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The deception of “buying” digital movies

worldofmatthew.com

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#421

Post by paxys »

iamacyborg wrote: post #83
rthomas6 wrote: post #47

I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the TV and surround setup to take a…

I buy blurays, rip them and then store them on a NAS to play back via Plex. Much, much better quality than any stream from Netflix et al.

Might as well skip the extra step and just torrent them directly. What you are doing is illegal either way, so why do the extra work?

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#422

Post by paxys »

ezfe wrote: post #2

The iTunes Store continues to be the only reputable place to buy movies, mainly because they allow downloads (except 4K...but I digress). In the past, redownloading movies wasn't even permitted. You download it and save it somewhere yourself. You can still do that to avoid any issues in the future, but I suspect the few incidents that have affected the iTunes Store are unlikely to re-occur. Why? For exactly the reaso…

Those downloaded movies still have DRM, and can only be played on official Apple devices or apps. Apple can revoke the license whenever they want. No better than what Amazon and others do.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#423

Post by pvaldes »

pvaldes wrote: post #373
retrac wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best example to work with is Star Wars, or maybe The Lord of the Rings. The harm of eternal copyright is probably best demonstrated with these. They've both entered popular understanding, becoming casually referenced all over the place. "We need to make a little stop in Mordor first" is probably more widely-understood than most references to Greek mythology at this point. The people who grew up in the cul…

Lord of the Rings drinks from European mythology, and Star Wars toke more than a few clues from a particular film of Kurosawa. Both evolved in interesting histories, innovated a lot and add their own work and merit, of course. This happened in part because they were not sued by former authors.

Oh, I almost forgot it... and Star wars toke also "more than inspiration" from the french comic Valerian. The designs from the imperial probe droid in Hoth or the Leia's bikini were taken directly from the comics with minimum changes, and without asking anybody.

This, lets call it, "cross pollination" would be much more difficult today.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#424

Post by paxys »

SergeAx wrote: post #166

I firmly beleive that for every movie I "bought" digitally of physaically I am entitled to download a torrent.

And a lot of people firmly believe that they are entitled to download a torrent without a purchase. Ultimately your beliefs don't matter, the law does.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#425

Post by paxys »

boros2me wrote: post #36

One idea I keep thinking about (which I'm sure interferes with some sort of copyright law) is: 1. User buys a physical copy of a movie/music 2. Instead of sending the disc to their house, it's sent to a storage facility 3. In the storage facility a digital backup is made and uploaded to a cloud storage 4. User is given access to the backup which they can watch/listen to 5. User would be the owner of said physical cop…

Unauthorized reproduction, even for personal use, is illegal under IP laws. This company would get sued by movie studios 5 minutes after it launches.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#426

Post by iamacyborg »

paxys wrote: post #421
iamacyborg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy blurays, rip them and then store them on a NAS to play back via Plex. Much, much better quality than any stream from Netflix et al.

Might as well skip the extra step and just torrent them directly. What you are doing is illegal either way, so why do the extra work?

Yeah, no.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#427

Post by f1refly »

nsxwolf wrote: post #91
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In t…

Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently angered the cinephiles. Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences have made multiple people this upset.

I think you're getting downvoted because the solution to your issue was one "why does my bluray look grainy" search away, yet you chose to stay uninformed on purpose and complained about it in a public forum without understanding the mechanics.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#428

Post by forrestthewoods »

mtgx wrote: post #295
forrestthewoods wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think a reasonable form of copyright law would look like?

Probably around 7-10 years, which is the time limit it originally had. Copyright is meant to be a "public pact" to encourage creation and innovation. But think about that goal for a minute. It doesn't necessarily mean you should be able to create one awesome thing once and then benefit from it for life as a rent-seeking fat cat. Instead, it should give you a reasonable amount of time to benefit from the fruits of it,…

> then benefit from it for life as a rent-seeking fat cat.

Instead the benefit of creative works would almost exclusively to middle-men who created nothing.

7 years is sooo short. Many TV shows and book series take longer than that from start to finish. And often times they grow in popularity.

Movies based on books frequently come out more than 10 years after the book resulting in a surge of popularity. With 10 years the original author would see no benefit from either the movie or their new book sales! There’d be a lot of fat cats, just not the actual creator.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#429

Post by 6stringmerc »

moffkalast wrote: post #368
titzer wrote: post #114

I am hoarding DVDs and it's because a.) it's cheap, b.) it's reliable c.) it's future-proof and d.) I don't trust tomorrow's political/cultural landscape to not disappear things down the memory hole as well as subtly editing out offensive material or otherwise altering things in hard to detect ways. Case in point, not long ago a family member witnessed "Scrubs" being scrubbed of a particularly offensive joke that ran…

Well you do you. If you ask me, DVD quality (480p) is not really watchable anymore these days. Looks like what VHS looked like when DVDs were new now that we have full HD and 4K to compare it to. Just going full on pirate with an HDD full of instantly accessible files seems way more practical, especially living in a country where it's de facto legal.

I’m pretty impressed with the upconversion quality of the Xbox One for better viewing on a modern television.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#430

Post by deadbunny »

KingFelix wrote: post #161
stewx wrote: post #7

One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes movies. IMO,…

Final space was also interesting. Another show that got the chopping block for tax purposes. They were removed from AMazon, even if you purchased the seasons! Piracy returns?

Thankfully we never went away and we have a lot of the shows/films/music that are no longer commercially available archived for future generations.
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