13 ms·

The Pirate Bay is trialing high-quality video streaming

198 points by elorant 7y ago

ajmurmann 7y ago
While streaming is certainly more convenient, I frequently wish streaming providers would also allow me to download movies in advance on more platforms. Especially for 4k content the bitrate on streaming can be quite limiting. I'd love to be able to download really high quality video in advance. Currently buying a 4k disc or piratebay seem to be the only option.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Even worse, the previous summer I was all hyped for UHD-1/HDR, decided to go buy a compatible Xbox... (since it was the most recommended player) only to find out that the (big!) store didn't even have Planet Earth 2 to go with all the "4k" hardware they sell ! Guess what I did ?
jakobegger 7y ago
We have a Netflix subscription, an Amazon Prime subscription, and we occasionally rent movies from the iTunes Store. But if I want to watch something specific, 50% of the time I still can't get it on any of the stores. I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? I can legally stream almost any song I can think of from any streaming provider, or I can buy DRM free albums! But for video, the pirate bay is often the only place you can get something.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  What can't you find on the iTunes Store? I use iTunes for most media, precisely because I see it as a way of cutting through all the BS—it has just about every movie and every show—including series from Hulu and HBO. (The sole thing I can't get are Netflix exclusive shows, which is annoying.) (And then I run my purchases through TunesKit to losslessly strip the DRM)
  - Emigre_ 7y ago
    If one is a cinephile there are many interesting classics that are sadly not available on the iTunes Store. There are no films by Ingmar Bergman, for example.
    - jeena 7y ago
      For classics I often use archive.org where you can download everything legally without DRM. https://archive.org/search.php?query=Bergman%2C%20Ingmar&and[]=mediatype%3A%22movies%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Bergman%2C%20Ingmar&and...
      - Emigre_ 7y ago
        Thanks! That looks really good! I will take a look... :)
  - jakobegger 7y ago
    I'm in Austria, so iTunes doesn't have any TV shows at all, and for movies it's hit and miss. Two films I recently looked for and didn't find are "Tank Girl" and "Waking Life", not really any special. I just checked again and apparently Tank Girl is on Amazon Prime! So maybe I'll watch that tonight :) It's also really bad with kids shows. Netflix and Amazon have a lot of them, but the selection keeps changing, and once something disappears from the streaming catalog it's often gone for good (ie. you can't get it for download anymore either). For one show (Lego Chima) I ended up buying used DVDs because I couldn't find it anywhere to download / stream in German. I have no idea how it makes any business sense to stop selling a TV show just because it's a couple of years old.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      Amazon Prime in the U. S. has Tank Girl because it’s currently on my “rewatch soon” list. Granted, that means jack in Australia, but maybe worth a look.
      - deleted 7y ago
- ramshorns 7y ago
  > I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? Maybe the movie industry saw the music industry as a cautionary tale and doubled down with DRM and exclusivity. The difference is bitrate and music sharing happened first, giving the film industry time to react.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    The movie industry has been strongly pushing exclusivity and DRM since the introduction of the VCR.
  - criddell 7y ago
    They doubled down with DRM and still, the only place you can reliably get just about anything you want is from pirate sites.
- shakna 7y ago
  The rules around streaming are much tighter than the rules around purchases. For purchasing films, stuff like iTunes & Google Movies are still pretty good bets, they do have quite a lot. Streaming often falls under public performance and a few other more restrictive contracts, making it harder. As to why a mass-streaming service like Netflix doesn't offer both, usually, then it's simple - you want people to continue paying. The business model depends on people not signing up, downloading, and then cancelling. In my experience a surprising number of people are willing to do that. (Doesn't stop me offering it, however.) --- As for DRM with videos... Hollywood truly, truly despises the idea of DRM-free. I've looked at few contracts for film collections recently, and every contract I saw _required_ the use of DRM. It wasn't a negotiable point. Which is mostly theatre. Bypassing DRM does not take significant effort. It can never truly prevent theft (ignoring any definition of theft), and is massively anti-consumer in the way it breaks. It hurts real customers and doesn't hurt pirates. All the same, it's a hard rule with most national film associations.
  - jakobegger 7y ago
    > It hurts real customers Yes it does. We bought a lot of kids movies on iTunes, and then I couldn't play them back because a device was not authorized (I bought it on my iPhone, so it doesn't work on my girlfriends iPad), or because the internet didn't work, or because iTunes was broken after upgrading to a new OS, ... it's so frustrating when you have a collection of video files on a USB stick that you paid for and you can't watch them.
    - jeena 7y ago
      You could re-download them DRM free from pirate bay, and because you already paid for them it wouldn't even be a immoral thing to do.
      - lkschubert8 7y ago
        It would however be illegal, which is a concern to some.
- sombremesa 7y ago
  As someone who speaks three languages, it's just as hard to find music. Grooveshark used to have a much larger and well-rounded selection, though it had legality issues similar to Pirate Bay.
  - jeena 7y ago
    I'm mostly using the regular YouTube for music nowadays.
    - lostgame 7y ago
      Guessing you don’t care for quality or that listening to an album is interrupted by unskippable ads that are usually far louder than the content? It saddens me, as a musician and producer, how YouTube is the go-to for listening to music. We put a lot of effort into audio engineering, and the flow of an album, only to have a ton of that work degraded by YouTube’s shitty compression or ads that interrupt the intended experience.
      - jholman 7y ago
        Why would anyone listen to ads on youtube? Do they not know how to use software? Regarding quality, most music is listened to in traffic, or on the bus, or while working, or as background in a store, or while exercising, or.... I think it should be pretty obvious that the majority of the time, quality is just not a factor.
      - true_religion 7y ago
        I use YouTube as well, but before it... I used this service called "radio". The compression was terrible. The ads were unstoppable. I love music, but for decades before we all fell in love with music despite the poor medium we listened it to. YouTube isn't any different.
      - cookie_monsta 7y ago
        Question from my kids: what's an "album"?
- perlgeek 7y ago
  I guess much of it is related to Disney pulling their stuff (and of all the brands they've acquired) off of the existing streaming services, to give Disney Plus a competitive advantage.
- danaris 7y ago
