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I think there should be a distinction between data hoarding and piracy. One can consume pirated content without keeping it around, effectively looking a bit lik

by bedast 4y ago

I think there should be a distinction between data hoarding and piracy. One can consume pirated content without keeping it around, effectively looking a bit like just paying for a streaming service, since that's effectively what you get. One could also buy blurays and rip them, keeping the result around, and having the same cost to "hoard" that content on top of paying for the content itself. For a while, I was in the camp of purchasing my content with the intent to hoard it. So I had the same problem with what it cost to do so. I ended up getting a dedicated NAS appliance specifically for this, and paying for better hardware to do the encoding I wanted faster. You could look at your usenet and indexer subscriptions as your "streaming service" counterpart. But I think the point you wanted to make is you do this because the preferred legitimate method of consuming media is onerous because licensing causes content to be kept from you, but piracy doesn't care. The idea being you're willing to pay for it if the legitimate means made it easier, or in some cases, made the content you want available at all. But none of that matters in the case of hoarding. And hoarding will always have a much higher cost.

oceanplexian 4y ago
It's not only onerous, but streaming services just suck. It's all hot garbage in AV1 or VP9 at a 10Mbps bitrate, which looks like crap. I know because I worked in this industry, how management would literally wet themselves over a slightly more efficient codec, so that they could dial down bitrates further while distracting people from terrible video compression artifacts. They also have problems keeping their services up, and few actually understand how to deliver video with adequate QoS (Netflix sort of gets it, but the rest just bolt on a generic CDN with terrible results). The average consumer doesn't notice because, well, they're blind and have crap AV equipment. Anyway, if there was such thing as a "streaming service" that could stream high bitrate content, reliably, like uncompressed digital cinema or, at the very least, an Bluray that hasn't been transcoded, I would throw money at them hand over fist. But that is not the case, so I have to rely on alternatives.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  > they're blind and have crap AV equipment We notice, but what are we going to do? Buy the Blu-ray?
- bedast 4y ago
  There is actually an argument to be made for trying to deliver high quality content at the lowest acceptable bitrates. First, most people won't know the difference (ie: my parents), and second it seems like high speed internet is still the exception in many places. In my old apartment, if I were to try to stream something 10mbit, I'd be hurting anything else trying to use my internet connection. I spent about a year trying to get office staff to work with the ISP they had an exclusive agreement with, and the end result was apartment staff didn't want to put in the effort and expense to upgrade the building. When I moved out, I made sure to move to a house with access to gigabit internet, and it was amazingly difficult to get. I don't live in a podunk town. I live in a major metropolitan area. Poor quality was one of the reasons I, myself, opted to buy and rip. I paid for the lifetime Plex long ago and used that until Plex got too annoying and started requiring internet to function. I still keep a Jellyfin service up for content that I want but can't get streaming.

by bedast 4y ago

oceanplexian 4y ago

It's not only onerous, but streaming services just suck. It's all hot garbage in AV1 or VP9 at a 10Mbps bitrate, which looks like crap. I know because I worked in this industry, how management would literally wet themselves over a slightly more efficient codec, so that they could dial down bitrates further while distracting people from terrible video compression artifacts. They also have problems keeping their services up, and few actually understand how to deliver video with adequate QoS (Netflix sort of gets it, but the rest just bolt on a generic CDN with terrible results). The average consumer doesn't notice because, well, they're blind and have crap AV equipment. Anyway, if there was such thing as a "streaming service" that could stream high bitrate content, reliably, like uncompressed digital cinema or, at the very least, an Bluray that hasn't been transcoded, I would throw money at them hand over fist. But that is not the case, so I have to rely on alternatives.

automatic6131 4y ago
> they're blind and have crap AV equipment We notice, but what are we going to do? Buy the Blu-ray?
bedast 4y ago
There is actually an argument to be made for trying to deliver high quality content at the lowest acceptable bitrates. First, most people won't know the difference (ie: my parents), and second it seems like high speed internet is still the exception in many places. In my old apartment, if I were to try to stream something 10mbit, I'd be hurting anything else trying to use my internet connection. I spent about a year trying to get office staff to work with the ISP they had an exclusive agreement with, and the end result was apartment staff didn't want to put in the effort and expense to upgrade the building. When I moved out, I made sure to move to a house with access to gigabit internet, and it was amazingly difficult to get. I don't live in a podunk town. I live in a major metropolitan area. Poor quality was one of the reasons I, myself, opted to buy and rip. I paid for the lifetime Plex long ago and used that until Plex got too annoying and started requiring internet to function. I still keep a Jellyfin service up for content that I want but can't get streaming.