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ryandrake
godelski
Piracy also offers:
0. Ability to watch offline!
1. Ability to fix subtitle issues with minimal tweeks like change size or moving location.
1.2 Ability to get subtitles if they aren't offered (or offered in your language)
2. Ability to normalize audio.
3. Ability to buffer videos when on a poor connection.
4. Ability to create collections, organize, and track your movie as you wish
5. Arbitrary number of user accounts
6. Multicast streams to watch the same show across different devices regardless of if someone has an account or not (see JellyFin's SyncPlay)
7. No big organization tracking you and selling your data to the highest bidder
There's more, but honestly pirating is just a better experience. I can't tell you how many times Netflix has fucked up the subtitles so they are covering half my screen. There's tons of little issues like that that are just random and the only option is to just not watch Netflix (or pick your streaming service) that day.
Besides that, for the price of a yearly subscription you can build a NAS that can do all this for you and you get to keep the movies. Instead of having a monthly fee you can progressively add more drives and this can also be used for all your other things. Pictures, home videos, games (you can make a Steam cache), your local AI models, or whatever else you want. With $1k you can build a pretty good system, though that's 3 years of 4k Netflix, so not the cheap route in the short term.
AnthonyMouse
This is a case study in why competitive markets are important in general.
Copyright is a government-granted monopoly but the monopoly is hard to enforce. It works because most people actually want to support the creators, not because DRM is effective or anything like that.
So you have the uncommon situation in which a monopoly (the copyright holder) is operating in parallel to a competitive black market for content distribution (pirates). And then the competitive market -- even though it has to operate underground and makes hardly any profit -- provides the better experience.
Lesson for anyone who thinks market consolidation doesn't lead to consumer harm.
nephanth
On the subject of artificial monopoly, it's interesting to compare video streaming to music streaming.
Music streaming platforms (Spotify, deeper, apple music, tidal etc.) Generally work a lot better than movie/series streaming. It seems that competition between them works quite well, prices are reasonable, and more importantly, any subscription gives you access to pretty much all of mainstream music. There's hardly any content exclusive to one platform, so you can essentially get any of them and be done with it
Contrast that with video streaming, where content is pretty much exclusively tied to one platform. As a consequence, people routinely have several subscriptions instead of one, and platforms compete on library more than on price or quality of service. Overall experience is much worse
I wonder why this difference came to be, although these are very similar services (with basically the same copyright mechanism)
psadauskas
I really want to support the creators! But by paying for movie tickets or streaming services, very little of the money I pay goes to the creators. It mostly goes to the executives and financiers, or the megastar actors that I don't really care about.
JambalayaJimbo
The black market is only more competitive because it doesn’t bear the costs of actually creating the content.
Dylan16807
Subtitles are often a very dumb failure point, especially when English subtitles aren't available in half the world for basically no reason.
cosmic_cheese
Similarly annoying is when original language subtitles aren’t available in your region for some reason, even when the audio track of the same language is. Really puts a damper on using foreign media for immersive language learning purposes.
presentation
I have another problem, which is that my wife is Japanese and I’m American, and if we watch a French movie then I want the English subs and she wants the Japanese subs. Making that work with streaming services is very painful.
hibikir
And don't miss the situations where the subtitles are baked into the stream: HBO Max is very fond of just not letting you remove subtitles at all for at least a few non-english series.
imoverclocked
Until recently, 3. (poor connection) has been a huge issue for me and streaming services. When there is a download/watch later, I sigh with relief.
7. is only sort-of an issue, IMHO. Anything that is pirated is usually fairly benign content and I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too.
I would add: Piracy offers the ability to remember content that isn't popular enough to remain in streaming services. I just searched "Big Trouble in Little China" and Google Play wants me to pay $3.79 to rent it or the full original price to purchase it. Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers?
qrios
> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy.
I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list.
Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched the film.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula
3036e4
> I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too.
I exported all my private data from Netflix and it had very detailed information on exactly when I (or anyone else in the household) watched what.
Sadly it only went back a few years. Either they do not keep older data or they pretend not to. My Spotify data seemed to be complete for all years I have used it, listing the exact time and location, what device etc, I listened to any track there ever.
helsinkiandrew
> Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers?
Google will have negotiated with the “owner” (in this case I think Disney) for a wholesale price and then adds its retail markup (eg 20%). Disney pay the industry standard SAG/DGA union negotiated residual agreements to cast, writers and directors
boppo1
>isn't popular enough No that's because it's good enough to get rented regularly. Why sign a streaming deal if your IP prints money?
benjiro
> With $1k you can build a pretty good system
1. The hardware you buy for these activities, has still residual value after 1, 2, 3 year. Unlike the streaming service you pay for.
2. Its cheap to upgrade / expand over time (if its not a all in one solution)
3. It opens a door to not just store movies/music/images, but as emulator, streaming service, or game streaming to one or multiple.
4. The content will not arbitrarily vanish.
5. Your bookmarks / last viewed / ... will not arbitrarily vanish. Do not get me started on this and how annoying it can be when a services removes content!
6. It serves not only as a device for "linux isos" or other gray zones but also as a legit backup of your own personal data.
7. Saves you from needing "cloud" storage or other cloud services.
8. Can be enhanced with programs that offer image conversion, pdf conversion etc, all private!
9. Run your own chat server for the family, no US/EU "we want to know what you are saying" issues.
10. Can act like your own VPN, to route data from your phone or other devices outside your home.
11. Provides service if you are in area's with horrible internet connection with its ability to "cache isos" at night slowly.
12. Your control over the media means you can stream 4k to your PC. Netflix kuch kuch ... No, its not 4k.
13. You can gain the FULL bitrate of the media. You do not get a washed down version of the supposed media based upon how busy a streaming service their servers are or other limitations.
14. It can be used for so many other activities like programming.
15. Did i mention home automatization?
And so much more ... People are probably doing things with NAS setups that i can not even think about.
