9 ms·

Although I am a customer of some streaming services (they are convenient and have good and bad stuff), it is often nice to just get a file for a specific song o

Although I am a customer of some streaming services (they are convenient and have good and bad stuff), it is often nice to just get a file for a specific song or movie - and that is most convenient via torrenting. People do sign up for streaming services, but not for like, 10. Furthermore torrenting got really convenient and is very fast with adequate Internet (let's say 10MByte/s), so you get a decent quality movie in under 5 minutes (obviously only if there are enough seeders - but the availability of torrents completely dwarfs the availability of streaming providers - if it's really unpopular and maybe a little bit older you just won't find it on streaming services). Beside the fact that BitTorrent is an interesting protocol in itself, imagine just how much simpler Netflix or Spotify could be implemented, if we wouldn't stream DRM encrypted blobs, but download files? You just need many big fat file-servers and put your media there - if we wouldn't have DRM (AFAIK all streaming providers enforce DRM), this is technically a solved problem.

afureta 7y ago
Out of curiosity, who are the people who want DRM? I understand that big media producers want them, in some misguided attempt at protecting their IP, but is that it?
- zeptomu 7y ago
  > [...], but is that it. Yes. I guess people would even pay for Spotify, if it's DRM free (which means the stuff on it can be copied), but that is still considered "radical" (in the Overton window) for shareholders of media distributors. That "Save your music offline" is a feature in 2019 is ridiculous.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    Fuck yes I'd pay for a drm free audio service. Any competitor of Spotify's that offers this would instantly get me as a customer - assuming, of course, they have a similar offering to Spotify. Spotify is already mediocre compared to Grooveshark and YouTube, it really shouldn't get worse than that.
    - neop1x 7y ago
      Deezer + Deezloader
  - jhanschoo 7y ago
    There was such a service once, magnatune, but it never took off.
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      It never got big but it still exists: http://magnatune.com/ http://magnatune.com/.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Yes but protecting their IP is futile, therefore DRM primarily targets legitimate users. The idea is to have complete control over the user experience. You can only watch movies on approved device X in approved app Y. The media companies can then use DRM to put hardware manufacturers and software developers under pressure and order them to do whatever they want.
zbobet2012 7y ago
As a streaming industry software engineer: File based streaming is done not for DRM but because of distribution cost and user experience. A segmented ABR video delivery massively decreases CDN costs (which is why Youtube, which is drm free does it). Video startup times, seek times, thumbnail scrubbing, fast forward, clip previews, ad insertion and many other things don't work in a file based experience. In addition subtitles, secondary audio, descriptive video, and multi-view video etc. are all things which we mandate by law which do not work well in a file base expierenced. Peer to peer as a distribution method is not only know, but there are plenty of providers that use peer to peer like streaming setups (see https://streamroot.io/streamroot-dna/ https://streamroot.io/streamroot-dna/). You may be using something like BitTorrent and _not even know it_. Distribution is 1/10th the story and DRM is only a small part of it as well. BitTorrent does nothing to solve the other 9/10ths and removing DRM doesn't either.
- DevoidSimo 7y ago
  Why do you say subtitles and secondary audio (I assume you mean multiple language tracks) don't work well? I've downloaded files with multiple subtitles and audio tracks, which VLC makes easy to switch between. Admittedly, many/most torrents don't offer these but that doesn't mean they can't.
  - developer2 7y ago
    Subtitles are not a burden; downloading a single torrent with a dozen subtitle tracks adds negligible bytes to the overall download size. Audio tracks are a tad rougher; the good torrents come with multiple tracks, but you are downloading all audio tracks even if you only play a single language–and the size of those audio tracks is not as negligible. Most people with large or unlimited bandwidth simply don't care about "paying the price" for multiple audio tracks; it takes a few extra minutes, at $0 additional financial cost. The rest is your parent justifying their job/industry as if they're a Godsend–perhaps as compared to cable? It's an indefensible position thus far. The streaming services are all trash with pathetic bitrates; all streams average the same ridiculously low bitrate over the entire stream, without accounting for dark scenes that require orders of magnitude more bandwidth. Every Netflix (and competitors') 1080p streams with dark scenes are unwatchable. It's highway robbery to deliver what looks like 180p frames for a 1080p stream. We're supposed to be at 4K these days, yet they can't even deliver acceptable 1080p. Until the streaming services are willing to stop compressing everything far beyond watchable levels, they don't deserve anyone's business. Netflix, I believe, averages ~3-5 GB for a 90-120 minute movie? That number should be, at least via opt-in to those with the bandwidth for it, 20-40+ GB. I don't necessarily expect fully uncompressed Blu-ray quality, but the standard should be to deliver something watchable, without banding artifacts. At a minimum that would mean massively variable bitrates, where the highest bitrate of a stream should be allowed to be 10-20x+ its minimum bitrate. Compressing a 60+ GB original file into a download of than 5 GB is flat out unacceptable and unjustifiable.
bscphil 7y ago
>Furthermore torrenting got really convenient and is very fast with adequate Internet (let's say 10MByte/s), so you get a decent quality movie in under 5 minutes (obviously only if there are enough seeders - but the availability of torrents completely dwarfs the availability of streaming providers - if it's really unpopular and maybe a little bit older you just won't find it on streaming services). Small nit: with that Internet speed you could only download a 3 GB file, which is definitely not enough for a quality film. Even iTunes, which is kind of infamous for how badly their films are encoded, is usually bigger than that. The big picture though is that it really doesn't matter anymore because quite a few clients now allow you to download the first 10% or so of the file first, so you can start streaming it instantly. There's no reason a for-pay streaming service built on to of bittorrent wouldn't do the same.
- 8GB 7y ago
  You need 4GB/hour, to achieve NTSC quality (640x480@32bit video + 44Khz audio) DVD bandwidth. A DVD ISO rip of a 2 hour movie usually clocks in at 8GB, since a dual layer disc can store 4GB per layer. The expanded LOTR trilogy needs 2 discs per movie, no matter what definition because each break the two hour mark, and even blu-ray can't fit long movies onto a dual layer disc for its format in HD.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    >You need 4GB/hour, to achieve NTSC quality (640x480@32bit video + 44Khz audio) DVD bandwidth. That's going to depend entirely on the codec. MPEG2? Sure. With H.264 a 4GB 720p rip from a Bluray is going to be much better than anything you can get on a DVD. >The expanded LOTR trilogy needs 2 discs per movie, no matter what definition because each break the two hour mark, and even blu-ray can't fit long movies onto a dual layer disc for its format in HD. I'm pretty skeptical of that. Regardless of what media LOTR actually comes on, the extended cut of Fellowship would have a bitrate of ~29 Mbits/sec on a dual-layer disc. That's entirely acceptable, if not exactly ideal. And I'm not sure what the "two hour mark" has to do with it: Fellowship is closer to 4 hours than 3, and there are tons of two hour long films that come on a single Bluray disc.
  - 7y ago
ma2rten 7y ago
Spotify used to be peer to peer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information
on_and_off 7y ago
I use to believe that Netflix or a similar service could be a serious competitor to piratebay and other torrent sites. But : - they all have rolling and incomplete catalogs. Pretty often I want to watch a duo or trilogy of movies. Only one of them is available on netflix, or I start watching a serie and it gets removed from their catalog. - I saw the Lord of the Rings on Netflix. I thought it would be great since I had only watched it once in a theater. But the version that was there was just Netflix's version. Not extended cut, not director commentaries, not bonuses. Just what Netflix gives you and that's it. - Maybe that's just me, but most of the new Netflix produced content seems to be of lower quality than what was launching 2 or 3 years ago. It seems that Netflix is focusing a lot more on delivering tons of original content even it means having duds. Bitorrent does not have these issues. Pretty much all the movies are there, in whatever language and cut I would like to see. The irony is that I am ready to pay for a streaming service, even more than what I pay Netflix if necessary but still, while it might be more convenient to just push the netflix button on my remote, it just not up to the task compared to torrenting.
neop1x 7y ago
And due to various licencing bullshit, there are still lota of movies not availabe on Netflix. Especially outside US.

