Alternatives to YouTube - new site offering direct comparisons

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

SatStorm · Posted: Jul 16, 2009 20:23

Overall, a nice effort.
But sites are missing, like veoh and megavideo for example.

Also, the main reason to search for youtube alternatives, are the copyright region restrictions. So, which sites has restrictions and which don't.
I stopped watching youtube, after many music videos became "not available" in my country. I search alternatives to watch them.

Another thing that might interest, is the ability to restrict your material to a region you choose. For example, when I upload a video, I would love to make it available only to my country. Now this is something I want to see tested!

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

Thanks for the feedback!

I can't really test for everything, and am restricting myself to what's useful to indie filmakers - most of which is useful to most other folk. I'll take a closer look at Veoh and megavideo, as well as two other new kids on the block: webs and vzaar. Many I've excluded because I wasn't too impressed by their sites.

I'll also take a look at what rights a video owner may be unwittingly giving away...

BTW I've set up a Twitter page at http://twitter.com/videoembedtests I'm not a Twitter fan, but for those that are I'll post (or do I mean twit?) a heads up on any updates as I make them, which should be every few weeks or so.

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

Hmm....

Veoh looks rather good, though the movie trailers were very low res. But the full screen PokerClub pop-up put me (and I'm sure most professional users) right off. What other little surprises do they have? I'd rather not find out.

Meagvideo looked like it had some interesting stuff to watch, but I never got to see any because I was redirected to a site (called GameHelper I think) that set about trying to download an installer!

There are dozens of sites like these that pro users need not have anything to do with.
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What are the Alternatives to YouTube?

SatStorm · Posted: Jul 21, 2009 13:10

If your search is about the needs of the professionals, then those sites are definitely not for you.

Veoh and -especially- Megavideo are popular because they don't have region restrictions and allow to show video material that is licensed in USA but not elsewhere.

Veoh also offers a pro version, which suits perfect the needs of any professional distributor.
Also it is the unofficial continuation of stage6.

But the next big thing IMO, is going to be the thevideobay.org
You see, it's not about the professionals and their needs: It's about our memories and our - so called - "pop culture". That was the case once with the youtube and that is the case today. And it seems that thevideobay gonna allow us to do this - for a while at least -

The day Youtube show for the first time to my screen "This is not allowed at your country", is the day I delete this site from my bookmarks. Plain a simply.

Supreme2k · Posted: Jul 21, 2009 14:58

SatStorm · Posted: Jul 21, 2009 19:29

No, Youtube just follow the rules that the Americans decided for my Country.
It has to do with what is licensed in the USA, which the youtube servers are located.

So I blame the Americans and only them for this.

If the company owns the copyright material in the USA and doesn't have a direct dealer / distributor in another country, it prohibits the broadcast.
They don't care If an official local dealer / distributor exists in that country, with a before - and still active - agreement or through another distribution channel than their own. They block the material they control, probably to force new agreements with the local dealers / distributors and bypass / cancel the active deals they already have.

It is stupid like that and it will never work. They loose costumers, not us.

Megavideo won't have restrictions ever (based on China I think), but veoh probably will, someday.

Personally, I'm into the thevideobay.org for the time being. And I would love to see a streaming site that would give to the user the choice to block the countries he wants to.

Supreme2k · Posted: Jul 21, 2009 21:59

It's quite a reach to say that the U.S. controls all distribution rights. Just as they do not control regions. It's an international trade agreement. There's stuff that's not available to the U.K. from Asia, which has nothing to do with the U.S. There's stuff that people in India may not be able to get or view from Greece.
Not to get political, whole IPs and blocks of sites are completely blocked from and by some countries, for political reasons. For Youtube to follow copyright/distribution laws is probably the most diplomatic you can get.
While I'm no fan of any country being Big Brother, I also don't think that anyone should be able to skirt the issue by relocating their servers.

All of this is pretty much moot, since Karel Bata signed up specifically to spam his site. Say what you want about the popularity of Videohelp these days, but he probably got a significantly huge amount of traffic to his site for free, while others (like supermediastore) had to pay.
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Copyright infringement is not theft

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

Spam? A curious accusation from someone whose signature declares that "Copyright infringement is not theft"!

Wikipedia: "Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately". Well this is hardly bulk nor is it indiscriminate, otherwise every post here is spam isn't it..?

To me a large part of the definition of any spam is its usefulness, or rather the lack of any. I regard pop-ups that invite me to play on-line poker as spam (hence Veoh gets my total thumbs down!). But on the other hand there's folk who welcome the opportunity to throw away their money, so it's not spam to them but legitimate promotion of a service.

By contrast, my site gives some very useful advice (better than 95% of what you will find by searching on Google) and is therefore highly appropriate and useful to the kind of folks who come here and choose to read this thread and follow the link. Who else has done a side by side comparison like I have..?

If all 'spam' were as useful I think we'd all be pleased every time some turned up...

And I don't think the comparison with supermediastore is at all appropriate...

I agree with the rest of your post though.

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What are the Alternatives to YouTube?

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

Supreme2k · Posted: Jul 27, 2009 23:54

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

From your link:

Karel Bata · Member Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Location: London, Antarctica

Hey, I think I'm 'going viral'.

No, not swint flu!

I had 300 hits on Saturday, 200 Sunday, 700 Monday, 800 yesterday.

Wow. I wish I was getting paid for this!

I started using Twitter a week ago, and it really works! A few big hitters have tweeted my link, like one with 30,000 followers on Monday, and it's made a huge difference. Of course the site has to be useful (which it is) to be recommended that way.

If you want to be kept informed of any updates you can follow them here http://twitter.com/VideoEmbedTests
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What are the Alternatives to YouTube?