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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

#571

Post by machomaster »

rekoil wrote: post #529
izacus wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of Spotify's biggest problems is their terrible UI, lacking even the basic functionality. I don't understand how they haven't been able do the bare minimum for 15 years now.

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

#572

Post by rrr_oh_man »

machomaster wrote: post #571
rekoil wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of Spotify's biggest problems is their terrible UI, lacking even the basic functionality. I don't understand how they haven't been able do the bare minimum for 15 years now.

Like what?

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

#573

Post by fragmede »

data-ottawa wrote: post #260
al_borland wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about an individual website, it’s about the industry. It’s not that Netflix, or any other service, is hard to use on its own. It’s the fragmentation of the content that makes it hard to use. This was solved for with music where pretty much every service has pretty much every song. People don’t need multiple music services, they just pick the one that best fits their style and needs. This is what the movie an…

I had Prime Video, and when searching for content I would get told to subscribe to some channel within Prime. Now Crave (in Canada) does the same thing. Netflix doesn't bother integrating with Apple TV's search or aggregation features to try and drive you into the app. The end result is searching for legitimate content is a terrible experience. If it's a result from Prime, I just pass. If it's from Crave, I pass. If…

If HBO and all the other content houses would all go to Netflix and say we'll close down our streaming service and license you all our content, and take our share of a household $60/month, everyone would all make more money, but there's negative infinity chance of that happening; on top of Netflix making their own content, so what's the way forwards? He government could step in and say that online distribution platforms can't also make their own non-self-marketing content, but there's also zero chance of that happening either, so it's a tragedy of commons until someone goes bankrupt, and it's not OnlyFans that's going to be the content farm to fail here, so someones is going to have to buy everyone else until the DoJ gets involved for antitrust reasons, and then we're left with two subscription services (US consumers aren't properly able to count higher than that. Apple vs Google, Democrats vs Republicans, McDonald's vs Burger King, CVS vs Walgreens, AT&T vs Verizon, etc)

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

#574

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Jochim wrote: post #484
mike_hock wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your eyesight is a lot better than mine but I can't discern pixels at sub-1080p resolution, especially in a movie where everything is kinda smudged out and individual pixel values don't matter as much.

It's usually blocky compression artifacts that show up at 720p and some 1080p encodes. They're most noticeable in dark or fast moving scenes. On Netflix, The Sandman looked abysmally bad at 720p. The complex backgrounds became a garbled mess and the dark scenes were filled with banding.

Do you like dark scenes?

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

#575

Post by cameronh90 »

You know a business is out of ideas when they start lashing out at piracy.

Netflix has a content problem. They lost their licenses for most of the third-party content worth watching, and their own productions are now trash.

Netflix Original was a stamp of quality at one point, but I think they probably saw in the data that cheap content like true crime and docuseries were getting the bulk of their playtime and focussed in on that. However, for many people, that sort of content is not something they'd pay for, it's just background TV to watch while half doing something else, similar to podcasts and YouTube - which are both free.

Their competitors have shows and films that people actually want to watch.

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

#576

Post by AnthonyMouse »

galahad_ wrote: post #463
mr_toad wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an equilibrium price, because the average cost is higher than the marginal cost (which is indeed close to zero). Free markets don’t work unless the marginal cost (and the price) is higher than the average cost, for obvious reasons.

The average cost ist always higher than the marginal cost for digital products, for obvious reasons. So you are literally saying free markets don't work for digital products.

That's not true. There are a number of obvious instances of it working.

YouTube/TikTok/etc.: The market price is zero, the service itself and much of the content is funded through ads.

Debian/Firefox/etc.: The market price is zero, the development is provided through user contributions/donations.

Substack/OnlyFans/etc.: The market price is not zero and then the content is often available for free anyway, but enough patrons choose to pay to fund its creation nevertheless, either because they don't know how to pirate or choose not to. Maybe this is the same as the donation model in all but the eyes of the law, but in any event there are objectively people making a living from it.

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

#577

Post by fragmede »

hedora wrote: post #257
prepend wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to invest about 10 minutes. It’s not complicated at all and makes a much better experience.

Setting it up properly probably takes a day or so. Which HDDs should you put in the synology (or are there SSDs that make more sense; need to check $/GB…)? Which VPN service makes the most sense? Which RSS thingy is as good as Prime, Netflix, HBO, etc, etc, combined?

Only if you over-optimize and get decision paralysis. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Cheapest is the enemy of actually-have-it-and-working.

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

#578

Post by rrr_oh_man »

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…

> - 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 audio and french subtitles.

> - Is actually available in my region and doesn't randomly disappear from my devices just because I decided to travel to visit my parents or have some time off.

This was the dealbreaker for me.

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

#579

Post by mkl »

jszymborski wrote: post #346
radley wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 500-ish MB per hour of content for decent quality. That's still YIFY-quality video, which is a few steps below HBO/MAX, which happens to be among the lowest quality paid streams. ATV+ is killing it with 30Mbps 4K HDR+ video (it used to be as high as 48Mbps). Disney+ is close. The Netflix 4K plan serves up high 1080p bitrates, 2x better than their 1080p plan. Worth paying for.

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.

1080p = 2k; both are 1920x1080p. p is rows in the vertical dimension (p for progressive, as opposed to i for interlaced; e.g. NZ terrestrial TV is 1080i). k is columns in the horizontal direction, and comes from film making and visual effects (1920 rounds up to 2k and 3840 rounds up to 4k).

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

#580

Post by rand_flip_bit »

rekoil wrote: post #529
izacus wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would look into Kaleidescape if you want blu-ray quality viewing in your home with the convenience of streaming (although you have to download ahead of time). Only downside is the price and need for their proprietary player + server.
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