afureta 7y ago

Out of curiosity, who are the people who want DRM? I understand that big media producers want them, in some misguided attempt at protecting their IP, but is that it?

zeptomu 7y ago
> [...], but is that it. Yes. I guess people would even pay for Spotify, if it's DRM free (which means the stuff on it can be copied), but that is still considered "radical" (in the Overton window) for shareholders of media distributors. That "Save your music offline" is a feature in 2019 is ridiculous.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Fuck yes I'd pay for a drm free audio service. Any competitor of Spotify's that offers this would instantly get me as a customer - assuming, of course, they have a similar offering to Spotify. Spotify is already mediocre compared to Grooveshark and YouTube, it really shouldn't get worse than that.
  - neop1x 7y ago
    Deezer + Deezloader
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  There was such a service once, magnatune, but it never took off.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    It never got big but it still exists: http://magnatune.com/ http://magnatune.com/.
imtringued 7y ago
Yes but protecting their IP is futile, therefore DRM primarily targets legitimate users. The idea is to have complete control over the user experience. You can only watch movies on approved device X in approved app Y. The media companies can then use DRM to put hardware manufacturers and software developers under pressure and order them to do whatever they want.

zbobet2012 7y ago

As a streaming industry software engineer: File based streaming is done not for DRM but because of distribution cost and user experience. A segmented ABR video delivery massively decreases CDN costs (which is why Youtube, which is drm free does it). Video startup times, seek times, thumbnail scrubbing, fast forward, clip previews, ad insertion and many other things don't work in a file based experience. In addition subtitles, secondary audio, descriptive video, and multi-view video etc. are all things which we mandate by law which do not work well in a file base expierenced. Peer to peer as a distribution method is not only know, but there are plenty of providers that use peer to peer like streaming setups (see https://streamroot.io/streamroot-dna/ https://streamroot.io/streamroot-dna/). You may be using something like BitTorrent and _not even know it_. Distribution is 1/10th the story and DRM is only a small part of it as well. BitTorrent does nothing to solve the other 9/10ths and removing DRM doesn't either.

