this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 165 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Wow that's old.

Frankly, as shitty is a lot of that stuff was, DVDs were like the last form of media distribution that I would actually call tolerable in terms of consumer friendliness. You still got a physical disk with the actual movie that was easy to rip and share, no internet required. If it weren't for the quality limitations, I'd still collect them as the primary physical backup to my media server.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

4k Blu Rays exist. Aside from the pain of having to get a special cracked drive to rip them they are my primary backup for my movie server.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

You just made me realize I could probably do this myself with a library card

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the only big shortcoming to DVDs was the region locking …

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why we had a market for region-free DVD players!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This fucking hurt to read.. thank fuck for piracy

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[–] [email protected] 129 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's been said to death but at heart, I've always felt that when it comes to piracy, it's a service issue, not a cost issue.

Except for you Adobe. That's a cost issue.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago

Except for you Adobe. That's a cost issue.

AutoDesk had entered the chat

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I found out the other day that LibreOffice Draw has a full pdf editor built in.

I know adobe makes many more products, but boy do I like telling people they don’t have to pay for Acrobat!

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Streaming companies are lucky that not more people know about Stremio + Torrentio + Real Debrid. That combination is a game changer and allowed me to get rid of all streaming services.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So true! Killer combo, have it on my nvidia shield TV works perfect almost as good buffer time as the streaming services with the real-debrid service with no loss in quality, I do have vpn on it also just to be sure.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This sounds interesting. I even have a Real-Debrid account but don't know anything about those other two things. Guess I'll be doing some researching tonight.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is a guide that someone on Reddit wrote and it helped me a lot. It looks complicated with the first glance, but when you do the steps it takes less than 15 minutes. I changed the order of the original slightly and added a few infos to make it easier:

"Guide installing Stremio with Torrentio and Real Debird on your desktop.

Stremio

Go to https://www.stremio.com/ Download the relevant client for your platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) Open Stremio and sign up with email or facebook

Real Debird

Go to https://real-debrid.com/ Sign up Go to Premium Offers ($3 for one month, $16 for 6 months) Choose a package and subscribe

Torrentio

Go to https://torrentio.strem.fun/configure Choose your options for providers, quality, foreign language etc You can now choose to install Torrentio without a Debid Provider. Personally I use Real Debrid to connect directly to a server vs having my IP shared in peer to peer and to speed up performance. Torrentio has a slot for a possible API key (the Real Debrid key) To install with Real Debrid follow the next steps: Go to the API key with this link: https://real-debrid.com/apitoken Copy the API Key and go back to Torrentio and paste it under RealDebird API Key Install

Stremio with Torrentio installed

Check the addon installed correctly Click the puzzle piece up on the top right that says 'Show All Addons' Click My Addons and scroll until you see Torrentio Test stream a movie or TV show Go to Discover Click on a Movie or TV show and click 'Show' You should now see [RB+] Torrentio - Quality Enjoy streaming"

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The issue with streaming companies is the exclusivity. I would happily pay for Netfix if I could watch Ted Lasso (= Apple+) and Halo (= Paramount+) on it.

But if you want access to original series you have to buy the platform. I pay around €45 total in VPNs, Seedboxes, Usenet indexers... per month. I would happily pay for Netfix if I had access to everything in the world for up to €50/month. But with netflix you get access to a shitty catalogue on only one device for €8/month... That's not okay for me.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

See they're doing you a favor by not letting you waste your time on that garbage that is the Halo show. What a farce.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

It's not even worth pirating, lol

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trust me. You do not want to watch Halo.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Ugh, there has not been a TV show that has disappointed me as much recently as "Halo" has... It's a disgrace that it is even called Halo.

The disappointing thing is there were small tidbits of S1 where I said "Hey, if there was more of this then I'd be excited to for the next episode to air!" ... But no.

I like to joke and say "My disappointment is immeasurable" but this was certainly a case where I actually meant it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I'm still only using legit services right now. For us the biggest thing we miss is the ability to actually find something specific. They work "ok" for just choosing something to watch from the algorithm, and that's only because we got like 4 services total. But if you want to watch a specific film? 9 times out of 10 it's not on any of them.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s why I pay for Spotify, convenience and pretty much everything in one place. For TV/Movies it’s Plex and the high seas.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

I've posted as much here in three weeks as i did on Reddit in three years. That's one post, but still. I am trying to be more active though to keep lemmy active and because it just feels more meaningful here.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (6 children)

My game changer was going to bflix.gg and downloading the android app from there (OnStream).

