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March 28, 2024, 07:07:11 PM

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Is Mubi Worth It?

Started by SteK, February 05, 2020, 07:40:15 PM

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SteK

Tempted, but I'd imagine I'd hate a lot of it as pretentious crap. Can you persuade me?

Sebastian Cobb

it's great imo, especially if you get mubi go as well. i've discovered loads.

non capisco

Mubi Go is great. I've really been enjoying visiting all the lovely non-chain cinemas I could never usually afford to go to. Saw the new Malick at The Arthouse in Crouch End the other night and I'm pretty sure it was a better experience than if I'd have gone to see it at the one Cineworld that was showing it.

peanutbutter

Quote from: non capisco on February 05, 2020, 07:58:49 PM
Mubi Go is great. I've really been enjoying visiting all the lovely non-chain cinemas I could never usually afford to go to. Saw the new Malick at The Arthouse in Crouch End the other night and I'm pretty sure it was a better experience than if I'd have gone to see it at the one Cineworld that was showing it.
As someone who went to the one Cineworld that was showing it, you're almost certainly right.

I don't use Mubi or Mubi Go as much as I should (if I had an actual television space I'd use it way more) but it's a pretty good deal imo. Every month at least one of the mubi go films will be worth seeing, which is basically the price covered in one trip. Only issue is some of them are very niche, e.g. this week's one looks good but because I missed it over the weekend I only had two screenings in the whole city I could get to easily over the week.



Overall I'd rather the Criterion Channel (US only and apparently hard to VPN) and all its bonuses but Mubi's a pretty neat niche thing.

non capisco

I also like the aspect of having films chosen for me. I'll sometimes kick off something on Netflix and start thinking "I bet there's something better than this on here" a mere two minutes in, not giving it a fair crack of the whip. Or else I start browsing and I'm paralysed by choice. With Mubi it's "Nah, you've got thirty to choose from out of these and if you don't watch the ones down the bottom in time they're getting binned." Refreshing, once you get out of the mindset of "I have to watch everything."

I think of it like Alex Cox's old much loved BBC2 cinema showcase strand Moviedrome, but it's on every day.

Sebastian Cobb

Can get a bit stressful if one is running down and you can't find the time though. Or you watch it out of obligation when not in the mood because it's going.

Oh and obligatory hawking of my bot. Again.
https://mobile.twitter.com/leavingmubiuk

peanutbutter

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 05, 2020, 10:27:36 PM
Oh and obligatory hawking of my bot. Again.
https://mobile.twitter.com/leavingmubiuk
How'd you go about getting the IMDb/RT/MC results here? I was trying to do something sorta related but didn't want to bother delving into their APIs.

grassbath

Quote from: non capisco on February 05, 2020, 10:23:28 PM
I also like the aspect of having films chosen for me. I'll sometimes kick off something on Netflix and start thinking "I bet there's something better than this on here" a mere two minutes in, not giving it a fair crack of the whip.

Yeah this about sums it up. Combats choice paralysis. While a lot of it is your typical slow arthouse stuff, theres enough of a variety on there at any one time that it's not overpowering.

Basically if you're interested in discovering new films and occasionally being promoted to watch a lesser-seen classic, its invaluable.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: peanutbutter on February 05, 2020, 10:31:27 PM
How'd you go about getting the IMDb/RT/MC results here? I was trying to do something sorta related but didn't want to bother delving into their APIs.

I take the name and date of the film and search the OMDB for it and include IMDB/RT/MC scores if it has them.
http://www.omdbapi.com/

If it doesn't have scores or it can't find them it uses the Mubi synopsis instead.

I figured out their listings endpoint/url by looking at a Kodi plugin that someone else wrote.

peanutbutter

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 05, 2020, 10:44:50 PM
I take the name and date of the film and search the OMDB for it and include IMDB/RT/MC scores if it has them.
http://www.omdbapi.com/

If it doesn't have scores or it can't find them it uses the Mubi synopsis instead.

I figured out their listings endpoint/url by looking at a Kodi plugin that someone else wrote.
Cool stuff, does the year have to be exact or would Parasite 2020 get you the right film?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: peanutbutter on February 05, 2020, 11:01:31 PM
Cool stuff, does the year have to be exact or would Parasite 2020 get you the right film?

