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Torrenting 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 str

Torrenting 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 ago
I'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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Ah 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 ago
  small 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.
  - amiga-workbench 9y ago
    After Steam took off I did the same, it's much more convenient than piracy. The only exception I make is when software has overbearing DRM in place. I will not hand over money for a tainted product when I can get better for nothing. With video media I'm largely covered with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video but there is still plenty of content I'm missing. Instead of doing the right thing many networks are rolling their own half arsed subscription streaming services. Nobody in their right mind is going to stay subbed to the likes of CBS All Access when the only thing half worth watching is Star Trek Discovery, I've seen many people ditching their sub now that the season is over.
- posterboy 9y ago
  In my experience it is. Streaming apps come integrated into all kinds of devices, giving a plug and play experience close to the old fashioned way. It's not much, but don't forget to consider trust at that. Why risk shady piracy when a convenient app is built right into your $device. Whether that reduces piracy or rather the legal enforcement which pushes torrents into the shadows of its former self does not hinge on the quality of the delivery.
- overcast 9y ago
  Certainly worked for Steam. Totally revitalized PC gaming. The hassle of downloading games, applying constant cracks, and what not. Now you pay $5 for a humble bundle full of steam games.
imglorp 9y ago
I've been tagged for torrenting things which were broadcast over the air. The way I saw it, there was no way to get the show on my device and on my schedule, and the content provider was actually getting someone watching their program--with ads intact--for no additional effort or expense on their part. Financially, they won. They didn't see it that way :)
- sosborn 9y ago
  Financially they lost. They can’t sell advertising based on the number of people who pirate the show. Yeah, the advertisers made out (assuming you didn’t skip the ads) but the content producer did not.
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    This was their choice. They could have simply made it available for streaming during or after the show was broadcast, adverts and all. It isn't like most folks I know sit there and watch adverts on "regular" channels anyway. They can offer an ad-free service for a charge. When they don't offer such things on a fairly broad (global) scale, I don't see how they can be surprised when folks watch it illegally. And I seriously don't understand why the courts aren't asking the providers to do such things.
    - sosborn 9y ago
      I don’t really disagree with you, but my point was that the original assertion that they made out because the OP pirated the content is false.
Shoothe 9y ago
> 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. I did as Netflix had continuous problems with keeping high quality stream at all times. Playing local file I have guaranteed HQ content without stops to buffer more data. Even with 250 Mb/s connection (measured using Netflix's own fast.com).
- ghaff 9y ago
  Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing. (I only do that for travel though. Even with a fairly modest Internet connection, I rarely have issues.)
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    I don't see download option on my TV running Android. Is this only for PC? On the other hand video files work seamlessly (there is MX Player for Android TV). Sure, there is extra hassle for getting them in the first place but Netflix still has small library for my family (e.g. has Frozen but not Tangled).
    - gamblor956 9y ago
      It's only for films or shows produced or distributed by Netflix. The download option doesn't include shows/films that they license.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        Ah. Hadn't noticed that. Most of what I watch on those services, especially when traveling, is their original content so I hadn't noticed it wasn't for everything.
      - johnny22 9y ago
        at least some of the documentaries from PBS and BBC are downloadable as well.
      - 9y ago
8draco8 9y ago
The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried to watch rest in hotel and Netflix refused to play it because I was in UK. Funny thing is that when I switched to plane mode I could watch it. My question is what's the point? I as a person, am going in to agreement with Netflix that they will provide me movie. Nothing changes apart from my geographical location (I am paying the same amount of money, I am paying the same taxes, everything stays the same) and yet I can't watch the movie just because I am in different spot on the glob. I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Netflix isn't locking it down, the company they are buying the media from is locking it down.
  - gsich 9y ago
    Netflix is enforcing it. They do the actual technical action of blocking access.
