An interesting anecdote at MinimalMac about television being broken. The author’s young daughter, who is growing up in a Netflix/Hulu/iTunes/etc. household, was confronted with actual TV for the first time, and wonders why she can’t pick what to watch, why the shows are being interrupted all the time, and so on. Clearly – TV is broken.
And let’s face it – it is. In The Netherlands, we don’t have as many commercial breaks as they do in the US, but when watching US shows, we are still reminded of the many, many commercial breaks on the other side of the Atlantic – random fade-to-blacks every 10 minutes or so. Over here, you get zero commercial breaks when watching our variant of the BBC (only in between programs), or about two breaks per hour on commercial channels (excluding breaks in between programs).
We do, however, also suffer from the horrible volume differences, intruding branding for other shows on the networks (those banners that pop up and such), and the various other annoyances. Worse yet, we don’t have Hulu. We don’t have Netflix. We don’t have Amazon. We don’t have iTunes (well, we do, but without any content – just music). And, to make matters worse, we have to wait months and months – often years – before we get most popular American shows. And often only in stereo and standard definition.
It’s no wonder, then, that Dutch people download so much stuff. I certainly do.
I have a Windows 7 machine hooked up to my TV running XBMC, which I use to watch all those TV series (and a few films, too). It’s infinitely easier and less horrible than watching these series on TV – if that is even possible. I fire up a torrent, and due to my 120MB connection, have the entire first season of Game Of Thrones on my hard drive before the coffee’s done (thanks to The Oatmeal for getting me interested in Game Of Thrones). In 720p, Dolby Digital. Flawless quality, and thanks to XBMC, presented with all the metadata and beautiful box art you could possibly want.
I have no other option. I can’t buy the DVD or Blu-Ray box set – it won’t come out until late April. Starting this month, my cable provider/ISP is offering HBO’s channels, but only in a monthly package of all three channels combined for a whopping €15 per month. To put that into perspective – my combined digital HDTV/120MB internet/phone line (all over cable) only costs €65.
I’m obviously not going to subscribe to three channels for €15/month because I want to find out if I would like Game Of Thrones. I’m also not going wait to buy a €40 Blu-Ray set if I don’t even know if I will like it.
Torrent sites simply offer a far better user experience, and often, they’re the only ones offering the product people want in the first place. In The Netherlands, downloading is legal too (hence why I’m not calling it piracy or illegal).
Give me a Steam-like service for TV series and films, without any silly region and/or device restrictions or delayed releases. HD quality in glorious Dolby Digital. Allow the downloaded files to integrate with our own preferred multimedia solutions (XBMC in my case), have interesting sales, and keep the prices acceptable (€1 per episode is more than enough). For new shows, offer the first episode for free as a sample.
To get major bonus brownie points: allow local TV networks to hook into the platform, so I can buy/download local content as well.
Anybody who can pull that off will be a millionaire within months. Steam has shown the way. All the industry needs to do is follow.
http://www.dvdspecialonline.com/dvd/Game-of-Thrones%3A-Season-1…
You can buy the legal disks.
* downloading IS legal in my country.
* I don’t have a credit card. Relatively few people do in The Netherlands.
* Not HD. This is a DVD.
* No sample. Can’t see if I like the series before buying it.
* The kicker: “No shipments to Germany, Italy,Netherlands, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Austria, South American countries.”
Edited 2012-02-24 22:21 UTC
Of course it is. Downloading is not illegal anywhere. What you mean to say is that downloading copy-written material without a license is legal in your country so long as it’s not for profit and you don’t upload it. Big difference.
Why do your your TV shows suck so bad? I mean seriously, outside of a few humorous commercials, European TV is really, really bad.
You clearly have no familiarity with European TV. Engrenages, Forbrydelsen, Wallander, Lilyhammer, and Borgen are all outstanding TV.
And then of course there’s the BBC, which is the greatest collection of TV & Radio channels anywhere, ever.
And two of those are Danish, one is swedish, and one is norwegian-american… the real Europe is boring like you wouldn’t believe it except Britain (all hail Little Britain!)
Im an American and I got pissed at that comment, lol.
I LOVE British and European tv. I’d rather watch a lot of British sitcoms than a lot of American ones.