Your not investing into a machine for "illegal" stuff, your investing into a machine that frees you as the end user from all those cloud, streaming, and other services their lackluster service. And then provides all the added benefits on top, that a 24/7 running PC can provide.
Lets also not forget the future where LLM's are a thing. Having your own open source LLM that runs at home, can be a major benefit.
But ... it does require more knowledge, especially as you step up beyond simple storage. So that is the real downside, not the money, the time and knowledge buildup.
sumtechguy
> The hardware you buy for these activities, has still residual value after 1, 2, 3 year. Unlike the streaming service you pay for.
With mine I am cracking on 14 years with some of it. It still 'just works'. I ripped all of my stuff so I can manage it as I have too much of it. The home streaming has been quite nice. I would upgrade just for '4k'. Not sure if I want it or not. One major roadblock has been finding a decent wake from power off not just s3 and works with an IR remote. 14 years ago media center was a thing so most manufactures put CIR into everything. Then suddenly they didnt. If I could get past that one roadblock I would update it all.
BrandoElFollito
You completely forgot to mention home automation :) Home Assistant FTW
Making all this work is not difficult with docker once you get past the steep learning curve
godelski
I agree with everything here. But I want to do a little nitpicking here
> 7. Saves you from needing "cloud" storage or other cloud services.
So it means really the only solution is just buying a storage box. You can treat it as safety so doesn't need much egress, just to sync. But you should have something off site and "cloud" makes that much easier. But also, depends on how important that is. I'm not doing that with "pirated" content but I am with my content.
[0] 3 copies, 2 locations, 1 off-site. (All these are "at least")
[1] How is it easier to write a small bash script through termux to rsync to my home and another location than it is to do this with professional tools? For the love of god, it is a fucking trivial script and I can make it do whatever I want, like only backup on WiFi, only through tailscale, or even a specific WiFi SSID. Hell, I can get it to issue a command to my home server to sync with the remote server checking to make sure things match. For what, not even 100 lines in bash? It's a joke
3036e4
GOG used to have a small selection of DRM-free movies that you could buy to download and that would then make all those things possible to do in a way that would be legal or at least able to do locally in a way that would have a zero risk of being discovered even if it violated some EULA. Announcement from 2014:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
Sadly http://www.gog.com/movies now redirects to http://www.gog.com/games and the movies link that used to be on the front page is gone. Based on a comment in that announcement thread it looks like the movies were silently removed already back in 2023. I only noticed it now. They never seemed to really add any new movies and the existing ones were mostly game-related documentaries.
nostrademons
Also the trust that your favorite music will still be available to you if the streaming service goes bankrupt or cancels its content licensing deal or decides to jack up prices unaffordably or makes its player incompatible with your OS or introduces a service-ending software bug.
zzo38computer
In addition to these and what you replied to, there is also the ability to downgrade the video quality in case you do not need the highest quality (e.g. in case you want to reduce the disk space and bandwidth requirements), and you might have a better UI (and otherwise use your own implementation of various software).
About subtitles, something else I sometimes want to fix is adding an outline to the text and adding a translucent background (many use a opaque background (making it hard to see the picture) or a transparent background (making it hard to see the text)).
account42
Or more generally: the ability to use a video player of your choice, which can have whatever features and interface that you want.
chongli
2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release.
Arguably higher. For example, fans of Star Wars have scanned the original 1977 theatrical release with very high quality film scanners and created a 4K release complete with film grain and the original scenes intact which is not available through approved channels.
cosmic_cheese
There’s also a number of movies where the best quality publicly available is a pirated rip of an HDTV broadcast from a Malaysian TV network or something similarly odd because the rights holders never released a BD and the official DVD release was a transfer from a crappy VHS or similar.
In cases of TV shows, fans have gone to the lengths of producing the best quality release possible by patching together video, audio, and subtitles from myriad sources, sometimes even splicing individual cuts when their quality varies between sources. It’s so much more effort than you’d see from any official restorations.
lyu07282
The criterion collection being the one noteable exception, and they have their own standalone streaming service that is pretty good:
qingcharles
Yeah, IIRC NHK broadcast some movies, like 2001, in 8K scans that are hard to find even on the high seas.
And there are one or two movies that have leaked in DCP 4K, which look absolutely stunning if you have the hardware to play them.
PetitPrince
> In cases of TV shows
Can you give me some examples of those guerilla remaster ? I know of the various Star Wars projects (Harmy and the likes) and the remaster from "La Classe Américaine", but I don't know any others.
A French movie that bungle together several excerpt from classic Warner movie to tell its own humorous story. A cult classic for French millennials. The director later on went on to make The Artist to universal acclaim.
account42
It's really infuriating how many TV series are only (legally) available as horribly over-compressed and interlaced DVDs outside of streaming platforms.
dddgghhbbfblk
The Star Wars project is a bit of an outlier in terms of the insane work and dedication that's gone into it.
However, in the quality-focused corners of online film piracy, it's still pretty routine for people to combine the best features of every retail release available to produce something that's better than what you can get even by just going out and buying a Blu Ray. For example, maybe the best picture quality available anywhere is from a Blu Ray that was released to the German market, but a US Blu Ray release has an extra commentary track, while the best audio track is actually from an old Laserdisc release (crazy but it's happened before).
In the live action world it's pretty rare for a video track or an audio track to be spliced together from multiple sources, though it does happen. But in the anime world it's pretty common and they'll do stuff to fix picture quality issues or localize Japanese text to English on signs or whatever (and they can do it slick enough that you wouldn't even notice).
The most bizarre part of all of this, though, is that people put in all this work only for the communities themselves to be small and fiercely private, meaning it could be hard for most people to actually access the end results (though the popular stuff tends to trickle out). The best place on the Internet to download movies bar none (better than all the major streaming platforms put together) is an invite only site with under 40k members that's extremely difficult to join these days.
