Reply To: Downloadable Videos

Hi Brandon, Happy to explain further on your points

So really, I feel bad for subscribers that have been here from the start having to pay for their subscription the whole time, while i can just pay a couple dollars and own the same videos that they are only allowed to stream unless they pay you even more.

The advantage to remaining subscribed is that users get to check out the latest tutorials without having to wait for them to enter the vault for download. For example, videos from this season, of which there are five, are not yet available for download, they are stream only.
So under your example people just joining today wouldn’t be able to get these yet, even from the vault and as such keeping things special for monthly subscribers, so as they have 4 months’ worth of videos available only to them, there is no need to feel bad for them, as we appreciate and reward their loyalty with this system

ergo, there are 2 subjects at play.

1) a “pay to play” system for new subscribers to be able to obtain any older knowledge from before the time,

Yes we offer downloads of older material for this purpose

2) old subscribers must pay you again for content they have already paid for if they want to keep it on their hard drive, so that various internet speed/availability issues dont hamper
their use of your site.

Just to clarify what people are paying for each month – this is to maintain access to the stream of content, this is the product, which includes monthly videos months before they are available for download and sample packs. Like with blockbuster you don’t get to keep a rental just because you have seen it, it’s the same with our membership. Cancelling your subscription essentially ends your rentals on all videos. Internet speeds are the best they have been in history, and while we have been using the Vimeo servers we have not one single report of speeds being an issue. But yes to take the content off the site a small fee is charged.

In the example of my time-frame on your site, since you felt the need to bring it up:
I don’t even think about users who signed up today, let alone think I should have access to subscribed content from September and they shouldn’t because they just got here today in November. when I come to your site, I come for tutorials, not because I think I’m superior to the person who signed up after me.

This was brought it up in answer to your question here to make sure you could see the three videos available to you and things are working correctly your end.
With regards superiority, this is not a factor in this, it’s just how the subscription runs.

When I was a member of Blockbuster (to use your example again) I never once thought that someone who signed up 3 years after me shouldn’t be able to watch the same movies I did 3 years ago because I had been a member longer. We were all just renting movies since we were paid members.

And we agree, that’s why the vault exists. Our system is similar but not identical to Blockbuster. The analogue to their rental is our monthly stream. If you want to keep renting all your videos you can – by remaining a member. With us, like blockbuster, latest releases are only available as rentals (streaming in our case) only older releases can be purchased to keep (our vault section). If you cancel a membership to Blockbuster you can’t go back and take out previous rentals again.
On Netflix there is a changing stream of videos available. Some things get taken off and replaced with new ones. If you saw a film that was on there several months ago, but it’s gone today. It doesn’t mean you should be entitled to get it back because you saw it once before. This is an example of how other sites provide a subscription to a stream of content rather than selling permanent ownership of specific things you have seen.
In another example, if you rented one film from Blockbuster / Lovefilm this would not entitle you to watch a copy of every film they have ever released and this is the same with us.

SG