I'm really beginning to think that views like this (which I share) are in the minority, at least so far as the "making astounding quantities of money" crowd are concerned. Even downloading an MP3 from Amazon--a process that used to just result in an MP3 link being presented after payment--needs a client and wants to sync to the cloud. Vendor lock-in has been a thing for as long as there have been computers, it's just that our interconnectedness has made it even more visible and incredibly more lucrative.
Doanloading an MP3 from amazon doesn't require a client. It does sync to the cloud, but it doesn't require a client. I guess I don't see the vendor lock-in there?
Well, come on. You could at least go the the pages that offer the functionality you want. Hit "Manage Your Kindle" from the "Your account" dropdown and download Kindle books to your heart's content; they really couldn't make that any easier. You'd download your music through "Your Cloud Player", just like Amazon tells you to do when you buy it. Alternatively, your order history for any item will include the relevant link.
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for as they have download links in there under cloud player, but on purchase, I got a choice of Cloud player I think or Download Amazon music player (which also gives access to files). Your Cloud Player doesn't sound like it'll let you download files, so I ignored it, but that's where they have put it.
IMO it should be called Your Music instead, because people want their music, not Amazon's software for playing their music, which is exactly what this article is complaining about.
Well, I'm completely prepared to agree that downloading music after purchase is both () less convenient than it used to be and () filed under an unintuitive name. But on the other hand, the cloud player sync does let you redownload already-purchased music, which I don't think you could do before. Mainly I was responding to the idea that downloading was being obstructed, which I don't agree with.
Spread information. Just like you're doing with this article. Eventually, enough decisions will be made based on that information, that was previously unknown or hidden, that companies will change their practises.
As crazy as this sounds... I've got no problems with being in an "ecosystem" as long as it can be run on any device. See Kindle for a perfect example -- I have it on my iPhone, iPad, desktop and my PaperWhite. Perfect.
Or Netflix: runs on everything. But if your "ecosystem" is limited to particular devices (see: iMessage, or the OP) then it may as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.
Hell, even Apple knew iTunes needed to run on Windows to matter. Eventually, anyway.
I think it's fine, but I also think some middleground has to be taken so that we aren't slowly tied into a "ecosystem."
The example I like is Netflix on Linux. Now, boredom will find a way - and I use Wine and FireFox - but, does it really have to be like that?
I understand Linux is (without looking it up) something like 1% of the desktop market. But really... why should that matter? I know, business..but it's a consumer product.
When I'm trying to look through Netflix's website to see what's supported, all I can find is them trying to sell me proprietary devices. I don't mind so much, because I still like Netflix.
GNU/Linux users are not in their business interests. And you can't fix that problem because the software is proprietary. The only acceptable option is to stop using Netflix.
I agree with you. I'd love to be a part of a solution, but it would take some serious commitment and big-backing. At least, as you say, on a social level - through HN and similar communities.
There is a good solution, and it'll solve several other problems (some way more important than copyrights). I just don't know how to implement it - does anybody have any idea that does not resemble Ucrania?
If you look closer at that list, the most recent film to enter the public domain was produced in 1968. The last time a film entered the public domain (known at least) was in 1991. And the overwhelming reason any work actually entered the public domain was that they failed to renew the copyright (which implies they could still not be in the public domain if the creators were more on top of their copyright situation).
I think what the GP meant with "public domain does not exist anymore" is that it is effectively is no longer relevant.
The problem with "ecosystems" is that they're usually trojan horses for vendor lock-in. It's fine to provide a comprehensive user-space, but when you start preventing people from running other stuff in their devices for dubious reasons, that's when you cross the line.
This can be done bluntly (via privileges) or sneakily (by making sure compatibility is not easy). But yeah usually ecosystems => lock-in and walled gardens.
Yeah, Amazon is actually the worst at this because of their e-book DRM. At least iTunes eventually removed DRM so you could move to Amazon MP3 or Google Play.
Job's anti-DRM letter was published 8 months before the public beta of Amazon MP3 in September 2007. The first DRM free music from EMI was available on iTunes in May 2007. Google Play Music opened in 2011, two years after iTunes music was fully DRM free in the US.
"Eventually" is a bit harsh, it isn't a given that Amazon MP3 and Google Play Music would be DRM free if it wasn't for Apple pushing for it back at the start of 2007.
It's not good to attribute all that credit to iTunes. Amazon and Google may have been able to negotiate other terms. Because unlike Apple, neither Amazon or Google had a separate MP3 player and thus no incentive to enforce DRM.
Seems that every thread has someone claim that if it wasn't for Apple, X would never exist and I'm frankly tired of it.
The bigger problem is that Netflix doesn't have much of a selection, so you either have a service that isn't useful or you have to use multiple services, with multiple logins, multiple clients, multiple ecosystems, which is a bad situation. The fact that some of those services have decent dvice support isn't a consolation.
I run Ubuntu entirely on my laptop... and it doesn't bother me that I'm missing it on that device, I have so many others that theres little utility lost.
That said, I see your point; what I'm worried about is the "HTML5 DRM" specification and the binaries for them not being released on Linux. Then we're entirely screwed, with no work-arounds.
> As crazy as this sounds... I've got no problems with being in an "ecosystem" as long as it can be run on any device. See Kindle for a perfect example -- I have it on my iPhone, iPad, desktop and my PaperWhite. Perfect.
That's how I felt, until it wasn't perfect. I have a lot of DRM free tech books from publishers like O'Reilly. I'd like to be able to read them on my Kindle and sync my notes with the Kindle desktop app or "Cloud Reader". Doesn't work. Notes and highlights only sync between desktop apps and the Kindle e-ink device when you're reading Kindle books bought from Amazon.
That's the problem with a closed ecosystem. No matter how hard they try, the creator of the ecosystem isn't going to be able to foresee/support every use case.
This is one of the reasons why Net Neutrality is so important.
Everybody and their brother wants to lock you in to their platform (whether it's a phone or an ISP) then split, differentiate, and bundle the product in so many complex ways you'll be lucky if you even understand what you're purchasing.
Cell phone companies have already done this. Airlines as well. So have insurance companies. They make money by farming the walled garden in such a way as to make it look like you have increased choices, but, mirabile dictu, all the choices end up with you paying more money each month.
It's always sad to see Libertarians sacrificing their principles as soon as it involves a slight inconvenience to themselves.
Net Neutrality means handing control of the internet to the government. Regulatory capture and special interests will ensure any Net Neutrality legislation is an unworkable mess that sets investment in the internet back decades.
