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The Dark Side of Amazon's New Pilots
For ages now, Amazon Instant Video has worked with Android devices supporting Flash and, more importantly to many people (and me) it seems, through an unofficial XBMC plugin. It seemed like Amazon was happily using RTMPE to prevent casual stream interception, at least for content funded by others. But with the release of their new pilots, they enabled "Flash Access," Adobe's DRM that (for now) is actually effective.
This effectively kills access for everyone using GNU/Linux, even with the (officially unsupported) Adobe Flash plugin! The Adobe plugin relies on HAL for some DRM magic, but HAL is unmaintained, deprecated, and was removed from most major distros ages ago. You can't even install it by hand thanks to udev removing a few features HAL relied upon. Naturally, the Adobe Flash plugin is equally unmaintained so there is little hope even for people willing to install a piece of unmaintained software with a history of remotely exploitable security holes, instability, and poor performance.
But it seems the loss of access from XBMC is more widely felt: RMS cultists and pragmatic Windows users alike now suffer equally. And the folks who aren't GNU/Hippies with an anti-cloud-chip-on-their-shoulder might even be suffering more: they've lost access to shows and movies that they purchased.
There are a dozen pages on the XBMC forum of people pretty pissed, hundreds of angry posts on their Facebook wall, lengthy threads on Amazon's official forums. But so far the response from Amazon has simply been: it was never supposed to work, and we've fixed it.
In the absence of a clear response from Amazon, wild speculations as to why they decided to institute DRM abound: it's not intentional, piracy is a problem for them after all, Jeff Bezos personally wants to eat every XBMC user's cat, or it has something to do with those pilots.
I'd wager it had something to do with the pilots, or was somewhat unintentional (maybe they only meant to restrict HD content).
An XBMC forum member claims to have chatted with a support representative and gotten a suggestive answer:
Amazon Support: Okay, for Android devices we unfortunately don't support them except for the Kindle Fires so it was really lucky your phone was able to play our instant videos before. As to why they aren't working now, we just recently updated our Flash video playback support which is more than likely why it won't play now. I'm really sorry for any inconvenience this will cause you!
Me: I see. Was the flash video playback updated because of the new Amazon Original Pilots that was released recently?
Amazon Support:I'm honestly not sure if it was due to the pilots that came out, though the timing with the pilots and the update can't be coincidental :-)
Assuming it's not just a technical glitch (it happened once before, and Amazon turned the harder-to-break DRM off) and related to the pilots, why only now have they enabled proper DRM? Surely if content they fund is worth restricting then all content is worth restricting? After all, the party line has always been that DRM is imposed by those evil card carrying MPAA members, and not by enlightened tech companies who are just doing what has to be done to free us from the tyranny of broadcast television.
Is it that the content they already provide is widely available through piracy that they haven't cared before? Perhaps; stream ripping from Amazon/Netflix/Hulu and transforming it into a shareable form is not something a normal person would do if only because the video is streamed in mostly real-time. But there are entire groups dedicated to capturing television and uploading it, so someone out there would probably do it.
The problem is that they are going to break the DRM and pirate everything anyway. In fact. they already have (possibly nsfw, because piracy). The same goes for Netflix; their onerous DRM did nothing to stop piracy of House of Cards (finding it is left as an exercise for the reader, but Knuth would rate it 00), and yet they just posted incredible financial results and strong subscriber growth (in utter contrast to this time last year).
The cat's out of the bag: a good chunk of the world population own Infinite Copying Machines and those machines are networked. You cannot stop a determined individual from making a freely copyable version of anything digital unless you ban all output devices (certainly would make Haskell programming nicer) and burn every camera and piece of audio equipment ever built.
It seems that the same toxic thinking about distribution control that pervades the traditional networks has infected the online distributors. It's clear that torrent trackers offer something the traditional channels do not: (mostly) effortless access to content how and when you want it. But these are things that Netflix, Amazon, et al could offer as well... that they do offer. However, instead of liberalizing distribution as time goes on, the New Distributors have fallen into the same clearly failed mentality about restricting distribution that led to the entire media industry becoming a former shell of itself in a mere five years!
This mentality will only lead to failure. Pursuit of it is insanity: we are witnessing the end stages of an industry-wide collapse because of it! And it seems these new distributors have quickly forgotten that it was only the desperation of their predecessors that they were even able to license what they have now.
So, Amazon, why do you insist upon flogging people who are yelling "Shut up and take my money!"?
Linux users can download compatible files here.
