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Hollywood Backs Swedish Movie Streaming Site
paulraps writes "Forget Spotify and Skype: the latest strangely-named-but-hey-it's-free service from Sweden offers users streamed on-demand movies free of charge, has deals with two major Hollywood studios, and is called Voddler. Since its launch two weeks ago, the service has signed up a quarter of a million users and has almost the same number queuing for an invitation. After signing deals with Disney and Paramount, the company provides access to thousands of films, which are shown uninterrupted after a barrage of ads. The target is the file-sharing generation: 'Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure, and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files,' says executive vice president Zoran Slavic."
It asks you for your name and email address, then will send you an invitation when the beta ends. Unless you mistook "email address" for "bank details", that hardly qualifies as phishing in my book.
Well, they do already need names for the companies that sponsor this concept...
Dyslexics are teople poo...
Here's what happens when you access their site.
First you are presented with a very sparse page with a couple areas you can put your name and email address to "register".
Next, if you are so inclined, you enter your email address and name.
Then it says "Thanks for your interest in Voddler!"
Then you receive an email informing you that actually you didn't actually register since the site isn't actually open yet.
I suppose it was a good idea to use a throwaway account for this.
You're an idiot. This is not a phising site, this is a completely legit site, and those who are with the ISP "Bredbandsbolaget" can already use the service. It's the same type of business model that spotify uses. And frankly, if you ever get your fat ass out of the US you'll see how many services aren't available for the rest of us. Not everything comes instantly, jackass.
The "free" movies from Comcast on-demand suck and I would imagine those costs are somehow worked into your Comcast bill. I can't imagine free movies would be that great if they are only ad supported. Hollywood wouldn't give the rights to any movie actually worth seeing unless you pay the expensive royalties.
I have been using voddler as a beta tester for a few weeks now and it works quite ok after the last client upgrade. The first mac client was crap, nothing happened when I tried to login and it went fullscreen mode when started plus the program froze so I had to shut down the computer with forced shut down. After the latest client version I was logged in when I started the program, Voddler client is built on XBMC Media Center and you can only use the keyboard to navigate which can be quite annoying when navigating.
Browsing the few movies they have at the moment is fairly easy (only about 500 movies or so). First I get a commercial and then the movie plays nicely on just 10-12Mbit adsl line. I have heard that there was commercial breaks in the movies, but I haven't seen any commercial in a movie so far, just the commercial just before the movie starts which can be 10 minutes long or so.
For a beta I think it's a nice product which works quite well for me. Especially since the last update on the client which allows you to go into windowed mode which I forgot to mention further up in my text.
I believe that Voddler can be great once the new movies pop in and the beta goes into full product. The client has only crashed on me once and when I started it up again and found my movie I was looking at I could start where it ended.
There is a story further down the page: http://www.thelocal.se/23202/20091111/
A Swede was caught and fined for speeding on the autobahn.
As Americans, we sometimes willfully ignore facts, as most Americans believe the Autobahn to be this magical road where speed limits don't exist and every can drive as fast as they want.
Our perspective is very narrow and insular, and that is one of our greatest weaknesses. Our willingness to quickly grab ahold of any negative story about China, Iran, or other "enemy" of ours is precisely the result of this lack of perspective.
So when we see a new site that is offering up movies for free, we are quick to cheer. We are quick to glom on to any sort of thing that we find even somewhat pleasing without fully understanding all the consequences. How will the movie companies make money from this type of site? Who is actually paying for the movies you see?
Yes, the commercials are played before the movie now, but as that becomes unprofitable where are they going to start putting them? What are we going to lose down the road?
We all want free access to premium content. Is the price worth it?
HTF is that phishing? Wikipedia sez:
And no analogy in your comment. Perhaps consider renaming yourself to inane first post guy?
My pics.
uninterrupted barrage of ads
Why, oh why do they insist on this selling point of "no risks of computer viruses".
I'm always concerned that "legitimate" sources will contain a dodgy driver or a rootkit. No such concerns with the latest aXXo rip.
I find the movie selection on Voddler quite disappointing.
When the fine article said "Swedish movie site", I was expecting something entirely different. As any movie buff knows, a true Swedish movie always ends with the single word "SLUT" and you all know there is a good reason for it.
At the very least I was expecting previosly unreleased footage of the Swedish Bikini team, and I was hoping for quite a few sluts.
xenu.net
It is not phishing.