For video things would be even worse. Do you want Congress telling Amazon which video formats they have to use, and which formats the devices they sell must support? When Amazon doesn't want to support some proprietary standard that congress members got bribed to pick then the thugs with guns will turn up at Amazon HQ and Amazon will be unable to defend themselves.
We know that markets are inherently self-correcting, we just need to have patience.
Nobody's asking for regulations here. I think in a digital age, "Product Definition" benefits everybody in the marketplace, and there's no reason we can't come together on that, whether by industry association or legal definition.
No regulators or laws necessary. I simply need to know when I'm buying an "apple" that I get a red thing that's somewhat round and good to eat -- all without spending 3 years studying the nuances of apple law. That's good for everybody because it encourages and supports a free and open market. This is what we want, no?
I'm not asking for a bureaucrat, or an agency. I just want bins in the market where vendors put stuff where I can easily tell what the thing is, that's all.
Honest question - if you're not going to regulate or outlaw it, what's going to stop providers from engaging in it? "It" being charging more for / throttling bandwidth for service A and not service B.
I bought an apple and you gave me a squash. What's going to stop that? My taking you to court for damages, that's what. But it won't just be me -- it'll be everybody you ever did business with.
Do you want to face one regulatory agency, where regulatory capture is always present, or do you want to go to court with a million angry customers, perhaps one at a time, that bought one product and were delivered another?
Right - no argument there. I buy X and get Y, that's breech of contract (for demonstrably different/inferior Y).
But I'm asking a slightly different question. I'm operating from a definition of "net neutrality" as "non-discrimination of all kinds of bits flowing through internet wires/beams/tubes." And my question is: what stops VeriComAO&T from selling internet service defined as 2kbps of Netflix and 75gbps of CrapVideo(tm brought to you buy VCA&T)? What guarantees/enforces that kind of net neutrality, if not laws or regulations?
"Product Definition" benefits everybody in the marketplace
No, it really doesn't: it commoditises the product, which tends to drive down margins. Vendors love lockin and lack of clarity. It benefits the customers. It tends not to happen unless it's enforced in some way. Food is a good example of this: what are you buying when you buy an "organic apple"?
Cell phone companies have already done this. Airlines as well. So have insurance companies.
While I agree with you in general, airlines in your example are clearly wrong.
As a matter of fact: It's precisely the other way and airlines are actually unbundling their services.
Bundling is when everything (luggage, food, seat assignment, check in fees) are included in the price of your ticket, if you want it or not. Unbundling is exactly the opposite.
I.e: You pay for the basic service (the flight) and if you want to check in luggage, order a meal, assign a choice seat , or whatever you pay for those extras.
I actually don't mind this practice, provided that an airline is transparent about it, it's clearly lined out during the booking process (if the final price say 232$, I don't have any mystery charges for that booking on my credit card) and as long I'm not sandbagged at the airport (for example: paying an additional 10$ "check-in" fee).
There were better justifications back then though. Stuff ran on completely different hardware and layers of abstraction weren't really workable. Some of the BASIC was more or less compatible but then again most stuff was machine code and BASIC was usually just the OS's terminal and bootloader of sorts.
One could not reasonably expect the same software to work unchanged on a MOS 6502 based computer like the VIC or the Apple ][ and in a Z80 based computer like the TRS-80. And there were many more differences at the hardware and ROM-kernel level that made cross-platform software largely unworkable.
Apple kept the bad old days alive with its own intentionally locked-in ecosystem. Maybe if they had failed more spectacularly in the 90s then perhaps today every company wouldn't be using iPhone lockin as a goal to aspire to.
This article is a misguided attempt to bemoan Panasonic for not enabling Amazon Prime video on their devices, which really has nothing to do with ecosystems and more to do with inferior technology and/or poor pre-purchase research.
I don't view Prime Video as an ecosystem but more as an added value type of thing. Beyond that, it's opt-in, therefore not limiting.
If the OP wanted Prime Video on their TV they should have purchased a TV that offered it, or buy a box that does it as an add-on.
Is that not rather the point of the post? I read it as Panasonic is trying to enforce its own ecosystem. It's not playing well with Amazon's ecosystem. Amazon's ecosystem doesn't play well with Android either (which to me is rather surprising, given Amazon has Kindle on Android)
So he's expecting Panasonic to upgrade the software to support it? I don't see how you can blame Panasonic for not having something that didn't exist when the TV was made.
I'm not a Panasonic fan, but I would guess they a) can't afford to add Prime and/or b) are trying to offer what they can in place of it.
The fact that you have to have some custom client (I don't care how thin it is) to get interop means it is an ecosystem.
There are business reasons to avoid interop (it costs money, it removes branding opportunities, blah blah blah), but let's not pretend they are anything else.
They aren't ecosystems - they're biospheres. They look like a functional system but by operating independently of external forces they stagnate quickly.
Companies want to sell you X on the expectation that you've bought their Y. Given that they've already been extremely successful doing this, X is only available on their Y.
Because if they do they might just create another extremely profitable market place.
Remember when all phones expected you to use their own proprietary OS with their own proprietary apps and developers had to make apps for every brand and model separately?
That's vendor lockin taken to such an extreme that people can't even be bother to make apps anymore.
Plus these apps are quickly going to become obsolete or outdated base what developer can be bothered to keep up with all that crap.
Same logic applies just this time it's not phones it's smart TV's.
Except that Apple is still making money hand over fist with a proprietary OS with their own proprietary apps, happily built by people who aren't Apple employees for 70% of their value.
Where does the profit in the new marketplace come from?
Apple was the first to implement the concept properly before android caught up so they had a head start.
The combination of excellent implementation of a touchscreen in the phone (it was done multiple times before but every other implementation sucked) and the combination of that with a proper app store (by today's standards) gave them the push necessary.
Notice it wasn't any of the regular players at the time that took it in the right direction but a no name in the phone industry. Everybody else was too busy fighting each other instead of innovating.
The profit is where it gets a bit odd since most likely the only profit the manufacturer of the TV gets is the price of the TV and maybe some bonuses from the companies whose app get installed by default on the TV.
No different then a laptop now.
The TV may become popular because of its great flexibility app wise but the bulk of the profits will be earned by software companies distributing the apps through adverts or by charging for the app.
Because there's the example of the iPod. It wasn't the music player to have until Apple employees wore down Steve Jobs so they could let it connect with Windows.
Except that Apple still owned the ecosystem. Allowing you to connect iTunes on Windows is just like having Kindle on everything - a means to spread your ecosystem and platform. In fact, this is even BETTER for them, because you still had to buy an iPod!
The more you can treat the underlying OS as "dumb pipes", the more valuable/easily spreadable your ecosystem is.
1) People purchase products from you because they are happy that they can use those products anywhere.
