13 ms·

Why you can't get 4K Netflix and Amazon

93 points by hugoc 12y ago

douglas_k 12y ago
DRM was sold to the politicians and public alike as a means of getting great content to customers and preventing piracy. I suspect it won't be long before the DRM being used for the Amazon and Netflix 4K TV streams are well and truly broken like they were for HDMI and other "secure" measures before it.
ep103 12y ago
Amazon's video streaming quality can be horrendous. Checking that I'm using an HDMI cable before streaming me HD content? Really?
timboslice 12y ago
TL;DR - speculation it's due to DRM/pirating concerns. Most TV's have no output and are therefore a safe mechanism to allow playback, whereas a PC could rip the stream
themartorana 12y ago
But if I grab a torrent to the 4K version of the movie, I can play it on my computer. Do people still legitimately wonder why so many people flock to torrents? Hollywood (and by extension, other large content producers) have the most sincere form of Ostrich Syndrome[0] that I know of. [0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Ostrich%20Syndrome http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Ostrich...
- scott_s 12y ago
  Do people flock to torrents? No one I know does. They all watch content on their tv, obtained through a legit streaming service or a cable subscription. Personally, I don't feel right grabbing torrents, but I also don't want the hassle. I think that legit digital delivery for music and video has, for the most part, crossed the threshold where it's just easier than the alternatives.
  - ceronman 12y ago
    I pay for Netflix every month. Still I use XBMCtorrent to watch most TV series and movies. Many things are not available on Netflix or a similar service. Even if they're available on Netflix, most of the time they don't have subtitles in my native language, seeking is slow, there is not flexibility in the resolution. XBMC just provides me a better user experience.
    - steeve 12y ago
      It is discontinued, you might want to switch to Pulsar instead. (I'm the author or both)
      - ceronman 12y ago
        I didn't know. Thanks for the tip.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    > Do people flock to torrents? No one I know does. I know quite a few people who use torrents (or usenet) as their primary source of TV. Combining Plex + Sabnzbd + Sickbeard you get a internet DVR with little to no maintenance once setup (other than adding more capacity as/if needed). They all have a hulu-like (next day) experience, they get it in HD, and there are no ads. Legit delivery for music has crossed the threshold but video has not. You still have to use multiple services to watch everything you want.
    - redblacktree 12y ago
      The setup you're describing is beyond the reach of a great many people. They pay for Netflix instead.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        I can't be bothered to go through it, and I do film post & production for a living, so it's not any lack of technical capability.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  I remember before Netflix and Amazon when it was: DVD or Torrent and this image came out: http://craphound.com/images/ifurapirate.jpeg http://craphound.com/images/ifurapirate.jpeg That was about stuffing promo's and ads in before the movie but this feels very similar. You can get a better experience by getting a torrent over streaming legally. I pay for Amazon and Netflix but I will still download content from time to time that I can get on them (for no additional cost) because I can get a better experience: no buffering, no quality yo-yo-ing as network speeds fluctuate, no ads, reliable watched status (Using Plex, this is more an issue with Amazon which keeps track of your position in a video but doesn't have watched/unwatched status so it's sometimes hard to pick up in a series where you left off). Spotify (IMHO) is a great example of a level of service/features (even at a price) beating piracy. I'm still waiting on the "Spotify of TV" (Or movies) and no I don't think it exists out there yet. I would be all over Hulu expect I refuse to pay for a service AND see ads. I would rather pay $20/mo and not see ads then pay the $10/mo and see them. Almost as bad as having to see ads in the first place the ads on Hulu are painfully repetitive at times.
  - fidotron 12y ago
    You're right, but it's worth recognising that few people realised what bad businesses Spotify or Pandora actually are. The margins just aren't there, and so for film/tv you're going to see a persistent effort to continue to "add value" which really means adding value for the seller, and not adding value for the consumer.
  - nemothekid 12y ago
    >I would be all over Hulu expect I refuse to pay for a service AND see ads. I would rather pay $20/mo and not see ads then pay the $10/mo and see them. Almost as bad as having to see ads in the first place the ads on Hulu are painfully repetitive at times. You are going to have to make a better offer to the studios that are currently charging customers $80/mo AND forcing them to see ads. Hollywood would have to slim down significantly if it was going to go Netflix-model primary on all its content.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  It's easy to give away a 4k torrent when you haven't had to pay anything for the right to distribute it or invest in the necessary infrastructure. If there are quality problems or whatever, there's no obligation to fix them. People have much higher expectations when they're paying, even if they're only paying a small amount.
