I have to PAY to view Escapist videos on the iPad?

[GeorgW]

It makes perfect sense to let people pay to get to subscribe to videos on their iPhone, but if your iPad is your primary computer, that is really annoying. I hope there's a happy medium here, but I can't think of any right now.

Not using your iPad as your primary computer? It's not meant to be anyway.

Well, I wouldn't use it in that way either, or use an iPad period, but from what I can tell from the OP, the OP seems to. And that's his/her choice, and the escapist should do what it can to respect that.

Edit: So apparently it's all Apple's fault, and not the escapist's. Soo, yeah, f*ck apple then. OP shouldn't have bought their product, cuz they suck. And they suck cuz they can't play escapist videos.

 

[Nimcha]

It makes perfect sense to let people pay to get to subscribe to videos on their iPhone, but if your iPad is your primary computer, that is really annoying. I hope there's a happy medium here, but I can't think of any right now.

Not using your iPad as your primary computer? It's not meant to be anyway.

Well, I wouldn't use it in that way either, or use an iPad period, but from what I can tell from the OP, the OP seems to. And that's his/her choice, and the escapist should do what it can to respect that.

I would think it's the other way around. He chooses to limit himself in his possibilities by using an iPad as his primary computer. I do not think he has any right to complain if he actually encounters such limits.

 

[Melancholy_Ocelot]

That's why i recommend that ALL iMcguffins be jailbroken.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-your-jailbroken-ipad-for-real/

This isn't advocating piracy. I know how you escapists get riled up about that. It's taking a purposefully inferior product and configuring it to perform as it was meant to.

*I say purposefully inferior because Apple has the capability, but blatantly refuses to allow the functionality.

 

[Hazzaslagga]

I understand that this would be annoying, is it publishers club thing or something else? Also why would you get an ipad?

 

[Ketsuban]

I find your anger very interesting, by joining Apple's "ecosystem", you are in fact agreeing to pay Apple for almost everything you do. You have to pay itunes to buy music, you have to pay to buy ebooks from Apple, you have to pay to buy or rent movies from itunes, etc...

Wrong. I haven't paid Apple a thing for any of the music, books or movies on this device. The apps came from the App Store, but that's it.

Yet, you are outraged that you have to pay the Escapist to enjoy content that they have to put some work on to make it available to apple devices!

Except the only thing different here is I'm not using a laptop. I'm not asking for special treatment. (The iPad is only a mobile device in being more mobile than a pallet of bricks; it's marketed as an alternative to netbooks.)

 

[Skylants]

I find your anger very interesting, by joining Apple's "ecosystem", you are in fact agreeing to pay Apple for almost everything you do. You have to pay itunes to buy music, you have to pay to buy ebooks from Apple, you have to pay to buy or rent movies from itunes, etc...

Wrong. I haven't paid Apple a thing for any of the music, books or movies on this device. The apps came from the App Store, but that's it.

Yet, you are outraged that you have to pay the Escapist to enjoy content that they have to put some work on to make it available to apple devices!

Except the only thing different here is I'm not using a laptop. I'm not asking for special treatment. (The iPad is only a mobile device in being more mobile than a pallet of bricks; it's marketed as an alternative to netbooks.)

Nevertheless, the iPad can't play Flash content and asking The Escapist to make separate players for the iDevices for free... well, let's just say it isn't going to happen.

 

[Creator002]

-snip-

There's an app (not sure if it's available on the iPad, but I assume so) called SkyFire. It's an alternative browser that allows you to watch flash videos. It works for the Escapist on my iPhone, but the sound quality is crap.

EDIT: Just checked it out again in the App store. It's not optimised for the iPad, but it doesn't say it won't work. They also say they're working on an iPad version, so be patient, I guess.

 

[deathbydeath]

hey, the ipad doesn't do flash, take it up with jobs

 

[mrwar]

Yet, you are outraged that you have to pay the Escapist to enjoy content that they have to put some work on to make it available to apple devices!

Except the only thing different here is I'm not using a laptop. I'm not asking for special treatment. (The iPad is only a mobile device in being more mobile than a pallet of bricks; it's marketed as an alternative to netbooks.)

That`s where you are wrong! You ARE asking for special treatment! THE IPAD`s BROWSER CANNOT PLAY FLASH! And that is Apple`s fault, not the Escapist`s! That is the reason why you cannot see the videos without paying! Is that clear now?

 

[Virgil]

So imagine my surprise, frustration and outrage when I discovered I have to pay twenty dollars a year for the privilege of watching content on The Escapist on my iPad.

Our content, especially our video content, is ad-supported. The reason that we can provide all this content, for free, to anyone and everyone who wants it is because of the ads in the video player and on the site. Without those ads, we couldn't even afford the bandwidth to serve the videos, let alone what we pay the creators and our staff to actually make them.

