HD Viewing: A Plea and/or Debate For It To Be Free

@Mercot said:

@damnboyadvance

Thanks for being the voice of us, bro.

I'd love to get a paid membership on this website as soon as I can, but I won't be able to for a while. Money is tight, and I don't have enough money to just get a membership.

But being a free user, I think we just get screwed sometimes. There was the case where they almost made the Bombcast a subscriber-only feature. That was total bullshit. There is also the thing about HD video. But what really grinds my gears is that the mobile website is subscriber only. Think about it: IGN, Gamespot, they all have mobile websites. They are also all free to use. But the Giant Bomb mobile website? You have to be a subscriber. That's a step backwards in my opinion.

I think instead of just restricting what free users can use, Giant Bomb needs to give subscribers more features. Yeah, I'm sure Happy Hour and all that is cool, but will that make everybody want to pay $50 a year?

I'm not sure how one can be screwed while enjoying a free service. You want subs to get more features than free users, making it worth the $50 a year, but wouldn't mobile access fall into this category? Would that bring you in as a subscriber if you had the means?

The mobile site was my sole reason (other than supporting a group of awesome people doing awesome things) for subscribing. All of the other content is great, don't get me wrong, but I can live without it.

If HD videos are no longer a member perk, that diminishes the value of the membership. I doesn't matter if the majority of members want it to be free. Since it was a bullet point as a member perk from the start, taking it away would mean the value of the membership is decreased by X (insert value of HD videos here, >0). I subscribed initially because of HD videos, now as premium videos have picked up I wold say that is the main reason with HD videos being a close second.

As others have said, staff created/recorded content in HD should be a member perk. Anything else, trailers, dev diary crap should be uploaded to youtube at HD or whatever the max resolution they were provided at.

Its not just the resolution of the videos uploaded either. 480p videos can look very very nice if they aren't compressed to shit. I understand the reason behind compressing videos to limit bandwidth, but at a point there are diminishing returns. Looking at some of the HD content, quick looks mainly, it may be 720p, but the compression makes it look a bit grimy on some videos and the SD videos suffer from this even more. I dont know how or who does the compression for the whiskey stuff, but as a user I would like to know as I've seen videos at the same resolution, but appear much much cleaner than whiskey stuff and at considerably lower file sizes. If I was a free user I would be demanding cleaner SD videos instead of trying to get whiskey to damage their membership value.

@theodacourt said:

If people value HD over the quality of the content, then they're probably not going to become subscribers anyway. Anyone who avoids this site because of that, isn't going to subscribe if it was the other way around. My point here is there would be no more incoming subscribers from such a change. The bandwidth of all the free users would be immense and would cost quite a lot to support.

When the costs outweigh the profit then it's not a smart move in any business. While I agree it would be nice and perhaps standard for Whiskey to offer free HD viewing, I don't think it's financially viable, and if it means sacrificing something else to make it work then I'd be even stronger in my opposition. I don't think enough people would be willing to up their subscription fee for such a thing either, they'd rather it went to producing more content, not just make some pixel figures go up.

If you want everyone to enjoy the giant bomb content, then you should offer up some money to a gifted subscription. If I wasn't a member, I'd rather have a subscription with everything in SD than free stuff in HD.

My points. The content is more important than the image quality. I don't think it's financially viable, or a smart business move.

The quality is great but the quality will look more awesome in HD

The picture quality on the HD videos is so bad and has been for a such a very long time that I don't really consider them to be a subscriber perk, I only download them because I can.

@damnboyadvance

Thanks for being the voice of us, bro. 
 
I'd love to get a paid membership on this website as soon as I can, but I won't be able to for a while. Money is tight, and I don't have enough money to just get a membership.
 
But being a free user, I think we just get screwed sometimes. There was the case where they almost made the Bombcast a subscriber-only feature. That was total bullshit. There is also the thing about HD video. But what really grinds my gears is that the mobile website is subscriber only. Think about it: IGN, Gamespot, they all have mobile websites. They are also all free to use. But the Giant Bomb mobile website? You have to be a subscriber. That's a step backwards in my opinion. 
 
I think instead of just restricting what free users can use, Giant Bomb needs to give subscribers more features. Yeah, I'm sure Happy Hour and all that is cool, but will that make everybody want to pay $50 a year?

I'm not sure how one can be screwed while enjoying a free service. You want subs to get more features than free users, making it worth the $50 a year, but wouldn't mobile access fall into this category? Would that bring you in as a subscriber if you had the means? (I'm not making light of your financial limitations by any stretch.) To reiterate (as I posted earlier) I'm happy to pay for extra content as long as GB keeps producing unique, quality stuff (hey, where else can I get periodic eps of Jar Time for fifty bones a year?). HD is still THE way to view GB videos, and it was the initial draw for me. If opening HD content to free users inspires more people to subscribe for extra content, then that seems like an okay deal for all.

No. Pay fifty bucks for a year or five for a month and become a member. Simple as that.

@Avanzato said:

The picture quality on the HD videos is so bad and has been for a such a very long time that I don't really consider them to be a subscriber perk, I only download them because I can.

This is too true. Too true indeed.