  - couchand 12y ago
    People have much higher expectations when they're paying Which is ironic considering how much better of an experience piracy is 9 times out of ten.
cwyers 12y ago
I have a hard time getting too worked up over this in the case of Amazon, because I have a heck of a time getting them to stream even SD content without horrible buffering issues.
- random28345 12y ago
  That's why I pay for Prime (and Netflix, et. al.), and torrent the content. Admittedly, I feel a little bad about paying providers of DRMed content, it sends the wrong market signal. But if I didn't pay these content providers, I wouldn't have a mechanism of signalling that I enjoy watching certain TV shows and movies.
  - balls187 12y ago
    If you cancel your subscriptions will you delete your torrented content? What if content is removed from Netflix?
    - redblacktree 12y ago
      I get what you're saying, but this is the edge case. I applaud GP for doing the right thing in the 95% case.
      - balls187 12y ago
        It's not really an edge case, is it? Does a netflix subscription give you rights to torrent movies that exist on Netflix? If so, what happens when they no longer exist. Does the parent commenter check Netflix first before downloading a torrent? I'm not passing judgement, but merely pointing out that a netflix subscription doesn't grant you the license to download and store content, in fact, it's likely expressly forbidden in the TOS. ETA: Not to sound self righteous, I torrented a copy of TES4: Oblivion for the PC day-1, after buying it from Amazon. It was being shipped, but I wanted to play it immediately.
        MacsHeadroom 12y ago
balls187 12y ago
Which devices support Netflix and Amazon 4k streams? ETA: From Netflix' FAQ it looks like it's via the TV apps on select "Smart" TV's. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444
johnduhart 12y ago
> Anyone who knows technology knows the computational and image-processing capabilities of even an average PC or Mac far outstrip those of a streaming box, set-top box, or smart TV by several orders of magnitude. It's quite possible these TVs or STBs are shipping with a special hardware decoder that supports this format that they're using.
- acgourley 12y ago
  They are - dedicated silicon support for HEVC. That's how they can do it with such a small form factor and power budget. However a software codec on a modern PC should have no problem with HEVC due to the huge amount of available CPU.
  - brigade 12y ago
    Well, Adobe hasn't added support to Flash yet. Plus, given their massive display pipeline performance problems, it's quite possible that they won't be able do 4k 10-bit HEVC when it's finally added.
    - TD-Linux 12y ago
      They would also have to pay the added HEVC licensing cost for Flash Player, which is substantially more than H.264 was.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    It exists but it's slow which is why it's not standard in many video editing platforms yet. Encoding speed for 4k using the Divx encoder is <1fps. So a 2 hour film owuld take about 48 hours on an i7. I think there are some commercial codecs that are a bit faster like the Cinemartin one, but they're about $500. Makes sense if you have a small rendering farm, but limits demand at the bottom end of the market. Of course you can just distribute the decoder, and of course the decoder is much faster (Divx is 28fps ont he same Core i7 IIRC). But the # of people with 4k displays right now is really tiny compared to the install base for HD, like I'd guess <<1%.
- 12y ago
k-mcgrady 12y ago
I wonder if part of the reason is lack of demand too. What percentage of Netflix subscribers actually have 4K monitors + the bandwidth needed to stream something of that quality?
_RPM 12y ago
As a torrent user, I do find that paid content is higher quality and more convenient, unless you have a dedicated setup. It is so simple to turn my TV on and watch a move than it is to connect my laptop, download the torrent, which involves firing up my VM, finding the torrent magnet link, and then DL'ing it.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  For your setup? Yes, legit tv is easier. Using Sickbeard (Usenet or torrent version) will give you a DVR-like experience with the shows auto-downloading, unziping/unraring, and moving into a defined folder structure 1-24hrs after the show airs.
- slayed0 12y ago
  Not all torrents are created equal. There are certain (private) communities within the torrent world which have amazing release groups who are dedicated to producing the highest quality versions possible. There are also groups who focus purely on release time and quality is at most a secondary concern. What I'm getting at is that using torrents (or rather piracy) allows to obtain content that matches your needs (in this case quality vs release time). You can get music/movies/tv shows etc in higher quality than any commercially available streaming source allows for.
