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MX Player, a Video App Used By More Than 175 Million Users, Debuts OTT Service. Android Enthusiasts Express Concern. (venturebeat.com)
MX Player, a video app which has been downloaded more than 500 million times across the globe, kickstarted its OTT (online video streaming) service in India, one of its largest markets, this week. MX Player, which is popular worldwide, has earned a loyal user base over the years for being the app that can run any video file you throw at it, even if your smartphone, tablet, or Android TV box doesn't have high-end specs or updated software. It was acquired by Times Internet, an India-based conglomerate this June, and now the big giant is beginning to show what it intends to do with the app. From a report: [...] All of these titles, including those produced by Times Internet, are now available to MX Player users in India at no charge, Karan Bedi, CEO of MX Player, told VentureBeat in an interview. Like most of Times Internet's properties, which include several TV channels and newspapers, MX Player will count on ads to generate revenue. Betting on ad-driven business model, a popular path in developing markets, could help MX Player quickly convince its existing user base to give the streaming offerings a try as it begins to compete in the Indian market. Star India's ad-supported service Hotstar, which offers about 80 percent of its catalog to customers for free, currently leads the video streaming market in the country.
Going forward, Bedi said, the company remains committed to making investments in what made MX Player so popular among customers: The ability to play a plethora of video files on low-end devices. The company won't be bringing its new streaming offerings to the paid version of the MX Player app, MX Pro, he said. Additionally, MX Player's streaming offerings are limited to India, one of its largest markets, for now, although Bedi said the company is working on the right content catalog for other regions. Over at Android sub-reddit, where this story has been discussed, dozens of users expressed their concerns on the direction MX Player appears to be headed.
Going forward, Bedi said, the company remains committed to making investments in what made MX Player so popular among customers: The ability to play a plethora of video files on low-end devices. The company won't be bringing its new streaming offerings to the paid version of the MX Player app, MX Pro, he said. Additionally, MX Player's streaming offerings are limited to India, one of its largest markets, for now, although Bedi said the company is working on the right content catalog for other regions. Over at Android sub-reddit, where this story has been discussed, dozens of users expressed their concerns on the direction MX Player appears to be headed.
...I don't have any concerns. VLC FTW!
The IP in the player and its abilities are a big deal for Times Internet and probably why they bought them. Over half of R&D efforts are toward getting a consistent streaming experience across platforms (and working around Apple's insanely bad protocols you are forced to utilize).
It stands for "Over The Top," which means they're going to screw you so bad, you won't even believe how bad you're getting screwed, even afterwards. You'll always be like, "They didn't really do all that to me, did they? Am I overstating it?" You'll never quite believe how bad they were.
... another day, another stupid acronym. How about first defining what it actually means?
Here's one:
You've paid for internet access on your [capable] mobile device. Some authority then sees it fit to charge you to for instance fully access Viber, Telegram, WhatsAPP or any other service that runs over the internet backbone.
If you're going to use obscure acronyms, at least spell them out once. I get tired of articles where I have to make 10 trips to Google just to translate them to something resembling English. Even those of us who are tech savvy cant keep up with all the latest shorthand.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
With VLC, I've been able to play any video file you throw at it, even if your smartphone, tablet, or Android TV box doesn't have high-end specs or updated software. VLC is open source so i trust it and it doesn't display any ads.
Has anyone here actually used MX? Sounds like a downgrade to me.
Well if dozens of people on a blog are concerned, who am I not to be?
If your player can play it ALL... even ancient obscure game video formats... even folders of JPEGs... Then it is based on ffmpeg. Full stop.
Basically everyone and their donkey use ffmpeg. Even DirectShow players, with the ffdshow that is the heart of every Windows codec pack.
And so, fighting about which player plays the most formats, is as silly as aguing which arm (aka "party") of the industry is more evil in the US.
They are just front-ends. Veils. Th
VLC was crap on Android for years, so I've been using MX. Until the last 6 months, it didn't contain ads (at least on my tablet), so there wasn't any reason to change.
I'll be looking at VLC, hopefully it doesn't have ads or require google-services. Those are no-touch reasons for me.
I guess it really shows were /. is headed nowadays when the forum users are worse than some AOL group user in their ability to use the internet.