  I think that ultimately, the difference is probably radio. Before the internet, people consumed music without buying it all the time. People consumed movies first solely at theaters, then at home from VHS and DVD. Some movies came to TV occasionally, but it was never a guarantee for any given title. So there was already a centralized way to pay record labels for music, and the basic idea of licensing it all to be played in a streaming format was well-established. The movie industry, on the other hand, still wants to make you pay every time you watch, like back when it was still just theaters.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I tend to agree but it probably went even beyond radio. Playing music has long been omnipresent in all sorts of venues and, as a result, there was a clear need for simple, low friction, centralized licensing. Pre-VHS, as you say, there just wasn't the same casual consumption of video content--and, even then, it was mostly private consumption for a long time. You even see differences between music and live theatre licensing. Music has mandatory mechanical licenses for cover. Whereas, with live theatre, a playwrite/copyright owner can refuse to allow a performance based on their work.
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    I think it might be because of the ubiquity of music piracy during the 90's. In it's heyday, you could get anything off of Limewire, Kazaa, and of course Napster with extremely little effort. By contrast, pirating video didn't come until later, when it was more technically feasible (downloading music over a modem already took forever, can you imagine downloading full length movies!?) and by that time, the likes of Spotify had already made legally consuming music so convenient as to make piracy obsolete. Even now, the pirating of PC games is being made more common by the introduction of the Epic Store, which, regardless of your feelings on it, has added friction. Games promised to Steam users are being delayed or going full Epic exclusive and many users are saying "fuck that, we're not getting railroaded into using a launcher we didn't like" and turning to piracy instead. The video landscape is even worse, where it used to be only a select few providers had their own bespoke services (like HBO) now every channel is looking to make their own damn subscription happen, which is adding tons of friction, causing the boom in piracy. The music companies learned, and the video companies haven't, that the main way to counter piracy is to make the legal way to get something as easy as possible, so easy that customers don't mind parting with some cash. And streaming right now is anything but easy.
- sircastor 7y ago
  I don't think it's a matter of harder. I think the film and television industry properly freaked out when they saw what Apple has done to the music industry, and the subsequent uniformity in available services. They had more time to prepare and locked down the content before SV companies could negotiate them into a more consumer-friendly position. I do note that the music industry has leveled out. You basically get the same deal from each streaming provider for the same price.
  - jeena 7y ago
    I guess also that musicians stopped making money with their albums and only use streaming for it's reach, they found other ways to make money.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Musicians never really made money from albums. Occasionally a mega hit might bring in residuals, but musicians generally need to start their own label to get any real cut of album sales.
- kfrzcode 7y ago
  To be fair - the licensing catalog for each of the given music services varies pretty wildly, and you cannot expect to find almost any song on any provider. See: Spotify && [Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Def Leppard, Tool, Beyonce, Garth Brooks], etc. Some of these artists have since released to Spotify but the concept is the same. I agree, though. If PLEX or someone offered a subscription that gave me consistent interface to access all the streaming services, I'd probably pay a few hundred USD a year.
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    Aaaand back to cable it is :)
- chooseaname 7y ago
  > I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? I have read places where if they can't secure the streaming rights to the music in the movie, they can't stream the movie. Also, if any other rights holders can't be found to secure streaming rights, they can't be streamed.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  See also books and video games. It's all down to convenience again I guess ? One big difference is how you're going to replay music & video games multiple times, but are going to play/read movies/shows & books only once.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    One big difference is how you're going to replay music & video games multiple times, but are going to play/read movies/shows & books only once. This is a very good point. Just look around in a public space at everyone wearing headphones, and you can see that music is almost always not consumed in isolation but as a background. A movie or book requires more dedicated attention; I don't see people watching a movie or reading a book while doing something else.
- corodra 7y ago
  I know, it makes no sense. Just because it takes a few more people, a little more time and just a hair more money to make a movie or TV show compared to a song, doesn't mean there should be complicated distribution contracts that navigate multiple investor and labor interests, and channel through international markets and regulations. I swear, capitalism these days. People need to stop demanding money for making entertainment. Just because they spend time making something doesn't mean they're entitled to be "compensated" for it.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  My guess is that it's a much smaller group of investors and executives that control the movie industry, with music creation ownership and distribution being much more distributed.
- HN-Censorship 7y ago
  "I can legally stream almost any song I can think of" Maybe your taste in music is more mainstream
- forrestthewoods 7y ago
  Streaming music is a secondary revenue stream. The real money is in live concerts, merchandise, etc. Streaming and YouTube music videos are practically advertising. For TV/movies the video content is the primary revenue stream. And for most content the only revenue stream. Only a few IPs sell action figures and lunch boxes.
  - dan-robertson 7y ago
    I think this wasn’t always the case, at least for more popular musicians, but it is certainly the case now.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  I think another big difference (apart from all those already stated) is that there was a realisation among musicians very early on (like mid 90s) that the internet was going to give them the ability to cut record labels out of the deal altogether and distribute directly to fans. Most of what a label does/did for musicians is marketing and distribution of physical copies. Sometimes a label organises a producer/engineer, but often bands do this themselves, or bring one along. With physical copies dying and the ability to self-promote on the rise the labels were looking less and less relevant. Movie studios on the other hand coordinate an insane amount of people (some credits sequences run for at least 5 minutes now) and legals, something that is out of the realms of possibility for indie film makers - if you want to make a "big" movie you pretty much need a studio, even to this day. So my understanding is that the record labels saw the writing on the wall, tried to fight the tide with the whole napster thing and ended up accepting reality and looking around for another way to remain relevant, which ended up being negotiating deals with legal music streaming services. Movie studios never felt that pinch. The other difference, at least for the artists, is that musicians don't make much money off recordings - many are happy to break even - where the real money is for them is in live performance and (in some markets) merch sales. The recordings almost act as ads for the "real" product. With movies, the movie is the product (although admittedly merch, theme park rides, etc can provide an even bigger revenue stream but those cases should be treated as outliers).