I got an invitation via my ISP Bredbandsbolaget.
Voddler works fine, but has currenly only budget movies to show. But that will change now with the Hollywood deals :).
It also works as advertised; see a few commercials (time to pop the popcorn), and the movie is played without interruption... as long as your network connection is ok :-).
BAG, please go and live with fellow Jobs-worth jcr and never post to /. again, instead telling all you have to say to each other. You and he crossed the line between potentially chronic troll and just plain stupid many moons ago, and you reflect badly on the uniform you wear.
This is why god invented yahoo email.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It's not phishing, you're added to the queue. But it's a pretty long queue.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
One of the reasons I stopped going to theaters to watch movies was that after I paid to get in, I was sitting through commercials (not just trailers, but commercials). I decided that I might as well stay home and wait for the movies on non-premium cable.
but without DRM and in common formats. streaming wastes bandwidth each time you want to watch the movie. there is probably a way to rip but with the MPAA involved you can be guaranteed 'the man' is putting in some sort of DRM to try and stop that
"Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure, and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files"
Finally! The amount of times I've had viruses from video-files have been... Erm... Ohwait.
What video files containing viruses -are- they talking about?,br>
With software they might at least have a point, but I've never seen a video file with a virus.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
Wow, this AC should really take a break. The GP is making a valid point security wise.
I myself made the same mistake of going directly and signing up. Of course I got the same email and it means that until the guys show me a real product, they have my name/email to sell it to whoever wants.
And the AC answering with "you're an idiot' and "jackass" is informative... that is more of a flamebait I think...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Well he is also calling it a phishing site, which is just to troll and throw this articles comments offtopic. Even the summary notes that theres tons of people waiting for invitation, so its kind of stupid to think you're just gonna get account like that from their main site.
But interesting note from About Voddler site is "Finally an alternative to illegal downloading is available on the Swedish market.", which makes me think if Voddler is available elsewhere too (atleast nordic and european countries like Spotify has). It might even be that this is specifically developed for Swedish market (at least first), since so large percent of people, specially young, pirate movies and music.
That being said, if this anything close to "Spotify for Movies" I'm really interested. It's been an year that I've used only Spotify for my music listening and it's even more convenience than downloading mp3's and everyone I know is the same thing. Been a premium member for months too.
How exactly pirating movies will boost business?
I know there's lots of people on slashdot who like to justify their pirating with all these "open", "bad bad record labels" etc bullshit, but truth is that people just want stuff for free and conveniently. As surprising it is after all the years of fighting from industry, it was really surprising that Spotify actually offers legit service that is a lot better than downloading warez. And with both free and paid, all-you-can-eat models. Spotify really changed things around here in Europe - it brought lots of people that download mp3's or send them between friends to a legit service.
And I love it.
Free isn't the big issue. Convenient is.
Welcome to the rest of the world.
It's often that us non US-people only get a sparse page with a few fields to enter your data in, only to find out that the service you thought you were registering for doesn't work yet in your country.
Call it phishing if you like, but it's par for the course. It's just that you US-ians don't notice it as often.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
Yeah I agree on that tho. I buy pretty much all games from Steam too because its just so much more convenient than walking to store, and comes with extra features like friends lists, community stuff and the ability to always download the game again when you need to.
Free model is a plus in this.
I work on a 5 minute per released week system:
First week: 20 minutes late
Second week: 15 minutes late
Third week: 10 minutes late
If it's been out longer than 3 weeks, I can wait for the DVD ( which I can skip the You wouldn't steal a policeman's helmet! adverts and trailers through VLC )
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
And the AC answering with "you're an idiot' and "jackass" is informative... that is more of a flamebait I think...
It's not an insult to say a dead man is dead.
They probably have the look alikes and the wannabee movies. Like a Swedish Steven Seagal that kicks arse and gets all the Swedish chicks...and he runs outta chicks...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
But how many Ingmar Bergman films can anyone watch?
You are welcome on my lawn.
What, you thought Hollywood would back a streaming site that showed first run blockbusters?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have no interest in pirating. I am willing to pay for movies. I do know it takes money to make them.
However, if the movie industry has already counted me out of their market, then how is it that downloading the movie from a pirate location results in any loss of money on their part for my one download? Sure, I do know that there are people that are actually in the movie industry's target market who are trying to cheat the system and not pay, by using such piracy places. But do NOT assume that everyone is in the movie industry's target market (e.g. Windows users, and maybe Mac users). The rest of us (BSD users, Linux users, Solaris users, etc.) are not and the movie industry has made it very clear they don't want our money.