- steeve 12y ago
  Look at Pulsar then: https://github.com/steeve/plugin.video.pulsar https://github.com/steeve/plugin.video.pulsar
imgabe 12y ago
> I and your readers on a PC or Mac could intercept the 4K [content] and therefore transmit it to a country that doesn’t have the rights. Wow, maybe if there's a country full of people so eager to watch your content that they'll steal it you should, I don't know, sell them the rights to watch it? Of course, I'm just a simple nobody. I guess you have to be a fancy movie studio executive to understand how you make more money by preventing people from accessing your content.
- mmastrac 12y ago
  The studios and middlemen that bring content to people's doorsteps have created this incredible Gordian knot of contractual obligations and agreements. This industry showed up in the dark ages of connectivity where content was produced for a local market. If someone else wanted to show this content in their jurisdiction, they'd just create a one-off agreement for it and be on their way. They honestly don't know how to sell to the entire world at the same time. Piracy is the Alexandrian solution to this. Untying the relationships and legal contracts would take decades, but the threat of piracy forces them to offer solutions today to compete.
  - imgabe 12y ago
    I'm sure there's contracts and such, but really, what leverage does Zoltar's Romanian Film Distribution Inc. have over Sony or Disney? They can't just say, "Look, we really don't need you to drive truckloads of DVDs around the country anymore. It's been nice working with you, good luck." Obviously they still need translations and such, but can't that be done concurrently while they're preparing for release anyway?
- jotm 12y ago
  No, the citizens of Poland MUST watch Avatar 2 six months later than the citizens of the UK. /s Why is this the case in this time and age?
  - santacluster 12y ago
    The more insane variant is "not available in your country". I'm in my country. You're serving me bits just now in order to tell me this. WTF? It's like sitting down in restaurant, see a wonderful meal being served at the table right next to you, seeing the meal on the fucking menu, but when you order being told "no sir, not at your table". In what industry do people come back after being treated like that?
aosmith 12y ago
Because everyone's comcast would choke and die?
- keeganpoppen 12y ago
  it's ok-- amazon is a level3 customer and comcast refuses to upgrade the interconnect between their two networks* (even if level3 foots the bill), so it would choke no worse than it's already choking. * technically level3 doesn't name them by name, but i wouldn't really consider it reading between the lines...
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    Amazon is a level 3 customer, but Amazon also has a direct connect with Comcast. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/see-which-isps-google-microsoft-and-netflix-trade-internet-traffic-with/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/see-wh...
meesterdude 12y ago
I tried to rent an HD movie (the family man (hey, its the holidays)) on amazon but was told my device (27-inch imac) is not "compatible". Super WTF. A torrented version gives me none of that BS. And its free. Piracy is mostly a matter of market. The more DRM BS you try to force upon me, the more I'm going to do to not give you any of my money at all. Even if most people pay for content, any level of piracy is "unacceptable" to these companies. It's not enough that they make a buck, or make quite a few. They have to crap all over the experience in an attempt to stop piracy, which is a fools errand and hurts the people who DO pay for content. I'll start being reasonable when they stop being unreasonable.
- meesterdude 12y ago
  Another example: hulu plus still shows ads. I'd happily pay for hulu but not if it means I still have to watch their ads. Classic corporate double-dip. Fuck that, and fuck hulu.
- jotm 12y ago
  Haha, yes, Amazon, where they offer digital copies of movies that can only be downloaded when your physical copy arrives in the mail. Fooking ridiculous.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    ? All the times I've done that, Amazon sends me a disc in the mail and then gives me an immediate 48 hour rental. I don't wait for the disc. Unless you're talking about the "UltraViolet" or "Digital Copy" thing, but that's not Aamzon. That's the studio. You get the same thing in a store. Amazon even has a whole page that explains the difference. http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Copy-DVD/b?ie=UTF8&node=721726011 http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Copy-DVD/b?ie=UTF8&node=721726...
    - jotm 12y ago
      Yes, the Digital Copy - I was very confused about it.
logicallee 12y ago
