6.0.0.8 wtf

[Cats4U]

StreamFab 6.0.0.8 Changelog
Fix: A failure problem when downloading Amazon Prime Videos.
Fix: A failure problem when downloading certain World Cup videos from AbemaTV.
Fix: A failure problem when downloading Fanza videos.
Fix: A failure problem when downloading Crunchyroll videos.

Amazon is still being re-encoded. 480p for the latest videos is still a failure any way you look at it.

Why are you even looking at problems on AbemaTV, Fanza, and Crunchyroll, much less working on them? I don't know how many times I have to write the word... PRIORITY.
Fix the DRM on the PRIORITY channels. Don't know what are the PRIORITY channels? Look at what your competitor has...
Amazon Prime Video
Disney+
Netflix
HBO Max
Hulu (USA)
Paramount+
and throw in Peacock, which is said to be their next release.

[DeadPixel]

yeah, release notes need to be a little more open about the status of providers or there needs to be a status page. saw the amazon "fix" and got my hopes up.

[artsunlimited]

Amazon is still being re-encoded. 480p for the latest videos is still a failure any way you look at it.

Why are you even looking at problems on AbemaTV, Fanza, and Crunchyroll, much less working on them? I don't know how many times I have to write the word... PRIORITY.
Fix the DRM on the PRIORITY channels. Don't know what are the PRIORITY channels? Look at what your competitor has...
Amazon Prime Video
Disney+
Netflix
HBO Max
Hulu (USA)
Paramount+
and throw in Peacock, which is said to be their next release.

Hey, 480 is perfectly fine, right? So what are we complaining about, now that Crunchyroll is fixed? There's not an eyeroll emoji large enough for my needs right now.

They were already kidding themselves with "For Amazon, most of Prime videos can still be downloaded in 1080p with EAC3 5.1 audio track" and AFAIC doubled down on that self-deception with "the video quality remains almost close to the original" with re-encoding.

That there's NOTHING in the release notes that they're even working on improving that substandard SD 480p result on PRIORITY channels smacks of how HBO Max was handled - which was to do nothing beyond a substandard "fix" then spent the next 6 months claiming they were "working on it" when they obviously weren't. Meanwhile, the competition had the DRM change licked in a matter of days.

[jpp72]

Amazon is still being re-encoded. 480p for the latest videos is still a failure any way you look at it.

Why are you even looking at problems on AbemaTV, Fanza, and Crunchyroll, much less working on them? I don't know how many times I have to write the word... PRIORITY.
Fix the DRM on the PRIORITY channels. Don't know what are the PRIORITY channels? Look at what your competitor has...
Amazon Prime Video
Disney+
Netflix
HBO Max
Hulu (USA)
Paramount+
and throw in Peacock, which is said to be their next release.

Like i speculated before, these things are fixed by people without CDM exploits knowledge. I bet if they have 15 employees, 3 have CDM reverse engineering/cracking knowledge and the others do the rest of the programming just using the libraries provided by the 3 CDM experts.

It's just like every single programmer in the world. We use libraries providing us methods. We don't need to know exactly how to do something. Just how to make calls to the library.

That is why GPAC libraries is used to manipulate MP4 files or Bento4 libraries to decrypt them.

I know it may look bad to fix these things that aren't CDM related but what kind of company will just tell employees who can't work on a specialized thing that they should just twiddle their thumbs when they could fix other things?

The whole recording thing had me worried. Rightfully so it seems. The fact that the fox was able to recover so quickly the last 2 times means they have a CDM expert in-house. StreamFab failing the past 2 times after being successful previously may mean they rely on public exploits being leaked or their expert(s) are no longer at the company...

I guess it's back to full-on Newsgroups for me. I bought SF for 2 reasons: Low bitrate H265 and Subtitles. Whenever i get something from newsgroups that has too many subs, i run it through my script to remove the superfluous ones and there are no subs, i can download a low res version with SF/AS to get them.

[Mike_M]

Amazon is still being re-encoded. 480p for the latest videos is still a failure any way you look at it.

Why are you even looking at problems on AbemaTV, Fanza, and Crunchyroll, much less working on them? I don't know how many times I have to write the word... PRIORITY.
Fix the DRM on the PRIORITY channels. Don't know what are the PRIORITY channels? Look at what your competitor has...
Amazon Prime Video
Disney+
Netflix
HBO Max
Hulu (USA)
Paramount+
and throw in Peacock, which is said to be their next release.

Cats4u,

StreamFab definitely needs to prioritize.

I'd add Apple+ with it's 32.5kb/s audio and low resolution to your list of StreamFab priorities - even though the competitor doesn't support Apple+.

Mike

[artsunlimited]

The whole recording thing had me worried. Rightfully so it seems. The fact that the fox was able to recover so quickly the last 2 times means they have a CDM expert in-house. StreamFab failing the past 2 times after being successful previously may mean they rely on public exploits being leaked or their expert(s) are no longer at the company...

