Reviews for Video DownloadHelper
Video DownloadHelper by Sarah
Review by The Red Pill
Rated 1 out of 5
by The Red Pill, 5 days agoThe newly required Lifetime License fee to remove the QR code should be fairly priced at $4.99
The 'Red Pill' Reality: the 'engine' doing the heavy lifting (downloading & converting) is still just FFmpeg, which is free, open-source software built by volunteers. You are essentially paying $30 for lifetime access to a dashboard that drives a free car.
To be fair to the Developer: Paul and his team built a very polished Link Sniffer and a nice UI. They also updated the 'Companion App' to handle HLS streams smoothly. For a non-technical user, this convenience has some value.
Why $4.99 is the fair price: You are paying for the convenience of not using a command line. That is worth a cup of coffee ($5), not the price of a full premium indie video game ($30).
How to do it yourself for free (The steps they don't want you to know): If you have 5 minutes, you can replicate this 'Premium' functionality for $0:
Option A (Web-based & Clean): Use cobalt[dot]tools. Unlike other sites, it has NO ads and NO trackers. (Pro Tip: Smart users run uBlock Origin anyway, which makes the free web safer than many paid apps).
Option B (Power User):
Install 'The Stream Detector' (Firefox addon) to sniff the links just like this extension does.
Click it -> select 'Copy yt-dlp command'.
Paste that into your terminal with yt-dlp (free open source).
A premium UI but the 'magic' is free elsewhere. Save your money unless you are allergic to keyboards.
The 'Red Pill' Reality: the 'engine' doing the heavy lifting (downloading & converting) is still just FFmpeg, which is free, open-source software built by volunteers. You are essentially paying $30 for lifetime access to a dashboard that drives a free car.
To be fair to the Developer: Paul and his team built a very polished Link Sniffer and a nice UI. They also updated the 'Companion App' to handle HLS streams smoothly. For a non-technical user, this convenience has some value.
Why $4.99 is the fair price: You are paying for the convenience of not using a command line. That is worth a cup of coffee ($5), not the price of a full premium indie video game ($30).
How to do it yourself for free (The steps they don't want you to know): If you have 5 minutes, you can replicate this 'Premium' functionality for $0:
Option A (Web-based & Clean): Use cobalt[dot]tools. Unlike other sites, it has NO ads and NO trackers. (Pro Tip: Smart users run uBlock Origin anyway, which makes the free web safer than many paid apps).
Option B (Power User):
Install 'The Stream Detector' (Firefox addon) to sniff the links just like this extension does.
Click it -> select 'Copy yt-dlp command'.
Paste that into your terminal with yt-dlp (free open source).
A premium UI but the 'magic' is free elsewhere. Save your money unless you are allergic to keyboards.