A commenter, richcon, on the linked story makes a good point: " The open source HEVC software decoder requires a four-core Intel Core i7 running at 2.3 Ghz to play 30p 4k video, and I'd guess it'd be running so hot you could fry an egg on it. The Retina iMac only has an i7 chip in the maxed-out upgrade configuration. So maybe it is about the hardware performance. If Amazon paid for it they could license a commercial software decoder with lower CPU requirements, but that'd cost them a lot of money and still likely run with fans blazing. Those new embedded TV chips you deem to be weak compared to desktop CPUs have dedicated hardware designed specifically for decoding this new video format, and dedicated chips beat software performance any day. When most desktop PCs ship with hardware 4k HEVC decoders too, then I'd expect Amazon and Netflix to come on board." (I think he would be fine with my copying it with the same attribution he posted with - it's just a story comment.)
- nharada 12y ago
  Yeah, reading this article my first thought was that it probably wasn't entirely malevolence. Not that I agree with the way video content providers run their businesses, but I suspect that running 4K video in the browser would chug the average user's machine. My 3 year old laptop works pretty hard just to display HD. If I was Netflix I wouldn't want to release 4K if it meant only a small segment of customers would get a good experience. Releasing a disclaimer that the user requires adequate hardware won't satisfy the majority of computer users who don't know or care about the specs required. Most people just want it to work. I also take issue with the line, "Anyone who knows technology knows the computational and image-processing capabilities of even an average PC or Mac far outstrip those of a streaming box." Dedicated hardware can outperform a general computer while requiring less "processing power" (measured in FLOPS or GHz or whatever). The Chromecast has a dual-core CPU and 512 MB of RAM and it runs HD video perfectly.
- Raphael 12y ago
  Perhaps GPUs would fare better.
ollifi 12y ago
How much is there 4k content currently? Arri Alexa which is quite common production camera shoots something like 2880x1620. Red has more pixels via heavier compression but even that stuff seems to be mastered 2k which is the common cinema format. Or maybe it is regional, but I don't think we have 4k cinemas anywhere here. I would hope they would spend the bandwith to get netflix stream closer to cinema datarates rather than try to compress more pixels through thin pipe.
ademarre 12y ago
Reminds me of this: http://avc.com/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-business-model/ http://avc.com/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-business-model/
TodPunk 12y ago
I worked for a company that had a media encoding lab approved by 5 of the major Hollywood studios, and I can assure you, this is purely studios not approving PCs and not allowing Amazon or Netflix to talk about it. Good lord do studios hate technology if they don't feel they control it completely. I invented two studio approved DRM schemes for embedded devices and you can be quite a bit simpler with DRM if you control the whole thing. If you want to cover PCs, you have to use more extensive DRM, usually 'off-the-shelf' as we call it, and you don't get more attractive content for that market. For instance, in airlines, you can get pre-DVD release movies for approved systems, but you can't for personal devices (even mobile devices). To the people talking about torrenting it instead, that's again the entire point. It limits access to those able to torrent, but still enables studios to control a significant part of the market that can't or won't torrent. It really is all a control game.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
tl;dr In order to get the content in the first place, we had to sign contract that said we wouldn't distribute it to a PC, and that we wouldn't tell anyone the real reason. Why Netflix or Amazon would tolerate that is another question. I'm not convinced they need to. But, I'm not the right one to ask anyway because I can't get that kind of internet access from my cable company, and therefore not going to watch any 4k anything for a few years, I'd bet.
meesterdude 12y ago
I wish I could just pay these companies for the right to download whatever I wanted. Bittorrent solves the storage and transmission issue for them and lets me download movies from the 1980's that nobody (apple, amazon, netflix) have in their inventory. Movies and music are more than simply products, they are part of our culture. Nobody would argue that they shouldn't make money from it, because we want them to succeed and do it again. But what we don't like is getting fucked over, and thats basically their business. There was some disney show a friend of mine wanted to watch with his kids, which was classically available via amazon prime. But then it became the holidays, and disney pulled it from prime so now he had to pay to watch it. It's the same song and dance with netflix, who is at the mercy of the licensing of media companies who decide how much to charge for the license, and if they want to license it at all to them. It's an exploration of bullshit and greed.
zackify 12y ago
Do they not understand you can just get a PVR and record the movie on a tv....
- lttlrck 12y ago
  On which 4K cable service would that be?