The same applies to people in other countries. If a service is NOT available in a given country, even if by another company or under another name, then this is AGAIN a case of the industry making it clear they do not want the money from a given market. if the content industry wants to make contracts specific by country, then THEY need to get those services running and functional in each and every country they want the market money from, and not act like cry babies about lost revenues from countries they didn't try to get those revenues from.
And this goes for the music industry, too. And that includes Spotify.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I still think one of the reasons Blu Ray won in the end is because HD required the movie start when you loaded the DvD. My Disney produced Blu Ray discs are loaded with nearly a dozen ads and such before the movie selection screen pops.
Its a constant pushing of "Next Chapter" after loading many Blu Ray titles. If they going to stream them over the net for free after a barrage of ads the least they could do is reduce the price of Blu Ray discs. Fortunately I haven't had a problem with skipping the ads, but I do have to press "Next Chapter" as each loads. One day someone might wise up and figure a way to go directly to the movie again.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"The nature of our business is both IT and media related and we are developing software solutions based on the Microsoft platform. "
"The nature of our business is to ignore all the users that use BSD, Linux, or Solaris, because we don't want their money. We only care about Windows users (and maybe some day, Mac users)."
There, fixed it for ... them. And yea, I took that "solutions" buzzword out to help them not look so much like a bunch of clueless pinheads.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I was very excited about Voddler (I'm a Spotify premium subscriber, and a big movie buff, so it was just what I'd been waiting for), until I read about how the mac client works.
When installed it takes root access (in beta? how can that be safe?), and the server part never shuts down. That's right, when you're not watching a movie, you're still uploading. When you're out and about with your laptop and on a 3G tether, just checking your email and paying for data transfer, you're still uploading. When you have some real uploading to do (for work or whatever), the only way to turn off the Voddler sharing is to uninstall the server part, and then the client and player stops working.
No thanks.
I believe that [Command-Option-Esc] will get you a "kill task" dialog most of the time, even when a program has taken the Mac hostage in full-screen.
Hey, maybe Hollywood is finally starting to get it? We'll see how badly they try to screw the customers in the long term, but this is at least a step in the right direction.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
That is correct, but in my case it did not work. I don't know if it was because it was trying to connect at the same time as it froze that made it so [Command-Option-Esc] didn't work. I could be completely wrong, but I have noticed that programs which connect to the net and freeze up while doing so on a Mac can be hard to kill at times. Firefox with lots of plugins does this from time to time so that a kill -p pid in terminal wont work. Could just be my imagination though. And it has only happened once so far and that was on the first Mac client.
It's a beta so I should have seen it coming.
Welcome to the rest of the world.
What is this rest of the world you speak of? Do you mean Mexico and Canada? Is Sweden a Canadian state? I think I've heard of those places. Do they get the internet there?
mmmm...forbidden donut
This guy's account needs to be banned
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
All that to get ready for Transformers: The Movie?
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I like the option to get all my ads up front and then watch a show uninterrupted. Hulu has this feature with some of its teevee offerings. I generally mute the stupid thing for the couple minutes that the ads are running, run to the kitchen grab something to eat, or switch windows and do work there, then when the time's over, I'll watch my show. Essentially the whole thing is ad free at that point. Of course advertisers probably hate me for suggesting we all ignore them.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Welcome to the rest of the world.
It's often that us non US-people only get a sparse page with a few fields to enter your data in, only to find out that the service you thought you were registering for doesn't work yet in your country.
Call it phishing if you like, but it's par for the course. It's just that you US-ians don't notice it as often.
LOL
By your definition, I have been living in "the rest of the world" all my life, As Germany, UK and Mexico are not part of the USA.
Hey, you may call me a beaner, alien, expat but a gringo? *that* I won't tolerate :P
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
And it is also not an insult to say that a jewish persn is "Jew"... it all depends in how you say it.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Between pirating and DRMed adware delivery. How about these digital content guys try to sell their stuff at some low price that reflects the reality that making digital copies is incredibly cheap, that we have had bona fide tech advances that make this possible, rather than sticking to now ancient history "per unit" pricing models? Instead of a buck for a song, how about a buck for a download movie and five cents for a song? Something like that. Figure out what bandwith costs them, double that, and offer their stuff legitimately at that price.
