angel:
There's an option for the Seezn Youtube channel which is mostly just clips for their actual shows on the Seezn app which is not listed. How can we add this?
I think, as a rule, YouTube channels (and equivalents on other platforms) are only be counted as a service in themselves if they have full episodes or movies, not samples of those on the company’s own site and/or app.
I at least think, given the number of channels, it would also be prudent to limit them to channels which have full movies and/or complete series (or are planning to), not ones which only have the first few episodes of series in other to promote the company’s own service. Though this may mean removing some that have already been approved.
For examples, the Tencent Video channel appears to host the full versions of all episodes of many series. But the WeTV English channel, after a cursory look, appear to only have the first 2 or 3 episodes of series and clips hosted on the channel itself, and either direct one to the WeTV app to see the rest or include the episodes hosted on the Tencent Video channel in playlists.
This isn’t the case for all the WeTV channels, however, as at least WeTV Korea has all the episodes of series such as Sweet First Love that WeTV English has only the first few of. The WeTV Taiwan channel also appears to have only the first few episodes of series. So, by the rule I purposed, the WeTV-branded channels (which there’s at least 10 of) will unfortunately needed to considered as services or not on a case-by-case basis. But it would mean there’d be a slightly more manageable amount of YouTube channels in the end, and there isn’t much point in linking to a service which is never going to have the full series.
It would also help to dramatically reduce the number of services needed if generic ‘Official YouTube’, ‘Official Vimeo’ and so on services were to be used not only for channels with only one series or movie, but also for those with content from only one production company (those run by TV networks, VOD services or which otherwise collect productions from various companies should be separate services, if the channel has full series/movies on it). The danger with that is that people who don’t understand the system will add links to channels which should be separate services to these generic channels, so the submissions to it would need close attention by admins.
TBH I feel separate services, Vimeo and V LIVE (which if there’s little to nothing in the way of piracy or duplicates on it could be one service for MDL’s purpose, even though the channels are run independently from each other) should be greater priorities than YouTube, as along with piracy sites it is where people are most likely to be searching for dramas anyway. It would be good to direct people to the official uploads on YouTube, but potentially more useful to direct them to official services they didn’t even know about. That’s just my thoughts, though.
A few separate services which it may take a long time before they’re added but I want to mention before I forget about them, after learning about all just recently:
dLibrary Japan – Subscription; limited to United States, Canada; subtitle availability varies. Also thanks should go to twiz for uncovering this utterly unadvertised in English service and mentioning it here.
FAREASTREAM – Subscription; limited to Italy; Italian subtitles. Part of MYmovies.it and uses the same accounts system as the rest of the site; however, I don’t feel the need to render the name as ‘FAREASTREAM (MYmovies.it)’, considering that as of now I don’t know of any other services for East Asian content hosted on the site, nor of any other way that FAREASTREAM is available.
JFF Plus – Free; limited to the 20 countries listed here; subtitle availability varies. I wouldn’t normally consider a festival a service, but as this takes place over near half a year and may become a regular occurrence over that part of the year, and will be way of seeing some much-anticipated and -discussed recent features in many countries, being able to link to it on the movie’s pages could make people consider watching them legally in this instead of pirating them.
It might be high time to share the sheet in this thread too. (:
>> Streaming Providers [ALL] <<
I've collected almost every legal and valid streaming website there is and that I could personally find on the internet, but of course more are coming up every day, so it'll constantly be updated with every new discovery.
This includes both regular websites and YouTube channels, which are further separated by countries we have here on MDL with tabs at the bottom of the sheet.
I've indicated in the column "MDL Name" the website and channels which are already on MDL and with which name they go by here. This bring me to the next three points:
- The channel named 'Ameba TV' needs to be renamed to 'Abema TV'.
- The following 4 channels need to removed from the list, as they're pirate sites. The names they use for their titles don't match the actual dramas under that name.
> 華語國際獨播 - TV Official (YouTube)
> 精选电视剧频道 (YouTube)
> 精彩TV (YouTube)
> 华语经典剧场 (YouTube)
These 4 and other pirate sites can be found in the 'Pirate Sites' tab in the above excel sheet. - Considering the sheer amount of YouTube channels that provide full length dramas, movies and TV shows, I would suggest separating the YouTube services from the the regular sites, by just adding another section below the one we have right now, perhaps just naming it simply 'Streaming Services (YouTube)' .
I'm suggesting this because of two reasons.
1. There are a lot of users who keep confusing the websites with the YouTube channels and keep adding YouTube playlists as a service option, by choosing the regular website service or vice versa.
For example, they would use a playlist posted on the YOUKU (YouTube) channel and choose the YOUKU (优酷) service, which is there for the regular YOUKU website.
Or they would try to delete a playlist from a regular website using the service option, because they couldn't find it on the YouTube channel of that site.
2. Just looking at the number of Chinese YouTube channels, there are at the moment 170 legal channels that provide full-length dramas, movies, and/or TV shows. Out of those 170 we currently have 45 YouTube channels available on MDL. And here we're just talking about the Chinese YouTube channels. There are still channels from other countries that we haven't taken into account.
The list will just be way too long and hard to navigate through if we add them all under one service option.
When new channels are suggested here or found somewhere else, I'll add them to the sheet, so everyone can look through the sheet to find new info, which then brings me to my last point.
If the sheet needs some new addition or it needs something to be adjusted differently, all so it's more useful for adding new services to MDL and for users to navigate through it, please let me know so I can make those adjustments. (:
