[HN Gopher] Show HN: Fakeflix - Netflix open source clone
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Show HN: Fakeflix - Netflix open source clone
Author : ReDeiPirati
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-07-13 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| cphoover wrote:
| This would be a real useful repository for someone trying to
| create a phishing website.
| spicybright wrote:
| the logo is amazing
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| I remember there was some guy who programmed a YouTube Instant
| search after Google rolled it out on their search. The then
| YouTube CEO reached out and offered the guy a job. I can see this
| happening here, this is really impressive. But, it would have
| been even better if clicking play would result in a rick roll.
| peer2pay wrote:
| Warning for all mobile users or those of you without unlimited
| data: This website will download almost 75MB of data when you
| first open it.
| yboris wrote:
| An MIT open source project I created is _Video Hub App_ which is
| "like YouTube for videos on your computer"
|
| Maybe interesting to some of you: https://videohubapp.com/en/
|
| https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
| Gtex555 wrote:
| wow thanks.
| sylwester wrote:
| Oh, I'd love to see this as an Jellyfin skin/theme.
| blowfish721 wrote:
| Second that, heck I'd pay for that skin in a heartbeat.
| Fantastic work, really!
| stewx wrote:
| To clarify for anyone wondering, this is just a web dev
| experiment to create a clone of the Netflix UI. It doesn't let
| you watch movies, nor does it provide any kind of back end for
| serving video.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > It doesn't let you watch movies, nor does it provide any kind
| of back end for serving video.
|
| You just killed my dream of starting a unicorn and filing to
| SEC for a FFLX ticker
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| At first, I thought that this was a cool DLNA-like client.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Me too I like the ui of Netflix and would love a way to
| nicely should stuff from a ftp drive.
| mxd3 wrote:
| Check out Jellyfin: https://jellyfin.org/
| prophesi wrote:
| I recently switched from Plex to Jellyfin due to the
| former's requirement that users must buy a PlexPass to
| download media you've shared with them. Relying on
| streaming for movie nights was a nightmare.
|
| A community developer also recently launched their
| Plexamp-inspired iOS/Android music player on the stores.
|
| https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp
| tekromancr wrote:
| Wowie! I just installed this and this friggin rules! All
| of the features I care about from Plex, plus the ability
| to enable/disable transcoding on a per-user basis? Yes!
| Bad_CRC wrote:
| I just installed jellyfin this weekend and I'm trying it.
|
| IDK why there aren't more open source tools for this,
| IIRC Emby and Plex are not open source, and using a close
| source software for watching content from.. the high
| seas... is a bit risky IMHO.
| khimaros wrote:
| Jellyfin is a community fork of emby.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > the high seas
|
| I appreciate the expression.
| eric4smith wrote:
| I think 99% of the "hard stuff" at Netflix is serving the video.
|
| The rest of the apps are mainly display and a little bit of crud.
|
| It's so easy for them to continue to experiment with the front
| end all the time -- because it's "not that hard" (tm).
|
| But the video serving? Rendering? Streaming in different
| resolutions? The video player? CDN's? Damn, that sh*t rough brah.
| [deleted]
| alias_neo wrote:
| If the UX isn't the hard stuff, I hold no hope for anyone else.
|
| I'm yet to experience a media streaming product that can hold a
| candle to Netflix in terms of UX on any platform.
|
| On my 2017 (non-Android) 4K "Smart" TV, the Netflix app is
| light years beyond everything else for UX, performance,
| everything, there's just no competition.
| jmkni wrote:
| I think BBC iPlayer is as good in terms of UX
| haolez wrote:
| CRUD stuff can be complicated at Netflix-scale.
| atatatat wrote:
| Just the translations of such an app would drive me batty.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| _I think 99% of the "hard stuff" at Netflix is serving the
| video._
|
| Making a robust, consistent, fast user experience that works
| well across all devices, resolutions, and network conditions is
| quite hard.
|
| If it was easy then fewer websites would suck.
| yosamino wrote:
| I am curious - I'm just doing a somewhat naive implementation
| for a private project. Do you have any pointers to a writeup
| of some specific problems I might not have encountered yet ?
| blamarvt wrote:
| Honestly the official Netflix site seems to perform
| similarly to your implementation in terms of number of
| files it downloads and the size of files.
|
| One thing I found was when emulating mobile screen size I
| wasn't able to horizontally scroll with my track pad. It
| works on Netflix though. I'm betting you'll find 100+ of
| those 'small' things with user testing across different
| OS/browser combinations.
| yosamino wrote:
| I'm just implementing this on a very tiny level. Just one video
| that will maybe get a view every other day or so. I do have
| adaptive streaming and something that qualifies as "CDN" only
| if you squint.
|
| But it's not harder than most other IT niches one might get
| into. I am not saying it's without challenges - I pulled plenty
| of hair. Just that it's doable and that all the parts one might
| need are available for me to built into a usable system.
|
| Scaling that up will might be hard in the sense that it's a lot
| more expensive, but the core technology is there.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Oh I was not critiquing your effort at all. In fact, good
| job. It was actually amazing.
