this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Yup.
I basically don’t pirate music because streaming is convenient.
I generally don’t pirate games because steam and GOG is convenient. (Sometimes if I’m not sure ill enjoy it I’ll pirate as a no limit trail then buy or drop).
I generally have to with movies and shows. Even though I have access to several streaming platforms though stuff like T-Mobile, AT&T, etc. it’s too annoying to jump around a bunch of apps and the quality is bad compared to the UHD rips of stuff
This is why I pirate Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I have a subscription to pretty much every streaming service in my country (Netflix, prime video, HBO max, apple TV, Sky showtime, etc. ) but Sky only has SNW in 1080p SDR. I can download it in 4k HDR. I don’t feel one bit guilty about it, I pay for the damn service that offers it. Just not in an acceptable picture quality.
It's not just quality compared with UHD rips, it's things like prime video refusing to play anything except 480p on a web browser.... WTF are they thinking?
I don’t use if on a browser, but even on my Shield Pro it’s not great. Prime Video seems to use a very low bitrate, there’s lots of compression artifacts, even on the 4k streams.
It's just more enshittification. If they can get away with smaller files, they absolutely will.
What do you mean with SDR?
Standard Dynamic Range. It's a term adopted to differentiate non-HDR video from HDR video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-dynamic-range_video
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Standard-dynamic-range video (SDR video) is a video technology which represents light intensity based on the brightness, contrast and color characteristics and limitations of a cathode ray tube (CRT) display. SDR video is able to represent a video or picture's colors with a maximum luminance around 100 cd/m2, a black level around 0.1 cd/m2 and Rec.709 / sRGB color gamut. It uses the gamma curve as its electro-optical transfer function.The first CRT television sets were manufactured in 1934 and the first color CRT television sets were manufactured in 1954. The term "standard-dynamic-range video" was adopted to distinguish SDR video from high-dynamic-range video (HDR video), a new technology that was developed in the 2010s to overcome SDR's limits.^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Oh, cool. Another gimmick that we are going to be fighting about which standard to use for the next few decades, making terabytes of libraries seem obsolete, and another convenient excuse for the manufacturers to discontinue old models and keep the TV prices up despite offering no real improvements and manufacturing costs and quality dropping to the floor. Nice.
I used netflix until the majority of my searches didnt show a result. and then went back to pirating.
using jellyfin+jellyseer and radarr/sonarr make it almost as convenient
If I want to buy a game it's super easy to search for it on my choice of digital store front, pay for it and download it.
If I want to watch a show I could do a search for which streaming service it's available on and hope it's one I have an account with, or for the same amount of effort I could do a search for the torrent and be able to watch it if the internet goes down.
Why not just rent each movie for 48 hours from Amazon for the bargain price of "pretty much the same as a Blu-ray disc, and often higher"?
This was especially frustrating with kids. All too often, with the shorter attention span of little ones, and general lack of time, where we couldn’t finish a movie that quickly. Maybe I understand that for physical media but for digital where the only scarcity is artificial?
Someone missed out on so much of my money for streaming movies when my kids were little, simply because I couldn’t guarantee finishing them in 48 hours so I didn’t rent
So true!