TL;DR at the bottom.
I started getting into torrents about 2 years ago, at the time I started out with downloading YIFY rips and x265 RARBG encodes. I didn’t care about the quality at the time, I was just happy to get movies. But I also wanted stuff like Special Features, and while Tigole and the QxR team occasionally added them for some of their movies, it felt like something was missing.
Eventually I grew dissatisfied with encodes, and wanted to watch movies in the highest quality possible. I would have downloaded BDMVs, but no one seemed to be seeding them, or in the case of less-mainstream/obscure movies, they weren’t on public trackers at all. (I tried downloading REMUXes from FGT, but they always replaced the PGS subtitles with UTF text subtitles, which I didn’t appreciate.) So in early 2022 I bought myself a Blu-ray optical drive, set up MakeMKV, and bought the Blu-ray of the movie I wanted to rip. After that, I bought some more BDs to rip, and I started making my own REMUXes. Some time after that, I flashed my drive with the LibreDrive firmware so I could rip my 4K UHD discs too.
So anyway, my point is that the arguments that piracy is “bad for business” and causes companies to “lose money” are full of hot air. If anything, piracy is good for them and increases sales. There have been numerous occasions where I have wanted to download a REMUX and there were no seeders, and decided it would be easier for me to buy the disc and rip it myself.
So, the main takeaways are:
- Piracy isn’t nearly as bad as the authorities say it is, and may actually increase sales.
- Create good-quality encodes.
- Seed all your torrents.
TL;DR: Started buying and ripping my own Blu-rays due to dissatisfaction with low-quality encodes and lack of seeders.
@TheImpressiveX if you don’t have money to spend but the movie is older, one can also hit up charity stores. I find good Blu ray and dvds for a few dollars at the local st Vincent DePaul stores all the time. It takes patience but it pays off. I’ve got some great full seasons of TV shows too for like $5
Just check disk for damage before buying and that the right disk is in the right box.
Same for music for me. Only difference now, I get to choose where my money goes. Instead of some streaming company giving next to nothing to the bands I listen to and everything else going to some super popular stuff I don’t enjoy.
Yeah, I’ve spent more money on smaller bands through Bandcamp then I ever have on streaming services, all thanks to piracy, since I realized it’s much better for offline files.
I wouldn’t be the faithful Final Fantasy patron I am today had it not been for a ROM of FF VI my old room mate put on my computer back in college. Now I own nearly ALLLLL of them (the ones available on modern platforms). I’ve also started investing in the Trails series for a similar reason and I don’t regret it.
Are there any good services like bandcamp, but for video? Even if it doesn’t have blockbuster/popular movies I’d be interested. I spend a lot of money on bandcamp because it’s easy and simple: I give them money and in return get bits that I do what I want with.
If you’re looking for DRM-free digital distribution, the best I can think of is Vimeo on Demand. You pay one-time for a movie, and in return you get the option to download the movie as a MP4. There’s mainly arthouse films and documentaries, but you may be able to find a few gems.
Thank you, I’m going to spend so much money buying indie movies
Thanks! That’s the sort of thing I’m looking for
I’m so confused by the tier list of what is good resolution. I thought AV1 was the best encode at the moment, I’m not concerned with size but resolution. Are these remixes the best for that?
Remux is lossless usually so it’s the closest to blu-ray
It’s not about resolution, it’s also about bitrate. Higher bitrate = higher quality.
Though I am excited for the futute of AV1. I’m still confused how they managed to make videos look great while keeping bitrate and file sizes low…
It’s not just bitrate but how good the retail encode of a Blu-ray is. There are certain movies where a smaller bit-rated Blu-ray is actually the best option. Private trackers are filled with comparisons between all the available Blu-rays to figure out of which one is the best in terms of video/audio quality. Buying a Blu-ray may still not get you the best quality.
This happened to me too. I download movies and shows onto my plex and watch them at my leisure. If I love a show or movie I get the Blu-ray and watch it in 4K/atmos! It’s nice being able to sample things before buying.
I used to have a lot of Blu-ray Disc movie resources, but I wanted to play Blu-ray Disc on different devices, or convert Blu-ray Disc into different formats, such as MP4, so I wanna know how to rip blu-ray. My friend recommended Handbrake to me. Although it is a free software, I have to install libdvdcss specially, and there are still a series of problems, so I finally bought a paid software, DVDFab, which is a one-time payment for permanent use, and it is still available at present.
Handbrake only converts an existing Blu-ray rip to a video format, it doesn’t rip DVDs and Blu-rays on its’ own.
You can install MakeMKV to rip your discs, then convert them to video files in HandBrake.