| yosamino wrote:
| I am realizing now that what I wrote reads like I was the
| author of Fakeflix - I am not. Sorry for the confusion..
| nonameiguess wrote:
| No disrespect meant to their engineering team, because I
| actually think Netflix does a much better job and produces less
| buggy software than any other streaming app, but the hard part
| is acquiring and/or creating a catalog worth subscribing to.
| The quality of the user experience is overwhelmingly determined
| by the quality of what they're watching.
|
| This is the basic reason why, though I'm sure they pay the
| engineers "well," they're not getting the $500 million deals
| the high profile writers and directors are getting.
| herbst wrote:
| DRM! Reading the headline I thought someone found an open way
| to ship videos in a copyright friendly way
| city41 wrote:
| Disclaimer, I worked at Netflix for 5 years. There are some
| interesting challenges in the clients. The TV client needs to
| run on devices with very little memory, and processors roughly
| as powerful as a Pentium 2. The JavaScript must be interpreted
| too, no JITing allowed. Getting smooth experiences everywhere
| in the world where internet quality and device power varies
| drastically, all in one code base that about 100 people work
| on, is a pretty good challenge. For example an entire
| proprietary "browser" was created with the goal of being low
| memory and high performance. So for TV devices, the entire dev
| stack from top to bottom had to be created mostly from scratch.
| This included forking React to create a version that would run
| on this platform.
|
| It's also interesting on the other end, what cool stuff can be
| done on the PS5 for example? Shaders and animation techniques
| are also pretty interesting to explore.
| emilfihlman wrote:
| Netflix is regularly slow or laggy with its ui even on
| perfectly normal hardware so you kind of failed with your
| task.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Can't say I've had much of an issue with Netflix, other
| than on Edge with paging forwards and backwards causing
| lag/voice sync issues - but then that could easily be an
| Edge thing.
| gmadsen wrote:
| thats pretty rude to be honest. Netflix has done a better
| job than anyone else at creating a video platform
| herbst wrote:
| How so? The local streaming services from German TV
| channels work just as well without needing so much RAM
| for just the interface.
| handrous wrote:
| It used to be remarkably good. Agree that over half the
| other services I use have much better UX, now. Actually
| the only one I can think of that I don't like _way_
| better is Amazon. Back when it was more catalog-like it
| was far more pleasant to use and performed much better,
| but I 'm sure that wasn't making whatever metrics they're
| optimizing for do what they wanted, plus that's way too
| boring-looking in screenshots for their designers'
| portfolios, I'm sure.
| gmadsen wrote:
| let me know when German TV serves over 200 million people
| on as many devices as Netflix
| herbst wrote:
| You think the amount of users or devices has something to
| do with how performant and we'll designed their interface
| is?
|
| These channels to have support for browser, phones,
| android, and smart TVs. They prolly just ain't trying to
| make one Interface work for them all.
| fouc wrote:
| The context of this sub-thread is about the client-side
| performance though
| ben-gy wrote:
| I can't remember ever having experienced a slow or laggy
| Netflix experience, on any device...
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| On my AppleTV (the first one supporting Apps) for at
| least a year it could get horribly laggy when browsing,
| seemed to get worse and worse until you restarted the
| app, then it was fine again for a while.
|
| Thankfully it's been fixed for many months now.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| On my TV (Sony Bravia, from before the Android TV ones),
| Netflix is terribly slow and occasionally crashes. It
| used to be smooth and stable, but I don't know who to
| blame here; the problems could've been caused by Sony,
| but they could have just as easily been caused by
| Netflix.
|
| I've learned my lesson, though, and now I just pirate
| Netflix content I want to see on my TV so I can watch it
| on Kodi. I'm not planning on replacing my TV any time
| soon and getting Netflix integration into Kodi is too
| much of a bother. Unless Netflix comes out with an
| official Kodi addon, I'll just stick to this setup.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| I use a PS3 (yes, from 2008) to watch Netflix and it
| works fine.
| tedunangst wrote:
| It's pretty janky on the older Roku boxes. Mostly due to
| trying to auto play videos I believe.
| hakube wrote:
| Kind of rude. But I have no problems with Netflix on my
| Smart TV, PS4 and a low-end Android phone
| herbst wrote:
| I have to agree, it's heavy as website, way more than any
| other streaming service I've used. There are visible lags
| and freezes between episodes. On all of my devices.
| Personally I never thought this to be one of their
| strengths
| emilfihlman wrote:
| Exactly, it's good looking, but it's absolutely not
| performant.
| herbst wrote:
| That's subjective ;) but it works. It also has better
| discovery than many others do (mainly due to not having a
| lot of content tho)
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, compared to some other providers they've clearly
| tuned the dial farther toward "looks _exactly_ how we
| want, everywhere " versus "performs well everywhere".
| Though they're far from the worst offenders.
|
| But yes, the challenge with building the UI for a product
| like this is that it has to run on everything. Android
| from 2014? Yep. Some weird vendor Android that was
| installed on TVs the same year? Yep. Apple TV? Yep. Roku?