DevoidSimo 7y ago
Why do you say subtitles and secondary audio (I assume you mean multiple language tracks) don't work well? I've downloaded files with multiple subtitles and audio tracks, which VLC makes easy to switch between. Admittedly, many/most torrents don't offer these but that doesn't mean they can't.
- developer2 7y ago
  Subtitles are not a burden; downloading a single torrent with a dozen subtitle tracks adds negligible bytes to the overall download size. Audio tracks are a tad rougher; the good torrents come with multiple tracks, but you are downloading all audio tracks even if you only play a single language–and the size of those audio tracks is not as negligible. Most people with large or unlimited bandwidth simply don't care about "paying the price" for multiple audio tracks; it takes a few extra minutes, at $0 additional financial cost. The rest is your parent justifying their job/industry as if they're a Godsend–perhaps as compared to cable? It's an indefensible position thus far. The streaming services are all trash with pathetic bitrates; all streams average the same ridiculously low bitrate over the entire stream, without accounting for dark scenes that require orders of magnitude more bandwidth. Every Netflix (and competitors') 1080p streams with dark scenes are unwatchable. It's highway robbery to deliver what looks like 180p frames for a 1080p stream. We're supposed to be at 4K these days, yet they can't even deliver acceptable 1080p. Until the streaming services are willing to stop compressing everything far beyond watchable levels, they don't deserve anyone's business. Netflix, I believe, averages ~3-5 GB for a 90-120 minute movie? That number should be, at least via opt-in to those with the bandwidth for it, 20-40+ GB. I don't necessarily expect fully uncompressed Blu-ray quality, but the standard should be to deliver something watchable, without banding artifacts. At a minimum that would mean massively variable bitrates, where the highest bitrate of a stream should be allowed to be 10-20x+ its minimum bitrate. Compressing a 60+ GB original file into a download of than 5 GB is flat out unacceptable and unjustifiable.

bscphil 7y ago

>Furthermore torrenting got really convenient and is very fast with adequate Internet (let's say 10MByte/s), so you get a decent quality movie in under 5 minutes (obviously only if there are enough seeders - but the availability of torrents completely dwarfs the availability of streaming providers - if it's really unpopular and maybe a little bit older you just won't find it on streaming services). Small nit: with that Internet speed you could only download a 3 GB file, which is definitely not enough for a quality film. Even iTunes, which is kind of infamous for how badly their films are encoded, is usually bigger than that. The big picture though is that it really doesn't matter anymore because quite a few clients now allow you to download the first 10% or so of the file first, so you can start streaming it instantly. There's no reason a for-pay streaming service built on to of bittorrent wouldn't do the same.

8GB 7y ago
You need 4GB/hour, to achieve NTSC quality (640x480@32bit video + 44Khz audio) DVD bandwidth. A DVD ISO rip of a 2 hour movie usually clocks in at 8GB, since a dual layer disc can store 4GB per layer. The expanded LOTR trilogy needs 2 discs per movie, no matter what definition because each break the two hour mark, and even blu-ray can't fit long movies onto a dual layer disc for its format in HD.
- bscphil 7y ago
  >You need 4GB/hour, to achieve NTSC quality (640x480@32bit video + 44Khz audio) DVD bandwidth. That's going to depend entirely on the codec. MPEG2? Sure. With H.264 a 4GB 720p rip from a Bluray is going to be much better than anything you can get on a DVD. >The expanded LOTR trilogy needs 2 discs per movie, no matter what definition because each break the two hour mark, and even blu-ray can't fit long movies onto a dual layer disc for its format in HD. I'm pretty skeptical of that. Regardless of what media LOTR actually comes on, the extended cut of Fellowship would have a bitrate of ~29 Mbits/sec on a dual-layer disc. That's entirely acceptable, if not exactly ideal. And I'm not sure what the "two hour mark" has to do with it: Fellowship is closer to 4 hours than 3, and there are tons of two hour long films that come on a single Bluray disc.
- 7y ago

ma2rten 7y ago

Spotify used to be peer to peer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Technical_information

on_and_off 7y ago

I use to believe that Netflix or a similar service could be a serious competitor to piratebay and other torrent sites. But : - they all have rolling and incomplete catalogs. Pretty often I want to watch a duo or trilogy of movies. Only one of them is available on netflix, or I start watching a serie and it gets removed from their catalog. - I saw the Lord of the Rings on Netflix. I thought it would be great since I had only watched it once in a theater. But the version that was there was just Netflix's version. Not extended cut, not director commentaries, not bonuses. Just what Netflix gives you and that's it. - Maybe that's just me, but most of the new Netflix produced content seems to be of lower quality than what was launching 2 or 3 years ago. It seems that Netflix is focusing a lot more on delivering tons of original content even it means having duds. Bitorrent does not have these issues. Pretty much all the movies are there, in whatever language and cut I would like to see. The irony is that I am ready to pay for a streaming service, even more than what I pay Netflix if necessary but still, while it might be more convenient to just push the netflix button on my remote, it just not up to the task compared to torrenting.

neop1x 7y ago

And due to various licencing bullshit, there are still lota of movies not availabe on Netflix. Especially outside US.