This is a Thing: VidAngel (Again)

So VidAngel got sued and shut down.

Now they're back.

Refresher: my old article on VidAngel.

If you don't want to click on that link, I'm deeply deeply hurt. But here's the short version, because I understand the whole short-attention span thing: VidAngel was an on-demand movie streaming service that let you edit out any specific content you didn't like (violence, nudity, cuss words).

That was nice.

They "sold" you movies for $20 and then you "sold back" movies to them for $19, thus essentially renting them for a buck.

That was sketch.

But I loved it because they had movies available before any other streaming service and their prices couldn't be beat and we could bleep out the f-bombs that my wife doesn't care for at all. She got to see Deadpool thanks to VidAngel, though about 80% of the movie was muted. (It has a lot of f-bombs, is what I'm getting at here.)

But now, VidAngel is an entirely different thing. You're no longer paying per movie/show you watch, they just charge a flat $7.99 monthly fee.
Their new business model is that you attach your streaming video accounts to them and filter your content that you're legally and lawfully watching through your paid services however you want it.

This gets them around the copyright loophole, because VidAngel is no longer buying thousands of physical discs as backup for the copies they used to stream. That was how they justified ripping the movie from the disc and making it available online. Hollywood wasn't cool with that.

So how's the new service work?

Meh.

But it's still beta-testing. They just went live a couple days ago, so it's glitch-tastic.

Starting/re-starting your account on their website or on the app is fine. But it's a Kafkaesque nightmare to get the Roku channel going. Here's how you do that:

-Download the VidAngel channel to your Roku.
-Poke around and realize it's the busted old channel and it's not letting you access any content.
-Find the screen where you can get the access code for the new Beta channel to enter into the VidAngel web site.
-Get your phone and open up the vidangel.com/roku site.
-Log in to/sign up for VidAngel .
-Get taken away from the VidAngel Roku page.
-Figure out how to get back to the VidAngel Roku page.
-Give up and retype vidangel.com/roku in your browser.
-At the top of the page, get hit with a list of three EXTRA steps involving logging in to your Roku account on a separate website to get the Beta Roku channel in addition to entering the access code at the bottom and the name of the Roku device.
-Open your Roku account, realize you have no idea what your Roku login or password are, making you unable to figure out how to reset your password because that would require knowing your login.
-Google around to figure out how to find your Roku login.
-Figure out you have to go to "System Settings" on your Roku, hunt through two more long sub-menus, and then find out the email address connected to your Roku account.
-Get a Roku password reset sent to that email.
-It's your wife's email, so ask her for her phone so you can get the password reset message.
-She hands it to you distractedly because she's working on helping her sister revise her grad school application essay.
-Realize it requires thumbprint identification and ask her to please log in with her thumb.
-Have your wife distractedly tell you there's an alternate login code that you can use instead of her thumbprint
-Ask her what that login code is.
-Have her tell you the login in a manner that implies you should have known it already.
-Sneer at each other for an hour or two.
-Then laugh as if it's all good and you're not gonna bring this up later when you're up against the wall and need ammo in an argument.
-Enter the code.
-Mistype a digit.
-Try again.
-Success!
-Go into her email and resist the temptation to read all her messages.
-Read all her messages anyway.
-Be disappointed by the lack of scandal and realize that your wife is pretty nice all the time. And that maybe most of your disagreements are your own fault for being so defensive all the time and failing to see both sides of issues.
-Get the password reset email.
-Open your phone again.
-Use the password reset code and create a new Roku password.
-Type it again.
-Get taken back to the Roku login screen.
-Enter the login email AND the new password again. They couldn't just remember them from the previous page where you typed it in, apparently.
-Rejoice that you're finally logged into your Roku account.
-Fail to find the "Yes, Add Channel" link that they said to click on the VidAngel Roku page above the other login instructions.
-Hunt through your Roku account diligently, still failing to find it.
-Try to add the new VidAngel Beta site manually.
-Find that it requires an administrative code or some nonsense.
-Throw your hands up in the air in impotent rage.
-Go back to the VidAngel Roku page, defeated, and follow the registration steps BELOW the three Roku steps at the top of the page.
-Get taken to a separate VidAngel account setup page.
-Get taken to yet another VidAngel account setup page.
-Get taken to the main VidAngel page.
-Realize you're still unable to access the new Beta Roku channel.
-Pull all your hair out.
-Then go back to the vidangel.com/roku page to look at those three instructions for the Roku connection again.
-Read them carefully.
-Try to make any sense out of them.
-Randomly go back to your Roku account page.
-Discover that only NOW does a "Yes, Add Channel" link come up for VidAngel. It appears on your Roku account AFTER you jumped through all the other hoops on the VidAngel page.
-Wonder WHY VidAngel didn't put those three additional steps at the LAST setup page instead of the FIRST setup page which requires you jumping away from to continue the other non-Roku steps.
-Go to System Settings on your Roku.
-Navigate through two sub-menus.
-Click "Check Now" for updates.
-FINALLY get confirmation that you have the new Beta VidAngel app.
-Go back to your main Roku screen.
-Open up the wrong VidAngel app because the old busted one looks the same as the new one.
-Go back to your main Roku screen and scroll down to find the new one and click that one.
-And you're ready to go! (Except for connecting your streaming services and realize that it's carrying over the dozen or so movies from your old watchlist that are no longer available for sale and you have to go through and delete those one by one and that's time-consuming because each page takes ten seconds to load.)
-But you're MOSTLY ready to go! Easy as that!

You can do all those steps in whatever order you prefer. But they all must be done if you want VidAngel on your Roku. (It's not a user-friendly process, is what I'm getting at here.)

So once you've got the new Roku Beta channel, how's it work?

Not so good.

It won't connect your Amazon account. You can try and try again, but it won't work.

And the alleged ability to connect to your HBO account? It has to be an "Amazon Channels HBO." It you want to filter your HBO through VidAngel, you have to get it through Amazon. Huh? I didn't even know that was possible. That's dumb. Just let people use their HBO Go login, VidAngel!

But the Netflix account connection did work. Finally something functional with the service.

But even that process is creepy because when you enter your email and password for your services to connect, it doesn't encrypt them or make them appear as stars in the login, it just shows every letter/number/character of your password as you slowly type it with your Roku remote. Not exactly reassuring from a security perspective. (Plus, it takes an hour to navigate your way from one letter to another using the arrows, so it's a long process.)

They have a few movies and shows available through their filtered service, but the selection is not good. If you want to watch House of Cards or Breaking Bad with the boobs and cussing removed, you can. But those shows are dark and toxic no matter how you edit them, so buyer beware. (That's a whole separate philosophical issue. I'll leave that to the comments sections of the world to solve it. Same applies to the debate on VidAngel-as-censorship, where people seem to conveniently forget that movies are already constantly being censored by airlines and network TV stations...)

The few things they have available work well enough. It's maybe SD-quality. Most files start super-blurry and then shift to higher-quality. (That doesn't happen on any other video streaming sites I use since I upgraded my Internet, so I don't think that's a connection/ISP issue.)

It's still in Beta form, so what do you want?

Good news: they're offering a 30-day free trial. And if you already have an account with them from their good old bootleggin' days, your account credit transfers over, which means you'll probably be able to get a couple free months using that credit before it costs you anything.

Hopefully they'll fix their glitches. And maybe make the Roku channel installation process a little easier.

(Update: they're aware of the Amazon glitch, and are extending the free trial to make up for it.)


-Phony McFakename

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