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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#521

Post by TeMPOraL »

prmoustache wrote: post #513
TeMPOraL wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because TV is also culture . Game of Thrones isn't just some random piece of personal, single-player entertainment: it was, and is, an important cultural phenomenon for at least half of the planet. That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about late…

> It's weird because TV is also culture. Game of Thrones isn't just some random piece of personal, single-player entertainment: it was, and is, an important cultural phenomenon for at least half of the planet. > > That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about…

Yes. However, attention is finite, the intersection of topics any one in the group is willing to talk about is narrow, and my point is that TV shows occupy significant fraction of it - that's why they have this weird dynamic where seemingly extraneous entertainment product is treated by many as basic human right. Because in some sense, it is: it's a big component of the shared experience, which itself is the glue that holds society together.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#523

Post by MichaelMug »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

I read this same thing a lot on Reddit and HN. It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money.

For my family here is the monthly spend with taxes for my area included:

HBO Max $ 13.53

Hulu $ 7.21

Disney+ $ 0.18 (w/ Hulu)

Paramount+ w/ Showtime $ 10.82

Apple TV+ $ 10.81

AMC+ $ 7.56

Amazon Prime $12.53

$62.64/month. Now, about 20 years ago in 2004 my parents had basic cable and they paid $60/month. An my parents combined made no where near what I make today in my salary alone. And with inflation the cost of entertainment has gone down significantly.

As for figuring out what is on what- Apple TV has made this easy.

Is piracy easier? Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. A budget NAS with 20 TB is going to cost $500. A small PC to transcode also $500. Also all the technical know how required. Backing up 20 TB to the Backblaze is going to cost $13/mo. So lets not pretend piracy is easier.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#524

Post by dijit »

MichaelMug wrote: post #523
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

I read this same thing a lot on Reddit and HN. It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. For my family here is the monthly spend with taxes for my area included: HBO Max $ 13.53 Hulu $ 7.21 Disney+ $ 0.18 (w/ Hulu) Paramount+ w/ Showtime $ 10.82 Apple TV+ $ 10.81 AMC+ $ 7.56 Amazon Prime $12.53 $62.64/month. Now, about 20 years ago in 2004 my parents had basic cable a…

You're missing Netflix, ironically.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#525

Post by maccard »

Mystrl wrote: post #498
josephg wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a wonderful point made by Gabe Newell a few years ago on this. He said the only thing you need to do to “beat piracy” is provide a better service than piracy offers. And that’s pretty easy, for all manner of reasons. I thought he was way too optimistic at the time - but here I am years later with hundreds of games in my steam library. I haven’t pirated a video game in years. I think Gabe’s rule is like grav…

I think media like TV/Movies might be fundamentally different than games because of how easy it is to serve pirated content. With games there's a lot of friction with getting cracks working and risks with malware while with TV/Movies you just watch them in your browser. Recently my friends showed me a pirate site that I'm in awe hasn't been taken down. Don't think I can post a link here but it has all the things I'd…

> Being honest as long as something like this is available I don't really see what a site like netflix could offer that would convince me to pay

Most people are honest, and will do the the legal thing when faced with two equal options. If the choice is between that UI but it's illegal, and a reskin of that UI but it's £30/mo, I'd pay.

But it's not, as the other comments here said. It's a choice between that for free and a limited catalog of region restricted, ever changing, poor video quality streams spread of multiple services, and given the choice between paying 4 providers for a poor service and getting a good service from one location, people will pick the latter.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#526

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

SurgeArrest wrote: post #63

Netflix has a problem that the front page is now filled with "B-rated" rather than "A-rated" content for more money than before. The amount of content that they spent money on in the past is hardly discoverable, genre search is barely exposed in the interface. You have to rely on 3rd party sites to find links to category selections, say Epic movies based on true events... good luck finding what they have in this cate…

> no superheroes, no animated stuff, no dei

Which one here is not like the other?

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#527

Post by dijit »

chmod775 wrote: post #518
jszymborski wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Netflix and co. won't stream 4K at all to Linux devices, and they often don't serve 4K if they deem your internet connection to be too slow. For many folks, pirated 1080p is par with what they'd get streaming, and pirated 2k or 4k is better.

Do they even stream 1080p to Linux devices by default now? I always had to use a browser extension to make it do that[1]. However the extension seems to be gone.[2] [1] https://github.com/vladikoff/netflix-1080p-firefox?tab=readm... [2] https://github.com/vladikoff/netflix-1080p-firefox/issues/28

720p for Linux.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/16yf3wi/why_do...

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#528

Post by Karellen »

the_real_sparky wrote: post #475
Dylan16807 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounding 1920 to 2k and 3840 to 4k is not too bad. And yes it's marketing to switch from height to width, but whatever. Rounding 2560 to 2k is massively confusing. Don't do it. 2.5k or don't use "k" at all. And when I go look at a couple torrent sites and scroll through movies and tv shows, I'm not seeing a single 1440p in the first couple pages. Some searches show barely anything at all.

I have a proposal for you: Take back the k from the marketers. Define: k = multiple of 1920x1080 pixel count 1920x1080 ~= 2M pixels = 1k 2560x1440 ~= 4M pixels = 2k 3840x2160 ~= 8M pixels = 4k So now 1440p = 2k, and k becomes meaningful. Problem solved! It also gives a solution for ultrawides like 7680 x 2160p, which are 8k. More interestingly, “8K” TVs now become 16k TVs, which marketers should like. We’ve come full…

> I have a proposal for you: Take back the k from the marketers.

And how do you propose getting your definition out in front of more people than the combined marketers of all the legit sources of movie, TV and other streaming content in the world?

lol

Pick the battles you have a whelk's chance in a supernova of winning.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#529

Post by rekoil »

izacus wrote: post #495
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

Yeah, also pirated content has: - 4K HDR video, not whatever the heck the buggy client delivers. - Atmos/TrueHD audio track that actually works, not whatever the broken app delivers (I'm looking at you Sky and rest of the ilk that still deliver HBO content with stereo). - Subtitles for ALL the languages, not just one or two. And those languages don't disappear when I go on a vacation, leaving me stuck with german aud…

I personally find that Spotifys offline content has worked reliably over the years. You just gotta remember that when you get a new device you have to go to library and click download and then leave Spotify open for a few hours.

Spotify is also a great example of how to beat piracy. I haven't downloaded an mp3 file since I got a Spotify Premium account in 2007. OK that's probably a slight overstatement, but it's near enough to the truth for this argument. They made it so simple and convenient to pay for access to music that I've had zero reasons to even consider piracy. They have everything (well, enough that I've never felt something was missing anyway), they have clients for everything, the pricing is reasonable, and they have great value-add in the form of playlist generation.

As for the rest, full agreement, the low bitrate of streaming services is the big one for me as I'm a film enthusiast with great gear that definitely doesn't reach its potential using any streaming services. Now that it looks like physical media is going the way of the Dodo I'm wondering where I'm gonna get actually high bitrate content from in the future.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#530

Post by cvalka »

MichaelMug wrote: post #523
PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

I read this same thing a lot on Reddit and HN. It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. For my family here is the monthly spend with taxes for my area included: HBO Max $ 13.53 Hulu $ 7.21 Disney+ $ 0.18 (w/ Hulu) Paramount+ w/ Showtime $ 10.82 Apple TV+ $ 10.81 AMC+ $ 7.56 Amazon Prime $12.53 $62.64/month. Now, about 20 years ago in 2004 my parents had basic cable a…

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