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TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

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Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#101

Post by aes256 »

dfc wrote: post #11
spindritf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDTV indicates source, not release quality. It's the same with bluray. The naming standards (and everything else for that matter) are highly regulated which is an impressive example of order by consensus since no one can give out orders. RARs are an artefact of FTP transfers during which files would get corrupted, and not-so-fast connections of the past which made re-downloading the whole release somewhat inconvenien…

I thought that rar was used so that the capper could split the archive across multiple files and begin uploading the content before the show was over.

That's a practice called segmenting. Some groups do it, some don't.

There used to be a group named NOsegmenT who were staunchly opposed to the practice and included a little diatribe against it in all of their NFOs.

Also bear in mind that some groups have (in the past, at least) had pre-air sources. LOL/DIMENSION, one of the most well-known TV groups, were called out on the practice of obtaining shows from a pre-air source then manually adding television station graphics a couple of years ago. They would "pre" their releases almost instantaneously after they finished airing.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#102

Post by _delirium »

ktizo wrote: post #75
jrockway wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little about film making has to do with x264 encoders and torrents. Anyone can do those things... Louis CK figured it out, anyway.

My point was that there is a large community that has gathered around the idea of sharing films. Large enough to make them want to issue standards. All I'm saying is with that size of community dedicated to sharing film, they should be producing more films. Especially if they dislike the current paradigm enough to remove themselves from its market.

If the skillsets overlap, that kind of shift towards production does happen. For example, the 80s game-cracking scene also became the 80s demoscene, because the various skills they acquired in cracking copy protection overlapped a lot with the kinds of skills that were useful for producing interesting interactive-art type software. It's not clear that x264 encoding and distribution produces skillsets that a particular helpful for film production, though, so I don't see a strong reason to expect them to start producing films.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#103

Post by Moschops »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #92
gradstudent wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (movie/audio/warez/demo) "scene" is not anarchic at all but rather a very well organised distributed processing machine. You probably know these guys organise into "groups" but there is lots of other stuff you likely do not know. I will describe below aspects of the warez scene, as it was some 10 years ago. I believe most observations continue to hold today and are probably mirrored in the movie-release scene. So…

That is amazing. But you what would be really awesome? If these people got together and created a nice all in one php + sqlite script that allows me to put my DVD collection and PS2 iso rips onto my server and share it with my friends. I could give friends usernames and passwords and see which of my movies and games they downloaded and they can do the same for me. Like file sharing on a much smaller more personal sca…

That already exists in so many variations.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#104

Post by nsns »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #93
donniezazen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchist are more open than content providers. On the other hand, content providers and publishers only act in wake of revenue loss.

It's funny because if it weren't for the pirates there'd be no innovation and new distribution means or it would be extremely slow. Hollywood and the music industry had become so stagnant, that it took pirates to get them to change their idea of distribution, I think.

Even more funny, for the fact that Hollywood was originally built in order to pirate Edison's patents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company...

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#105

Post by rmc »

gioele wrote: post #51

I wonder if the producers of the content they distribute will ever get that such a high level of quality. DVDs are often full of interlaced content (even for short movies), broken subtitles, letterboxed pictures, jerking menus; sometimes they even resize the video to 4:3. The rare downloadable videos are often over compressed or barely compressed (thank you for the 2GB file to this 20 minute show). Similar things hap…

This is why open source works. People can make matches and fix up the original content.

If only all content like this was open source.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#106

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

Moschops wrote: post #103
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is amazing. But you what would be really awesome? If these people got together and created a nice all in one php + sqlite script that allows me to put my DVD collection and PS2 iso rips onto my server and share it with my friends. I could give friends usernames and passwords and see which of my movies and games they downloaded and they can do the same for me. Like file sharing on a much smaller more personal sca…

That already exists in so many variations.

Name 2 please, so I don't have to build my own.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#107

Post by unicornporn »

gradstudent wrote: post #73
mdda wrote: post #19

Personally, I find it fascinating that this band of merry pirates is so organized, so rules-based. Out of a purely anarchic environment, they've managed to accept this kind of self-discipline. If only web-standards committees had that sort of power...

The (movie/audio/warez/demo) "scene" is not anarchic at all but rather a very well organised distributed processing machine. You probably know these guys organise into "groups" but there is lots of other stuff you likely do not know. I will describe below aspects of the warez scene, as it was some 10 years ago. I believe most observations continue to hold today and are probably mirrored in the movie-release scene. So…

I'm sorry, but you (as ZeroGravitas has already pointed out) have only convinced me that you don't know what anarchism is. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#108

Post by shocks »

hippich wrote: post #83
gradstudent wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (movie/audio/warez/demo) "scene" is not anarchic at all but rather a very well organised distributed processing machine. You probably know these guys organise into "groups" but there is lots of other stuff you likely do not know. I will describe below aspects of the warez scene, as it was some 10 years ago. I believe most observations continue to hold today and are probably mirrored in the movie-release scene. So…

Thank you for insight on how scene works. But my main question - where is profit? I.e. what drives this scene and what these groups compete for?

Topsites can offer a pay to leech scheme. It's often a hushed topic and people don't like to talk about it (because it is insecure). Many topsites are at it.

A lot of scene members react badly to topsites like this, and often people infiltrate such sites and public a "scene notice" about them containing siteop nicknames, hostnames, IRC/FTP details, and screenshots.

Scene notices are like the news system of the scene. They allow people to publish messages that will disseminated to all the other scene topsites.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#109

Post by shocks »

mdda wrote: post #19

Personally, I find it fascinating that this band of merry pirates is so organized, so rules-based. Out of a purely anarchic environment, they've managed to accept this kind of self-discipline. If only web-standards committees had that sort of power...

Competition forces rules to be born. Not just competition for prestige, a competition for access.

Topsites are fuelled by racers. These are the couriers, who transfer data between multiple topsites they have access to. All topsites have a multiplier. For every 1MB you upload, you can download ~3MB. If you don't each a quota or are not in the top ~15 racers by the end of the week your access will be revoked.

With access comes prestige, ability to race to other topsites, contacts, and leech access to the topsite. These things are many terabytes big and can have archives in excess of 60TB. A huge repository of constantly refreshing and up to date material.

Without rules this would become a free-for-all, with poor quality. That's no good for anyone.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#110

Post by omarchowdhury »

shocks wrote: post #109
mdda wrote: post #19

Personally, I find it fascinating that this band of merry pirates is so organized, so rules-based. Out of a purely anarchic environment, they've managed to accept this kind of self-discipline. If only web-standards committees had that sort of power...

Competition forces rules to be born. Not just competition for prestige, a competition for access. Topsites are fuelled by racers. These are the couriers, who transfer data between multiple topsites they have access to. All topsites have a multiplier. For every 1MB you upload, you can download ~3MB. If you don't each a quota or are not in the top ~15 racers by the end of the week your access will be revoked. With acce…

They still using pftp these days?
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