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      They are required to per the licensing deal they made with the content owner.
      - gsich 9y ago
        This always reads like an excuse. They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details Netflix has to deploy. If the deal says "no access for users outside country x", Netflix could just ask the user from which country they are from. Then, depending on the answer either show it or not. On another note, some companies like this. Take Valve with Steam. They are definitly in a position to dictate "no region lock bullshit", yet they still make them available. Because it means more money.
adrusi 9y ago
I have a wireless audio configuration which introduces 200ms latency. This is usually unnoticeable because I watch almost all my video through mpv, which lets me set a 200ms delay on the video to compensate. I can't play Netflix titles through mpv, and as far as I've been able to tell, the Netflix player doesn't have an AV sync setting. My setup is idiosyncratic, and I wouldn't expect Netflix to build in every feature of power-user video players like mpv and vlc. As long as Netflix uses DRM, their service will be inadequate for some small segment of the population, and that segment will pirate their content, because their DRM has done nothing to stop their content appearing on torrent sites within hours of its release.
- perfmode 9y ago
  My tv can do this. And I think my Apple TV can also.
- icebraining 9y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_while_watching_netflix_instant_play_hold_down/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_whi...
  - adrusi 9y ago
    This works on the old silverlight player, not on the modern HTML5 EME-based player. I've been able to find some hidden keybindings that work, but those only display information. Let me know if you know how it can be done.
    - pentagonpapers 9y ago
      Route through jackd and an audio delay should work
- cat199 9y ago
  should have bought a digital monster cable instead.. would have had just as much utility and impressive shinyness without the latency..
baddox 9y ago
When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f* the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of CDs of bands I almost certainly never would have discovered without what.cd. Same goes for old and indie films. These days I do very little pirating. I'll occasionally pirate a TV show or film that I can't find on the handful of VOD services I or my friends subscribe to. Say what you will about the bad aspects of the modern media ecosystem: DRM, "stream instead of own," fragmentation, etc. But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience.
- Momquist 9y ago
  > But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience. It has, but the fragmentation that you mentioned is starting to seriously erode this progress. If the situation worsens on this front, I can definitely see a resurgence of piracy, again because of convenience.
  - baddox 9y ago
    That’s true. I should also say that I watch a lot less content than I did in college and before, so that’s another big contributing factor.
  - tracker1 9y ago
    Agreed.. I'm paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu... I'm not paying for another service at this point. Not to mention UK content I can't get at any price. I also pay for a seedbox in another country to avoid local issues.
  - Tijdreiziger 9y ago
    The convenience factor is already catered to by illegal streaming sites mentioned in the article. Anecdotally, out of the people I know, only two still pirate, but a lot use illegal streaming sites.
brooot 9y ago
This is how Steam basically single handily defeated video game pirating. Newell himself is on record saying that piracy is an issue of not making something accessible enough, and he was obviously right. People will pay for convenience. We are no longer in the age of, "I want to watch/listen/play something, lets drive to the store". If the platform they use sucks, it will have the same problem. Last pirating site I was apart of that had a game library, you would see games on shittier platforms pirated more often.
- taneq 9y ago
  Convenience, sure, but don't forget that games on Steam are often deeply discounted compared with off-the-shelf prices. PC games (at least in Australia) are often $60 - $90 on the shelves. Many of these games can be had on Steam for $20 or less, and sometimes for only a few dollars in a bundle or on sale.
  - matt_j 9y ago
    An $80 packaged game on a shelf probably nets the developer the same profit as a $20 digital version of the same game delivered via Steam. Packaging, distribution and retail markup are a big chunk of the price.
    - King-Aaron 9y ago
      As an aside to this, I find it astonishing that you even still see packaged games on the shelf. The last couple of games I bought from a retailer were just a carboard box, a dvd sleeve inside and a business card with a download link on it inside that... No need to pay a markup for literally nothing.
      - detaro 9y ago
        funnily enough, sometimes the cardboard box is cheaper than buying the digital download. I assume a motivations of it are a) to have presence next to console games and b) gift-giving? If there were at least the basic versions of the games on the disc, you could add c) people with slow internet to the equation, but that seems less and less common.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bringtheaction 9y ago