@Meowayne said:

Got to agree with damnboyadvance here: To hide a mobile version of your site behind a credit card check in 2011 is a considerably more dickish and backwards move on behalf of WM; whereas I can understand the "premium" status of HD due to bandwidth and/or prestige, this is actually limiting the usability of the website itself. Binding video quality and availability to a subscription is regular practice. But I've never been asked to pay for a mobile site. I'm not a subscriber and I won't ever be one, and I have no emotional investment in this issue whatsoever. But following the logic behind the argument, the mobile site should be the issue here.

I don't agree with you on the mobile site issue, but there's not really any argument I can bring against it. At the same time, we could all easily devolve this into a discussion that says "well, why are their memberships at all". The mobile site is something separate from the regular site that they have to code, which is more man hours than already necessary. That's really the only way I can try to justify it. Even then, anyone on Android could easily pick up the free Giant Bomb app, which is pretty damn good and run by a community member. You wouldn't have the forums, but honestly, I don't use the mobile site for anything other than checking the news and watching some videos...and literally, the only thing the app doesn't have is the forums.

The other thing that we have to continue pointing out, however, is that places like Gamespot or Gametrailers or IGN are large corporate entities with a ton of money behind them. Building and running a mobile site for them? Probably not that big of a deal for those places. However, Giant Bomb is something like...30 people, maybe less, trying to build a network of sites. There are things that will obviously come along with time.

The main reason the argument about HD videos is even coming up is because of the fact that the intern videos on the YouTube channel are in HD while the website's front page content on YouTube is not in HD. That is something that seems reasonable to point out and say something about. Something like a mobile site takes a few more man hours than just shooting a video in HD and then pushing that through the tubes...I think. I can only assume how many man hours go into making an HD video happen on the site and/or YouTube.

Not having HD as a standard option just makes the site look bad. I think I'd eventually get a lot more value out of my subscription if the site had more users. The switch is going to happen sooner or later and I'd rather not have the site be approaching irrelevancy before that happens. I mean currently you don't have to go too far down the list of top viewed videos on the YouTube account to get to under 10k views.

I'm not saying to change it right away. The youtube account hasn't been putting up all content for too long and possibly can bring those numbers up some, but I suspect they'd make a lot more off those videos from ads if they were HD.

@Olymp1c said:

Not having HD as a standard option just makes the site look bad. I think I'd eventually get a lot more value out of my subscription if the site had more users. The switch is going to happen sooner or later and I'd rather not have the site be approaching irrelevancy before that happens. I mean currently you don't have to go too far down the list of top viewed videos on the YouTube account to get to under 10k views.

I'm not saying to change it right away. The youtube account hasn't been putting up all content for too long and possibly can bring those numbers up some, but I suspect they'd make a lot more off those videos from ads if they were HD.

...youtube videos have been HD for a week. They made the change.

I've said it in another topic and I'll say it again here, as a paying member I think free members should get up to 720p streaming for free. Keep 1080p streaming pay only, only allow HD viewing on Roku type devices for pay members, and keep downloading of HD videos of all qualities to pay members. I don't think 720p streaming for free members is at all a bad idea, as lots of other sites come with it standard, no pay.

@MidgardDragon said:

I've said it in another topic and I'll say it again here, as a paying member I think free members should get up to 720p streaming for free. Keep 1080p streaming pay only, only allow HD viewing on Roku type devices for pay members, and keep downloading of HD videos of all qualities to pay members. I don't think 720p streaming for free members is at all a bad idea, as lots of other sites come with it standard, no pay.

There is no 1080p video. They have only done and will continue to only do 720p video. Non subscribers now get 720p through youtube, they changed it about a week ago.

Not having HD as a standard option just makes the site look bad. I think I'd eventually get a lot more value out of my subscription if the site had more users. The switch is going to happen sooner or later and I'd rather not have the site be approaching irrelevancy before that happens. I mean currently you don't have to go too far down the list of top viewed videos on the YouTube account to get to under 10k views.

I'm not saying to change it right away. The youtube account hasn't been putting up all content for too long and possibly can bring those numbers up some, but I suspect they'd make a lot more off those videos from ads if they were HD.

@dudeglove said:

Political cartoons, eat your heart out!

@Dagbiker said:

@Olymp1c

Not having HD as a standard option just makes the site look bad. I think I'd eventually get a lot more value out of my subscription if the site had more users. The switch is going to happen sooner or later and I'd rather not have the site be approaching irrelevancy before that happens. I mean currently you don't have to go too far down the list of top viewed videos on the YouTube account to get to under 10k views.

I'm not saying to change it right away. The youtube account hasn't been putting up all content for too long and possibly can bring those numbers up some, but I suspect they'd make a lot more off those videos from ads if they were HD.

They already put hd video on youtube

Sorry, I'm a subscriber so I didn't even notice a change since I only use the youtube for the intern stuff which has always been HD. GJ guys! Getting stuff I want done before I even know I want it lol.

@nrh79 said:

I think that at least the videos that are available in HD elsewhere should be HD here. I don't think that necessarily has to include in-house sort of vids like mailbag or whatever; trailers and such should prob be HD though.

I stand behind that, totally.