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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?

#71

Post by mbreese »

jmonegro wrote: post #67
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 Sure, the ads would be outdated, but the brands are still there.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 ;-)

Or you get get inundated with ads from the next Pets.com...

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

#72

Post by tjmc »

No. However I would pay for content if the bandwidth to stream it was included in the price. Here in Australia most broadband is metered. Globally, most 3G and 4G bandwidth is metered. I'd much rather stream something in HD that I can watch immediately rather than torrent a lower quality version because I don't want to blow my data allowance.

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

#73

Post by mbreese »

wslh wrote: post #68
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.

How would that work? They dynamically make a new version each time someone wants to download it from the "official source"? Would this be the same version over the entire day? The entire week? What if I wanted to download an old episode of Seinfeld, would I get current ads, or ads from 1996? Would the "official source" still have to be able to upload each episode? If not, you run the risk of having multiple versions of current shows (this week's ads and last week's ads) in the wild. And you lose the ability to have people who downloaded it last week help with distribution.

I think that the best solution is to have a container that automatically inserts ads at the appropriate times. In this case though, the task will be making sure someone doesn't just remove the ads from the container. This is a similar problem with DVRs, but since this would all be automated, there is a greater risk.

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

#74

Post by mbreese »

eropple wrote: post #63
teamonkey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

> Because, fundamentally, most people aren't assholes.

I think that the concept is that piracy is a symptom of a broken market, not the cause of a broken market.

If something costs more than someone thinks it is worth, or they have difficulty obtaining it in an 'easy enough' manner, they will revert to piracy. However, if something is available at an appropriate price point with easy access, then piracy will diminish (down to people who only think that everything should be free).

As far as the 'donate what you want' concept, Panera Bread has a few locations that are like this [1]. I can't remember the details, but I think that it all ended up evening out. They would give you a suggested cost, and you paid what you wanted/could.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-05-16-pan...

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

#75

Post by w1ntermute »

younata wrote: post #65

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…

> 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)

Is it? In my experience, most DVD/Blu-ray rips of TV show boxsets are released online before their retail date because an employee at a Wal-Mart somewhere grabs a copy and sources it to a scene group.

As for the actual download time, I'd say it's faster than ripping the DVDs as well, not to mention the hassle of inserting/removing 5+ DVDs is just annoying.

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

#76

Post by archangel_one »

DannoHung wrote: post #61
LogicX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would also make it drastically easier for the playing software to skip them entirely though.

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

#77

Post by sliverstorm »

teamonkey wrote: post #56
sliverstorm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop suing because we want to watch the shows you've told us are available for free, our entire lives. Amen. They should be thrilled their product is getting torrented so much- it means people like their product so much, they will commit crimes to get it. Few businesses are blessed with the problem of too many rabid fans.

It's only great if you can monetize it.

Either way, they still have half the problem already solved.

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

#78

Post by waitwhat »

voidfiles wrote: post #69
LogicX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That already exists. It's called Hulu.

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

#79

Post by rmccue »

waitwhat wrote: post #78
voidfiles wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That already exists. It's called Hulu.

Not available in Australia though.

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

#80

Post by Confusion »

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 (…

I'd pay for the certainty that what I download contains what I want it to contain, in the format that I want, at the download speed I want. Downloading torrents is a game of chance, where you regularly end up with a version you don't want at a much lower speed than anticipated. I also pay for Spotify.
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