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I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak Engli
by jimmies 9y ago
I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies.
Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think of something to do. We would spend time watching classic movies together every night with the little projector I have. I would have to download the Vietnamese subtitles from subscene and play the pirated movies with VLC. Sometimes the timings were a bit off but VLC allowed me to fix it easily.
There was no streaming service offered at any price that allowed me to have native language subtitles with those movies. I'm very happy for the time we had together, it might have been the very last chance we had in our lives. I am very thankful because BitTorrent and VLC allowed me to do what would be otherwise impossible.
- chickenfries 9y agoThank you for sharing this story. I hope you and your parents are able to connect again when you finish school.
- distances 9y agoThis is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.
- jedberg 9y ago> Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! Sadly, this has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with rightsholders (aka "Hollywood"). The rights on the subtitles are held by the company that makes them, are then sold to the company that distributes the movie, which are then resold to regional distributors, separately from the rights to show the movie. This means that if you want to show, say Transformers, you have to negotiate with one company to show the picture, another company to license the sound, and yet another company for each set of subtitles. It just isn't worth the effort in most cases to negotiate the Transformers English titles in France, for example. Movie industry licensing and asset packaging are stuck in a time when you had to move physical reels of tape and film around, and still haven't caught up to digital technology.
- pietjepuk88 9y agoBut they always seem to offer English CC though, just not the regular ones (for many movies). And the regular ones should just be a simple transformation of the CC ones (strip all "\[.*?\]" stuff). That said, the other day I watched the movie "Easy A" which did happen to have both English CC and normal English subtitles. Still the only one I've found so far though.
- jedberg 9y agoTechnically it is easy to create the subtitles, but legally that would be a derivative work of the CC subtitles, so again, it comes down to copyright law. :(
- gregschlom 9y agoWouldn't it be a derivative work of the original movie instead? (Assuming that the person creating them didn't use the CC subtitles as a reference point) Just curious about the technicalities of copyright law.
- jedberg 9y agoWell I only phrased it that way because OP suggested running a regular expression on the English CC subtitles. :)
- distances 9y agoEnglish CC is offered in English speaking countries probably for legal reasons. They are not available elsewhere in the world. In Germany you get only German subtitles. For whatever reason this is not the case for series in Netflix, which most of the time contain also in English subtitles. Wouldn't have helped the original commenter's case of course.
- taternuts 9y agoEnglish CC for English speaking countries is actually for deaf people. There's some new rule/law that is actually making websites include English CC's in order to be compliant, though I'm not sure what the penalty is for ignoring that (probably fines).
- Larrikin 9y agoNetflix and their subtitles is so strange. I have an account but the subtitle selection is so limited. The rip of a Netflix show, especially recently, will have upwards of twenty subtitles, I assume from every region they're allowed to show the movie. In the actual app, you're lucky to have more than four, with two of those being English and English for the hearing impaired.
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoNetflix seems to be pretty opinionated about subtitles. Try watching Narcos without subs, you can't. "Off" means the Spanish parts are subbed, and switching it to Spanish means the English parts are subbed! Netflix, a Californian company, simply couldn't fathom that some people might understand English and Spanish.
- Lewton 9y agoThat’s a far far saner interpretation of “off” than the alternative On hbo Nordic, (The Scandinavian hbo go) off means -OFF- and it’s absolutely infuriatingly stupid to expect that I can speak Spanish, or Russian, just because I don’t want Scandinavian subtitles when watching an English movie
- YawningAngel 9y agoI feel like English-speaking product design in general has not caught up with the idea that there is a substantial audience of very competent second language speakers. Most educated Continentals I know have similar complaints.
- xxs 9y agoTo help out: in the most of Hollywood movies spoken Russian is usually beyond unnatural with a heavy accent... to a point computer synthesized voice acting would be an improvement.
- 9y ago
- oelmekki 9y agoIt may depends on the country. I'm in France, and I almost always have english subtitles. On the rare occasions there is no english subtitles, I always have french subtitles. I never had to watch anything without subtitles on netflix (which btw, is one of the clear wins of netflix to me compared to pirate streaming).
- bgdam 9y agoThere is a Google Chrome extension[1], which allows you to do this. It basically replaces the site's player with its own and you can even search for subtitles from within the player itself. 1. https://www.google.co.in/url?q=https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/substital/kkkbiiikppgjdiebcabomlbidfodipjg%3Fhl%3Den&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwia18HTjqHZAhUMqI8KHa2cAmoQFggLMAA&usg=AOvVaw1VIUC-um6bMINm0mQWnJ9Q https://www.google.co.in/url?q=https://chrome.google.com/web...
- jimmies 9y agoThat is really cool. Seems like there is an extension for everything. Thank you.
- phil248 9y agoTorrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figured this out a decade ago, and I wonder how many people have ever "given up" on Netflix to go torrent a show? I can't imagine it's a lot.
- mulmen 9y agoI'd like to know the ratio of "legitimate" viewers to pirates for Netflix and major network shows. Does the quality and convenience of the Netflix player reduce piracy?
- digi_owl 9y agoI suspect it used to back when Netflix was more of an archive of "classics" and less supplier of their own content. Also, it depends a bit on where in the world you lived. Netflix for the most part was a US phenomena, and even as it spread elsewhere the library offered often lagged what was found in the US. So people would use proxies and similar to access the US library from abroad.
- mulmen 9y agoAh yeah good point about region. In this case we'd have to look at just US viewers of Netflix Originals. The entire dataset would be interesting though.
- akoncius 9y agosmall anecdote: when spotify vecame available in my region (Lithuania), I instantly became paid subscriber because it was really convenient. And my colleagues did the same - it’s just simpler to use Spotify with its was library instead of wasting time in torrent sites looking for some new music. Same applies for me with netflix.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoWould you mind contacting me about this, my email address is in my profile.
- samblr 9y agoBittorrent has kind of given me real sparks in life that I could have never attempted to experience. This is in terms of amounts of books that I have downloaded! Most associate torrents with audio/video downloads. But any books lovers here - should check out the wealth out there. I sincerely want to 'buy' all books I have downloaded after I own a house and a dog.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoI have zero moral qualms about pirating things that the copyright holder refuses to sell at any price. If they don't want my money, I'm under no obligation to give them any.
- ekianjo 9y agoOpen solutions are by nature more flexible.
- on_and_off 9y agoYesterday I saw that 'Lord of the Rings' is on Netflix. I thought to myself 'Cool, I have not seen this movie since it's initial release. I remember there is an extended version, let's check it out'. Nope, you only get the base version on Netflix. And that's until netflix removes it from it's library. I am pretty sure that for such a well known movie, I could be watching the hires version of the extended cut with all its goodies after 2 minutes of research if I wanted too thanks to bitorrent.
- AznHisoka 9y agoThis. X 100. Bittorrent and VLC gives you 100% control over how you view content. And subtitles are a huge part of the watching experience for many people.
- scoggs 9y agoTechnology is really beautiful for reasons precisely like this and I'm really happy that there are real life cases and stories such as yours to underline and define the most positive side. It'll never be talked about nor trotted out in defense of allowing things like this to happen but I'd be willing to bet there are many more stories like yours than the demonized stories you'll hear lawyers tell to explain the "seedy underbelly" and "plight on humanity" that pirating and torrenting cause.
- spraak 9y agoThat's a sweet story, thanks for sharing.