Only to discover that Amazon has taken away my ability to watch entirely in the name of Digital Restrictions Management.
You're lucky, they saved you from watching the horrible things. It was an act of mercy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For all the time you spend messing with Linux setups and devices, a $100 Roku 3 will last you a decade and save you time and shelf space.
Simple solution: Stop giving Amazon money if you don't like their service.
I was gonna call the guy who wrote this a complete moron, except for this...
http://forums.androidcentral.com/tablet-apps/239022-amazon-prime-video-app.html
http://betanews.com/2013/04/22/why-is-there-no-android-app-for-amazon-instant-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000645111
We're missing something here namely something like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.netflix.mediaclient&hl=en
Yep, there doesn't appear to be an Android app for amazon prime. So either Amazon is telling android users to f off, or they're unaware of the issue they'd cause with DRM.
Annoyed yet? It's available for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-instant-video/id545519333?mt=8
Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Justified, Mad Men and Homeland are a few of the terrible shows I've watched in the past decade. Thank goodness for Amazon coming "rescue" us from this tripe!
If anybody recalls:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1947228/ask-slashdot-dealing-with-flagged-channels-for-xbmc-pvr
I haven't found a solution to the cablecard problem yet, but so far in what little free time I've had, I've been working on improving an automated bittorrent based solution I already have. Perhaps you should do the same.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
>"Perhaps the decade long dearth of any good television is nearing its end!"
Excuse me, but there's some damn good TV in the last ten years, including but not limited to:
Sons of Anarchy
Game of Thrones
Doctor Who
Boardwalk Empire
Battlestar Galactica
Justice League Unlimited
Dexter
Spartacus
Yep, there doesn't appear to be an Android app for amazon prime.
Welcome to what happens when the company that controls your content stream also provides hardware.
There's no other Android client because Amazon would much, much rather you buy a Kindle Fire to watch Amazon Prime with.
I've been wondering how much longer there will be an iOS version... but at the moment the desire to gain viewers overrides the desire to force hardware sales.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think this is especially pitiful that they are doing this with their own shows they are now producing. It's not even the MPAA demanding them to DRM everything to license it, they are stupid enough that they are doing it for the hell of it..
I finished up editing Slashdot for the day
Are you sure? Would you like to double check that?
So, Amazon, why do you insist upon flogging people who are yelling "Shut up and take my money!"?
1. Because they can.
2. Because people are begging them to take their money.
3. Because it's fun to them.
4. Because there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
5. Because there's not a damn thing you WOULD do about it. You're begging them to take your money.
Gee, that was easy enough. Hell, I didn't even need to post a whole screed about it. Next question?
the majority of linux/unix users have never had. netflix has never warmed up to GNU, and thats just fine for me. ill hit TPB, download the latest excretion from hollywood, judge it based on its merits and if i like it, ill buy the blu-ray version. if i dont like it, 'rm' works nicely and if its a star-wars prequil, 'unlink' and a half pound of thermite has so far proven slightly effective.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This is sad if Amazon is taking this route. I'm a paying Amazon Prime customer. Why shouldn't I be able to stream on any device I own? They cannot reasonably justify preventing their customers from accessing content they paid for.
This is what happens when you hire the same industry people (and lawyers). they recommend the same failed road to travel.
Try running OS2/Warp for a while and see how they treat you!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Unfortunately without locking both platform (walled garden) and distribution DRM is futile. Why unfortunate? Because inevitable conclusion of all failed DRM is not to open it up and monetize, but to build more walled gardens.
Idea that DRM only has to defer casual pirates is an intellectually bankrupt idea - defense has to be breached only once for the information to become freely available. As such it inevitably turns into vs. Internet battle, and Internet always wins.
The only sane thing to do is to compete with your content based on merits - provide it on demand, at high quality and at low price. Some will always pirate and some will always pay - but majority will go with whatever is the most convenient.
Capitalize on laziness and stop building walled gardens!
You know, that's not just about fun and games.
I never expect end user products to work on anything Linux. Maybe it's narrow minded or pessimistic. I hope you do convince Amazon, but this rant on slashdot is preaching to a choir. Quit giving them your money and do something other than talking to tech/customer support.
And I'm sure you are enjoying Windows 8 too.
You lost me at the opinion that there has been nothing good on tv for a decade.
You really lost me at the "clever" renaming of DRM.
Then you made me laugh when the whole thing turned into a misdirected rant about why piracy is okay.
Did you actually have a point to this, or where you just using your undeserved soapbox to rabble-rouse a little bit?