Matticus_Rex
What's the name of the Star Wars project? You know, so I can avoid those darn pirates more effectively.
dawnerd
People just don't realize just how garbage even 4k streams are from all the services. It's not in their interest to give you real bluray quality.
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abbycurtis33
Yes! Someone came after me on here because I said there really is no 4k streaming.
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kcb
I don't know, 4k HEVC at 15,000mbps looks plenty good to me.
lz400
That's a bit of an edge case, powered by the absolute, lovely turbo-nerdery of a few dedicated souls. They are called 4K77 / 4K80 versions for people looking for them.
greazy
Wow. I thought it was impossible to watch the original release of star wars. I need to hunt this down.
amgutier
"4k77" should get you to the right places
nosioptar
There's also a DVD release of the theatrical versions. Usually goes for $50-75 for OG trilogy.
matheusmoreira
They release better products than trillion dollar corporations.
There are piracy groups out there who are known to source frames from multiple different blu-rays in order to create the best version of a work.
Imagine caring so much about something you compare different releases frame by frame in order to select the best ones so that you can splice them all together to form the highest quality ultimate version of a work.
Meanwhile corporations are perfectly happy shitting out some butchered streaming slop with compression artifacts in 90% black frames.
fragmede
Eh Stremio's episode chooser leaves a bit to be desired, when jumping back into the middle of a show.
perdomon
This is crazy. Going to surprise my wife with a watch night of these soon. Are these film scans pretty easy to find?
hbn
Don't forget censorship-free
I swore off streaming services when they started pulling episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they were worried someone might be offended
maest
The DnD episode from Community (S2E14) can't be seen on any streaming services because one Asian character wears black makeup while cosplaying as a drow.
BlobberSnobber
The list of Sunny's removed episodes from Hulu is insane to me:
- Season 4 Episode 3: America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model Contest
- Season 6 Episode 9: Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth
- Season 8 Episode 2: The Gang Recycles Their Trash
- Season 9 Episode 9: The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6
- Season 14 Episode 3: Dee Day
They're all in my home server, though :)
thret
One of the best episodes in my opinion, and an excellent introduction to DnD for people who don't know what they are getting into.
nosioptar
That's a problem that predates streaming.
There's at least one ALF ('86-90)episode that you can only get the uncensored version via piracy.
(Episode in question is Try to Remember. ALF originally got an electric shock. It quickly got censored in reruns to have ALF slip and hit his head because the network worried kids would get shocked emulating ALF.)
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
That part really aggravated me. I already pay a hefty premium for Disney/Hulu so the fact that I do not get full experience, because someone thought an episode I pay for with subs is offensive really irks me. I am slowly getting to the point of pulling the plug and each time I see an ad for hulu on disney, I am getting a tiny little bit closer to pissing off wife and making kid cry in one go.
ethersteeds
Fair to be upset. Just noting that has been happening for about the whole history of televised comedy:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smothers_Brothers_Comedy...
l72
They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.
cosmic_cheese
Or sometimes the licensor just doesn’t feel like paying for it. Netflix famously removed the iconic version of “Fly Me to the Moon” from the ending credits of their copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion and even more weirdly stripped the vocals from the similarly iconic ending credits theme of Naoki Urusawa’s Monster, both because they didn’t want to shell out the cash for the rights.
macNchz
I was so surprised and bummed when I discovered this was a thing. My wife and I started watching the original Beverly Hills 90210—a sort of ridiculous snapshot of American pop culture in the early 1990s—on some streaming service, and after a few episodes I noticed the music was just...super wrong.
Reading online, I learned that a lot of the original music had been licensed only for the original run of the show, so even when it went to DVD in the early 2000s they had to remove a whole bunch of the original music. It's terrible on two fronts: one, the show is an awesome snapshot of 90s music, with tons of great stuff featured both as background music and in extended live performances, but they cut whole scenes and entire episodes that had too much of it, and two, whoever managed the process of picking replacement music clearly did not care at all, and used awful generic music that sounds like it came from a file called "BeachRiff.aiff" on a $29.95 CD library of royalty-free 60 second stock music samples.
I admit to finding a source of video files patched together from various sources with the original soundtracks intact, and it's simply MUCH more enjoyable. It seems, though, that some episodes of live performances are lost to time—or at least lost to the corporate owners who'd rather sit on the tapes in a warehouse somewhere than make them available.
josh-at-banxa
The TV series Scrubs was hit really hard by this — The soundtrack and sound-design in that show really drove home the emotion in the episodes, and when replaced, it really doesn't hit the same mark.
GuinansEyebrows
the DVD/streaming releases of Daria suffer from this. i used to have old TV rips of the show with the original contemporary MTV soundtrack but i'm not sure what happened to them. the stock music just doesn't carry the weight of the times.
qingcharles
Ugh, the music licensing issue is horrible. I sold a movie to Netflix many years ago and they "couldn't afford" the awesome soundtrack so they switched it out with garbage which makes a so-so movie into a total turd.
johnvanommen
> They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.
1990s Beavis and Butthead episodes seem completely bizarre/pointless without the music.
When Mike Judge started releasing new episodes back in 2012-ish, it's noticeable how he mostly avoided music clips and focused on satirizing reality shows that were on the same network (MTV.) I assume this was to avoid licensing nightmares.
JodieBenitez
Nature is healing ! https://nofilmschool.com/disney-butt-in-splash
oriel
For me, it was when a movie wasn't the way I remembered it. Then I found a pirated copy.
Turned out the 'official' release was heavily edited, with tone, characters, and even some plot had been completely reshaped. I've found this to be increasingly prevalent, and not just in a "made for TV" or "adapted for Flying" type modifications.
jaimex2
This was what made me cancel Netflix 10 years ago.
They decided to remove stuff that cost them nothing to have in their library like Gone with the Wind. I'd never watch it but it was clear then they had decided they would be gatekeepers of what people can and cant watch.