Dude, your profile claims you’re in Taiwan.
If that is the case, something about people in glass houses and throwing rocks not being a good combination, etc, etc.
The other day I started to watch the series Braquo for the first time. Really impressed.
Well, we get crappy TV, you get bandwidth-capped internet connections and multiple incompatible wireless standards. Take your pick
In France, I would only watch two channels: France 5 and Arte (and to some extend, free TV shows from Canal+). The other channels are crappy!
LCP stuff beyond debates from the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat looks also great if you’re into intellectual debates. Although I don’t watch TV much these days, I found their stuff interesting the two times I watched it.
The first time I watched was during the debate on burqa interdiction, a while ago. They had a theologian speaking about women in the Quran and how it is not necessarily what one may think. As an example, he discussed how men who do not sexually satisfy their wives are supposed to get beaten by their peers in Coranic law. Fascinating.
The second time, it was something about surrogacy (mères porteuses/gestation pour autrui), which was also quite interesting.
Edited 2012-02-25 12:28 UTC
Downloading, yes, but on p2p services you usually have to seed back isn’t it ?
This has always bothered me.
Do some people still use P2P? Most people I know use direct downloads…And if your country forbides downloading of copyrighted material, direct downloading is one of the few ways not to get caught.
Apparently, Thom does
And I have to say it makes some sense too, since his überfast broadband is a bit under-used when using DDL sites that barely go above 100 KBps without a paying subscription.
Edited 2012-02-25 12:30 UTC
Would suck if only one or a few people hosted the content and took all the risk.
What bothers me is that anyone cares in the first place and don’t just accept that this is what will be done. Let it happen.
What I think about intrusive ads in TV programs is that we could do to TV what we’ve done to the web with Adblock Plus. The small community of admins could use a computer application used to monitor a TV channel and to add milestones at the very beginnings and ends of every ad. Then they would share in real time these milestones accross other users who would watch their TV show slightly late, and their application would cut off TV ads based on the ads database updated in real time. This could also be used when you schedule a recording. Let’s say you want to record a movie tonight. You set your computer to record film XYZ tonight, using the database. No ads before, no ads after, and none inbetween either! This would be 100% legal and convenient. Sample of database content, for instance:
channel3;from=06:32:15;md5start=765767892210972;to=06:43:12;md5stop=65 52972019862453
channe02;from=06:32:15=md5start;765767892210972;to=06:43:12;md5stop=65 52972019862453
channe11;from=06:32:15;md5start=765767892210972;to=06:43:12;md5stop=65 52972019862453
channe01;from=06:32:15;md5start=765767892210972;to=06:43:12;md5stop=65 52972019862453
channe10;from=06:32:15;md5start=765767892210972;to=06:43:12;md5stop=65 52972019862453
Most people in The Netherlands don’t have credit cards? What do you use to purchase items? Certainly not Cash or Cheques?
I can only speak for germans, but most people here use simple wire transfers from one to another bank account or Paypal to pay online. Or cash or a debit card (different from the american credit cards) to pay in the super market.
Thom mentioned something about a special payment method to pay online in the netherlands, though.
Debit cards make sense, they really are interchangeable with credit cards. I often call them credit cards, even though they really aren’t. If the have a Visa/electron, Mastercard/maestro, logo, they will work with any merchant that takes those credit cards ( with a few exceptions, like car rentals).
Wire transfers seem pretty cumbersome for purchasing goods. PayPal is evil, I have refused to use them since 1998.
In some countries like Romania you can get any classic credit card as a debit card. I personally have a MasterCard Gold and nobody (including the car rentals) ever guessed that it was a debit card. The condition was that in the debit account I should have as much as they request the hold on. So for a €130 car rental, you should have in your account €250. Ultimately, the hold is canceled and you are billed only for the €130.
Well, you *can* tell the difference as a merchant. It depends on your payment processing features. It falls into the category of possible, but not common. The large ones in the United states (Avis, enterprise, Hertz, Budget, ect) , most certainly can and do.
The American Debit and/or Prepaid Mastercard and Visa generally behave differently than the European ones. In Europe there isn’t much of a difference between a credit card and a debit card.
