Comment by andrewstuart
2 months ago
There’s basically zero innovation in online video.
Such a pity startups can’t innovate on the content stores of the big companies.
2 months ago
There’s basically zero innovation in online video.
Such a pity startups can’t innovate on the content stores of the big companies.
It's actually a regression overall compared to physical media like DVDs and Blurays. No director commentaries, no behind the scenes, no silly menu games, etc. Streaming would theoretically allow for tons of this type of content to be made and connected to a film at any time but instead we have this stagnant recreation of cable TV. C'est la vie
The lack of director commentaries and behind the scenes content on streaming has always baffled me as the rights to that must be much cheaper to acquire and would result in more minutes of streaming watched for less licensing money.
It's telling that VFX subcontractors are putting out their own BTS content on YouTube now as promotional material, since the primary production companies for shows and films (with a few exceptions) have completely stopped doing this.
I miss director commentary, I loved re-watching movies with that audio track.
Is there just too much content now? Or has streaming become such a "content mill" that the creators aren't inspired enough about their own work to sit down and talk about it after it's complete?
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We’ve started watching Pluribus on Apple TV and it seems like when they’re making the show Apple contractually obligates them to make a podcast about each episode. Some of them are very interesting (like costume design) and some are less so.
It was funny how the sound engineers remoted in for the podcast and had extremely low quality mics, despite it being a show with fantastic sound (really it’s an excellent show in general, just really good).
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DVD extras existed as an incentive for users to re-buy films they already had on VHS.
No such incentive is necessary with streaming, the format competes so well on convenience it doesn't have to invest in extra content.
Exactly. And this is why a whole dimension of collecting rare footages is quite dead now. This is why piracy through these great public trackers still matters.
Rare movies and film documentaries from the 20th century still can be found on rutracker, for example. The Russians really did create a dedicated community of archivists, with the quality varying to a certain degree depending on the uploader's reputation, but they certainly created a notorious collection of movies, even the ones relatively unknown or sometimes censored to death on western countries.
Disney+ has quite a bit of this actually. I agree though that overall most streaming services don’t offer this.
DVDs were iirc 480p which would look absolutely terrible on a modern TV.
Remember those DVD releases that had plastic edges and cardboard fronts/backs? That's an era for you. They're always max 480p, sometimes even 480i, and often single layer, dual sided. Those came out when the Sony was still making Trinitron CRTs that could barely do 720p.
Depends on the DVD. Some of them do look terrible, but some aren't too bad. Probably depends on how it was transferred and mastered and what bitrate they used on the disc.
> There’s basically zero innovation in online video.
AV2 is coming out this year.
> Such a pity startups can’t innovate on the content stores of the big companies.
What do you mean?
Can’t speak for OP but personally I’m thinking of things like the ability to actually add new features. Like what Netflix did with the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror years ago. Online video is extremely locked down when compared to the web.
Probably because there are over 9000 different TVs with their own proprietary apps on each one. So the easiest thing to do is just go with the lowest common denominator which is just giving you a menu to play a simple video.
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Can a startup not make a bandersnatch-like web page with video on it? What would stop them?
20 years ago, it was possible to seamlessly merge video clips from multiple streaming RealPlayer servers into a single composite video stream, using a static XML text file (SMIL) distributed via HTTP, with optional HTML annotation and composition.
This is technically possible today but blocked by DRM and closed apps/players. Innovation would be unlocked if 3rd party apps could create custom viewing experiences based on licensed and purchased content files downloaded locally, e.g. in your local Apple media library. The closed apps could then sherlock/upstream UX improvements that prove broadly useful.
It is not blocked by DRM but different codec. Even if you have two MP4 files, but if they were encoded differently ffmpeg will still need to do some computation to join them.
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>AV2 is coming out this year.
Which has less than 48 hours to go.