2) People purchase products from you because they are happy they work on the device/service/ecosystem they've invested in, and they don't have lose their sunk cost.
I feel that 1 is a great lead in for new customers - if they have options. I know that 2 definitely wins in the long run - people want to avoid the pain of their sunk cost. That's why lock-in works.
The core of the issue is that people are asking companies who are wildly successful with locking people in to open up their ecosystem on some nebulous promise of future earnings based in popular goodwill.
Don't you think that it is a stupid name? Why should it be a zero-sum game?
Also, I still do eat with spoon, fork and a knife, but I do not call that "war on spork".
You miss the point. If I am some huge player who decides to produce tablets, how does that make me at war with someone else producing computers?
Or are those producing utensils at war with Victorinox?
So who is actively trying to hurt "general computing" devices? And by this I mean not "producing limited computing devices" but active and deliberate actions against general computing.
Or shall we all close our eyes and pretend that many of those general computing devices never saw general computing in their lives? Some are glorified typewriters, some are facebook and email devices, some are game machines.
Where does this tunnel vision that anyone working with something with CPU inside should be interested in general computing?
Not arguing with the basic point, but I find it rather humorous that forks essententially do prevent you from eating soup because they've chosen not to (literally) support it. You need to use a different device to consume that media.
Not quite, forks are ill suited to the job of consuming many soups. This is more akin to how the Samsung watch is ill suited to host a Super Bowl party. All devices cannot be all things, nor should they be, and this has nothing to do with content licences.
No, you can still eat your soup with a fork. It will work. Nobody will stop you. It will just be very ineffective, and your soup will get cold long before you finish it.
The analogy would be having to pick one of spoon, fork, or knife for eating a whole meal with. Soup and steak. In this dystopia, manufacturing sporks is banned as patent infringement and filing an edge and some tines into your spoon is a DMCA violation.
Don't forget there will have to be some type of law forcing you to purchase a spoon as it is unfair to spoon manufacturers that you don't require a utensil at all to consume soup from an easily lifted bowl.
Maybe force all bowls to be too big and heavy to easily lift?
I think the smart TV is inherently a lock in platform like the old phone market use to be when Nokia phones were all the rage.
If the smart TV runs android I'm ok with it the apps are already there but if anything else i would rather have the "smart" part outside my TV and just get a regular old TV.
Say for instance using XBMC I know it's a lot less likely the apps will get out of date or I'm going to be forced by some vendors whims to use certain service because they need to increase their profit margins.
The author is mixing together several problems here.
1) Amazon bundling a video service with their free shipping program.
2) Amazon's proprietary software locking in you into whatever platforms that are in their business interests.
3) Panasonic's proprietary TV platform that people can't be bothered to develop for.
4) Digital Restrictions Management that prevents one from downloading a movie via Amazon Prime and playing it in any other video player on any other platform.
This is just the usual awful situation when you rely on proprietary software. Stop using Amazon Prime to watch videos. Write to them about the problems you have. I recently wrote to Audible because their ebooks come with DRM and cannot be played on GNU/Linux using Free Software.
Yeah, not exactly a satisfactory one, though. Just something along the lines of "We have sent your request to remove DRM to our audio team. We value your feedback." It was a nice way of saying that mail has been forwarded to the audio team to throw in the bin. Still, better than being ignored outright.
Demand a refund. My girlfriend ran into this problem (we're pretty much a Linux household). Just could not get the audible books to run on Ubuntu and I wasn't willing to spend the time hunting around for a way to get around it. Fortunately, Audible was pretty gracious about the refund.
I once asked Lovefilm about their video streaming (Silverlight) on Linux. I got a relatively honest answer: Movie studios required them to use DRM and no DRM solution is available on Linux. They will "keep looking for opportunities". I translate that to "waiting for the movie industry to give up on DRM".
It's decryption of encrypted contents with a key that you're not meant to have access to, and with measures to try to prevent you from accessing the decoded video and audio on its way to the screen/speakers, despite the fact that the key is on your system and it's being played back via hardware that's physically under your control. It's a bit like trying to stop a sieve from leaking with your fingers.
The only way of making it sort-of, maybe achieve anything in software is through obscuring the key and decrypted data sufficiently to make it more effort than it is worth.
This means the DRM implementations are all closed source, and Linux ports are pretty much bottom of the priority list of any of the companies providing DRM solutions, not least because it gets massively harder to lock down access to the data on a system where tons of people know how to rebuild the kernel and modify drivers and otherwise try to intercept it.
"... it gets massively harder to lock down access to the data on a system where tons of people know how to rebuild the kernel and modify drivers and otherwise try to intercept it."
Because proprietary systems never get cracked; and it always takes more than one person to do it. For example, geohot.
My point is that Linux DRM is possible. But all DRM sucks anyway, because ultimately to lock down the system implementors choose to reduce the number of devices that can operate with it and sooner or later it's just one or two devices.
Of course the get cracked, but as you say: all DRM sucks anyway. So they set a bar based on how difficult they can make it to circumvent vs. market share. In that calculation it becomes easy to decide to ignore Linux - small desktop userbase and a much harsher environment makes it extremely unattractive.
It's never about locking it down fully - they're not quite stupid enough to believe they can prevent copying. After all they know perfectly well that most torrents are not originating from copies ripped by average consumers.
DRM is about a perceived tradeoff between the cost of DRM and how much copying they can stop by making it too cumbersome or difficult for a reasonable proportion of regular users.
It doesn't even necessarily have much to do with reality, but just as much to do with sheer fear.
DRM is handing a ciphertext, a decryptor, and keys over to someone else and asking them to use it only in the way that you want them to use it. (It's not signed because nobody cares whether the information is authentic or not.)
Once you have bought into the rigmarole that this can somehow be effective, you have to test and support various platforms. Doing that for Windows is cost-effective, doing it for MacOS is less so, and doing it for anything smaller is not a money-making proposition.
Of course, if you could add 2 + 2 to get 4 in the first place, you would use an open standard and be able to sell your media to everyone.
Simpler: since you need the key to view the content, the only security scheme possible is through obscurity of the key or the decryptor. Hence anyone with the appropriate flashlight can dispell the darkness.
Netflix delayed their offering, and then restricted it to a few devices for quite some time, and now makes heavy use of the Android DRM framework. This doesn't exist on desktop Linux, and I doubt it could even be incorporated (however pragmatic) given the knee-jerk reaction to anything DRM.
Only if the video is being decrypted by the kernel rather than userspace, which may be true from what little I know about the inner workings of DRM. Otherwise, it's the GNU part that's important, not the 'Linux' shorthand.