93 points by hugoc 12y ago

DRM was sold to the politicians and public alike as a means of getting great content to customers and preventing piracy. I suspect it won't be long before the DRM being used for the Amazon and Netflix 4K TV streams are well and truly broken like they were for HDMI and other "secure" measures before it.

ep103 12y ago

Amazon's video streaming quality can be horrendous. Checking that I'm using an HDMI cable before streaming me HD content? Really?

timboslice 12y ago

TL;DR - speculation it's due to DRM/pirating concerns. Most TV's have no output and are therefore a safe mechanism to allow playback, whereas a PC could rip the stream

themartorana 12y ago

But if I grab a torrent to the 4K version of the movie, I can play it on my computer. Do people still legitimately wonder why so many people flock to torrents? Hollywood (and by extension, other large content producers) have the most sincere form of Ostrich Syndrome[0] that I know of. [0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Ostrich%20Syndrome http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Ostrich...

scott_s 12y ago
Do people flock to torrents? No one I know does. They all watch content on their tv, obtained through a legit streaming service or a cable subscription. Personally, I don't feel right grabbing torrents, but I also don't want the hassle. I think that legit digital delivery for music and video has, for the most part, crossed the threshold where it's just easier than the alternatives.
- ceronman 12y ago
  I pay for Netflix every month. Still I use XBMCtorrent to watch most TV series and movies. Many things are not available on Netflix or a similar service. Even if they're available on Netflix, most of the time they don't have subtitles in my native language, seeking is slow, there is not flexibility in the resolution. XBMC just provides me a better user experience.
  - steeve 12y ago
    It is discontinued, you might want to switch to Pulsar instead. (I'm the author or both)
    - ceronman 12y ago
      I didn't know. Thanks for the tip.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  > Do people flock to torrents? No one I know does. I know quite a few people who use torrents (or usenet) as their primary source of TV. Combining Plex + Sabnzbd + Sickbeard you get a internet DVR with little to no maintenance once setup (other than adding more capacity as/if needed). They all have a hulu-like (next day) experience, they get it in HD, and there are no ads. Legit delivery for music has crossed the threshold but video has not. You still have to use multiple services to watch everything you want.
  - redblacktree 12y ago
    The setup you're describing is beyond the reach of a great many people. They pay for Netflix instead.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      I can't be bothered to go through it, and I do film post & production for a living, so it's not any lack of technical capability.
joshstrange 12y ago
I remember before Netflix and Amazon when it was: DVD or Torrent and this image came out: http://craphound.com/images/ifurapirate.jpeg http://craphound.com/images/ifurapirate.jpeg That was about stuffing promo's and ads in before the movie but this feels very similar. You can get a better experience by getting a torrent over streaming legally. I pay for Amazon and Netflix but I will still download content from time to time that I can get on them (for no additional cost) because I can get a better experience: no buffering, no quality yo-yo-ing as network speeds fluctuate, no ads, reliable watched status (Using Plex, this is more an issue with Amazon which keeps track of your position in a video but doesn't have watched/unwatched status so it's sometimes hard to pick up in a series where you left off). Spotify (IMHO) is a great example of a level of service/features (even at a price) beating piracy. I'm still waiting on the "Spotify of TV" (Or movies) and no I don't think it exists out there yet. I would be all over Hulu expect I refuse to pay for a service AND see ads. I would rather pay $20/mo and not see ads then pay the $10/mo and see them. Almost as bad as having to see ads in the first place the ads on Hulu are painfully repetitive at times.
- fidotron 12y ago
  You're right, but it's worth recognising that few people realised what bad businesses Spotify or Pandora actually are. The margins just aren't there, and so for film/tv you're going to see a persistent effort to continue to "add value" which really means adding value for the seller, and not adding value for the consumer.
- nemothekid 12y ago
  >I would be all over Hulu expect I refuse to pay for a service AND see ads. I would rather pay $20/mo and not see ads then pay the $10/mo and see them. Almost as bad as having to see ads in the first place the ads on Hulu are painfully repetitive at times. You are going to have to make a better offer to the studios that are currently charging customers $80/mo AND forcing them to see ads. Hollywood would have to slim down significantly if it was going to go Netflix-model primary on all its content.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
anigbrowl 12y ago
It's easy to give away a 4k torrent when you haven't had to pay anything for the right to distribute it or invest in the necessary infrastructure. If there are quality problems or whatever, there's no obligation to fix them. People have much higher expectations when they're paying, even if they're only paying a small amount.
- couchand 12y ago
  People have much higher expectations when they're paying Which is ironic considering how much better of an experience piracy is 9 times out of ten.