Business huh? You just lost yourself a customer .. what's that Homer?
$$ cha ching
YOU JUST LOST YOURSELF A CUSTOMER MOE!
$$ cha ching... what?.....
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Please leave your Geek ID card at the counter on your way out!! Thank you for visiting.
They Want You To Buy A Kindle
Doesn't that basically mean the 'cultists' were actually being pragmatic? Or maybe this post is an attempt at irony?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No they don't. They sell a shitty kindle fire.
Let me know when they have something of the caliber of the Asus Transformer Prime Infinity or a recent iPad.
Strong finish there, good work :)
Kind of like Slashdot editors have taken away my ability to read a summary?
The problem is that, according to the story's poster, the change not only affect new pilots, but also all the old previously bought and previously accessible content.
Suddenly, all the part services which you did like and for which you gave money, stops working too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Excuse me? I believe you have my stapler?
I used to have an office with a window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then I had to move to the basement, and if I can't talk to Mr. Luhmberg I'll just set the building on fire...
I've installed HAL in my Arch box just to see if it'll work, and nope, it still doesn't.
Not in Firefox with the last supported Flash for Linux that uses NPAPI (11.2.202.280), nor on Chromium, with Pepper Flash (11.6.602.171). hald is running and everything.
Why don't these guys learn from Steam? Make an effort, and they get some of the most loyal, most vocal platform zealots money can never buy; shun them, they get the most rabid haters.
I seriously hope Amazon reconsiders this move. I was this close to actually paying for an Amazon Prime subscription, but since I won't be able to stream on my PC (which solely runs Linux) nor on my phone (Android 4.1), they just lost a potential loyal customer to piracy (I downloaded Zombieland and Alpha House through TPB).
You might want to start by explaining who (or what) jms is, for the benefit of us who aren't hipster faggots like you.
According to google, J. Michael Straczynski was some guy worked on the show Babylon 5, and was somehow involved in some sort of fan-supported netflix or kickstarter thing or something. Apparently, he's important enough to warrant a medium-length wikipedia article, but it's almost impossible to understand why.
Internet video is broken in many ways in Linux at its current state.
Netflix is not my favorite service. I *Love* Babylon 5. I used to watch it on netflix, until my instant que dropped it. So I went looking and found it again. This time it had been repackaged w/ 5 seasons put into 1. Then it was dropped completely from the service. So when the Netflix Content Officer says:
"Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time," .... "Their incredible creations are favorites of Netflix members globally and we can't wait to bring Sense8 to life."
I can't help but wonder just how much Bab 5 was costing them in bandwith. I guess that is what makes a global favorite, eh?
The shitty kindle fire hd is the most popular android tablet on the market followed by the Samsung tablets
The Asus and the nexus all share the single digit percentages of the market
We must be grateful to Amazon for this kind of issues, really.
It annoys the hell out of many people - and that's a good thing here. More and more people learn the dangers of DRM. Now even people with legitimately purchased content are blocked from watching their stuff; and I think that's a good thing.
The only thing that can stop and really overcome the DRM cancer from growing is this. People getting burned, and getting burned badly. They get angry, they talk about it to their friends, who may also have gotten burned. The anger spreads, and friends talk to friends and mention what happens and warn about the dangers of DRM. Content buyers start to look more critical at content vendors: do they sell it with or without DRM? If with DRM, should I take the risk of losing my money? Is there an alternative, another vendor that sells it, without DRM? And in that case I just have to hope for the content providers that these people don't resort to using The Pirate Bay.
Theater is life. Film is art. Television is furniture.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Claiming there hasn't been any good television for the last decade is fucking idiotic. If you haven't found good television, it's because you've had your head in the sand. I don't even have or watch live television (I ditched cable ages ago) and I'm sure I have missed a lot of other things to add to the list, but in the last decade, you have had some really great shows from pretty good to great:
Battlestar Galactica
Doctor Who
Sopranos
The Shield
The Wire
Friday Night Lights
Breaking Bad, Mad Men
Sons of Anarchy, Firefly
Arrested Development
The Office, Sherlock
Luther
Game of Thrones
Fringe
Boardwalk Empire
Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Archer
The IT Crowd
Walking Dead
Louie
Justified
Community
Eastbound and Down
Californication
Deadwood
Oz
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Venture Brothers
Lost
Futurama
Eureka!
Farscape
Blood in the Wire
Alias
The Killing
Mythbusters
There's a lack of great science fiction stuff out there, but there's still a lot of great programming to be found, if you bother.