People really started pirating about the same time it became apparent to just about everyone that any legitimate way to get content was blatant price gouging. People looked at plastic disks and went "hey, how come I can make a copy with my home equipment for 25 cents, yet these big places with even better equipment, who can do it cheaper at wholesale rates, want 25 bucks for a copy"? And when it comes to pure downloads, it was worse than that.
What these big content guys kept trying was "digital prohibition", if I can use this analogy, just like the government tried with booze and failed at, and that is just never going to work. The black market moonshiner rates and "home brewed" and "bath tub gin" methods just routed around obvious market inefficiencies and stupid laws.
The ad method won't work for them in the long run, people will figure out how to skip the ads, or just ignore them. Just offer the product way cheap with at least some profit in there (that's why I like a clean "double the bandwith costs and no more" method, easy to figure out and still a cheap price), and try volume sales instead. There are potentially six BILLION customers out there who ARE willing to buy things if the price is right and not blatant price gouging.
At least you can hit Next Chapter and skip the ads. When I load a Sesame Street DVD in for my kids to watch, I'm forced to see the same "supporting Sesame Street supports kids around the world" commercial read by Whoppi Goldberg. Next Chapter is locked so you can't skip it (though I think some of the newer DVDs might have fixed this). So my kids (unaccustomed to ads thanks to DVRs) want to know why they can't just get right to the movie.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Having a firewall with a default deny policy is a good way to promote safety.
If you use Voddler, you need to open each and every TCP and UDP port from 1025 and up. (Or have some D-Linkish "router" with UPnP.)
Okay, this may not be such a big deal for most home users. But it makes it impossible to use in a work or school setting.
This is a great service for documentaries and educational videos that can never be.
Why can't they do like Skype, Spotify or... well most anything else, like the web?
That's an interesting point, the one about network connections taking their toll; one sure way to make my Mac unresponsive is to pull the plug while I'm trying to browse a network share!
Is it a Swedish site that streams movies, or a site that streams Swedish movies?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hulu or any of the other free online TV/movie streaming sites?
No,
Most business's just want an assurance that a 24 hour rental will only be a 24 hour rental. Blockbuster can make you return the movie, but how do you return streamed bits? DRM is their only way to ensure that you aren't going to rape them and are going to comply with the agreement.
Hell there was an asshat above asking to be woken when the client got hacked and movies could be saved to his hdd. I cant imagine why Hollywood would bother writing a client for a platform where the vast majority of users are either going to try and break the DRM because it's "morally wrong" or something or break the DRM because they dont want to pay. No I think their target market are the people that dont try and screw them.
I read that as "Bollywood Hacks Swedish Movie Streaming Site". Had this image of some programmer replacing documentaries about meatballs with clips of Aishwarya Rai dacing on a hilltop.
This guy's account needs to be banned
Naw, probably won't even use it again and would just sign up again with a different id if they did want to.
What they need is a DDoS on the website they're plugging & for that website to be informed that it was a direct result of the spam comments. Someone should turn one of the botnets against them.
Ever heard of the main menu button on your remote, works like a charm goes right to the movies menu and skips the adds
Cool useless anecdote, bro.
Uggs and Ed Hardy clothing. Somebody nuke it from orbit.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Hollywood Backs Swedish Movie Streaming Site
Hollywood is now supporting The Pirate Bay? Excellent!
Well they aren't losing any business either.
I do like the trend towards legal and convenient offerings, but when 10 mins of ads in the beginning of a stream is enough to pay for the movie, why don't the media corps go together and make a torrent tracker with their movies with ads in the beginning, in a standard format without DRM?
Sure, they would have no control over the files after someone downloaded it, it could be distibuted further out, spreading the ads, and someone may cut off the ads and distribute that, but I'd think the convenience of their movie site would still be good enough for a huge majority of users.
Another solution would be to stream the movies, still in standard format and without DRM. Of course those determined to make copies can't be stopped, but again the convenience would win.
Why does it make sense for them to keep those old fashion regions of distribution? Don't tell me because of different languages, DVD's have been able to play different chapters for different languages, not just audio or captions. Only reason I see is solidarity with the old meatspace distributors, who still want money.
Of course they want money, but why should they be paid for nothing? Let them sell physical discs and what so ever, but let the internet be free from geographical licensing. It would be cheaper to the consumer, not having to feed those lazy distributors for allowing online distribution in their area, and the big media corps could still earn more.