  - Ericson2314 7y ago
    Great comment. One thing though is sometimes indie movies are made and then sold for release. Maybe they should be able to go direct?
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      They can absolutely go direct. I've watched numerous movies on filmmakers' websites or youtube that I assume never got a cinematic release. I guess the difference is that the Hollywood studio model is still so entrenched with the massive PR/media industry built up around it and reliant on its survival that indie releases get drowned out in the noise. Another thing to consider is that niche content is just that - if a filmmaker decides to distribute direct to fans (or along some other indie avenue) it's likely you'll never hear about it unless you are one of those fans and regardless of what your definition of "success" is.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  Possibly because movies take a lot more money to make than music.
- swiley 7y ago
  I pretty often can't find specific music I want to listen to on Spotify. Sometimes it's weird meme stuff like vaporwave. Sometimes it's less weird modern "classical" music. Sometimes popular stuff disapears. Usually it's because the artist can't afford to upload it
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Typically a song does not cost over $100 million to produce, while many movies do.
kop316 7y ago
Personally, I use the following two combinations: - For things I will watch/listen to a lot, I purchase and rip to my server running Plex. Then I control my own streaming server and don't have to worry about where to find it. If you have a local secondhand store, its not hard to find what you are looking for. - For one offs, I can actually very reliably find it either on Redbox or my local library. The local Library had DVDs and Blu-Rays there. I watch and return.
xfour 7y ago
Speaking of new streaming services, I was trying to watch The Expanse Season 4. Amazon famously made this happen, so thanks to Bezos there. But even though I have their Prime service there seemed to be a monthly service called Prime Video required. Amazon seems to be doing the Microsoft thing where everything is Prime something and it’s confusing and annoying.
- jlokier 7y ago
  Amazon Prime Video is confusing. When I had an Amazon Prime Video subscription, almost everything I wanted to watch had to be paid for separately, yet had Prime Video labels all over the place. It took me months before I realised that Prime Video wasn't actually getting me anything I wanted. I needed to pay outright for each season of what I wanted, and Prime Video didn't change anything about that, such as prices or what was available. When I figured that out, I dropped the subscription. I still watch things on Amazon Prime Video, without the subscription to Amazon Prime Video. Yes, confusing.
  - integricho 7y ago
    So what is Prime Video for then, could you explain it for us that still don't get it?
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Some videos are free, but others you still have to pay for. (I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the "have to pay for" ones are just the ones where the studios charged dumb licensing fees and Amazon's trying to recoup costs.)
    - pasttense01 7y ago
      Amazon Prime Video is the streaming component of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime Video is thus somewhat comparable to Netflix--but with a poorer selection of movies and series. Amazon Prime has a number of other things, primarily free shipping. So if you have no interest in free shipping or the other things in Amazon Prime you can save a few dollars a year (but only a few dollars) by just getting Amazon Prime Video.
wishinghand 7y ago
If not for my friend who sails a lot, i would have needed to turn to the Pirate Bay to get a copy of the film The Fall with Lee Pace in it. One of the most beautiful films ever made and it’s not available to stream anywhere. Or purchase in hard copy unless I go for an $80 used copy on eBay or amazon. It’s out of print and no studio seems to be interested in putting it out there. Went through something similar for the film Hero with Jet Li, but eventually found a new old stock copy for a reasonable price. Sometimes things just aren’t legitimately available anywhere, streaming or not.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  Netflix has the DVDs of both of those movies.
  - ghego1 7y ago
    It depends on what country you are based
  - wishinghand 7y ago
    I can't own those, unless I refuse to return them to Netflix. I could "lose" them but it's still ridiculous in order to acquire those films.
- wodenokoto 7y ago
  Wow, is hero out of stock? I remember that as being a quite popular and talked about movie, not at all some niche cinema thing
  - wishinghand 7y ago
    For hard copies, yes. You can still get it on iTunes.
fenwick67 7y ago
PopcornTime.sh also works really well for streaming, you can even cast to your TV. Its convenience is seriously on-par with Netflix.
- Cyph0n 7y ago
  Kodi + Seren is another great option for streaming.
- tnolet 7y ago
  I use Popcorntime a lot. It’s the only “service” in the world that just allows me to see what I want regardless of whether it’s on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon or just cinema. I would pay for a service like this in a heartbeat.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    It doesn't work that great for anything that isn't "top 100 popular".
    - oscargrouch 7y ago
      Change the file from "Popularity" to "Recently added" will probably do the trick. Not everything like a torrent indexing service, but also theres a lot of stuff, not only the popular titles.
- hauxir 7y ago
  https://github.com/hauxir/rapidbay https://github.com/hauxir/rapidbay is another option
carlhjerpe 7y ago
https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123 https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123 <- Once this PR is ready and merged we'll probably see a boatload of streaming websites streaming (web)torrents. This might just be the next era of pirate streaming coming up, considering the ease of distribution when you don't have to do it yourself. For those unaware, libtorrent powers a lot of torrent clients.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  PeerTube uses WebTorrent right? So does this mean we can make clients easier?
  - carlhjerpe 7y ago
    I'd assume yes, but also you'd have the ability to get waaaaay more people seeding content consistently.
- Pmop 7y ago
  Bit off-topic but what are your thoughts on using libtorrent for content distribution such as podcasts?
  - kuzimoto 7y ago
