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

[Shameless]

it's simply one of apple's unethical business practices that's all, it's not The Escapist's fault that apple put so many limitation in their iOS.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Meh...that's life. Problems arise, and very often you have to throw money at them to make them go away. If you have £400 quid to throw at an ipad, is £13 for a membership really such a stretch?

Are apple just refusing to conform to current industry standards? Or is there another reason for the incompatability? Clarification would be appreciated.

 

[Weaver]

Is it possible to set the iPad up to view the regular version of a site instead of a mobile version?

I don't think so, but in our case we aren't changing the site to prevent videos from working on the iPad. We don't have a special mobile site. Normal users (or people not logged in) see the same site as everyone else regardless of what they're using. If the device they're using supports Flash in some way, or begins to support Flash, they can load our normal player and see the video.

When we detect a logged in PubClub member, we then check to see what kind of device/browser they're using and what they've set their video preferences to. We use that to figure out what kind of video player to show them - some of which have no advertising, but work on the iPad (or iPhone, or Android, etc). It's extra work for our servers to detect what device people are using, so we only do it for PubClub members, and only on the video pages.

Is
$isiPad = (bool) strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPad');
really that much extra work?

I think the real issue is that the iPad/android videos have no advertising. I can see this as not being a priority, but if one day you guys add advertisements to non-flash video formats it would be cool to have them available for free.

Note this doesn't affect me in any way, I just feel bad for the OP.

 

[Virgil]

$isiPad = (bool) strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPad');
really that much extra work?

It is when you need to do it 50+ million times. Or if you need to cache those values in memory for millions of users. We've got a fixed amount of hardware to support a high level of traffic, and we spend a lot of time tweaking things that most people would consider relatively minor just to make sure they're efficient enough to run at our scale.

Plus we can't just check for the iPad, we need to check individually for every different "supported" mobile platform, and check for desktop browsers and their versions as well. Figuring out whether or not a given device/browser/version combination can handle H.264-encoded videos and by which method is more complicated than just one string search.

The real roadblock is definitely the advertisements, but doing auto-detection and displaying the appropriate video player for everyone will be a technical challenge on its own when/if we get to that point.

 

[JemothSkarii]

$20 a year? To a website you love? It's really not that much considering.
If you want to use your iPad, pay it, and then punch Steve Jobs in the face for hating Flash.
If you don't want to pay, use a laptop and make the iPad a small coffee table, a paperweight, or a large coaster.
The Escapist really isn't in the wrong here; it's not as rich as apple and just wants to make some money. Apple is stuck so far up it's own behind that they don't really care about it's consumer base.

 

[The Ambrosian]

Interesting, I thought that they said that they wouldn't remove features when they introduced Publishers-club.

There never was a way to watch it on mobile devices until they added it into PubClub nothing was removed, the feature was added.

 

[Weaver]

$isiPad = (bool) strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPad');
really that much extra work?

It is when you need to do it 50+ million times. Or if you need to cache those values in memory for millions of users. We've got a fixed amount of hardware to support a high level of traffic, and we spend a lot of time tweaking things that most people would consider relatively minor just to make sure they're efficient enough to run at our scale.

Plus we can't just check for the iPad, we need to check individually for every different "supported" mobile platform, and check for desktop browsers and their versions as well. Figuring out whether or not a given device/browser/version combination can handle H.264-encoded videos and by which method is more complicated than just one string search.

The real roadblock is definitely the advertisements, but doing auto-detection and displaying the appropriate video player for everyone will be a technical challenge on its own when/if we get to that point.

Alright, that's fair enough then.

 

[[.redacted]]

Can you not 'crack' an Ipad?

 

[mrwar]

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...

As much as I hate Apple, you're pretty much wrong about all that. You have to pay for that stuff no matter what device you get, nobody is giving away music, movies, and ebooks for free (legally).

Although, you are essentially correct, you should not forget that joining Apple's "ecosystem" means you are no longer part of a free market for all your media content consumption with all the bad implications that this entails. You have to pay the price Apple wants, you have to use the file format they want and you are cut off from any technology that displeases them (usually any technology that weakens their grip on their monopoly, like flash, Grooveshark, Skype, etc).
If you are able to stand that, I must say their products are kinda cute.

 

[Frozengale]

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.

Well if you're using an Ipad as your primary computer then you have a whole other set of problems.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Correct me if I am wrong here BUT:

The Escapists videos are in flash, right?

