The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#271

Post by Momquist » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #251

phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f * the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of…

> But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience.

It has, but the fragmentation that you mentioned is starting to seriously erode this progress. If the situation worsens on this front, I can definitely see a resurgence of piracy, again because of convenience.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#272

Post by gsich » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #120

distances wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.

> Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! Sadly, this has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with rightsholders (aka "Hollywood"). The rights on the subtitles are held by the company that makes them, are then sold to the company that distributes the movie, which are then resold to regional distributors, separately fr…

Like the enduser cares about whos fault it is. Netflix could at least allow the loading of custom subtitles.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#273

Post by vbezhenar » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #215

>Cause 5: VPN Usage >The real problem here is that there’s no way to know just how much of VPN traffic is growing or how much of it is BitTorrent. Though different traffic studies look at the internet from different vantage points, some simply would not be able to see VPN-obscured BitTorrent traffic. I'm on a VPN all the time, and torrenting without a VPN, to me, is living on the edge. I'd constantly wonder: how long…

At least sometimes I'm grateful that I'm living in 3-rd world country, where most of the people including police don't realize that copyright even exists (every Windows XP in police I saw seemed to be pirated, LoL). I can use torrents at 1 GB/s without any fear. I don't have much choice anyway, legal services usually completely out of touch with their insane prices and provide very limited selection, so they don't even close to compete. I don't know anyone who would pay $10 for album, it's ridiculous pricing. Make it $0.01 for song and someone might pay that for easy of use.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#274

Post by gsich » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #153

distances wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.

Netflix seems to be pretty opinionated about subtitles. Try watching Narcos without subs, you can't. "Off" means the Spanish parts are subbed, and switching it to Spanish means the English parts are subbed! Netflix, a Californian company, simply couldn't fathom that some people might understand English and Spanish.

Burned in subtitles maybe?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#275

Post by icebraining » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

8draco8 wrote: post #230

phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried…

I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market.

The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them.

Also, you're paying a fixed monthly fee, and unless you're part of the small minority that travels a lot, you're not likely to drop Netflix over not being able to watch certain movies in foreign countries, hence they didn't lose anything.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#276

Post by Nition » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #182

masklinn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PS: Mostly thanks to Bandcamp.com music torrenting is completely dead for me. Seconded. My music search these days is Find interesting band + | v not sure I can Is on bandcamp? +-no-> be arsed to even + check torrents | yes | v buy entire discography on bandcamp

Oh the other hand, if it's on iTunes it's almost an instant piracy. Not only you can't buy it without installing a huge application, you can't even preview it either.

Can anyone speculate on why Apple has never made iTunes purchasing available as an online store? It's the prospect of installing iTunes that keeps me away as well.

I've used Google Play when I couldn't find something on Bandcamp because it lets me purchase and download the album in a browser. But even then you have to have an account.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#277

Post by icebraining » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #243

phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

I have a wireless audio configuration which introduces 200ms latency. This is usually unnoticeable because I watch almost all my video through mpv, which lets me set a 200ms delay on the video to compensate. I can't play Netflix titles through mpv, and as far as I've been able to tell, the Netflix player doesn't have an AV sync setting. My setup is idiosyncratic, and I wouldn't expect Netflix to build in every featur…

https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_whi...

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#278

Post by bringtheaction » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

phil248 wrote: post #205

jimmies wrote: post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

I was about to argue that Netflix is still not viable for Linux users but then I googled it and apparently Netflix now works out of the box in Google Chrome.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-e...

Does that include Chromium though? I think probably not. I will give it a try in Chromium but if that doesn't work then I will not be able to use Netflix still.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#279

Post by joshumax » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

bringtheaction wrote: post #278

phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

I was about to argue that Netflix is still not viable for Linux users but then I googled it and apparently Netflix now works out of the box in Google Chrome. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-e... Does that include Chromium though? I think probably not. I will give it a try in Chromium but if that doesn't work then I will not be able to use Netflix still.

It should work with Chromium, IIRC, however you'd need to install the Widevine DRM plugin to make it work. It's available in the non-free section of most-distributions, being closed-source and all...

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#280

Post by distances » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

thesumofall wrote: post #246

distances wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English CC is offered in English speaking countries probably for legal reasons. They are not available elsewhere in the world. In Germany you get only German subtitles. For whatever reason this is not the case for series in Netflix, which most of the time contain also in English subtitles. Wouldn't have helped the original commenter's case of course.

That’s not correct. All recent shows I watched on Netflix in Germany (on a German account) had English CC subtitles in addition to typically a range of others. This includes Originals and external content such as Star Trek TNG

Yes as I mentioned most series have English subtitles, while movies do not. I don't have a clue what's behind this difference.