenue with online storefronts.
Lots of situations where resolving the rights issues is going to cost more than you expect the movie to bring in, especially once you start talking about splitting the revenue with online storefronts.
As someone who has built a streaming service, I’m always amazed how much money the studios throw at it and don’t have something good or profitable. The infra cost for my service was then 10% of revenue. I just wish the huge consolidation hadn’t happened, now all of the studios are too protective of their content.
If anyone has ideas for re-purposing or re-targeting a streaming service, I’m all ears.
If anyone has ideas for re-purposing or re-targeting a streaming service, I’m all ears.
Go for international movies. A lot of them have incredibly convoluted rights, so the biggest expense is going to be negociations, but if you can become a destination to find obscure films from varied countries, it might be possible to eke out a slice of the pie.
Could you please expand on your "viral indie release to Youtube" idea? I am just a YT basic user and don't know what is there and what is not beyond HN, random videos, and my relatively simple use cases (e.g. music videos, and movie trailers).
Indie film makers release a lot of their work on youtube.
There hasn't really been a Blair Witch Project movie happening on Youtube yet...
I get that the real issue isn't just YouTube, but that no other horror film, or otherwise, has really matched Blair Witch Project's combination of impact, marketing success, micro-budget, and cultural phenomenon.
I just speculate that if Blair Witch Project were made today, it would likely debut on a platform like YouTube before gaining wider recognition.
I just speculate that if Blair Witch Project were made today, it would likely debut on a platform like YouTube before gaining wider recognition.
The best example I can think of is already mentioned up-thread, but just to drill down on that. Kung Fury[1] was initially released on Youtube (and a few other services, mostly in other countries I think) and became a pretty big viral hit. Enough so that the filmmaker eventually signed a deal to make a sequel[2] with distribution by a traditional film company and some big-name stars. Unfortunately the release of the sequel has been held up for "legal reasons" and FSM only knows when or if it will see the light of day. :-(
Anyway, not as big as BWP, but still a decent example of the concept under discussion, I think.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2
Anyway, not as big as BWP, but still a decent example of the concept under discussion, I think.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2
Just because the quality of the things people upload there isn't up to the arbitrary standards of "as good as the Blair Witch Project" doesn't mean its less valuable
I would argue KanePixels (Kane Parsons) is doing the Indie filmmaker thing very successfully on YouTube. He went from creating a viral hit with his interpretation of The Backrooms, signed a deal with A24, and has continued releasing his own horror short films in the interim. The format isn't the standard 90-120 minutes of most studio movies but his longest videos are nearly an hour long and with each narrative spread across several videos, stitching the whole thing together would look something like a conventional film
https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/
https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/
There have been more niche shows that became quite popular after a YouTube release.
I've seen a few things go that route - Hazbin Hotel was a YouTube pilot ish thing and got picked up on Amazon, I think amazing digital circus got grabbed by someone too.
No one seems to stay on YouTube when it happens though.
No one seems to stay on YouTube when it happens though.
There is a price to pay for the control they’re trying to maintain. That price is called profit, in most cases.
I think you missed a decade or two. This was already a thing and the mainstream didn't exactly have the appetite for it. Check out 'web series' on Wikipedia.
I don't know what you're into but "The Guild" is pretty excellent example of the form.
I don't know what you're into but "The Guild" is pretty excellent example of the form.
> Building a streaming service is pretty expensive..
It's not. At least not for companies of that size. There is PeerTube for that: https://joinpeertube.org/. It can even decrease the load to your servers by spreading the trafic over peers.
It's not. At least not for companies of that size. There is PeerTube for that: https://joinpeertube.org/. It can even decrease the load to your servers by spreading the trafic over peers.
Creating and running a (direct to consumer) profitable streaming service takes a lot more than just “infrastructure”.
Which problems are you expecting if you already have the content, the servers and the software? It's a famous company; people would definitely watch their movies for a small payment or with ads.
[deleted]
agree.
as a 2nd order effect, crowds out the competition: every 90 minutes spent watching a low value film of yours is time not spent watching anything of the competition.
as a 2nd order effect, crowds out the competition: every 90 minutes spent watching a low value film of yours is time not spent watching anything of the competition.
If it's like a regular YT video and monetized as such, there's going to be regular ad breaks... which effectively makes it just like watching a film on cable TV, and I suspect the amount they would earn is similar. Although iirc a cable channel would pay a fixed amount for the syndication rights, then their profit would be from ads in turn, in this case the profits would go straight to the publisher after Youtube takes its cut.
It's also the same channel they put their new trailers on, so the increased watch time should really help with getting their other videos recommended more.
For your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their full movies in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.
That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.
A link to just the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
From IMDb:
From IMDb:
The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary, 7.2)
The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8)
Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2)
City Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5)
Michael Collins (1996, Docudrama, 7.1)
The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9)
Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.6)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, Historical Globetrotting Adventure, 7.2)
Dungeons & Dragons (2000, Adventure Fantasy, 3.7)
Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7)
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, Dark Comedy, 5.6)
The Accidental Tourist (1988, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.7)
Critters 4 (1992, Horror Sci-Fi, 4.1)
Murder in the First (1995, Legal Thriller, 7.3)
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982, Drama Romance War, 7.1)
December Boys (2007, Drama Romance, 6.5)
Waiting for Guffman (1996, Satire, 7.4)
Lionheart (1987, Adventure Drama, 5.1)
Oh, God! (1977, Comedy Fantasy, 6.6)
Crossing Delancey (1988, Comedy Romance, 6.9)
Price of Glory (2000, Drama Sport, 6.1)
Flight of the Living Dead (2007, Horror, 5.1)
Deal of the Century (1983, Dark Comedy Satire Crime, 4.6)
Deathtrap (1982, Dark Comedy Suspense Mystery, 7.0)
The Mission (1986, Historical Epic Jungle Adventure, 7.4)
SubUrbia (1996, Comedy Drama, 6.7)
Hot To Trot (1988, Comedy Fantasy, 4.5)
True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2)
The Science of Sleep (2006, Quirky Comedy Drama Romance, 7.2)
The Big Tease (1999, Comedy, 6.1)> Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7)
My favorite zombie flick, if you've not seen it you need to!
