Hacker News Reader

Comment by mentos | Hacker News Reader

If I'm understanding this correctly this offloads the copyright issue by making it the users responsibility to upload a rom?

No one really talks about it but the first iPod had the same approach to letting people play their thousands of mp3 files (which I imagine 99% of were obtained illegally). Apple was eventually able to create a legal marketplace for mp3s but early days it was all napster/limewire/kazaa/etc

Obviously Playstation/Nintendo roms are not as prevalent but its an interesting thought?

View on HN

You could also rip your music CDs.

Apple had a marketing campaign to encourage that.

The funny thing is, this is one of the current top recommended ways for DJs to acquire music in 2020, and the most affordable.

This is the top way that I build up my private Plex library.

1. Buy DVD on ebay

2. Rip DVD with handbrake

3. Add rip to Plex library

4. Archive DVD in disc folder

Works great for "classics" that can't get much better than DVD quality anyway (i.e. any movie made before, say, 2005)

Almost all of the classics are shot on film so they absolutely can get significantly better than DVD quality.

Maybe movies made post-digital but before 2005, but if you look at (say) the recent cut of apocalypse now looks unbelievably good. Like it was shot yesterday.

35mm film has equivalent resolution of about 90megapixels, way better than DVD quality.

If a movie isn't issued in better than dvd quality is because nobody has cared about remastering them to better formats.

I guess there maybe super budget, made for tv films that were filmed on tape and those certainly have reached their digital quality maximum.

I think TV shows tend to be much more of a mixed bag. The Sopranos (1999), The Wire (2002), and Firefly (2002) were all shows at the forefront of the current renaissance in dramatic television— they were all shot on film, but it's interesting that Firefly for example was natively 16:9 and cropped to 4:3 for its original run, whereas The Wire's "conversion" to widescreen has been a matter of some more controversy, eg: https://www.techhive.com/article/2854439/hbo-remastered-the-...

Another interesting aspect of Firefly is that the pure VFX scenes (eg spaceship exteriors) were rendered originally at 480p, so when you watch the Blu-ray version of the show, you can see a bit of an awkward transition where the shots of the actors are gloriously crisp, but the space scenes are clearly upscaled.

Friends was also shot on film, and cropped to 4:3 for broadcast. Like Firefly, Friends also had unintentional things (crew, microphones, un-dressed sets, etc) appear in the edges in 16:9. While most were probably edited out before the uncropped 1080 re-release; some unintended things remain, which I personally really like seeing.

Additionally, like Firefly's pure VFX, some footage in Friends also appears in SD in the HD release (seemingly either because the original film stock was lost, or it wasn't originally shot on film), with the zoomed 4:3 SD vs 16:9 HD sometimes changing mid-scene, and …that too I find a humbling reminder of the quality of yesteryear.

I've been noticing some of the same with The X-Files. There are seemingly random shots with lower quality, and any shot with heavy VFX looks original, but most of it now looks quite sharp.

I remember having a distinctive moment of clarity watching Seinfeld reruns in 16:9 HD. Did they have the foresight that it would be a classic making billions in syndication?

A random episode on IMDB has ‘35 mm’ as film format, which to my knowledge is 4:3: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697703/technical

So I would ask if maybe the image was cropped for the 16:9 conversion.

Update—here's what Wikipedia says: “Unlike the version used for the DVD, Sony Pictures cropped the top and bottom parts of the frame, while restoring previously cropped images on the sides, from the 35mm film source, to use the entire 16:9 frame.”

35mm stills cameras normally use a 3:2 frame. Television shot on film typically used movie cameras that shot at 1.85:1 and then cropped to 4:3.

But different shows handled the aspect ratios differently in their widescreen re-releases. Seinfeld included slightly more horizontally than the original TV release but still cropped a significant amount from the top and bottom. That 70s Show as one example that was also shot on 35mm film included the whole original 4:3 frame plus extra on the sides.

> 35mm stills cameras normally use a 3:2 frame

Ah, indeed, I seem to be forgetting the days of film photography.

Could it matter that movie cameras use the same film but vertically? I'd be more inclined to stretch frames horizontally if I was designing a cinema camera, because that means the film run slower.

