Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#471

Post by 1980phipsi » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:04 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #308

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…

Don’t forget that piracy allows for front ends that actually want to make the user happy and have good UX. I use Plex and it shows what I’m currently watching first. So continuing to a new episode is easy. If I sub to 50 episodes they just show up on my first line. Hulu makes me scroll down a few rows to continue watching. It also shows cast and crew and other movies with the same.

Plex’s recent changes have been garbage and it’s still better than the experience on a lot of streaming sites.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#472

Post by joules77 » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:05 AM UTC

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…

Use the right browser (not built/funded by ad tech companies) and all Ads can be blocked in 2025.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#473

Post by al_borland » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:07 AM UTC

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…

I recently bought music from the iTunes Store, because it was easy and DRM free. I can do what I want with the music after I buy it, and don’t have to worry about what happens if Apple shuts down the store. I’m not aware of a single video platform that can say the same thing. This is the core of the issue for me. In 25 years, I want to know that I can still watch my favorite movies and TV shows. Outside of buying DVDs and ripping them, there is no way to do that without venturing into piracy. I actually bought an external DVD drive recently (while I still can) so I can still rip music and DVDs when discs are the best/easiest way to get some content.

While piracy has a huge library, when it comes to stuff that’s not popular for the long-term with the mainstream, if a person doesn’t grab it while they can, it can be very difficult to get. Of course, these same things aren’t available at all on streaming services, so…

If I could buy DRM free movies and TV shows, from a single source, with a quality library of every show and movie, I’d be down. That doesn’t exist.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#474

Post by freehorse » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:08 AM UTC

My most annoying experience has been some providers blocking VPNs. I pay for an account, I log in with my account, I use a vpn with ip in the country I made the account with and use my account, and still I am blocked. I don't want to stop my vpn just for the sake of streaming, I would rather pirate the content.

A second one is subtitles. Somehow the streaming services decides which subtitles I need and which I don't.

It is funny how we went from pirating content being normalised, then being frown upon, and now getting normalised again.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#475

Post by bagol » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:09 AM UTC

oulu2006 wrote: post #458

Never left bittorrent. I really wanted to embrace streaming services, prime really killed me recently, with introducing ads into a membership that I already pay for! and 90% of movies on prime I have to pay an extra 20 bucks to view ...why am i paying for membership?

Ads for a paying member? That is just... evil?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#476

Post by thayne » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:09 AM UTC

jack1243star wrote: post #445

komali2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some movies have portions that are really quiet and others that are quiet loud. Depending on your taste you may prefer to not have the experience of turning up the audio so you can hear a quiet conversation, then having your ears blown out by a loud explosion or whatever. Director's tastes be damned, I'm trying to relax over here!

In audio processing, the more precise term for it is compression (dynamically adjust gain). Normalization usually means that the gain is adjusted so that the highest volume meets a certain level. (Like what YouTube does)

But compression is ambiguous because that could also refer to compressing the video stream to reduce the size of the movie.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#477

Post by lucideer » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:11 AM UTC

jack1243star wrote: post #445

komali2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some movies have portions that are really quiet and others that are quiet loud. Depending on your taste you may prefer to not have the experience of turning up the audio so you can hear a quiet conversation, then having your ears blown out by a loud explosion or whatever. Director's tastes be damned, I'm trying to relax over here!

In audio processing, the more precise term for it is compression (dynamically adjust gain). Normalization usually means that the gain is adjusted so that the highest volume meets a certain level. (Like what YouTube does)

Compression is an entirely different thing.

Compression isn't just gain adjustment - it's a specific type of audio processing that increases perceived "gain" (loudness) of the entire source audio by "compressing" the levels of loud frequencies & increasing the levels of quiet frequencies.

Normalization increases gain of all frequencies at any given point-in-time while reducing gain of all frequencies at other points in time. It doesn't reduce dynamic range.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#478

Post by al_borland » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:12 AM UTC

JustExAWS wrote: post #457

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…

I had a Plex server for years. It just got to the point where it wasn’t worth the time or effort to find a high quality rip. If I can’t find what I want on streaming service I just buy it or rent it on iTunes. For movies, if you buy it from one of the major movies studios that participate in Movies Anywhere, it is automatically added to your library in Amazon Prime, whatever Google is using these days, Vudu etc. But…

4. Plex lets you cache stuff locally for a plane or when you’re traveling. That’s usually what I do when I’m going somewhere. I did try streaming from my house to a hotel in India a decade ago… it technically worked, but I had to set the resolution so low that it wasn’t fun to watch. I assume that’s better now, but I just cache stuff before I leave now.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#479

Post by cbeley » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:15 AM UTC

ta1243 wrote: post #68

sunrunner wrote: post #24

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" -- Gabe Newell [1] And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_ seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now encompasses: - Availability by Company - Availability by Global Region - Stream Quality - Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?) - Qu…

I cancelled prime when they told me they were putting adverts on Went to resubscribe, no option given for no adverts, no money from me.

It still exists. I'm currently paying for the ad free add on and often cancel and resubscribe to it before I'm about to watch anything.

Annoyingly though, even with that, it'll still show you skipable ads about other shows they have once before you start something in a session.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#480

Post by throwawayxcmz » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 3:16 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #107

When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also have a right to train their real neural network for free without paying.

What do you mean? is this about AI training on copyrighted material?