Hacker News Reader

Comment by jzellis | Hacker News Reader

If only there were some way to download anything you wanted even if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray and isn't on streaming anymore....

View on HN

I think public discussion has moved beyond making people aware of illegal copying / streaming, and how to do it. So the people who don't engage in that probably have their reasons.

If you're trying to move some readers to start doing that, you'll probably need to engage with their reasons.

If you're alluding to torrents, it's common that obscure stuff is not being seeded.

What's the point of seeding content on public trackers?

Private trackers and usenet generally don't suffer from this issue but it requires a few hours of work upfront, less if you know someone who can help you.

I think you need to go pretty niche before it's not available on even public torrents. Everything mentioned in this article is.

So if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, then where did the source for the torrents come from? If I saw a file with the name of something I knew wasn't available on a shiny round disc, I would be very skeptical and hesitant to download it from fear of it not being what it said it was.

I damn sure don't want to go to the hassle of downloading a VHS transfer

For example Final Space got cancelled and while the last season was available on streaming services the physical copy hadn't been released and was also cancelled. (So it is a webrip, got pulled from streaming services)

If a VHS transfer is the only way to re-experience something that blew me away as kid, you bet I'll be happier with a VHS transfer than with nothing at all.

Not everything needs to be pixel-perfect.

What's really nice are the heroes who take those VHS transfers and SD DVD copies and release AI-upscaled versions. Particularly cartoons that never had blu-ray releases look glorious upscaled.

On YouTube, been watching Siskel and Ebert reviews that are clearly VHS transfers. It works. I'm just watching to enjoy their banter and queue up some films I missed from the 80's and 90's.

> downloading a VHS transfer

you kids with your universal formats; we used to have to make camera copies to watch PAL shows on NTSC...

You remember when pirate copies were literally some guy with a camcorder in a cinema? Sometimes you'd get unlucky and the guy had to turn it off because the usher was coming, and you'd miss a random chunk of the film :)

"Good" times.

> So if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, then where did the source for the torrents come from?

If it's something old without a DVD/BluRay release these will usually be a WEBRip (literally a screen recording of DRM'd content) or a WEB-DL (someone has cracked the DRM, or it was DRM free).

You'll only find VHS rips on highly specialized trackers (usually).

From its streaming service when it premiered. A LOT of TV has come out on streaming but has never been physically published. A majority of it, I'd guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com