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.

Subtitles are often a very dumb failure point, especially when English subtitles aren't available in half the world for basically no reason.

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?

> 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.

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.

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.

I think my favorite thing of not even piracy, just ripping my DVDs, is the ability to watch a random episode of a show. There's some shows like The Simpsons that I don't want to watch in production order any more, nor do I want to manually select. Now I just tap some buttons in Kodi and it randomly picks a recently unwatched episode.

Or more generally: the ability to use a video player of your choice, which can have whatever features and interface that you want.

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)).

You shouldn't need to spend anything like $1k to get yourself going with a simple Jellyfin server running on a $50 TinyMiniMicro and a 4 tb external HDD. $150? 8 months to match Netflix. Substantially less to replace two services.

Funnily enough, ability to watch offline is something the Netflix app for Windows (yes from their app store) lets you do. It is my favorite reason to install Windows apps instead of just using the browser, really handy for a trip when you have a real screen to watch movies from.

Offline watching is a thing with streaming services, too.

Also, there is no reason for a paid streaming service not to implement 1 (but not 1.2), 2, 3 and 4. It's not like these features will affect their bottom line. They just don't see value in implementing and supporting them.

1.3 Ability to make your own subtitles so your Klingon grandma can watch the movie

1.4 Ability to edit the video so your 10 year old can watch Top Secret! without gross anal sex jokes

What do you mean by audio normalization? Aren't you talking about compression?

Nice zero indexed array.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Wow. I thought it was impossible to watch the original release of star wars. I need to hunt this down.

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.

It’s great but do you know of any others?

While that's the best option, there's always AI upscaling and frame gen. These of course won't be as good as native resolution and can sometimes make more errors, but they can make a big difference on low resolutions when you got a big screen.

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.

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.)

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.

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...

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.

Nature is healing ! https://nofilmschool.com/disney-butt-in-splash

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.

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.

especially when Advanced DnD is like the best Community episode

If people stopped getting offended by literally anything. We wouldn’t have to deal with this bs.

I hate the censorship. But when some groups are willing to kill if you don’t censor then I can’t blame others for not wanting to be martyrs and put their lives on the line for it

That seems like a bad reason to swear off streaming services. Do you not shop at stores because they don’t carry offensive clothing?

This can happen with piracy too. For example, I'm aware of at least one case where the highest quality option for a specific show edited out the gay scenes.

It's a shame https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P.... was never applied to streaming services.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Plex’s recent changes have been garbage and it’s still better than the experience on a lot of streaming sites.

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.

Point 6 grow a lot, with the recent UK chances requiring people to hand over their Identity to see xxx rated content. Privacy was a issue before but its getting worse and worse.

Point 7 ... see the recent EU law about chat services needing to provide access to users chats. Also links to UK recent laws etc ...

The more the governments and companies go crazy for your data / privacy, the more a personalized solution becomes a need. All the other benefits that such a platform offers, become icing on the cake.

It’s frustrating when languages are locked behind regional restrictions or selective availability, and it borders on being an accessibility issue. That said, things have improved compared to the past, at least when it comes to consuming foreign media from outside its home country. In my case, that means accessing Japanese content while outside Japan.

In most cases, I suspect the limitation isn’t the fault of the streaming services but rather the content owners. On Netflix, for example, expecting English subtitles for anime in Japan is about as hopeless as expecting Japanese subtitles for U.S.-made films while in the United States.

To Netflix’s credit, their original shows are often subtitled and dubbed in a wide range of languages, which has significantly increased the availability of non-English content worldwide.

The same trend can be seen with music, at least for Japanese music. Until around ten years ago, almost nothing was available abroad. While some regional restrictions remain on certain tracks, the vast majority are now accessible outside Japan.

This one is particularly janky!!!!!

Watch anime on Netflix at home with English subs. Fly to japan. Open Netflix, now you cannot watch with English subs.

The workaround is to pre emptively download the show, then put your device on airplane mode so Netflix cannot phone home, then watch the show with the English subs as snapshotted at home.

From a cursory search, there are browser extensions to display your own subtitles on sites like netflix. At least for firefox.

Except for our ip address, timestamp and torrent metadata

https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com

Older TV shows are often also only available on DVD which is much lower quality than what streaming services (and thus pirates) have for them.

So how come you can't (legally) watch Blue-Rays using a Linux computer, or when viewing it on an ancient CRT using an HDMI-to-analog converter?

A lot of effort has gone into making physical media work only with pre-approved devices.

It fails on all of them if it's not available to purchase, and none of them are of relevance if I want it right now vs having to wait 1-7 days to get hold of that physical copy and there's an easier alternative where I can have it right now.

