6 ms·

This is the same effect of wanting to watch an old film... If you want to do it the legit way, you will have to face all kind of hurdles, starting from finding

This is the same effect of wanting to watch an old film... If you want to do it the legit way, you will have to face all kind of hurdles, starting from finding a service provider that might have the film, then forget about all the modern audience "edits" they put on these things, at times the quality isn't even good, the audio tracks are messed up... So you either give these jackals at least 30 to 60 minutes of your life (plus money) for the luxury of using their crap services and obtaining a half-assed version of what you want, or you just go to good old Forum McTorrent and get what you actually want for free.

dwedge 2mo ago
I don't know if I agree with you with this example. Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Usually true with a film or TV show through the "forums" too, but not always. Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat with your wife or friends watching it, because who checks the show in advance?
- Retr0id 2mo ago
  If you're talking about those random malvertising-supported streaming sites then sure, but torrenting is not like this at all.
  - dwedge 2mo ago
    No, I'm talking about downloaded files. It happens maybe 2% of the time. You can't be sure the indexers are giving you the correct one.
    - dmantis 2mo ago
      I haven't encountered such a thing on private trackers for a very long time. Like, for years. They usually have a very decent moderation and if they say that an entry has some particular resolution/subs/audio then it has it. Sure, you have to stay as a seeder for some ratio/period in such trackers and can't hit-and-run, but it gives a warm feeling of contributions anyway.
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  How would a downloaded file buffer? That sounds more like streaming sites, which yeah are bad. But if you download a movie or season of a show in advance I don't think you'll have the same issues. Language ones or missing subtitles maybe - you gotta check those as the download finishes and before you put it on a media server.
  - dwedge 2mo ago
    > How would a downloaded file buffer I've no idea. It happens sometimes and only seems to happen with certain fils. In this case I'm sure it's a jellyfin issue, but this just comes down to having to debug while someone is waiting to watch - which is exactly the time I don't want to. As for language/subtitles it's true if it happens from the start (which I agree, is usually true) but occasionally the downloads get weird midway through.
    - whycome 2mo ago
      At that point you’re not playing the downloaded file. You’re either playing a transcoded version of it which will buffer as a computer tries to convert on the fly. Or you’re dealing with a network throughput issue related to the bitrate of the file you’re trying to remotely play.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  > Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. I have 2 words for you: "soon leaving". You may have seen them on Netflix. And in the US you have the advantage it's generally leaving to go somewhere. In many smaller countries this is not true. I've never those words in File Explorer.
- rc5150 2mo ago
  "who checks the show in advance?" Maybe I'm old school, but the primary lesson Limewire taught me was to always check the media before you show it to someone else. Every 'issue' that you mentioned about wrong episode, wrong language, etc. If those are the costs to ride the ride then so be it. No CEO gets paid in 'had to redownload a different version'.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
  > Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Well that's hilariously untrue. Movies getting pulled out of streaming services is why I started to buy physical DVDs again. > Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat with your wife or friends watching it, because who checks the show in advance? Yes, those things do happen with commercial streaming platforms; Paramount is especially bad IME, but hardly unique.
  - autoexec 2mo ago
    > Movies getting pulled out of streaming services is why I started to buy physical DVDs again Me too, but sadly more and more shows aren't getting physical releases at all anymore.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  > Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. On streaming services shows get silently censored or edited, or episodes are just outright removed (and get re-numbered so you don't even realize what was removed), and episodes get put out in the wrong order, or they aren't released at all in the right language, and there are no subtitles, only closed captions. Neither streaming or piracy are perfect, but only one them allows you to save a show to your hard drive so you know it will be there the next time you want to watch it unlike streaming where they constantly pull shows offline
schnevets 2mo ago
The streaming service is a Cathedral: You've paid your tithe to the temple of HBO Max? Marvelous, please come in, my child and gaze upon our wonders! What? James Cameron's True Lies? It is not in our collection, please remain here and we can watch Commando together! It's just as good! The digital copy is a Bazaar: You wander the booths of Prime Video, iTunes, and... Fandago!?! They assure you their copy of True Lies is the best! Ignore that other booth... you may save $2 but are you certain that video will still exist in a year? And the whole time you know that just under the bazaar is the Underground/Black Market where all is preserved and all can be had, but you'll need to work for it.