My favorite zombie flick, if you've not seen it you need to!
Do I need to watch part 1 first?
Nope. Same applies to the third one.
Awesome funny movie and i think the best part of this „trilogy“.
Awesome funny movie and i think the best part of this „trilogy“.
Yeah I was going to say the III one is surprisingly good. I used to know the director and he was super cool. Also produced re-animator. He also did a weird low budget movie called "society" which is interesting.
There are a few horror and sci fi movies with similar themes to Society that all came out around the same time. Society is probably the wildest. Worth a watch.
One film from 1962, one 1977, the rest 80's-plus.
Too bad we're not seeing 30's classics, etc.
Too bad we're not seeing 30's classics, etc.
Out of that list, The Science of Sleep stands out to me. It is a film by Michel Gondry who also directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It is kind of an indie pretentious movie, but if you are into that kind of thing it is a decent one.
"The Year of Living Dangerously" is a surprising one to show up. Reasonably profitable and successful film for the time.
Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver - she usually doesn't get the romantic role.
She became so enamoured with Mel Gibson that the man whom she eventually married resembles Gibson.
Linda Hunt won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (her character is male in the movie), she played the "boss" on NCIS-LA TV show for several years.
wikipedia page says 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver - she usually doesn't get the romantic role.
She became so enamoured with Mel Gibson that the man whom she eventually married resembles Gibson.
Linda Hunt won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (her character is male in the movie), she played the "boss" on NCIS-LA TV show for several years.
wikipedia page says 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.
> Hot To Trot (1988, Comedy Fantasy, 4.5)
haha
>True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2)
watch this if you're a fan of Talking Heads or Spalding Gray
haha
>True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2)
watch this if you're a fan of Talking Heads or Spalding Gray
AVClub on City Heat:
"City Heat has the misfortune to peak in its first five minutes. "That didn't stop Up (the Pixar film) from being a masterpiece, so that's hardly an excuse /j
Video unavailable
The uploader has not made this video available in your country
so much for that
so much for that
Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube, its easy cash for them on films that are sitting idle otherwise. Anything they aren't licensing to anyone anywhere should just be on YouTube. Or any sort of streaming platform that has sane ads, and anyone can see. It is really sad to me there's no genuine YouTube competitor.
> Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube
Agreed, but because all of that should be public domain at this point. The idea that some company needs rent-seeking motivation to allow people to view 50-year old media literally until everyone who could have consumed it when it was published is dead is absurd.
Agreed, but because all of that should be public domain at this point. The idea that some company needs rent-seeking motivation to allow people to view 50-year old media literally until everyone who could have consumed it when it was published is dead is absurd.
It's such a scandal that even though the original Mickey Mouse cartoons are finally in the public domain, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act is still preventing anything created in our lifetimes from ever joining the public domain during them.
I wanted to say that too, but I rather take any wins we can get. I mean, the best part is, if they made their movies public domain THEN put them all on youtube, they would earn so much ad revenue from them being on their YouTube accounts.
But I think that the real shame is that there's no true YouTube competitor for ad-supported streaming
"you should just do X" generally means you don't have the full picture. You're completely disregarding all the union stuff that needs to be considered. You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do.
Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in place. HN knows best. It must be that easy.
Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in place. HN knows best. It must be that easy.
Early US copyright was something like 20 years + 20 years if they were still alive.
Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright already.
I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended copyright to approx 100 years.
Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright already.
I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended copyright to approx 100 years.
I'm not saying that shouldn't change. But you're right! Just change copyright law! Easy. Brilliant.
Apparently it was super easy to change copyright law to extend it over and over again.
> You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do.
We're talking about movies that are 45 years old at a minimum. The majority of the people "involved in making the film" are dead at this point.
We're talking about movies that are 45 years old at a minimum. The majority of the people "involved in making the film" are dead at this point.
Are the little guys receiving royalties from these movies decades later? I recall instances where actors paid some of the little guys out of their own pocket to keep movies going, Deadpool is an example of this.
Yes, I'm pretty sure they do.
That really depends, as the studios have some tricks up their sleeves, like
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Check out Peroscope films.
They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and release it and claim copyright over it.
I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube and they freaked out.
Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming.
But they did have the YouTube terms of service.
So, back to this.
If they had public domain stuff they wanted to protect, this is another less obvious way to do it.
They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and release it and claim copyright over it.
I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube and they freaked out.
Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming.
But they did have the YouTube terms of service.
So, back to this.
If they had public domain stuff they wanted to protect, this is another less obvious way to do it.
That's interesting, how did you find these guys?
They found me. I found public domain old black and white military training videos on a public resource on the internet and put them in YouTube. Then they did the YouTube strike thing and I called them and the guy was a total jerk on the phone. Like Jerry McGuire or that other guy Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder.
They put a strike on you because they had the film themselves and were claiming copyright?
Were you putting up those films just as a public good service or was it for something else?
Were you putting up those films just as a public good service or was it for something else?
I was putting them up in good faith as a public service.
