
Show HN: CuriosityStream – Netflix for non-fiction - MPetitt
http://Curiositystream.com
======
mbrock
People recommend "documentary streaming sites" to me all the time that are
illegal / grayzone. When I first saw your landing page, I kind of thought it
was something like that.

I wondered "Is this really legit?" and my first instinct was to click one of
the newspaper icons, like to see what NYT or WSJ wrote about you—but as
someone else pointed out, they're not links.

(I've actually seen landing pages that have a whole bunch of bogus newspaper
badges, like it's a part of their Bootstrap theme that they didn't bother
changing...)

Maybe your conversion rates are good, in which case ignore me.

But personally, I'd be way more likely to sign up if you

1\. highlighted that you're a legitimate business,

2\. mentioned how your founder started Discovery Channel,

3\. and generally polished your landing page.

Netflix has a barebones landing page but their brand recognition is extremely
high...

~~~
MPetitt
We're currently working on new landing page variations. We were definitely
planning on polishing it up but 1 and 2 are definitely great tips. Thanks!

~~~
EwanG
If I may add, putting a title on the videos in your promo might help as well.
I saw a couple interesting shots in the "trailer" but couldn't figure out
which programs those may have come from. Also, if any of those titles are
exclusives, it would be worth mentioning. A few titles on the first page when
I hit the trial button were ones I knew I had seen elsewhere - which left me
concerned I'd spend $5.99 only to find a couple things I hadn't already
watched. If they're not exclusives, but there's a value I'm missing, then
emphasize that as well.

------
kitbrennan
Looks like an interesting proposition.

Two pieces of feedback:

* Alarm bells ring when a company says where they are mentioned in the press but fail to link to any articles.

* I really struggled to find your pricing. I saw plans _starting at_ $2.99 but the obvious next question was: "What are the plans? How much will I actually pay?" I ended up in your Help Center before I could find an answer.

~~~
adamkaz
Our press kit has links to the major articles
([https://medium.com/@CuriosityStream/curiositystream-is-
the-w...](https://medium.com/@CuriosityStream/curiositystream-is-the-world-s-
first-streaming-service-for-the-best-documentaries-from-around-the-
bf3c2ca4c56a#.14uagnqrr)).

Pricing is $2.99/month for SD quality and $5.99/month for HD.

~~~
pgrote
Why the difference in price? Is the bandwidth more expensive or is it people
will pay for a higher def stream?

~~~
MPetitt
Definitely bandwidth, HD video is much larger and more difficult to stream
than SD.

~~~
gravypod
How are you doing the streaming? I've done some work on my end for a media
streamer a friend and I wrote for out NASs.

We can stream 1080p quite easily to our mobile devices from a home internet
connection over a cell phone 4g plan.

My friend settled on VP9 but I was using plain MP4s. VP9 in my experience, if
you have money, is the way to go. I'd setup an S3 bucket with all of my home
videos and do an AWS lambda to transcode it when I finally find a job.

I don't know how well this falls into your use case because you, I assume,
need DRM but I'm sure you can still find a way to do it with HTML5.

I'm really interested in your product and think I may buy it.

~~~
ninjakeyboard
Video streamed through the internet is generally not just MP4 in a muxed
container but some form of multi-bitrate adaptive stream that deals with
smaller segments of content. Eg see Apple's HTTP Live Streaming or MPEG Dash.

~~~
gravypod
Yea I understand that. My comment is more about how it's possible that HD
streaming would cost that much more.

I've been able to do it at a bitrate that is acceptable over a crappy network.
I'd say that I'm not very smart and that a group of well-paid engineers should
be able to do better than that.