Every episode of anything can be streamed! If I get problems I can download an episode str8 on my phone. I use xcast to then chromecast it directly on my tv.

For anime, I go to 9anime.

LITERALLY FREE

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's weird that we have "capitalism" and there are people, who clearly have desire for a drm-free content. Hell, we even have a gog, where you can buy drm free games. Yet the market does not want to provide legal option to obtain films/shows that are not locked into the service.

And even with the gog there are still many games that are impossible to get drm-free in a "good" way. Not to mention emulation where things get kinda grey, depending on the system you are emulating

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If I wanted to drop my Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ and still have lots of options for stuff to watch, what would you guys suggest. Please explain like I have the IQ of a half eaten apple that's been sitting out in the sun for a week, I can barely figure out Lemmy having come over from Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Kodi + Real-Debrid. Or like top comment says you could also use Stremio + Real-Debrid. I recommend using a Trakt account too to keep track of everything you watch/episode progress. Real-Debrid costs about $3 a month but has just about every torrent cached to their servers (it’s never needed to buffer for me), and if they are missing one you can cache it yourself. Setting up kodi/stremio with RD is definitely worth a Google!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (8 children)

With Sonarr/Radarr and Jellyfin, that convenience has effectively been trumped. I don't know how they can compete

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dropped Netflix and got a Plex share with tens of thousands of movies and TV shows. Costs less than their 4K plan for several streams. Now they’re doing the “you can’t login in more than one location” bullshit? Back to sailing the high seas for me and hopefully many others

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think piracy is more convenient

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

100000000%, beyond the fact that I don't want to pay a thousand different subscriptions, I also much prefer having everything in jellyfin or Plex. I don't want to mess around with all these crappy streaming apps, each with their own set of limited functionality or handicaps.

Also, why would I want to watch low bitrate streams when I can get full quality Blu-ray rips. Hopefully someday streaming platforms will offer full bitrate video, as physical media will probably go away over time.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At this point it 100% is. I could bother and use nonsense apps, and their poor players. But now that I need 5 subscriptions and it's still like 40% chance that I find movie i want to see there it's simply stupid. Also consistency with plex and much better quality, not to mention frequently found bonuses like deleted scenes or interviews with creators / actors. Another thing, it's sad to see people switching to streaming lose their interest in exploring filmography by genre, director etc and only come down to brainlessly watching any garbage recommended by netflix.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think they're already over the tipping point.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Because of their enshittification to chase pandemic profits, it's just so much better to pirate now.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Piracy is the only viable option. The problem isn't the concept of a streaming subscription service, the problem is how many of them there are. A couple would be fine I guess but if we consider the fact that all the content is divided in more than 10 major services, it's no longer a viable option.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I pay for Amazon Prime, but still get less buffer time by streaming torrents with Stremio, which also never fails to remember where I left a movie at (even if I change the torrent source, which is crazy)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

One day piracy will catch up and everyone will be trading episodes of family guy, just like they used to with scanned disk and vhs cassets.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got no problem with streaming services competing and putting exclusive content on platform. What do I have problem with is them backing off from the things they advertised as when they were starting. Netflix literally rose in populating with ads saying "love is sharing the password" and other bullshit. Premium accounts were more expensive just so you can share your password with others. Nowadays they say it's no longer possible and you have to pay extra.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We traded ownership (physical media) for convenience. I was a matter of time until that came biting us in the ass

PS: I love the convenience of everything being in my computer without having to lift my ass to change media, so it's possible to have ownership AND convenience.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me it hasnt been for along time. The site I use has everything as soon as its available, stores which episodes and at which time I was last time, has intro skip, autoplay and autonext. When i want to watch a series i just type the name in my browser, auto-complete the URL and i'm done. On netflix i have to tap through multiple menues, have to login and might even get blocked because im not on my home device. I get a better service in every aspect for free.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This reminds me of the meme subreddit called r/Piracy. That was quick.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Fmovies is more convenient than many streaming services though

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't use piracy for convenience. I watch movies and series together with my girlfriend (in a remote way) and we haven't found a way to watch together (Like Teleparty for Netflix or Disney Plus native "Watch Party") the content without the remote partner watching it in 320p (using Plex "Watch together" functionality). It simply doesn't work.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Pay $100+ to get all streaming services or use my favorite site through my smart tv with adblock from my phone for free and get it all....... hmmmm

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