I was about to argue that Netflix is still not viable for Linux users but then I googled it and apparently Netflix now works out of the box in Google Chrome. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-easy-way/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-e... Does that include Chromium though? I think probably not. I will give it a try in Chromium but if that doesn't work then I will not be able to use Netflix still.
- joshumax 9y ago
  It should work with Chromium, IIRC, however you'd need to install the Widevine DRM plugin to make it work. It's available in the non-free section of most-distributions, being closed-source and all...
- wpietri 9y ago
  Yeah, I've been happily using Netflix on Linux for years. (As well as on an Android tablet and a Roku box for my projector.) Like many others, I'm entirely happy to pay money for content; my torrenting was about convenience. I'll still torrent when I buy a movie on DVD, because it's way easier to download than to rip it myself.
  - xur17 9y ago
    I've been fairly happy with it on Linux, but it still drives me crazy that despite paying for a 4k plan, the best I can view in my browser is 720p. I'm guessing it's a piracy prevention mechanism, but I'm not sure there's much value in this as it's released in 4k on torrent sites within an hour of the release.
  - jug 9y ago
    You can happily use Netflix on Linux, but not in 1080p. :(
- planck01 9y ago
  Netflix also works in Firefox on Linux since almost a year or so.
_Marak_ 9y ago
I also had major issues trying to stream A.P. Bio on NBC's streaming website. I wanted to see the new show with Glenn Howerton. The video was really laggy, skipped dialog due to lag jitters, and served up 15 minutes of ads for 22 minutes of content. Ended up not watching the show because of NBC site not working right.
- phil248 9y ago
  Yes, lag is one thing, but the NBC website was literally skipping dialogue. After missing three jokes in a row I gave up.
cm2187 9y ago
Same. I have the budget for it, just there is no legit service that will give me the movies I want to watch. I have zero interest in the latest fast & furry or marvel movie. I'm rather: pull the filmography of Robert Duvall and let's watch the movies I haven't seen already. Easy to do on bittorrent, impossible on any streaming service. The only alternative is buying DVDs and Blurays on amazon which I also do, but that requires some patience/planning ahead which I'm not good at, and then I have to rip them on another machine, it's just not convenient.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  This might sound like a dumb question, but have you checked Youtube much? Their catalog of "pay to stream" movies is (to me) surprisingly good. Definitely not just the recent blockbusters... they've got all sorts of older and less well know stuff. Just for shits and giggles I pulled up the Robert Duvall filmography just now and check and found even the oldest and lesser known ones on Youtube, most for around $3-4 to watch. Strangely enough, since discovering this aspect of Youtube, that has become my goto site for most movies, and definitely helped cut down on my pirating activity.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Thanks for the tip. Will look into it.
RobertoG 9y ago
You made me curious about the show, so I went to the NBC page. It says: "Sorry, this video is not available from your location."
- PhantomGremlin 9y ago
  Oh, God no! I like to watch the first episode of a new show to see if I'll like it. But this is one show I deeply, I say again deeply regret watching. I'll never get those 22 minutes of my life back. The show is cringeworthy. It's one of the un-funniest sitcoms (can they call it that?) I've ever seen. It's that bad. Everything has a price, but I wouldn't watch another episode unless they paid me $100. And if the second episode was as bad as the first, they would need to keep doubling that payment for each additional episode.
jen729w 9y ago
This. Me and my lady enjoy watching [some abysmal show that I won’t admit to] which is currently broadcast on one of the Australian networks. I don’t own a TV receiver, so everything is streamed. Their site is so pitifully bad I refuse to use it. I tried, I really did. But when the ads break and you’re forced to reload the stream, only to be put back to the start, with no ability to skip forward? Sorry, no. I wait a day and torrent the show with the ads removed. And I don’t feel the tiniest bit bad about it.
pepe56 9y ago
Cannot agree more. It's only convenience for me as well. An mp4/mkv file has no ads, doesn't care about my browser version and will play perfectly on the plane or in any country. Ah, and I can have it in any language available with any subtitles. Sorry, but all that proprietary crap out there can't beat that.
m_mueller 9y ago
I second GP's problem with subtitles and availability. For me torrenting always been about media I cannot get in the way I want - their release is delayed in the country I stay in, or it's only available dubbed or it doesn't have the subtitles I need (e.g. to watch Japanese, Spanish, French or Italian speaking films for me or anything other than Japanese for my Japanese wife). Where I come from around half the marriages are between people of different nationalities and a significant percentage of those between people of different languages. Even when people are fluent in a language, subtitles still allow a much more comfortable viewing (and also learning a language better). This is something that all those US-centric services just don't get. Netflix is improving with its own content, anyone else is far behind.