There's also a hardware ecosystem problem. Apparently we live in a world where people expect a TV to have a web browser with Adobe Flash on board.
I have a 30-year-old amplifier that still works just fine, despite having been built before CD players and MP3 players came along. Sure you could buy an all-in-one device that integrated the amp and the tape deck, but a lot of people avoided those because they wanted flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Similarly, back in those days it was quite common to see little TVs with an integrated VHS player. But if you were the sort of person who bought individual audio components, you probably also avoided those things, because you recognized that the function of projecting a moving image on a screen was independent of the function of reading a signal from a strip of magnetized tape, and so keeping them in two separate devices bought you flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Now, apparently, those old lessons are still useful. I'm not very much into TVs, so I don't know, but to me the real "ecosystem" problem here is that the TV apparently is not just a display device. It's pulling double duty as a web browser also (and who knows what else is in there). Unfortunately, a year and a half is a long time in terms of web technologies, so a perfectly good device for projecting moving images onto a screen is now deemed obsolete.
This arguably happens in every context. What keeps these "integrated" devices useful is the (hopefully) open nature of the software running them. A TV that supports open web standards will last a helluva lot longer than one that supports a vendor standard abandoned after a couple of years.
In other words, a TV that also plays online video is great as long as there's an open, standardized method of delivering it.
>Now, apparently, those old lessons are still useful. I'm not very much into TVs, so I don't know, but to me the real "ecosystem" problem here is that the TV apparently is not just a display device.
For a while, the appeal was that it was cheaper and simpler to just buy a smart TV that had Netflix, etc integrated than it was to put together some other solution yourself.
Turns out the reality is that the integrated smart functionality tends to be slow, clunky, and rarely updated. Now that things like Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast are so cheap and easy, the tides have turned there.
While I was somebody that bought a smart TV a few years ago for those reasons, I've gotten to where I haven't touched those features since Chromecast launched. If anything, it's become an annoyance that my TV has a 15-20 second boot time when I turn it on. I know I've decided that my future TVs will be TVs only, and that seems to be a common theme among others I've talked to with smart TVs.
> Turns out the reality is that the integrated smart functionality tends to be slow, clunky, and rarely updated.
This was my immediate assumption as soon as I saw advertisements for "smart TVs". I assume it's even worse for in-car smart screen thingies, since you buy a new car even more rarely than a TV.
What I wouldn't give to have read your comment 2 months ago. Smart TV integration seemed great since we almost exclusively use Netflix. But the boot time and interface interaction speed is so slow, I now leave the input set to chromecast exclusively.
Add me to your list of people who will only be buying a dumb tv in the future.
This seems especially true with cars. I lease a new Volkswagen and it comes straight out of the factory with a navigation system that looks and feels so outdated that it makes you wonder why car manufacturers even bother trying..
It's just so slow and ugly compared to an iPhone or other smartphone that I cannot imagine anyone using it in a few years.
Bundle solutions seem to offer more issues than they offer simplicity. Like you, I own a ~30 year old amplifier which does only does a few simple things thing: running my speakers, switching between two inputs, and supplying power to my PS3 (bluray player).
The two inputs are my TV and 3.5mm audio jack (for phones), my TV handles digital input, namely my PS3, my laptop, a RaspPi, and eventually a Chromecast when I get around to it.
My laptop makes my TV an audio visualisation screen (Project M), a Netflix screen (Chromium-Pipelight), a YouTube screen (Chromium/Minitube). A multipurpose media screen, without any smart-TV'esque clunkiness.
Chromecast is one of those things that is either purposely or coincidentally replicating this kind of setup for a more average user. You can use your tablet (extremely practical) to do pretty much everything I described above. Once again I find Google trying to be my (huge and scary) buddy, instead of hugging me to death by ecosystem lock-in. (Yes, I see the irony of Android with that statement.)
Hoo boy, speaking of proprietary issues, I unplugged mine over a year ago, and haven't missed it. I used the PS3 for Netflix and sometimes DVD/Bluray playing. The trouble is, you never knew when it would decide that it needed to update itself. Every update takes like half an hour to run, can't be postponed or run in the background, and your device can't do much until you run it, since naturally, you can't use your Netflix account, which ought to be completely separate, without logging into a PSN account that I have no use for. And of course, the Netflix interface is slow and terrible, and it doesn't really support anything else.
I replaced it with a Roku that does everything better and is a third of the price. Being tiny and taking almost no power are nice too. If it updates at all, it does it silently in the background, which is how I like it.
The last television that I purchased, just about a month ago, was a "dumb" television.
The reason?
The television I purchased before that was an LG "smart" television. At the time I bought it, LG promised that it would provide additional software for its TV platform that would enable additional services. It never happened. That particular TV still does exactly the same stuff it did on the day I bought it. And then I heard rumors floating around about how some "smart" televisions phone home and serve ads.
Screw that. There are any number of discrete devices with a network connection on one end, and a HDMI port on the other. I don't even need my television set to have its own tuner. So starting from my last purchase, I will now be buying televisions only as passive display devices with a variety of video input ports.
(And the device that translates the Netflix and Amazon Prime feeds to video will not be the Xbox, because there's no way in hell that I am paying Microsoft rent just to use the network interface on the box that I own to connect to a third party server. I already have at least 4 uncrippled computers in the very same room that can do that at no additional charge.)
>back in those days it was quite common to see little TVs with an integrated VHS player. But if you were the sort of person who bought individual audio components, you probably also avoided those things
Even more, if your VCR went rogue and started taking out tapes, you didn't have to throw out your TV. This mentality is now completely gone, because you're expected to throw your TV (or phone or whatever) out every 6 months.
Forced obsolescence is always a boon for manufacturers.
That's a cogent point, but those are all symptoms of the same problem, which I'm guessing from your last sentence, you are already aware of. The OP is merely using them as examples (again, demonstrable symptoms) of the illness that is "intellectual property", so that when people say "so what?" to the likes of EFF, you can show them articles like this.
As another example, on the same front page of HN that this article is on, is another entitled "When is it Stealing?", whereby the author begs the question by just blithely assuming that bits can be owned like physical property.
Don't get me wrong, I think attribution is a very important part of sharing information, but at the same time, too many people get caught up in believing they are special, when history has shown time and again that most "new" ideas were built upon the bedrock that is the thousands of years of our civilization, and usually multiple people get the same idea around the same time.
The DRM is pretty limited (afaik) to the free streaming stuff included with Prime. If you pay to "own" (heavily scaremarked), you can download a copy yourself (some titles only allow you to "rent" the ability to stream; others wont let you download ieven if you pay to "own" the ability to stream).
