Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

The problem with legal movies are DRM, vendor/device lock-in, forced ads, regional policies etc.

You can just download a pirated movie as a plain MP4/MKV/AVI file in the language you want (not necessarily the official language of your region) and the quality you want (some people like 30+ gib HDs, many prefer 5 of less gib per movie) and play it forever everywhere, including unsupported platforms (namely huge number of TVs and no-name set-top-boxes with USB ports, old PCs with exotic OSes etc). This (besides visiting cinemas, these 2 things don't really affect each other, people often do both for the same movie) is what almost everybody does in the eastern Europe. People don't really mind to pay some bucks for a movie/song/book/etc. but nobody in sane mind wants the crap I've mentioned in the first paragraph. Sell plain DRM-free standard-format multilingual downloadable files for humble prices (under $5 per movie) and you'll have almost all the audience pirate sites attract.

> as a plain MP4/MKV/AVI file in the language you want (not necessarily the official language of your region)

Not to mention being able to download subtitles in almost any language there is and then play the movie with those subtitles.

That's one of those things that drive me crazy about Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and such: there's a ton of movies I can't watch with my wife because her English isn't good enough yet.

> That's one of those things that drive me crazy about Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and such: there's a ton of movies I can't watch with my wife because her English isn't good enough yet.

I will tell you something more crazy about Amazon Prime. You will have an English movie available in the German catalogue but only in German (dubbed). You won't get the English version. I'd like to meet the geniuses who came up with these ideas.

You know what is more crazy. Having most of the movies in the movie theaters dubbed to the local language. I for the love of god can`t understand why people prefer to watch those lame versions and not with the original actor audio/voice. Especially when some guy is doing voice overs for several actors. It hurts my brain so badly I can`t watch it.

The Germans and French prefer dubbing, you won’t see it in the northern (Netherlands+Scandinavian) countries. In Switzerland, you have to look for version originale playings (at least in the French part).

In some countries (e.g. Poland) the theaters have two shows, one with voice-over usually afternoons - for the kids, and subtitles later/nights, for grown-ups that most likely have an adequate knowledge of the foreign language.

The German dubs are usually quite good (some are so good that it is really difficult to notice that it's dubbed), because the majority of the audience demands it. Having the same voice actor for multiple characters would be unusual (at best), and often the same actor is voiced by the same voice actor across movies, though sometimes it changes.

Spain also dubs almost everything. At least, they are quite good at it

Because many people don't want to read subtitles because it breaks their immersion or is distracting?

Because they are mostly 'lame' to you because you know the source language and not to someone who only knows the destination language?

Because voice artists often have better voices than the original actors?

I can understand you personally not liking dubs, but I don't see how it's difficult to see the point of those who do.

There are subtitles for that. When I watch movies from countries that speak languages I can`t understand I always watch undubbed with subtitles. Would you listen to dubbed favorite band or great vocals like Adele? I hope not.

I literally enumerated reasons why subtitles would lead to a suboptimal experience for people. You just ignored them and re-asserted your personal opinion.

Well of course it is a preference. I said that I just can`t understand that other preference. Because for me, dubbing breaks immersion so much more that it makes the movie unwatchable.

I agree with everything you stated, when dubs are good it vastly helps with the experience and I remember movies better if they have dubs. That being said though when movies are dubbed badly it seriously detracts from my experience and I used to switch subs if it is early in the movie and they sucked. I eventually gave up of this practice and just watched with subs because there where so many bad dubs.

two words: dubbed porn. Its a thing in Germany :o

> You won't get the English version.

Meanwhile the DVD/Bluray version usually has at least English and German voice tracks and subtitles, but usually French and some other versions as well.

So, interesting workaround for Netflix: If the language of your account is set to something other than English, it unlocks subtitles and dubs for that language that you wouldn't normally have access to.

My wife and kids have their Netflix UI set to Japanese, which allows them to access Japanese language and subtitles for movies that support it, even though they're not available on my English-language Netflix.

I checked it right now: no support for my native language at Netflix. Netflix is not interested in me, so I will continue to support pirates, which will translate Netflix shows into my language.

> If the language of your account is set to something other than English, it unlocks subtitles and dubs for that language that you wouldn't normally have access to.

Thank you for the hint, but don't you think this is a way ridiculous? Why can't people that prefer English UI (e.g. I do, although it's neither my native language nor the official language of the country I've moved to, I am fluent in all the three but am interested in content in other languages too and I always strongly prefer all the apps UIs to be in English) access content in other languages?

If you bear watching Netflix on the browser (for example Chrome and Firefox are restricted to 720p), you have the option to provide a subtitle file, but you are required to jump through another hoop as it needs to be in the DFXP format, not considering that you have to find one with the correct timing cause you don't have a way to delay/accel them in the interface.

There's a webpage that can convert SRT to DFXP and you can download the subtitles if someone has done the conversion be fore, but you are totally right, Netflix subtitles experience are subpar.

Their subtitle font CSS is pretty poor too. I have custom CSS injected to watch anything with subtitles because their default subtitle CSS gives a choice of a large box that blocks the content or provides no outlines around the text.

DRM, lock-ins etc. are a problem for sure, but this is a narrow view.

It's disingenous to depict torrents ("download a pirated movie") as a problems-free, conventient, alternative, since there is a certain set of associated problems.

There is malware lingering at each page. The movies are typically in english. Torrents may be very slow at certain times. Subtitles needs to be searched, generally separately, and generally, are available only in english. Subtitles may even be malware (happened a few times to me).

For a part of the audience, using torrents is worth the compromise, but it's not the very convenient and generic option that is generally depicted.

In addition, most of the people I know switched to streaming long ago; those who are willing to pay, use Netflix, the other ones, use streaming websites.