542354234235
They are choosing not to host a movie on their service, which I think is a bit different than say, Disney not allowing anyone to access Song of the South.
fragmede
> cost them nothing to have in their library
I cancelled Netflix too, but it's not true that it cost them nothing to have it in their library. Everyone in the movie still needs to get paid and simply having the show in the library costs them money.
pluc
What gets to me is exclusivity deals. Wanna watch this? Subscribe to that. Wanna watch that? Well itnisnt available on this so you'd have to subscibe to that. New streaming service launches with promotional exclusivity of something you like? Gotta get on that too. And don't get me started on sports!
Streaming was OK when it was fighting cable, because it was cheaper and on-demand. With the constant greed, we're back to paying more than we used to pay for cable, it doesn't make sense anymore.
bradbeattie
It's a shame https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P.... was never applied to streaming services.
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john01dav
In addition to inconvenience and cost, this is a problem because the technical implementation of most services is poor. For example, Comcast's streaming service as of a few years ago went VERY out of its way to block Linux.
zaptheimpaler
> 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release.
I paid for Disney+ to watch Andor at 4K, only to find out that you can't - Disney+ prohibits anything over 1K on computers whether you use the app or a browser. Went back to piracy very quickly after that. More fragmented experience is annoying, not even being able to get the highest quality as a paying customer is insane.
anonymars
I went down a similar rabbit hole when I bought my OLED monitor, finding that you can neither stream UHD nor play UHD Blu-Ray (it was possible on a few generations of Intel chips before SGX was deprecated because it was not in fact secure; 10th-gen was the latest)
Well, okay then -- chump don't want the money, chump don't get the money
bombcar
Amusingly if your have MakeMKV and patched firmware, you can rip them without even blinking.
DHRicoF
Netflix and to some level spotify drowned piracy for a time. But then a lot of companies tried to rap the same "winings" splitting the ecosystem and trashing the user experience.
- ¿could we watch x movie? - let me see. no, it in this other service beside the 3 we are paying.
at-fates-hands
In the beginning, Netflix was great. Then they became a media company and suddenly EVERYTHING they push on you is THEIR stuff. Gone are the days where you could remember a cool movie and pull it up on Netflix like Fandango or Corvette Summer. I remember going back and watching several seasons of the original Miami Vice back when nobody knew who Michael Mann was.
Not its exactly as you say, you want to watch something but its not on any of the streaming services you're already paying for. I've started to just think of a movie I want to watch, go out to Pirate Bay, download it and then stream it. When I'm done? Delete it.
Its good to know I'm not the only one who has gone back to downloading movies.
ysavir
My understanding is that this isn't Netflix's fault. They were king when they were the first major streaming service, and studios and networks were happy to get extra income from hosting their content on Netflix. But Netflix knew that any success it has would be mimicked by those same studios and networks, and that they would pull their own content to their own services as soon as they have them up and running, and so Netflix started making its own content in preparation for that day. And that bet paid off.
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phkahler
At some point I'm willing to just pay a few dollars for a movie. But even then you cant get them all in one place! And they like to charge a premium for some. Im not paying a premium for anything I've already seen a while back.
cmiles74
The particular service that has the movie may not last or they may lose access to the movie. With a streaming service you aren't "buying" much.
dylan604
> Im not paying a premium for anything I've already seen a while back.
devil's advocate. what's the point of a producer expending money to have a premium version made? it takes money to go back and rescan film to higher resolution, and the rest of the work flow involved to create that new final version.
sure, it's easy to not have sympathy for hollywood producer types, but to meet modern standards for legacy content takes time/effort/money. of course they are going to want to get a bit of that back.
freddie_mercury
I lived in a country where Netflix never bothered to open up (until very recently) so piracy never went away for the 100 million people living there.
birn559
Netflix also often only buys the first seasons of an existing show. And of course they love to cancel shows they produce themselves which for me has significantly lowered my loyalty over the years.
kmeisthax
[dead]
prepend
Don’t forget that piracy allows for front ends that actually want to make the user happy and have good UX.
I use Plex and it shows what I’m currently watching first. So continuing to a new episode is easy. If I sub to 50 episodes they just show up on my first line. Hulu makes me scroll down a few rows to continue watching.
It also shows cast and crew and other movies with the same.
1980phipsi
Plex’s recent changes have been garbage and it’s still better than the experience on a lot of streaming sites.
birn559
Prime Video keeps starting the wrong episode when I click on "Continue Watching". That's infuriating in particular because that often makes me watch advertising 2-3 times: When starting, when clicking into the middle of the episode to confirm I indeed have watched it already and then again when switching to the correct episode.
GlitchRider47
It blows my mind what slow momentum Amazon has for a company with such vast resources. Kindle, for example, lacks so many features to enhance the reading experience. Jailbreaking my kindle and installing KOReader was a game changer.
LMYahooTFY
Let's not forget:
No advertising.
I think, particularly now after having the luxury of ad blockers for so long, that many of us are extremely triggered by advertisements and see them more nakedly as the awful propaganda they are.
Disrupting a cinematic experience with garbage propaganda ruins it. It's an insult to the creators, and none of us should tolerate it.
I'm glad streaming services adopted a better model, but then they reverted back as they increased prices because the money is too good and people put up with it.
crooked-v
To really sum it all up in one place, check out the absurdity of the official guide on where to watch the Pokemon cartoon: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...
And that doesn't even actually list the movies, which are even more fragmented.
sunrunner
And I thought the problem was (just) limited to fragmentation of complete IPs between services. I'd love for someone in the know to explain how you get to this stage.
It it some kind of hedging strategy by The Pokémon Company to account for the number of different streaming services (thereby actually making the problem worse)? Was there some kind of timed exclusivity deal that's forced them to put different things in different places? Did one of the streaming services come along at a later time to try to undercut the earlier ones but the earlier licencing deals haven't expired? Anything else?
LikesPwsh
Another possibility is that every streaming service wants "Pokémon" and parents don't care which season.