Yes, they did. But when I pointed out that they didn't in fact own the copyright they highlighted this detail about the youtube terms if service, so I still had to take the video down, not because it violated copyright, but because it violated the YouTube terms of service.
Yes, they did. But when I pointed out that they didn't in fact own the copyright they highlighted this detail about the youtube terms if service, so I still had to take the video down, not because it violated copyright, but because it violated the YouTube terms of service.
Youtube enforces its own terms of service, not them. They just bullied you into removing the content so they can keep their ad revenue from the views without having to compete with you.
Sounds about right. They flagged it via the youtube process so I don't even know how I would dispute that with them.
Which part of the Youtube terms of service did it violate?
I dont know, here is their contact info:
https://stock.periscopefilm.com/contact-stock/
As I said, super unpleasant folks.
https://stock.periscopefilm.com/contact-stock/
As I said, super unpleasant folks.
It’s Zaslav-era WB so there’s probably some kind of weird tqx write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they’re living up to in the cheapest way possible.
Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.
Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.
This is a good point. They may lose rights if they fail to distribute for a certain amount of time. They may revert to the filmmaker or someone else. This is a way to comply contractually.
They're not being dumped. Putting them on YT lets WB make passive money while maintaining control of their rights with little effort on their part. If WB makes a better deal down the road, they can hide or delete the movies from YT.
This also makes some of the movies more valuable by revealing hidden demand. WB will see their YT stats for their films and see where future investments or licensing deals may pay off. A streaming company is disincentivized to tell the movie owner how the film is doing.
This also makes some of the movies more valuable by revealing hidden demand. WB will see their YT stats for their films and see where future investments or licensing deals may pay off. A streaming company is disincentivized to tell the movie owner how the film is doing.
My first thought upon reading the headline was that it's better that they put everything on YouTube, than delete more stuff like what they did to Cartoon Network's website:
https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bro...
https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bro...
When Jeremy Irons was asked why he did Dungeons & Dragons (2000), he replied "Are you kidding? I'd just bought a castle, I had to pay for it somehow"
(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/trivia/)
(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/trivia/)
Michael Caine's quote about Jaws 4 is similarly great:
"I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
"I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
from the Hot To Trot Wikipedia page:
"In an interview in 2011, Bobcat Goldthwait said that he got the script for Hot to Trot and wrote "Why would I do this?" on the cover, to which his manager responded by writing a dollar sign"
"In an interview in 2011, Bobcat Goldthwait said that he got the script for Hot to Trot and wrote "Why would I do this?" on the cover, to which his manager responded by writing a dollar sign"
As someone with more modest means, I'm wondering - was that just a quip, or is it really possible for rich people to buy property first, and then figure out how to pay for it? How do they finance it?
For the type of rich people like actors, sports stars, etc, yes.
You may have an actor of a certain budget who has no roles lined up currently, but is a pretty safe bet he will get some lined up eventually, and so he's a decent risk for a loan.
This is private lending and is a completely different world than a home loan that is resold. Depending on the dollar amount, the lender will have their own appraisers, etc taking careful look at the collateral (which might be the castle you're buying, or that and more, or something else entirely, like royalties due, etc).
They will then structure it so that it's a heads they win, tails they don't lose - only lending as much as they're sure they'll be able to get back out (up to and including having alternate buyers lined up to purchase the property if it gets foreclosed, etc).
You may have an actor of a certain budget who has no roles lined up currently, but is a pretty safe bet he will get some lined up eventually, and so he's a decent risk for a loan.
This is private lending and is a completely different world than a home loan that is resold. Depending on the dollar amount, the lender will have their own appraisers, etc taking careful look at the collateral (which might be the castle you're buying, or that and more, or something else entirely, like royalties due, etc).
They will then structure it so that it's a heads they win, tails they don't lose - only lending as much as they're sure they'll be able to get back out (up to and including having alternate buyers lined up to purchase the property if it gets foreclosed, etc).
> How do they finance it?
The same way most people do, with a mortgage. The difference is what a bank is willing to lend you if they see you have a significantly higher than average income.
It's also possible he wasn't just talking about the purchase payment. Large, old, valuable buildings also often require very large upkeep bills.
The same way most people do, with a mortgage. The difference is what a bank is willing to lend you if they see you have a significantly higher than average income.
It's also possible he wasn't just talking about the purchase payment. Large, old, valuable buildings also often require very large upkeep bills.
It depends on levels of money. At musk levels, it's cheaper to borrow from your shares on margin, spend that, and never repay anything but interest - no financing involved except lending out your own assets. At multi-million illiquid, you're going to go to a bank, show them accounts and historic income, and because you're an actor with bursty income, they'll smooth out the line and decide if the loan you want is above it or below it. He likely had the means for the down payment and the assets for enough monthlies that the bank felt it was de-risked, but you can also do hard-money loans and similar if you have expectations of payment - but they tend to come with heavy duty strings.
Which is to say - for musks, not like you or I, for the illiquid, very much the same process, but with money managers and the like doing the actual bank negotiation.
Which is to say - for musks, not like you or I, for the illiquid, very much the same process, but with money managers and the like doing the actual bank negotiation.
This is the castle in question:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcoe_Castle https://jeremyirons.net/kilcoe-castle/
It’s quite something. He bought it for IEP 150,000 (around €190,000) but likely spent an order of magnitude more restoring it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcoe_Castle https://jeremyirons.net/kilcoe-castle/
It’s quite something. He bought it for IEP 150,000 (around €190,000) but likely spent an order of magnitude more restoring it.
Oh nice they got The Science of Sleep (2006) on here, great film with Gael García Bernal by Michel Gondry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyg_ENvHzc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyg_ENvHzc
I like that this article made us reminisce (or for some, discover) old and somewhat forgotten films.
