Subscription price
Prices for online cinemas in Russia are roughly comparable to prices in the US or Europe, although the average income is much lower. For the average American, a $ 10 subscription won't hit your budget, while for a Russian user, the price will be more tangible.
It is impossible to buy one subscription and watch any films and series
Each service has its own set of content, but this set is always quite limited, and to expand the list of films and TV series, you have to buy several subscriptions at once. Unfortunately, so far no one has made the option “we have everything that any competitor has”, so there are no alternatives left. Kinopoisk tried to do something similar by adding the Kinopoisk HD + Amediatek subscription, but in reality it turned out that the set of content does not coincide with the Amediatek, but only a part of it is presented.
Services offer to buy content that is not included in the subscription
Very often you can see that the service offers to buy the opportunity to watch a new movie or series, even though the user has paid for the “maximum” subscription. Moreover, the prices for such content can reach 400-600 rubles, which is comparable to the price of several cinema tickets (below is an example when last year's film is offered to be bought for 400 rubles with a paid "maximum" subscription).
That is, in reality, it turns out that you bought the best subscription for a lot of money, and you are offered to pay extra for fresh content. A similar example of the absurdity of the situation: you go to breakfast in an all-inclusive hotel, take whatever you want, but at some point you see that they brought ice cream. However, you will not be given ice cream, but will be offered to pay for it even though you have already paid for the all-inclusive.
Very often the subscription is limited to a country or region
Imagine a situation that you bought a subscription from some service and went on vacation for a couple of weeks to lie on the beach of a
Some content cannot be downloaded to the device in advance
Suppose that you have left for a forest / village / Siberia (underline the necessary), and you want to download a couple of seasons of your favorite TV series to your device in advance. Unfortunately, this will not always be possible for the money you paid, and the service can only offer online viewing of the content you are interested in. Service representatives will say that they have nothing to do with it, and it is bad copyright holders who prohibit downloading, but the money is paid to the service, and it is their business to negotiate with the copyright holders.
Already downloaded content needs to be updated periodically
I came across this only on Kinopoisk, so I can't say anything about other services, but I believe that the principle of operation is about the same. A couple of weeks after you've downloaded the content to your device, the app will ask you to update the download. No, it's not that bad, and you don't have to download anything again: the device will just update the license file and that's it. However, for this you need internet access. And if there is none at all, then there is nothing to be done.
It is not always possible to select the picture quality when viewing online
The problem follows from the previous point: suppose you were unable to pre-download your favorite TV series, and you decided to watch it online. Unfortunately, a big disappointment can also await you here: the service itself decides what picture quality the Internet channel allows you to download, and if the signal quality is poor, then instead of Full HD you will have to enjoy a picture of disgusting quality.
Individual seasons or entire series may disappear from the rental.
Before buying a subscription, I did not think that this was possible, but the harsh reality turned out to be this: at any time and for an indefinite period of time, seasons or entire series can disappear from the service. A simple situation: you started watching a new series, watched the last episode of the first season, the outcome was simply stunning, and you want to see what the writers came up with for the second season. Instead of watching the next season, you can see an inscription that now this content is not available, when you can see it, no one knows, and in general, the copyright holders are again to blame, and the service has nothing to do with it, but thank you for paying us money every month. That is, when buying a subscription, you do not need to hope that you will be able to watch your favorite movie or series in a couple of years - it is quite possible that it may not be there anymore.
Copyright holders can set any, even the most ridiculous conditions
This is also a consequence of the previous paragraph - copyright holders can set any rental conditions, for example, even series are available only on even days, odd on odd days. Of course, I have not seen this anywhere, but one of the series has an inscription that the series is available only for 35 days after the release.
Seeing it, I did not believe that this could be, but technical support dispelled my doubts, and everything turned out to be true: after the episode was released, it can only be watched for 35 days. Not in time - your problems. In my case, it turned out that I finished watching the previous season at the moment when the first 4 episodes of the new season were no longer available.
I don’t know why the number 35 was chosen, and why such an absurd condition was made at all, but one thing is clear here - the convenience of customers who pay money is not in the first place here.
Lack of subtitles and original audio tracks
Some online cinemas do not provide the ability to watch content in the original language or with subtitles. For some films, this is possible, but this set is very limited, and you should be very lucky if you can switch the audio track for a movie.
Translation of new episodes of TV series may appear with a very long delay
Yes, this happens with pirated online cinemas, but in this case, users pay money for viewing and high-quality voice acting. Unfortunately, there may be situations where the voice acting appears with a very long delay. For example, this happened with one of the TV shows that I really liked: when buying a season view, it was indicated that the voice acting appears 10 days after the episode was released. This rule was almost always observed, but at the end of the season, the translation began to appear much later, the inscription about ten days disappeared, and the last episode of the season has been hanging without translation for almost 2 months. To my legitimate question "Where and when will the voice acting?" I once again received the answer that the copyright holders are to blame for everything, and the service has nothing to do with it.
In most cases, the online cinema turns out to be quite user-friendly: you do not need to download content from torrents or watch a bunch of advertisements on pirate sites, but for their own money the user gets a lot of disadvantages, which, in my opinion, are quite significant.
What can be improved in my opinion:
- Offer a short piece of video to understand what kind of voice acting and video quality.
- If the user has bought a view for 48 hours (for example, from Kinopoisk), then offer to pay the difference after the view to a version that can be watched an unlimited number of times. Similarly, you can buy low quality views from Okko: it would be cool if you could pay the difference.
- To make it possible to purchase one viewing of a movie without a time limit, that is, at least 10 minutes a day, but you can only watch it once, of course, at a reduced cost.