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Again? I used to regularly check Netflix before Pirate Bay, but it's been so long since anything I wanted to watch was streamable on Netflix (and I'm in the US
by 0xffff2 11y ago
Again? I used to regularly check Netflix before Pirate Bay, but it's been so long since anything I wanted to watch was streamable on Netflix (and I'm in the US too) that I rarely bother anymore. Even at the best of times it was maybe 50/50.
Hell, I torrented "The Man in the High Castle" even though I have Amazon Prime just because I didn't feel like installing Silverlight. Even when you are paying for the content, it can still be easier to watch via other means.
- neumann 11y agosame - we torrent content we have access to on Netflix and Amazon because, for some unknown reason, those services regularly degrade their video quality to 420p while torrents download at 1.4mb/s.
- trvz 11y agoThe problem is probably your ISP, check http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/.
- soylentcola 11y agoNot surprising. We pay for cable (ugh, not my call) as well as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The cable box version of on-demand video is terrible because it's a cable box. The apps and websites are usually OK...except when they're not because Comcast is throttling or Amazon doesn't include Chromecast support in the mobile app so you have to cast the whole fullscreen browser tab. When I don't just plug the damn laptop in, I tend to just connect through VPN and despite the fact that it slows my connection down considerably, I can stream any of the shows I've paid for through Popcorn Time or any other streaming torrent client. A typical hour-long episode is usually finished downloading within the first few minutes of the show and it's all accessible in a single interface. My personal dream is that Comcast or one of these awful companies decides that they need to do a better job of pleasing customers and starts offering a legal PopcornTime/Netflix-style web interface to browse and stream all of the content you're already paying for. That is something I would actually want to subscribe to. Instead I pay, rarely torrent anything I don't have legal access to, and stream/download illegally just because it's easier and works better. I haven't gone as far as some friends who set up auto-downloaders for usenet or torrents so they always have the latest episodes sitting on their NAS as soon as they go up. But I've considered it.
- gcb0 11y ago> unknown reason it's called greedy ISP
- kaybe 11y agoFor us Netflix refuses to play the high quality because the beamer is not to the liking of their copyright protection.
- pknopf 11y agoHow do you avoid your ISP from punishing you for using torrents? Do you use private trackers?
- ballsohardy 11y agovpn that doesn't keep logs, preferably paid for with bitcoin or visa gift cards bought with bitcoin
- 0xffff2 11y agoIt's never been an issue. I use PeerBlock most of the time, but I've only ever gotten one letter from my ISP, and that was probably almost a decade ago now.
- yulaow 11y agoYou have an ISP that punish you just for using torrents? WTF, they really exist? I mean, what happens if you just download Ubuntu in its torrent version... they punish you just because it is a torrent?
- softawre 11y agoYou know what they meant...
- yulaow 11y agoI actually don't know why I got some downvotes... in my country I never had a single ISP who blocks torrents, I don't even think is legal for them to check what you are downloading (except if they have a police warrant).
- soylentcola 11y agoIt's not quite the same (although they will throttle torrents frequently). Basically some firm gets hired by a media conglomerate to look at a torrent swarm for one of their shows or movies, and log the IP addresses that are sharing the data. Then they look up the IPs, see that 123.456.78.90 was connected through a Comcast account. They send a big pile of requests to Comcast with all of the Comcast IPs and ask "hey, who had the IP 123.456.78.90 on January 14th, 2016 at 4:50pm?" Not sure how often they actually bother suing actual users these days but either way, the ISP got the complaint and turns around and sends you a letter saying "hey, stop downloading tv shows and movies over torrents or we will have to cut off your service." I'm sure the details of how this works change and are more complex but that's the essence. Even if you aren't sued, your ISP will cut you off if you keep torrenting stuff and generating complaints from rights holders.
- untog 11y agoHell, I torrented "The Man in the High Castle" even though I have Amazon Prime just because I didn't feel like installing Silverlight. Doesn't Amazon use Flash?