I'd forgotten all about that film, it was delightful.
Sony has this thing they call Bravia Core (which they no renamed to Sony Pictures Core) and as far as I can tell, it’s restricted to Bravia TVs (okay also PlayStations and an Xperia phone apparently). You get a certain number of credits when you buy a tv I guess. And then I don’t think you can even buy more. I get that it’s Sony trying to monetize their content in a way (though I’m not sure it really incentivizes the TV purchase if people don’t really know about it…) but it seems like a step in the wrong direction if other studios are looking to make their catalogs more accessible. The killer feature for the Sony service though is that it’s super high bandwidth and really high quality stream. (But, in testing it, it seems some of their tv processor hardware or memory limits can’t handle the load).
It’s like the most bizarre version of a walled garden.
At least using YouTube kind of makes it accessible to more people. And YouTube does have some high bitrate options
It’s like the most bizarre version of a walled garden.
At least using YouTube kind of makes it accessible to more people. And YouTube does have some high bitrate options
Oh neat, I have that on my new TV and I never tried it out. Thanks for letting me know about it!
All of Tarkovsky is on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc
It's been discussed here before but there are amazingly good soviet films available on YouTube.
These are movies nobody is lining up to syndicate, for a company desperate for cash. Why not dump them on YouTube and get a bit of ad revenue? It’s low effort relative to the income it generates. Even if it’s unlikely to make much money.
The why not is because it potentially devalues the prestige of the individual work’s IP, and the brand in general.
This is short-term optimization, par for the course with the new Disovery-owned Warner Bros.
This is short-term optimization, par for the course with the new Disovery-owned Warner Bros.
I thought that at first, but if you look at the movies its hard to say any have much prestige? And you could probably make the case that getting more eyeballs on it will, if anything, make them a bit more valuable in 10 years. I still remember watching the same shitty movies on cable over and over as a kid just because they were available, and I imagine those movies have a higher place in the collective memory now because they were available.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
Though I would imagine if you were Tom Hanks or Ryan Reynolds you may be upset some of your least popular work is now the most accessible.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
Though I would imagine if you were Tom Hanks or Ryan Reynolds you may be upset some of your least popular work is now the most accessible.
Well, if any of these movies ever end up in a box like this I'm going to feel ripped off. That's the prestige those movies have now lost.
https://shop.warnerbros.co.uk/products/warner-bros-100th-ann...
https://shop.warnerbros.co.uk/products/warner-bros-100th-ann...
The selection added has mostly reached end-of-life on cultural relevance and/or prestige. This is like reopening a tapped mine hoping for a few more nuggets of value. If anything gets too much traction they'll move it to a paid service.
I think prestige is hard to gauge from availability channels, and ebbs and flows. Sometimes visibility even increases interest and regard, if it's a sort of forgotten film.
Night of the Living Dead has been freely available for some time for example and is still considered a classic of horror. I'm not sure it hurt Criterion when they released a version of it. People are paying for the restoration and extras.
Night of the Living Dead has been freely available for some time for example and is still considered a classic of horror. I'm not sure it hurt Criterion when they released a version of it. People are paying for the restoration and extras.
This stage was set 7 years ago when ATT overpaid for Time Warner by $60B+. There was no way to recover from that.
WB has decided these movies have no prestige.
"""
33 unavailable videos are hidden
No videos in this playlist yet
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beat me to it, in mere seconds
yup geolocked. :(
My guess it's that they do it to discover what "hidden gems" actually have potential, and that they may not stay free.
I can't imagine any of these have potential. The Crossing Delancy cinematic universe isn't coming anytime soon. I think they just want some short term juice.
Bingo. YouTube has a massive audience and builtin social aspects. Something will eventually go viral from this and draw customer acquisition to the WB platform.
There is an increasing amount of UK TV uploaded to YouTube from whoever owns the rights. Have seen The Bill (26 seasons) and pretty much all of Gordon Ramsey's work recently (including a 8hr entire season video). ITV appears to have even created the brand "Our Stories" for their YouTube fly on the wall telly content.
Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily found on YouTube even without the rights holder being involved anyway - so better they get paid?
Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily found on YouTube even without the rights holder being involved anyway - so better they get paid?
Also 18 seasons of Taskmaster, which at least I think is fantastic quality.
Just watched one for the first time today! You are correct.
Channel 4's been doing it too, in fact absolutely loads of their shows are on YouTube now and they do it as a weekly release, so for example last week they posted the first episode of "Celebrity Hunted" season 6, and then a week later episode 2, etc.
Take a look at their playlists to see what I mean, tons of stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4/playlists
They've also got other channels, eg you can watych most of grand designs over here: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4Homes/playlists
Guessing they realised its more profitable to use someone elses bandwidth and run ads.
Take a look at their playlists to see what I mean, tons of stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4/playlists
They've also got other channels, eg you can watych most of grand designs over here: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4Homes/playlists
Guessing they realised its more profitable to use someone elses bandwidth and run ads.
Now do Coyote v. ACME!
(It was a Roger Rabbit-style live action + cartoon character blend, based on an awesome newspaper parody, that was completely created, received rave reviews, and then shitcanned by the befuddling new accounting practices of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
(It was a Roger Rabbit-style live action + cartoon character blend, based on an awesome newspaper parody, that was completely created, received rave reviews, and then shitcanned by the befuddling new accounting practices of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
If Trump signed an EO to release this I might excuse a couple of his other ones.
I watched one of these movies after reading this discussion on HN. It was blocked halfway thru the movie "not available in this region" (European IP address).
