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If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

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Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#61

Post by DannoHung »

LogicX wrote: post #58
dgallagher wrote: post #53

The giant elephant in the room is being overlooked: Advertisements have a lifespan measured in months, weeks, or days. Television content can stay relevant for decades. Imagine it's the year 1997. Aliens from the planet GNU have gone back in time and provided us with bittorrent, and technology making dial-up modems a million times faster (but they still drop their connection if your mom picks up the phone). You just…

Except this same scenario happened if you recorded off TV; or used a DVR like Tivo. Now imagine the benefits of a torrent option where they have the option of updating the ads every 6-12 months; and releasing fresh torrents (or even better they use your IP Geo info when you fetch the torrent and have region-specific torrent offerings with different ads in them.) Maybe if its a legit source, you're more likely to down…

Orrrr, even better, the container they send the show in dynamically changes the ads based on what advertisers are trying to sell.

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#62

Post by neilrahilly »

No. I'm tired of waiting for downloads, dealing with external hard drives, re-encoding video files, syncing my phone/tablet/TV, etc. Streaming is such a superior experience. Search, hit play, watch. Happy to watch an ad or pay a subscription for that convenience.

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#63

Post by eropple »

teamonkey wrote: post #52
jrockway wrote: post #26

No. Why would I watch content with ads when I can already watch the same content without ads? Content middlemen: you've lost. The 21st century has no place for you. Distribution is now dirt cheap and dirt simple. You can't add any value because you don't solve any hard problems. All you've done for the last 10 years is make content harder to pay for. Content creators: make content, add it to your website, charge $2 (…

Why would I pay $2 to watch content without ads when I can just download the same content from a torrent site for free?

Because, fundamentally, most people aren't assholes.

I vacillate between both sides of the piracy issue. I used to pirate, when I was 14 and had no money. About the time I turned 16 or so I realized it wasn't a good idea and pretty much went without if I couldn't buy it; I saw no reason why other people couldn't do likewise, and got pretty annoyed at the casual piracy at the time. Having graduated from college and moved into a nice job, I buy stuff pretty much on the basis of "it looks interesting and it's only two bucks," and I can't bring myself to care about the pirates at all anymore. They're not part of my worldview.

If you can make the process of buying something simple enough and pain-free enough, I think that most people who can afford it will buy it. Others will pirate it because they can't afford it, and I think that there's a compelling argument to be made that many of those will eventually become regular consumers when they've got the money to do so. There surely is a group of dyed-in-the-wool douchebags who will never buy anything they can pirate because they are, at their cores, Bad People, but them's the breaks--I've come to the gradual understanding that these people are shitty human beings who will screw others so long as they don't have to look them in the eye to do so, and all you can do is write them off.

But I think that, for the most part, if you treat your potential customers right, they'll do right by you. (The same is not true, I think, of "donate what you want"--I strongly feel that method of revenue generation encourages people to pay as little as they can rationalize, and what even nominally 'good' people can rationalize is really really small. But that's another topic.)

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#65

Post by younata »

I've taken to just buying a season/series on dvd, then ripping them to a hard drive.

I get the double whammy of 1) I feel all good and whatnot of making sure the content produces get some money (even if it's realistically, like, 10% of what I payed to get the series), and 2) I have rather high quality masters that I can then rip rather high quality copies to a hard drive.

Also, this is faster than just torrenting the shows at similar quality. (maybe a few days, regardless of the show compared between a day and more than a week, depending on the popularity of the show)

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#66

Post by cpeterso »

pessimizer wrote: post #45

I'm pretty sure that there's no way to do this without effectively just releasing pristine copies that somebody will cut the ads out of within 5 minutes of them being posted. They could use their own DRM'd file format and media player, but that would be broken in a week and have the effect of just releasing copies that somebody would cut the ads out of within 5 minutes of them beng posted. I can't think of any scheme…

Kickstarter for filmmakers? That sounds promising.

I've read of many promising films that never get made because they can't get funding. For example, Tom Hanks owns the movie rights to Arthur C. Clarke's 2061, MGM owns 3001's, and Morgan Freeman owns Rendezvous with Rama's. And who knows who owns Neuromancer.

As for downloads, some torrent sites offer "fast, direct downloads" for a fee. Someone is making money from bittorrent users and it's not Hollywood (but there's nothing stopping them).

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#67

Post by jmonegro »

dgallagher wrote: post #53

The giant elephant in the room is being overlooked: Advertisements have a lifespan measured in months, weeks, or days. Television content can stay relevant for decades. Imagine it's the year 1997. Aliens from the planet GNU have gone back in time and provided us with bittorrent, and technology making dial-up modems a million times faster (but they still drop their connection if your mom picks up the phone). You just…

I don't think it'd go to that extreme. Sure, the ads would be outdated, but the brands are still there.

You're still exposed to the Apple brand, and are reminded that they've been (hypothetically) awesome since 1997 and beyond. You're still exposed to McDonald's and might head out for a Big Mac (I suspect that'll stay on forever).

Maybe Volkswagens will get better in ten year's time ;-)

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#68

Post by wslh »

dgallagher wrote: post #53

The giant elephant in the room is being overlooked: Advertisements have a lifespan measured in months, weeks, or days. Television content can stay relevant for decades. Imagine it's the year 1997. Aliens from the planet GNU have gone back in time and provided us with bittorrent, and technology making dial-up modems a million times faster (but they still drop their connection if your mom picks up the phone). You just…

No, the best idea will be to insert those ads dynamically when you download the torrent.

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#69

Post by voidfiles »

LogicX wrote: post #58
dgallagher wrote: post #53

The giant elephant in the room is being overlooked: Advertisements have a lifespan measured in months, weeks, or days. Television content can stay relevant for decades. Imagine it's the year 1997. Aliens from the planet GNU have gone back in time and provided us with bittorrent, and technology making dial-up modems a million times faster (but they still drop their connection if your mom picks up the phone). You just…

Except this same scenario happened if you recorded off TV; or used a DVR like Tivo. Now imagine the benefits of a torrent option where they have the option of updating the ads every 6-12 months; and releasing fresh torrents (or even better they use your IP Geo info when you fetch the torrent and have region-specific torrent offerings with different ads in them.) Maybe if its a legit source, you're more likely to down…

Why not just provide streaming versions for free, and insert new ads whenever they feel like it. It could even be like a website where a Person could find lots of different streaming video programs. I would use that in a heartbeat.

Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?

#70

Post by cpeterso »

teamonkey wrote: post #52
jrockway wrote: post #26

No. Why would I watch content with ads when I can already watch the same content without ads? Content middlemen: you've lost. The 21st century has no place for you. Distribution is now dirt cheap and dirt simple. You can't add any value because you don't solve any hard problems. All you've done for the last 10 years is make content harder to pay for. Content creators: make content, add it to your website, charge $2 (…

Why would I pay $2 to watch content without ads when I can just download the same content from a torrent site for free?

People will pay money for convenience and speed. Media companies good delivery fast high-quality downloads with an easy one-click process. Joe User doesn't want to deal with slow downloads of torrents with unknown quality, sharing their bandwidth and possibly exposing themselves to malware.
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