If the cost is just "because people will pay that much more for it" then that
is fine but as it rests right now it is because "the bandwidth would cost that
much more"

~~~
MPetitt
A lot of the problem comes with A: High Quality B: High Scale C: Consistent
quality internationally

Properly encoded HD video is still easily 4 times larger than the SD
equivalent, so that leads to 4 times the bandwidth costs.

------
phasnox
I signed up for this and can say the product is good for the price. I wish
they had native Chromecast support. You can cast the tab with chrome, but it
lags sometimes.

I recommend Cosmic Front if you are into astronomy.

To the developers and guys running the site, I recommend a more legit rating
system, where you can actually see what people are saying about the
documentaries. Right now it seems everything has a 5 star rating which feels a
little deceiving.

~~~
phasnox
Oh and also, spanish subtitles would be nice.

~~~
MPetitt
Subtitles are definitely in the works, and we're eventually hoping to source
as many translations as possible. We even recently added our first spanish
documentary!
([https://app.curiositystream.com/collection/221/](https://app.curiositystream.com/collection/221/))
Hoping to have the previews live soon.

~~~
danenania
Hi, I like the concept and will definitely give it a try! It seems like you
have a lot of good science content which is right up my alley.

My wife is a Spanish ↔ English translation consultant who has a lot of
experience with subtitles. Feel free to ping me if you're interested in
chatting with her--email's in my profile.

------
MickyTheMouse
Huge fan of documentaries here. I was thrilled to find about this site and
definitely going to sign up. But as a designer/frontend developer I was
disappointed by the overall looks of the site since it wasn't quite par with
the competitors. I had my Photoshop open already so I tought why not give it a
shot: [http://cloud.vel.lu/2u1c0I0h0f0l](http://cloud.vel.lu/2u1c0I0h0f0l)

~~~
MPetitt
Wow, that looks fantastic. We just actually hired our first UX/UI designer and
are working on redesigns of EVERYTHING.

------
polytap
You might want to consider naming your pricing plans differently.

There is a plan offering standard definition streaming called "Basic", and a
plan offering high definition streaming called "Standard".

Those two words are often synonymous.

~~~
MPetitt
That's actually an AB test we have in the pipeline, hoping it seems more
straightforward.

------
rocky1138
When I went to watch my first video, I got this:

\--

html5: Unsupported video format. Try installing Adobe Flash.

[http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/](http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/)

\--

Flash is dead. How long until you support html5?

~~~
cameroncf
How I fell out of the funnel:

Preview > Click Video > Flash Warning > Close Browser Tab

Maybe one day I'll be back.

~~~
MPetitt
Sorry to hear that, like we said, we're working as quickly as possible to get
an HTML5 compatible player up.

~~~
rocky1138
I signed up for the free month and discovered the Flash problem after. I don't
use Flash but my girlfriend does. Since she's the one I'm subscribing for, it
won't affect our customership.

------
shrikant
Pet peeve: apps/services that have a section that says "As featured in..."
followed by a bunch of media outlet icons that aren't links.

Why would you NOT link to press coverage of your money-maker?

~~~
MPetitt
We've had a ton of feedback on that and are working on changing that as soon
as possible.

------
riffraff
I really like the idea, and the price seems very low for the offer, so I'm
inclined to try it out.

But, the "browse" page does not immediately show anything I'd really like to
watch now.

This might be a problem caused by not seeing enough of a blurb to go with the
title images, even when hovering, i.e. this
[http://imgur.com/X76fN1C](http://imgur.com/X76fN1C)

~~~
MPetitt
We're working on ways to try to tailor and customize the browse page a bit
more. If you're a member once you start watching some videos a recommended for
you slide will be added to the home page based on your history. And thanks for
the feedback on the popover. Just curious what information is most important
to you as a user when picking a video? Just the description?

~~~
riffraff
The only other thing I can think of is "name recognition".

E.g. I love Hans Rosling (or James Burke, Carl Sagan, Niall Ferguson or
whoever) so if I see that something is based/stars/includes their work I'd
likely be interested.

This is obviously not applicable to many things though, and can be somewhat
included in a description anyway.