So each service buys a single season to tick that box.
test6554
This. Pokemon likely has an a la carte menu and platforms can choose which seasons they want.
Streaming services have a limited budget for kids content so they can’t catch em all without sacrificing other kids content. They need pokemon they need action they meed rainbows and princesses and they needs stuff for babies and toddlers.
thaumasiotes
For reference:
Season 1: Amazon Prime Video (also, Netflix)
Season 2: Amazon Prime Video Channels
3-5: Prime Video
6-13: Prime Video Channels (with 10-13 also available on the Roku Channel)
14-19: Prime Video (with 17-19 also on Netflix)
20-22: Prime Video Channels (and Hulu, and the Roku Channel)
23-25: Prime Video (and Netflix)
So, they're all on Amazon in some sense. I was aware that there was some kind of concept of Prime Video Channels, but when I tried to find an explanation on Amazon's website, I failed.
thaumasiotes
Following up, "Prime Video Channels" seem to be an Amazon offering in which you have your subscription to a separate video service (the "Channel") billed through Amazon, for "convenience". (And you can also watch their stuff on Amazon's website.) So Pokemon has licensed about half of their series to Amazon, and they reserve the remaining half for people who subscribe to the Pokemon Channel.
barbazoo
And it doesn't even reflect availability outside the US it seems as my Netflix catalog does't have some of the seasons that list says it should.
kmac_
Well, "Gotta Subscribe 'Em All!"
godzillabrennus
Wow. It's like an advertisement for torrent sites... I had no idea it was that bad out there...
0cf8612b2e1e
I have seen this before, but I never realized that was an official product! Thought that started as a joke by a disgruntled fan.
aucisson_masque
Holy mother of God, that’s insanity. How could someone come up with that and get it approved is beyond human understanding.
devjab
I wonder if they will eventually go the LEGO route and host their shows on youtube while also letting streaming services have them.
sunrunner
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" -- Gabe Newell [1]
And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_ seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now encompasses:
- Availability by Company
- Availability by Global Region
- Stream Quality
- Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?)
- Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any other media accessibility options
[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...
mattbee
Absolutely right!
A week ago I downloaded a couple of movies and shows from Netflix for my 6yo daughter, to watch on a 3hr flight. Worked nicely!
Today we made the return flight. She opens Netflix, and ⅔ of the films have now "expired" with no notice and she can't watch the one she wanted.
For the next flight I'll remember to pirate!
pi-rat
I remember a few years ago when our niece came to visit. One evening, we started watching a movie on Netflix together.
We only made it halfway before bedtime, but since she was coming back in two weeks, we decided to save the rest for her next visit.
Two weeks later, she returned, bouncing with excitement to finally see how the story ended. We opened Netflix, ready to hit play - and lo and behold… the movie had vanished from the catalog.
Be a cool uncle, be a pirate.
teruakohatu
> She opens Netflix, and ⅔ of the films have now "expired"
I have given up saving Netflix titles in advance of travel because this has happened to me too many times. What is bizarre is you can only "download" them a certain number of times, despite being expired. So I now cannot download some shows ever again.
Nobody loses money if I cache a Netflix show to my device. The limitation is bizarre.
throwaway05241
> Nobody loses money if I cache a Netflix show to my device. The limitation is bizarre.
It wouldn't surprise me if some executive has an irrational fear of millions of people passing ipads around their family and friends with a downloads of movies/series as a way to avoid paying subscriptions.
baby_souffle
I've lost access to YouTube premium features just because my phone was not the United States for a couple of weeks.
As soon as I was back on a US ip, features just came right back.
Last I checked, background play with VLC just works regardless of where you are physically located at the time.
do_not_redeem
Getting 'em started early. You arr a great dad!
snailmailman
I tried to download something from Netflix recently. The download wouldn’t process. It got stuck partway. Not an issue, I’ll just delete it and redownload.
Nope. There’s a limit to the number of downloads on some content. I wasted mine trying to get the download to even work.
kashunstva
> service problem and not a pricing problem
Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.
netsharc
That reminds me of some passengers I sat on a flight next to once.. they tried to watch something on their iPad, but because we were about to depart from a country foreign to theirs, it got region-blocked...
Not that I pitied them, they were obnoxiously late and boarded with 5 bags (the stiff rectangular bags boutique stores have) of shopping...
interestica
In a weird quirk that must be a bug, you can watch the first season of the Good Place in French in the USA but not in Canada.
Ferret7446
Why make it complicated? Service means the user experience. If the user needs to do anything other than click pay click play, you done goofed, simple as that.
ta1243
I cancelled prime when they told me they were putting adverts on
Went to resubscribe, no option given for no adverts, no money from me.
WD-42
This is what did it for me too. Why would I pay for a crappy UX and ads? But all these companies need numbers to keep going up, so they keep tightening the screws.
cbeley
It still exists. I'm currently paying for the ad free add on and often cancel and resubscribe to it before I'm about to watch anything.
Annoyingly though, even with that, it'll still show you skipable ads about other shows they have once before you start something in a session.
ta1243
When I click "subscribe" on my TV it gives me three options, all with adverts
Maybe I could subscribe and take a risk that I could then buy something again, but it tells me they don't want people paying money, they want people watching adverts.
As such the rare amazon exclusives (mainly clarkson's farm) I will get elsewhere.
Compared to say Paramount, which I once again subscribed to through apple-tv a couple of months ago. I watch new Star Trek and South Park episodes, then unsubscribe, suits me fine, far cheaper than how I used to watch Star Trek in the 1990s.
Likewise I'll subscribe to Apple when for all mankind and morning show come back.
If they want me permamently subscribed, they should go back to making 26 episodes a year.
cchance
Yes but price has also become a huge part of it netflix raised prices like 5 times in 1 year lol
nlawalker
> "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem"
Maybe so, but if media companies invested in fixing the service problems, the pricing problems would remain, and those keep people away just as effectively, so they're not going to do it.