Same here. YIFY torrents were just a gateway drug to 4k HDR blurays.
Far too much of a snob to watch those icky YIFY movies with all of their artifacts.
Many others have said before people who pirate spend more on media than those who don’t.
I pay for cable tv (get off my lawn) in addition to several other streaming services.
And sometimes I still can’t get the thing I want. You think I’m going to spend even more when my half dozen existing subscriptions don’t cover this one thing? I don’t think so.
Same idea with video games. There are many game franchises that I never would have gotten into as a kid if I hadn’t been able to pirate them. I usually still pirate games to try them out, and if I end up enjoying it or want features like online play, I might buy it during a Steam sale.
me too, but usually only with indie games, because triple a studios can go fuck themselves. but like Stardew valley costs $6, imma buy it
Yeah I used to game on console but I got a steam deck thinking I would pirate shit. Then steam sales hit me like a fucking truck.
Command & Conquer was like that for me. I pirated Red Alert 2, but ended up buying it like six times via various collections. None of that would have happened had I not had that first pirated copy.
Anymore it’s a roll of the dice whether the game is functional to a point where you would enjoy it. Most publishers don’t seem to bother with demos anymore (probably because their games are half broken) so we are largely left to create our own demos.
I suspect your story is not unusual. Piracy is, at worst, a morally neutral action.
As Gabe Newell once said:
Piracy is an issue of service, not price
Ehhhhh, sorta’. I’ve spent WAY more money thanks to Steam than I would have without it, but I’m still buying everything on sale and cheaper than anyone I know with a console. I think price is still a bit part of the equation for me. Some games that refuse to ever have a decent sale are making me consider the high seas again as they stagnate on my waitlist.
Yep. The video entertainment industry had a great solution to piracy in Netflix and it had moved piracy out of the mainstream… Then companies got competitive and content became fractured across a multitude of platforms.
Then companies got competitive
You spelled greedy wrong
Heh, I actually had greedy when intially typing the comment and changed it after some thought.
Greedy might be more apt, as from basic economics you would think price should come down as more players entered the market… But we’ve seen the opposite.
The price of the subscription isnt what bother me personally though, I used to pay alot more for cable, its more the quanity of subscriptions/ accounts/apps that have to be used that drove me away.Yep, it was greed, pure and simple. After seeing how wildly successful Netflix and Hulu were, companies that owned ip weren’t content in just having a small piece of the pie. No, they needed the whole thing.
I hope all of these late-coming streaming services burn to the ground. And I LOVE streaming their content for free.
“now that we finally solved one of the hardest problems we’ve ever faced, let scrap the solution!”
No, it’s actually:
“Now that we’ve gotten everyone locked into one service, let’s squeeze them for every single cent we can until they pop!”It’s literally capitalsim’s job and it will never change.
I would have continued to pay a steadily increasing price for Netflix if they kept being a “one stop shop” for content.
I was very annoyed when they dropped Mythbusters and Dr Who halfway through me watching them, and then loosing all the Disney movies was just a nail in the coffin.
Even if it cost less, I could not be bothered to maintain multiple subscriptions/accounts/passwords for the content I want.I mean, it’d not like it was their choice. I’m sure they would have loved to remain the place where everything was.
The reason why public companies were a mistake
The first step is making them no longer legally people.
Yeah that’s definitely more accurate. That’s the step 3 everyone’s always missing in those 1 2 3? 4 profit! things.
My preferred solution is to only subscribe to one service at a time, and then switch, when I run out of things to watch.
This also means the providers get less money when they have less content.
And companies just don’t seem to get it. They saw Netflix boom in popularity and said, “Hey, I wanna do that,” without realizing that having all your content in one platform was what made it so successful.
Yep.
I’m a fan of a certain sport, and they didn’t have a reasonable way of making it available on demand… so I sailed the seas. But lo and behold once an app was available, I was happy to pay as I’m no longer having to wait.
Someone smarter than I said. The largest part of piracy is a delivery issue. Make thing’s available and people will pay for them.
Similar outcome. At this point, I mostly just rent 4k online because my massive Plex library has bit-for-bit Blu-ray rips of everything I care about enough to have on hand. But I spent years building that library by ripping physical media.
I still buy and rip CDs because I love album art and want high quality. If not for the former, I’d likely go flacc or lossless and buy online.
The problem with older media is that you have to actively create torrents, the tracker might fold, etc.
With eD2K, it’s very old school P2P filesharing, just give it a directory and the files on it are shared on the network.
Of course, the “push” part to torrent tracker sites isn’t as active.
I use both torrents and eD2K, depending on what I’m looking for.