And thanks to you for taking time to read my comments :)

~~~
MPetitt
That's great to know, we love the feedback. And Don't Panic with Hans is one
of my favorite personally
([https://app.curiositystream.com/video/999](https://app.curiositystream.com/video/999))

------
MPetitt
Hey everyone, I'm one of the developers at CuriosityStream. I'd be happy to
answer any questions you guys have about streaming technology or the industry.

~~~
sawyerjhood
The product looks great, I am a huge fan of documentaries myself and have
always wanted a service like this. I have always been interested in small
streaming sites and how they keep the costs down, your plans are very well
priced. Have you guys ever thought about using P2P sharing with WebRTC to
reduce bandwidth prices?

~~~
MPetitt
We've looked into it, but it works a lot better with live streams then on
demand since the amount of people watching the same piece at the same time are
pretty low. But we did just start experimenting with a product from Hola that
does some pretty cool stuff with adaptive streaming.
[http://holacdn.com/](http://holacdn.com/)

~~~
fpvracing
Do you know of any good resources for learning about using P2P and WebRTC to
cut down on livestreaming bandwidth costs? This is highly relevant to
something I'm working on at the moment.

~~~
MPetitt
Unfortunately most tech in that space seems to be proprietary but here are
some companies we have found doing cool stuff in the space.

Hola CDN Streamroot Peer5 Conviva Cedexis

I think some have some whitepapers, but I'd be surprised if they give much
away.

~~~
eldod
Hey, Nikolay from Streamroot here.

We also have whitepapers easily accessible on our website, and a free
dashboard where you can test our technology in a few clicks. In terms of open-
source projects, there are some projects like Bem.tv but they lack robustness
when you try to scale.

------
seanb
Does this offer playback speed controls? I watch a lot of non-fiction video
content, but a lot of it is too information-sparse to watch at 1x.

~~~
adamkaz
We don't currently - but our underlying player supports it. We'll add it to
our feature requests.

~~~
ogreveins
I'm not lying when I say that if you implement up to 2x speed I'll subscribe
that day. Everything I watch on youtube is at 2x speed. People talk way too
slowly.

------
Zalos
Looks interesting, took some time to figure out the connection to Discovery
but now I know. I think I´ll be holding out until 4k/UHD has been added. Space
documentaries in 4k would be awesome. And a bunch of other stuff. I´ve
subscribed to the newsletter to keep an eye on you guys, and the 4k feature. I
find it a little iffy that if I go to Netflix I can login and watch stuff
without any problems, without privacy badger going off. (It´s something like
ad-block that stop external sites tracking my browsing and stops ads). If I go
to your [https://app.curiositystream.com/](https://app.curiositystream.com/) I
get a completely white page, like the page is broken, making me think the site
is a hoax the first time I checked the page. Turning off my privacy settings
and enable all tracking from external sites have the page looking normally and
telling me, okay there is something there to subscribe to potentially. But why
do you need all this to show the page correctly?

Some of the external stuff tracking on
[https://app.curiositystream.com/](https://app.curiositystream.com/) are:

insight.adsrvr.org googleads.g.doubleclick.net connect.facebook.net (Something
recognizeable yay, but no login or sign up with facebook, then why?)
www.googleadservices.com fonts.googleapis.com www.googletagmanager.com (Google
stuff is to be expected) js.maxmind.com cdn.optimizely.com js.stripe.com
cdn.taboola.com platform.twitter.com (Again no sign up with so why twitter?)

