Does this App go against copyright laws?

[likemyorbs]

Pshh, i get way better quality pirated movies than this app can provide. FAIL

 

[doug in albq]

...pretty nice way to watch a bunch of Chinese television programs, including (almost) live news and other live TV (in Chinese), though...

I think the app is not half bad. If you can ignore the low quality video, the app itself is nice—unlike Netflix, which is just a skin of their website.

Don't get me wrong, Netflix is is great, but the Netflix APP for the iPad is weak.


EDIT: this app is quite interesting. Does seem to be pushing the boundaries of copyright infringement. I'd grab this app now, before Apple deletes it. BTW, the download of a movie just failed for me, I was trying to watch it and download at the same time and that did not work so well...however, the 10+ channels of live Chinese TV is still quite impressive...

 

[caubeck]

I've been practicing my Chinese with this and some other Chinese TV apps. The music videos are great, they could remove the bootleg movies and it would still be worth keeping. I'm amazed it got through the screening process.

 

[cfs123]

...pretty nice way to watch a bunch of Chinese television programs, including (almost) live news and other live TV (in Chinese), though...

I think the app is not half bad. If you can ignore the low quality video, the app itself is nice—unlike Netflix, which is just a skin of their website.

Don't get me wrong, Netflix is is great, but the Netflix APP for the iPad is weak.


EDIT: this app is quite interesting. Does seem to be pushing the boundaries of copyright infringement. I'd grab this app now, before Apple deletes it. BTW, the download of a movie just failed for me, I was trying to watch it and download at the same time and that did not work so well...however, the 10+ channels of live Chinese TV is still quite impressive...

You can't download and watch at the same time. Although it says download failed, you are still able to continue download where you left off.And it does take three hours to download one movie so it is best to do it overnight to see the quality of the video.

 

[cfs123]

Pshh, i get way better quality pirated movies than this app can provide. FAIL

Maybe it depends on the movie you download. True the TV is iffy quality but I am not sure if you downloaded a movie. I have twice to check the quality after some people on this thread said it was poor. The two movies I downloaded where Date Night and Green Zone. Although none where to the quality of an itunes rented movie, the quality, IMO of course, was good. The first 3 minutes of each movie tends to be a bit "pixilated" but beyond that, I get almost as good quality as my Netflix gives me, easily being able to see details of the camera's background images (something not present in videos with poor quality).

 

[cfs123]

CFS123, the streaming of TV function is probably similar to the ABC player but as we can't use this app here in Canada I personally can't make the comparison. Do you know if ABC (or any others) download directly to the ABC app as opposed to the iPad's video library and once downloaded require a live mobile connection for playback? If the video can't be played in an offline mode then technically has it been downloaded? I suspect that this is a beta app being tested in a live enviroment and that Apple is in agreement with the provision of these videos as a preliminary part of a larger deal currently being inked. The extreme slowness of the download (internationally anyways, I'm on high speed), the mediocre quality, the subtitles and the app's lack of visibility is probably meant to thwart those that are currently looking for a free ride. Looks like China Unicom will provide the network infrastructure but the retail of mobile devices and the media distribution will be through a licensed agreement with Apple. When you think about it, the requirement of being online in order to view a video is similar to the renting of a video on iTunes. Both situations are temporary as you aren't gaining ownership.

There must have been another update as one can now watch DVD movies with no network connection. It doesn't save to itunes library but it is embedded in the application somewhere.

The evolution of this app has been very interesting to me.