Seinfeld started airing in 1989 a decade before American HDTV so they probably didn't foresee the aspect ratio of televisions switching from 4:3 to 16:9. 35mm film likely gave them more high-end options than the cameras and lenses meant for broadcast. It would also give them more wiggle room if they needed to re-frame a shot in post.

Personally I find most of the 16:9 crops of old shows in syndication quite jarring, especially because in any shot where the formerly extra width doesn't work the editor is forced to vertically crop the original. Here are some screenshots comparing 4:3 and 16:9 Seinfeld and ...eek

https://lambdan.se/blog/2018/11/13/seinfeld-original-vs-wide...

My point being the production on film instead of tape

Some interesting technical commentary on The Simpsons in 4:3 vs 16:9 here: https://medium.com/disney-streaming/bringing-new-aspects-of-...

A ton of movies were reissued on Blu-ray, re-scanned from film. DVD has garbage resolution and compression, while film is made to be projected on gigantic theater canvas. Surely you don't believe movie theaters were effectively displaying 720x480 or 720x576 at the size of canvas?

Consult this video, for example: https://youtu.be/sCv-dIFGcd0

Personally I find that even BD-rips made in SD resolution look better than DVD—if only for contrast enhancements made for reissues, and due to better compression formats.

Moreover, if the source was shot on 70mm film then people might still keep re-digitizing it in the 22nd century into fresh HD formats of the day.

The quality is impressive, and I've seen this before with older footage which has been re-scanned in higher quality. Still, there's some characteristic about old footage which sort of tells me it was shot a long time ago.

I want to say it's that the footage seems darker, and you can obviously make a case for classic brand logos being a giveaway.

The darker edges seem to be due to ‘natural vignetting’, as I learned from this article recently posted on HN: https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/

In the comments on YouTube, people discuss some other race-related aspects that reveal the age of the video. Such as lack of protective barriers, and people standing right next to the race track.

> lack of protective barriers, and people standing right next to the race track

Makes me wonder what kind of risks we are obliviously taking today that will seem kind of crazy in the future.

I don't know that "oblivious" is the word I'd use. People standing next to the racetrack are well aware of the risks involved. They aren't there because they don't perceive the risk; they're there because they think it's worth it.

Would you describe rock climbers as "oblivious to the risks involved", or just as people who are sometimes killed by their hobby?

Cars, perhaps.

For another recent historical example see: smoking.

Personally I'm waiting for when sitting at the desk all day long is found out to be Very Bad. But that's probably just a modern ‘proletariat vs capitalist’ issue—I guess factory assembly lines weren't and aren't too popular either.

Makes sense. With respect to the environment, I don't pay much attention to racing so I don't know if that would stick out as much to me personally.

I think shadows are more prevalent and even color is not as vivid as many videos we see today either. The image is sharp though!

For anyone watching that video, and are interested in watching more classic racing in incredibly high fidelity, I recommend this collection of clips from the 1966 movie "Grand Prix". It's a proper old-school Hollywood movie.

They entered actual Formula 1 cars into a grand prix, strapped it with cameras, and recorded the whole thing. Other times they added new bodywork to a Formula 2 car and had the actors driving around on track - again with cameras strapped to the car. Being recorded in 70mm it's some of the best footage of on-board Formula 1 racing until well into the 2010s, and the advent of small 4k on-board cameras in modern races.

https://youtu.be/7HA71tYl640

IIRC (having trouble finding my source), MAS*H was shot on film but in 4:3 AR. It's been released in HD/Blu-ray now by being re-digitized but each scene has been cropped to be 16:9.

There's going to be a dead spot of TV/Movies where things were shot in SD on Video where they will be forever SD but older things, shot on film, can be brought to HD and newer things are either shot on Film or HD video.

I'm curious to see how quickly the things shot in HD Video become outdated by superior resolutions of 4k, 8k and whatever comes after and if there's a plateau of consumer/home resolution.

