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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

#521

Post by frollogaston »

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…

Gabe Newell, founder of the largest video game DRM company. Find a way for anyone to download video games for free without risking malware or compromising online play, and see how many people still pay $60 for a new game on Steam.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#522

Post by bombcar »

anonymars wrote: post #294
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. I paid for Disney+ to watch Andor at 4K, only to find out that you can't - Disney+ prohibits anything over 1K on computers whether you use the app or a browser. Went back to piracy very quickly after that. More fragmented experience is annoying, not even being able to get the highest quality as a paying customer is…

I went down a similar rabbit hole when I bought my OLED monitor, finding that you can neither stream UHD nor play UHD Blu-Ray (it was possible on a few generations of Intel chips before SGX was deprecated because it was not in fact secure; 10th-gen was the latest) Well, okay then -- chump don't want the money, chump don't get the money

Amusingly if your have MakeMKV and patched firmware, you can rip them without even blinking.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#523

Post by frollogaston »

area51org wrote: post #254
nlawalker wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" Maybe so, but if media companies invested in fixing the service problems, the pricing problems would remain, and those keep people away just as effectively, so they're not going to do it. People don't want to pay what the media companies want to charge, at any level of service.

Not necessarily true, as the success of streaming shows. The problem comes when the unbounded greed of the billionaires in charge leads them to inflate prices beyond their customers' ability and willingness to pay.

Streaming was cheaper than what existed before, and still is. Inflation-adjusted, movies and TV were insanely expensive back then, yet people willingly paid. And the movies were better. Who's greedy, companies wanting to offer nonessential entertainment for a price, or people who want it for free?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#524

Post by bombcar »

MrGilbert wrote: post #224
noselasd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fails on all of them if it's not available to purchase, and none of them are of relevance if I want it right now vs having to wait 1-7 days to get hold of that physical copy and there's an easier alternative where I can have it right now.

The elder might remember a time where you could drive to a place and rent physical copies of a movie. But of course, these places dried out a long time ago.

They still exist and now are free.

They’re called “public libraries”.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#526

Post by tootie »

bagol wrote: post #475
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?

It's like nobody has ever watched cable TV.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#528

Post by qrios »

arrowsmith wrote: post #498
zerocrates wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collapse being the collapse of the DDR? The Lives of Others must have been made way further beyond that than 7 years. Closer to 20, I'd figure.

TLOO came out in 2006, 16 years after the DDR collapsed. I wondered if GP was thinking of another movie so I asked ChatGPT, which told me: "The German film you’re thinking of is "Good Bye, Lenin!" — released in 2003, exactly seven years after the formal end of the DDR in 1990. " (My emphasis.) So much for GPT-5.

Right, I missed a whole decade. (For me 1989, the Mauerfall is the official end of GDR)

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#529

Post by chairmansteve »

crote wrote: post #303
Levitz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the case right now in Spain. We pay a tax on every piece of recordable media (don't think it's only SD cards or hard drives, it applies to phones, laptops, mp3 players, ebooks, even smartwatches). In exchange, sharing media for personal use is legal, and P2P is sharing media. Doesn't stop corporations from trying to scare people off and complaining about piracy though of course.

The Netherlands has the same tax, but they managed to ban the "sharing media" part. First they outlawed uploading media (you could make a copy for your own use, but as you didn't hold the rights you weren't allowed to offer it to anyone else), then they outlawed the downloading as well (you can still make a copy for your own use, but you can't obtain it from someone who doesn't have the rights to offer it to you). Yo…

I guess we're going to have to go back to telling stories around a campfire....

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#530

Post by buzer »

kcb wrote: post #459
dawnerd wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People just don't realize just how garbage even 4k streams are from all the services. It's not in their interest to give you real bluray quality.

I don't know, 4k HEVC at 15,000mbps looks plenty good to me.

...what service offers 15Gbps stream?
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