Panasonic, a company not known for quality software -- what was he expecting? Just get a freaking $50 rokubox and be done with it. Then it won't matter if android or his tv doesn't make coffee to go with his salty tears. And it'll work with whatever shitty Smart TV he decides to buy into next.
So, hum, why would I accept the hefty price increase on Prime if I get quite literally nothing in return? I do not own a single one of the ‘compatible devices’ and apparently my browser (which works just fine on Youtube…) is not ‘compatible‘ either.
I just wanted fast shipping with no additional costs ¬.¬
Opera 12.16 on Debian, no Silverlight here. I even have a Firefox installed, too, but that still needs Silverlight which is not available for Linux (at least not in any of the official repositories).
I used to do business development work at Sony bringing content services onto the TVs although this is a few years ago now. It is complicated and messy and there are many aspects both technical and commercial[0] that can cause services not to be available.
Lovefilm were one of the most flexible and adaptable service providers although I don't know the extent to which this still applies with Amazon.
I don't blame Panasonic for not supporting Flash/Silverlight in the TV. Adopting either of these is likely to require unpleasant licensing terms AND opaque binary blobs into the TV software.
On the service provider side they cannot just drop the security measures (DRM or other security measures) as that would likely be breaching their own licenses from the content owners (film companies). If not supporting a major recognised DRM approach it can be a real sticking block.
[0] Including placement, branding, design and obviously any revenue share arrangements.
The main problem is that most consumers don't really care about openness, functionality and anything that requires a bit of brain power to understand.
They get a TV, smartphone, PC - it works, cool. That feature is missing - oh, shucks, whatcha gonna do? It was probably too hard to implement anyway, right?
Which is why ecosystems exist - once people learn how to use that one simple system, they'll tend to buy stuff from the same company for convenience's sake. Most poeple don't want to figure out how to install apps, why this web page isn't displaying correctly, or how to make those mp3 files smaller.
While I agree with his point about ecosystems (I strongly avoid them), these examples are a bit weak. Android is not an "open standard", it's a code-dumped open source touch OS controlled by 1 company. Amazon should make an Android app, but by doing so they are contributing to an ecosystem.
What's not widely known is that, unlike smartphones, HTML5 is the dominant platform for TV-based apps. That's why every TV has Netflix, not because Netflix is employing an army of engineers to make a new app for each TV model.
However, TV based apps are still apps that are installed and controlled by the TV vendor. Which means Amazon has to strike a deal with Panasonic to get their generic HTML5 app on Panasonic TVs.
If HTML5 DRM (which, to clarify, I am opposed to) becomes a standard this whole mess could be avoided and Amazon could serve their videos on any TV with a modern browser.
While I agree with his point about ecosystems (I strongly avoid them), these examples are a bit weak. Android is not an "open standard", it's a code-dumped open source touch OS controlled by 1 company.
Evenmore, Android doesn't support standards very well. E.g., the default IMAP mail client didn't (probably still doesn't) have IDLE support, it doesn't have CardDAV/CalDAV support (luckily, there are external connectors), and XMPP federation is gone, so you can only talk with your Hangouts buddies via Hangouts.
The 'problem' is that from a user's perspective Android is great. The integration with the Google ecosystem in Android is impressive. And given that many westeners already have GMail et al., Android provides a great and smooth out of the box experience. So, there is little reason to switch, as long as the ads don't become to intrusive.
The problem here isn't ecosystems, it's standards. Standards that allow us to move MP3s, emails, books, etc. between providers.
I'd like to believe that HTML5 will eventually be the standard for video delivery, but this may never happen. There's no incentive to standardize streaming content delivery because it would increase competition and take power away from the corporations.
I don't mind being part of your ecosystem as long as I'm part of your family, you care for my needs, think about me, and the whole company is built around my lifestyle and serves it really well leaving not much to be desired. The loss in interoperability is worth it in this case.
If you're not going to be the above, then act like a pipe-able Unix process.
Amazon most definitely has an android app for instance video. That's how it runs on Kindle Fire devices. They just don't approve it (or enable it to work) on non-Kindle devices. You can find leaked apk files on various forums, but they don't fit most screens and crash frequently. On the flip side, you can stream movies via their website in Firefox for Android which still supports Flash.
It's not clear that Amazon has 100% control over how they distribute video. Rights holders are pretty controlling about DRM, distribution, and what devices can use their content.
I don't know anything about the specific deals here, but I wouldn't be surprised if an open Amazon Instant Video was an Amazon Instant Video without very much content you'd care about.
maybe it would be good to have some sort of (general) index of compatibility for consumer products. A one-number thing. "how likely this product is to lock you out of something good".
If this information is valuable (and I think it is!) even small fluctuations on the index could push a given product up.
The basic issue is lock-in. Ideally we'd have no lock-in, but that's a benefit balanced against other benefits (e.g. having a good UI, ease of setup and maintenance, enough scope for vendors to make money and stay in business). In practice this means we tolerate a certain amount of lock-in for other benefits.
But, the problem comes when everyone thinks that they can be the guy with the tolerable lock-in. Use MY video service -- anywhere, MY platform -- running on anything, MY app store -- on anyone.
Amazon's model is illustrative. It's hard to read non-Amazon content on a Kindle (harder than any other platform!) but easy to read Amazon content on any rival platform. They've been less successful with video because they aren't able to leverage their existing near-monopolies as well.
Google Play Books lets you upload epubs, PDFs, etc. and syncs them for you between your devices. I don't know if that meets your needs. I use it for all the papers I want to read on my tablet.
As a TV developer, I say connect a PC to the TV already. Making a 37-in TV that sells for £479.00 is a major feat in itself. The panel leaves scant margin for a SoC. Porting various codecs and runtimes to run on the said SoC is easier said than done.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadSign into Amazon. Hit this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/ays
View->View By Type->Music->Amazon MP3
But then tried to actually download my music or Kindle books. You're right. It's actually quite difficult to. Not pleasant.
EDIT: Apparently I'm a dolt; see /u/thaumasiotes's response below.
IMO it should be called Your Music instead, because people want their music, not Amazon's software for playing their music, which is exactly what this article is complaining about.
Or Netflix: runs on everything. But if your "ecosystem" is limited to particular devices (see: iMessage, or the OP) then it may as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.
Hell, even Apple knew iTunes needed to run on Windows to matter. Eventually, anyway.
The example I like is Netflix on Linux. Now, boredom will find a way - and I use Wine and FireFox - but, does it really have to be like that?
I understand Linux is (without looking it up) something like 1% of the desktop market. But really... why should that matter? I know, business..but it's a consumer product.