- apocalyptic0n3 11y agoThey were using Silverlight on the web. They had Flash at one time, but I think it's been a while; they've been using Silverlight for a few years. They've been pushing into HTML5 video, though I don't know the current state of that rollout http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-starts-rolling-out-html5-web-player-moving-beyond-silverlight-and-flash/ http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-starts-rolling-out-html5...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wsha 11y agoNot sure if this is true for all vidoes, but I have watched several shows on Amazon using Chromium, and I don't have Flash installed.
- manigandham 11y agoThis is something that I run into a lot. It's just nicer being able to click a file and play in VLC that's more responsive, can fastforward/rewind, play at different speeds, etc. Streaming through webpages just isn't that great for how I consume video. EDIT: I always like to remind people that VLC can open youtube videos natively. CTRL+V and paste in url. Not perfect control but nicer than youtube player.
- Houshalter 11y agoNetflix has really good compression though. Torrenting takes hours, makes the internet unusable in the whole house, and the quality is much worse. Netflix just works, even if multiple people are using it. And it goes straight to the TV.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoYou should probably either tune your wireless AP (increase max connections, decrease linger time) or change ISP. Torrenting should absolutely not make the internet unusable.
- Phlarp 11y agoThere are so many dead simple technical solutions to this I can't fathom someone on HN not being able to find any of them. 1. QOS on the router, set a lower priority for the ports torrents use 2. Set a bandwidth limit in your torrent client 3. Use a queue / batch system to have them download at 3AM or whatever.
- Houshalter 11y agoI have no access to the router. Of course I know how to throttle bandwidth or schedule it later. My point is that it's far less convenient than just streaming instantly from Netflix.
- swasheck 11y agono true scotsman
- veritas3241 11y agoI'm pissed that Amazon Video doesn't support my TV anymore. That means I can't hookup my laptop to my TV via HDMI. Extremely frustrating.
- soylentcola 11y agoCurious what's not working. Is it a DHCP thing? On my upstairs TV I regularly hook up a laptop or just cast a browser tab (fullscreened) to the Chromecast when I want to watch Amazon video. My only real complaint is that I can't just cast from the Amazon video application on a mobile device the way I do with Netflix or HBO Go but that's just them wanting you to buy a Fire Stick so there's no Chromecast support in the app. When Chromecasting the tab is occasionally flaky I just plug in the spare HDMI that used to go to the Xbox.
- eric_h 11y ago> Is it a DHCP thing That threw me for a second. "What would DHCP have to do with HDMI?". Clearly you must have meant HDCP, which I suspect is what the GP was referring to.
- corp-a 11y agoI pay for Netflix but never look there first for content..
- jandrese 11y agoNetflix doesn't need Silverlight anymore as long as your browser is up to date. Maybe if you use IE. Chrome and Firefox use the HTML5 viewer instead.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- clinta 11y agoIE uses HTML5. In fact, IE and Edge and Safari are the only browsers that can play HTML5 Netflix videos in 1080p. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
- sergiotapia 11y agoOn the flipside, I watch Netflix literally every night (American Dad, Family Guy, Always Sunny) as I go to sleep. We don't have cable at my house and Netflix fills that hole extremely well. Maybe I'm Netflix's dream customer, I don't know.
- Nexxxeh 11y agoTheir dream customer would have the 4 stream 4K package, tell everyone how great it is, but never use it so they consume no bandwidth. But you are what's known as a cord cutter. No cable (or satellite) TV package, just an Internet connection. Netflix wants you, but they want everyone.
- ufukbay 11y agoI have Amazon Prime (living in Germany) and when I visited my brother in Turkey, I couldn't watch any TV shows on Amazon Prime due to country restrictions. I know different licences in different countries etc but in the end, it sucks that you cannot use a service which you are paying for. They also don't communicate these restrictions to their customers in a visible and prominent way for obvious reasons.
- Shorel 11y agoIt really needs Silverlight? I saw the series in Ubuntu, and it was nice, fullscreen, no issues at all. And I'm sure there's no Silverlight in Ubuntu.