    Are you asking specifically about libtorrent, or about BitTorrent in general? I think BitTorrent is really good for content distribution, as it's spreads the burden of traffic across many peers. In a typical server-client situation, the greater the number of clients, the bigger the burden on the server. But with BitTorrent, the load is spread between all clients, reducing the load for any one "server".
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    BitTorrent was much more commonly used for podcast distribution in the first half of the 2000s, so there is some precident.
- tnolet 7y ago
csours 7y ago
I hate ad supported video with the power of 1000 suns, and it's not because of the ads themselves. It's because the ads stutter and skip and take twice as long to play as the content of the ad itself. How can they fuck it up so bad? The ads are how you get paid, how is it that you don't prioritize playing the ad correctly? If I were a sponsor, I would be furious! I tried to watch some movies on IMDBtv for instance, and I got through one and gave up a quarter through the second one.
driverdan 7y ago
Blogspam of this: https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-is-trialing-high-quality-video-streaming-links-191209/ https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-is-trialing-high-qua...
- dang 7y ago
  Yes. We changed the URL to that from https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/12/10/pirate-bay-streaming-apple-netflix/ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/12/10/pirate-bay-streaming-....
soared 7y ago
> The addition of BayStream links to The Pirate Bay isn’t the first time that the world’s most famous torrent site has dipped its toes into streaming waters. In 2016, the site experimented with ‘Stream It!” links next to all video torrents, playable via a browser plug-in called Torrents-Time. I thought this seemed familiar! I'm curious if anyone knows the history of their last attempt.
bluedino 7y ago
How do streamers affect the seeders? I'm guessing that they don't keep the entire video file in the browser and contribute 'their share' back to the torrent, do they?
- ripdog 7y ago
  Honestly, I'm not seeing any signs of webtorrent usage at all. It appears to be a normal stream from a normal server. Even if they don't store all the video, and just proxy the torrent sessions, I'm not sure how they could afford that. The video loaded very fast for me. It's quite impressive.
  - trevyn 7y ago
    Actual cost of bandwidth is approaching zero, fwiw.
pasttense01 7y ago
The big question is how this streaming operates and the legal consequences. There was a previous version of torrent streaming called Popcorn Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time Basically users suffer the same legal consequences as for torrenting: they are not just downloading, but also uploading--that is how the software works. This is quite different from a streaming site like Fmovies--where the user is downloading only--and not uploading.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  "was" ? (And most of the content is obviously going to be illegal...)
- tyre 7y ago
  Popcorn Time is up and, from what I hear, running just fine.
- CraneWorm 7y ago
  > Basically users suffer the same legal consequences as for torrenting namely, none, baring exceptional cases
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    Maybe in Somalia...
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      Or Eastern Europe. Everyone torrents films here, and until recently, ISPs often even facilitated filesharing. Cases where anyone has received criminal sanctions are vanishingly small, even in the EU or West Balkan states, let alone Russia where reportedly most copyright infringement cases are dismissed out of hand.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Downloading is a civil violation. Uploading is a crime, since it's "commercial-scale" even if no money actually changes hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Criminal_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Crimina... While it's true that most pirates won't be prosecuted, there are a lot fewer people willing to risk five years in jail compared to the civil penalties for just downloading.
enahs-sf 7y ago
I dream of a product where I can watch anything. Any tv station, from any country, in real time and HD. Any movie or film that has been digitized. Searchable in a well indexed fashion. Any user generated content as well. No switching between YouTube or reddit or Vimeo. Just one search bar and all of the things. And then I wake up. It was just a dream. The rights and licensing would never let this happen.
- xkcd-sucks 7y ago
  Is Popcorntime still around?
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Yes
  - hbcondo714 7y ago
    When I had Time Warner cable, I would use PopcornTime all the time without any VPN. After it was acquired by Comcast and rebranded to Spectrum Internet, I immediately received a notification that I was using an illegal service. I then subscribed to an IP blocker service hoping I could use PopcornTime without being detected and sure enough Charter blocked my internet. I had to acknowledge that I was aware of the illegal activity in order to get my internet back. I wonder if BayStream will have the same issues.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
thomasfl 7y ago
Streaming videos via The Pirate, is probably legal in many countries. Copyright means you are not allowed to make a copy. Streaming is not the same as making a copy. At least in norway.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Who told you that? A streamed copy of is still a copy for purposes of copyright laws.
  - thomasfl 7y ago
    You are nor creating a copy when watching a stream.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      Some courts have considered the copy in RAM legally a copy. Even when streaming, you create a partial one. Maybe Norwegian law makes more sense.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Yes you are, because that is exactly how you are able to watch the movie in the first place. Copyright law focuses on the content that is copied, not the specific mechanics of the copying, because it is technology agnostic.
- upofadown 7y ago
  Most copyright law also includes distribution and public performance rights.
alistproducer2 7y ago
This is been around in various forms for quite a few years. But it's never really caught on because the basic fact is it turns everyone into leeches. Also doesn't really make any sense because when you stream something you're downloading and anyways so you might as well be a good citizen download it, and then seed it, and keep the community decentralized and healthy.
- runeks 7y ago
  Why do you say that? It’s perfectly possible to download a file sequentially while uploading parts of it. Although I guess the ending would be harder to find than the beginning... but if all they do is make the first half part more widely available, I don’t see the issue.
  - sp332 7y ago
    I think the issue is that it stops uploading when you're done watching the movie and close the tab. It would be less of an issue if it somehow continued seeding for a while afterward.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bigpumpkin 7y ago
So do you upload when you're using this?
weystrom 7y ago
There are so many streaming providers right now, no wonder people are turning to torrents. It's almost easier UX-wise to set up Transmission and Plex once, than manage 5 sets of subscription, apps on all your devices and credentials to log into each one. They will have to consolidate eventually, to keep the customers, or lose to piracy yet again.