This is cool!
I do get it, these movies are most likely basically "worthless" for WB at this point.
Hell, I remember seeing Deathtrap and True Stories in the Wal-Mart $5 DVD bin 20 years ago.
This is still better than letting them basically be completely lost/unavailable and the ad revenue makes it a positive cashflow proposition I bet.
I do get it, these movies are most likely basically "worthless" for WB at this point.
Hell, I remember seeing Deathtrap and True Stories in the Wal-Mart $5 DVD bin 20 years ago.
This is still better than letting them basically be completely lost/unavailable and the ad revenue makes it a positive cashflow proposition I bet.
Maybe this helps their efforts agaisnt illegal hosting of those old movies? It is available for free for users, and they will keep attacking piracy.
They can at any time substitute the full movies with ads to buy the collection, before IP expires. It is a low cost experiment.
They can at any time substitute the full movies with ads to buy the collection, before IP expires. It is a low cost experiment.
Why are some great films mixed with some duds? This is classic Hollywood accounting. They sell N files for $M and then split the revenue evenly. The great film gets $M/N and so does every dud.
In practice, the great film's revenues have already "earned out" any advances so that $M/N must be shared with outsiders. Often, the duds haven't made enough so the studio gets to keep all $M/N.
I don't know that's what they're doing here. Certainly, they have enough data to accurately allocate revenues. But it's what's been done in the past.
In practice, the great film's revenues have already "earned out" any advances so that $M/N must be shared with outsiders. Often, the duds haven't made enough so the studio gets to keep all $M/N.
I don't know that's what they're doing here. Certainly, they have enough data to accurately allocate revenues. But it's what's been done in the past.
The “Hollywood accounting” meme makes no sense. Anyone in the media production business can take 5 min to read the Wikipedia article on it (or use common sense) and learn that they should not accept compensation on terms completely controlled by the opposing party.
If they do, then they had no negotiating power in the first place, and so had nothing to lose by accepting those terms (because they were not going to get a better offer such as more cash upfront).
If they do, then they had no negotiating power in the first place, and so had nothing to lose by accepting those terms (because they were not going to get a better offer such as more cash upfront).
> By releasing a handful of hidden gems next to some of the worst films it ever released, WBD is doing a disservice to its creative teams of past and present
Making older movies publicly available at no cost (albeit with ads) is good, actually?
Is the suggestion that there's no bad content on Max and that's why they should put the movies there, instead, behind a paywall? Instead of Youtube, he wants these movies next to Dr. Pimple Popper?
(Ironically, I'm pretty sure this is #1 on Hacker News because people appreciate the heads-up about the free resource, and not because folks support his call to remove them from public view.)
Making older movies publicly available at no cost (albeit with ads) is good, actually?
Is the suggestion that there's no bad content on Max and that's why they should put the movies there, instead, behind a paywall? Instead of Youtube, he wants these movies next to Dr. Pimple Popper?
(Ironically, I'm pretty sure this is #1 on Hacker News because people appreciate the heads-up about the free resource, and not because folks support his call to remove them from public view.)
I work at Google, and I didn't even know that there are good movies you can watch for free with a YT Premium subscription until I saw this article:
https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront
Includes Roger Rabbit, Billy Madison, Good Will Hunting, Wayne's World, Mars Attacks, Grumpy Old Men, Osmosis Jones, the 90s TMNT movie…
https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront
Includes Roger Rabbit, Billy Madison, Good Will Hunting, Wayne's World, Mars Attacks, Grumpy Old Men, Osmosis Jones, the 90s TMNT movie…
For those who are interested, Mosfilm has been uploading a bunch of Russian movies to YouTube for a long time.
You can watch Tarkovsky's movies, for example.
And one of my personal favorites - Kin-Dza-Dza! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYHv8eJrW2Y
You can watch Tarkovsky's movies, for example.
And one of my personal favorites - Kin-Dza-Dza! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYHv8eJrW2Y
Last time I checked there was no age check on the horror movies, which is especially strange for access from Germany
Murder in the First is one of them, and it is a long favorite of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X42yOL5Ah4E&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
It has the best performance I've ever seen by Kevin Bacon, and a solid performance from Christian Slater. Gary Oldman is a solid villian. R. L. Emery does his usual thing, but he's really good at that usual thing. I think about lines and ideas from it frequently. Granted, this is partly because the movie came out when I was 15 and I watched it a formative age with friends. But I've also watched it recently, and I think it holds up.
It has the best performance I've ever seen by Kevin Bacon, and a solid performance from Christian Slater. Gary Oldman is a solid villian. R. L. Emery does his usual thing, but he's really good at that usual thing. I think about lines and ideas from it frequently. Granted, this is partly because the movie came out when I was 15 and I watched it a formative age with friends. But I've also watched it recently, and I think it holds up.
This is what I thought digital content would be two decades ago.
I love this.
It's been ages since I've seen "Oh God" or "Hot to Trot". Not great movies, not genre or culture defining, but fine. These are movies I'd watch if they were on.
I hope they do more. And I hope other distributors follow suit. Basically, I want Critters 1-3.
It's been ages since I've seen "Oh God" or "Hot to Trot". Not great movies, not genre or culture defining, but fine. These are movies I'd watch if they were on.
I hope they do more. And I hope other distributors follow suit. Basically, I want Critters 1-3.
wikipedia page for "Hot to Trot", besides Bobcat Goldthwait, has Virginia Madsen, Dabney Coleman, and the voice of John Candy.
Released in that dead zone known as late august, in 1988.
0, zero, null!!!, percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 22/100 on Metacritic.