If I was as pragmatic and objective as I claim to be, would I be commenting?
Well forget it then.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hi there movie industry,
When launching a new movie streaming service, don't bother unless you start with..say..100,000 movies. 500 movies is laughable, risible, ridiculous.
Just saying, Technology has advanced, no reason why all movies in existence can't be hosted in HD in h.264 format on the cloud by the studios, and provided to partners such as vodswede.
That's assuming you actually want to compete with unauthorized copies. Maybe this is just to tell judges there are legal alternatives or something. It just seems too pathetic to mean anything else.
Good luck to you, MPAA.
...that argument works, because your customers can't tell data formats (like MKV or AVI) from executable files.
Unfortunately, I say FUCK streaming! I'm not falling for that "you actually don't own shit" strategy!
Either I own the unencrypted file on my hard drive, of you can just right GTFO.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Can any beta tester verify whether around 1.8Mbps will be enough? I mean, if I can't stream real time, can I at least pause and then resume after it buffers (like youtube)? Also, apologies if it's been asked before, but is this service gonna work for all countries? What about the ads then.. don't they need to be region specific?
Transgenders! More than meets the eye!
The target is the file-sharing generation
Okay, I'm listening.
'Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure ...
Sounds good.
... and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files,'
Say, what? If your target is "file-sharing generation", then don't spout bullshit that is obvious to the majority of it!
But how many Ingmar Bergman films can anyone watch?
I was hoping it's more like 'Swedish Erotica' streaming... hmmm, that takes on a whole new meaning somehow.
My DVD player obeys the requests of many DVDs not to allow skipping to the menu during previews. Often I have to fast-forward play through them, as it won't even let me chapter-skip past them.
What exactly does Skype have to do with Sweden?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
My DVD player has a "fast play" button which works in those cases. You still have to watch the advertisement but it zips by twice as fast.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I've tried that button on my DVD player but I can't fast forward or next chapter past the Sesame Street ad.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
does anyone know if this streaming service will be "throttled" like p2p traffic is?
sure would be one sided to block my p2p traffic while giving me a full 600kb/sec download for these movies.
www.disolvethecrtc.com :P
There is no valid security point here.
The article already stated that the service is only available to Swedish citizens, or people who are with the Swedish ISP.
They have your email to sell to anyone anyway, whether they have a real product or not.
Signing up is only a mistake if you don't want the service. There is a real service and a real product, you in the US are just not eligible for it.
I think that the use if "idiot" and "jackass" is meta-informative, like a tag for an article. It shows that the poster was responding to an American.
No, he's saying that until Hollywood backed, there were only budget movies. Now that Hollywood IS backing them, the site will now have first run blockbusters.
There is a reason why this came in Sweden and not elsewhere. Don't expect to see something like this here.
Sweden giving more power to their people than to foreign companies, those companies were faced with the choice of staying with their old way of doing business (making no virtually no money) or changing the model to do less. At least, less means more than nothing. The fact that this tactic of suing customers failed forced the big players to change. Sweden people along side with their government forced an industry to innovate. And this wouldn't have been possible without piracy. It was the mean through which people expressed their discontent with an industry's current way of doing things. Piracy was like a boycott and it worked.
Now let see how this goes. Could this open the way for other countries? Don't expect it in countries where governments are more concerned by profit making business than their people.
Maybe a premium movie theater like the "VIP" cinemas we have in México would help bring people to the movie theaters.
Here's a picture. http://dealante.com/upload/nodos/2008/8/28/doc-151693.jpg
Admission costs the equivalent of 9.50 USD (twice what the regular theater costs) and there's waiters bringing you food and alcohol to your seat, huge reclining seats and you choose your seat while buying the admission. I've never seen anything like that in the US, maybe they'd have to cost over twice as much the regular admission since the staff would be so much more expensive but there's been great success with that business model over here.
These are still corporations that are members of organizations such as the RIAA, MPAA, etc. and have themselves participated in many large-scale abuses that have been documented over the years, correct? Should I suddenly support and fund them now that they've launched a heavily ad-supported streaming video website?
Don't get me wrong, ads bombarding you before a movie instead of every 15 minutes during is better, I guess (And I doubt will last long.) But you'd have to have a sort of battered wife syndrome to champion them for this.