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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

#751

Post by dddgghhbbfblk »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #745
dddgghhbbfblk wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Star Wars project is a bit of an outlier in terms of the insane work and dedication that's gone into it. However, in the quality-focused corners of online film piracy, it's still pretty routine for people to combine the best features of every retail release available to produce something that's better than what you can get even by just going out and buying a Blu Ray. For example, maybe the best picture quality av…

What's the name of the Star Wars project? You know, so I can avoid those darn pirates more effectively.

The one they were talking about (based on scans of original film prints) is called 4K77/4K80/4K83 for the three films.

I believe the first project of this type for Star Wars was Harmy's Despecialized Edition but I think these days most people prefer the 4K77 versions, although it varies by film and by person.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#752

Post by the_af »

padjo wrote: post #716
simianparrot wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody I ever talk to cancel Netflix because it’s too expensive. They cancel it because it runs out of content they care about. Including me. I’m not keeping a sub for that one week a year I find something I enjoy. It’s absolutely a service problem.

What you described is the same as cancelling because it’s too expensive, you’re just describing the value side of the equation.

That's one way of framing it (pro provider). A pro consumer way of framing it is that it's a service problem.

Since I'm a consumer, not a provider, I side with consumers.

Streaming sucks today -- I should know, I'm subscribed to most platforms.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#753

Post by the_af »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #741
matheusmoreira wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Piracy" is not theft, it is copyright infringement. Calling it theft is not "honesty", it's just factually wrong. There's nothing to debate on this matter. > Like everyone is trying to somehow spin the whole situation into some story that makes their act of theft morally correct. Nobody is "spinning" anything. We're telling you what we believe and why we believe it. Actual moral justification involves the realizatio…

No. The entire games and movie industry exists because a segment of people don’t pirate. All the technology created to support those two industries mentioned above are supported by people who paid for their shit. Your view point twists reality because the financial realities don’t pan out. Who the fuck pays for a triple A video game if it’s morally right to pirate things? If you pirate you benefit off of millions of…

> Call it what you want. If it’s not theft then it’s not theft. But the gravity of the moral infraction is equivalent to theft so I don’t see the point of the word play here.

No. As I said, we had this debate decades ago and your side lost. This is settled ground; you can shout into the void but you already lost.

You might pirate because you're a "cheap ass" (your words, not mine), but many others don't. They've explained their reasons.

You don't like those reasons? Fine. But don't go around accusing others of your own sin.

Most people just want to watch and play stuff in the most convenient, non-intrusive, frictionless way possible. It just happens that this is often best achieved through piracy, because most legally available platforms suck in some way or the other (or content is not available).

(Before you accuse me of anything: I don't pirate games like you, I have a huge library of Steam, GOG and Humble Bundle games. I also subscribe to Netflix, Disney, HBO Max, Apple, and a couple more I forget. And I pay for YouTube premium. And Spotify -- which removed vast swathes of music I listened to because why not. The streaming platforms mostly suck and so I must occasionally resort to piracy because it's goddamn more convenient!)

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#754

Post by padjo »

the_af wrote: post #752
padjo wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you described is the same as cancelling because it’s too expensive, you’re just describing the value side of the equation.

That's one way of framing it (pro provider). A pro consumer way of framing it is that it's a service problem. Since I'm a consumer, not a provider, I side with consumers. Streaming sucks today -- I should know, I'm subscribed to most platforms.

Really voting with your wallet there.

Anyway I’m not taking platforms side just stating that “I don’t get enough value” and “it is too expensive” are the same thing.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#755

Post by SSLy »

PetitPrince wrote: post #708
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also a number of movies where the best quality publicly available is a pirated rip of an HDTV broadcast from a Malaysian TV network or something similarly odd because the rights holders never released a BD and the official DVD release was a transfer from a crappy VHS or similar. In cases of TV shows, fans have gone to the lengths of producing the best quality release possible by patching together video, audio…

> In cases of TV shows Can you give me some examples of those guerilla remaster ? I know of the various Star Wars projects (Harmy and the likes) and the remaster from "La Classe Américaine" , but I don't know any others. A French movie that bungle together several excerpt from classic Warner movie to tell its own humorous story. A cult classic for French millennials. The director later on went on to make The Artist t…

Right now it's usually CINEPHiLES remuxes, that pick absolute best sources available, and sometimes splice the video to get each shot the best possible treatment from the available bitstreams

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#756

Post by pmarreck »

tclancy wrote: post #427
qrios wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list. Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched t…

What if I have recently watched The Lives of Others? (Which everyone in the US should.)

Trivia about that movie: The spying devices used were authentic and from the era depicted.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#757

Post by the_af »

padjo wrote: post #754
the_af wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way of framing it (pro provider). A pro consumer way of framing it is that it's a service problem. Since I'm a consumer, not a provider, I side with consumers. Streaming sucks today -- I should know, I'm subscribed to most platforms.

Really voting with your wallet there. Anyway I’m not taking platforms side just stating that “I don’t get enough value” and “it is too expensive” are the same thing.

> Really voting with your wallet there.

Sadly, you're right. But it's a Catch-22 here, if I pirated everything people would accuse me of being part of the problem, etc.

I enjoy the moral high ground of paying for everything yet still supporting piracy (with caveats, and not for everything): it makes my position unassailable.

And I disagree with your last statement, as I said it's a framing issue and framing matters. I'm pro consumer, and therefore, it's not the same thing .

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#758

Post by whimsicalism »

selcuka wrote: post #619
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…

Offline watching is a thing with streaming services, too. Also, there is no reason for a paid streaming service not to implement 1 (but not 1.2), 2, 3 and 4. It's not like these features will affect their bottom line. They just don't see value in implementing and supporting them.

most streaming services i use do not allow offline watching on a computer, only mobile

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#759

Post by whimsicalism »

hbn wrote: post #177
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 censorship-free I swore off streaming services when they started pulling episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they were worried someone might be offended

especially when Advanced DnD is like the best Community episode

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#760

Post by throwaway290 »

lucideer wrote: post #559
throwaway290 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you really misunderstand what normalization and compression means. "quiet frequencies" :D

I assure you I don't. I'm not sure what the scare quotes are about but if you point out what I'm misrepresenting I can try to explain it a little better.

You don't need to explain, I know the subject.

Compression acts on the amplitude of the entire audio signal, not "quiet frequencies". You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Normalization as it normally is used is offline process where you up the gain of the whole audio so that the loudest noise is 0dB.

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