- vsl 9y ago
  Netflix is improving in some locales, but remains a shitshow elsewhere (experimentally: countries with under 40M population). E.g. there are German and Polish subtitles for everything; there are almost none for Czech. They do things like providing them for only season 1, but not the rest, or don’t bother even with their own high-profile shows. Slovak viewers can choose between Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian subs, but not Czech - even though the entire country fluently understands Czech, an extremely closely related language. Netflix doesn’t care. Or have even nominally-useful support. If the Netflix app allowed side loading my own subtitles, it’d be fine. But of course it doesn’t and won’t. So guess what I do when I finish Narcos season 1 and discover lack of subtitles in season 2. Or when a show available on Netflix doesn’t have any (and I want to watch it with my spouse who can’t read English subs quickly enough).
  - jesperbk 9y ago
    Interesting. I don't think I have ever come across anything that didn't have Danish subtitles. The same goes for the other Nordic languages that for some reason are available on Danish Netflix.
jobu 9y ago
> But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. It amazes me how actively hostile most of the TV networks are towards viewers. It's very obvious that we're the product and the advertisers are the customer. If the NBC app crashes in the middle of a show you're forced to re-watch all of the ads from the beginning. If an advertisement doesn't load for any reason, there's no timeout or error handling, you're just done watching that show until you kill and restart the app (and re-watch all the ads again).
- twothamendment 9y ago
  I've been around some TV news people. They can't imagine why we aren't glued to our sets because they told us to come at 6pm and 10pm. They think they teased a good story earlier in the day. They think they are being so generous to let us watch something when we want to. It is already a huge leap to break the schedule and play on demand. Yes, someday they will realize most people under 45 don't watch TV news. That someday will come when their current viewers die. The stations will be lost -they already "tried" streaming. Who wants to bet that they will desperately add more advertisements to any stream they can.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  They're not specifically hostile, it's more the industry - like many others - selects True Believers who cannot understand the outsider/consumer point of view. And yes - ultimately it's about ad sales.
realusername 9y ago
On my case it's the same, I torrent shows I can watch for free on Amazon Prime because for some reason their DRM never plays properly.
paulie_a 9y ago
I've attempted to pay for some shows and movies but after a while I've become sick of drm, slow downloads or crappy streaming. It is simply more convenient to just get it from a high quality source.
philliphaydon 9y ago
Torrenting for me was because there was no other way. When I lived in Australia the internet was so bad and there was no access to Netflix, Hulu or anything. Once I moved to singapore I instantly went from adsl2+ giving me 1.8mbit to 1gbit giving me 800mbit average. And I could sign up for Netflix and Hulu. The last time I used BitTorrent must be 6-7 years ago now.
Grangar 9y ago
Plenty people still give up on Netflix to torrent. Especially when Netflix doesn't carry all that much content in some countries. I wanted to watch Lord of the Rings the other day, and to my surprise they pulled it from the available content in my country.
ansible 9y ago
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. I had a similar experience last year trying to watch "The Orville" using the Fox Now app. First they place restrictions so that you can only watch the 4 most recent episodes. And then the Android app itself was horribly slow and crashy. The interactive ads were annoying, but I could have lived with it if everything else had worked smoothly. I'm so lazy these days that if it isn't already available on Netflix, I won't bother watching it. There's enough stuff on there that I can just watch something else. I'm also cycling through some Stanford physics lectures by Leonard Susskind, which satisfies my desires for intellectual simulation right now.
heisenbit 9y ago
> Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. They won't master. They focus on monetization before they got the basics in place. Case in point MSNBC. Unbelievable where in the world the page is loading scripts from and phoning home to. Add weak streaming and of course the experience is brittle and virtually unusable. If MSNBC wants to share information with serious partners they may do that but the cheap way they let everyone add a tracker is embarrassing.
moistoreos 9y ago
I would subscribe to a torrenting plan anyday. i don't even care if it's like $30/mo. Just give me access to high quality content in a legal fashion.