198 points by elorant 7y ago

While streaming is certainly more convenient, I frequently wish streaming providers would also allow me to download movies in advance on more platforms. Especially for 4k content the bitrate on streaming can be quite limiting. I'd love to be able to download really high quality video in advance. Currently buying a 4k disc or piratebay seem to be the only option.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BlueTemplar 7y ago
Even worse, the previous summer I was all hyped for UHD-1/HDR, decided to go buy a compatible Xbox... (since it was the most recommended player) only to find out that the (big!) store didn't even have Planet Earth 2 to go with all the "4k" hardware they sell ! Guess what I did ?

jakobegger 7y ago

We have a Netflix subscription, an Amazon Prime subscription, and we occasionally rent movies from the iTunes Store. But if I want to watch something specific, 50% of the time I still can't get it on any of the stores. I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? I can legally stream almost any song I can think of from any streaming provider, or I can buy DRM free albums! But for video, the pirate bay is often the only place you can get something.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
What can't you find on the iTunes Store? I use iTunes for most media, precisely because I see it as a way of cutting through all the BS—it has just about every movie and every show—including series from Hulu and HBO. (The sole thing I can't get are Netflix exclusive shows, which is annoying.) (And then I run my purchases through TunesKit to losslessly strip the DRM)
- Emigre_ 7y ago
  If one is a cinephile there are many interesting classics that are sadly not available on the iTunes Store. There are no films by Ingmar Bergman, for example.
  - jeena 7y ago
    For classics I often use archive.org where you can download everything legally without DRM. https://archive.org/search.php?query=Bergman%2C%20Ingmar&and[]=mediatype%3A%22movies%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Bergman%2C%20Ingmar&and...
    - Emigre_ 7y ago
      Thanks! That looks really good! I will take a look... :)
- jakobegger 7y ago
  I'm in Austria, so iTunes doesn't have any TV shows at all, and for movies it's hit and miss. Two films I recently looked for and didn't find are "Tank Girl" and "Waking Life", not really any special. I just checked again and apparently Tank Girl is on Amazon Prime! So maybe I'll watch that tonight :) It's also really bad with kids shows. Netflix and Amazon have a lot of them, but the selection keeps changing, and once something disappears from the streaming catalog it's often gone for good (ie. you can't get it for download anymore either). For one show (Lego Chima) I ended up buying used DVDs because I couldn't find it anywhere to download / stream in German. I have no idea how it makes any business sense to stop selling a TV show just because it's a couple of years old.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    Amazon Prime in the U. S. has Tank Girl because it’s currently on my “rewatch soon” list. Granted, that means jack in Australia, but maybe worth a look.
    - deleted 7y ago
ramshorns 7y ago
> I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? Maybe the movie industry saw the music industry as a cautionary tale and doubled down with DRM and exclusivity. The difference is bitrate and music sharing happened first, giving the film industry time to react.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  The movie industry has been strongly pushing exclusivity and DRM since the introduction of the VCR.
- criddell 7y ago
  They doubled down with DRM and still, the only place you can reliably get just about anything you want is from pirate sites.
shakna 7y ago
The rules around streaming are much tighter than the rules around purchases. For purchasing films, stuff like iTunes & Google Movies are still pretty good bets, they do have quite a lot. Streaming often falls under public performance and a few other more restrictive contracts, making it harder. As to why a mass-streaming service like Netflix doesn't offer both, usually, then it's simple - you want people to continue paying. The business model depends on people not signing up, downloading, and then cancelling. In my experience a surprising number of people are willing to do that. (Doesn't stop me offering it, however.) --- As for DRM with videos... Hollywood truly, truly despises the idea of DRM-free. I've looked at few contracts for film collections recently, and every contract I saw _required_ the use of DRM. It wasn't a negotiable point. Which is mostly theatre. Bypassing DRM does not take significant effort. It can never truly prevent theft (ignoring any definition of theft), and is massively anti-consumer in the way it breaks. It hurts real customers and doesn't hurt pirates. All the same, it's a hard rule with most national film associations.
- jakobegger 7y ago
  > It hurts real customers Yes it does. We bought a lot of kids movies on iTunes, and then I couldn't play them back because a device was not authorized (I bought it on my iPhone, so it doesn't work on my girlfriends iPad), or because the internet didn't work, or because iTunes was broken after upgrading to a new OS, ... it's so frustrating when you have a collection of video files on a USB stick that you paid for and you can't watch them.
  - jeena 7y ago
    You could re-download them DRM free from pirate bay, and because you already paid for them it wouldn't even be a immoral thing to do.
    - lkschubert8 7y ago
      It would however be illegal, which is a concern to some.
sombremesa 7y ago
As someone who speaks three languages, it's just as hard to find music. Grooveshark used to have a much larger and well-rounded selection, though it had legality issues similar to Pirate Bay.
- jeena 7y ago
  I'm mostly using the regular YouTube for music nowadays.
  - lostgame 7y ago
    Guessing you don’t care for quality or that listening to an album is interrupted by unskippable ads that are usually far louder than the content? It saddens me, as a musician and producer, how YouTube is the go-to for listening to music. We put a lot of effort into audio engineering, and the flow of an album, only to have a ton of that work degraded by YouTube’s shitty compression or ads that interrupt the intended experience.
    - jholman 7y ago
      Why would anyone listen to ads on youtube? Do they not know how to use software? Regarding quality, most music is listened to in traffic, or on the bus, or while working, or as background in a store, or while exercising, or.... I think it should be pretty obvious that the majority of the time, quality is just not a factor.
    - true_religion 7y ago
      I use YouTube as well, but before it... I used this service called "radio". The compression was terrible. The ads were unstoppable. I love music, but for decades before we all fell in love with music despite the poor medium we listened it to. YouTube isn't any different.
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      Question from my kids: what's an "album"?
perlgeek 7y ago
I guess much of it is related to Disney pulling their stuff (and of all the brands they've acquired) off of the existing streaming services, to give Disney Plus a competitive advantage.
danaris 7y ago
