Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

plagiarismtoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 546 posts

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#311

Post by planck01 »

bringtheaction wrote: post #278
phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

I was about to argue that Netflix is still not viable for Linux users but then I googled it and apparently Netflix now works out of the box in Google Chrome. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-e... Does that include Chromium though? I think probably not. I will give it a try in Chromium but if that doesn't work then I will not be able to use Netflix still.

Netflix also works in Firefox on Linux since almost a year or so.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#312

Post by XorNot »

wpietri wrote: post #297
remir wrote: post #110

P2P forced the industry to adapt and now we have good streaming services, but the content selection is nowhere as good as what you can find on torrent sites. What the Popcorn Time devs did was simply amazing. It had a Netflix-like interface plus a huge selection of content that you could watch right away. The industry should learn from these guys. Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay f…

> Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. It's that simple. No, that's just easy from a consumer perspective. But it's not simple at all from the business perspective. Making movies and TV is expensive and complicated. Getting them to break even means a lot of careful work to maximize revenue and profit from a variety of revenue streams. It means dealing with a lot of players that…

Except people would happily accept variable pricing for content provided it was centralised.

Steam gets this so right - games change price all the time, go on sale etc.

It's the same phenomenon you see with landlords - rental properties go unoccupied for huge periods of time because they believe they'll get a better deal just in the future - with media we've let absurd copyright durations do the same damn thing, and probably at the expense of artists and content creators who I want to support.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#313

Post by atomical »

koonsolo wrote: post #198

I think the main takeway is that people not necessarily want it for free, they just want it convenient. Why would I buy a game in the store when I can just illegally download it? Why would I pirate games when I can easily get them on Steam? Why would I download a series when I can watch it on Netflix? Why would I try hard to pay for my non-netflix series when I can just download it? Why would I go out and buy a CD wh…

Because if someone steals your money from a bank or you lose your PIN there is still a way to get your money back. If you lose your private key or someone steals it you can't get your money back with crypto.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#314

Post by salvar »

gsich wrote: post #290
wpietri wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Netflix has been enormously disciplined about preventing feature bloat, and I really admire them for it. When this problem gets high enough on their list to solve, I'd much rather they did it right (buying the rights or doing their own subtitles) than some sort of half-assed thing that 90% of humanity won't be able to get to work.

It is very easy actually. Drag and Drop the subtitle onto the screen. MPC-HC and VLC do this. I would safely assume that Netflix could achieve such simplicity too. And even if it's for 10% of the users, people with hearing problems are more in percentage.

There's a lot more to it than that though, especially if you're targeting normal people and not the HN crowd. What if the subtitles are delayed? What if there are problems with the encoding and there are question marks all over the place? All of this is very solvable, but you can't just say "it's very easy actually, just drag and drop".

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#315

Post by MarkMc »

khedoros1 wrote: post #126
make3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think copyright is a good thing, as it allows for artists to actually get paid for their work

Problems: - Company hires a bunch of artists to make something, pays them one time, keeps gathering checks decades after the artists are dead, and even longer after they're getting any payment for the work. - Artist collects money from their work, dies, and the estate continues collecting for decades. The purpose of copyright should be to encourage artists to create works for the enrichment of society as a whole, by…

The time limit on copyright seems to be just an inefficient form of taxation.

If Disney keeps copyright of Snow White the government can tax Disney's extra profit to pay for cancer research. Isn't that more socially useful than giving everyone the right to watch Snow White on YouTube for free?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#316

Post by _Marak_ »

phil248 wrote: post #205
jimmies wrote: post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

I also had major issues trying to stream A.P. Bio on NBC's streaming website. I wanted to see the new show with Glenn Howerton.

The video was really laggy, skipped dialog due to lag jitters, and served up 15 minutes of ads for 22 minutes of content.

Ended up not watching the show because of NBC site not working right.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#317

Post by dtx1 »

some-guy wrote: post #148
blt wrote: post #9

Saving movies to disk doesn't make much sense. The files are huge, and rewatching is not that common. BitTorrent is great for music, sadly we lost what.cd to law enforcement.

what.cd has a spiritual successor that is fairly close to its former glory (redacted.ch)

you don't happen to have an invite for that?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#318

Post by lmkg »

gsich wrote: post #306
nsxwolf wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are required to per the licensing deal they made with the content owner.

This always reads like an excuse. They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details Netflix has to deploy. If the deal says "no access for users outside country x", Netflix could just ask the user from which country they are from. Then, depending on the answer either show it or not. On another note, some companies like this. Take Valve with Steam. They are definitly i…

> They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details

The deal can include whatever the content owners want it to include. And the content owners want it to include strict enforcement.

They can specify the specific technical details of enforcement, if they want. That's a legal contract, and one that they have a financial incentive to offer. Or they can specify an acceptable level of enforcement failures, or they can specify financial penalties for insufficient enforcement, or they can specify Netflix carries liability for infringement that it allows.

Or they could leave Netflix to do as they will, but threaten to pull their content or to sue Netflix for contributory negligence or whatever if Netflix doesn't comply. The fact of the matter is, the content owners have leverage and Netflix is not (yet?) in a position where they can blow off such concerns. Netflix is trying to get into that position, by creating its own content, but right now the majority of their content is dependent on other parties finding Netflix an acceptable content partner.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#319

Post by zanny »

Semaphor wrote: post #78

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

Don't forget youtube-dl, the bridge between the streaming world and the download world of yore. Song you like on youtube? youtube-dl -x. It supports so many sites too - at least all the major video sites plus bandcamp and soundcloud.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#320

Post by cm2187 »

phil248 wrote: post #205
jimmies wrote: post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

Same. I have the budget for it, just there is no legit service that will give me the movies I want to watch. I have zero interest in the latest fast & furry or marvel movie. I'm rather: pull the filmography of Robert Duvall and let's watch the movies I haven't seen already. Easy to do on bittorrent, impossible on any streaming service. The only alternative is buying DVDs and Blurays on amazon which I also do, but that requires some patience/planning ahead which I'm not good at, and then I have to rip them on another machine, it's just not convenient.
Post reply on HN