mulmen 9y ago

I'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 ago
I 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 ago
  Ah 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 ago
small 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.
- amiga-workbench 9y ago
  After Steam took off I did the same, it's much more convenient than piracy. The only exception I make is when software has overbearing DRM in place. I will not hand over money for a tainted product when I can get better for nothing. With video media I'm largely covered with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video but there is still plenty of content I'm missing. Instead of doing the right thing many networks are rolling their own half arsed subscription streaming services. Nobody in their right mind is going to stay subbed to the likes of CBS All Access when the only thing half worth watching is Star Trek Discovery, I've seen many people ditching their sub now that the season is over.
posterboy 9y ago
In my experience it is. Streaming apps come integrated into all kinds of devices, giving a plug and play experience close to the old fashioned way. It's not much, but don't forget to consider trust at that. Why risk shady piracy when a convenient app is built right into your $device. Whether that reduces piracy or rather the legal enforcement which pushes torrents into the shadows of its former self does not hinge on the quality of the delivery.
overcast 9y ago
Certainly worked for Steam. Totally revitalized PC gaming. The hassle of downloading games, applying constant cracks, and what not. Now you pay $5 for a humble bundle full of steam games.

imglorp 9y ago

I've been tagged for torrenting things which were broadcast over the air. The way I saw it, there was no way to get the show on my device and on my schedule, and the content provider was actually getting someone watching their program--with ads intact--for no additional effort or expense on their part. Financially, they won. They didn't see it that way :)

sosborn 9y ago
Financially they lost. They can’t sell advertising based on the number of people who pirate the show. Yeah, the advertisers made out (assuming you didn’t skip the ads) but the content producer did not.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  This was their choice. They could have simply made it available for streaming during or after the show was broadcast, adverts and all. It isn't like most folks I know sit there and watch adverts on "regular" channels anyway. They can offer an ad-free service for a charge. When they don't offer such things on a fairly broad (global) scale, I don't see how they can be surprised when folks watch it illegally. And I seriously don't understand why the courts aren't asking the providers to do such things.
  - sosborn 9y ago
    I don’t really disagree with you, but my point was that the original assertion that they made out because the OP pirated the content is false.

Shoothe 9y ago

> 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. I did as Netflix had continuous problems with keeping high quality stream at all times. Playing local file I have guaranteed HQ content without stops to buffer more data. Even with 250 Mb/s connection (measured using Netflix's own fast.com).

ghaff 9y ago
Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing. (I only do that for travel though. Even with a fairly modest Internet connection, I rarely have issues.)
- Shoothe 9y ago
  I don't see download option on my TV running Android. Is this only for PC? On the other hand video files work seamlessly (there is MX Player for Android TV). Sure, there is extra hassle for getting them in the first place but Netflix still has small library for my family (e.g. has Frozen but not Tangled).
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    It's only for films or shows produced or distributed by Netflix. The download option doesn't include shows/films that they license.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Ah. Hadn't noticed that. Most of what I watch on those services, especially when traveling, is their original content so I hadn't noticed it wasn't for everything.
    - johnny22 9y ago
      at least some of the documentaries from PBS and BBC are downloadable as well.
    - 9y ago

8draco8 9y ago

The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried to watch rest in hotel and Netflix refused to play it because I was in UK. Funny thing is that when I switched to plane mode I could watch it. My question is what's the point? I as a person, am going in to agreement with Netflix that they will provide me movie. Nothing changes apart from my geographical location (I am paying the same amount of money, I am paying the same taxes, everything stays the same) and yet I can't watch the movie just because I am in different spot on the glob. I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market.

lotsofpulp 9y ago
Netflix isn't locking it down, the company they are buying the media from is locking it down.
- gsich 9y ago
  Netflix is enforcing it. They do the actual technical action of blocking access.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    They are required to per the licensing deal they made with the content owner.
    - gsich 9y ago
      This always reads like an excuse. They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details Netflix has to deploy. If the deal says "no access for users outside country x", Netflix could just ask the user from which country they are from. Then, depending on the answer either show it or not. On another note, some companies like this. Take Valve with Steam. They are definitly in a position to dictate "no region lock bullshit", yet they still make them available. Because it means more money.

