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Comment by sveme | Hacker News Reader

There's the extremely annoying tendency at least at German streaming providers (iTunes, Amazon/Google Video) to remove rental access to movies about nine months after DVD release or when a second movie of a series is about to arrive at the theatres. Only buy access remains accessible. Now that physical video rental stores are on terminal decline, online stores have an effective oligopoly without real competition and push customers towards paying a maximum. The only alternative in this case remains thepiratebay.

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There is also the issue that movies in Germany and such only have the German Audio track in 5.1, but the English one is in 2.0. How ridiculous.

But most Germans don't care for the english track in the first place, being used to subbed dialogue.

It's changing. I'm seeing movies in English a lot more often in cinemas than I did 10 years ago.

But there is no technical reason not to include other languages in 5.1? I would get the argument for DVDs and maybe live TV, but not for streaming...

There are a lot of immigrants, like me, who can speak and understand German but miss a lot when watching movies.

Subtitles would help a lot but even that is missing with a lot of providers (I wonder what people with hearing disabilities do).

At least Netflix has always German subtitles. For series, English subtitles too most of the time, but practically none of the movies have those in English which I find quite weird.

Are you saying it isn't ridiculous? It's always ridiculous to not have the original language track in the best quality/format. It would be ridiculous for Japanese films distributed in the US to have the Japanese track in 2.0 and the dubbed English in 5.1

> It would be ridiculous for Japanese films distributed in the US to have the Japanese track in 2.0 and the dubbed English in 5.1

A far worse offender, for me at least, are Blu-Rays in that regard. During their introduction, they were hailed as allowing distributors to pack dozens of high-quality different language tracks and different subtitle options on the disc.

While the reality these days looks like this: Most Blu-Ray releases are still regionalized, very often with limited audio language options (in 2.0 quality) and sometimes not even subtitle support for one language.

I think a lot of that has to do with distributors pretty much forming cartels by region, thus having only rights to distribute only specific versions in specific regions.

To be fair this has gotten somewhat better, at least with TV series and newer releases on Amazon. Newer shows releasing with proper audio quality, language choice and often even CC subtitles in both languages.

I was pleasantly surprised that my Prime subscription might actually still be useful for something.

Abstinence is not an alternative?

I've never understood why so many people feel that they have to see every superhero movie or every Blockbuster.

Becomes more difficult the more social your life becomes. Ordinarily I wouldn't care about the new Star Wars movie, but because everyone else cares, I pretty much have to go see it, if only so I can talk about it.

I don't mind going to see movies in the theater, but TV shows are a different animal. Hollywood refuses to allow me to buy the kind of access I want, digital, unencrypted copies that I can store on a disk drive, or failing that a streaming service that allows access to everything, so pirating is the only way to go.

You pretty much have to see it? I think Hollywood sucks and all, but geez, if you think you have to pirate a TV show at a certain level of sociality, you're probably not really socializing in a healthy way. You may not be giving them a lot of money, but you're definitely giving them a lot of power over your self.

That's an... interesting... way of looking at it.

I'm not sure what having a social life has to do with anything. I haven't sat down to watch a TV show for over a decade, but by some great miracle, I have a robust social life with friends and plenty of activities to do. When a friend asks, "hey, did you see the latest Star Wars movie" or "how 'bout that great Sportsball game last night??" I just say no, didn't see it, and we talk about something else. I know, it sounds crazy.

Or they just start talking with your other friends about it and leave you out.

You have an unusual definition of "friend" then... But I'm not gonna tell you who to hang out with.

You really want me to tell my friends what they should be watching and talking about?

For Germans: Create a US iTunes account, buy USD iTunes gift cards on eBay Germany, put in the account. Rent from the US store.

This proves the exact point that customers who wish to legally pay for content have to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops.

Register an account in a different country, pay for a gift card in another currency, suffer international transaction fees + currency conversion rates, then manage multiple accounts with different balances depending on when iTunes has juggled around it's regional stores.

Or just visit pirate bay.

Isn't that as bad as downloading via torrent? In many countries the sole consumption is not considered illegal (only sharing is), so violating iTunes terms could be even worse theoretically.

And as a side note it could open you up to getting your main account blocked by Apple if they start cracking down on that.

Aren't you afraid of receiving a 'Abmahnung' for torrenting?

I'm still dumbfounded that the practise of setting up torrent honeypots by agencies like waldorf&frommer is actually legal

That's why you use a VPN when downloading Torrents.

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