People don't want to pay what the media companies want to charge, at any level of service.
the_af
This is absolutely not true.
I pay an ungodly combined amount of money to various streaming services, but must still occasionally resort to TPB. Which "just works", unlike said streaming services.
Within reason, it's not a money problem (within reason; media conglomerates would love for me to sell my kidney in order to watch their premium shows, but that's not going to happen).I would rather just pay for the problem to go away, but Netflix, Disney et al just disagree.
area51org
Not necessarily true, as the success of streaming shows. The problem comes when the unbounded greed of the billionaires in charge leads them to inflate prices beyond their customers' ability and willingness to pay.
frollogaston
Streaming was cheaper than what existed before, and still is. Inflation-adjusted, movies and TV were insanely expensive back then, yet people willingly paid. And the movies were better. Who's greedy, companies wanting to offer nonessential entertainment for a price, or people who want it for free?
HDThoreaun
Service problems are usually pricing problems. Advert policy is because people refuse to pay more so to make more money they put in ads. Fragmentation by content/region is also because each service is trying to spend as little as possible on content. If you want to watch unlock video content youd have to pay $100+ a month and people refuse to do that.
6thbit
Love how this same quote was used in celebration of streaming back in Netflix’s early days as the solution, and now to show the new industry found on those very same ideas as the problem.
dilDDoS
I actually think pirating encourages a healthier approach to watching TV/movies. I've fully made the switch to pirating instead of subscribing to any streaming services, and it's led to me thinking more critically about what I want to spend time downloading and watching rather than just flipping mindlessly through endless amounts of readily available garbage on a streaming service.
I do still have Kanopy though, which is great for me but obviously depends on your library.
Akronymus
For me, I only seek out media I plan to actually watch. Rather than flipping through what is available and choosing from there. Currently it is stargate sg1/atlantis what I am watching.
Also, a lot of movies/series are only available dubbed here. (I really effing hate "Sie" in dubbed media. So much so, that it's one of the major reasons I go for subbed in english, at most)
justanotherjoe
When i first used netflix at my friends house, I immediately used the search bar and looked for Jurassic Park... what kind of movie service doesn't have JP, i thought. It must be around 10 years ago, and I never used it once afterwards.
IIsi50MHz
They've had Jurassic Park repeatedly over the years since then, and I've watched it a couple of those times.
But when Netflix was new to streaming they had so much more content; it was great. Then all the rights-holders decided they didn't want just a cut of Netflix's rates, they'd rather have all of it. Since then, the services have seemingly reluctantly agreed to license some of their stuff, some of the time, to other services, often with temporary exclusivity. If Netflix wanted it all back, they'd need a friendly blue genie and a monkey to defeat a multitudinous Jafars.
bhaney
Not always. Now I just flip mindlessly through endless amounts of readily available garbage on my jellyfin server instead.
artdigital
Then don’t be a hoarder and only get what you want to watch
I have my watchlist hooked up to *arr so it pulls that stuff automatically. Once I watched it and it’s not something I want to show to others, I delete it.
bhaney
> Then don’t be a hoarder
Of course. Why didn't I think of that?
LelouBil
> led to me thinking more critically about what I want to spend time downloading and watching rather than just flipping mindlessly through endless amounts of readily available garbage
For me it's a bit different. I have the *arr stack fully automated (with 22Tb of storage for now maaaaybe it's overkill), for friends and family too.
And the experience is nice because it makes content "crowd sourced". If something is on the server it means someone else purposefully added it, so you can still browse, but it's curated based on your friend/family circle.
But also the automation part can be a bit "mindlessly click download on everything even stuff I probably won't watch", but disk space constraints force you to delete it if nobody's watching.
Gareth321
Radarr and Sonarr are my two favourite pieces of software ever. Together with Plex I get an experience FAR superior to any streaming service. For the record I would be happy to pay for such a service, but they're so greedy they'll never offer such a unified service. Instead they keep making the direct to Netflix content worse. Removing content without any notice. Making the app UX worse, including removing useful reviews from the platform, and making content auto play when browsing. The best example of this clusterfuck is the Pokemon where to watch guide: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...
galleywest200
Why not purchase the discs and copy them yourself? At least artists can get paid that way.
yunwal
Most shows don't get a dvd release anymore.
tstrimple
And then sometimes you have to deal with a bunch of bullshit changes because of music licensing or something.
simpaticoder
I prefer physical media. However, it can sometimes be a chore to start the movie! Each disc is different. Some discs use non-standard methods to access the home menu. Some require that you at least skip past all the previews at the beginning. The worst discs require several minutes of fiddling in addition to finding and inserting the disc before you can watch it. Compare this with double-clicking an mkv and having it just...start.
x62Bh7948f
I haven’t bought a lot of DVDs lately, but the ones I have all were from used DVD stores. I think the artists were paid once.
lotsoweiners
Why not buy them used or better yet check them out at the library and save myself some money in the process? Piracy is more convenient.
skeaker
Nobody said you couldn't do this too.
tick_tock_tick
Ehh sounds like an automation issue. Buy another hard-drive and just have everything new auto download.
parpfish
i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix.
the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable levels of screentime and VERY diverse content.
i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of watching them someday, but always put them off because something about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave something light and simple.
the disk-in-the-mail era was "remember that three-hour subtitled classic film you always said you should watch but haven't? well, today's the day you're watching it." and i always ended up being glad i did.
the streaming era is "ugh, i don't have the mental bandwidth to watch that three hour thing that's been on my queue forever. lets just rewatch some background content to zone out" and i always lament wasting hours of my life in front of the screen.
bkettle
I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to build a library that has content from many different publishers.
(of course, this could only work as long as publishers keep producing physical media)
piffey
Scarecrow Video does this in Seattle. Their library is amazing.
wingworks
We have these guys in NZ, they're amazing. + overnight delivery. https://www.aliceinvideoland.co.nz/
LeonardoTolstoy
Library. I order DVDs to my local library all the time. Maybe your library system is terrible, but if it isn't you certainly can do this. There are hundreds a big wide release films with, effectively, are only available on DVD from a library (legally).