Physical media has arbitrary device limitations.

It's been super easy to stream pirated content for more than a decade (Popcorn Time) at this point, especially of late with the billions of pirate streaming sites that all pull from 20 different sources.

It's funny in a sad way how much better the UX of a lot of the piracy sites are, too.

RSS doesn't support such aggregation?

This whole thread shows many people don't mind spending time building their own content library and making their own little Netflix on their NAS. I think this is just the beginning.

I have been a happy user of JellyFin for a couple of years. Then when Spotify raised its prices again I realized I mostly listen to the same songs, most if not all I still own the CDs.

So with Navidrome and a couple of Python scripts to transform playlists, I made my own little home Spotify as well (Homify? Hopify?)

Works perfectly. No fees. No ads. No stupid email at the end of the year bragging about all the data Spotify collects and stores about me. Perfect.

Well that's also the point of building your own library. You get to choose to store only the things you like, and not store/delete things you don't like. Nothing gets pushed to you, you are in charge.

> No one is offering that service because it would be completely illegal.

It would be technically possible to decentralize distribution while still paying rights holders for each download. Laws could be rewritten to accommodate, encourage or even require this.

My biggest gripe with streaming services is that you literally can't legally own the content you paid for. You can only "license" it. Amazon, Google, Apple, whoever can revoke your access at any time and there's nothing you can do about it. There are plenty of examples of this already happening. The rights holders are protected, but the consumer is fucked. It's untenable, in my opinion.

Why would you need a connection at all to play local content that would need a VPN? Are you using one of those players that "streams" the torrent? That always seemed like a novel idea once bandwidth was available for that, and I guess plenty of seeders. It could also be the stereotype I've built in my head that the people that torrent lean towards hoarders adding to their local inventory.

Apple is the most egregious of them all. The times I wanted to watch a foreign language film only to discover the subtitles are not available in English!

Jellyfin is shockingly good now also

Plex is garbage spyware. You cannot use the client/server offline, go ahead and reatrict your Plex server to lan only and try to log in from a client.

Jellyfin is an excellent solution right now. I'd say the desktop and mobile app is early Netflix quality now. Completely open source, and has click to run binaries for almost any OS.

4. Plex lets you cache stuff locally for a plane or when you’re traveling. That’s usually what I do when I’m going somewhere. I did try streaming from my house to a hotel in India a decade ago… it technically worked, but I had to set the resolution so low that it wasn’t fun to watch. I assume that’s better now, but I just cache stuff before I leave now.

Those companies own half the internet and they make sure the right browser is always slower and shittier than theirs

I'm not going to name any names but depending on your budget and jurisdiction you can probably figure out a setup where you either torrent, possibly through a reputable VPN, from an invite based tracker, or you pay to play with one or two Usenet accounts.

If you are willing to spend a bit of money you can get what's called a seedbox in a suitable jurisdiction and do rather innocous seeming tunneling between your home network and there.

Torrenting is a bit messy, usually it's not 'one tracker fits all', instead you'd likely want one for movies and one for music or something like that. Perhaps Limewire is a good fit for your needs, or perhaps you're more of a power user willing to endure weeks or months of research and interviews with tracker admins.

Usenet is a bit more involved, and you pay for access and bandwidth. The network traffic doesn't look as suspicious as torrenting, however, and if something turns up in a search it's yours, you don't have to beg for people to seed and so on.

With a bit of effort and technical savvy you can automate a lot of piracy these days, with tools like Sonarr and Radarr tracking releases and automatically pushing them into your self-hosted streaming service.

Maybe I'm just lucky with where I've lived, but I've literally never had problems pirating without obfuscating my traffic in any way whatsoever. I've been torrenting since I was a kid, too, and I torrent literally everything you can possibly torrent from software to music.

Do people really get hounded for piracy in other countries?

But you can check out fmhy.net, it's a great resource (unaffiliated, it's just a genuinely great resource for piracy :p)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/movies_and_t...

pay for a vpn, get an open-source client like qbittorrent, and go to sites like yts.mx and 1337x.to.

I use torrent with private trackers for over 20 years now, no VPN. Never had an issue.

You have to have real options or people can’t make informed decisions.

I have a background in city planning, and in the US, you’ll constantly hear about how trying to make cities more friendly to pedestrians, bicycles, or public transit is a waste because no one uses it. But the truth is, most people will end up using the system you design. If you build a system just for cars, people will use cars. If you build a city around public transportation, people will happily use it. If you build a walkable city, people will walk.