Vimeo is the really interesting case for me, because they are the white label hosting providers for a large number of niche streaming services -- Criterion Channel comes to mind, for example. Evernote failing is sad but lower on indirect effects. Vimeo going down would leave a noticeable hole in the streaming world.
Vimeo won’t “go down” anytime soon. It might get worse/more expensive, but it’s not in imminent danger. And it’s also not the only white-label provider around, either.
Bending Spoons also bought Brightcove so they actually own two of the white label streaming providers.
Would not be surprised to see the two merged into a single service.
For customer facing streaming sites they also don't seem to be the clear default choice. I think dropout.tv is one of the few "secondary streaming services" to still be with Vimeo (and with the strong overlap in their networks I'm sure they got a good deal), while many other ones like Nebula evaluated them but went with other providers.
It looks like the majority of their business is in employee training portals for megacorps.
The Nebula apps are pretty bad. Vimeo white label has issues but the app experience is much better than whomever Nebula are using.
One reason Vimeo is a good deal is that they charge for video transcoding by the minute, not by the file size. So you can upload full ProRes 4K movies and it doesn't cost the earth.
I dug in a bit and did a little research. Criterion and Dropout, as mentioned, use Vimeo. So does Arrow's streaming service (cult films, mostly). From there on in it gets even more fringe: Taskmaster (the British game show) has a streaming service built on Vimeo, the Z-movie titans Troma and Full Moon Features use Vimeo, and so on. So not insanely crucial but I still think it's a better world in which those services can keep doing what they do.
Yes, there are alternatives. Nonetheless, the niche streamers I'm thinking of would find it a moderate burden to move to a different provider and they're operating on slim margins as is.
Is this why Criterion streaming quality is so poor? It’s completely unacceptable for a service that is supposed to pride itself on loving movies and preserving them. Sometimes the scene will be dark and I will descend into some sort of weird 8 bit pixel world.
Yes, yes it is. And there was some sort of bug that pushed the top quality down to 720p last month.
Is there any streaming option with non dogshit quality?
For streaming movies and TV at reasonable prices? No, but you can DIY with Plex and get Blu-ray quality
Dont do Plex! Closed source that leaks what you upload to Plex. And they're owned by big media - so only time they start suing users for files they know they have.
Instead, check out FLOSS server Jellyfin!
That’s alarming. Do you have any sources where I can learn more about this?
What does "uploading" have to do with using Plex? As far as I was aware, My media is sitting less than a meter from me right now. Does Plex upload my content to a server without asking or something?
Plex has a lot of dubious partnerships with companies like Lionsgate and Kliener Perkins but is not owned by Big Media
With Netflix, there are never visible artifacts, play/pause always works within a second. I am sure I'm not always getting HD but I wouldn't call it dogshit. All the other streaming services though, random hiccups are common, and the UI is slow enough that it's not just play/pause, it often takes 30 seconds just to resume what I was previously watching if I closed the browser tab.
> With Netflix, there are never visible artifacts
Uwotm8. Any sufficiently dark scene will have artifacts out the wazoo.
Not to mention other stuff like subtitles mentioning the wrong spoken language (ie. the character is speaking French, but the subtitle say they're speaking English), the UI unloads after some time, and the only action you can take is to start the video (you can't go back), the button for info when hovering over a card doesn't work half time time, video controls disappear at the end of an episode while transitioning to the next (the 'next episode' button is present and animating, but you can't pause the video at the credits in that moment), etc... In short, the UI is shit and so is the video quality.
Many — but you have fork over a significant chunk of change to view them.
Vimeo isn't dogshit. In fact it's one of the only quality ones I've found which also support HDR / Dolby Vision.
Criterion is an extra layer below dogshit. Kanopy, which is free with your library card, blows it out of the water.
> free with your library card
Maybe with yours. My local library's offerings are abysmal.
Dropout as well I think.
Yep. Vimeo is the tech infrastructure from the original collegehumor, and Dropout still uses it.