Nominated for 5 Razzies - of course, they didn't "win" any.
Don't think I've ever seen it on TV.
Released in that dead zone known as late august, in 1988.
0, zero, null!!!, percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 22/100 on Metacritic.
Nominated for 5 Razzies - of course, they didn't "win" any.
Don't think I've ever seen it on TV.
When it was fairly recent. Maybe a year or two out of theaters
It would be great if they started putting the canceled and removed cartoons on YouTube as well. Stuff like Final Space, Close Enough, and Infinity Train, which AFAIK has no legal way of watching anymore, could get a new audience on YouTube.
The problem here (and problably the reason why they were removed from paid streaming services) are residuals [1]: Even if nobody watches them, studios still may have to pay actors, directors, writers, etc. a share. I assume the movies put on YouTube don't have any residual agreements.
[1] https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-tv-and-theatrical-residua...
[1] https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-tv-and-theatrical-residua...
Yeah, and I suspect also potential weirdness with tax law and writing off TV shows as a loss makes it hard to release again.
I actually do have legit copies of Infinity Train, I bought all four seasons on Amazon before the huge purge a couple years ago, but I would like legit copies of Close Enough.
I genuinely don't know what Warner Bros actually wants us to do? Is their official stance "it's ok to pirate it"?
I actually do have legit copies of Infinity Train, I bought all four seasons on Amazon before the huge purge a couple years ago, but I would like legit copies of Close Enough.
I genuinely don't know what Warner Bros actually wants us to do? Is their official stance "it's ok to pirate it"?
Free money?
It's probably zero effort to upload them to YouTube. People watch them. YouTube generates ad revenue and pays out Warner Brothers.
They probably choose the movies nobody wants to pay for any more on VoD/DVD and nobody views on paid streaming services.
It's probably zero effort to upload them to YouTube. People watch them. YouTube generates ad revenue and pays out Warner Brothers.
They probably choose the movies nobody wants to pay for any more on VoD/DVD and nobody views on paid streaming services.
As always, don't count on it lasting. Nevertheless, it's a welcome move from WB, even if I've already fallen out of movie watching. I'm quite surprised they did it region-free.
Even though the article says this initiative is not part of YouTube Movies/Premium, assumedly if one does have YT Premium/Music, then these movies should be ad-free, correct?
Great was my first thought - except that I am met with “the uploader have not made this video available on your country” (Denmark). So no value for me…
I don’t know about officially sanctioned releases, but I feel like I’ve watched entire movies through YouTube shorts at this point… there’s a really simple grift that rockets to the top of the algorithm and also pushes people into a pipeline for other clips of the movie:
1. Clip a movie scene and crop it for vertical aspect ratio (maybe some AI is used here to choose the focus point of the scene)
2. Add royalty-free background music and possibly other tweaks like mirroring the video
3. Title it something generic that doesn’t acknowledge it’s a movie/show, like “College dropout beats Harvard Law grads to the job” for the scene from Suits (Note: for shorts, the title doesn’t matter if it’s algorithmically chosen to play next… in fact at this point the more relevant title is the optional link to a different short… the real title is barely visible)
4. Do not mention the name of the movie/show in the title or description
There are hundreds of accounts producing these shorts on an industrial scale. It’s easy to see how the automation works and also why it’s successful. It’s clickbait (people want to comment or ask for the title, or correct the title to mention it’s actually from a movie); it’s addicting (it funnels people into watching more clips from the same movie… funny how YouTube knows to do that but not that it’s copyrighted, btw); it’s self-optimizing (if the algorithm doesn’t surface the next short, people go looking for it specifically); and of course, it’s automatable (everything from curation to editing can be automated, and just a sprinkle of AI is apparently enough to obfuscate the automation).
What’s fascinating is that YouTube hasn’t stopped this. The shorts algorithm can obviously detect the similarity between clips from a movie, but the copyright/spam detection algorithm can’t detect the same.
1. Clip a movie scene and crop it for vertical aspect ratio (maybe some AI is used here to choose the focus point of the scene)
2. Add royalty-free background music and possibly other tweaks like mirroring the video
3. Title it something generic that doesn’t acknowledge it’s a movie/show, like “College dropout beats Harvard Law grads to the job” for the scene from Suits (Note: for shorts, the title doesn’t matter if it’s algorithmically chosen to play next… in fact at this point the more relevant title is the optional link to a different short… the real title is barely visible)
4. Do not mention the name of the movie/show in the title or description
There are hundreds of accounts producing these shorts on an industrial scale. It’s easy to see how the automation works and also why it’s successful. It’s clickbait (people want to comment or ask for the title, or correct the title to mention it’s actually from a movie); it’s addicting (it funnels people into watching more clips from the same movie… funny how YouTube knows to do that but not that it’s copyrighted, btw); it’s self-optimizing (if the algorithm doesn’t surface the next short, people go looking for it specifically); and of course, it’s automatable (everything from curation to editing can be automated, and just a sprinkle of AI is apparently enough to obfuscate the automation).
What’s fascinating is that YouTube hasn’t stopped this. The shorts algorithm can obviously detect the similarity between clips from a movie, but the copyright/spam detection algorithm can’t detect the same.
What i never understood:
Why not use some kind of interlacing and randomly sort the lines. The result is a valid video file which could be uploaded to YouTube. Then deinterlace with a browser plugin and the random pattern used to scramble the lines. Same can be applied to the audio.
Why not use some kind of interlacing and randomly sort the lines. The result is a valid video file which could be uploaded to YouTube. Then deinterlace with a browser plugin and the random pattern used to scramble the lines. Same can be applied to the audio.