I can't remember but I think it needs to be exact. The OMDB site has a form to play around with the api and Parasite 2020 didn't work.

Bear in mind the date is coming from Mubi so I expect it to be reasonably trustworthy. Most of the time it probably doesn't need a date at all.

Armin Meiwes

Love Mubi, prefer it to the criterion model because (and this is probably just more about my own shitness) when I was a subscriber to the filmstruck/criterion joint site before it went bust I had a great list of films set up ready to watch and I hardly ever got round to seeing them whereas anything i really want to see on Mubi I'm much more likely to catch because of the time limit.

If you combine it with a VPN the selection is brilliant as every country has its own set of films (with some but not massive overlap). Started noticing that France in particular seems to get a lot of stuff I want to see. Obviously not much point in subscribing unless you're a fan of arthouse stuff but it's not all totally obscuro stuff by any means.

Armin Meiwes

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 05, 2020, 10:27:36 PM
Can get a bit stressful if one is running down and you can't find the time though. Or you watch it out of obligation when not in the mood because it's going.

Oh and obligatory hawking of my bot. Again.
https://mobile.twitter.com/leavingmubiuk

Any chance you could do a bot of every film from every country that has been added reach day? Right pain in the arse having to keep changing VPN location and restarting the app.

Puce Moment

I get this free through work and I really like it a lot, after many years of criticising the curated way it is run. It is a great way to catch up with older world cinema, often in restored HD. These are the types of films that, how can I put this, are less 'available' online, or are uploaded to dailymotion in shitty quality.

I have found myself going on little rabbit holes of directors, and have ploughed through the back catalogues of Varda, Antonioni, Bergman, Cassevetes, Akerman, Bresson, Fassbinder and loads more. I'm not sure I would take the time to download these films, or buy the eye-wateringly expensive criterion boxsets.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Armin Meiwes on February 07, 2020, 12:09:19 PM
Any chance you could do a bot of every film from every country that has been added reach day? Right pain in the arse having to keep changing VPN location and restarting the app.

I paremeterised it so I could do that, the api isn't geoblocked, although I've never considered region hopping.

https://mubi.com/services/android/films?country=us

SteK

Just seems a bit steep, a tenner a mo on top of ITV Hub, BritBox, Netflix and NowTV.....

Sebastian Cobb

I suspect with the inclusion of ITV Hub and Britbox you might be taking the piss but...

I'd rather support a smaller service that's curating good cinema and letting me discover things from round the world and cinema history than give money to most of those services especially since NOW TV are now part of Comcast, a media cartel, and Netflix are also eating into film and production services in a way that is making everything homogeneous, now with added pushback from strongarmers like disney, throwing money at Mubi is good as they're now distributing budget and arthouse cinema in cinemas.

Armin Meiwes

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 07, 2020, 01:39:52 PM
I paremeterised it so I could do that, the api isn't geoblocked, although I've never considered region hopping.

https://mubi.com/services/android/films?country=us

Didn't understand any of that but thanks anyway!

Armin Meiwes

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 07, 2020, 06:52:46 PM
I suspect with the inclusion of ITV Hub and Britbox you might be taking the piss but...

I'd rather support a smaller service that's curating good cinema and letting me discover things from round the world and cinema history than give money to most of those services especially since NOW TV are now part of Comcast, a media cartel, and Netflix are also eating into film and production services in a way that is making everything homogeneous, now with added pushback from strongarmers like disney, throwing money at Mubi is good as they're now distributing budget and arthouse cinema in cinemas.

Flippin exactly! They are genuinely doing something interesting and different to anyone else, would be gutted if they closed down.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Armin Meiwes on February 07, 2020, 10:27:01 PM
Didn't understand any of that but thanks anyway!

Sorry, it's not readable if you don't have anything to interpret it.

https://jsoneditoronline.org/?id=5f83a24d10e0482b8a55f7df153419a8

If you look at the left pane the results should be in a tree that helps, slightly.