I think that ultimately, the difference is probably radio. Before the internet, people consumed music without buying it all the time. People consumed movies first solely at theaters, then at home from VHS and DVD. Some movies came to TV occasionally, but it was never a guarantee for any given title. So there was already a centralized way to pay record labels for music, and the basic idea of licensing it all to be played in a streaming format was well-established. The movie industry, on the other hand, still wants to make you pay every time you watch, like back when it was still just theaters.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I tend to agree but it probably went even beyond radio. Playing music has long been omnipresent in all sorts of venues and, as a result, there was a clear need for simple, low friction, centralized licensing. Pre-VHS, as you say, there just wasn't the same casual consumption of video content--and, even then, it was mostly private consumption for a long time. You even see differences between music and live theatre licensing. Music has mandatory mechanical licenses for cover. Whereas, with live theatre, a playwrite/copyright owner can refuse to allow a performance based on their work.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  I think it might be because of the ubiquity of music piracy during the 90's. In it's heyday, you could get anything off of Limewire, Kazaa, and of course Napster with extremely little effort. By contrast, pirating video didn't come until later, when it was more technically feasible (downloading music over a modem already took forever, can you imagine downloading full length movies!?) and by that time, the likes of Spotify had already made legally consuming music so convenient as to make piracy obsolete. Even now, the pirating of PC games is being made more common by the introduction of the Epic Store, which, regardless of your feelings on it, has added friction. Games promised to Steam users are being delayed or going full Epic exclusive and many users are saying "fuck that, we're not getting railroaded into using a launcher we didn't like" and turning to piracy instead. The video landscape is even worse, where it used to be only a select few providers had their own bespoke services (like HBO) now every channel is looking to make their own damn subscription happen, which is adding tons of friction, causing the boom in piracy. The music companies learned, and the video companies haven't, that the main way to counter piracy is to make the legal way to get something as easy as possible, so easy that customers don't mind parting with some cash. And streaming right now is anything but easy.
sircastor 7y ago
I don't think it's a matter of harder. I think the film and television industry properly freaked out when they saw what Apple has done to the music industry, and the subsequent uniformity in available services. They had more time to prepare and locked down the content before SV companies could negotiate them into a more consumer-friendly position. I do note that the music industry has leveled out. You basically get the same deal from each streaming provider for the same price.
- jeena 7y ago
  I guess also that musicians stopped making money with their albums and only use streaming for it's reach, they found other ways to make money.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Musicians never really made money from albums. Occasionally a mega hit might bring in residuals, but musicians generally need to start their own label to get any real cut of album sales.
kfrzcode 7y ago
To be fair - the licensing catalog for each of the given music services varies pretty wildly, and you cannot expect to find almost any song on any provider. See: Spotify && [Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Def Leppard, Tool, Beyonce, Garth Brooks], etc. Some of these artists have since released to Spotify but the concept is the same. I agree, though. If PLEX or someone offered a subscription that gave me consistent interface to access all the streaming services, I'd probably pay a few hundred USD a year.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Aaaand back to cable it is :)
chooseaname 7y ago
> I don't understand why video seems to be so much harder than music? I have read places where if they can't secure the streaming rights to the music in the movie, they can't stream the movie. Also, if any other rights holders can't be found to secure streaming rights, they can't be streamed.
BlueTemplar 7y ago
See also books and video games. It's all down to convenience again I guess ? One big difference is how you're going to replay music & video games multiple times, but are going to play/read movies/shows & books only once.
- userbinator 7y ago
  One big difference is how you're going to replay music & video games multiple times, but are going to play/read movies/shows & books only once. This is a very good point. Just look around in a public space at everyone wearing headphones, and you can see that music is almost always not consumed in isolation but as a background. A movie or book requires more dedicated attention; I don't see people watching a movie or reading a book while doing something else.
corodra 7y ago
I know, it makes no sense. Just because it takes a few more people, a little more time and just a hair more money to make a movie or TV show compared to a song, doesn't mean there should be complicated distribution contracts that navigate multiple investor and labor interests, and channel through international markets and regulations. I swear, capitalism these days. People need to stop demanding money for making entertainment. Just because they spend time making something doesn't mean they're entitled to be "compensated" for it.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
My guess is that it's a much smaller group of investors and executives that control the movie industry, with music creation ownership and distribution being much more distributed.
HN-Censorship 7y ago
"I can legally stream almost any song I can think of" Maybe your taste in music is more mainstream
forrestthewoods 7y ago
Streaming music is a secondary revenue stream. The real money is in live concerts, merchandise, etc. Streaming and YouTube music videos are practically advertising. For TV/movies the video content is the primary revenue stream. And for most content the only revenue stream. Only a few IPs sell action figures and lunch boxes.
- dan-robertson 7y ago
  I think this wasn’t always the case, at least for more popular musicians, but it is certainly the case now.
cookie_monsta 7y ago
I think another big difference (apart from all those already stated) is that there was a realisation among musicians very early on (like mid 90s) that the internet was going to give them the ability to cut record labels out of the deal altogether and distribute directly to fans. Most of what a label does/did for musicians is marketing and distribution of physical copies. Sometimes a label organises a producer/engineer, but often bands do this themselves, or bring one along. With physical copies dying and the ability to self-promote on the rise the labels were looking less and less relevant. Movie studios on the other hand coordinate an insane amount of people (some credits sequences run for at least 5 minutes now) and legals, something that is out of the realms of possibility for indie film makers - if you want to make a "big" movie you pretty much need a studio, even to this day. So my understanding is that the record labels saw the writing on the wall, tried to fight the tide with the whole napster thing and ended up accepting reality and looking around for another way to remain relevant, which ended up being negotiating deals with legal music streaming services. Movie studios never felt that pinch. The other difference, at least for the artists, is that musicians don't make much money off recordings - many are happy to break even - where the real money is for them is in live performance and (in some markets) merch sales. The recordings almost act as ads for the "real" product. With movies, the movie is the product (although admittedly merch, theme park rides, etc can provide an even bigger revenue stream but those cases should be treated as outliers).
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  Great comment. One thing though is sometimes indie movies are made and then sold for release. Maybe they should be able to go direct?
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    They can absolutely go direct. I've watched numerous movies on filmmakers' websites or youtube that I assume never got a cinematic release. I guess the difference is that the Hollywood studio model is still so entrenched with the massive PR/media industry built up around it and reliant on its survival that indie releases get drowned out in the noise. Another thing to consider is that niche content is just that - if a filmmaker decides to distribute direct to fans (or along some other indie avenue) it's likely you'll never hear about it unless you are one of those fans and regardless of what your definition of "success" is.
Thorrez 7y ago
Possibly because movies take a lot more money to make than music.
swiley 7y ago
I pretty often can't find specific music I want to listen to on Spotify. Sometimes it's weird meme stuff like vaporwave. Sometimes it's less weird modern "classical" music. Sometimes popular stuff disapears. Usually it's because the artist can't afford to upload it
tinus_hn 7y ago
Typically a song does not cost over $100 million to produce, while many movies do.