There is a bunch of stuff that I don´t know about or trust, so why do you need
it? why should I let it run? and if your app page needs it, it´s a safe bet it
will be needed if I subscribe. I don´t like the thought of that. Can you
elaborate on this? I tried a bunch of combinations as to how little I could
let through the page for the site to work correctly, I diden´t find a
combination that worked other than, enable everything to view it normally.

~~~
MPetitt
Thanks for the feedback! So all of those are pixels that we use for marketing
to do 2 things.

1st is to track conversion coming from our ad's on those platforms.

2nd is remarket to people who visit our page. We find that many customers may
visit the site once or twice before they actually convert, so we found it
really effective to be able to specifically show more ad's to those people.

Just curious if you know which plugin or blocked asset might have caused that
white page? We try to test with most ad blockers and privacy plugins to ensure
our sites work without them. We definitely don't require them to use the site.

If you email me the logs in your browser console when the white page shows up
it might help us debug it(matt.petitt@curiositystream.com). And once it's
fixed if you decide to become a member I'd be happy to hook you up with a deal
as a thanks for helping us out.

------
fpvracing
I'd like to see more content related to robotics.

The fact that almost everything has a 5-star rating is kind of off-putting as
it makes the ratings pretty useless.

By the way, are you the developer I was talking to sometime last year about
[http://fpvracing.tv](http://fpvracing.tv) and possibly doing a doco about
drone racing?

~~~
MPetitt
I agree, and since our DARPA stuff did really well the content guys have been
working on getting more tech and robotics stuff.

We're currently brainstorming ways to have more effective feedback from users
about the content. It's definitely in need of improvement.

And yes I am! I still try to poke the content guys every once in awhile to try
to get involved somehow. All of us on the dev team and tech team have been
following FPV racing religiously.

------
ohblahitsme
This looks cool! I'll probably subscribe in the next month or so. You should
definitely highlight "from the creators of the Discovery Channel" on the
landing because it takes you from "who are these people" to "ohh cool these
guys are legit"

------
watson
Interesting. I've been bombarded with ads on YouTube the last one or two
months for this. Thought to sign up a few times, but wasn't sure if it was
worth it. Those ads cannot be cheap!

~~~
MPetitt
Well we definitely like to think we're a good deal, any ideas of how we might
have been able to communicate our value better? And we just started a series
on how to roll your own streaming
service([https://medium.com/@CuriosityStream/how-to-roll-your-own-
str...](https://medium.com/@CuriosityStream/how-to-roll-your-own-streaming-
service-4e8d9f7308cd#.g1r699gwu)) and our marketing/ad strategy might be a
future post.

~~~
watson
I've been watching a lot of science channels and documentaries on youtube. And
the quality varies a lot. To be honest, I wasn't sure if the content on
CuriosityStream would be good enough, since it's very hard to make good
science films.

I guess you guys are doing it right, because I keep being interested and
thinking about signing up. But for some reason I just haven't gotten around to
it yet ;)

~~~
MPetitt
Well we have tons of big budget and high quality pieces from producers like
BBC, NHK, and stuff that's been on PBS. Feel free to check out and preview our
library [https://app.curiositystream.com/](https://app.curiositystream.com/)

------
dominotw
I love documentaries. I am currently a subscriber to bunch of services like
fandor.com, docclub.com ect.

But all of these are too America focused. I want to travel the world, see what
lives are like for people all over the world. I can only watch so many food
snob documentaries.

Current best bet is just going to youtube.com which has a wealth of
documentaries.

Please someone make a non-america/europe focused indie flick site.

~~~
MPetitt
Well although we are currently english only, we like to think of ourselves as
an international service. We have tons of content focusing on other cultures
and countries. Feel free to preview some of our content and let me know if
anything strikes your interest.

[https://app.curiositystream.com/browse/category/society/1?ti...](https://app.curiositystream.com/browse/category/society/1?title=Society)

~~~
dominotw
I don't mean other languages. I mean for example, history of thailand,
harrapan civilization ect.

All the documentaries in that link are Europe/america focused. History of
western civilization is overplayed, I wan't to know more about what was
happening in other parts of the world.