cwyers 12y ago

I have a hard time getting too worked up over this in the case of Amazon, because I have a heck of a time getting them to stream even SD content without horrible buffering issues.

random28345 12y ago
That's why I pay for Prime (and Netflix, et. al.), and torrent the content. Admittedly, I feel a little bad about paying providers of DRMed content, it sends the wrong market signal. But if I didn't pay these content providers, I wouldn't have a mechanism of signalling that I enjoy watching certain TV shows and movies.
- balls187 12y ago
  If you cancel your subscriptions will you delete your torrented content? What if content is removed from Netflix?
  - redblacktree 12y ago
    I get what you're saying, but this is the edge case. I applaud GP for doing the right thing in the 95% case.
    - balls187 12y ago
      It's not really an edge case, is it? Does a netflix subscription give you rights to torrent movies that exist on Netflix? If so, what happens when they no longer exist. Does the parent commenter check Netflix first before downloading a torrent? I'm not passing judgement, but merely pointing out that a netflix subscription doesn't grant you the license to download and store content, in fact, it's likely expressly forbidden in the TOS. ETA: Not to sound self righteous, I torrented a copy of TES4: Oblivion for the PC day-1, after buying it from Amazon. It was being shipped, but I wanted to play it immediately.
      - MacsHeadroom 12y ago

balls187 12y ago

Which devices support Netflix and Amazon 4k streams? ETA: From Netflix' FAQ it looks like it's via the TV apps on select "Smart" TV's. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444

johnduhart 12y ago

> Anyone who knows technology knows the computational and image-processing capabilities of even an average PC or Mac far outstrip those of a streaming box, set-top box, or smart TV by several orders of magnitude. It's quite possible these TVs or STBs are shipping with a special hardware decoder that supports this format that they're using.

acgourley 12y ago
They are - dedicated silicon support for HEVC. That's how they can do it with such a small form factor and power budget. However a software codec on a modern PC should have no problem with HEVC due to the huge amount of available CPU.
- brigade 12y ago
  Well, Adobe hasn't added support to Flash yet. Plus, given their massive display pipeline performance problems, it's quite possible that they won't be able do 4k 10-bit HEVC when it's finally added.
  - TD-Linux 12y ago
    They would also have to pay the added HEVC licensing cost for Flash Player, which is substantially more than H.264 was.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  It exists but it's slow which is why it's not standard in many video editing platforms yet. Encoding speed for 4k using the Divx encoder is <1fps. So a 2 hour film owuld take about 48 hours on an i7. I think there are some commercial codecs that are a bit faster like the Cinemartin one, but they're about $500. Makes sense if you have a small rendering farm, but limits demand at the bottom end of the market. Of course you can just distribute the decoder, and of course the decoder is much faster (Divx is 28fps ont he same Core i7 IIRC). But the # of people with 4k displays right now is really tiny compared to the install base for HD, like I'd guess <<1%.
12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago

I wonder if part of the reason is lack of demand too. What percentage of Netflix subscribers actually have 4K monitors + the bandwidth needed to stream something of that quality?

_RPM 12y ago

As a torrent user, I do find that paid content is higher quality and more convenient, unless you have a dedicated setup. It is so simple to turn my TV on and watch a move than it is to connect my laptop, download the torrent, which involves firing up my VM, finding the torrent magnet link, and then DL'ing it.