kop316 7y ago

Personally, I use the following two combinations: - For things I will watch/listen to a lot, I purchase and rip to my server running Plex. Then I control my own streaming server and don't have to worry about where to find it. If you have a local secondhand store, its not hard to find what you are looking for. - For one offs, I can actually very reliably find it either on Redbox or my local library. The local Library had DVDs and Blu-Rays there. I watch and return.

xfour 7y ago

Speaking of new streaming services, I was trying to watch The Expanse Season 4. Amazon famously made this happen, so thanks to Bezos there. But even though I have their Prime service there seemed to be a monthly service called Prime Video required. Amazon seems to be doing the Microsoft thing where everything is Prime something and it’s confusing and annoying.

jlokier 7y ago
Amazon Prime Video is confusing. When I had an Amazon Prime Video subscription, almost everything I wanted to watch had to be paid for separately, yet had Prime Video labels all over the place. It took me months before I realised that Prime Video wasn't actually getting me anything I wanted. I needed to pay outright for each season of what I wanted, and Prime Video didn't change anything about that, such as prices or what was available. When I figured that out, I dropped the subscription. I still watch things on Amazon Prime Video, without the subscription to Amazon Prime Video. Yes, confusing.
- integricho 7y ago
  So what is Prime Video for then, could you explain it for us that still don't get it?
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Some videos are free, but others you still have to pay for. (I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the "have to pay for" ones are just the ones where the studios charged dumb licensing fees and Amazon's trying to recoup costs.)
  - pasttense01 7y ago
    Amazon Prime Video is the streaming component of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime Video is thus somewhat comparable to Netflix--but with a poorer selection of movies and series. Amazon Prime has a number of other things, primarily free shipping. So if you have no interest in free shipping or the other things in Amazon Prime you can save a few dollars a year (but only a few dollars) by just getting Amazon Prime Video.

wishinghand 7y ago

If not for my friend who sails a lot, i would have needed to turn to the Pirate Bay to get a copy of the film The Fall with Lee Pace in it. One of the most beautiful films ever made and it’s not available to stream anywhere. Or purchase in hard copy unless I go for an $80 used copy on eBay or amazon. It’s out of print and no studio seems to be interested in putting it out there. Went through something similar for the film Hero with Jet Li, but eventually found a new old stock copy for a reasonable price. Sometimes things just aren’t legitimately available anywhere, streaming or not.

Godel_unicode 7y ago
Netflix has the DVDs of both of those movies.
- ghego1 7y ago
  It depends on what country you are based
- wishinghand 7y ago
  I can't own those, unless I refuse to return them to Netflix. I could "lose" them but it's still ridiculous in order to acquire those films.
wodenokoto 7y ago
Wow, is hero out of stock? I remember that as being a quite popular and talked about movie, not at all some niche cinema thing
- wishinghand 7y ago
  For hard copies, yes. You can still get it on iTunes.

fenwick67 7y ago

PopcornTime.sh also works really well for streaming, you can even cast to your TV. Its convenience is seriously on-par with Netflix.

Cyph0n 7y ago
Kodi + Seren is another great option for streaming.
tnolet 7y ago
I use Popcorntime a lot. It’s the only “service” in the world that just allows me to see what I want regardless of whether it’s on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon or just cinema. I would pay for a service like this in a heartbeat.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  It doesn't work that great for anything that isn't "top 100 popular".
  - oscargrouch 7y ago
    Change the file from "Popularity" to "Recently added" will probably do the trick. Not everything like a torrent indexing service, but also theres a lot of stuff, not only the popular titles.
hauxir 7y ago
https://github.com/hauxir/rapidbay https://github.com/hauxir/rapidbay is another option

carlhjerpe 7y ago

https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123 https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123 <- Once this PR is ready and merged we'll probably see a boatload of streaming websites streaming (web)torrents. This might just be the next era of pirate streaming coming up, considering the ease of distribution when you don't have to do it yourself. For those unaware, libtorrent powers a lot of torrent clients.