- diseasedyak 2mo ago
  Just a minor correction: Commando is superior to True Lies ;)
  - fluoridation 2mo ago
    It is, but it's not much consolation if you want to watch True Lies and not Commando.
  - DrSiemer 2mo ago
    That only strengthens the example. Their recommendations are usually awful. I'd argue even that is done better on underground services. Plus they'll just show you actually useful metrics, like the IMDB rating.
- sensanaty 2mo ago
  > but you'll need to work for it To be honest it's never been easier to pirate media. It is, in fact, much easier to pirate media than to find a show or movie you'd like to watch "legally". I have Netflix because I have a family plan with my parents, but I literally never use it in favor of regular ass usenet pirate sites that usually have better UI/UX than any of the streaming services do. Whenever I'm interested in some show or another, I google "Where to watch blah?". You then get greeted with 9000 websites all purporting to tell you which service has blah (the fact that this is even needed is an absurdity). 90% of them say different things to one another, most of them are clearly some hallucinated AI-generated crap created for the purpose of siphoning ad revenue from visitors. You login to whatever streaming service you subscribe to, and there's only 3 seasons out of 9 of blah, and it's the middle 3 seasons to boot (one that comes to mind is Law and Order SVU on Netflix, it only has seasons ~11-18 or something like that). The other seasons are spread across 4 different services. You then go to a different country. The catalogue is completely different, and half the shit you actually wanna watch isn't there. The DRM they use fucks up often, streams get interrupted if you open more than 1 tab at a time, the supposed "4K" resolution they offer with your subscription looks more like 360p, they don't have subtitles in one region when they do in a different one, the audio tracks are horrid more often than not. I throw my hands up in the air, navigate to one of the 9 trillion piracy websites out there, type "blah" in the searchbar, and I'm watching it in 4K after approximately 30 seconds of effort. It has all the nice features like autoplay, all the episodes are in 1 place. Gaben was 1000% right in saying piracy is a service problem, considering I don't even bother pirating games pretty much ever because of how good Steam is. I didn't even have a problem with Netflix back in the day when it was a genuinely good service, and I still pay for Spotify and Tidal, but the TV and Movie industry needs to get a grip on reality.
trompetenaccoun 2mo ago
From a moral PoV pirating old movies isn't a big issue, especially in cases where the original makers are already dead. At that point you're only feeding Hollywood bosses, shareholders and decendants. Same as torrenting music from dead artists. I don't care for Jimi Hendrix' greedy sister or 'Authentic Brands Group', which owns the rights to Elvis Presley's music. These people can create their own art instead of living off other people's work.
- mawadev 2mo ago
  but enough about anthropic
  - mpfh 2mo ago
    Well played.
- ciupicri 2mo ago
  What if Jimi Hendrix wanted for his sister to benefit from his work?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Too bad because she isn't either way. It's all going to shareholders and top executives.
  - whycome 2mo ago
    Who made his guitar? It seems like he made all his art on the back of someone else’s work… they should be getting royalties for every track made with their product (I’m pointing out the absurdity of trying to assign ownership within a system of shared creation)
    - ciupicri 2mo ago
      I don't think that the guitar manufacturer asked for royalties. On the other hand there are video cameras that you can't use for commercial purposes because they lack the appropriate video codec license from MPEG-LA :-) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735824)
wbl 2mo ago
Physical DVD is the way. Praise Criterion
- ksenzee 2mo ago
  yeah good idea, I'll just pop it into my xbox -- oh.
  - fwip 2mo ago
    You can play the DVD without your Xbox being online.
    - pelagicAustral 2mo ago
      Well!, thank God for small mercies.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Lammy 2mo ago
      Only if you online-installed the BD/DVD Player app first: https://support.xbox.com/en-NZ/help/games-apps/apps-help/dvd-blu-ray-setup https://support.xbox.com/en-NZ/help/games-apps/apps-help/dvd...
- reaperducer 2mo ago
  Praise Criterion The whole collection, mostly on Blu-Ray, was 50% off at Barnes and Noble when I was there a couple of weeks ago. There was a huge display right at the entrance of this huge chain retailer, so in spite of the online streaming hype, there must be a non-niche audience for optical media.
  - autoexec 2mo ago
    Blu-Ray is risky from the DRM side of things. Those disks can be disabled at anytime and can just stop working if the players are offline too long or the manufacture's servers go down. Rip them to your hard drive if you want to keep being able to watch them without begging for permission.

dwedge 2mo ago

I don't know if I agree with you with this example. Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Usually true with a film or TV show through the "forums" too, but not always. Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat with your wife or friends watching it, because who checks the show in advance?