You attach the debit card to a normal account, while the credit card is attached to a special CC account, but other than that, the cards are the same, it’s only the accounts that are different. I am quite sure that the large merchants in the US can’t tell the difference here because I had an argument at one point with a merchant that stopped accepting credit cards. I explained to them that my Mastercard was in reality a debit card and he suggested to try it out and it was rejected for presenting itself as a credit card. I’ve also tried my (backup) Visa Electron that was linked to the same account and it worked.
In some countries, such as Germany you can’t get a Visa/Mastercard on a current account, you can only get it as a credit card, but that’s by internal bank policy.
Another difference is the mandate to use an EMV chip. In Europe, almost all cards are now using an EMV chip and there is an European Directive requiring all transactions to happen with the EMV chip. The magnetic strip and the embossed numbers are kept only for compatibility with foreign nations, but their use is discouraged in some countries or forbidden in others.
And the final difference would be electronic cash. It’s quite convenient, but the systems are not universal. The EC/Geldkarte system is for DE, AT and CH while France has another system and the Netherlands have another system. In some countries such as Romania, the electronic cash system has been skipped, favouring the introduction of contactless transactions (PayPass, etc.).
There are many classifications of Visa/Mastercard types other than Credit and Debit.
For those living in the US where “real” credit cards seem to be very common, the following explaination may make the situation clear:
Unlike credit cards, debit cards are issued by your bank. In the default case, you can only spend as much money as you have available on your bank account. Drawing credit (or overdraft) is possible if you manage that with your bank (up to a given limit).
During the payment, no 3rd party is involved: The system is called ELV (Elektronisches Lastschrift-Verfahren) = electronic debit procedure. It’s commonly used “offline” (e. g. in most shops and restaurants, the supermarket or everyone who has a “payment line” with his bank to participate in “cashless” payment procedures).
During the procedure, the bank of the person where your buy something gets a transfer from your bank. This transfer is authorized by your 4-digit PIN and the insertion of the card into a special reader. Security is typically enhanced by a chip on the card, while the transfer data (account and bank number) are obtained from the magnetic stripe.
(Most banks allow you to also to get cash at an ATM with the same card. Some cards include a different chip where you can “upload” money from your account “onto” the chip in order to make payments, e. g. at parking lot payment machines.)
You can use PayPal to pay per your bank account, but this does not involve your plastic card.
It must sound really alien and stupid to you but the idea of credit cards sound even more stupid to dutch people. Most people use a ‘pin pas’ a card with a magnetic strip and these days a chip. You use a four digit Personal Identification System(PIN) number. It goes directly from your bank account to the merchant.
By default you pay with money you have but you can activate an automatic debt if you want to spend more than you have.
In the Netherlands a lot of sites use iDeal. It is an automated interface for electronic banking.
(the ammount, accountnumber and order number are already included you just Ok the transer of the funds.
The receiver get an e-mail that it is payed so they can ship the product immediately instead of waiting for the bank to actually finish the transaction. Which takes at least a day. Banks in the netherlands are slowly migrating from the coal powered steam driven computers.
Grown up Dutch people who go on holidays abroad do have credit cards. Gas-stations, tollbooth in France, car rental companies, hotels are a lot easier with it.
Jefro. I also “steal” because I get absolutely no option to digitally buy the TV Shows. In the States you get Hulu and Netflix with which you watch as much as you want for pennies, but in other countries, the content is either prohibitively expensive (€50/season in a country with €300 average wage) or not available at all. When the content is finally available (usually 1 year later) it’s of bad quality (widescreen in 4:3 with black bars on DVDs).
And here’s the best part, if I search really really hard I can find most things that I would like to watch in another EU county (varies by content), but I can’t buy it since my billing address is not from there. This is especially appalling since the EU fundamental freedoms require services and products to be available cross-border to any EU citizen. By comparison, it would be like denying a citizen from New Hampshire the ability to buy from the iTunes Store because the iTunes Store is only available in California, or because a movie is only available in the California iTunes Store (and not in the New Hampshire Store).
So the whole system is idiotic and counter-productive, but they want us to sign ACTA. Here’s what they don’t get: I have a lot of storage capacity, until they decide to make the TV Series that I enjoy available for decent money in my country, I will have downloaded all of them on an external raid array remuxed them to MP4 and tagged them. I want my ability to watch whatever I feel like watching for $29 on NetFlix, and to watch whatever TV shows I like on Hulu. I don’t want to pay €200 per month to be able to watch the same TV Shows and Movies that an american watches for $29. Especially when they are not made available in my country soon enough.