faissaloo 7y ago
PeerTube uses WebTorrent right? So does this mean we can make clients easier?
- carlhjerpe 7y ago
  I'd assume yes, but also you'd have the ability to get waaaaay more people seeding content consistently.
Pmop 7y ago
Bit off-topic but what are your thoughts on using libtorrent for content distribution such as podcasts?
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  Are you asking specifically about libtorrent, or about BitTorrent in general? I think BitTorrent is really good for content distribution, as it's spreads the burden of traffic across many peers. In a typical server-client situation, the greater the number of clients, the bigger the burden on the server. But with BitTorrent, the load is spread between all clients, reducing the load for any one "server".
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  BitTorrent was much more commonly used for podcast distribution in the first half of the 2000s, so there is some precident.
tnolet 7y ago

csours 7y ago

I hate ad supported video with the power of 1000 suns, and it's not because of the ads themselves. It's because the ads stutter and skip and take twice as long to play as the content of the ad itself. How can they fuck it up so bad? The ads are how you get paid, how is it that you don't prioritize playing the ad correctly? If I were a sponsor, I would be furious! I tried to watch some movies on IMDBtv for instance, and I got through one and gave up a quarter through the second one.

driverdan 7y ago

Blogspam of this: https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-is-trialing-high-quality-video-streaming-links-191209/ https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-is-trialing-high-qua...

dang 7y ago
Yes. We changed the URL to that from https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/12/10/pirate-bay-streaming-apple-netflix/ https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/12/10/pirate-bay-streaming-....

soared 7y ago

> The addition of BayStream links to The Pirate Bay isn’t the first time that the world’s most famous torrent site has dipped its toes into streaming waters. In 2016, the site experimented with ‘Stream It!” links next to all video torrents, playable via a browser plug-in called Torrents-Time. I thought this seemed familiar! I'm curious if anyone knows the history of their last attempt.

bluedino 7y ago

How do streamers affect the seeders? I'm guessing that they don't keep the entire video file in the browser and contribute 'their share' back to the torrent, do they?

ripdog 7y ago
Honestly, I'm not seeing any signs of webtorrent usage at all. It appears to be a normal stream from a normal server. Even if they don't store all the video, and just proxy the torrent sessions, I'm not sure how they could afford that. The video loaded very fast for me. It's quite impressive.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Actual cost of bandwidth is approaching zero, fwiw.

pasttense01 7y ago

The big question is how this streaming operates and the legal consequences. There was a previous version of torrent streaming called Popcorn Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time Basically users suffer the same legal consequences as for torrenting: they are not just downloading, but also uploading--that is how the software works. This is quite different from a streaming site like Fmovies--where the user is downloading only--and not uploading.

BlueTemplar 7y ago
"was" ? (And most of the content is obviously going to be illegal...)
tyre 7y ago
Popcorn Time is up and, from what I hear, running just fine.
CraneWorm 7y ago
> Basically users suffer the same legal consequences as for torrenting namely, none, baring exceptional cases
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  Maybe in Somalia...
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Or Eastern Europe. Everyone torrents films here, and until recently, ISPs often even facilitated filesharing. Cases where anyone has received criminal sanctions are vanishingly small, even in the EU or West Balkan states, let alone Russia where reportedly most copyright infringement cases are dismissed out of hand.
- sp332 7y ago
  Downloading is a civil violation. Uploading is a crime, since it's "commercial-scale" even if no money actually changes hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Criminal_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Crimina... While it's true that most pirates won't be prosecuted, there are a lot fewer people willing to risk five years in jail compared to the civil penalties for just downloading.

enahs-sf 7y ago

I dream of a product where I can watch anything. Any tv station, from any country, in real time and HD. Any movie or film that has been digitized. Searchable in a well indexed fashion. Any user generated content as well. No switching between YouTube or reddit or Vimeo. Just one search bar and all of the things. And then I wake up. It was just a dream. The rights and licensing would never let this happen.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago
Is Popcorntime still around?
- celticninja 7y ago
  Yes
- hbcondo714 7y ago
  When I had Time Warner cable, I would use PopcornTime all the time without any VPN. After it was acquired by Comcast and rebranded to Spectrum Internet, I immediately received a notification that I was using an illegal service. I then subscribed to an IP blocker service hoping I could use PopcornTime without being detected and sure enough Charter blocked my internet. I had to acknowledge that I was aware of the illegal activity in order to get my internet back. I wonder if BayStream will have the same issues.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

thomasfl 7y ago

Streaming videos via The Pirate, is probably legal in many countries. Copyright means you are not allowed to make a copy. Streaming is not the same as making a copy. At least in norway.

gamblor956 7y ago
Who told you that? A streamed copy of is still a copy for purposes of copyright laws.
- thomasfl 7y ago
  You are nor creating a copy when watching a stream.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Some courts have considered the copy in RAM legally a copy. Even when streaming, you create a partial one. Maybe Norwegian law makes more sense.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Yes you are, because that is exactly how you are able to watch the movie in the first place. Copyright law focuses on the content that is copied, not the specific mechanics of the copying, because it is technology agnostic.
upofadown 7y ago
Most copyright law also includes distribution and public performance rights.

alistproducer2 7y ago

This is been around in various forms for quite a few years. But it's never really caught on because the basic fact is it turns everyone into leeches. Also doesn't really make any sense because when you stream something you're downloading and anyways so you might as well be a good citizen download it, and then seed it, and keep the community decentralized and healthy.

runeks 7y ago
Why do you say that? It’s perfectly possible to download a file sequentially while uploading parts of it. Although I guess the ending would be harder to find than the beginning... but if all they do is make the first half part more widely available, I don’t see the issue.
- sp332 7y ago
  I think the issue is that it stops uploading when you're done watching the movie and close the tab. It would be less of an issue if it somehow continued seeding for a while afterward.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bigpumpkin 7y ago

So do you upload when you're using this?

weystrom 7y ago

There are so many streaming providers right now, no wonder people are turning to torrents. It's almost easier UX-wise to set up Transmission and Plex once, than manage 5 sets of subscription, apps on all your devices and credentials to log into each one. They will have to consolidate eventually, to keep the customers, or lose to piracy yet again.