When I'm trying to look through Netflix's website to see what's supported, all I can find is them trying to sell me proprietary devices. I don't mind so much, because I still like Netflix.
It's cheaper for Netflix to have you use their box than it is for them to develop & support a Linux client for the relatively small user base.
Licensing restrictions and other politics likely prevent them from accepting open source clients, even if they wanted to.
There has to be a good solution.
I know of no place to legally purchase DRM free content that you would find on Netflix. It's a sorry state to be in.
> Maybe launch a startup that has only public-domain videos to start?
See: http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/05/03/a-kill-hollyweb-plan...
Feel free to take the idea and run with it.
> There has to be a good solution.
I think you or I or someone else needs to make the solution. Though the problem is not simply technical. It's social and political, too.
There is a good solution, and it'll solve several other problems (some way more important than copyrights). I just don't know how to implement it - does anybody have any idea that does not resemble Ucrania?
Public domain does exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_dom...
Or do you mean something else?
I think what the GP meant with "public domain does not exist anymore" is that it is effectively is no longer relevant.
This can be done bluntly (via privileges) or sneakily (by making sure compatibility is not easy). But yeah usually ecosystems => lock-in and walled gardens.
iBookstore, Nookbook store, and Kobo -- the other three big players also have eBook DRM (via Adobe). Kindle is no "worse" than them.
Job's anti-DRM letter was published 8 months before the public beta of Amazon MP3 in September 2007. The first DRM free music from EMI was available on iTunes in May 2007. Google Play Music opened in 2011, two years after iTunes music was fully DRM free in the US.
"Eventually" is a bit harsh, it isn't a given that Amazon MP3 and Google Play Music would be DRM free if it wasn't for Apple pushing for it back at the start of 2007.
Seems that every thread has someone claim that if it wasn't for Apple, X would never exist and I'm frankly tired of it.
If it doesn't run on Ubuntu and RedHat, it doesn't run on everything.
That said, I see your point; what I'm worried about is the "HTML5 DRM" specification and the binaries for them not being released on Linux. Then we're entirely screwed, with no work-arounds.
That's how I felt, until it wasn't perfect. I have a lot of DRM free tech books from publishers like O'Reilly. I'd like to be able to read them on my Kindle and sync my notes with the Kindle desktop app or "Cloud Reader". Doesn't work. Notes and highlights only sync between desktop apps and the Kindle e-ink device when you're reading Kindle books bought from Amazon.
That's the problem with a closed ecosystem. No matter how hard they try, the creator of the ecosystem isn't going to be able to foresee/support every use case.
Everybody and their brother wants to lock you in to their platform (whether it's a phone or an ISP) then split, differentiate, and bundle the product in so many complex ways you'll be lucky if you even understand what you're purchasing.
Cell phone companies have already done this. Airlines as well. So have insurance companies. They make money by farming the walled garden in such a way as to make it look like you have increased choices, but, mirabile dictu, all the choices end up with you paying more money each month.
Enough is enough.
Net Neutrality means handing control of the internet to the government. Regulatory capture and special interests will ensure any Net Neutrality legislation is an unworkable mess that sets investment in the internet back decades.
For video things would be even worse. Do you want Congress telling Amazon which video formats they have to use, and which formats the devices they sell must support? When Amazon doesn't want to support some proprietary standard that congress members got bribed to pick then the thugs with guns will turn up at Amazon HQ and Amazon will be unable to defend themselves.
We know that markets are inherently self-correcting, we just need to have patience.
Nobody's asking for regulations here. I think in a digital age, "Product Definition" benefits everybody in the marketplace, and there's no reason we can't come together on that, whether by industry association or legal definition.
No regulators or laws necessary. I simply need to know when I'm buying an "apple" that I get a red thing that's somewhat round and good to eat -- all without spending 3 years studying the nuances of apple law. That's good for everybody because it encourages and supports a free and open market. This is what we want, no?
I'm not asking for a bureaucrat, or an agency. I just want bins in the market where vendors put stuff where I can easily tell what the thing is, that's all.
I bought an apple and you gave me a squash. What's going to stop that? My taking you to court for damages, that's what. But it won't just be me -- it'll be everybody you ever did business with.
Do you want to face one regulatory agency, where regulatory capture is always present, or do you want to go to court with a million angry customers, perhaps one at a time, that bought one product and were delivered another?
But I'm asking a slightly different question. I'm operating from a definition of "net neutrality" as "non-discrimination of all kinds of bits flowing through internet wires/beams/tubes." And my question is: what stops VeriComAO&T from selling internet service defined as 2kbps of Netflix and 75gbps of CrapVideo(tm brought to you buy VCA&T)? What guarantees/enforces that kind of net neutrality, if not laws or regulations?
No, it really doesn't: it commoditises the product, which tends to drive down margins. Vendors love lockin and lack of clarity. It benefits the customers. It tends not to happen unless it's enforced in some way. Food is a good example of this: what are you buying when you buy an "organic apple"?
As a matter of fact: It's precisely the other way and airlines are actually unbundling their services.
Bundling is when everything (luggage, food, seat assignment, check in fees) are included in the price of your ticket, if you want it or not. Unbundling is exactly the opposite.
I.e: You pay for the basic service (the flight) and if you want to check in luggage, order a meal, assign a choice seat , or whatever you pay for those extras.
I actually don't mind this practice, provided that an airline is transparent about it, it's clearly lined out during the booking process (if the final price say 232$, I don't have any mystery charges for that booking on my credit card) and as long I'm not sandbagged at the airport (for example: paying an additional 10$ "check-in" fee).
Around 1980 you'd buy an Apple ][ or a TRS-80 or a Commodore VIC and they all were incompatible, although most of them still had Micro$oft BASIC.
One could not reasonably expect the same software to work unchanged on a MOS 6502 based computer like the VIC or the Apple ][ and in a Z80 based computer like the TRS-80. And there were many more differences at the hardware and ROM-kernel level that made cross-platform software largely unworkable.
Behold the genius of Bill.
Also of note, I first learned programming in QBASIC. And by programming I mean dozens of GOTO loops.
I don't view Prime Video as an ecosystem but more as an added value type of thing. Beyond that, it's opt-in, therefore not limiting.
If the OP wanted Prime Video on their TV they should have purchased a TV that offered it, or buy a box that does it as an add-on.
I'm not a Panasonic fan, but I would guess they a) can't afford to add Prime and/or b) are trying to offer what they can in place of it.
There are business reasons to avoid interop (it costs money, it removes branding opportunities, blah blah blah), but let's not pretend they are anything else.
You want to be able to consume X on any Y.
Companies want to sell you X on the expectation that you've bought their Y. Given that they've already been extremely successful doing this, X is only available on their Y.