"...I finished up editing Slashdot for the day .."
are you sure?
First, there has been a ridiculous amount of good TV over the last decades. I like lasers and aliens too but broaden your horizons. Second get a life. Nobody cares about desktop Linux users.
Back to bit-torrent then for many I should imagine, if they tighten the screws people will slip through the gaps. There I was thinking we had just reached a happy equilibrium.
*Insert ridiculous, apparently intelligent but ultimately meaningless phrase here*
You're confusing "popular" with "good" or even "worth considering". Don't feel bad though; it's a very common mistake, right after "I didn't see that sign" and "I thought pulling out would be good enough".
Customers have choice. If you make content available under reasonable terms, they may be your customer. If not, they won't. I decided a couple of years ago that the cable company's terms were unreasonable, so I cancelled my cable. With over the air HD, internet streaming and DVDs, I don't miss it.
While many tv shows people have mentioned are from U.S. cable tv networks, I've seen top-quality stuff from other sources. Recent faves include Borgen and Scott & Bailey, both from "regular" (albeit European) TV channels. Who would have thought Danish parliamentary democracy would make such gripping drama? And Janet and Rachel can arrest me any time they like. :-)
I've watched Borgen on DVD, and am currently streaming S&B on youtube. When ITV get around to releasing series 3 on DVD I'll buy it. Reasonable terms, remember.
...laura
BSG
Dexter
Mad Men
Game of Thrones
Breaking Bad
Falling Skies / Walking Dead (well, not that great, but not that bad)
All these have been done in the past 10 years. They have all been entertaining, and wildly successful. TV has improved by leaps and bounds if you ask me. I'm quite enjoying the concept of 70 hour long movies.
There is a lot more TV than reality shows and whatever crap they show on TLC/Discovery channel.
A failure to understand why there is a Wikipedia author on an award nominated/winning writer speaks more to a fundamental lack of intelligence and grasp of the world around you than anything else. Perhaps contributing to an internet forum is a little above your skill level and you should aim a little lower
Nuh uh, I have it on good authority from Android users that Flash is absolutely essential to accessing the web, and without it, toy devices like the iPhone are doomed to market failure.
Flash is AWESOME - it's a high-performing, energy sipping entertainment powerhouse that NO device, mobile or otherwise, should ever be without.
LOL JUST KIDDING. But remember when that was all Slashdot could talk about, and Apple was evil for trying to kill it?! Oh god, the irony here is delicious. You got in bed with a proprietary technology, and now you pay the price.
They are evil fucks. They have always been evils fucks. They will continue to be evil fucks.
Stop voting for them with your wallet, and shrink their evil.
Try reading that article in full. It doesn't cover the DRM issue, and indeed actually confirms that a subsequent Slashdot post will cover the DRM issue.
I see the little slams against RMS "cultists", silly programmer hippies and similar software flower children that the right-wing millennials and Gen-Xers love to dismiss as fools. Because Hippies.
But the reason Stallman and the open software movement despises DRM was shown to you, precisely, when your "rights" disappeared.
So, who's the fool? As usual, as in the support for civil rights, the fight against wars started for lies, the rejection of Victorian sexual repression, the rejection of environmental destruction, and all the other things that Hippies were despised for, the Hippies were god damned right and everyone else was wrong, wrong, wrong. So that's why the hate, really.
If you'd have listened to the hippies, there'd been no Vietnam, no Iraq, no Afghanistan, and computers that would actually do what they are told to do by their, you know, actual owners. Instead of a PC, you now have a set-top DRM box, pretending to be a PC, managed by the powers-that-be, among whose number you will never be counted.
...but then I remembered I had Amazon VOD on my TV.
One would think if they can make it work on one Linux-based device, it shouldn't be too hard to do the same for other Linux-based devices.
This is why you don't pay for media.
My wife's iPod recently decided to just stop syncing with her windows desktop all together. iTunes has always been the worst of the worst in music management but now it's just dead to her. I'm sure I could reinstall windows for the 10th time, but shes just done with it and wants to be rid of it. It especially irked her when it tried to "Sync" with her camera every time she plugged it in and randomly erased photos...
So I ordered her a new MP3 player with the same amount of memory and features for $35 (her iPod was $200) so she was happy... then she asked "How do I get all this music I bought off of it?"
YOU PAID FOR MUSIC?!?!?
Then I had to explain she didn't actually "buy" anything at all. Downloaded her entire music collection in about 5min (took me an hour to look it all up) and I guess that's piracy even though she paid for it. Go figure.