Bonus when I go I can still get that browsing the aisle experience like in an old video store (but in this case I am lucky, my local library has a large DVD / Blu-ray collection to browse)
ct0
The pirates version of blockbuster is still alive and well at your local library.
JKCalhoun
Slim pickin's, but, yeah.
dabockster
Before someone comes in and says something moronic (because physical media isn't a VC funded B2B SaaS business), I'd like to remind everyone that Redbox was going strong until Chicken Soup for the Soul bought them. Even in the late 2010s when streaming was really taking off, you could often go down to your local corner store and rent a DVD or BluRay out of a Redbox machine.
The only reason people went to streaming in the first place was that Netflix was cheap and, arguably, a heavily subsidized monopoly in the streaming space.
So yeah, some kind of DVD/BluRay business could very well work in the US and Canada.
chairmansteve
There are still services. Here is one:
Haven't used them, but I am planning on setting up a dvd player,
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shoelessone
I relate to this. Also, I am not the best person in the world, but recently this hit the point where I decided because of these very same thoughts + nudging from my much better partner to donate to NPR, to cancel Netflix and move that money to NPR. Now no more Netflix, which is sort of a relief in ways, and I have to be more intentional about what I download / consume.
ajmurmann
For a few years Mubi solved this. They only had 30 movies at a time. Every day the oldest movie left and a new one was added. All well curated and movies you'd remember. No empty calories. Because of the timing it had the same effect as you described. While Mubi is still one of my favorite platforms it now has a regular catalog.
lackoftactics
It's no longer as convenient with dozens of streaming services; the streaming bitrate is also subpar, and audio is compressed to the point it feels flat. If you want to be mindful about what you are watching, it will be really hard with Netflix, Prime, and Disney compared to your own media server. When I had a streaming subscription, I was constantly shocked by what was popular in Poland and what people were watching. It took me some time to accept that I am not their target audience.
eastbound
The quality of shows is also subpar. And there aren’t many shows on Netflix at a given time: Probably 80 things to watch, all categories included (with 70% of overlap in content).
JKCalhoun
I feel like we've had at least two lost decades of good content. It's probably somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.
disillusioned
In my humble opinion, some "good content":
Netflix:
* Dark
* Fisk
* Adolescence
* Ripley
* The Queen's Gambit
* Ozark
* Baby Reindeer
* Easy
Apple TV:
* Black Bird
* The Studio
* Severance
* Shrinking
* Ted Lasso
HBO:
* The Wire
* Oz
* True Detective (S1 at least)
* The Sopranos
* Big Love
* Rome
* In Treatment
* Succession
* Deadwood
* Insecure
Misc:
* Colin From Accounts
* Black Sails
* Mad Men
* Breaking Bad
* Better Call Saul
I don't know, there's plenty. It just absolutely gets washed out with a lot of chaff.
anal_reactor
> When I had a streaming subscription, I was constantly shocked by what was popular in Poland and what people were watching. It took me some time to accept that I am not their target audience.
Now I'm genuinely curious
l72
If they were willing to sell movies and tv shows WITHOUT DRM, I’d happily buy what I want and put on my Jellyfin server. I don’t pirate music because I can buy what I want on Bandcamp (and even mainstream music on apple and Amazon without drm).
But since I can’t (and you can’t even find physical media for a lot of things), I feel like I am left with no options.
I am not even trying to get stuff that is recent, as I prefer to wait, especially for tv shows, to finish its run before I decide if it is worth investing my time in.
I mostly go to the library every week and pick up movies and tv shows on Blu-ray and rip them so I can watch them on my schedule. I often delete them afterwards if I feel like they don’t have replay value.
I think Jellyfin also provides a much better interface than any of the streaming apps, and I like to be able to know if I am going to watch them on my theatrical version or some extended version.
jorams
> If they were willing to sell movies and tv shows WITHOUT DRM, I’d happily buy what I want
So much this. I take the simple moral position that I won't pirate things I can reasonably buy. That includes almost all music, and almost no movies, TV shows, comedy specials, etc. I still largely avoid pirating things and seek out alternatives instead, but I don't feel bad about it when I do because it's an industry that doesn't consider me a potential customer anyway.
bee_rider
I know this is pedantic but it is so annoying: downloading shows is not piracy. It is totally nuts to conflate unauthorized copying and sharing with the violent act of going on somebody’s boat and killing/threatening them until you loot their stuff.
Calling it piracy was funny during the early Internet when it was all pirate and ninja memes. But really letting them conflate this very minor crime with violence was a big propaganda loss.
opan
Agreed. I do my part to avoid using the word at least since seeing it on gnu's words-to-avoid page several years ago.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy
I don't usually get too many weird looks with "unauthorized copying".
bee_rider
Oh, that’s funny. Actually I feel a bit Stallman-y when I point this out.
layer8
You are a couple of centuries late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Pira...
wrasee
Some words are overload with more than one meaning. That’s like, a thing in many languages.
wiredpancake
No one is conflating piracy with raid boats, killing people and physically stealing items.
Ignoring the nuance is just ignorance and pedantic.
As a matter of fact, most people likely don't even associate piracy with pirates or boats. It's almost universally used to describe obtaining digital content for free.
TrackerFF
Fair enough, but if you torrent a show - which I assume most people pirating something do - you also share something, unless you explicitly turn off seeding.
IshKebab
You're not being pedantic, you're being wrong.
bawolff
Black markets are usually the result of failed markets, and i think its no different here. Copyright is a monopoly so there is no competition. Sure different streaming services compete with each other, but they essentially sell different products. It'd be like if only one resturant was allowed to sell hamburgers. There might be other resturants but they arent really in direct competition.
