Is there not a reasonable way to watch VHX content on your TV?

Hard copies of S13 will deliver in or around January, 2023.

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I tend to download digital content and then transfer it to my “magic box” (streaming server) so that I can watch it on my TV. I’ve found that to be the easiest and fastest way for me.

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That’s fair, I was being a little snarky. I personally don’t care for streaming, but I get that others do. One option to consider is downloading them to a thumb drive, then plugging that directly into your TV. Almost every TV today will play MP4 this way. It’s still more trouble than streaming, but not much, and you can control it with your remote (instead of a computer) and it will work even if your internet goes out.

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I have an LG tv with a web browser, and I just logged into my VHX account and am now streaming Revenge of the Mysterons.

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Happy to hear there’s a workaround. I can be understanding of these things since I work in the software consulting sphere. But users are never happy with “Workarounds”. So I get it. But I’m happy to move on using a Console/TV/Blah blah browser.

Hey, anyone remember Internet TV from the early aughts? The kind where you had a kooky external keyboard and had to navigate websites using the keyboard’s arrow keys? No responsive design UX back then, everything was wonky. Certain images wouldn’t load. Certainly no streaming content to enjoy…

Just wanted to put our woes into perspective.

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If my internet goes out, I’m out. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Internets can go out?

Oh, the horror!

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There, there. It’s just a nasty conspiracy theory.

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Yeah, I don’t see a VHX app available on my Roku.

Are we sure of that? Also, if they’re using VHX as their back end for video, doesn’t that give good reason to expect that if we’re having trouble getting VHX to talk to our TVs or even cast from a desktop browser to the TV, we’ll likely have the same problems when the Gizmoplex front end launches?

Yes. Don’t mean to knock the work you’ve put in or the favor you’ve done getting this out. Just trying to figure out what’s possible with it and what problems might need to be overcome as things continue to develop. And maybe even figure out how to make things work for myself and my fellow MSTies.

The issue is that people want to watch on their TVs. Because that’s why they have a TV. It’s a larger screen, and set up so you can watch with friends and family instead of staring at a small screen in your lap. So we’re trying to figure out how to make that possible. But, yes, as far as I can tell, the best option I have right now to do that is to download the ep to a USB thumb drive and plug that into the TV. Which is a little more cumbersome than is ideal when it seems like you should be able to do it more directly, but, in the scheme of things, not that big a deal.

In other news:

I haven’t used VHX before. Interestingly, the login I created for mst3k.vhx.tv does not work if I try to sign in to the vhx.tv front page. It’s only for the MST3K sub-site.

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No. If you look at the site, you can see that VHX’s niche is providing branded apps. There’s probably no money in them providing a generic VHX app—it might even undermine what they do which is

image

Beautiful branded apps.

24/7 support for you, and subscribers.

We develop, submit, and maintain apps for every platform. 100% approval rating.


In other words, they’re not in the business of providing generic access to videos, like YouTube (or Vimeo, for that matter). They’re in the business of (essentially) building Gizmoplexes.

This is a good thing: Let the MST3K crew make MST3K and let the video distributors distribute video.

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Ah, I see your point. That’s… interesting. So they’re not incentivised to make their content as portable as possible… until someone pays them to do that. It makes a weird kind of sense.

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It makes a lot of sense when you realize it’s either that or compete with YouTube, which exists solely to squeeze out anyone else from the market.

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No. VHX has an API that allows the developer to access videos with whatever app they develop. Every single complaint I have read is fixed by that. That Vimeo has a crappy app right now doesn’t mean that the 100s of developers out there using their API haven’t created apps that actually work for what we want the Gizmoplex to be. The VHX app, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been updated in 5 years. They are just focusing on selling the backend.
BTW, I have made several Roku, Twitch, and Amazon channels for clients, so I know a bit about how these systems work.
What Joel and the team released this week wasn’t a platform, it was access to download the episodes that backers had purchased. With the responses that some have made that was probably a bad idea, at least with the way that they announced it. On another forum I follow, it was up to crazy kill MST3K and everyone involved kind of hate. So it hasn’t been that bad here, or the posts were deleted.

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Huh. What forum was that?

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I’m with you 100% on this, a TV is all I use to watch anything (no phones, laptops, etc.). But TVs today are also monitors, so you can hook anything up to 'em.

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That is, in fact, the very first thing I thought of; I do it almost every day.

I’m not going to give them a mention. They have been getting toxic over the last few years(heck it may be down to 20 members). That was the last time I’m visiting there.

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I’m planning on downloading everything anyway, since streaming is nice, but a backed up file is forever.

I just wish there was a faster way to batch download from VHX. You have to drill into each movie and choose the format, one at a time, over and over again. I picked up the “ultimate digital collection” as an add-on, so, that’s one heck of a lot of mousing!

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With the TV I want to use it on currently, the USB port is not easily accessible, given where I have it mounted. I have so far used that tv exclusively for streaming, although I will be getting a blu-ray player for it tomorrow that has a USB port, so I will be able to plug in through that without moving the TV. I also don’t often use thumb drives, although I have a small one (8gb) attached to my keychain for important documents. I did just order a 64gb thumb drive, as a friend of mine is going to put the Johnny Sako series, and a bunch of Gamera movies I do not yet have on it for me.

I did manage to pry the girls off of the TV where I have my media PC connected in the living room yesterday, and watched Revenge of the Mysterons after their time for go to bed. It’s not ideal, but it scratches the itch for now, I am hoping to get a viewing of Quest of the Delta Knights in today. As I said before, I’m not complaining, I am happy to have my rewards and I can watch them, just not in the ideal place. I just feel like this is a good place to let MST3K know that things are falling a bit short with the currently selected platform for viewing. I want them to improve, I don’t want to them to feel like I am piling on the toxicity, because that will get us nowhere.

Finally, I am a software developer, and one of the current professional projects I work on is a video chat app. I know a bit about APIs and 3rd parties, and how the development process works in general. From what I have seen in the updates, I am not confident that this particular issue will be worked out with the initial release of the Gizmoplex. I am confident that MST3K will put their best foot forward to improve the product, but software development today is an iterative process, and takes time. I feel it is very likely that the initial Gizmoplex offering will be feature light and only designed to work well with the most basic usages of product.