Not sure I’m understanding you, but it sounds like you’re asking why not upload a video that’s scrambled until viewed with a browser plugin that knows how to unscramble it?
That would be cool, but it won’t be very effective as a viral video if everyone needs to have a browser plugin installed :)
The challenge here is to circumvent the copyright algorithms while still looking like a normal video to the user (who has no external tools installed).
However, for things like hosting pirated streams or sharing content out-of-band, it would be interesting. It’s basically the a minimally lossless form of steganography.
That would be cool, but it won’t be very effective as a viral video if everyone needs to have a browser plugin installed :)
The challenge here is to circumvent the copyright algorithms while still looking like a normal video to the user (who has no external tools installed).
However, for things like hosting pirated streams or sharing content out-of-band, it would be interesting. It’s basically the a minimally lossless form of steganography.
Because that requires extra effort from users. The intention here is to maximize the number of viewers reached, not to be maximally evasive.
Youtube doesn't want to stop things like this. It is only when studios get furious and go after Alphabet that they'll finally move to do something about it.
Yeah I guess that’s the interesting thing - where are the normally litigious studios?
Tinfoil hat time – I’ve noticed these shorts cropping up from shows which are about to be re-released on Netflix…
Tinfoil hat time – I’ve noticed these shorts cropping up from shows which are about to be re-released on Netflix…
Then that's not tinfoil bat that's just "oh they had a small marketing budget"
Sure but it’d be kind of weird if they chose to launder it through all these spammy accounts instead of doing it above board. I guess it’s more effective this way though. They get more reach than they would from their single obviously branded account, and as the rightsholder they know they won’t get any (valid) DMCA complaints. And at the end of the day, Google has no reason to care and users are happy. Sure it’d be nice if the clips didn’t have annoying background music but that’s the tax we pay to algorithmic incentives…
Quite nice that they, unlike the free ones on the "Youtube Movies" channel, can be downloaded by YouTube Premium users without any hassle.
Within the last 2 or 3 months, I have noticed that a lot of old movies are popping up on my YouTube feed. This includes full movies from the 30s to the 90s, and some are even in other languages. They are being uploaded, often with a small watermark in the corner, and they are not taken down.
I am rather curious as to why this is happening now (and happening across multiple countries, apparently) but I kinda like it.
I am rather curious as to why this is happening now (and happening across multiple countries, apparently) but I kinda like it.
Why? My guess is the data Youtube Analytics makes available and the potential for making something a cult classic.
To boot, if there’s no revenue, there’s no need to pay creative people. Indeed, if it boosts expenses under Hollywood accounting practices, those expenses might offset other income that would otherwise be owed to artists and their estates.
To boot, if there’s no revenue, there’s no need to pay creative people. Indeed, if it boosts expenses under Hollywood accounting practices, those expenses might offset other income that would otherwise be owed to artists and their estates.
I think this is a play on testing how the DRM of their catalog looks like. Looking through my mcn cms they have all the applicable claims on the content so they are possibly testing how many infringing videos are on YouTube as well as using all this content as a content funnel
Since those are mostly old movies, my immediate thought was: "maybe it's a new creative way to create a new income stream for hard-to-sell-otherwise assets?". If a decent enough number of users watch them, it could bring some cash to the publisher, couldn't it?
[deleted]
people talking about ad revenue... It feels more like a reputational play, ie: throw some free movies out with the WBD logo, more people recognize the brand strength of WBD, then subscribe to Max. Though the selection is small and the movies don't look very good at a glance..
There just isn't much value in most old films. There are a handful of standouts per year, and anything in a major franchise, but the demand for everything else is low, so you might as well make it as easy to find as possible and get what money you can from it.
I think it does two things:
1. It puts these otherwise worthless movies to work and earns some ad revenue even if it is peanuts
2. There is always the chance a clip goes inexplicably viral on social and suddenly finds new relevance to the point that someone does want to pay money for it.
1. It puts these otherwise worthless movies to work and earns some ad revenue even if it is peanuts
2. There is always the chance a clip goes inexplicably viral on social and suddenly finds new relevance to the point that someone does want to pay money for it.
It's not strange that they are attempting to monetize movies that don't generate subscriptions or VOD revenue. WB/Discovery doesn't have a free streaming service like Tubi, PlutoTV, FreeVee, etc. so why not YouTube? The CPMs are great.
I imagine the selection seems random because these are films that WB has the most favorable contracts for -- So there is no need for them to track number of streams so they can send some director or production company penny checks every month, etc.
[deleted]
All paid for, near zero cost to distribute, small crumbs of revenue, but from enough crumbs - a loaf can be made, and they have a lot of crumbs.
I have poked around and watched a few and I liked them. Good for you WB = adapt and prosper
YouTube playlist with the movies https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
Is it even a "release" when it's on youboob?
Will they allow downoad? Will they enforce ads and popups in order to view these movies?
It's more like they gave the licensess to goggle than actually "releasing" the movies...
Will they allow downoad? Will they enforce ads and popups in order to view these movies?
It's more like they gave the licensess to goggle than actually "releasing" the movies...
If we stopped watching, they would pay us to watch. Holly wood casts spells.
I think, for viewers, it's a win. Free movies, no DRM, and no region locks? But it's ironic that YouTube is now offering a more open and accessible archive than most official streaming services
At the moment those are region locked.
Maybe they are republishing the movies in the cheapest way to keep the rights?
Mr. Nice Guy has 15M views so far. I don't know what that comes out to in ad revenue, but it seems like maybe this was a good idea. Most of the others don't have anywhere near this, though.