RajT88
The streaming services are relying on enforcement to preserve their business model.
This only works as long as there's no other nations with significant digital infrastructure that can be used for VPN egress points who don't care a whole lot about US copyright enforcement (or copyright enforcement in general).
Our government just pissed off a lot of other governments. Enforcement is good within the US, but not outside, even nations which the US has a lot of control over.
zamadatix
This mirrors my experience as well. I used to pirate everything, it was relatively inconvenient to get the exact thing you wanted on physical media. Then streaming, Steam, and app stores came about. I pivoted 100%, it was sooo much more convenient than trying to find legitimate and quality copies of content and managing a set up to do so.
Then the streaming side started to fragment a bit, but I just grabbed all of the subscriptions (HBO, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, etc). It was getting a bit iffy on value, but at least it was still convenient. Now it's just ridiculously _in_convenient. Search around to see which service might have the thing you're actually trying to watch and use this device with this app to get a decent quality version of the content delivered, all while hoping it doesn't force automatic quality "for your benefit". With Steam it's a bit less severe, but it did reach the "and the games you want are split across 5 services in exclusivity" and "DRM is getting to be an extreme pain on some of these" stages.
owlninja
I'll choose your comment to agree. I was a pirate in the 90s and early 00s, even though it took forever - it was "free"! Several years ago I was guilty of calling people out by saying that the real reason they pirated things is because they simply didn't want to pay. Fast forward to now and I can afford several services but it is just getting out of hand. My less tech-savvy family will hear about a show or movie and I have to google where the hell it is even available, and are we already subscribed to that service. Then I had a friend setup the whole AAR suite, and it has been a breath of fresh air. I'm not sure what the answer is but I am just about done having money extracted from me every month...
WrongOnInternet
I've always chosen piracy for the privacy. I don't need a bunch of services building a profile on my viewing habits and tastes, then sharing that data with other businesses and governments. If I want a recommendation, I'll ask a friend, not an algorithm.
lordofgibbons
I'm fine with recommendation algorithms if it was truly anonymous. The problem is that when you're paying for these streaming services, they have your identity, and most likely also sell your watching preference and habit data to data brokers.
loughnane
This to me is the biggest feature I’d love to see in paid services. It skeeves me out to know that everything I watch or listen to is recorded.
That and owning the media.
ncr100
It's creepy when you're influenced in ways that are insightful, because they know you deeply from your behavior. It's unfair to you.
Privacy is undervalued.
neves
For me worse than the can't pay is the lack of options. In the VHS time I had more good movie options than in the current streaming services. I remember when I bing watched Kurozawa or Mario Monicelli's movies. Now it's very hard to find non American cinema. The tech is there, but the System fail us.
epolanski
Even many American movies are no shows on most streaming platforms. Sometimes I'm like: "Let's take the top 30 movies that critics loved the most in US in year X".
As soon as it's earlier than 2005 you're gonna find less than half available across most streaming platforms, unless for renting/buying.
JKCalhoun
"Gold Diggers of 1933", "Stella Dallas", "Marty", "The Snake Pit", "Casablanca", ... I could go on.
whobre
Yep. I swear I liked the old Netflix with DVDs better. I could rent pretty much any movie I wanted.
thewebguyd
Even after the DVDs, Netflix had a much bigger catalog before everyone else decided they needed to copy Netflix and launch their own service, then IP rights got restricted and redistributed.
Streaming was great when I only needed to subscribe to a single service to watch most everything I wanted. It's not so great when I need to subscribe to 5+ services and still not have everything I want to watch.
Yeah, monopolies are bad but the way IP is distributed right now across so many different services just ends up being worse for consumers.
rgblambda
Netflix found that while it was a nice advertising tool to boast about the broadness of its catalogue, most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff so it wasn't particularly profitable.
devilbunny
> most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff
I'm sure that's true, but the flip side is that the niche stuff is what pulls in the hardcore film buffs. And guess who those of us who aren't big film buffs turn to when picking films and services? The hardcore film buffs we know.
They may not generate a ton of revenue if you look only at "how many people request obscure movie X", but having those movies pulls in the people who will, in turn, influence others.
0cf8612b2e1e
That’s what happens when you have a big library. The usage is going to be some 80:20 rule. A small slice drives the numbers. Yet it is nice to be able to consume some long tail content. Without the DVD catalog, access to the long tail has disappeared from mainstream providers.
layer8
We don’t have that problem with books for the most part, why do we have it with TV shows and movies?
JKCalhoun
That may be true. But for those in "the long tail" Netflix could have been the only game in town.
Amazon was that way for me. I went to record (music) stores to buy my music in the 1990's. I started buying music from Amazon in 1996 because they had the stuff I couldn't find in the record stores.
piva00
MUBI is a good option for the more high cinema stuff, one of the few subscriptions I'd feel sad canceling.
ajmurmann
Same. We rotate through services but Mubi and Criterion are fixed. I do sometimes miss when Mubi would only have movies for 30 days. It helped me to actually watch the movies I wanted to watch. I'd guess that at least half the movies that from the last ten years that sometimes pop into my head were from Mubi. I've probably watched entire series on Netflix I don't remember anything of.
weeznerps
Criterion Channel and Kanopy are very good (not perfect) for international films.
ajmurmann
Have you checked out Criterion or Mubi. Lots of excellent foreign movies. Criterion seems to have about two dozen Kurozawa movies.
neves
Thanks. Never heard about Criterion. I'm not in USA. These are very expensive to buy and don't have subtitles in my native language.
I'm complaining that the tech to allow me to stream every movie ever produced is here, but I'm not able to do so.
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Piracy offers:
1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies.
2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release.
3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations.
4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth.
I didn't even mention that it's free or that there are no ads, because that's pretty much the least important attribute to me. If any company came out with a service that offered those four points, I'd probably be willing to pay a lot for it. How much? Who knows, we don't know how much this is worth because nobody is even trying to offer it.