Free Tube allows you to watch YouTube videos guaranteeing privacy.
How to live without Netflix or other similar services. Ten years ago andThis question would never have been raised. Most of us hadn't even heard of this service. However, it is now almost impossible to find a middle class home that does not have a subscription to this service or a similar one.
Some experts consider that the current model of unlimited content for a flat fee andis about to run out. The reasons are various.
For my part, I concluded that what I spent on that platform was not justified for its use. I decided to look for alternatives and open source helped me.
The eighties weren't great, they just look like it on TV
Now that those born in the sixties and seventies are rising to managerial positions in content production companies, they decided to produce tons of shows to relive their adolescence. Of course, as a concession to the millennial generation, in a politically correct key. For those who did not live it, it may seem like the best decade in history
However, the teens of the eighties, we would have killed for services like Netflix or Spotify.
I grew up with five broadcast television channels. Cassettes were expensive and you had to wait for the multinational subsidiaries to decide to release them. You had to rent movies on video and for the most interesting titles you had to wait a long time.
Entonces Why are we not happy with such an extensive catalog of movies and music at a reasonable price?
Until the XNUMXs, content consumption was tied to a physical location. If you wanted to watch a movie or listen to a record or radio show, you had to do it in the place where the receiver was. With the advent of transistor radio and the Walkman, things would begin to change.
In the case of video content, we had to wait until this century for there to be technology that would allow you to see what you wanted when and where you wanted.
And there the problem began.
For the first time, supply exceeded demand. Before, when you had to wait a week to see if the protagonist was saved from the villain, the interest was maintained. Now, being able to watch entire seasons, you realize when the writers ran out of imagination.
To this must be added the fragmentation in the content. Not all of us like everything available. And sometimes what we like, for rights reasons we don't get to see it in time. As if that were not enough, new platforms are being added, owned by the different production companies. We will likely end up paying five platforms to view at most ten percent of their content.
How to live without Netflix using open source to find alternatives.
This is a serious blog, therefore there is no place for mules and torrents. If you want to see The paper house without paying, you will have to look elsewhere.
A few years ago, Linus Torvalds commented that he was reading more and more self-published books on Amazon, rather than edited ones. Personally, the same thing is happening to me with videos. I find content produced by ameteurs more interesting than by professionals.
freetube
Free Tube could be one of the applications to play YouTube videos, but it differs from them for one important thing. Instead of using the Yotube API, use the invidious. This allows you to browse and even subscribe to YouTube channels, without Google being able to use most of its tracking techniques.
If you want more privacy, you can use it together with the Tor network.
freetube available for Windows, Linux and Mac
Google2SRT
A key point to solve how to live without Netflix, is to have proper subtitles. I still remember a website volunteer who translated the name of the musician Thelonious Monk as "the monk Telonius." Not to mention when I spent half a chapter of Dr House, thinking who would be that doctor Casas that they named so much.
There are many programs that allow you to download YouTube videos, but not all of them allow you to download subtitles. That's what Google2SRT is for.
To use this program you need to have OpenJDK or Oracle Java installed. The program, allows you to download the subtitle of a video or all the subtitles corresponding to a playlist. It has a translation function, but the results are not very good.
JDownloader 2
On another occasion I spoke of this program saying that I considered it essential. JDownloader2, also Java based, JDownloader 2 allows you to download videos from almost anywhere, including subtitles and audio tracks.
OBS Studio
If you want to save a video from a site that does not allow download, we can use brute force. OBS Studio allows us to take video captures of the desktop, windows and multimedia players. Of course you have to be present to start the recording.
OBS Studio is available in Flatpak y Snap. In addition to binaries for Windows and Mac.