adrusi 9y ago

I have a wireless audio configuration which introduces 200ms latency. This is usually unnoticeable because I watch almost all my video through mpv, which lets me set a 200ms delay on the video to compensate. I can't play Netflix titles through mpv, and as far as I've been able to tell, the Netflix player doesn't have an AV sync setting. My setup is idiosyncratic, and I wouldn't expect Netflix to build in every feature of power-user video players like mpv and vlc. As long as Netflix uses DRM, their service will be inadequate for some small segment of the population, and that segment will pirate their content, because their DRM has done nothing to stop their content appearing on torrent sites within hours of its release.

perfmode 9y ago
My tv can do this. And I think my Apple TV can also.
icebraining 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_while_watching_netflix_instant_play_hold_down/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1j7hce/lpt_whi...
- adrusi 9y ago
  This works on the old silverlight player, not on the modern HTML5 EME-based player. I've been able to find some hidden keybindings that work, but those only display information. Let me know if you know how it can be done.
  - pentagonpapers 9y ago
    Route through jackd and an audio delay should work
cat199 9y ago
should have bought a digital monster cable instead.. would have had just as much utility and impressive shinyness without the latency..

baddox 9y ago

When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f* the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of CDs of bands I almost certainly never would have discovered without what.cd. Same goes for old and indie films. These days I do very little pirating. I'll occasionally pirate a TV show or film that I can't find on the handful of VOD services I or my friends subscribe to. Say what you will about the bad aspects of the modern media ecosystem: DRM, "stream instead of own," fragmentation, etc. But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience.

Momquist 9y ago
> But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience. It has, but the fragmentation that you mentioned is starting to seriously erode this progress. If the situation worsens on this front, I can definitely see a resurgence of piracy, again because of convenience.
- baddox 9y ago
  That’s true. I should also say that I watch a lot less content than I did in college and before, so that’s another big contributing factor.
- tracker1 9y ago
  Agreed.. I'm paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu... I'm not paying for another service at this point. Not to mention UK content I can't get at any price. I also pay for a seedbox in another country to avoid local issues.
- Tijdreiziger 9y ago
  The convenience factor is already catered to by illegal streaming sites mentioned in the article. Anecdotally, out of the people I know, only two still pirate, but a lot use illegal streaming sites.

brooot 9y ago

This is how Steam basically single handily defeated video game pirating. Newell himself is on record saying that piracy is an issue of not making something accessible enough, and he was obviously right. People will pay for convenience. We are no longer in the age of, "I want to watch/listen/play something, lets drive to the store". If the platform they use sucks, it will have the same problem. Last pirating site I was apart of that had a game library, you would see games on shittier platforms pirated more often.

taneq 9y ago
Convenience, sure, but don't forget that games on Steam are often deeply discounted compared with off-the-shelf prices. PC games (at least in Australia) are often $60 - $90 on the shelves. Many of these games can be had on Steam for $20 or less, and sometimes for only a few dollars in a bundle or on sale.
- matt_j 9y ago
  An $80 packaged game on a shelf probably nets the developer the same profit as a $20 digital version of the same game delivered via Steam. Packaging, distribution and retail markup are a big chunk of the price.
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    As an aside to this, I find it astonishing that you even still see packaged games on the shelf. The last couple of games I bought from a retailer were just a carboard box, a dvd sleeve inside and a business card with a download link on it inside that... No need to pay a markup for literally nothing.
    - detaro 9y ago
      funnily enough, sometimes the cardboard box is cheaper than buying the digital download. I assume a motivations of it are a) to have presence next to console games and b) gift-giving? If there were at least the basic versions of the games on the disc, you could add c) people with slow internet to the equation, but that seems less and less common.

