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There's no point in paying for essentially any streaming service these days. Piracy legitimately provides a better user experience for free if you know how to d

There's no point in paying for essentially any streaming service these days. Piracy legitimately provides a better user experience for free if you know how to do it right

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I disagree. I want to support the content I like. So I type it into my browser, find the content owner, see if they have a quick and easy way to buy it directly from them, and then watch it. If that takes more than a few seconds, I open up TV app on my phone, search it, and decide if it is worth buying. If it is any more difficult than that, I spend my time doing something else. The situation is much better than the old days of relying on Comcast.
- cardanome 5y ago
  > I disagree. I want to support the content I like. So I type it into my browser, find the content owner, see if they have a quick and easy way to buy it directly from them, and then watch it. How often can you just buy the content? There are many movies that I would love to buy and own but there is no option. It is either lend them for streaming or buy a super expensive blue ray which I don't get to own because of DRM. I wish there was a gog.com kind of solution. The only way I can truly own a movie is to pirate it. I get wanting to help content creators but I think it is fine to help just some of them (especially the smaller ones). There is no reason to feel bad about not helping all of them. Pirating something can still help the creators buy creating more attention. You might not pay for it but the friend you are telling about it, might. Or you might pay later after having more money.
- threevox 5y ago
  Dude just pirate it and then if you really want send a donation directly to the content creator so you're not sending part of the money to Disney/Comcast/etc lol
post_break 5y ago
I used to pirate everything. Now it's easier to just pay for a subscription and get what I want in the highest quality ever. I will say though, I will never "buy" something digitally like on iTunes or whatever.
- baq 5y ago
  Outside of the US it just isn’t possible to sign up to some services!
- nvarsj 5y ago
  Except you can't really get good quality. Netflix 4k bitrates are atrociously bad. Compression artifacts are super noticeable especially in dark scenes. I think they use around 10mbps for 4k, which is just a joke. Blu-ray is around 50mbps, cinema is around 250. You can't actually get decent quality without buying physical media or pirating.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    It's worth noting that cinema bitrates are a very different beast, because they store every frame as a separate jpeg2000.
    - nvarsj 5y ago
      Yes, which avoids all compression artifacts that come from the cross-frame compression that mpeg does. There's a reason DCP is used in cinemas - those kinds of artifacts become a lot more noticeable on very large screens and are hard to avoid completely. But for now, you can't even get Blu-ray quality video over streaming which would be sufficient for everyone with nice TVs. Netflix takes a 250GB master and compresses it down to about 10GB. The dark scenes in most Netflix content make me want to cry. Macro blocking on moving scenes, and so on. It's the video equivalent of listening to 64kbps mp3s.

There's no point in paying for essentially any streaming service these days. Piracy legitimately provides a better user experience for free if you know how to do it right

lotsofpulp 5y ago

I disagree. I want to support the content I like. So I type it into my browser, find the content owner, see if they have a quick and easy way to buy it directly from them, and then watch it. If that takes more than a few seconds, I open up TV app on my phone, search it, and decide if it is worth buying. If it is any more difficult than that, I spend my time doing something else. The situation is much better than the old days of relying on Comcast.

cardanome 5y ago
> I disagree. I want to support the content I like. So I type it into my browser, find the content owner, see if they have a quick and easy way to buy it directly from them, and then watch it. How often can you just buy the content? There are many movies that I would love to buy and own but there is no option. It is either lend them for streaming or buy a super expensive blue ray which I don't get to own because of DRM. I wish there was a gog.com kind of solution. The only way I can truly own a movie is to pirate it. I get wanting to help content creators but I think it is fine to help just some of them (especially the smaller ones). There is no reason to feel bad about not helping all of them. Pirating something can still help the creators buy creating more attention. You might not pay for it but the friend you are telling about it, might. Or you might pay later after having more money.
threevox 5y ago
Dude just pirate it and then if you really want send a donation directly to the content creator so you're not sending part of the money to Disney/Comcast/etc lol

post_break 5y ago

I used to pirate everything. Now it's easier to just pay for a subscription and get what I want in the highest quality ever. I will say though, I will never "buy" something digitally like on iTunes or whatever.

baq 5y ago
Outside of the US it just isn’t possible to sign up to some services!
nvarsj 5y ago
Except you can't really get good quality. Netflix 4k bitrates are atrociously bad. Compression artifacts are super noticeable especially in dark scenes. I think they use around 10mbps for 4k, which is just a joke. Blu-ray is around 50mbps, cinema is around 250. You can't actually get decent quality without buying physical media or pirating.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  It's worth noting that cinema bitrates are a very different beast, because they store every frame as a separate jpeg2000.
  - nvarsj 5y ago
    Yes, which avoids all compression artifacts that come from the cross-frame compression that mpeg does. There's a reason DCP is used in cinemas - those kinds of artifacts become a lot more noticeable on very large screens and are hard to avoid completely. But for now, you can't even get Blu-ray quality video over streaming which would be sufficient for everyone with nice TVs. Netflix takes a 250GB master and compresses it down to about 10GB. The dark scenes in most Netflix content make me want to cry. Macro blocking on moving scenes, and so on. It's the video equivalent of listening to 64kbps mp3s.