7 ms·

I've actually heard that quite often and it seems anecdotally true to me, but is there actually any study to prove this?

Mindwipe 5y ago
Nope. There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not watertight and lots of people staying at home with not much to do seems a more likely culprit than service fragmentation.
- toyg 5y ago
  anecdotally, I freeload on a Netflix account paid for by a friend, and last year I was tempted to get my own subscription. Then I noticed Netflix had fewer and fewer movies I was interested in, and just went back to sailing the high seas.
  - whoaisme 5y ago
    People like you always say you will pay but never do, not because of BS like selection but because you are cheap and will never pay for something you can steal. I dont even know why you'd pretend to be interested in paying.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Yea, it's their Achilles heel. You can throw money at directors, and actors, but there are just so many great movies, and most were made by hollywood years ago. The owners of those great films, started their own streaming service.
    - reacharavindh 5y ago
      Yeah. The attraction of Netflix was the ease of access to a lot of desirable content even faster than finding it online somewhere else* But, nowadays it feels like Netflix’s catalog is full of its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less and less “popular” ones that we heard of somewhere and just want to watch. If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not that different from the cable TV model that these guys took on against. Sailing the high seas indeed!
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      It is one of the biggest reasons to use torrents. You see, this is the only non-fragmented service that has all media content! Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search for all content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one already, and its just that i don't know it?
      - ageyfman 5y ago
        ... Pirate Bay? We're back in the early/mid 2010s now.
        Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        PirateBay became a haven for false torrents infested by malware. I'm ta lking about rutracker.org It has mostly russian-dubbed content, but it usually has original soundtracks, too. Also, now it is probably better than ever (didn't watch anything for quite a while, so it's a guess), because films are currently released on VOD concurrently with premieres in theatres, and that means that good quality content appears immediately, and not after theatrical window
    - AnonHP 5y ago
      Netflix seems like a split brained company. Most of its original movies are terrible, and are in sharp contrast to many of the Netflix original series which are very good. I personally wouldn’t (and don’t) look for movies on Netflix.
asdff 5y ago
https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-and-filesharing-traffic-surges-amidst-covid-19-crisis-200408/ https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-and-filesharing-traffic-surg...
tacLog 5y ago
I found this site from the torrentfreak link below and thought it was pretty cool. https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 If you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018 have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think that can somewhat safely answer your questions. EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older movies also might just have been downloaded more over time. From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in general torrenting has been growing less popular. However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity check very well for me. For example, the End Game Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high enough to me.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  It does make some sense that movies which have been available for three years could have more downloads than movies which have been available for one year.
  - tacLog 5y ago
    I didn't think of this at all. This throws the tenuous conclusions I was drawing completely out the window.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Yeah but if most people have services - I have three - then the most popular movies for that year will be on all the services almost. Endgame has been on all my services at some point over the last couple years. I've seen it probably 20+ times. Probably also the people who are most likely to want to watch Endgame have services.
  - tacLog 5y ago
    By services you mean, Netflix, Hulu and similar right? Not plex, or the various illegal streaming sites?
e40 5y ago
I had completely stopped downloading movies in 2018, and even for that year, I downloaded very few. I had been tapering off since 2015. These are real numbers from my NAS. I got a seedbox 2 months ago. This was my last straw: trying to rent some movie on Amazon and was told I had to subscribe to some service to watch it--there was no price to watch it once. The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX. The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  I was pretty pissed off to discover the HBO Max Roku app is such garbage - after paying for HBO Max for a year.
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    If you have a T-Mobile Magenta plan with unlimited data, you get HBO Max for free btw.
- vageli 5y ago
  > The Amazon app/UI is HORRIBLE, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app. Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8. It is nonsensical.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Ironically, the biggest russian torrent site is just a phpbb forum and it is wonderfully organized and very well moderated. Easy to find the content you want. Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the content owners and removed content by request, so the UX was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!
ddingus 5y ago
I don't have a numerical proof based on numbers myself either, but myself and everyone in my circles has increased.
anothernewdude 5y ago
It's harder to study now that torrents aren't the only alternative.
Sophistifunk 5y ago
My anecdata is definitely this. I used to pay for almost all my media, but switching regions, logging in and out of shit, buying iTunes cards on ebay, checking through 4 different streaming apps, and then extra work when you do find what you want and try to watch it only to be told your subscription doesn't actually cover it but you can pay extra (looking at you, Amazon Prime), it's just so much fucking work when tracker -> torrents dir -> plex is so much easier and user-friendly. And I pay for Plex.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Specifically for the example of Australians watching pirate rips of television programs, the percentage of us doing it dropped like a brick after Netflix launched here back in 2015 and has climbed back slightly since the fragmentation occurred. It's nothing like the old days where we had to wait several weeks to watch Game of Thrones legally, though. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but from memory it was something that around 40% of us were doing back in 2013, had dropped to around 15-20% by 2018-2019, and is now at just above 20%.
- BigJono 5y ago
  My parents asked me to help them get into streaming a few months ago after they got a new iPad. So I bought them a Chromecast, taught them how to switch the input source between the Chromecast and Cable on their TV, which they were cool with. Then I tried to set them up on the iPad. There was about 5-10 specific shows they wanted to watch, what I found was that they were literally spread across more than 5 services, with one show each. Not a single one of them had 2 of the shows they wanted to watch. They were already set up with Foxtel and had been using it for a couple of years, they watched shows on it regularly and knew how to do everything up to hitting the 'cast' button. So I set them up with the other services, bummed an Amazon account off a sibling, signed them up to the 3 or 4 free services we have in Australia, think I subbed to one other one or something too. I can't even remember what they all were there was so many. I put the icons all in the same place on their home screen so they knew those apps were all the streaming ones etc etc. I logged into a few of the accounts a week or so ago and they haven't watched a single thing. Not even on the Foxtel, which they were already using, and now they've stopped using it. It seems to me like they've just hit a wall of complexity and thrown their hands up and said fuck the whole thing. And you know what? I'm right there with them. Half way through the set up, trying to do the right thing, I was an inch away from throwing my hands up and saying fuck the whole thing as well. It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months. There was another thread here yesterday where some bloke was going on about how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just spin up a linux box or something instead of using Discord. Well, this is it. It took my parents months to get used to using one app, and adding something as simple as another couple of apps to the mix has turned them off the technology entirely. When you introduce anything other than the absolute most simple UX, you risk losing part of your market entirely. You're not building stuff for other software engineers or other TV network execs or whatever your job title is. Everyone trying to carve out their own piece of the pie is just smashing the pie to bits for everyone else. When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together. That goes for music, TV and games. All 3 ecosystems are running into the exact same problem.
atatatat 5y ago
University libraries