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bringtheaction 9y ago

I was about to argue that Netflix is still not viable for Linux users but then I googled it and apparently Netflix now works out of the box in Google Chrome. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-easy-way/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-netflix-natively-linux-e... Does that include Chromium though? I think probably not. I will give it a try in Chromium but if that doesn't work then I will not be able to use Netflix still.

joshumax 9y ago
It should work with Chromium, IIRC, however you'd need to install the Widevine DRM plugin to make it work. It's available in the non-free section of most-distributions, being closed-source and all...
wpietri 9y ago
Yeah, I've been happily using Netflix on Linux for years. (As well as on an Android tablet and a Roku box for my projector.) Like many others, I'm entirely happy to pay money for content; my torrenting was about convenience. I'll still torrent when I buy a movie on DVD, because it's way easier to download than to rip it myself.
- xur17 9y ago
  I've been fairly happy with it on Linux, but it still drives me crazy that despite paying for a 4k plan, the best I can view in my browser is 720p. I'm guessing it's a piracy prevention mechanism, but I'm not sure there's much value in this as it's released in 4k on torrent sites within an hour of the release.
- jug 9y ago
  You can happily use Netflix on Linux, but not in 1080p. :(
planck01 9y ago
Netflix also works in Firefox on Linux since almost a year or so.

_Marak_ 9y ago

I also had major issues trying to stream A.P. Bio on NBC's streaming website. I wanted to see the new show with Glenn Howerton. The video was really laggy, skipped dialog due to lag jitters, and served up 15 minutes of ads for 22 minutes of content. Ended up not watching the show because of NBC site not working right.

phil248 9y ago
Yes, lag is one thing, but the NBC website was literally skipping dialogue. After missing three jokes in a row I gave up.

cm2187 9y ago

Same. I have the budget for it, just there is no legit service that will give me the movies I want to watch. I have zero interest in the latest fast & furry or marvel movie. I'm rather: pull the filmography of Robert Duvall and let's watch the movies I haven't seen already. Easy to do on bittorrent, impossible on any streaming service. The only alternative is buying DVDs and Blurays on amazon which I also do, but that requires some patience/planning ahead which I'm not good at, and then I have to rip them on another machine, it's just not convenient.

mindcrime 9y ago
This might sound like a dumb question, but have you checked Youtube much? Their catalog of "pay to stream" movies is (to me) surprisingly good. Definitely not just the recent blockbusters... they've got all sorts of older and less well know stuff. Just for shits and giggles I pulled up the Robert Duvall filmography just now and check and found even the oldest and lesser known ones on Youtube, most for around $3-4 to watch. Strangely enough, since discovering this aspect of Youtube, that has become my goto site for most movies, and definitely helped cut down on my pirating activity.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Thanks for the tip. Will look into it.

RobertoG 9y ago

You made me curious about the show, so I went to the NBC page. It says: "Sorry, this video is not available from your location."

PhantomGremlin 9y ago
Oh, God no! I like to watch the first episode of a new show to see if I'll like it. But this is one show I deeply, I say again deeply regret watching. I'll never get those 22 minutes of my life back. The show is cringeworthy. It's one of the un-funniest sitcoms (can they call it that?) I've ever seen. It's that bad. Everything has a price, but I wouldn't watch another episode unless they paid me $100. And if the second episode was as bad as the first, they would need to keep doubling that payment for each additional episode.

jen729w 9y ago

This. Me and my lady enjoy watching [some abysmal show that I won’t admit to] which is currently broadcast on one of the Australian networks. I don’t own a TV receiver, so everything is streamed. Their site is so pitifully bad I refuse to use it. I tried, I really did. But when the ads break and you’re forced to reload the stream, only to be put back to the start, with no ability to skip forward? Sorry, no. I wait a day and torrent the show with the ads removed. And I don’t feel the tiniest bit bad about it.

pepe56 9y ago

Cannot agree more. It's only convenience for me as well. An mp4/mkv file has no ads, doesn't care about my browser version and will play perfectly on the plane or in any country. Ah, and I can have it in any language available with any subtitles. Sorry, but all that proprietary crap out there can't beat that.

m_mueller 9y ago

I second GP's problem with subtitles and availability. For me torrenting always been about media I cannot get in the way I want - their release is delayed in the country I stay in, or it's only available dubbed or it doesn't have the subtitles I need (e.g. to watch Japanese, Spanish, French or Italian speaking films for me or anything other than Japanese for my Japanese wife). Where I come from around half the marriages are between people of different nationalities and a significant percentage of those between people of different languages. Even when people are fluent in a language, subtitles still allow a much more comfortable viewing (and also learning a language better). This is something that all those US-centric services just don't get. Netflix is improving with its own content, anyone else is far behind.

