We all love the video content on the Escapist; it's probably what brought most of us here in the first place. Well a few months ago (I believe it was in February) I discovered that my media centre had an Escapist plugin.
I use XBMC [http://xbmc.org/] (formerly known as X-Box Media Center, since it was initially developed for the X-Box), which is a brilliant, free and open-source media centre available for all the major platforms (Windows, OSX, Linux, BSD and even Apple TV). This discovery was not only convenient, it was a dream come true. I could come home from work, relax on my sofa and watch a few Escapist videos on my TV, like I would any other show.
But it was too good to be true. My IP got blocked from watching Escapist videos a few days later. The problem was that the way the addon crawls the list of shows on the site is kinda forbidden. To quote a section of the video help:
However, I would love to see this implemented properly, with the cooperation of the Escapist admins and advertisers. As I understand, there were plans to build this addon to conform to Escapist standards and make it "legal", so to speak, but it somewhat stagnated. There is a relevant thread [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=89243] on the XBMC forums regarding the problems with the plugin and the will to make a proper one.
So I'm making this thread/poll to see if there is a significant amount of users who would use a proper XBMC plugin for watching Escapist videos. If we get enough "yeses", perhaps that would motivate the admins to work with the developer in making a proper plugin that would benefit both the users and the site, by providing an alternative way of experiencing the site's content (that's always a good thing, right?).
TL;DR: Vote YES if you want an XBMC plugin for Escapist videos.
I bundled all the "No" and "Don't care" answers in the poll into one option, because basically I want a count of all the "Yes" answers vs. all the non-yes answers, whatever they may be.
I use XBMC [http://xbmc.org/] (formerly known as X-Box Media Center, since it was initially developed for the X-Box), which is a brilliant, free and open-source media centre available for all the major platforms (Windows, OSX, Linux, BSD and even Apple TV). This discovery was not only convenient, it was a dream come true. I could come home from work, relax on my sofa and watch a few Escapist videos on my TV, like I would any other show.
But it was too good to be true. My IP got blocked from watching Escapist videos a few days later. The problem was that the way the addon crawls the list of shows on the site is kinda forbidden. To quote a section of the video help:
Now, I'm no idiot. I can understand the reasons for this. If you're viewing videos through a plugin on an external program, you're not getting the advertisements that keep the company financially afloat. So I politely asked the admins to unblock my IP, promising not to use the XBMC plugin any more.
However, I would love to see this implemented properly, with the cooperation of the Escapist admins and advertisers. As I understand, there were plans to build this addon to conform to Escapist standards and make it "legal", so to speak, but it somewhat stagnated. There is a relevant thread [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=89243] on the XBMC forums regarding the problems with the plugin and the will to make a proper one.
So I'm making this thread/poll to see if there is a significant amount of users who would use a proper XBMC plugin for watching Escapist videos. If we get enough "yeses", perhaps that would motivate the admins to work with the developer in making a proper plugin that would benefit both the users and the site, by providing an alternative way of experiencing the site's content (that's always a good thing, right?).
TL;DR: Vote YES if you want an XBMC plugin for Escapist videos.
I bundled all the "No" and "Don't care" answers in the poll into one option, because basically I want a count of all the "Yes" answers vs. all the non-yes answers, whatever they may be.