Mindwipe 5y ago

Nope. There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not watertight and lots of people staying at home with not much to do seems a more likely culprit than service fragmentation.

toyg 5y ago
anecdotally, I freeload on a Netflix account paid for by a friend, and last year I was tempted to get my own subscription. Then I noticed Netflix had fewer and fewer movies I was interested in, and just went back to sailing the high seas.
- whoaisme 5y ago
  People like you always say you will pay but never do, not because of BS like selection but because you are cheap and will never pay for something you can steal. I dont even know why you'd pretend to be interested in paying.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Yea, it's their Achilles heel. You can throw money at directors, and actors, but there are just so many great movies, and most were made by hollywood years ago. The owners of those great films, started their own streaming service.
  - reacharavindh 5y ago
    Yeah. The attraction of Netflix was the ease of access to a lot of desirable content even faster than finding it online somewhere else* But, nowadays it feels like Netflix’s catalog is full of its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less and less “popular” ones that we heard of somewhere and just want to watch. If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not that different from the cable TV model that these guys took on against. Sailing the high seas indeed!
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    It is one of the biggest reasons to use torrents. You see, this is the only non-fragmented service that has all media content! Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search for all content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one already, and its just that i don't know it?
    - ageyfman 5y ago
      ... Pirate Bay? We're back in the early/mid 2010s now.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        PirateBay became a haven for false torrents infested by malware. I'm ta lking about rutracker.org It has mostly russian-dubbed content, but it usually has original soundtracks, too. Also, now it is probably better than ever (didn't watch anything for quite a while, so it's a guess), because films are currently released on VOD concurrently with premieres in theatres, and that means that good quality content appears immediately, and not after theatrical window
  - AnonHP 5y ago
    Netflix seems like a split brained company. Most of its original movies are terrible, and are in sharp contrast to many of the Netflix original series which are very good. I personally wouldn’t (and don’t) look for movies on Netflix.

asdff 5y ago

https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-and-filesharing-traffic-surges-amidst-covid-19-crisis-200408/ https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-and-filesharing-traffic-surg...