Retr0id 2mo ago
If you're talking about those random malvertising-supported streaming sites then sure, but torrenting is not like this at all.
- dwedge 2mo ago
  No, I'm talking about downloaded files. It happens maybe 2% of the time. You can't be sure the indexers are giving you the correct one.
  - dmantis 2mo ago
    I haven't encountered such a thing on private trackers for a very long time. Like, for years. They usually have a very decent moderation and if they say that an entry has some particular resolution/subs/audio then it has it. Sure, you have to stay as a seeder for some ratio/period in such trackers and can't hit-and-run, but it gives a warm feeling of contributions anyway.
nemomarx 2mo ago
How would a downloaded file buffer? That sounds more like streaming sites, which yeah are bad. But if you download a movie or season of a show in advance I don't think you'll have the same issues. Language ones or missing subtitles maybe - you gotta check those as the download finishes and before you put it on a media server.
- dwedge 2mo ago
  > How would a downloaded file buffer I've no idea. It happens sometimes and only seems to happen with certain fils. In this case I'm sure it's a jellyfin issue, but this just comes down to having to debug while someone is waiting to watch - which is exactly the time I don't want to. As for language/subtitles it's true if it happens from the start (which I agree, is usually true) but occasionally the downloads get weird midway through.
  - whycome 2mo ago
    At that point you’re not playing the downloaded file. You’re either playing a transcoded version of it which will buffer as a computer tries to convert on the fly. Or you’re dealing with a network throughput issue related to the bitrate of the file you’re trying to remotely play.
spwa4 2mo ago
> Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. I have 2 words for you: "soon leaving". You may have seen them on Netflix. And in the US you have the advantage it's generally leaving to go somewhere. In many smaller countries this is not true. I've never those words in File Explorer.
rc5150 2mo ago
"who checks the show in advance?" Maybe I'm old school, but the primary lesson Limewire taught me was to always check the media before you show it to someone else. Every 'issue' that you mentioned about wrong episode, wrong language, etc. If those are the costs to ride the ride then so be it. No CEO gets paid in 'had to redownload a different version'.
yjftsjthsd-h 2mo ago
> Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Well that's hilariously untrue. Movies getting pulled out of streaming services is why I started to buy physical DVDs again. > Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat with your wife or friends watching it, because who checks the show in advance? Yes, those things do happen with commercial streaming platforms; Paramount is especially bad IME, but hardly unique.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  > Movies getting pulled out of streaming services is why I started to buy physical DVDs again Me too, but sadly more and more shows aren't getting physical releases at all anymore.
autoexec 2mo ago
> Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. On streaming services shows get silently censored or edited, or episodes are just outright removed (and get re-numbered so you don't even realize what was removed), and episodes get put out in the wrong order, or they aren't released at all in the right language, and there are no subtitles, only closed captions. Neither streaming or piracy are perfect, but only one them allows you to save a show to your hard drive so you know it will be there the next time you want to watch it unlike streaming where they constantly pull shows offline

schnevets 2mo ago

The streaming service is a Cathedral: You've paid your tithe to the temple of HBO Max? Marvelous, please come in, my child and gaze upon our wonders! What? James Cameron's True Lies? It is not in our collection, please remain here and we can watch Commando together! It's just as good! The digital copy is a Bazaar: You wander the booths of Prime Video, iTunes, and... Fandago!?! They assure you their copy of True Lies is the best! Ignore that other booth... you may save $2 but are you certain that video will still exist in a year? And the whole time you know that just under the bazaar is the Underground/Black Market where all is preserved and all can be had, but you'll need to work for it.

