I would rather just pay them a small subscription fee to download their advertisement-free content via torrents after watching streaming advertisement-laced versions for free on their website and choosing which shows I'd actually want to buy and enjoy.
If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
111–116 of 116 posts
Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
#112The question misses the point. Networks wouldn't care where there shows were distributed if they could make as much money from new distribution channels as old ones. That is really all they care about. If you have ever heard the term analog dollars, for digital pennies, it's talking about this exact problem.
Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
#113Let's not kid ourselves, the salad days of broadcast TV are over. They happened due to a quirk of technology that imposed unusual restrictions on the transmission and consumption of media for a few decades, restrictions that had not been present before or since. These unusual conditions made monetization of broadcast media far easier and far more lucrative than it would have been otherwise.
The result was an unusual era of TV content that was exclusively ad supported and also generated far more revenue than it should have. That era is now coming to a close. This is a catastrophe for the folks who have come to live on the anomalous gravy train that has been broadcast TV in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, distributing and consuming video content has become easier and cheaper than ever, the industry will survive and thrive as new business models take hold.
Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would also make it drastically easier for the playing software to skip them entirely though.
Having two versions that only differ in the ads would also make it very easy to take only the common (non-ad) content and throw away the rest. Considering that there is DRM software, and that it's largely accepted for at least some content (PC games), it's a wonder that there's no digital format where a DRM software plays the content you downloaded after playing some relevant ads to you. (Kind of like crunchyroll, or…
Yes, but to do that you'd have to download two versions then throw some special software at them - or someone else would have to do this then supply a new torrent without them, which would mean you weren't getting it from an official source any more. Whereas if your movie has embedded directives saying "get some ads from ads.hbo.com to fill in 6:25 to 7:45", it seems pretty trivial to have the player software respond to that as "skip straight from 6:25 to 7:45".
As for the DRM software thing - that does solve that problem, but to me it is a deal killer. Yes, I would probably download TV from the "official" torrent with ads if it's just a movie, but if it's some DRM-laden mess that has to be played through their proprietary player, no way. Also, there would seem to be very little chance of getting a Linux version of the DRM software which would be a practical deal-killer for me even if I got past the conceptual issue.
Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having two versions that only differ in the ads would also make it very easy to take only the common (non-ad) content and throw away the rest. Considering that there is DRM software, and that it's largely accepted for at least some content (PC games), it's a wonder that there's no digital format where a DRM software plays the content you downloaded after playing some relevant ads to you. (Kind of like crunchyroll, or…
Yes, but to do that you'd have to download two versions then throw some special software at them - or someone else would have to do this then supply a new torrent without them, which would mean you weren't getting it from an official source any more. Whereas if your movie has embedded directives saying "get some ads from ads.hbo.com to fill in 6:25 to 7:45", it seems pretty trivial to have the player software respond…
How hard would it be for someone to download both versions, do the diffs, and create the instructions, get torrent X, and play from 0:30 to 6:25, skip straight to 7:45, etc?
The differencing task would be the perfect app for the new unlimited inbound bandwidth at linode. :)
Re: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would You Download Them?
#116Product Placement. Product Placement. Product Placement. Product Placement. Product Placement. Product Placement. I know it's kind of annoying/cheap sometimes when a camera zooms in on the Bud Light logo in a fridge, or when Don Draper says that he loves Smirnoff (lawl), but its the only choice that the studios have. They must turn to product placement as their primary source of advertising revenue. Because if they j…
Well that would be a good way to get me of watching new tv episodes, that is for sure. I hate product placement because it breaks the story and my suspension of disbelief. But hey, maybe I would get more done that way.
fair enough, but they would get better at it. they would (hopefully) get more subtle with the product placement and make it more natural.
or they could just mess it up terribly and ruin television forever.