SteK

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 07, 2020, 06:52:46 PM
I suspect with the inclusion of ITV Hub and Britbox you might be taking the piss but...

I'd rather support a smaller service that's curating good cinema and letting me discover things from round the world and cinema history than give money to most of those services especially since NOW TV are now part of Comcast, a media cartel, and Netflix are also eating into film and production services in a way that is making everything homogeneous, now with added pushback from strongarmers like disney, throwing money at Mubi is good as they're now distributing budget and arthouse cinema in cinemas.

Well I have ITV Hub purely for Corrie - I'm an addict and in Ireland. Britbox on trial but there's a lot of stuff on it I like so not sure.

I'll go for it.....

buttgammon

Quote from: SteK on February 07, 2020, 10:40:17 PM
Well I have ITV Hub purely for Corrie - I'm an addict and in Ireland. Britbox on trial but there's a lot of stuff on it I like so not sure.

I'll go for it.....

Can you get the Virgin Media Player? They have Corrie episodes. Not sure if it's free if you're not a subscriber to their atrocious cable service though.

mjwilson

After my first couple of months of Mubi, I decided I wasn't using it enough, so I went to cancel on the website.

It immediately offered me the option to continue at a reduced rate.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: buttgammon on February 08, 2020, 09:28:22 AM
Can you get the Virgin Media Player? They have Corrie episodes. Not sure if it's free if you're not a subscriber to their atrocious cable service though.

Geoblocking is the issue innit. I believe ITV hub has a paid option that lets you use it abroad, technically you still have to say you live in the UK and really it should be part of the UK that is an ITV region, so not Scotland or NI because it's an EU law that allows you to watch your local streaming library anywhere in the EU, it was aimed at the likes of Netflix, it put a stop to region hopping on Netflix via vpn's but that should be superseded by the fact they want distributors to treat the entire EU as a single region. I worked on implementing the same sort of subscription-based thing for, ahem, a different broadcast region that also shows corrie.

Fun fact Geoblocking cannot give accuracy greater than 'somewhere in the uk' as isp's exit points could be anywhere (eg plus net = Sheffield) so these services tend to restrict to that then use a postcode for further granularity.

SteK

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on February 08, 2020, 01:18:20 PM
Geoblocking is the issue innit. I believe ITV hub has a paid option that lets you use it abroad, technically you still have to say you live in the UK and really it should be part of the UK that is an ITV region, so not Scotland or NI because it's an EU law that allows you to watch your local streaming library anywhere in the EU, it was aimed at the likes of Netflix, it put a stop to region hopping on Netflix via vpn's but that should be superseded by the fact they want distributors to treat the entire EU as a single region. I worked on implementing the same sort of subscription-based thing for, ahem, a different broadcast region that also shows corrie.

Fun fact Geoblocking cannot give accuracy greater than 'somewhere in the uk' as isp's exit points could be anywhere (eg plus net = Sheffield) so these services tend to restrict to that then use a postcode for further granularity.

On Irish Sky we get BBC Northern Ireland, And Virgin One (ITV), I wondered with the exit point issue and if you are close to the border whether you can actually control geo-blocks accurately.

Sebastian Cobb

It looks like virgin media has a streaming service?

https://www.virginmediatelevision.ie/player/show/1058/0/0/Coronation-Street

I don't know anything about how the geoblocks function on the Irish border, but I'd guess it's a relatively hard border in network terms as the underlying telephone systems (BT/TE) are distinct in a way they aren't between components of the UK.

Buzby will have a much better answer.

SteK

I do like the ITV Hub as I'm all over Europe (will we're still sort of in) and it's only £3.99 and the ads are removed.

Britbox is £5.99 and I quite like it, loads of the Brit drama and comedy on it suits me.

Netflix £8.99 but I watch it less and less, it does the skip intro thing I like but as I like to fall asleep with something familiar but good on, the 'Are You Still Watching' thing kicks in too early and interrupts by drowsing before I drop off, then I'm fully awake again.

I've somehow ended up with Amazon Prime Video too, £3.99 I have no memory of subbing to that.

Sometimes prefer having BBC1 and ITV and new kid on the block BBC2, no costs apart from licence fee and no balancing subscriptions.