joshstrange 12y ago
For your setup? Yes, legit tv is easier. Using Sickbeard (Usenet or torrent version) will give you a DVR-like experience with the shows auto-downloading, unziping/unraring, and moving into a defined folder structure 1-24hrs after the show airs.
slayed0 12y ago
Not all torrents are created equal. There are certain (private) communities within the torrent world which have amazing release groups who are dedicated to producing the highest quality versions possible. There are also groups who focus purely on release time and quality is at most a secondary concern. What I'm getting at is that using torrents (or rather piracy) allows to obtain content that matches your needs (in this case quality vs release time). You can get music/movies/tv shows etc in higher quality than any commercially available streaming source allows for.
steeve 12y ago
Look at Pulsar then: https://github.com/steeve/plugin.video.pulsar https://github.com/steeve/plugin.video.pulsar

imgabe 12y ago

> I and your readers on a PC or Mac could intercept the 4K [content] and therefore transmit it to a country that doesn’t have the rights. Wow, maybe if there's a country full of people so eager to watch your content that they'll steal it you should, I don't know, sell them the rights to watch it? Of course, I'm just a simple nobody. I guess you have to be a fancy movie studio executive to understand how you make more money by preventing people from accessing your content.

mmastrac 12y ago
The studios and middlemen that bring content to people's doorsteps have created this incredible Gordian knot of contractual obligations and agreements. This industry showed up in the dark ages of connectivity where content was produced for a local market. If someone else wanted to show this content in their jurisdiction, they'd just create a one-off agreement for it and be on their way. They honestly don't know how to sell to the entire world at the same time. Piracy is the Alexandrian solution to this. Untying the relationships and legal contracts would take decades, but the threat of piracy forces them to offer solutions today to compete.
- imgabe 12y ago
  I'm sure there's contracts and such, but really, what leverage does Zoltar's Romanian Film Distribution Inc. have over Sony or Disney? They can't just say, "Look, we really don't need you to drive truckloads of DVDs around the country anymore. It's been nice working with you, good luck." Obviously they still need translations and such, but can't that be done concurrently while they're preparing for release anyway?
jotm 12y ago
No, the citizens of Poland MUST watch Avatar 2 six months later than the citizens of the UK. /s Why is this the case in this time and age?
- santacluster 12y ago
  The more insane variant is "not available in your country". I'm in my country. You're serving me bits just now in order to tell me this. WTF? It's like sitting down in restaurant, see a wonderful meal being served at the table right next to you, seeing the meal on the fucking menu, but when you order being told "no sir, not at your table". In what industry do people come back after being treated like that?

aosmith 12y ago

Because everyone's comcast would choke and die?

keeganpoppen 12y ago
it's ok-- amazon is a level3 customer and comcast refuses to upgrade the interconnect between their two networks* (even if level3 foots the bill), so it would choke no worse than it's already choking. * technically level3 doesn't name them by name, but i wouldn't really consider it reading between the lines...
- NoPiece 12y ago
  Amazon is a level 3 customer, but Amazon also has a direct connect with Comcast. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/see-which-isps-google-microsoft-and-netflix-trade-internet-traffic-with/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/see-wh...

meesterdude 12y ago

I tried to rent an HD movie (the family man (hey, its the holidays)) on amazon but was told my device (27-inch imac) is not "compatible". Super WTF. A torrented version gives me none of that BS. And its free. Piracy is mostly a matter of market. The more DRM BS you try to force upon me, the more I'm going to do to not give you any of my money at all. Even if most people pay for content, any level of piracy is "unacceptable" to these companies. It's not enough that they make a buck, or make quite a few. They have to crap all over the experience in an attempt to stop piracy, which is a fools errand and hurts the people who DO pay for content. I'll start being reasonable when they stop being unreasonable.

meesterdude 12y ago
Another example: hulu plus still shows ads. I'd happily pay for hulu but not if it means I still have to watch their ads. Classic corporate double-dip. Fuck that, and fuck hulu.
jotm 12y ago
Haha, yes, Amazon, where they offer digital copies of movies that can only be downloaded when your physical copy arrives in the mail. Fooking ridiculous.
- tedunangst 12y ago
  ? All the times I've done that, Amazon sends me a disc in the mail and then gives me an immediate 48 hour rental. I don't wait for the disc. Unless you're talking about the "UltraViolet" or "Digital Copy" thing, but that's not Aamzon. That's the studio. You get the same thing in a store. Amazon even has a whole page that explains the difference. http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Copy-DVD/b?ie=UTF8&node=721726011 http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Copy-DVD/b?ie=UTF8&node=721726...
  - jotm 12y ago
    Yes, the Digital Copy - I was very confused about it.

