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Comment by null0pointer | Hacker News Reader

It's even worse if you watch stuff that's not popular. Hollywood is not really my thing so I usually watch more arthouse or vintage movies. Eg. 60's French or Italian cinema, or 80's/90's Asian cinema. Not only are these simply not available on most streaming/rental platforms, torrents can be incredibly hard to find without access to a private tracker. And even if I can find a public torrent it usually doesn't have many seeds.

It's really quite saddening to me that some classic cinema is essentially dead, completely inaccessible.

I eventually found Mubi, which is a relatively cheap arthouse movie streaming/rental service. So at least I have that for now. Until they go out of business because they're not popular enough.

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A friend of mine is their marketing manager, they are doing ok. The long tail is really long ;) and services like Mubi have a pretty good (and often wealthy) niche to get money from.

Please tell them that their homepage is shit.

At lest the German version that I get to see. I want to know how much that costs but it only offers me a 7days free subscription. Even when I go to the gift option it asks me to sign in...this is terrible.

When I click through "Try 7 days free", it then gives me some info and says "Start free trial version", when I press that button it tells me:

    maandelijks €9,99 per maand
    jaarlijks €7,99 per maand
    Afgeschreven in één betaling van €95,88

When seems sufficiently accessible to me. The next step is creating an account.

Might have to give this a try.

Yes, I get that too. I didn't see that because I didn't click that "start free trial version" button because it's not what I wanted to do and actually it's not even what you get when you click that button.

This is just bad.

I disagree. If you're interested in the product and want to give it a try because you know you get a free trial, that's exactly what you're going to do. It doesn't seem bad at all to me.

I was interested until it asked me to sign in.

I assumed that I'd have to create an account before I get to know the prices and therefore I lost interest.

60's French or Italian cinema, or 80's/90's Asian cinema

It doesn't even have to be something as niche as that. Even popular productions can be impossible to watch if the rights holders aren't interested.

Try to find 77 Sunset Strip. It was a massively popular television series that ran for years on TV. It simply doesn't exist anymore. Not on broadcast, cable, streaming, DVD, or any other platform. You can't even torrent it.

I have a relative who lives off the grid. He has this massive collection of thrift store VHS tapes that he watches. I'm so envious every time I see it. So much quality material that simply cannot be watched anymore by any means because they never made the transition to digital.

>You can't even torrent it.

You sure? Seems to be around on torrent sites these days. (At least, most of it.)

But yes, it's frustrating that there's media out there with no legal way to watch it. At least, not unless you're lucky enough to stumble upon a secondhand physical copy.

I tried last month. For even one episode it said the transfer time was 37 years.

Yup, even Evangelion was like that for many years, and so too a lot of British dramas. Even recent hits like Deutschland 83 and Utopia were missing from American market for years.

> Hollywood is not really my thing

I have that issue as well and i'm happy I see more and more vintage stuff (shows and movies) on Archive.

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