Don't pay for media. You're just asking to get screwed.
So, with that in mind, I finished up editing Slashdot for the day and sat down to watch some of these new pilots.
Nice try, but we know you were wanking. Next time say you're sky-diving, designing the next Mars rover, or banging a supermodel. At least we know that there is someone doing those things.
That story doesn't explain why one day I could view Amazon prime videos and the next day I couldn't. If I weren't so honest, I'd consider just saying FU and start pirating like so many suggest. Instead I'll probably go out and buy a new BR player that supports their DRM scheme. I know one thing for sure though, I won't be ordering it through Amazon after this dick move.
BTW, anybody know of BR player that supports the 4TB drives that I ripped all my DVDs too?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
About 2 weeks ago or so, I stopped being able to watch any Amazon Prime video on my Ubuntu 12.10 box. I was fine previously, after installing HAL and disabling the Pepper flash plugin in Chrome, so the Adobe plugin was used. But suddenly, with Flash 11.2.202.280, it didn't work.
... probably better than back-leveling all the way to 10.1, like I mentioned in those instructions.
After experimentation, I found that video viewing was re-enabled by back-leveling to an earlier Flash plugin version. Instructions here.
Can't try it till tonight, but hopefully that workaround is effective still. Minor edit to the instructions, I later tried the plugin version right before 11.2.202.280 (can't recall the number) and it worked fine
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
That looks pretty clear to me. You just don't like the answer so you're refusing to listen to / accept it as an answer.
This wasn't supposed to work. You found a loophole and were using it in a way they neither intended you to nor wanted you to. They closed the loophole. You need to deal with it from that angle, not "they broke it and it's their responsibility to fix it", because they didn't, and it's not.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
F*ck it, it never worked in England anyway.
*woooosh*
Thanks for the irony overload!
Sig out of date
Right. We can't have 'the masses' determine what a good product is, can we? That must be done solely by self-appointed elitist assholes who know better than everyone else.
By purchasing a player that works with their DRM you are showing them that their customers will put up with that shit, and that they can screw you even more in the future.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I haven't spent a penny on software for years. For good hardware I have spent many a decent penny.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You can wave money in peoples' faces, but you can't force them to put it into their wallets. Once you get over the shock (and I'll admit, it's always a shock at first) of seeing a "business" tell customers to fuck off and keep their money, you eventually learn to stop trying. Many media "businesses" just aren't interested in revenue right now. Louis CK is a greedy New Yorker bastard, so he sells video files using a centuries-proven business model that 100.0% of the population knows works reliably. These Hollywood Hippie types, though, have some kind of visceral aversion to profit and business, so they're off in their communes talking about the virtues of DRM and how it helps you "turn on and tune in" to the pirate scene, and "drop out" of your oldschool media subscriptions. Groovy, man. Every day is 4/20 in Hollywood. And when you need a PR bump, just check into rehab.
On the bright side, went home for lunch today and saw Amazon had delivered another box of equipment including hard drives (several days ahead of schedule). So while their media "business" is some kind of non-profit non-revenue experiment, overall the situation is different. There are still at least some actual competent business people working there, still, hence the hardware-for-money transaction going through. (Why these "conservative" suit-and-tie-wearing [hold nose]salespeople[/hold nose] haven't been fired yet, I don't know, but after it happens, we'll still have newegg.) And the very drives they sold me, will contain what they refused to sell. In the end, they still got to wet their beaks.
Anyway, keep stickin' to The Man, Amazon Prime VP. If the boss ever says something in a meeting about the other divisions still bringing in revenues, I'm sure you'll think of some way to change the topic, away from your insideous sabotage.
Won't work on DOS 6.2.2 either.. WTF?? Doesn't anything last?
Wouldn't it be terribly ironic if Amazon was using Linux internally, taking advantage of the hard work of the open-source community, only to shun them away from using any content being generated?
Perhaps another clause is needed in GPL?
I tried a friends Amazon Prime account earlier this month on XBMC. It worked great and had some content of which interested me. So much so that, last evening I signed up for Prime, only to find today that I can't even use it. Oh well, so much for the 30-day trial.
-- L8R, guitardood
And unlike their content someone can't take a copy of my money and post it on the internet for everyone to get for free.
If amazon wants my money they need to have a local storage model where I can download once and view as many times as I want offline, on any device I own. And it needs to work w/ linux as easily as possible.
Right now thanks to private trackers I have every tv show and movie ever made at my fingertips for free, pretty much immediately after it "airs" the first time. Amazon and netflix are competing against that and they aren't doing a very good job.