I guess it's back to full-on Newsgroups for me. I bought SF for 2 reasons: Low bitrate H265 and Subtitles. Whenever i get something from newsgroups that has too many subs, i run it through my script to remove the superfluous ones and there are no subs, i can download a low res version with SF/AS to get them.

I feared the writing was on the wall when HBOMax was never restored to 816/1080p - they no longer had the in-house expertise to crack that DRM change, and weren't willing to hire it on.

When I bought this software in January it appeared to be a great product, superior to the competition in every way, and by May the honeymoon was over. I've never seen such a promising product been allowed to go down the drain through neglect, in exchange for basically running off to chase shiny pieces of tinfoil.

What an appalling and totally preventable waste.

[Cats4U]

The whole recording thing had me worried. Rightfully so it seems. The fact that the fox was able to recover so quickly the last 2 times means they have a CDM expert in-house. StreamFab failing the past 2 times after being successful previously may mean they rely on public exploits being leaked or their expert(s) are no longer at the company...

I was going to hold off on posting this until a later time if the Developer didn't fix the DRM in a timely manner but your quote above is a perfect segue. That non-changelog is making me mad enough to post this far earlier than I should. The whole of my previous message is at https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/softwa...983#post412983 but the main point is in the last two paragraphs which I will quote out below. This is from the summer of 2022 and the issues then we're with Apple+, HBO Max, and Disney+ (none of which I subscribed to then.) Admittedly, at the time I really wasn't aware that Apple+ was a different sort of encryption problem with it being moved to L1. I only say this because if you read the replies to my post I am taking to task over that by one person. They were right and I was wrong.
Anyway, back to the relevant 2 paragraphs...

I don't know if the developer is in-house or a farmed out job but Fengtao needs to put pressure on the developer to get AppleTV+, HBO, and Disney+ working at their highest level possible, ASAP. Temporarily forget about work on all other modules, either existing or in planning. Put all available resources, meaning coders, on fixing these three modules. If you don't have enough coders, hire new ones. For the amount of money being charged for each module, money used to hire employees should not be a problem. Forgive me if I come across as being crass but the world looks to China for it's cheap labor. It's summertime and probably 100,000 recently graduated ex-students with Computer Science degrees are out there looking for something like this. Hire them and finally get these modules working to their fullest potential.

And finally, I absolutely hated everytime someone here did a "Well, the competition has it fixed." For the moment, let's put aside that based on reading their forum, they don't really have it fixed, not totally, anyway. The fact is (or at least, I believe) there are people out in the world that have already broken the HD and beyond DRM of these 3 services or have the talent to do it if asked. Fengtao (or whoever the developer is if not in-house) needs to track down these people and hire them immediately. They don't need to be located in China. Find the best video crackers in the world and put them to work. Once word gets out on how flawlessly StreamFab works Fengtao will be making so much money that they won't know what to do with it. How many purchases have been lost now because word got out that StreamFab has only low resolution for their AppleTV+, Disney+, and HBO modules?

Like I wrote in another thread, they need to set up a Job Fair at VideoHelp.com. Anyone that reads the Video Streaming Downloading forum there knows what I mean.

[jpp72]

I feared the writing was on the wall when HBOMax was never restored to 816/1080p - they no longer had the in-house expertise to crack that DRM change, and weren't willing to hire it on.

When I bought this software in January it appeared to be a great product, superior to the competition in every way, and by May the honeymoon was over. I've never seen such a promising product been allowed to go down the drain through neglect, in exchange for basically running off to chase shiny pieces of tinfoil.

What an appalling and totally preventable waste.

1000% agree. I had bought the competition 1st and when i learned of this other one, it was a no brainer for me.

In my opinion, SF was better in 99% of the ways. H265, CBR/CVBR, Selectable Bitrates, Sleeker Interface, Tons of modules, multi-audio and MKV output were the main selling points.

Then when you use it every day, there are a ton of minor things that just grinds yours gears:

• Subtitles list is not Alphabetical
• Random sub is being tagged as the default one
• No way to customize file naming

Let's not forget selling a Lifetime license for All-In-One but telling your users that any new module you still need to buy left a bitter taste in my mouth

[LycanHD]

Hey, 480 is perfectly fine, right? So what are we complaining about, now that Crunchyroll is fixed? There's not an eyeroll emoji large enough for my needs right now.

They were already kidding themselves with "For Amazon, most of Prime videos can still be downloaded in 1080p with EAC3 5.1 audio track" and AFAIC doubled down on that self-deception with "the video quality remains almost close to the original" with re-encoding.

That there's NOTHING in the release notes that they're even working on improving that substandard SD 480p result on PRIORITY channels smacks of how HBO Max was handled - which was to do nothing beyond a substandard "fix" then spent the next 6 months claiming they were "working on it" when they obviously weren't. Meanwhile, the competition had the DRM change licked in a matter of days.

