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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

#721

Post by BLKNSLVR »

disillusioned wrote: post #590
JKCalhoun wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we've had at least two lost decades of good content. It's probably somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.

In my humble opinion, some "good content": Netflix: * Dark * Fisk * Adolescence * Ripley * The Queen's Gambit * Ozark * Baby Reindeer * Easy Apple TV: * Black Bird * The Studio * Severance * Shrinking * Ted Lasso HBO: * The Wire * Oz * True Detective (S1 at least) * The Sopranos * Big Love * Rome * In Treatment * Succession * Deadwood * Insecure Misc: * Colin From Accounts * Black Sails * Mad Men * Breaking Bad * Bet…

Off topic: Black Sails is amazing, I've watched it through a couple of times, and every now and then I lament that I'm not watching it again yet...

On topic: Black Sails is about actual piracy.

P.S. Fisk - you're a fellow Aussie I take it?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#722

Post by devinprater »

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 audio description, allowing blind people to enjoy described media, for shows movies that don't have them on streaming services, like Doctor Who. An audio description site offers audio description for the original and revival series. Streaming offers none of that. They also do third-party audio description cause studios can't be bothered.

It also offers video games that can be emulated, and with OCR nd AI image descriptions, can be played by blind people. It also offers EBooks in many different formats which can b loaded onto accessible apps or Braille displays and read, without needing apps which may or may not be accessible, but which will always need connection to a phone or computer. And you can read all this offline.

So when I find companies, like Big Finish and Graphic Audio, which offer their stuff in downloadable, DRM-free formats, I pay them good for their stuff, because they respect me.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#723

Post by the_cramer »

risico wrote: post #720

Coming from a country where piracy was the norm, I was very happy when Spotify and Netflix finally arrived. I even went through the trouble of accessing them via VPN just so I could pay for them. Unfortunately, that excitement didn't last long. Shows started disappearing from Netflix, so we signed up for another service, then another, and so on. Prices kept going up, and I eventually realized I was paying a lot of mo…

I assume you are using torrent based services?

I was always wondering about how this approach could provide "instant playback". This is the one feature that keeps me ensnared to the big streaming services TBH. It's hard to get into the matter if one does not have much time to scoop information from the web.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#724

Post by NoGravitas »

account42 wrote: post #682
jaimex2 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of Star Trek Voyager

Care to expand? I assume the result is still 480p or have they actually done more than that?

All of the 90s Star Trek series were filmed on 35mm, but all of the post-production work (editing, SFX, etc) were done on tape, at 480p. There's no 35mm copy of the final result to scan and color-grade for a "normal" HD remaster. For the TNG remaster, what they actually did was re-do all of the post-production from the original 35mm negatives. VFX were re-composed, some were re-done in CG. They finished the TNG remaster just as streaming services were ramping up and Blu-Ray disk sales declining, and sales were disappointing given the amount of work that had to go into them.

Paramount will never remaster DS9 or VOY because they don't expect to make the money back, because neither was as popular as TNG. And it's worse for DS9 and VOY because they extensively used CGI effects for things like ship battles, which were originally rendered at 480p. If the original assets could be found, they could be re-rendered, but in many cases, they would have to be fully re-created.

Fans have created AI upscales which are generally better than watching the horrible 480p releases that were on Netflix and are now on Paramount+. But they are also sometimes uncannily smooth and unpleasant.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#727

Post by nerdjon »

NoGravitas wrote: post #724
account42 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand? I assume the result is still 480p or have they actually done more than that?

All of the 90s Star Trek series were filmed on 35mm, but all of the post-production work (editing, SFX, etc) were done on tape, at 480p. There's no 35mm copy of the final result to scan and color-grade for a "normal" HD remaster. For the TNG remaster, what they actually did was re-do all of the post-production from the original 35mm negatives. VFX were re-composed, some were re-done in CG. They finished the TNG remas…

Is there a name that these upscaled releases fall under to easily find them?

Star Trek in particular (I was watching voyager yesterday) the quality is always pretty depressing when shown on a larger TV. Been recently thinking about trying to find the best quality I can find but it is always a lot of trial and error. But if there is a common name and tag I could look for that would be great.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#728

Post by nerdjon »

It is annoying, I would much rather pay for the content I am consuming since I want to support content being made.

But with prices going up and there now being so many services, I find it hard to justify more than a couple.

I pay for Apple TV+ and Disney+ with zero hesitation since I get a large amount of content from both of those that I actually enjoy. I added Hulu to Disney plus because why not.

Outside of that I just can't bring myself to subscribe to Netflix, whatever HBO is calling themselves now, paramount, etc etc anymore. It added up too quickly and there are alternative solutions.

It isn't even necessarily about the cost anymore; I have spent way too much on the hardware for my media server and I am nowhere near any concept of breaking even. But I no longer need to think about where something may be accessible just to be disappointed that I can't stream it.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#729

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

Funnily enough, ability to watch offline is something the Netflix app for Windows (yes from their app store) lets you do. It is my favorite reason to install Windows apps instead of just using the browser, really handy for a trip when you have a real screen to watch movies from.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#730

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #631
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…

This is a case study in why competitive markets are important in general. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly but the monopoly is hard to enforce. It works because most people actually want to support the creators, not because DRM is effective or anything like that. So you have the uncommon situation in which a monopoly (the copyright holder) is operating in parallel to a competitive black market for content d…

The black market is only more competitive because it doesn’t bear the costs of actually creating the content.
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