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.