Except Bitchin' Rides is only in CVBR now, which is lower bitrate than my previously downloaded CBR. (almost half the bitrate)

[artsunlimited]

Let's not forget selling a Lifetime license for All-In-One but telling your users that any new module you still need to buy left a bitter taste in my mouth

You don't want to know what I was tasting when I found out there was a hidden 30-day clock in the so-called 3-free-download-trial of those modules. Once you try one download, the other two trial downloads will go bye-byes within 30 days due to that hidden expiration date - but you won't be told that. So if, as was my case, your first download lost audio partway through and you waited patiently for a month for SF to tell you if this was a bug in the module or what and never got an answer, all you'd get after that time would be a strong-arm attempt to force you to buy the module that didn't work the first time you tried it.

[bwnautilus]

The fact that the fox was able to recover so quickly the last 2 times means they have a CDM expert in-house.

By fox I'm assuming you're referring to RF? (I know we're banned from mentioning competitors by name on this forum so I'm using the acronym). Since I've already sunk $$ into SF's all-in-one product there's no way I can claw my money back now. In your opinion, would you recommend people switching to RF in light of what's happening here? Thanks.

[jpp72]

By fox I'm assuming you're referring to RF? (I know we're banned from mentioning competitors by name on this forum so I'm using the acronym). Since I've already sunk $$ into SF's all-in-one product there's no way I can claw my money back now. In your opinion, would you recommend people switching to RF in light of what's happening here? Thanks.

I can't really "recommend" it because i may be wrong and SF cracks the CDM tomorrow. If you don't really need the pros i listed, i guess go for it. I also don't really keep up with their releases so some of my pros might have been introduced there now. I know HBO Max now has H265/HEVC

I am glad i have both but right now, i am strictly using the competitor so i can download HBO movies. I always use the highest bitrate for movies and lower bitrates for TV Shows. Especially reality shows. WTF would i waste space downloading 15 Mb/s bitrate for reality shows that look just as good at 3 MB/s?

[Mona]

Amazon is still being re-encoded. 480p for the latest videos is still a failure any way you look at it.

Why are you even looking at problems on AbemaTV, Fanza, and Crunchyroll, much less working on them? I don't know how many times I have to write the word... PRIORITY.

Hi, I can understand your feeling about the re-encoding,480p thing in the recent updates, and we can assure you that the solution for that is been working on.
If all goes well, we can see the solution before the end of December, or maybe within this week.

As for other services, they are part of the product, I don't think it's wrong for us to maintain them while other staff are working on the major sites you mentioned.

We appreciate your support to DVDFab and StreamFab, please give us some more time. Thanks again.

[Cats4U]

As for other services, they are part of the product, I don't think it's wrong for us to maintain them while other staff are working on the major sites you mentioned.

Finally some usable information. All this time you have referred to the developer as The Developer, meaning one person doing it all. Never in the past have you let on that it was a team (although there was speculation to that effect.) Now that we know that, how close was jpp72 to reality with his excellent post in this thread at https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/softwa...231#post419231 ? How many developers on staff are specialized in CDM/DRM reverse engineering/cracking? And finally a question that was asked a long time ago, several times, and never answered - Are the developers employees of Fengtao or is Fengtao just licensing the program from a third-party contractor? With all the various clones of StreamFab out there, all at varying prices, it would seem that the latter would be the answer. That would be unfortunate as Fengtao would have less say in the hiring of extremely experienced programmers that specialize in DRM code breaking.

[Mike_M]

Finally some usable information. All this time you have referred to the developer as The Developer, meaning one person doing it all. Never in the past have you let on that it was a team (although there was speculation to that effect.) Now that we know that, how close was jpp72 to reality with his excellent post in this thread at https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/softwa...231#post419231 ? How many developers on staff are specialized in CDM/DRM reverse engineering/cracking? And finally a question that was asked a long time ago, several times, and never answered - Are the developers employees of Fengtao or is Fengtao just licensing the program from a third-party contractor? With all the various clones of StreamFab out there, all at varying prices, it would seem that the latter would be the answer. That would be unfortunate as Fengtao would have less say in the hiring of extremely experienced programmers that specialize in DRM code breaking.

Cats4U,

Some very good questions.

I'd also be interested in knowing why the website StreamFab.com is maintained differently than DVDFab.cn and seems to have different content and writers - but now they seem to be moving to DVDFab.cn too.

Along with the software installing in a different path and messing up my registry previously.

When you search for "Download Streamfab" the StreamFab.com site is now the first site listed in Google for me.

It's also interesting and comical to see that stock photos/names are probably being used for some of their "technical writers" and "contributor's" with majority white and female previously with pretty generic sounding names - complete with graduation from U.S. Colleges (for StreamFab.com).

I did notice that it's changing a bit and now has a few more guys and some of the women aren't quoted as much in current articles.

I guess they figure this is good and targeted marketing.

Other's might think it's a tad condescending and an insult to the intelligence of customers.

Recently saw one of the few guys (see attached) on Streamfab.com (Malcolm) name "transitioned" to "Emily" when encountering on DVDFab.cn now.

Oh well.

The important thing is FOCUS ON GETTING DRM FIXED A.S.A.P.

Mike

US -CST, Win10/64 Pro & Win11/64Pro, No VPN, RTX 3080ti