tacLog 5y ago

I found this site from the torrentfreak link below and thought it was pretty cool. https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 If you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018 have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think that can somewhat safely answer your questions. EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older movies also might just have been downloaded more over time. From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in general torrenting has been growing less popular. However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity check very well for me. For example, the End Game Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high enough to me.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
It does make some sense that movies which have been available for three years could have more downloads than movies which have been available for one year.
- tacLog 5y ago
  I didn't think of this at all. This throws the tenuous conclusions I was drawing completely out the window.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Yeah but if most people have services - I have three - then the most popular movies for that year will be on all the services almost. Endgame has been on all my services at some point over the last couple years. I've seen it probably 20+ times. Probably also the people who are most likely to want to watch Endgame have services.
- tacLog 5y ago
  By services you mean, Netflix, Hulu and similar right? Not plex, or the various illegal streaming sites?

e40 5y ago

I had completely stopped downloading movies in 2018, and even for that year, I downloaded very few. I had been tapering off since 2015. These are real numbers from my NAS. I got a seedbox 2 months ago. This was my last straw: trying to rent some movie on Amazon and was told I had to subscribe to some service to watch it--there was no price to watch it once. The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX. The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.

GiorgioG 5y ago
I was pretty pissed off to discover the HBO Max Roku app is such garbage - after paying for HBO Max for a year.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  If you have a T-Mobile Magenta plan with unlimited data, you get HBO Max for free btw.
vageli 5y ago
> The Amazon app/UI is HORRIBLE, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app. Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8. It is nonsensical.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Ironically, the biggest russian torrent site is just a phpbb forum and it is wonderfully organized and very well moderated. Easy to find the content you want. Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the content owners and removed content by request, so the UX was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!

ddingus 5y ago

I don't have a numerical proof based on numbers myself either, but myself and everyone in my circles has increased.

anothernewdude 5y ago

It's harder to study now that torrents aren't the only alternative.

Sophistifunk 5y ago

My anecdata is definitely this. I used to pay for almost all my media, but switching regions, logging in and out of shit, buying iTunes cards on ebay, checking through 4 different streaming apps, and then extra work when you do find what you want and try to watch it only to be told your subscription doesn't actually cover it but you can pay extra (looking at you, Amazon Prime), it's just so much fucking work when tracker -> torrents dir -> plex is so much easier and user-friendly. And I pay for Plex.

AussieWog93 5y ago

Specifically for the example of Australians watching pirate rips of television programs, the percentage of us doing it dropped like a brick after Netflix launched here back in 2015 and has climbed back slightly since the fragmentation occurred. It's nothing like the old days where we had to wait several weeks to watch Game of Thrones legally, though. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but from memory it was something that around 40% of us were doing back in 2013, had dropped to around 15-20% by 2018-2019, and is now at just above 20%.

BigJono 5y ago
My parents asked me to help them get into streaming a few months ago after they got a new iPad. So I bought them a Chromecast, taught them how to switch the input source between the Chromecast and Cable on their TV, which they were cool with. Then I tried to set them up on the iPad. There was about 5-10 specific shows they wanted to watch, what I found was that they were literally spread across more than 5 services, with one show each. Not a single one of them had 2 of the shows they wanted to watch. They were already set up with Foxtel and had been using it for a couple of years, they watched shows on it regularly and knew how to do everything up to hitting the 'cast' button. So I set them up with the other services, bummed an Amazon account off a sibling, signed them up to the 3 or 4 free services we have in Australia, think I subbed to one other one or something too. I can't even remember what they all were there was so many. I put the icons all in the same place on their home screen so they knew those apps were all the streaming ones etc etc. I logged into a few of the accounts a week or so ago and they haven't watched a single thing. Not even on the Foxtel, which they were already using, and now they've stopped using it. It seems to me like they've just hit a wall of complexity and thrown their hands up and said fuck the whole thing. And you know what? I'm right there with them. Half way through the set up, trying to do the right thing, I was an inch away from throwing my hands up and saying fuck the whole thing as well. It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months. There was another thread here yesterday where some bloke was going on about how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just spin up a linux box or something instead of using Discord. Well, this is it. It took my parents months to get used to using one app, and adding something as simple as another couple of apps to the mix has turned them off the technology entirely. When you introduce anything other than the absolute most simple UX, you risk losing part of your market entirely. You're not building stuff for other software engineers or other TV network execs or whatever your job title is. Everyone trying to carve out their own piece of the pie is just smashing the pie to bits for everyone else. When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together. That goes for music, TV and games. All 3 ecosystems are running into the exact same problem.

atatatat 5y ago

University libraries