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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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

#471

Post by xxs »

tekknik wrote: post #371
xxs wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. In the EU most people have identity documents... and enough services that provide identity verification. The said verification is mandatory in some industries like online gambling. There is no intrinsic hurdle to remove the retarded IP block. Using VPN to bypass it is just yet another step away but again, why bother with VP…

That’s just the EU though, no such service exists on the US side. Also again these restrictions are put in place by the content owners, not netflix. It is very feasible to remove said checks but the content owners want them in place for their reasons. One can argue all day about how inconvenient this is but until they make more money without the geographic restrictions they will remain in place.

The OP complains about not being able to see movies within the EU (Poland/UK), hence my reply.

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

#472

Post by xxs »

ekianjo wrote: post #383
xxs wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To help out: in the most of Hollywood movies spoken Russian is usually beyond unnatural with a heavy accent... to a point computer synthesized voice acting would be an improvement.

Do the same thing happen in Russia when they feature spoken English?

(Likely) it used to in the 80s when I was exposed to Russian movies but nowadays I cannot judge due to lack of exposure. (Russian is my 3rd language.)

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

#473

Post by cm2187 »

mindcrime wrote: post #390
cm2187 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I have the budget for it, just there is no legit service that will give me the movies I want to watch. I have zero interest in the latest fast & furry or marvel movie. I'm rather: pull the filmography of Robert Duvall and let's watch the movies I haven't seen already. Easy to do on bittorrent, impossible on any streaming service. The only alternative is buying DVDs and Blurays on amazon which I also do, but tha…

This might sound like a dumb question, but have you checked Youtube much? Their catalog of "pay to stream" movies is (to me) surprisingly good. Definitely not just the recent blockbusters... they've got all sorts of older and less well know stuff. Just for shits and giggles I pulled up the Robert Duvall filmography just now and check and found even the oldest and lesser known ones on Youtube, most for around $3-4 to…

Thanks for the tip. Will look into it.

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

#474

Post by Semaphor »

thirdsun wrote: post #459
Semaphor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most bands I but from don't have the "problem" of having a label to worry about ;)

I'm so tired of this evil label narrative. It's unfair to reduce them to those 5 major labels. Particularly on Bandcamp there are countless small, honest labels that act as a curator and really help to develop their artists while taking a fair cut. Being featured on one of them is a huge opportunity for most artists.

I make it easy for myself. Any label that's a member of RIAA of IFPI is evil, the others I throw money at.

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

#475

Post by Semaphor »

arximboldi wrote: post #221
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

Torrents don't really work for music. Soulseek is your friend there, super old-school but great community and it has basically everything. I also buy almost everything I find on Bandcamp. Excepting those über-hipster techno artists with 100-copies vinyl-only releases (but those you can usually still find rips on Soulseek.)

Before there even was Bandcamp, there was Oink's Pink Palace [0], not only one of the best sources for music (NiN's Trent Reznor was a member & user of the site), some (lesser known) artists even released music exclusively on OiNK.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink's_Pink_Palace

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

#476

Post by kuon »

lbenes wrote: post #407
kuon wrote: post #382

I have a netflix subscription, but I download all movies from bittorrent, for three reasons: 1. Quality, especially audio, on many netflix movie I just cannot hear the voices. VLC is much better at mixing 5.1 to stereo for my speakers (not mentioning having multichannel when I watch on TV) 2. Being able to apply filters. I don't use many filters, but when I watch movie on my computers, I like to change the gamma of V…

Do you do this with VLC or another media player? I have a 16:10 monitor that often has space in the letterboxes for subtitles. I took the time to do this in VLC for a foreign TV series, but the next time I went to use subtitles it was broken and I didn't bother to tweak it. This really ought to be a built-in feature that just works™ without fiddling.

Actually, for subtitles, I use mpv.io with --video-align=-1 which is smart enough to place the subtitles at the right place.

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

#477

Post by detaro »

King-Aaron wrote: post #438
matt_j wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An $80 packaged game on a shelf probably nets the developer the same profit as a $20 digital version of the same game delivered via Steam. Packaging, distribution and retail markup are a big chunk of the price.

As an aside to this, I find it astonishing that you even still see packaged games on the shelf. The last couple of games I bought from a retailer were just a carboard box, a dvd sleeve inside and a business card with a download link on it inside that... No need to pay a markup for literally nothing.

funnily enough, sometimes the cardboard box is cheaper than buying the digital download.

I assume a motivations of it are a) to have presence next to console games and b) gift-giving? If there were at least the basic versions of the games on the disc, you could add c) people with slow internet to the equation, but that seems less and less common.

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

#478

Post by vsl »

m_mueller wrote: post #412
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 second GP's problem with subtitles and availability. For me torrenting always been about media I cannot get in the way I want - their release is delayed in the country I stay in, or it's only available dubbed or it doesn't have the subtitles I need (e.g. to watch Japanese, Spanish, French or Italian speaking films for me or anything other than Japanese for my Japanese wife). Where I come from around half the marria…

Netflix is improving in some locales, but remains a shitshow elsewhere (experimentally: countries with under 40M population). E.g. there are German and Polish subtitles for everything; there are almost none for Czech. They do things like providing them for only season 1, but not the rest, or don’t bother even with their own high-profile shows. Slovak viewers can choose between Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian subs, but not Czech - even though the entire country fluently understands Czech, an extremely closely related language. Netflix doesn’t care. Or have even nominally-useful support.

If the Netflix app allowed side loading my own subtitles, it’d be fine. But of course it doesn’t and won’t.

So guess what I do when I finish Narcos season 1 and discover lack of subtitles in season 2. Or when a show available on Netflix doesn’t have any (and I want to watch it with my spouse who can’t read English subs quickly enough).

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

#479

Post by vsl »

detaro wrote: post #477
King-Aaron wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside to this, I find it astonishing that you even still see packaged games on the shelf. The last couple of games I bought from a retailer were just a carboard box, a dvd sleeve inside and a business card with a download link on it inside that... No need to pay a markup for literally nothing.

funnily enough, sometimes the cardboard box is cheaper than buying the digital download. I assume a motivations of it are a) to have presence next to console games and b) gift-giving? If there were at least the basic versions of the games on the disc, you could add c) people with slow internet to the equation, but that seems less and less common.

Around here (Central Europe), it’s ALWAYS the case. Steam has Europe-wide pricing, local stores’ normal prices are often 40% lower on launch day.

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

#480

Post by liviu- »

arximboldi wrote: post #221
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

Torrents don't really work for music. Soulseek is your friend there, super old-school but great community and it has basically everything. I also buy almost everything I find on Bandcamp. Excepting those über-hipster techno artists with 100-copies vinyl-only releases (but those you can usually still find rips on Soulseek.)

>Torrents don't really work for music

How come? I know What.CD closed down, but I remember that RuTracker had quite a large selection of high-fidelity music records.

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