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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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

#411

Post by rayalez »

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…

Also don't forget a much narrower content selection. I'm happy to pay for Netflix, but if you live in the wrong country, it has like 10 times less good content than the US version.

I understand that there are business and licensing reasons for that, but it is still a bummer to use a much inferior second rate version of the website.

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

#412

Post by m_mueller »

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 second GP's problem with subtitles and availability. For me torrenting always been about media I cannot get in the way I want - their release is delayed in the country I stay in, or it's only available dubbed or it doesn't have the subtitles I need (e.g. to watch Japanese, Spanish, French or Italian speaking films for me or anything other than Japanese for my Japanese wife).

Where I come from around half the marriages are between people of different nationalities and a significant percentage of those between people of different languages. Even when people are fluent in a language, subtitles still allow a much more comfortable viewing (and also learning a language better). This is something that all those US-centric services just don't get. Netflix is improving with its own content, anyone else is far behind.

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

#414

Post by toomanybeersies »

justrobert wrote: post #69
rjvir wrote: post #53

This strikes me as an area where distributed apps on a blockchain could have a big impact. Currently, top piracy options like torrent websites and Kodi addons constantly get taken down by the government (through methods described in this article). But what happens if a distributed YouTube exists with every movie in pristine 1080p quality, that lives on a blockchain so the government can't shut it down or issue DMCA t…

The blockchain itself would be too expensive to store a large amount of data, so they would only be storing magnet links much like most tracker sites currently do.

Is anyone currently storing magnet links in a blockchain?

It seems like one of the more appropriate types of data to be storing on blockchains.

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

#415

Post by mason55 »

ryandrake wrote: post #394
icebraining wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market. The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them. Also, you're paying a fixed monthly fee, and unless you're part of the small minority that travels a lot, you're not likely to drop Netflix over not being able to watch c…

Licensing a movie in such a way that it can be played in France but not Poland seems as ridiculous as licensing it such that it can be played in Pennsylvania but not Minnesota. When will this Stone Age practice go away?

Are you saying it shouldn’t be legal? Or that the business practice doesn’t make sense?

Let’s say you’re a French movie distributor. You know the French market, you know which movies will sell, you know how to market to French audiences. Because of this you can bid more on the rights to distribute movies in France than a global company that doesn’t have any specific knowledge about the French market (your return is likely to be higher and you’re liekely to have fewer failures). Same in the Czech, Romanian, etc markets.

But let’s say this movie conflicts with the release of some other movie you’re distributing so you want to hold it back for three weeks.

What’s your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?

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

#416

Post by baddox »

vonseel wrote: post #357
baddox wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f * the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of…

what.cd was amazing. Sad that it was shut down :(

Much has been written about it, but I agree that it feels like a “burning of the library of Alexandria” moment.

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

#417

Post by jobu »

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…

> But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show.

It amazes me how actively hostile most of the TV networks are towards viewers. It's very obvious that we're the product and the advertisers are the customer. If the NBC app crashes in the middle of a show you're forced to re-watch all of the ads from the beginning. If an advertisement doesn't load for any reason, there's no timeout or error handling, you're just done watching that show until you kill and restart the app (and re-watch all the ads again).

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

#418

Post by matt_j »

taneq wrote: post #392
brooot wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how Steam basically single handily defeated video game pirating. Newell himself is on record saying that piracy is an issue of not making something accessible enough, and he was obviously right. People will pay for convenience. We are no longer in the age of, "I want to watch/listen/play something, lets drive to the store". If the platform they use sucks, it will have the same problem. Last pirating site I wa…

Convenience, sure, but don't forget that games on Steam are often deeply discounted compared with off-the-shelf prices. PC games (at least in Australia) are often $60 - $90 on the shelves. Many of these games can be had on Steam for $20 or less, and sometimes for only a few dollars in a bundle or on sale.

An $80 packaged game on a shelf probably nets the developer the same profit as a $20 digital version of the same game delivered via Steam. Packaging, distribution and retail markup are a big chunk of the price.

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

#419

Post by fyfy18 »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #109
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…

Is German Netflix that bad? In the USA, I can choose the audio and subtitle language pretty easily; it's even supported on their Plex app and so forth. Example: I just watched "Dark" and it defaulted to English dub, but it just took a second to switch it to German with English subtitles.

I’m in a small European country, my wife is learning Spanish so she’d like to watch TV shows in Spanish. I think Netflix here has maybe 3 shows in Spanish or with it as an option.

Even worse is although most films at the cinema come out dubbed in our language or at the very least with subtitles, Netflix doesn’t have any content in our language or subtitles. It does have an option for Russian, but most people under 40 don’t speak it.

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

#420

Post by dingo_bat »

FuckOffNeemo wrote: post #408
dingo_bat wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quality. I don't care that your algorithm thinks my network is not fast enough for HD. Just let me tell it that it's wrong. Or I could torrent and download something in actual HD within just a few minutes. This is so true. I have a decently fast connection (75mbps) and Netflix's own speed test tells me the pipe really is that fat. YouTube can play 1080p60fps content without breaking a sweat. But Netflix is always b…

1080p and 4k streaming on Windows currently only works on Internet Explorer\Edge. Other browsers are at a lesser resolution, I believe it was 720p but that could be wrong. Edit: yup, 720p on everything except IT. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 Quote: Google Chrome Up to 720p on Windows, Mac, and Linux Up to 1080p on Chrome OS Internet Explorer up to 1080p Microsoft Edge up to 4K* Mozilla Firefox up to 720p Op…

I know, that's why I tried IE, edge and also the native Windows app. The quality is still crappy. In fact I wanted to watch the movie Pacific Rim, and the quality was so bad that it was unwatchable. I torrented a 1080p copy and watched that instead.

As I said, the weird part is that their is no improvement in quality even if you pre-download the content.

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