OTT is a well established concept ever since netflix came along. And for all the others who hear this the first time, they can use google.
The first entry I get in my localized google version is a special wikipedia link since basically google itself tells me the definition. However it's in pretty much any wikipedia version, including the international one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a video service without their own distribution service (antenna, dish, copper lines, etc.) instead only using the internet.
What do you mean the Internet Protocol in the player? ... You know, people who steal money (and hence work) and don't give anything back. The criminals who leech on on artists and fans alike, always trying hard to give them as little money as possible. Those who act like they can pay with something they put on the copier and expect real actual money that required real actual work in return because "they worked hard for the original". Like that would fly if you put your money on the copier and tried to pay with that because "I worked hard for the original!". The cokeheads who made up the imaginary "intellectual property" concept, to justify both an otherwise illegal monopoly and an otherwise illegal artificial (and also quite imaginary) scarcity, enable this crime scheme. (That "cokehead" description comes from my whole family working in the entire "business" from TV to music to movies to games to books to newspapers. It is a cocaine-based "industry". That's where the extreme paranoia and ridiculous over-confidence come from, when the distribution part [the main money stealer, err, maker] of the "industry" became pointless, and they probably had to hallucinate this bull with a bit of LSD. ;)
You don't support "pirating" thieves, do you?
The "I'm retarded. People are retarded" pseudo-argument doesn't fly anymore. Sorry.
If you're too dumb to handle a computer, get a legal guardian to protect you and your mental disability from the world. If everyone in your town is (aka finds even trivial *scripting* too "hard"), then maybe you are not in a town but in a mental hospital, my friend. Might it be called "United States of Ameritard"?
I could argue "that's geekery, not nerdery", but you wouldn't know the difference.
The point is that this summary is terrible: The central point of the thing is something everyone would "just" need to google? The summary should summarise, that's what a summary is for, you silly geek.
See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...
* Is that the best your "phantasyland FAKE NAME" (for your fake lie of a so-called 'life') can manage?
When a FAKE NAME do nothing like YOU does better than I have? Then talk (you're all talk & no action)...
You can't help you're an immature little BUTTHURT no-mind, lol! I blew you away in TONS OF PLACES and easily dust your no-mind bullshit blatherings.
APK
P.S.=> The TRUE PRICE of your UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME do-nothing selves like you that I can ALWAYS CASH IN ON (lol) is that I can use FACT/TRUTH on them to SHATTER their all TOO fragile delusional egos that they actually know A DAMN THING in computing, lol... apk
You, sir, have dirty intestines.
FYI even the early symbian phones were "spyware phones". And every single modern phone is.
There's a reason why state security people require that any high security meeting, no phones are allowed in the room.
OTT makes almost zero sense. I hate whoever is trying to use it.
I should clarify, OTT as a term. It's not even intuitive to Internet Streaming Video, why not ISV or something.or Online Video Streaming like the synopsis had to explain. OVS sounds better too.
Over-the-top is a more widespread concept than streaming media. More people use the phrase over-the-top than even know the difference between "watching," "streaming," and "downloading."
And, what an awful idea for them! Why don't they choose a term that makes them looks good, or is suggestive of their product?
Maybe they think that language is invented by marketing people? That they're considered an authority? I doubt even marketing people use the term at home. "Streaming" is faster and easier to say than their acronym.
That said, any time anybody uses an acronym for the first time in the document, they need to explain it. But if it is some niche shit that is a different niche than the specialized website they're writing for? Yeah, definitely deserving of ridicule. Maybe they don't need to explain CPU, but sure as heck better explain shit from teeveeland marketing.
The slashvertiser should demand a refund.
The UI, the (former) support for so many formats, the hardware acceleration, etc... MX used to be the absolute best player out there for Android.
Unfortunately, they've ripped out the codecs so you have to install a separate package, and that package (the one on Google Play) has a dearth of codecs. The only way to play something incredibly common/normal/standard with it (like mpeg2video) is to sideload a codec downloaded from some google drive linked from a post in xda developers' forums.
My work phone (very nice S8) is locked down, so I guess I'm SoL. By MX, it was nice knowing ya!
I've been using VLC for years. It's never failed me.