Other streaming services are available

[steveh]

The BFI have just launched a new subscription service offering 300+ films for £4.99 a month.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/announcements/say-hello-to-bfi-player-plus

Looks like a pretty decent selection, with a bunch of films I might otherwise have eventually shelled out for Blu-rays of. Main downside is that it is browser and phone / tablet support only - they really need to be on smart TVs and Apple / Android TV boxes and sticks.

I guess Mubi might be hit by this as it has only 30 films a month for the same price, even if they are generally a bit newer. The only other close competitor, Curzon, seem to have chosen a premium market aimed at older people out in the sticks who have no local arthouse cinema to see the new releases.

Anyone here use services other than the usual Netflix and Amazon Instant Video?

[olliebean]

Does it support Chromecast, at least?

Currently on my second extended free trial of Now TV, thanks to Chromecast (worth checking the offers every so often), but I wouldn't advise paying for it - a lot of stuff on there has buggered sound atm, and apparently has done for the past several months according to the support forums.

[steveh]

Seemingly not. Thought they had an app available but on further digging it turns out it's browser only with a plugin needed to run on Android. I could understand them going for a universal HTML5 app like YouTube do but a Flash / plugin service in this day and age is a bit rubbish really.

[imitationleather]

Ah, I've been looking forward to this since I saw it trailed at London Film Festival. (So I've been looking forward to it for nearly three whole weeks!)

I wonder if the lack of app for tellies is something to do with licensing. There is really no reason to overlook it otherwise. I think this service is a great idea, but I don't know if I'd actually ever use it without Roku support. Having to plug my laptop into the telly and as a result not being able to use it as a laptop is really annoying.

[Paaaaul]

I use Mubi. It's ace. Over a year they have 365 films, so comparable to the BFI list. It works on Chromecast and Fire Stick.

[prwc]

Vinegar Syndrome recently started a streaming service for their vast selection of obscure retro filth, called exploitation.tv. It's still quite odd seeing these sorts of films in 1080p, but I do feel they benefit from it. Still a fairly limited selection but I'm sure it'll expand.

There's Fandor also, which I know less about but it seems to have a decent selection of non-mainstream/arty titles.

I'm not opposed to streaming at all but the inherent bias it has towards really popular content is potentially very damaging for both distributors and film watchers. So many people won't bother with something now if it's not on Netflix which is absolutely horrible. Good that some sites seem to be trying to readdress the balance at least.

[steveh]

Fandor has a nice eclectic selection - only US and Canada though.

Although ad-supported, there have been occasional things of interest I've found on Viewster amongst the bargain basement tat. They seem to be going big on Japanese and Korean films and shows lately.

[WesterlyWinds]

What happened to the good old days of illegal downloads? Kids today, pfft

[Bobby Treetops]

Fandor looks good, you don't get 'An American Hippie in Israel' on Netflix I tell you, has anyone tried to get it to work with Hola?

[prwc]

Fandor looks good, you don't get 'An American Hippie in Israel' on Netflix I tell you, has anyone tried to get it to work with Hola?

I'd steer well clear of Hola, this site explains well why.

Best bet is to just find a DNS redirection service that offers a free trial, there's quite a few around.

[olliebean]

Hotspot Shield has browser plugins now, probably the simplest free VPN option. On the DNS side, Ad-Free Time is only $2.20 Canadian (currently about £1.10) per month.

[non capisco]

I do really like Mubi but the 30-days-to-watch aspect instills some weird sort of guilt anxiety in me about the things I think I might like but haven't watched yet. I still haven't seen that new Paul Thomas Anderson/Jonny Greenwood thing they've had up for ages, just occasionally been looking at the homepage and watching it slide further to the bottom, thinking 'I'd better watch that tomorrow'. 'Only Angels Have Wings', the renowned 1939 Howard Hawks film starring Cary Grant that I've read about for years and thought 'I bet that's good', that was up on MUBI recently. Dithered about not watching it until it was right down the bottom of the page with a countdown timer on it and then just thought 'that's too much pressure now, I'll download it later'. Fucking about on Cook'd and Bomb'd as we speak instead of watching something on MUBI that the sands of time are threatening my immediate access to. What's the next thing to go? 'The Golem' from 1920, thank fuck, I've seen that already. Bit of breathing space.

[great_badir]

There's quite a lot coming through now, and available through our Samsung smart TV, as well as Amazon Prime and NetFlix, we have things like Wuaki, Curzon Cinema and others, all of which offer slightly different things and are typically cheaper than the usual suspects.

One of my favourites, though, is a free YouTube-like site which offers LOADS of foreign films and TV shows, a lot of which have had subtitles done by users of the site (this is typically for things that don't "travel", or have previously only been available to the West in dubbed form).  Despite the fact I'm on there quite a lot, I can't remember the fucking name of it.  Will check tonight and report back.

[steveh]

Amazon have launched their add-on channels in the UK today. They include BFI Player, which previously wasn't supported on most devices so it's great to finally be able to watch on a TV, though the catalogue isn't currently everything on their direct service. The Arrow Video channel also looks interesting, with a reasonable rotating selection of their catalogue for £4.99 a month. The Comic Con HQ and Shudder channels probably also appeal to some here. Rest is mostly old stuff or reality programming that I can't see most people justifying the price for. 30 day trials on all channels though.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/storefront/ref=nav_shopall_nav_sa_aos?filterId=OFFER_FILTER%3DSUBSCRIPTIONS

[Sebastian Cobb]

Amazon have launched their add-on channels in the UK today. They include BFI Player, which previously wasn't supported on most devices so it's great to finally be able to watch on a TV, though the catalogue isn't currently everything on their direct service. The Arrow Video channel also looks interesting, with a reasonable rotating selection of their catalogue for £4.99 a month. The Comic Con HQ and Shudder channels probably also appeal to some here. Rest is mostly old stuff or reality programming that I can't see most people justifying the price for. 30 day trials on all channels though.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/storefront/ref=nav_shopall_nav_sa_aos?filterId=OFFER_FILTER%3DSUBSCRIPTIONS

Some of those look decent.

[Sebastian Cobb]

One of my favourites, though, is a free YouTube-like site which offers LOADS of foreign films and TV shows, a lot of which have had subtitles done by users of the site (this is typically for things that don't "travel", or have previously only been available to the West in dubbed form).  Despite the fact I'm on there quite a lot, I can't remember the fucking name of it.  Will check tonight and report back.

Is this still a thing? I wouldn't mind checking out Weissensee on account of it supposedly being a period drama in the GDR but they ballsed up the dvd release and some episodes don't have English subs and I don't really want to resort to pushing a subtitle file through google translate and hoping for the best.