~~~
MPetitt
Thats a great suggestion, and ideas of specific pieces or ideas I could hand
over to our content guys?

~~~
ohblahitsme
I don't have specific pieces but I second this suggestion. Always love to see
history stuff outside of Western civilization!

------
hotcool
Just signed up (it was the vertical farming episode + reasonable price point
that sold me). The $2.99 price is perfect for a sporatic watcher like me.

One suggestion: please make your app available in the Amazon app store. Some
of us don't want to use Google Play.

~~~
MPetitt
I think we are, let me know if this works for you.

[http://www.amazon.com/CuriosityStream/dp/B017C70WHE](http://www.amazon.com/CuriosityStream/dp/B017C70WHE)

------
jgh
Looks cool, but could you guys list some of your content? Like is this just a
bunch of low-value videos of tree frogs or are there some decent
documentaries? Hard to tell from the landing page...

~~~
MPetitt
Feel free to tour and preview our library
[https://app.curiositystream.com/](https://app.curiositystream.com/)

~~~
ninth_ant
It's great that you helped this one person find that content, but the feedback
is useful for your site in general.

My experience was: 1) saw ad 2) clicked ad 3) not a clear idea about what type
and calibre of documentaries you had in your library 4) didn't want to sign up
to find out 5) bounced

You did a great job with 1-2 -- targeted me correctly as a potential consumer
and even got me to click on an ad -- but you failed in the conversion of
interest to customer.

~~~
MPetitt
We just opened up our library recently and are working incorporating it and
the content into our funnel.

------
thedaemon
Any time frame on an Android TV app? I use a Nvidia Shield TV for all of my TV
media viewing and would only pay for your service if I could stream it from
there.

~~~
MPetitt
We actually just pushed it out there recently, we just got our shield for
testing and would love your feedback
[https://goo.gl/093zUZ](https://goo.gl/093zUZ)

------
jessaustin
OT, but it's distracting when mounted knights in cheesy reenactments like that
in the video are led, as if any knight ever didn't know how to ride.

------
warcode
Any plans to add food/cooking documentaries to this?

I'm already sold on trying this out, but it seems very lacking in that
department.

~~~
MPetitt
We actually have a wine piece we're going to be adding in the near future that
we made in house that looks amazing. But if you haven't already checked it out
we have a good bit on food to start.

[https://app.curiositystream.com/search/Food/1?title=Society](https://app.curiositystream.com/search/Food/1?title=Society)

------
drcongo
How far off are native apps for Apple TV and Fire TV? This looks right up my
street, but I hate AirPlaying.

~~~
MPetitt
We're putting the finishing touches on Apple TV as we speak. And our Fire TV
app is live! [https://help.curiositystream.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214497157...](https://help.curiositystream.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214497157-Viewing-CuriosityStream-through-Amazon-Fire-TV)

~~~
dominotw
Oh awesome. I am in. Just canceled my netflix.

~~~
MPetitt
Thats amazing to hear!

------
vmp
Is there any geo-blocking? Can I subscribe to this from my country (Germany)?

~~~
lechucker
Was wondering the same. HelpSite says that 80% of the content is viewable
worldwide. Fire TV app is also available in the German store.
[https://help.curiositystream.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204913267...](https://help.curiositystream.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204913267-Why-are-shows-suddenly-missing-from-my-library-)

------
markbnj
This looks seriously awesome. Nice job on the catalog broswer.

~~~
MPetitt
Thanks!

------
hathym
quick question: is there something that is not on youtube?

~~~
MPetitt
Definitely, the vast majority of our content is either exclusive, or only
offered behind paywalls(most of which are more expensive than us).

You can check out our library here
[https://app.curiositystream.com/](https://app.curiositystream.com/)

------
ajtaylor
What about support for Roku? I love my Roku 3.

~~~
adamkaz
I develop our Roku channel -
[https://channelstore.roku.com/details/61657/curiositystream](https://channelstore.roku.com/details/61657/curiositystream).
You currently need to sign up on our website and link your device. The next
release will incorporate Roku billing so that you can sign up directly on the
device.

Comments are appreciated!