Star Trek tng was shot on 16:9 film, transferred to 4:3 video to be cut and turned into a final 4:3 video. When they did the blu ray remaster, they had to match and rescan every shot from the source film, re-edit each episode and recreate the special effects (when not produced on film). There was the thought to maybe scan the material in 16:9, but the scenes and crew only considered the 4:3 frame - in 16:9 there would often be crew or mics in the frame or even perhaps sets missing. So they kept the show in 4:3.

Apparently for later trek shows (ds9, voy) the film crews were more careful to respect the 16:9 frame, but those shows aren’t as popular and may never get the expensive blu ray makeover.

TNG has such careful framing too, even if they didn't have crew in the shot I bet it'd look off in 16:9 anyways.

What would any of these shots look like in 16:9 [0][1][2]? They really liked filling the frame to the brim with TNG, and any side-areas would just look empty.

[0] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/3/37/We... [1] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/3/36/Sa... [2] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/9/90/Tr...

FYI, those images don't seem to open.

They don't allow hotlinking. Copy the URL and paste it in a new tab, and it works :)

I hope by 2100 that technology will exist using ML or similar to upcode digital video.

Do a quick search of YouTube. You’ll find it already does.

Upcoding was done for ages, conceivably your TV might have some more clever algorithm than cubic.

But never in a million years will upcoding recreate the picture that was there in the original. It can create some new detail of its own, yes.

This is what I meant

Consider Jellyfin instead of Plex :)

https://jellyfin.org/

Eh? Just buying a CD wont give you commercial rights though?

EDIT: It seems the thing you need is a "Public performance license"

Typical public performance licenses require you to play from a legitimate source like a cd or a purchased download and don’t cover illegal copies.

A big part of music piracy these days is ripping music straight from streaming services.

I don't know how it works or how to do it, but I know that it is possible to rip music from the Deezer music streaming service in lossless quality.

It's crazy that this hasn't been patched yet because it has been a thing now for a couple of years.

Oh it's way crazier than that, Deezer has already publicly said "We know about it and don't indend to patch it"

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/10/26/deezer-pirate-ap...

That does seem somewhat of a rational response. It doesn't really make sense because pirates would provably use free burner/throwaway accounts.

The thing is, it probably comes down to an architecrural flaw on Deezers part that they think would cost more to fix than the actual losses due to piracy.

But I just wonder if Deezer could run into legal trouble because of this... I can't imagine that the artists/labels would want their music available like that but maybe Deezer is "too big to be held accountable" as well?

There are github repos that show how to crack spotifies DRM as well. I don't think it really matters or that any one cares. People pay for spotify because its super convenient in a way that pirated music isn't.

I have only seen Spotify github projects that loads your playlist and downloads the songs from Youtube.

Looks like its gone now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017167

Ripping music CDs is illegal in the UK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingdom

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-33566933

This is such a dumb law that I'd think a case of jury nullification would be within the realm of possibility. I had absolutely no idea this was supposed to be illegal.

Wow... put me in the camp of UK people that had no idea that was the case!

I remember a time when we digitised our DVD collection just swapping them one by one into handbrake.

Never would have dreamed that was illegal...

I recently went looking to buy a lossless digital copy of one of my favourite albums.

The album is fairly recent but still old enough to not be in stock anywhere.

But, I did manage to find a used CD on Discogs' marketplace.

I remember using iTunes solely for the purpose of ripping CDs. It was pretty much one of the best tools for the job, at the time.

> If I'm understanding this correctly this offloads the copyright issue by making it the users responsibility to upload a rom?

It doesn't, though.

It sources roms from the Internet Archive: https://i.imgur.com/4bX7Oow.png

Legally dubious.

Hmm, they offer a selection of rom you can choose in addition to uploading your own rom. There is JJBA, Medal of Honor, Doom, CTR, etc that you can run without uploading anything.

It's not mainstream, but some of this is going on right now with emulation portables like the Odroid Go Advance and its various knockoffs. The devices are all made in China and some even ship with the SD card preloaded with ROMs, but generally speaking I think it's the same framework of "the device is neutral, choose for yourself what you want to do on it."

there's been a legal rom marketplace on the consoles most likely since before you were born

Reply on news.ycombinator.com