vsl 9y ago
Netflix is improving in some locales, but remains a shitshow elsewhere (experimentally: countries with under 40M population). E.g. there are German and Polish subtitles for everything; there are almost none for Czech. They do things like providing them for only season 1, but not the rest, or don’t bother even with their own high-profile shows. Slovak viewers can choose between Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian subs, but not Czech - even though the entire country fluently understands Czech, an extremely closely related language. Netflix doesn’t care. Or have even nominally-useful support. If the Netflix app allowed side loading my own subtitles, it’d be fine. But of course it doesn’t and won’t. So guess what I do when I finish Narcos season 1 and discover lack of subtitles in season 2. Or when a show available on Netflix doesn’t have any (and I want to watch it with my spouse who can’t read English subs quickly enough).
- jesperbk 9y ago
  Interesting. I don't think I have ever come across anything that didn't have Danish subtitles. The same goes for the other Nordic languages that for some reason are available on Danish Netflix.

jobu 9y ago

> But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. It amazes me how actively hostile most of the TV networks are towards viewers. It's very obvious that we're the product and the advertisers are the customer. If the NBC app crashes in the middle of a show you're forced to re-watch all of the ads from the beginning. If an advertisement doesn't load for any reason, there's no timeout or error handling, you're just done watching that show until you kill and restart the app (and re-watch all the ads again).

twothamendment 9y ago
I've been around some TV news people. They can't imagine why we aren't glued to our sets because they told us to come at 6pm and 10pm. They think they teased a good story earlier in the day. They think they are being so generous to let us watch something when we want to. It is already a huge leap to break the schedule and play on demand. Yes, someday they will realize most people under 45 don't watch TV news. That someday will come when their current viewers die. The stations will be lost -they already "tried" streaming. Who wants to bet that they will desperately add more advertisements to any stream they can.
TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
They're not specifically hostile, it's more the industry - like many others - selects True Believers who cannot understand the outsider/consumer point of view. And yes - ultimately it's about ad sales.

realusername 9y ago

On my case it's the same, I torrent shows I can watch for free on Amazon Prime because for some reason their DRM never plays properly.

paulie_a 9y ago

I've attempted to pay for some shows and movies but after a while I've become sick of drm, slow downloads or crappy streaming. It is simply more convenient to just get it from a high quality source.

philliphaydon 9y ago

Torrenting for me was because there was no other way. When I lived in Australia the internet was so bad and there was no access to Netflix, Hulu or anything. Once I moved to singapore I instantly went from adsl2+ giving me 1.8mbit to 1gbit giving me 800mbit average. And I could sign up for Netflix and Hulu. The last time I used BitTorrent must be 6-7 years ago now.

Grangar 9y ago

Plenty people still give up on Netflix to torrent. Especially when Netflix doesn't carry all that much content in some countries. I wanted to watch Lord of the Rings the other day, and to my surprise they pulled it from the available content in my country.

ansible 9y ago

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. I had a similar experience last year trying to watch "The Orville" using the Fox Now app. First they place restrictions so that you can only watch the 4 most recent episodes. And then the Android app itself was horribly slow and crashy. The interactive ads were annoying, but I could have lived with it if everything else had worked smoothly. I'm so lazy these days that if it isn't already available on Netflix, I won't bother watching it. There's enough stuff on there that I can just watch something else. I'm also cycling through some Stanford physics lectures by Leonard Susskind, which satisfies my desires for intellectual simulation right now.

heisenbit 9y ago

> Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. They won't master. They focus on monetization before they got the basics in place. Case in point MSNBC. Unbelievable where in the world the page is loading scripts from and phoning home to. Add weak streaming and of course the experience is brittle and virtually unusable. If MSNBC wants to share information with serious partners they may do that but the cheap way they let everyone add a tracker is embarrassing.

moistoreos 9y ago

I would subscribe to a torrenting plan anyday. i don't even care if it's like $30/mo. Just give me access to high quality content in a legal fashion.