提问 HN：免费（非法）流媒体应用如何支付运营成本？
1 分•作者: BuildTheRobots•6 个月前
最近，我接触了一些关于搭建合法点播和直播服务涉及的技术和财务细节，这让我不禁好奇，那些非法的免费应用是如何运作的。
我玩过朋友的电视盒子，他们似乎安装了多个应用，可以提供全球电视直播（包括商业频道和付费频道，不仅仅是免费频道）。他们还有一些应用，可以访问看似庞大的点播视频库，流式传输各种电视剧和电影。而且，大多数内容似乎都有多个来源。
这些应用似乎可以免费安装、免费使用，而且我没有看到任何广告。他们是如何赚钱的呢？
如果他们不赚钱，他们到底是如何负担得起托管这项服务的呢？
我觉得制作和托管一个安卓应用相对容易，这个应用可以让你从一个流媒体/播放列表数据库中选择内容，但总得有人在某个地方托管这些媒体内容。仅直播一项，（我猜）就需要大量的调谐器或采集卡来获取内容，大量的处理能力来重新编码所有内容，一定程度的 CDN 或代理来支持大量的并发观看者，以及大量的带宽。点播视频虽然没有采集问题，但它需要大量的存储空间。
持续的成本一定非常高昂。即使是自托管，也会消耗大量的电力和带宽，毫无疑问，还需要持续的工程时间。
我非常天真，但我无法理解是什么动机或财务因素导致这些应用的存在。我和（Hacker News 上的）其他人肯定都曾犯过构建一些无聊的东西并让它们运行的错误，仅仅是为了好玩，但持续的成本让我觉得这肯定不仅仅是几个人“为了好玩”而做的事情。
有人能告诉我我遗漏了什么吗？
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I've recently been exposed to some of the technical and financial minutia involved in hosting a legal video on demand and live streaming service, and it's left me wondering how some of these illegitimate free apps work.<p>Playing with friends TV boxes, they seem to have installed multiple apps which offer live-streamed worldwide TV (including commercial and premium channels, not just free to air). They also have apps that give access to seemingly massive video on demand libraries, streaming a wide range of TV and films. Most content seems to have multiple sources available as well.<p>It seems to be free to install the apps, free to use and I can't see any advertising. How are they making money?<p>If they're not making money, how the heck do they afford to host the service?<p>I can see it being relatively easy to make & host an Android app that lets you pick from a database of streams/playlists, but someone, somewhere has to be hosting the media content. The live-streaming alone would (I assume) require a vast amount of tuners or capture cards to get the content, an amount of processing to re-encode it all, some level of CDN or proxies to support large numbers of simultaneous viewers and a large amount of bandwidth as well. The video on demand doesn't have the capture problem, but it swaps it for massive storage requirements.<p>The ongoing costs must be massive. Even self-hosted, you're burning large amounts of electric and bandwidth, and no doubt ongoing engineering time.<p>I'm very naive, but I don't understand the motivation or the finances that cause these apps to exist in the first place. I (and others on HN) have certainly been guilty of building silly things and keeping them running only for the heck of it, but the ongoing costs make me think it must be something bigger than a few people doing it "for the lols".<p>Can someone please tell me what I'm missing?