Why should they change?
Remember when all phones expected you to use their own proprietary OS with their own proprietary apps and developers had to make apps for every brand and model separately?
That's vendor lockin taken to such an extreme that people can't even be bother to make apps anymore.
Plus these apps are quickly going to become obsolete or outdated base what developer can be bothered to keep up with all that crap.
Same logic applies just this time it's not phones it's smart TV's.
Where does the profit in the new marketplace come from?
The combination of excellent implementation of a touchscreen in the phone (it was done multiple times before but every other implementation sucked) and the combination of that with a proper app store (by today's standards) gave them the push necessary.
Notice it wasn't any of the regular players at the time that took it in the right direction but a no name in the phone industry. Everybody else was too busy fighting each other instead of innovating.
The profit is where it gets a bit odd since most likely the only profit the manufacturer of the TV gets is the price of the TV and maybe some bonuses from the companies whose app get installed by default on the TV.
No different then a laptop now.
The TV may become popular because of its great flexibility app wise but the bulk of the profits will be earned by software companies distributing the apps through adverts or by charging for the app.
Because there's the example of the iPod. It wasn't the music player to have until Apple employees wore down Steve Jobs so they could let it connect with Windows.
The more you can treat the underlying OS as "dumb pipes", the more valuable/easily spreadable your ecosystem is.
Long term vs. short term.
1) People purchase products from you because they are happy that they can use those products anywhere.
2) People purchase products from you because they are happy they work on the device/service/ecosystem they've invested in, and they don't have lose their sunk cost.
I feel that 1 is a great lead in for new customers - if they have options. I know that 2 definitely wins in the long run - people want to avoid the pain of their sunk cost. That's why lock-in works.
The core of the issue is that people are asking companies who are wildly successful with locking people in to open up their ecosystem on some nebulous promise of future earnings based in popular goodwill.
[1] - http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
Because the barrier to entry to creating your own fork, should Big Cutlery™ decide they want to prevent your access to one, is very low.
Come to think, that's pretty hilarious actually.
Maybe force all bowls to be too big and heavy to easily lift?
There's literally one report from 2005 from one A&E (ER) dept that suggested it would be a good idea. Others disagreed.
If the smart TV runs android I'm ok with it the apps are already there but if anything else i would rather have the "smart" part outside my TV and just get a regular old TV.
Say for instance using XBMC I know it's a lot less likely the apps will get out of date or I'm going to be forced by some vendors whims to use certain service because they need to increase their profit margins.
1) Amazon bundling a video service with their free shipping program.
2) Amazon's proprietary software locking in you into whatever platforms that are in their business interests.
3) Panasonic's proprietary TV platform that people can't be bothered to develop for.
4) Digital Restrictions Management that prevents one from downloading a movie via Amazon Prime and playing it in any other video player on any other platform.
This is just the usual awful situation when you rely on proprietary software. Stop using Amazon Prime to watch videos. Write to them about the problems you have. I recently wrote to Audible because their ebooks come with DRM and cannot be played on GNU/Linux using Free Software.
DRM is basically digital signing w/encryption right ? Linux doesn't have that ?
The only way of making it sort-of, maybe achieve anything in software is through obscuring the key and decrypted data sufficiently to make it more effort than it is worth.
This means the DRM implementations are all closed source, and Linux ports are pretty much bottom of the priority list of any of the companies providing DRM solutions, not least because it gets massively harder to lock down access to the data on a system where tons of people know how to rebuild the kernel and modify drivers and otherwise try to intercept it.
Because proprietary systems never get cracked; and it always takes more than one person to do it. For example, geohot.
My point is that Linux DRM is possible. But all DRM sucks anyway, because ultimately to lock down the system implementors choose to reduce the number of devices that can operate with it and sooner or later it's just one or two devices.
It's never about locking it down fully - they're not quite stupid enough to believe they can prevent copying. After all they know perfectly well that most torrents are not originating from copies ripped by average consumers.
DRM is about a perceived tradeoff between the cost of DRM and how much copying they can stop by making it too cumbersome or difficult for a reasonable proportion of regular users.
It doesn't even necessarily have much to do with reality, but just as much to do with sheer fear.
Once you have bought into the rigmarole that this can somehow be effective, you have to test and support various platforms. Doing that for Windows is cost-effective, doing it for MacOS is less so, and doing it for anything smaller is not a money-making proposition.
Of course, if you could add 2 + 2 to get 4 in the first place, you would use an open standard and be able to sell your media to everyone.
I think I have a new .sig.
Very, very simply, here is the premise behind DRM.
1. I know a secret 2. I want to tell you the secret 3. I don't want you to tell anyone else the secret 4. I don't trust you
Perhaps you can see now why there's no solution to that scenario.
Another good short one:
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that jail 'manages freedom.'
Also, analog hole.
http://blog.netflix.com/2010/11/netflix-on-android.html
Netflix delayed their offering, and then restricted it to a few devices for quite some time, and now makes heavy use of the Android DRM framework. This doesn't exist on desktop Linux, and I doubt it could even be incorporated (however pragmatic) given the knee-jerk reaction to anything DRM.
I have a 30-year-old amplifier that still works just fine, despite having been built before CD players and MP3 players came along. Sure you could buy an all-in-one device that integrated the amp and the tape deck, but a lot of people avoided those because they wanted flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Similarly, back in those days it was quite common to see little TVs with an integrated VHS player. But if you were the sort of person who bought individual audio components, you probably also avoided those things, because you recognized that the function of projecting a moving image on a screen was independent of the function of reading a signal from a strip of magnetized tape, and so keeping them in two separate devices bought you flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Now, apparently, those old lessons are still useful. I'm not very much into TVs, so I don't know, but to me the real "ecosystem" problem here is that the TV apparently is not just a display device. It's pulling double duty as a web browser also (and who knows what else is in there). Unfortunately, a year and a half is a long time in terms of web technologies, so a perfectly good device for projecting moving images onto a screen is now deemed obsolete.
In other words, a TV that also plays online video is great as long as there's an open, standardized method of delivering it.
For a while, the appeal was that it was cheaper and simpler to just buy a smart TV that had Netflix, etc integrated than it was to put together some other solution yourself.
Turns out the reality is that the integrated smart functionality tends to be slow, clunky, and rarely updated. Now that things like Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast are so cheap and easy, the tides have turned there.
While I was somebody that bought a smart TV a few years ago for those reasons, I've gotten to where I haven't touched those features since Chromecast launched. If anything, it's become an annoyance that my TV has a 15-20 second boot time when I turn it on. I know I've decided that my future TVs will be TVs only, and that seems to be a common theme among others I've talked to with smart TVs.
