I think the key thing it misses though (usually) is that you usually have to go grab things. I'm not willing to go download something in order to view it. Not even spending a few minutes time grabbing a whole season of a series and then storing it somewhere, even if viewing it takes many hours.

Spotify's convenience killed the mp3, and Netflix is hyper convenient compared to most piracy. No one (to a rounding error, but let's say no one) is _really_ interested in file organizing, bitrates, buffering, whether a show disappears in 5 years etc. Everyone (again, to a rounding error) just wants to watch that latest season of that latest show and then forget it.

What's now making old-school piracy return is that while Netflix is convenient, having 7 streaming services is really _inconvenient_. Not to mention expensive. But the inconvenience is horrible.

I wish just 1-3 of the large streaming services would cooperate on some standard which lets me see and manage all my content in one place. Then devices could natively support browsing that "rss for streaming" instead of having N different services. Once a few do, the pressure on others to join the standard would increase.

▲ sensanaty 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲ alkonaut 5 days ago | parent [-]

It's still hit & miss. You still get shit content interspersed with the good there. There isn't perfect curation so you can have a missing episode, a version that doesn't allow removing the spanish audio track, a duplicate of a movie or whatever. I'm not sure if that's solved yet (i.e. that you can somehow subscribe to pirated and well curated content) but at least last time I checked it sucked.

▲ defrost 5 days ago | parent [-]

Curation tends to be better with private sites and their trackers than with public trackers.

It's a point of member pride to assemble complete seasons with consistent quality, sizing, subtitles, and audio, etc.

▲ alkonaut 5 days ago | parent [-]

Yes but pirate site 1 does that for shows A, B, and C while pirate site 2 does it for show B, C, and D now you have rivaling versions of B and C etc, and worst case one of them did a poor job. If you just choose one source you have decent curation but not all the content. If you choose both you get duplication. I don't get how it solves the fundamental problem of getting everything curated with good content and no duplication? Perhaps this is a solved problem - but I just haven't tried recently.

	▲	defrost 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I guess the best answer to that is it requires a touch of "smart customer" insight, they kind that people develop food shopping, buying hardware, etc. Scene files are named to rules that name the content, the source, the video and audio encoding, and the release group. `SeriesName S03E12 EpisodeName 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DDP5 1 H264-NTb SeriesName S03E12 EpisodeName 1080p HEVC x265-MeGusta` The first is by a group -NTB that are known for 'direct copies' (by various indicated methods) of streaming sources; here it's episode 12, season 3 of SeriesName as a WEB-DL copy and sourced from AMZN, video encoded with H264 and DDP5.1 audio. That'll be a larger file and an "as viewed" copy. The second is probably derived from the first, re-encoded using HEVC H265 to create a smaller file. The audio stream may also be transformed to be smaller in size, perhaps fewer channels. The compression may have introduced jagged chunky artifacts in fast moving scenes, or moire patterns in panning shots across chain link mesh basketball court fences. So, it's a "solved problem" in the sense of it's not hard to learn to read the labels and understand different brand strategies. Again, good private trackers that have been about for a good while now typically have complete seasons in a fully consistent form as a single multi episode torrent- all the same source (eg: BluRay release, or DVD, or from digital channel, or upscaled reconstruct, etc) all by the same release group. Good private trackers also tend to have request forums, anything sought and not held can be requested and admins or users with multiple accounts tend to fill requests and often like the challenge of a hard to source rarity. From the end user PoV they can also join multiple private trackers and use tools (-arr suite, etc) that can search across multiple trackers and present sorted and grouped results with easy selection of some or many for download. My personal solution is I've pretty much always "curated as I go", making notes or filing stuff as I consume it - books, film, TV, papers, things built or designed.. anything I circle back on may or may not be worth chasing up a better version, I'd have to have liked it and want to share it or experience it again in better form- I'm happy buying digital media that I can own if it's available for things I enjoy, for things not available over the counter I can search for the best version available ATM by polling trackers .. failing that by joining forums and asking about.

▲ GoblinSlayer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

RSS doesn't support such aggregation?

	▲	alkonaut 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		You just fetch all your rss'es from N sources and the client can show a merged one.

▲ bambax 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.