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Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

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Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#211

Post by an_opabinia »

sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

> People who had cut the cord... As long as you don't care about the zeitgeist...

That's not really what it's about. You have no idea how utterly janky Plex and torrenting is. People on Hacker News find IT stimulating, so their experience is basically moot. It's like trying to predict trends based on a nerd's hot take of the iPod.

It has always been about enforcement. Seen in this lens, the hassle of pirating movies is itself a form of enforcement of copyright protections, even if the IT is not a legal instrument.

Enforcement has definitely weakened. Why though? It wasn't limited to bad PR, although again the Hacker News crowd is wildly incomparable to the population at large when it comes to issues like this.

What has changed is that TV makers are also now Internet providers. They are recouping the costs of piracy by raising your Internet prices. They don't make content you consume in the rest of the world, so naturally in the rest of the world fast Internet is dirt cheap.

Calling this a consequence of consolidation is accurate! It's just not about consolidation among ISPs, but between producers and ISPs.

And on top of that, all the people who held onto the cord were subsidizing your television. Now that they finally cut the cord, who's going to pay for it?

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#212

Post by slothtrop »

sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

> I feel like there's a business opportunity for a meta-service that automatically manages monthly subscriptions for you on different services. You queue up a catalog of shows you want to watch, and it creates an optimized schedule for you and helps sign up for the individual streaming service on a given month in order to watch the show you want.

Yeah I think this is what people mean when they say they want "one service". An actual single service would mean a monopoly and extravagant prices. That being said the other streaming options are being offered up by large telecoms that dwarf Netflix in what they control.

My ps4 menu already lazily sort of implements this in it's video section with a highlight menu of available shows on various platforms.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#213

Post by ryandrake »

scarface74 wrote: post #18
sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

“Your circle” unless it includes families with small kids, isn’t Disney’s primary audience. Most normal middle class people aren’t going to go through the trouble of pirating movies and setting up a Plex server and then worry about setting up their router to get a good connection while they are away from home and even then deal with the abysmally slow upload speed of the typical home network instead of spending $8 a…

Why does everything have to be "streamed" these days? Hard drives are cheap. Just have a file and playback locally or on your LAN. No special set up of some server, your router, etc. Given the $/GB curve throughout the years you'll likely never run out of space. Do people really need to do a significant amount of movie watching outside their own LAN/home?

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#214

Post by ArnoVW »

navigatesol wrote: post #202
throwaway2048 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somehow doubt that streaming platforms will finally be the ones to end piracy once and for all via lawsuits.

There's a difference between pirating something, and distributing pirated content, both ethically and legally.

Mind you, most peer-to-peer sharing protocols work by having everyone be distributor and downloader at the same time.

This is why they are "peer to peer". The bittorrent protocol for example downloads files in fragments, and every fragment that you have downloaded becomes available for other clients (i.e. you start becoming a server as soon as you have downloaded one fragment)

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#215

Post by cabaalis »

So far, my go-to has been Vudu. Sure, you have to rent/buy. But $3 to watch that movie you're itching to watch, or $9 to own is very reasonable.

When I was a teenager and Napster was huge, casual piracy was a thing. Now that I make digital things that I ask people to pay me for, I think differently.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#216

Post by robertoandred »

sbarre wrote: post #6

"May" drive them back? This has already happened in my circles.. People who had cut the cord but all but walked away from casual piracy and signed up for Netflix and HBO (and probably Prime Video because they had Amazon Prime already) are openly talking about the fact they're definitely not signing up for more streaming services, and are seeking out torrenting again for the stuff that's being pulled from Netflix (esp…

Lowlifes who steal tv shows don't really need a push to keep stealing.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#217

Post by rolltiide »

jasonkester wrote: post #196

Another factor in the mix is how poor a job a lot of the streaming services do at the mechanics of running their business. I, for instance, pay for streaming packages from both the NFL and Formula 1, but more often than not the best way to watch the actual events is to download a torrent that some random guy recorded, edited, and posted. The video quality is just plain better. It's not missing the pre-event buildup c…

Thats because there is more competition amongst pirates than rights holders

Turns out complaining about free things is actually an effective strategy for improving quality

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#218

Post by CoolGuySteve »

scarface74 wrote: post #72
gldalmaso wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirating shows and putting them on an external drive that you plug on any TV and can take with you on trips works fine and most normal middle class people can manage it though.

Any TV except the ones in most hotel rooms that lock down the HDMI input and the ones that don’t exist in most cars. Then you have the issue of the kids fighting over what to watch and wanting to watch video on their phones and tablets.

I use VLC on iOS to copy movies and shows to my iPad from a Windows share. Works perfectly fine.

In some ways it's better than Netflix/Amazon offline mode since I know my files will always work in VLC whereas I don't know ahead of time which streaming content allows offline mode or not.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#219

Post by robertoandred »

esond wrote: post #113

There's something to be said for the cord-cutting software ecosystem supporting more-than-casual piracy experiencing huge improvements. If you have the hardware, you can host your own media using Plex as a server, and Sonarr to manage your library and automate acquisition of new TV episodes. Plex is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It Just Works™. You need a decent internet pipeline to support remot…

Everything's free when you steal. Lame argument.

Re: Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

#220

Post by mcv »

scarface74 wrote: post #184
mcv wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I need to check carefully what they're going to offer before I sign up. Also, I may have to wait until my smart TV supports it. We never had these kind of problems when we just had cable. (Or did we?)

https://attractionsmagazine.com/disney-plus-day-one-list/

Thanks. Though with this big a list, a list of what's missing might be more useful.

The Muppet Show seems to be missing, though there's lots of other muppet stuff. Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal are also missing, perhaps because Netflix made a new Dark Crystal show.

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