This was my immediate assumption as soon as I saw advertisements for "smart TVs". I assume it's even worse for in-car smart screen thingies, since you buy a new car even more rarely than a TV.
Add me to your list of people who will only be buying a dumb tv in the future.
Bundle solutions seem to offer more issues than they offer simplicity. Like you, I own a ~30 year old amplifier which does only does a few simple things thing: running my speakers, switching between two inputs, and supplying power to my PS3 (bluray player).
The two inputs are my TV and 3.5mm audio jack (for phones), my TV handles digital input, namely my PS3, my laptop, a RaspPi, and eventually a Chromecast when I get around to it.
My laptop makes my TV an audio visualisation screen (Project M), a Netflix screen (Chromium-Pipelight), a YouTube screen (Chromium/Minitube). A multipurpose media screen, without any smart-TV'esque clunkiness.
Chromecast is one of those things that is either purposely or coincidentally replicating this kind of setup for a more average user. You can use your tablet (extremely practical) to do pretty much everything I described above. Once again I find Google trying to be my (huge and scary) buddy, instead of hugging me to death by ecosystem lock-in. (Yes, I see the irony of Android with that statement.)
Hoo boy, speaking of proprietary issues, I unplugged mine over a year ago, and haven't missed it. I used the PS3 for Netflix and sometimes DVD/Bluray playing. The trouble is, you never knew when it would decide that it needed to update itself. Every update takes like half an hour to run, can't be postponed or run in the background, and your device can't do much until you run it, since naturally, you can't use your Netflix account, which ought to be completely separate, without logging into a PSN account that I have no use for. And of course, the Netflix interface is slow and terrible, and it doesn't really support anything else.
I replaced it with a Roku that does everything better and is a third of the price. Being tiny and taking almost no power are nice too. If it updates at all, it does it silently in the background, which is how I like it.
The reason?
The television I purchased before that was an LG "smart" television. At the time I bought it, LG promised that it would provide additional software for its TV platform that would enable additional services. It never happened. That particular TV still does exactly the same stuff it did on the day I bought it. And then I heard rumors floating around about how some "smart" televisions phone home and serve ads.
Screw that. There are any number of discrete devices with a network connection on one end, and a HDMI port on the other. I don't even need my television set to have its own tuner. So starting from my last purchase, I will now be buying televisions only as passive display devices with a variety of video input ports.
(And the device that translates the Netflix and Amazon Prime feeds to video will not be the Xbox, because there's no way in hell that I am paying Microsoft rent just to use the network interface on the box that I own to connect to a third party server. I already have at least 4 uncrippled computers in the very same room that can do that at no additional charge.)
Even more, if your VCR went rogue and started taking out tapes, you didn't have to throw out your TV. This mentality is now completely gone, because you're expected to throw your TV (or phone or whatever) out every 6 months.
Forced obsolescence is always a boon for manufacturers.
As another example, on the same front page of HN that this article is on, is another entitled "When is it Stealing?", whereby the author begs the question by just blithely assuming that bits can be owned like physical property.
Don't get me wrong, I think attribution is a very important part of sharing information, but at the same time, too many people get caught up in believing they are special, when history has shown time and again that most "new" ideas were built upon the bedrock that is the thousands of years of our civilization, and usually multiple people get the same idea around the same time.
Panasonic, a company not known for quality software -- what was he expecting? Just get a freaking $50 rokubox and be done with it. Then it won't matter if android or his tv doesn't make coffee to go with his salty tears. And it'll work with whatever shitty Smart TV he decides to buy into next.
I just wanted fast shipping with no additional costs ¬.¬
Edit: it's probably not your browser, but you do have to install silverlight.
Lovefilm were one of the most flexible and adaptable service providers although I don't know the extent to which this still applies with Amazon.
I don't blame Panasonic for not supporting Flash/Silverlight in the TV. Adopting either of these is likely to require unpleasant licensing terms AND opaque binary blobs into the TV software.
On the service provider side they cannot just drop the security measures (DRM or other security measures) as that would likely be breaching their own licenses from the content owners (film companies). If not supporting a major recognised DRM approach it can be a real sticking block.
[0] Including placement, branding, design and obviously any revenue share arrangements.
They get a TV, smartphone, PC - it works, cool. That feature is missing - oh, shucks, whatcha gonna do? It was probably too hard to implement anyway, right?
Which is why ecosystems exist - once people learn how to use that one simple system, they'll tend to buy stuff from the same company for convenience's sake. Most poeple don't want to figure out how to install apps, why this web page isn't displaying correctly, or how to make those mp3 files smaller.
What's not widely known is that, unlike smartphones, HTML5 is the dominant platform for TV-based apps. That's why every TV has Netflix, not because Netflix is employing an army of engineers to make a new app for each TV model.
However, TV based apps are still apps that are installed and controlled by the TV vendor. Which means Amazon has to strike a deal with Panasonic to get their generic HTML5 app on Panasonic TVs.
If HTML5 DRM (which, to clarify, I am opposed to) becomes a standard this whole mess could be avoided and Amazon could serve their videos on any TV with a modern browser.
Evenmore, Android doesn't support standards very well. E.g., the default IMAP mail client didn't (probably still doesn't) have IDLE support, it doesn't have CardDAV/CalDAV support (luckily, there are external connectors), and XMPP federation is gone, so you can only talk with your Hangouts buddies via Hangouts.
The 'problem' is that from a user's perspective Android is great. The integration with the Google ecosystem in Android is impressive. And given that many westeners already have GMail et al., Android provides a great and smooth out of the box experience. So, there is little reason to switch, as long as the ads don't become to intrusive.
I'd like to believe that HTML5 will eventually be the standard for video delivery, but this may never happen. There's no incentive to standardize streaming content delivery because it would increase competition and take power away from the corporations.
If you're not going to be the above, then act like a pipe-able Unix process.
I don't know anything about the specific deals here, but I wouldn't be surprised if an open Amazon Instant Video was an Amazon Instant Video without very much content you'd care about.
If this information is valuable (and I think it is!) even small fluctuations on the index could push a given product up.
But, the problem comes when everyone thinks that they can be the guy with the tolerable lock-in. Use MY video service -- anywhere, MY platform -- running on anything, MY app store -- on anyone.
Amazon's model is illustrative. It's hard to read non-Amazon content on a Kindle (harder than any other platform!) but easy to read Amazon content on any rival platform. They've been less successful with video because they aren't able to leverage their existing near-monopolies as well.
I have The Cloud. All I want is a system that lets me read and sync all eBooks (and PDFs too please!) on all readers. Does anything like this exist?