I tried Nebula (Video streaming service)

Sunday, October 13, 2024

For those who are not aware, Nebula is a pretty interesting streaming service which, according to Wikipedia, has been around for five years (this sounds wrong to me though, as I literarily heard about it last year! – but that maybe a ‘me’ problem.)

Nebula has been on my periphery for a little while as something I wanted to one day find the time to check out. Recently, a friend passed me a ‘guest pass’ for a week of access to the platform and wow, do I have thoughts!

First off. Nebula is a fantastic service. It has a smooth interface, nice search, no visual clutter and an excellent colour scheme.

I spent my first day or so with Nebula, exploring the content. The strange thing I noticed, almost instantly, was that it was all high quality, not necessarily things which I would want to watch, but all of it looked well-made and at the very least not ‘click baity.’

The video player is basic (intentionally so) and snappy. It has about the same start time as YouTube (which is a good thing because start speed is one of the few things which YouTube does very well.) And the information below the video is tastefully displayed. Actually, it’s displayed in a way which reminds me of YouTube about five years ago, again, a good thing. There are no comments, no up or down vote buttons and no ‘support’ links to be seen on the platform.

I have quite literally nothing bad, or even negative-adjacent to say about the viewing experience, at least not in my testing, in Safari. I can’t make comment on other browsers because I only use Safari (because it’s the best one… fight me!)

The mobile (and iPad) app is solid and without silly things which would stop my enjoyment. That was one of the things which I experienced with the platform – there were no annoyances, none at all. Not one. Nothing to make me eye squirm, furrow brow, or sigh in annoyance. It wasn’t until a few days in that I realised one of the things that was different was that all the videos were without sponsor spots. No one tried to get me to sign up to square space, take an audible trial or check out how great iFix-it is. I think this wasn’t instantly obvious to me because I am a YouTube Premium subscriber and also a Sponsor-Block user. Essentially, I have augmented my YouTube experience to the point that it’s emulating Nebula. I even use a plugin to remove comments and shorts on my laptop.

I think that, is in part, why I was not as blown away as I perhaps should have been with Nebula. While I watched hours of ReligionForBreakfast and MinutePhysics, these are both things I could have just watched on YouTube with a very similar experience, over all.

That’s how my Nebula week went – I used it and enjoyed it, but there was very little available that wouldn’t be able to watch on YouTube with, for a premium, a very similar experience.

The selection also pushed me back to YouTube. While Nebula is great, a lot of the creators I like are not on there, which meant that I would find myself on YouTube a lot. I had little reason to leave and go to nebula when a creator uploaded something I knew was on both platforms. Even though, in theory, I would rather support Nebula, over YouTube.

Now, most people are not YouTube Premium subscribers. In fact, I don’t actually know a single other person who subscribes to it. So, let’s do some numbers…

Cost

Nebula:

YouTube Premium:

This makes Nebula a fantastic price, if the creators you care about are on there. In fact, their $300 lifetime deal is actually very tempting. So much so that if I ever had $300 (about £230 GBP) spare, I would actually consider it. But, here’s the pickle for me, I have a £20 a month YouTube Family subscription. I share it with my mother, and my daughter. If they were not freeloaders (I mean that lovingly) the cost would be about £6.65 a month, each, putting YouTube in the ballpark of Nebula, pricewise. This coupled with the monstrously larger selection of videos, and back catalogues, and the addition of it coming with YouTube Music access, makes it a less than appealing monthly subscription for me.

If I did not have to ‘feed’ my family the subscription, and it was me alone, I would almost definitely use Nebula and just ignore YouTube. The reality is, there is enough to watch. It would be made more appealing still if one or two more of the channels I watched signed on. The fact that Sponsor Block doesn’t work in the YouTube app on my phone and tablet also makes Nebula more appealing. If I also had to watch ad’s i would likely quit YouTube cold turkey.

YouTube makes me hate YouTube

One of the facts I can’t ignore is that the main reason to loathe YouTube is, well, YouTube. Even though I pay a no-insignificant amount of money to be on the platform ad-free, creators are allowed to shove sponsor’s down my neck with no ‘baked-in’ way to remove them. They flash ‘support channel’ at me every time I load a video, and I can’t turn off Shorts. YouTube makes me mad. A paying customer should be able to use the product without annoyances that they created!

Nebula forever

The pay once offer Nebula has very appealing, but at $36 a year, I would have to expect to use it for eight and a half years to make it a good investment. If they fail to attract new creators at a reasonable rate, I would have to also use YouTube for some things. I need to think on this for a while, honestly, I really do.

The verdict

The mixed feelings which I have, actually run deeper than I realised, until I started writing this.

The fact that a lifetime subscription exits for a reasonable cost makes me have Nebula in the back of my mind as a viable ‘exit’ should YouTube ever get, well, too ikky for me. I think I may even put some money aside for getting a lifetime account, as I doubt it will be available for sale, forever. If I knew I had access to it, ‘forever,’ I would naturally migrate towards it and eventually tell the freeloaders to get their own damned accounts, eventually.

At this time though, with Sponsor-Block, Comment/shorts blocked and a Premium, ad free tier, I think YouTube is too alluring as a one-stop shop. But long term, I could see myself washing my hands of it and moving to Nebula as a cleaner place to ‘live.’ – I really shouldn’t have to do all this tweaking to make YouTube useable.

This sounds like a cop-out, but I think, the only reason I didn’t go all in on Nebula is simply because ‘YouTube exists’ – though, I have no doubt that one day, it will make it’s self too much of a pain in the rear to actually use.