Hey, give me an legal and official way to watch my series and I will be the first one in line.
I live in Brazil. No Amazon, No Hulu, we have Netflix but only for things 5 years old or older (they are advertising season *1* of Heroes now) and iTunes only does movies and even so, still has a smal catalogue. I wouldn’t complain much about watching it in cable *IF* I was sure all shows I want would be displayed here and I wouldn’t have to wait months for them to start.
The solution is to include more product marketing inside movies and series.
Everybody remember how well fitted Windows 7 on Smallville, OS/2 on GoldenEye 007, Target on Josie and the Pussicats, Lenovo on Transfomers 8, FedEx on Castaway…. yes.. that’s the future
Edited 2012-02-24 22:21 UTC
Depends on the country.
France has this strange law that product placement is forbidden on TV, as a result, every time a know brand is shown on a foreign show, a black box or fuzzy layer is drawn on top of the name.
Really ugly.
Want to hear something really stupid/funny? When I watched Castaway I had never heard of FedEx. I thought they made up a dumb but comical name because they couldn’t use a real company’s name.
How do you do that in a story without a modern, real-world, setting?
How do you do that without the marketing taking control of your characters and story? In the fifties and sixties even animated characters like the Flintstones smoked liked chimneys.
“Give me a Steam-like service for TV series and films, without any silly region and/or device restrictions or delayed releases.” except for one thing: the price should be different according to the region where you live, because wages differ across Europe.
http://storage0.dms.mpinteractiv.ro/media/1/186/3936/9262912/1/mw-m…
Agreed.
Agreed.
Also, why not have region specific ads, like Google & Facebook do? Just have streaming videos with 2 options
* Free with ads (not too long)
* Paid without ads (reasonable prices)
And have all TV shows & movies available – past & present. Just imagine the millions they could make if they were just willing to do this, instead of whining about piracy like like brats!
The interesting question is “Why hasn’t Google done it already?”. They have the distribution network, they have the advertising network, and they have the technology. So what’s stopping them?
The bleddie per country distribution rights the major studios awarded to companies long time ago is not conducive to a global content delivery system.
For the major studios to bring content directly they have to break that distribution agreements.
This and the non-uniform film rating/classification system countries have is the biggest hurdles to seamless global content delivery system.
The political influence of individual countries PayTV industries is also hampering reform.
They don’t want you get your content from other places.
Edited 2012-02-24 23:34 UTC
Then the answer is not to deal with the “big media companies”. I’d reckon Google are big enough to produce their own content.
The efforts from Google are called YouTube and GoogleTV.
Google understands they have no knowledge about content production, but they can be the infrastructure and payment system.
YouTube has many programs where content producers can make money. From revenue sharing of ads displayed on the videos (Youtube partner-program), encouragement programs for people starting out and projects with money up front to create content.
There is a whole business around Youtube, just as an example there are studios setup by people who are already making money on YouTube. This isn’t just a bedroom or basement, these are regurlar studios with 50+ people on payroll (not as large as some of the film stuios ofcourse).
A lot of large studios producing content for TV or film also want to get on Youtube, most of those projects fail miserably because they don’t understand the medium.
GoogleTV so far was their attempt at getting the big industry on board and merging existing TV and Youtube, I guess that hasn’t worked so well yet.
I second that motion.
Broadcast TV in Brazil came to a point of being completely unbearable for those that still have some gray matter left in their skulls.
With the exception of classic (should I say timeless?) cartoons re-runs, the occasional sitcom-like local show and the nightly news – those which are still not completely taken over by the extremely conservative right wing media oligopolies – Brazilian TV is almost completely made of brain dead stupid reality shows, soap operas and stuff like that.
It gets a little better with cable but even then, expensive channel packages such as HBO and Telecine both leave one quickly upset with the amount of commercials (in between shows mostly for now but I still see commercial breaks every now and then) and those stupid on-screen overlay adverts for other shows that you may or may not be interested and that will certainly piss you off if you are PVRing the whole thing.
iTunes is a non-starter here for similar reasons to those stated on the article and Netflix has yet to be as ubiquitous as it is on the US and abroad and even then it will be an uphill battle to conquer the Brazilian audience when the availability of titles to stream leaves so much to be desired.
