I stopped torrenting a long time ago. But if the media streaming market shards too much I would start again.
I basically feel Netflix to be a rip off, and Prime's value proposition is faster deliveries, better discounts and a few free Kindle books.
And despite trying to use these services for a long time, I am still a fan and a proponent of torrents for such consumption as I get all the content, on time, on my terms and can consume it in a way I like.
Music, is sorted. TV and Movies isn't.
As a pretty large portion of the stuff seemed to not be available here this made it basically unusable.
- Even though the minimum wage here is half that of the UK, for some reason Netflix is more expensive, and has less selection.
- They have no content in the official language of the country, not even subtitles. When you go to the cinema, movies are dubbed or have subtitles.
- They push a lot of Russian language content, even though most people under 35 don't speak it, and it is not even a semi official language.
Amazon don't have operations here, you can sign up to Amazon Prime for video in another country, but it only shows their own content.
I found this out when I tried to show it to my daughters. Apparently the copyright agreements don't cover how to split the proceeds from streaming, so nobody can sell Amazon, Netflix, etc the right to stream it.
But it is on The Pirate Bay...
What a shame that the rights holders are so short sighted. The nostalgia those old tracks would create would surely sell more records. And it's not like anybody is going to be satisfied with replaying the video when they want the song, with the characters talking over the top of it.
It was not even available on dvd for a very long time. So much potential money lost.
It's weird; you can't watch it on demand, but you can virtually DVR it when it is "broadcast" at an arbitrary time.
As an American in Europe last month, I experienced:
Watching Showtime through Playstation Vue was impossible from European IP, and impossible through US VPN. So I torrented Billions instead of trying a redundant unportable Showtime through Amazon Video subscription, or instead of trying a redundant Showtime subscription through their native app assuming they have one.
Watching Game of Thrones through HBO Now also had the same issues. But downloading torrents over VPN worked really fast. I only used VPNs partially out of habit, and partially not to get my host (hotel/airbnb) in trouble.
Because VPNs were so readily detected and blocked, it reminded me to consider buying a dedicated IP address in a few different countries for VPN, instead of having IP addresses that all the VPN users use. I have not done this yet, as I also heard that another way to detect VPNs is by knowing if the IP block is associated with a data center. I wonder if this is really done by the services I use.
Final note is that I did notice that alot of the torrent providers are doing "webrips" now instead of ripping in the highest quality their TV provides applying compression. The webrips are noticeable worse as the streaming service already is using compression.
Kind of weird outcome currently.
I had zero problems torrenting it, and no no moral qualms about it; I'm pretty sure all the actors & crew are dead by now and not recieving any more royalties, plus I have it on DVD but I hadn't ripped it to my NAS & don't have anything that can play DVD's connected to the TV.
There are simpler ways :)
It supports the importing of subscriptions but doesn't seem to handle playlist import currently.
The system still sucks but effectively there is enough available to keep me going.
In the meantime if some media isn't convenient for me to consume, it is off my radar. I don't don't bother either way.
For me we've reached a level I'm ok with, but it is very much based on usage.
Now we seem to be entering a time where, as media mega-corps have appeared and won us back to paying for content and having content easily accessible, they're starting to think they can ramp up the prices and lock away "their" content in a silo with a hefty price-tag for entry.
It seems as if we're going to move back towards a much higher price for taking part in the culture that surrounds current media; and that in turn is going to lead to more copyright infringement. Only this time the media corps have got the internet sewn up pretty well
It would be ideal if the reaction were to rest control of culture from the hands of big business a little with some statutory reform. But that in turn rests on whether countries get democratic reform to proportionalise representation and enable the tackling of smaller issues like disenfranchisement from culture and locking away of works so they can't ever enter the public domain.
Examples: any music from “nightvale presents”, and “dark compass” podcasts. DC has an epic best of 2019 as the current episode.
I’ve had mixed luck finding works from those sources on the big streaming services, but I listen to them legally nevertheless.
We circled. Streaming services partially were about to solve the problem of not paying serious $$$ for a cable subscription (lots of programming that people don't care about/watch) by providing a cheap, affordable service with lost of content that is interesting and worth to watch. Today, streaming services are creating the very same problem they were trying to solve.
This video describes the problem really well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDF-S68kx5o
I was trying to show a tv show to my girlfriend last week, it was from 2007, not crazy long time ago, it's just 12 years ago and there was no way to find it legally.
Teh only place where I found it was Amazon prime video, as a per episode paid download, not in streaming, but it wasn't available in my country, even though I'm a primenow subscriber.
I ended up torrenting it (and the only torrent site where I found it was thepiratebay, nobody else had it)