| Yep. Every video game console and some handhelds? Yep.
| And so on. Your build target list is _insane_. Luckily
| for them, they can get access to SDKs or dev kits that
| Mere Mortals cannot--for instance, IIRC there 's a "big-
| boy shops only" SDK for Roku that lets you link in C/C++
| libs and have much lower-level access to drawing
| routines, since otherwise it'd be impossible to make
| things like Netflix look as similar on there as it does
| elsewhere. As a user, I wish they _didn 't_ have that
| access, because it'd perform better if they had to use
| the same very-efficient UI the small players do (plus
| it'd make it harder for them to have the damn auto-
| playing videos everywhere).
| scarface74 wrote:
| That might have something to do with the fact that
| Netflix originally created the first Roku and spun it off
| as not to compete with third party vendors.....
| scarface74 wrote:
| Just to confirm. My son still uses my first generation iPad
| from 2010 - an a4 processor running at 400Mhz with 256MB of
| RAM to watch Netflix.
| meibo wrote:
| Meanwhile, I can't install Netflix on my 2016 iPad Mini
| because it's stuck on iOS 12 and the Netflix app requires
| iOS 13.
|
| So much for Apple "lifetime support", half of the store
| apps you want to use can't be installed anymore. If you
| don't have an iTunes backup, you're SoL.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| I'm not sure what Apple and Netflix are doing there. I
| have a 2012 iPad that has the Netflix app already
| installed and it works fine.
| larkost wrote:
| My Kids' iPad is on iOS 9, and I was able to download
| Netflix for it. I remember there was a "older version"
| button I needed to press when I downloaded it, so you
| might still be able to get at least Netflix on that one.
| meibo wrote:
| This only works if you are on an Apple ID that has had
| the old version of the app installed at any point in
| time, sadly. I don't have access to my old Apple IDs
| anymore, so I can't install any old apps.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If you have a newer device, you can use your current ID
| to download the latest version and use your same login on
| your older device.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes you can. Apple has supported installing the "last
| compatible version" since 2013. I can reset my original
| iPad, install Netflix and it will ask do I want to
| install the last compatible version.
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250476703
|
| The same works for Plex.
|
| If you have ever installed it anywhere you can reinstall
| it.
|
| BTW, Apple never promised "lifetime support".
| meibo wrote:
| What if I don't? This is on a new Apple ID.
|
| It's impossible to install old versions of apps without
| ever having "owned" them, even if they're free. Your
| "solution" also doesn't work for all apps on the store,
| quite a few of them don't offer old versions anymore at
| all.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Any app that requires server side support like YouTube
| won't work regardless if they allowed you to download the
| client if they no longer support that version of the API.
|
| I noticed the same with the Kindle app.
| fleaaaa wrote:
| I'm working on similar streaming application as a side project,
| was expecting to see how static media serving strategy with
| concurrency being handled but this is just UI..
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| I wonder if this could be connected to Jellyfin.
| haar wrote:
| A _tiny_ side note:
|
| You'd be better served using an example.com email address for
| test accounts over a test.com account, with the former being a
| reserved domain name and the latter being a real one.
|
| https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved
| pelasaco wrote:
| Looks good. What is the chance that Netflix would ask GH to drop
| it, sue the developers, and etc?
| [deleted]
| sigmonsays wrote:
| i wondered about that too. Seems unlikely given its an
| experiemnt with no connection to video content. However, the
| legal system has amazed me before...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Probably zero. It's just a SPA that grabs images from
| https://www.themoviedb.org. It doesn't actually do anything.
| whobar wrote:
| This is just a project someone made to put in their portfolio,
| it's nothing serious.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I don't think they have anything to worry about, anyway you
| can't spend all your life fearing lawyers.
|
| I hope Hulu steals this, their new UI is really awful and they
| don't seem to comprehend no matter how many people tell them
| their UI is really awful.
| tekromancr wrote:
| It really is terrible! I always try to hold my tounge
| whenever the UI changes in an app, because it's usually just
| me not liking a "new" ui. But they have had this for
| months|years? now. if people are still saying your UI is bad
| after an extended period, then I think it's safe to trust
| them
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| For those interested in a nice self-hosted media server, I used
| to use Plex but am _really_ happy with Jellyfin[1] these days.
|
| [0]: https://jellyfin.org/
| guerrilla wrote:
| Well, I'm impressed by the demo. That's fancy and works.
| handrous wrote:
| I've been running it in Docker on my file-server machine for
| a while. Worked great until the Roku "app" suddenly started
| failing with most videos, then later all videos, across
| multiple devices. I don't think I've even looked at it in
| months, after the first couple upgrades to Jellyfin itself,
| and to the Roku app, didn't fix anything, though it's still
| running. Their official Docker image works really well and
| the web version is good.
|
| https://registry.hub.docker.com/r/jellyfin/jellyfin
| khimaros wrote:
| Jellyfin pairs well with LibreELEC running on Raspberry Pi.
| there is an addon which keeps the library (including watch
| status) in sync with the native Kodi library across multiple
| devices.
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