Comment by CapsAdmin
2 years ago
Something related to this which I find extremely frustrating is that I'm capable of watching a 4k video in my browser just fine. So if I decide to buy or rent a movie on youtube, they can only be played back at 420p.
Apparently this is due to DRM restrictions, but the frustrating part is that you can pay extra money for the HD version and there's nothing telling you about this not being supported in your browser until you've made the purchase (by just allowing 420p and needing to search for why it's broken)
see https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/pm0eqh/why_are_my_...
This sort of behavior should be an open-and-shut case of false advertising. You were told that the video would be a certain resolution. You gave money as a result of that statement. You received an inferior product to the one that was described.
Isn't that fraudulent? Its amazing how an individual can commit fraud one time and its FRAUD! But a company can do the exact same thing en masse as like a business model over and over and its only ever a misunderstanding that they get a chance to correct and a gentleman's handshake. aAnd even if they didn't, it seems impossible to adjust the dial from civil to criminal as its often left in the consumers hands. Its not like there are attorneys that, like, represent the State that could exercise their legal authority to protect consumers.
To my not-a-lawyer understanding, it is fraudulent. Fine print is allowed to clarify an offer, but may not substantially alter the offer as originally made.
I could see an argument made that a reasonable person would know an offer to be limited to supported platforms, and that the fine print clarifies which platforms are supported. To me, though, I’d draw a line between unsupported due to underlying limitations (e.g. can’t serve 4k video on a NES) and unsupported due to seller-side limitations (e.g. won’t serve 4k without remote attestation). I’d see the former as a reasonable clarification of the offer, and the latter as an unreasonable alteration of the offer.
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It's crappy behavior but I think screaming fraud is taking things a bit far. If you buy a Blu-ray from a website you don't come back screaming fraud because the browser or computer you you used doesn't play Blu-rays due to the DRM requirements. A refund request fits the scenario much better and the company's response tells you whether they are worth doing business with, not whether you were the victim of fraud. Some responsibility still lies with the buyer that they will understand what it takes to use the thing they are buying and not expect to rely 100% on the seller to verify everything for them beforehand.
At the same time... I think the behavior is pretty shitty, just not illegal, in that it takes minor up front effort to resolve. An explicit message along the lines of "You won't be able to watch in higher quality on this browser/device combination. Do you still want to purchase the high quality version for use on another device? You'll still be able to watch either version on this device, just always in low quality" goes a long way.
Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version? This isn't the future we were promised, but it sure is the future we have.
Not youtube specifically, but I wanted to watch the wheel of time series on my ipad and:
#1 You cannot stream in a browser on iPadOS anymore. Amazon won't let you, you must use their app.
#2 They don't seem to give a fuck about making sure you're getting a quality stream in their app. Full of artifiacts and horrible compression way more often than is warranted on my symmetric gigabit connection.
So I added it to my Sonarr instance (pirated it legally) and watched it in a browser from there with perfect quality and no pre-stream ads.
Once again: A paid service so bad that it couldn't compete with the pirate experience even if it was free.
Which once again confirms Gabe Newell's statement to be true: "piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue"
> Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version?
in which case, why buy it at all? A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for.
The further time goes on toward segmented streaming platforms and DRM bullshit, the deeper my piracy hedge grows. Eventually there will be a streaming service aggregation service a la Cable channels and we're back at square 1. Add to that streaming services pushing new ad schemes now that they've captured enough market share for the risk to be worth it, and we've got a great storm brewing for a resurgence in piracy and media execs going "but y?"
BTW modern piracy setups are far more streamlined and easier to manage/use than modern streaming platforms. Assuming you have some tech ability anyway.
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>A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for.
Unless you want to rewind the video without it re-buffering...
Netflix does the same thing. Actually, speaking of infuriating corporate bullshit, allow me to go on a rant about Netflix and subtitles.
They give you the option to choose between like four, maybe five languages. That's it!
If you want subtitles in any of the other hundred or so languages that they have available, well... no. Just no. Learn one of the four they've picked for you.
If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you.
You see, what actually happened, is that some too-smart UX guy at Netflix couldn't make a language picker look nice for that many options so he asked a too-smart data science (lol) guy to figure out the most common languages for each region.
Here in Australia they picked English, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese because we have a lot of immigrants from those countries. I'm sure they used very clever algorithms on big data clusters to figure that out. Good job, well done.
Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out. Netflix and their $500K total comp Stanford or wherever graduates couldn't. So they instructed their call centre staff to lie to their customers.
Then they had someone write this idiocy: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101798
"If subtitles for a title are offered in a language but do not display on your device, try another device."
Oh, oh, I'll go do that right now! Let me try my PC... nope four languages. On the TV? Four languages. Actually, I have a phone... and... oh... four languages.
PS: Thai (only!) subtitles are "special" and use eye-searing HDR maximum white. Like 1,600 nits white that literally leaves green after-images etched into my retina. They have a support page and a pre-prepared set of lies for the support staff to read for that piece of shoddy engineering also.
A common thing where I live is for local companies to buy streaming rights for Netflix-created media, and then we can't watch Netflix-created media on Netflix because local-company bought streaming/playback rights. Netflix doesn't care about the customer. They care about money, and that won't change. They'll max out the bullshit until customers push back, leave it there for a bit, wait for customers to get used to the new-bullshit, then add more bullshit and repeat.
> Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out
Did they? Both Prime Video and Disney+ have very very narrow subtitle and audio language choices.
> If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you.
Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright?
As someone who speaks multiple languages, and has the habit of watching with subtitles in the original language of the content if I speak it; otherwise default to English subtitles with original audio... none of the streaming companies have managed to handle that properly. Way too often the audio is only dubbed (often badly), or only my subtitles in my local language (French) are available, regardless of the original language of the content. I'd rather watch British movies with subtitles in English, not French, thank you very much.
Apple TV shows something like 50 languages. More than I can be bothered to count, certainly.
Are you saying it's some sort of challenge beyond the abilities of a Senior Technical Lead with total comp in the seven digits to figure out how to make a list of items more than 4 or 5 entries long? Too many megabytes of JSON to shove down the wire for more?
> Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright?
They definitely do not. That's not how work-for-hire translations work. You pay someone to translate your shows' subtitles for you, then you own the copyright on that work that you paid for. That's how that works. No weird region-locked silliness.
You can make other languages appear by changing the entire UI language of Netflix, which then shows some other "data driven" subset of the subtitle languages.
But then, the entire UI is in another language, which not everyone watching may understand.
Essentially there are audio-subtitle language combinations that are impossible to achieve, no matter what. That combo may not be common enough to make any top-5 list anywhere.
So if you love someone of a sufficiently small minority, or have an unusual racial makeup in your household, Netflix would rather you weren't so weird.
Sit down and think about how absurd it is for the bastion of wokeness that is Netflix to discriminate this profoundly against inter-racial love. On purpose. They wrote the code to do this.
Blows my mind.
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I have to add two adjacent subtitle-related stupidities on Netflix:
1. Closed captions (CC). Okay, I'm willing to accept they improve the experience of a show / movie for a non-zero number of people. What I absolutely don't accept is CC being the ONLY VERSION OF ENGLISH SUBTITLES available. Either CC or nothing. I can't be the only one who prefers English subtitles for English-spoken media, while NOT needing every single sound described as [wet squelching] or [quirky synth music].
(Bonus points for everyone who recognizes those specific examples ↑)
2. Subtitles in all-caps. For the entire movie. Just why? If I'm able to read the text in time at all (it is widely known that words and sentences in all-caps are slower to read), then I'll just feel everyone's screaming all the time, even if they aren't. Whose idea was this? And also here, to my knowledge it only affects English. (I believe all Nolan movies got this "treatment" for example.)
There have been several occasions where even though it was readily available for me to stream from Netflix, I pirated a show or movie anyway, specifically to avoid one or both of these issues.
> Netflix couldn't make a language picker look nice for that many options so he asked a too-smart data science guy to figure out the most common languages for each region.
Odd they couldn't ask your preferred language(s) in your profile, then include it whenever available with the regional list.
I don't know about browser options, but on the android app I can choose between 7 different audio languages and 29 subtitles. Looked it up just for you with an episode of "The good Doctor", which is not a netflix original. I live in Germany. Definitely not an UI issue.
Seems like they'd want people to, idk pick up to 4 languages themselves in settings if they are really attached to their picker. Which makes more sense to me.
is it still a thing that you have to use Edge on windows to get 4k HDR, but you can't on Chrome?
I love this rant with a passion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
By the way, it is 480p. 420 is for something else :)
You guys are getting 480p? I'm only getting 240p!