diseasedyak 2mo ago
Just a minor correction: Commando is superior to True Lies ;)
- fluoridation 2mo ago
  It is, but it's not much consolation if you want to watch True Lies and not Commando.
- DrSiemer 2mo ago
  That only strengthens the example. Their recommendations are usually awful. I'd argue even that is done better on underground services. Plus they'll just show you actually useful metrics, like the IMDB rating.
sensanaty 2mo ago
> but you'll need to work for it To be honest it's never been easier to pirate media. It is, in fact, much easier to pirate media than to find a show or movie you'd like to watch "legally". I have Netflix because I have a family plan with my parents, but I literally never use it in favor of regular ass usenet pirate sites that usually have better UI/UX than any of the streaming services do. Whenever I'm interested in some show or another, I google "Where to watch blah?". You then get greeted with 9000 websites all purporting to tell you which service has blah (the fact that this is even needed is an absurdity). 90% of them say different things to one another, most of them are clearly some hallucinated AI-generated crap created for the purpose of siphoning ad revenue from visitors. You login to whatever streaming service you subscribe to, and there's only 3 seasons out of 9 of blah, and it's the middle 3 seasons to boot (one that comes to mind is Law and Order SVU on Netflix, it only has seasons ~11-18 or something like that). The other seasons are spread across 4 different services. You then go to a different country. The catalogue is completely different, and half the shit you actually wanna watch isn't there. The DRM they use fucks up often, streams get interrupted if you open more than 1 tab at a time, the supposed "4K" resolution they offer with your subscription looks more like 360p, they don't have subtitles in one region when they do in a different one, the audio tracks are horrid more often than not. I throw my hands up in the air, navigate to one of the 9 trillion piracy websites out there, type "blah" in the searchbar, and I'm watching it in 4K after approximately 30 seconds of effort. It has all the nice features like autoplay, all the episodes are in 1 place. Gaben was 1000% right in saying piracy is a service problem, considering I don't even bother pirating games pretty much ever because of how good Steam is. I didn't even have a problem with Netflix back in the day when it was a genuinely good service, and I still pay for Spotify and Tidal, but the TV and Movie industry needs to get a grip on reality.

trompetenaccoun 2mo ago

From a moral PoV pirating old movies isn't a big issue, especially in cases where the original makers are already dead. At that point you're only feeding Hollywood bosses, shareholders and decendants. Same as torrenting music from dead artists. I don't care for Jimi Hendrix' greedy sister or 'Authentic Brands Group', which owns the rights to Elvis Presley's music. These people can create their own art instead of living off other people's work.

mawadev 2mo ago
but enough about anthropic
- mpfh 2mo ago
  Well played.
ciupicri 2mo ago
What if Jimi Hendrix wanted for his sister to benefit from his work?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Too bad because she isn't either way. It's all going to shareholders and top executives.
- whycome 2mo ago
  Who made his guitar? It seems like he made all his art on the back of someone else’s work… they should be getting royalties for every track made with their product (I’m pointing out the absurdity of trying to assign ownership within a system of shared creation)
  - ciupicri 2mo ago
    I don't think that the guitar manufacturer asked for royalties. On the other hand there are video cameras that you can't use for commercial purposes because they lack the appropriate video codec license from MPEG-LA :-) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735824)

wbl 2mo ago

Physical DVD is the way. Praise Criterion

ksenzee 2mo ago
yeah good idea, I'll just pop it into my xbox -- oh.
- fwip 2mo ago
  You can play the DVD without your Xbox being online.
  - pelagicAustral 2mo ago
    Well!, thank God for small mercies.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Lammy 2mo ago
    Only if you online-installed the BD/DVD Player app first: https://support.xbox.com/en-NZ/help/games-apps/apps-help/dvd-blu-ray-setup https://support.xbox.com/en-NZ/help/games-apps/apps-help/dvd...
reaperducer 2mo ago
Praise Criterion The whole collection, mostly on Blu-Ray, was 50% off at Barnes and Noble when I was there a couple of weeks ago. There was a huge display right at the entrance of this huge chain retailer, so in spite of the online streaming hype, there must be a non-niche audience for optical media.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  Blu-Ray is risky from the DRM side of things. Those disks can be disabled at anytime and can just stop working if the players are offline too long or the manufacture's servers go down. Rip them to your hard drive if you want to keep being able to watch them without begging for permission.