Also, I don't know how much of a profit they make on a Kindle fire.
It's not so much that they make money on the Fire. It's that once you have one:
1) You are renting movies and watching video from the Fire, all from Amazon.
2) You are buying and using Kindle books.
3) You also are buying apps from the Amazon app store.
4) Presumably you will make use of the Prime membership and order more physical goods from Amazon (I have Prime and it's very true that it has that effect).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But it already works that way. Self-appointed elitist assholes flood information channels with what they think should be consumed, and the masses in turn consume it. We simply need elitist assholes that have a different goal.
This is why I keep using Windows. Despite preferring Linux for (some) technical and ideological reasons, ultimately Windows is always going to be the first-tier platform for a lot of companies to support, Mac second and Linux often not even on the radar. Doesn't matter if the content is always good or not, at least having the ability to see said content is better than being without. Apologies for any flamewars.
Apparently being anti-Steam is grounds for insults, even if there's basis. I shall learn to keep my mouth shut.
Just viewed the Alpha House pilot and I am using Debian 7.0 (Wheezy). "apt-get install hal" was all that was needed. Works perfectly. Love to Debian!
I suspect this is being rolled out on all new shows. I had similar issues with Game of Thrones last week. But I have to to hand it to Amazon I set them an email nicely asking if there was any way to watch it on my Nexus or Linux box. Or if they could refund it. The result 3 messages over the space of a day no you can't watch on Android, try this on Linux (didn't work), and here is your money back. Sure it sucks that I could not get Amazon Instant video working on Game of Thrones, but the end result is I have my money back, and I'm likely to remain a customer. Of course I'll most likely wait until the DVD comes then buy it used or borrow it from a friend. Sad how DRM actually causes a loss of sales to the content owner....
Amazon is being particularly uncool about this. When I submitted a ticket this weekend I got a message back a day later thanking me for my suggestion that they add support for Android, when the point was thay it had already been supported!
Fortunately(?) streaming is working on my desktop with FF17 under Lucid Lynx (the previous LTS).
Were that I say, pancakes?
Is this why my secondary CRT TV goes blank black when watching Amazon's videos in dual screens set up? :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Start paying attention to the hardware you buy, the software you use, and the web sites.
Google makes it easy to find content that is DRM-free. Just install Adblock Plus and use Google to search. Restrict the sites to eu & ch. Other domains may also be good in the future. Just keep an eye on what domains the DRM-free content linkers are using. Then type 'name of show/movie' and site:eu OR site:ch to restrict it to the domains which the DRM-free content linkers use. ie DRM-free content linkers are linking to DRM-free content on other sites.
2nd thing to do is purchase hardware that is free software friendly and from companies which make it easy to get such hardware. ThinkPenguin avoids offering DRM-encumbered hardware. For now (while it is still possible) they don't ship CPU with 'Trusted Computing' technology.
3rd is pay for commercial content from legitimate companies that only distribute DRM-free content such as eztakes.com. While the selection isn't great there are still some great films in there catalog. It's at least worth a look.
I suspect that this is not a problem for anyone but a minor chunk of Slashdot readers. Who bothers with linux anymore? I supported you, but the war's over and you lost. After 20 years, Linux still sucks. It sucks just like Unix did. It's why we abandoned both of them. They suck. It's time to give up and move on to something that may be of value to the masses. Unix sux. OS2 sucks. CP/M sucks. Grow up and get over it. I won't be offended when you vote my comment down. It's expected from true believers in unix/linux.
I love my Kindle. As a way to read books and watch Amazon video content it is superb and all the other stuff it does is a bonus. I never ever thought I was buying a general purpose computer and neither should anyone else.
This might explain it a little bit: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-is-planning-to-release-a-set-top-box-for-video-streaming-2013-4
You lost your credibility in the second line:
Perhaps the decade long dearth of any good television is nearing its end!
In chronological order, an abbreviated list:
Yeah, it's been a pretty crappy decade. (Any show listed before 2003 had a significant number of episodes in 2003 and beyond.) There are a lot of people out there that feel that this is the new golden age of television.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
"It seems that the same toxic thinking about distribution control that pervades the traditional networks has infected the online distributors. It's clear that torrent trackers offer something the traditional channels do not: (mostly) effortless access to content how and when you want it."
This is the only reason I (would ever, hypothetically) need to get content from torrents. It's just so darn easy. I pay for these other services, but still (would, hypothetically) download shows from torrents because it allows me more flexibility in my watching.