I've been using Youtube to re-discover a lot of fun movies from the 80s-00s that I never saw when I was a kid. It's quite nice to tune in and out while working.
They do no longer remember who holds the IP but have copies laying about. So post them, if they do not get a strike by a ip owner- they might be actual yours?
I think it's pretty obvious.
They think it's going to makes more money with YouTube advertisement than the traditional copy selling.
They think it's going to makes more money with YouTube advertisement than the traditional copy selling.
Honestly maybe just because they can?
They have these relatively obscure movies that aren't really worth much so why not throw them on youtube and give them the best possible chance of being watched.
I think it's a great move honestly, I know a tv show from the UK that's been doing the same, hopefully more shows/movies will do it as well.
They have these relatively obscure movies that aren't really worth much so why not throw them on youtube and give them the best possible chance of being watched.
I think it's a great move honestly, I know a tv show from the UK that's been doing the same, hopefully more shows/movies will do it as well.
[deleted]
A friendly reminder that your local library has a ton of free online access to news sites, movies, and ebooks! Libraries are amazing! Support them!
There's a small chance they will get a cult following with more exposure and lead to increase in value of the IP.
I'm surprised by the quality of some of these movies, they're not no name failures.
The wind and the lion! Took me years to find a digital copy of that movie about 7 years ago
Because they need all the money they can get, they are a sinking ship. Next question.
Could be for market research. Whichever is the most popular, gets remade or whatever.
I will go ahead and say that some of these movies were given 'for free' some years ago. In some countries, Sunday newspapers and/or magazines would come with a 'free' DVD. But they were never giving away the blockbusters, they would give away good movies, with good cast (e.g. Mission - De Niro).
So there are so many (hundreds? thousands?) of DVDs/copies floating out there, to the point that nobody would pay a fee to watch them.
I had a collection of those 'free' DVDs that came in newspapers/magazines. Some years back I 'ripped' them all (kept photos of the album with the DVDs as proof of ownership) and threw away (responsibly) hundreds of DVD disks. I have never watched any of them.
I do not believe that all these "views" listed are real.. "True stories", 29k views in 6 days?? Really?? I think people search for "<title> full movie" and click on anything that comes up, as they search for some blockbuster/pirated movie.
And/or some people will click, use their InternetDownloadManager (or similar), download the 1080, save it, and never watch it.
So there are so many (hundreds? thousands?) of DVDs/copies floating out there, to the point that nobody would pay a fee to watch them.
I had a collection of those 'free' DVDs that came in newspapers/magazines. Some years back I 'ripped' them all (kept photos of the album with the DVDs as proof of ownership) and threw away (responsibly) hundreds of DVD disks. I have never watched any of them.
I do not believe that all these "views" listed are real.. "True stories", 29k views in 6 days?? Really?? I think people search for "<title> full movie" and click on anything that comes up, as they search for some blockbuster/pirated movie.
And/or some people will click, use their InternetDownloadManager (or similar), download the 1080, save it, and never watch it.
Very nice. Unfortunately no Brazilian Portuguese subtitles.
Ok but how am I going to watch the first three Critters films??
Good luck getting kids to watch them. Kids today have a hate on for movies or TV older than themselves. It makes sense since there has only been a handful of great movies in the last 20 years. Dumping B grade and lower stuff on YouTube is only going to reinforce the idea.
It’s hard to believe how far Hollywood has fallen. I haven’t paid much attention to trailers in years.
It’s hard to believe how far Hollywood has fallen. I haven’t paid much attention to trailers in years.
because no one watches them, so better be available, and in peoples minds, grab attention (which is the #1 commodity in the world) than fall to obscurity
looks like they already removed all of those. I just opened saved playlist and found that non videos available.
Now if only whoever owns the rights (Fox? Disney?) would follow suit and drop the old Fox TV catalog (Herman's Head. Whoops!, Parker Lewis Can't Lose) on youtube so I could rewatch the shows I loved as a kid, but never stream anywhere.
Have you tried finding a pirated copy anywhere? I went through an ordeal trying to find the original 60s batman show online for someone, since most available versions were the versions edited down to fit the increased number of ads in the 80s.
I am pretty sure what was syndicated and shown on TV here was the original 60s cut though, since we have far fewer ads than the US.
I am pretty sure what was syndicated and shown on TV here was the original 60s cut though, since we have far fewer ads than the US.
The problem might be music rights clearance if they used a lot of contemporary music from actual artists.
They are not old they are classics
My guess would be offloading storage space while adding monetization revenue.
Is storage space for this significant?
I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs.
A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could afford more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is basically nothing.
I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs.
A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could afford more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is basically nothing.
This is a desperation move. Warner, like many other studios fed Netflix the content to make the service that is destroying them. Then a WB had a disastrous acquisition by ATT-- admittedly made worse by a Trump grudge that held it up for years. Then an acquisition by Discovery, that added very little to WB except bad management. Destroying the HBO brand, DC, etc.
Why is this dumb? They get pennies for their assets today while they bolster the other tech giant that is going to kill them. Studios like WBD don't have the capital or the strategic vision to operate in this environment.
Why is this dumb? They get pennies for their assets today while they bolster the other tech giant that is going to kill them. Studios like WBD don't have the capital or the strategic vision to operate in this environment.
Aaaaand it's gone.
TL;DR: because they dont have a streaming service
> TL;DR: because they dont have a streaming service
They have two major streaming services (which they originally planned to merge), Discovery+ and MAX (formerly HBO Max).
They have two major streaming services (which they originally planned to merge), Discovery+ and MAX (formerly HBO Max).
They own HBO and HBO Max.
For the same reason the guy wrote an article/ad about it. To make money.
Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.