Steve Jobs don't like flash, and decided that Flash will not be a part of his iProducts.


That means you can't open an Escapist video on your iPad through a browser.
This is not the Escapists problem though, it's yours and Apples problem, but the Escapist are nice enough to offer a secondary service to allow you to watch their videos on an iProduct. Notice how this is something they create EXTRA! and I do not find it wrong or thieving to ask you to pay for their extra work.

Besides, you get all the other content for FREE! on a computer (and most likely any other tablet)m so aren't you complaining about something that really boils down to:

"I use an inferior product, and want special treatment"

PS: I called the iPad inferior to point out that it lacks the capabilitys to run flash/the escxapist browser based videos.
It should not be read as me hating on Apple.

True, iDevices can't run Flash. Apple has found an alternative, instead of Flash they use a format called MP4, or Quicktime. It's similar to Flash, but close to no websites use it as default (but they do have videos in Flash and MP4 format). In fact, some sites have a format that knows if you're surfing on an iDevice, and only show those certain videos. Actually, converting a file from flash to Apple's format is only at the sacrifice of a few minutes.

For the topic itself: I think it would be a lot easier if the Escapist made an iTunes, Droid (or whatever device) app for the website.

 

[FarleShadow]

I feel absolutely no pity for you, you bought an overpriced piece of sh....debris, then expect not to get raped when it comes to paying for content.

Maybe if Apple climbed down from their Fruity Tower of Douche, you'd get Escapist for free.

But saying that, I doubt Apple would climb down from FToD, as its the reason idiots buy their shit, to be DOUCHES.

 

[Destal]

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.)

Have you tried it in the Skyfire web browser? It is a 2.99 app, but it is supposed to convert flash video's into HTML 5. I'd say try that.

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...
You also chose not to be able to enjoy any kind of flash content because Apple decided for you that flash is not a "good" technology (in reality they just want to sell apps that make the same thing flash based applications can do, but I digress).
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!
How quaint...

Except that apple lets lots of other company's sell things that work on apps. For example, there is a kindle app on the ipad. Also the iPhone 4 supports Skype.

 

[Aurgelmir]

For the topic itself: I think it would be a lot easier if the Escapist made an iTunes, Droid (or whatever device) app for the website.

Thats sort of what they did, and they want you to pay for it, which is what OP dislikes. My whole point from the beginning is that since iDevices cant run the escapist normally, they need an app or other addons to work correctly. These cost more money to make, enter the Developers Club.

 

[Phoenixx33]

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.

Thanks for the response, that really clears it up and makes sense. It's unfortunate though that a lot of sites this year have been able to include free HTML5 video for people using there IPads. From my experience since it is free on the PC there really no reason to pay so I can just wait to watch it. on my IPad ultimately it makes me visit the site less as I use my IPad very often as I travel around. Wish you guys the luck in the future to be able to use ad supported HTML5 to capitalize on another large portion of mobile users.

 

[DoPo]

Is it just me or are people desperate to defend the Escapist lol?

They always have been.

All major sites support iOS devices. It's sad this one wants to charge you to use them. Once Flash dies out, they'll be forced to. IOS isn't going away, so they'll cave enpventually.

You responded to a message that is a year and a half old. And the original user is permabanned. I think there is only one way to redeem yourself - press the button.

 

[Hazy992]

Is it just me or are people desperate to defend the Escapist lol?

They always have been.

All major sites support iOS devices. It's sad this one wants to charge you to use them. Once Flash dies out, they'll be forced to. IOS isn't going away, so they'll cave enpventually.

You responded to a message that is a year and a half old. And the original user is permabanned. I think there is only one way to redeem yourself - press the button.

Did you see the post above him? This thread has been... DOUBLE NECRO'D!!!!

EDIT: Oh god it was triple necro'd!!!! D:

 

[puCrepeaP]

I actually found this thread while looking for reasons as to why HTML videos would need a subscription on this site. You see I just bought a new android tablet, and it has been officially announced that the OS will no longer support flash with its new jelly bean update. Flash is not a thing of the past, but will be soon. Especially with all mobile platforms abandoning it. And with the emergence of tablets as media consumption devices, I feel its imperative that this site either offer all there videos for free on any device, or require a subscription for all devices. The line between PC and tablet isggetting awfully thin, and the escapist might end up losing followers if they are segregated.