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Answerman - Why Do Streaming Websites Still Use Flash?

Hulu, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and most of the others still rely on Flash for PC support.

Does the copyright protection really make a difference? I mean, torrents of Netflix originals appear the day Netflix starts streaming them. And in general, you have to give the user the key to the encryption for them to be able to watch it in the first place.

Does the copyright protection really make a difference? I mean, torrents of Netflix originals appear the day Netflix starts streaming them. And in general, you have to give the user the key to the encryption for them to be able to watch it in the first place.

It was only in the last year or so that developers could consider it for streaming "sensitive" content. (By sensitive, I mean the sort of stuff people would want to rip and pirate.) Plain HTML5 streaming video is extremely simple and offers literally zero protection against any sort of unwanted ripping. Most websites code their own video player (which is a surprisingly involved process) but without additional toolkits and Apis, locking down the video is pretty much impossible. And most major media companies won't allow streaming without at least some rudimentary protection against that content getting ripped.

XChampion wrote:

Even a illegal streaming site I know can use a html5 player then why can't these million dollar companies do it.

The illegal streaming site doesn't have to worry about satisfying a licensor that they are doing something to try and protect the content licensed to them (because, of course, they've pirated it rather than licensing it).

In most cases, the pirate site isn't even streaming the video or coding the player, but rather embedding a player from the video sharing website that the video has been uploaded to.

Every streaming site needs to ditch Flash, I don't care what their reasons are for keeping it ... it's that horrible. I've basically flipped from using Crunchyroll to FUNimation because I refuse to use it.

Rychy wrote:

Every streaming site needs to ditch Flash, I don't care what their reasons are for keeping it ... it's that horrible. I've basically flipped from using Crunchyroll to FUNimation because I refuse to use it.

Seriously?! I find Funi's streaming service the shitest of all the three (Crunchy, Daisuki, Funi). It's even worse than Daisuki's. I've never had any problems with streaming Crunchy's HD content. Funi, on the other hand, does all sorts of funny things (bad image-sound synchro, the video suddenly stopping, choppy playback) in every browser I used.

Clearly Flash's protections aren't really working either, given all the easily-available rips of CR/Funi/hulu/etc. streams out there.

And let's not forget the part where anytime you wanted to watch a video, you'd be prompted to upgrade the player software, install a new codec, reboot your computer twice, and then try to remember where the hell the video you wanted to watch was.

FUNimation uses HTML5, but not as the default player. I watch videos with Safari and I don't have Flash installed on my computer.