this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024

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Recent Nebula content (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking for a way to watch recent Nebula plus videos. I only have two short videos that I am looking to watch and I don't think that justifies the cost of a subscription, though I would gladly pay 50p for each video.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sign up, watch videos, cancel account. Or look for pirated versions, but Nebula is one of the places that has yet to turn shitty.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Plus it's hard to believe that it will since it's creator owned and the creators who own it mostly have integrity.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I understand pirating from Netflix and such, cause they're big companies and their service is shit, but Nebula is run by creators and you support them directly with a subscription. So if you have $5 at your disposal I would highly encourage paying for Nebula.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Just a few weeks a ago "Real Engineering" relased a video about how Nebula works. Literally talking about the streaming protocol used and the technical aspects of it. Nebula is definity pirateable with ffmpeg if you properly edit the m3u8 file, from what I can tell.

But seriously, I'm with most other people here ... just pay for it for a month an cancel. It's a really great platform and I'd feel bad ripping from them. I actually bought the $300 lifetime membership the other day.

If you have some means of recieving donations, PM me, I'll send you the $5 for a month.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if the $300 is sort of like extra startup money to get better hardware, infrastructure, software improvements in the short term. I honestly have no idea. I pop on there sometimes to watch the full length videos from YouTube and there is some really great content, but not necessarily enough. Their UI/apps could definitely use some work, though I have not checked recently.

I really hope they continue to run and it looks like I need to catch up on some content. I took a break from most YouTube/TV/etc. I cancelled all of my other subscriptions, but I have no reason to not support a company like Nebula, especially at their price points.

I am not going to debate the ethics of piracy or people's justifications for or against it. It isn't productive. I do think this is an instance where you are better off paying for a month than spending a lot of time trying to get it another way. Sometimes, I like to put things in the perspective of I make X dollars an hour, how many man hours did I spend to do X task? Cost benefit analysis. This isn't always practical, thus the "sometimes".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I wonder if the $300 is sort of like extra startup money to get better hardware, infrastructure, software improvements in the short term

Yes, it totally is. It says so in the video I was refering to. They basically needed some capital but didn't want to be accountable to traditional investors. He explains it much better in the video.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

the fact that they offer a lifetime subscription tells me that they don't care about sustainability and will disappear within a decade

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

A tiny fraction of their users paying upfront (remember opportunity cost of money) is hardly going to doom them to insolvency.

Look at this way - investors give money to a company now to receive money later. They risk capital now in exchange for future rewards. Lifetime subscribers pay a large fixed amount now to receive free service later. Same thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They're probably just leveraging the good will they have as the plucky underdog. I personally found the app clunky and that the videos loaded really slowly, but I don't blame them for offering a lifetime subscription.

Either that, or it's just price anchoring and they weren't expecting anyone to spend $300, but it made the other options look cheaper

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't do them like that. This is the type of service our money should actually be going to, for now.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This. Generally speaking, If we don’t support small businesses, large corporations win and we all lose.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Maybe those services shouldn't use similarly predatory models that rely on immoral subscription rather than ownership.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Think about how this would actually work. Suppose you paid some small sum for access to a piece of content.

Fairly speaking, you should only get one chance to download it or one physical copy. That's how it's traditionally been. The ability to download it multiple times (which is what happens when you stream content) is a service, and it costs a lot of money.

Streaming would therefore be pay-per-view, since you are paying for each individual copy of the data that has to be transmitted to you. It wouldn't be fair for you to just pay once and watch once and have paid the same price as someone who paid once but watched it fifty times, thereby consuming fifty times as much server power.

Most people would find it more convenient to pay a large sum upfront in exchange instead of going through the hassle of making dozens of micropayments.

In order to encourage people to make those large upfront payments, content creators would probably offer deals whereby users could get unlimited streams of their content if they commit a certain amount each month. This means their revenue is predictable and the expense is also predictable for the viewer.

Congratulations. We have invented the pricing scheme of cable television.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago

I would gladly pay 50p for each video.

Nebula is $5 for a month and half of that goes to whatever videos you watch.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

Since you're open to paying, have a look around the video descriptions of channels like Wendover and HAI, they often have promo links to get nebula for around ~$25-35 for the year, works out to just under $3 per month.

I'm not aware of anywhere that pirates Nebula content, although I'm aware that floatplane (similar but less popular platform) used to get pirated to YouTube on a regular basis a looooong time ago

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nebula should have a free trial period.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, you can navigate de UI freely and watch the first video for free without any account. What else would you need to know the platform? There's a free trial of Nebula called YouTube. Everything in there except the exclusives. When you're convinced they have the content you want, it's 3€/mo so... whatever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

There’s a free trial of Nebula called YouTube

Lemmy silver award for you, this comment had my dying with laughter

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

what creator are you looking for exactly

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I know it's possible to rip nebula videos with yt-dlp but I don't know of any sites hosting them

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can the comments please stop finding a reason to pirate? Not everyone needs reasoning to pirate.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's exactly 0 comments reasoning piracy 🙃 what the hell is going on? Are bots influencing my opinion not to pirate stuff??

(Also, since when pirates are so chicken, everyone has their own reasons and they shouldn't be shamed for this or something. I thought it's piracy lemmy, not a leagally obtained content lemmy)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

At the end of any pirated content there is some guy that actually "ripped" it. Someone that probably payed for it that then decided to share the copy with the world.

I think this community is generally very piratey and not controlled by bots. If you can't find anyone willing ripping a specific source of content ... well, that's quite telling.

You want Nebula content to be piratable? Go rip and seed it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Nobody suggested re-uploading, everyone suggested respecting authors, and the platform

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Look what community the post is in. Of course it will be about piracy.