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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#381

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

black_puppydog wrote: post #184
yunwal wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical media has arbitrary device limitations.

and arent' there retro-active device blocklists on bluray? I seem to recall sth of the sort. Sure, they can be circumvented, but then why bother buying in the first place if you're gonna be the bad guy anyhow?

Yes and yes. I got mildly upset when I learned this, because it is oddly surprising amount of work to get it to work ( and some models do better than others, apparently ).

On the other hand, dvd is dirt cheap now and you get a very respectable collection that is not reliant on the internet.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#382

Post by djtango »

marak830 wrote: post #221
ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Subtitles is a big one for me. I can stream something in Japan, that I have seen other places has english subs, but due to licensing I cannot see them. I know I could vpn around this, but why should I pay even more just for subtitles? In the end I'm paying for Netflix, Disney and Amazon. My son uses those as he is bilingual, I just pirate what I want to watch personally.

This one is particularly janky!!!!!

Watch anime on Netflix at home with English subs. Fly to japan. Open Netflix, now you cannot watch with English subs.

The workaround is to pre emptively download the show, then put your device on airplane mode so Netflix cannot phone home, then watch the show with the English subs as snapshotted at home.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#383

Post by marcus_holmes »

dylan604 wrote: post #320
phkahler wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point I'm willing to just pay a few dollars for a movie. But even then you cant get them all in one place! And they like to charge a premium for some. Im not paying a premium for anything I've already seen a while back.

> Im not paying a premium for anything I've already seen a while back. devil's advocate. what's the point of a producer expending money to have a premium version made? it takes money to go back and rescan film to higher resolution, and the rest of the work flow involved to create that new final version. sure, it's easy to not have sympathy for hollywood producer types, but to meet modern standards for legacy content…

But this is the insane bit - there is clearly a market for this. People do want to watch old stuff in new formats, and they're prepared to pay a reasonable amount for it. There is a perfectly reasonable business model in here.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#384

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

godelski wrote: post #366
ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Piracy also offers: 0. Ability to watch offline! 1. Ability to fix subtitle issues with minimal tweeks like change size or moving location. 1.2 Ability to get subtitles if they aren't offered (or offered in your language) 2. Ability to normalize audio. 3. Ability to buffer videos when on a poor connection. 4. Ability to create collections, organize, and track your movie as you wish 5. Arbitrary number of user account…

[flagged]

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#385

Post by maxglute »

Yokolos wrote: post #239
maxglute wrote: post #72

I spent last few days chasing down a Bravo/peacock show from outside the US trying to watch legally, only to find it on watchseries and realize how good the experience has gotten. It's not even released on torrents or nzb. Watchseries UI is kind of peak now. Nuts. Does anyone know how Watchseries manage to stay up?

It's been taken down plenty of times. They just host a mirror somewhere else under a new TLD.

By take down I mean have entire org steamrolled which we've seen with other crackdowns. Watchseries hydra never seems to fully die.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#386

Post by kryptn »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #384
godelski wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy also offers: 0. Ability to watch offline! 1. Ability to fix subtitle issues with minimal tweeks like change size or moving location. 1.2 Ability to get subtitles if they aren't offered (or offered in your language) 2. Ability to normalize audio. 3. Ability to buffer videos when on a poor connection. 4. Ability to create collections, organize, and track your movie as you wish 5. Arbitrary number of user account…

[flagged]

Mind elaborating?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#387

Post by Dylan16807 »

godelski wrote: post #366
ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Piracy also offers: 0. Ability to watch offline! 1. Ability to fix subtitle issues with minimal tweeks like change size or moving location. 1.2 Ability to get subtitles if they aren't offered (or offered in your language) 2. Ability to normalize audio. 3. Ability to buffer videos when on a poor connection. 4. Ability to create collections, organize, and track your movie as you wish 5. Arbitrary number of user account…

Subtitles are often a very dumb failure point, especially when English subtitles aren't available in half the world for basically no reason.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#388

Post by pezezin »

ak217 wrote: post #297

> Spotify > “enshittification” of streaming I've been a happy paying Spotify user since 2010 or so. I'm still mostly happy with what I get out of it... they did try to shove podcasts down people's throats, but backed off pretty quickly. One thing that recently infuriated me though, was something they call "smart shuffle". Like, you press shuffle on your playlist, it starts shuffling. You press it again, it should tur…

I have been paying Spotify for 5 or 6 years now, and while I love how much amazing music it has helped me to discover, the UI is absolutely atrocious. The way it puts together artists, albums, individual songs and playlists in the same list, or the way it mixes your personal selection with their algorithmic recommendations, is extremely confusing to me. I am seriously considering going back to the high seas.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#389

Post by marcus_holmes »

cyberax wrote: post #255
l72 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have real options or people can’t make informed decisions. I have a background in city planning, and in the US, you’ll constantly hear about how trying to make cities more friendly to pedestrians, bicycles, or public transit is a waste because no one uses it. But the truth is, most people will end up using the system you design. If you build a system just for cars, people will use cars. If you build a cit…

> If you build a walkable city, people will walk. No, they won't. If you build a walkable city and then make it impossible to do anything else, then people will walk. It's a subtle difference, but it's there.

Absolutely not true. If anything, the opposite is true - people will walk unless/until you make the city unwalkable.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#390

Post by Olreich »

hk1337 wrote: post #127

As with most things, I think we leaned in too hard to streaming services. Part of the appeal of streaming services back then was being able to cherry pick what you wanted so you only paid for what you actually wanted to watched. Because of how fragmented all the shows are, people sign up for multiple streaming services just to watch the shows the want to watch, and then wish for everything to be bundled together...ag…

The appeal back then was being able to get all the shows you wanted on a single platform. Netflix had all of Disney, WB, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. at one point, including strong original content. Going all in on $10/month for all the TV I wanted to watch was a good deal. Paying $15/month times 5 for a worse experience... not so much.
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