logicallee 12y ago

A commenter, richcon, on the linked story makes a good point: " The open source HEVC software decoder requires a four-core Intel Core i7 running at 2.3 Ghz to play 30p 4k video, and I'd guess it'd be running so hot you could fry an egg on it. The Retina iMac only has an i7 chip in the maxed-out upgrade configuration. So maybe it is about the hardware performance. If Amazon paid for it they could license a commercial software decoder with lower CPU requirements, but that'd cost them a lot of money and still likely run with fans blazing. Those new embedded TV chips you deem to be weak compared to desktop CPUs have dedicated hardware designed specifically for decoding this new video format, and dedicated chips beat software performance any day. When most desktop PCs ship with hardware 4k HEVC decoders too, then I'd expect Amazon and Netflix to come on board." (I think he would be fine with my copying it with the same attribution he posted with - it's just a story comment.)

nharada 12y ago
Yeah, reading this article my first thought was that it probably wasn't entirely malevolence. Not that I agree with the way video content providers run their businesses, but I suspect that running 4K video in the browser would chug the average user's machine. My 3 year old laptop works pretty hard just to display HD. If I was Netflix I wouldn't want to release 4K if it meant only a small segment of customers would get a good experience. Releasing a disclaimer that the user requires adequate hardware won't satisfy the majority of computer users who don't know or care about the specs required. Most people just want it to work. I also take issue with the line, "Anyone who knows technology knows the computational and image-processing capabilities of even an average PC or Mac far outstrip those of a streaming box." Dedicated hardware can outperform a general computer while requiring less "processing power" (measured in FLOPS or GHz or whatever). The Chromecast has a dual-core CPU and 512 MB of RAM and it runs HD video perfectly.
Raphael 12y ago
Perhaps GPUs would fare better.

ollifi 12y ago

How much is there 4k content currently? Arri Alexa which is quite common production camera shoots something like 2880x1620. Red has more pixels via heavier compression but even that stuff seems to be mastered 2k which is the common cinema format. Or maybe it is regional, but I don't think we have 4k cinemas anywhere here. I would hope they would spend the bandwith to get netflix stream closer to cinema datarates rather than try to compress more pixels through thin pipe.

ademarre 12y ago

Reminds me of this: http://avc.com/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-business-model/ http://avc.com/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-business-model/

TodPunk 12y ago

I worked for a company that had a media encoding lab approved by 5 of the major Hollywood studios, and I can assure you, this is purely studios not approving PCs and not allowing Amazon or Netflix to talk about it. Good lord do studios hate technology if they don't feel they control it completely. I invented two studio approved DRM schemes for embedded devices and you can be quite a bit simpler with DRM if you control the whole thing. If you want to cover PCs, you have to use more extensive DRM, usually 'off-the-shelf' as we call it, and you don't get more attractive content for that market. For instance, in airlines, you can get pre-DVD release movies for approved systems, but you can't for personal devices (even mobile devices). To the people talking about torrenting it instead, that's again the entire point. It limits access to those able to torrent, but still enables studios to control a significant part of the market that can't or won't torrent. It really is all a control game.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

tl;dr In order to get the content in the first place, we had to sign contract that said we wouldn't distribute it to a PC, and that we wouldn't tell anyone the real reason. Why Netflix or Amazon would tolerate that is another question. I'm not convinced they need to. But, I'm not the right one to ask anyway because I can't get that kind of internet access from my cable company, and therefore not going to watch any 4k anything for a few years, I'd bet.

meesterdude 12y ago

I wish I could just pay these companies for the right to download whatever I wanted. Bittorrent solves the storage and transmission issue for them and lets me download movies from the 1980's that nobody (apple, amazon, netflix) have in their inventory. Movies and music are more than simply products, they are part of our culture. Nobody would argue that they shouldn't make money from it, because we want them to succeed and do it again. But what we don't like is getting fucked over, and thats basically their business. There was some disney show a friend of mine wanted to watch with his kids, which was classically available via amazon prime. But then it became the holidays, and disney pulled it from prime so now he had to pay to watch it. It's the same song and dance with netflix, who is at the mercy of the licensing of media companies who decide how much to charge for the license, and if they want to license it at all to them. It's an exploration of bullshit and greed.

zackify 12y ago

Do they not understand you can just get a PVR and record the movie on a tv....

lttlrck 12y ago
On which 4K cable service would that be?