Right now, HTML5 is a nascent technology. Advertising in HTML5 video is either prohibitively difficult or impossible, and HTML5 video is the only way to get video to play on the iPad. Without the ads to fund the service we would still have to pay for the bandwidth, but we'd get nothing in return. Unlike google with YouTube, we're not a mega-corporation with billions of dollars and unlimited bandwidth, and it's just not reasonable for us to cover that on our own.

The Publisher's Club membership [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/subscription/], as one of its primary features, removes all advertising from the site. Because PubClub members don't have to see ads, we can provide them with a lot of access that we can't give everyone else. HTML5 video, Podcast feeds, full-content RSS. Members can see the video on the iPad because they don't need to see the ads.

So here are the options we're left with:


Wait for Apple to introduce Flash on iOS, so you can see video through our normal, ad-supported video player. Complain to them if you'd like.
Wait for ad serving tech to catch up with HTML5 video, at which point we will roll out an ad-supported HTML5 player for everyone. Trust me, we want people to see the videos, that's why we make them.
Wait for us to come up with some kind of ad-supported device-specific app that will let you see the videos but also cover the cost of serving them. We're a small company and we do a lot, so don't expect this soon though.
Wait for some gigantic company to buy us and provide our videos ad-free to everyone. Also ponies.
Join the Publisher's Club and support us directly, removing the ads and getting all the content in as many ways as we can reasonably provide.


Don't get me wrong. I like the iPad. I own one, and use it, and would love to let everyone watch all our videos on it. If I had my way, there would be no ads on the site at all - they mess up my work and mean I get to do fewer cool things. But I also like having a job, and having all my friends have jobs, and being able to support people like Yahtzee and Shamus Young and the LRR crew. That makes the advertising a necessary evil, and one that we have to keep in mind with everything we do if we want our site to be around next year.

 

[Virgil]

According to Virgil [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Virgil], comparing the iPad to a netbook is short-sighted. At this moment, I'm inclined to ask, "Who was being short-sighted now?"

In that post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.251405.9335237], I said that comparing them based on hardware specs was woefully incorrect and deliberately misleading. Please don't misquote me on my own forums, or I'm likely to get very annoyed and do something petty and vengeful.

 

[gl1koz3]

Wait, you bought something by Apple and complain about such things as twenty dollars? The rage level must be really, really high.

 

[Westaway]

I guess I can understand where you're coming from. Still, it's a premium feature.

On an unrelated note, I think it would be really great if they somehow modified the forums for smartphone use. I found it almost impossible to use the forums on an iPhone.

Same here, I wish they just had an app for the website, I mean, I'd buy it.

 

[jackpipsam]

well the content on the site is still free

 

[megapenguinx]

I've been a fan of The Escapist for a while now - started with Zero Punctuation, moved on to Unskippable, then Extra Credits. That's not too important for the moment, though, but note that the majority of what I consume on this site is video-based.

It's been my intention for a while now (since the release of the iPad made tablets a viable market by demonstrating the superiority of mobile operating systems over traditional ones for low-resource platforms) to buy a tablet. I was going to get an Archos 101, but the distribution for it was so terrible that by the time I had enough cash for the highest-model iPad the Archos still was nowhere near being delivered to me, so I took advantage of a relative visiting Singapore and got an iPad at a moderate discount.

So imagine my surprise, frustration and outrage when I discovered I have to pay twenty dollars a year for the privilege of watching content on The Escapist on my iPad. What's even more galling is that's the only feature of the subscription which I actually care about - it'd be less annoying if I regularly cursed the low quality of Escapist videos, or wanted to download the videos to watch later or any of the other features which you get for a subscription, but the only thing of that long list which I actually want is the ability to watch videos on my own computer.

As such, I feel like The Escapist is a highwayman. It's punishing me for the crime of buying one device over another. I can't be the only one in this situation. Is there an official response?

(I tried to search the forums to find any similar prior posts and came up with nothing, so I'm sorry if I've somehow overlooked an existing thread on the same topic.)

I don't think the Escapist is a highway man. Everyone here knew that you couldn't download videos without joining the pubclub. You should have done some research before you bought the iPad with the intention of using it like that. Just jailbreak your iPad so you can use Flash, it's not really the Escapist's fault for you not being able to watch their videos on the iPad, blame Apple for not supporting Flash.

PS: Though you would have been able to watch the videos on the Archos, pretty much every Android tablet on the market right now is rubbish. So even if you can't watch ZP, you're still better off with the iPad.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

Wait, you bought something by Apple and complain about such things as twenty dollars?

Yeah, excuse me for a moment (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA).

Okay, I'm back. Complaining about Apple's known defects after paying for an Apple product is sorta silly. That said, I do feel a bit for the OP. Nothing's worse than getting a new gadget and finding out it's not compatible with all your old stuff (Sony, no backwards compatibility with the PS3....*grumble*).