> There is malware lingering at each page. The movies are typically in english. Torrents may be very slow at certain times. Subtitles needs to be searched, generally separately, and generally, are available only in english. Subtitles may even be malware (happened a few times to me).

These problems are [mostly] solved for private trackers. It always amazes me that a group of volunteers can do a better job than huge companies that are dedicated to the same thing. I'd love to be able to pay for stuff with the same ease of use as a good private tracker.

There is not always a company dedicated to this thing. There is a private tracker where the three most popular torrents are the following: Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker, Chris Marker L'héritage de la chouette , Louis Malle Le feu follet AKA The Fire Within. Tens of thousands of movies, series etc you'd have serious trouble obtaining with money.

The second Vernay adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo from 1954 is considered perhaps the truest to the book but it is impossible to get hold of, especially in any digital format. It seems there was a VHS edition in 1988 and Amazon.fr occasionally has third party sellers selling them. Or you can torrent it. Vernay himself is dead for 40 years, Marais only 19 years -- but of course the movie is now over 60 years old. I do not lose much sleep over "stealing" it.

I am sure everyone on that tracker has similar stories.

Edit: I am so wrong! Apparently in 2015 a German publisher made a DVD out of it! I am off to amazon.de to purchase it. I haven't checked the last few years because it seemed rather futile. This time Hackernews served as a rubber duck for debugging, sort of :D

> It always amazes me that a group of volunteers can do a better job than huge companies that are dedicated to the same thing.

That's a general fact of life, applicable beyond piracy scene.

The little guys can do it where the big companies can't because the little guys can break the law and not get caught or sued into oblivion (for the most part).

It's a theme that appears a lot in these pages: you can do all sorts of neat things when you ignore the rules.

There's nothing stopping a company from distributing non-DRM files with an easy to use interface and fast download speeds...

Did you miss the part above about the law?

Content providers don't allow companies to ship non-DRM movies, so unless that changes...

I think GP was referring to content providers who distribute their own content, e.g. HBO, Disney, etc.

One of the big things people were mentioning here was having all the content under one roof. This is something the torrent space is great at, since they simply ignore ownership.

Of course, getting the content for free (or for the cost of one member purchasing or renting it a single time) doesn't hurt selection either.

Even the specific stuff mentioned here about subtitles is affected by the law: translations are derivative works.

Private trackers leverage the power of exclusivity and status to get volunteers to work hard. I worked probably 1000 hours on about 30 movies to get access to some of the exclusive perks reserved for only the most skilled encoders.

To this day I'm proud of my work and glad that thousands of people have downloaded my completed works.

FYI, most video players today let you download subtitles with one press of a key (and they even let you choose among many options).

No separate download, zero risks of malware.

> zero risks of malware

This is factually false. You download subtitles from a website (generally, opensubtitles.org); if somebody has maliciously uploaded a malware to that website, you will end up downloading that.

Whether the carrier is effective or not (it's dubious that downloading malware masked as subtitles will be executed) is besides the point.

The only way you'll get malware is if your video player is already compromised.

If it's not compromised, having that video player download a subtitle file from a website they defined is safe.

And yet, torrents and free streaming are still more convenient than buying. That tells something about how bad official sources are.

As for the non-English-speaking audience, pirates tend to deliver better translated subtitles much faster than the official sources, and the latter frequently don't even bother - not a target market? Tough luck.

The critical point which everyone (including OP) missed is that on pirated websites : you'd get ALL movies under one roof. Even with streaming, you now have 10s of subscription services : Netflix, HBO Go, Disney/Hulu, Amazon Prime etc.

Roku solves part of this problem. While you do still need to maintain separate subscriptions to these services, Roku has a search function that shows you everywhere that a given movie is available (and for how much, if applicable), and lets you directly open that "channel" to that program.

Yeah, same thing in the Apple ecosystem. iOS/AppleTV has the "TV" app which shows you where you can stream or buy something.

Yes! This is another one I've forgotten to mention. And there also are many old and exotic movies/songs/books/games that aren't legally available anywhere.

If you run Kodi, there is a huge archive of subtitles that it automatically will apply. More often than not, I've started watching a movie, seen subtitles all over the bottom of it, wondered what the hell, and eventually realized the toggle to apply subtitles has gotten re-enabled somehow.

How does it solve the synchronization problems by the way? It's not always easy to find a subtitles file that will match the particular version of the movie second-by-second.

The length of the movie(extended cuts are longer) and other pieces of meta data to select the correct version of the subtitles. For DVD and Bluray sources it is nearly always accurate. Though those are usually included in the MKV container anyway.

opensubtitle has a search by hash.

>Subtitles needs to be searched, generally separately, and generally, are available only in english.

You'd be surprised.

> The problem with legal movies are DRM, vendor/device lock-in, forced ads, regional policies etc.

This, right here. I recently tried to start watching The Crown. So I go to Netflix on my tablet and start it up. I get an error 5.2[0]. Following Netflix's advice, I force-restart; I reboot my tablet; I uninstall & reinstall. Hmmm … I am running LineageOS, so I do a bit more googling. It turns out that this is actually a DRM error. Oddly, I can still play e.g. Stranger Things.

Why the #*&@ does Netflix do this? I've been a customer for a dozen years; they've made quite a packet from me over that time. All I want to do is watch their content, that I'm paying for, on my tablet.

[0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/65574

Thanks to DRM, if I want to watch a movie on my computer, I'm restricted to 720p because I've only access to Firefox and Chrome... t(`__`t) Netflix.

Not to mentioned regional modified versions of the movie/tv show, especially in regards to music, where it will be replaced with some random song that often doesn't make any sense.

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