The solution was to resort to torrents which, as Thom correctly asserts, offer a much better viewing experience. You get to watch what you want, when you want and, if you want it so, with superior quality to anything on broadcast or cable TV.
The availability of RSS feeds for torrents of TV shows and applications like CouchPotato – for movies – and SickBeard – for TV shows – to automate the whole thing make it a breeze and with plug-ins like XBMC Subtitles, one does not need to even leave the media center to look out for subtitles!
I understand that some people really do not like to watch anything that is not dubbed on their native language and for those the availability of content on most public torrent trackers is not THAT good but still…
The point is that the “pirates” do a better job with the source material than the “rightful owners”. What these media moguls fail to realize is that there is an untapped market potential here and that they are wasting their time trying to come up with useless DRM systems – that WILL be broken eventually! – instead of trying something new, akin to Steam with reasonable prices like Thom described.
Well, it’s their loss, really. Despite still subscribing to cable mostly for the kids-friendly channels, I have been using torrents for my own entertainment for a long time now and I am not looking back…
Edited 2012-02-24 23:29 UTC
Someone should come up with a clean-looking paid torrent site, void of any annoying ad, sponsored by the governments of several countries, whose subscription can be paid without a credit card, and with better dubbing availability. This would lead to the end of silly centralized media distribution sites.
But for that, governments would have to acknowledge that peer to peer is not necessarily about copyright infringement. Probably won’t work.
Doesn’t Vuze already do this?
Though they will have some issue with the idiots that think they shouldn’t have to upload anything just because they’re paying. The are the same idiots that will bitch about slow download speeds and likely the same assholes that set their upload to only 1Kbps on free torrents anyways.
Not only in Brazil. Argentinian TV also is for dead brain people.
I had i nice old 32 inches TV and i don’t have antenna, cable o satellite tv. Just my old VCR, DVD, and a PC as media player.
I rarely see a movie, i just watch sitcoms and documentaries that i downloaded. And i buy the DVD if they are released in my country.
I used to buy DVDs from other regions but they are really expensive and (if you read the small lines at the bottom of the box) illegal.
About six. I mean, actually sat down and watched a show when it was scheduled. O.K, my partner sometimes has the TV on and is watching something, but that’s background noise. All the TV I watch is either a) online (BBC iPlayer, ITV/Channel4 On Demand) or b) Downloaded.
I mean, why wouldn’t you?
P.S: Thom, you don’t seem to have Breaking Bad. You should look into that.
Definitely!
No “The IT Crowd” in that screenshot? Bollocks!
Anyways, your post is nothing new. I see torrent sites as content providers like netflix and similar. And if people are choosing torrents even with it being a crime in some barbaric countries opver netflix and co – other content providers should rethink their CRAPPY business ideas, lol.
I’m a fan of Animes. Crappy english audio or crappy english subtitles over GOOD fan subs? No, thank you, torrents it is.
I feel no guilt while pirating, companies fail to deliver, so they fail to get my money, FU.
Edited 2012-02-24 23:50 UTC
When their IS export. How many lesser-known series never got an official US/European version ?
(Or a totally butchered one because the censoring authority didn’t like what they saw)
I just do not watch Dutch television anymore.
I bought a satellite dish so I could watch BBC3 and BBC4
(bbc one and bbc two were on cable) but the quality was so much better than the cable company provided at that time (before digital) that I canceled my cable subscription. Never missed it.
http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl has dutch shows in low resolution for the occasional gem.
I used to watch House on SBS6 (dutch commercial) but when the 8 minute commercial breaks arrived in season three I gave up and just download it.
It also took them months, maybe even a year for new seasons of House to show up on Dutch TV. I think they had reruns of a season first on some other channel instead of new content.
About 10 years ago, I stopped subscribing to cable. And since then online services have gotten a lot better (Hulu, Netflix). Before I joined those services, I just bought used DVDs of movies and shows I wanted to see. Buying all that ‘used’ media was still cheaper than me subscribing to cable and I still had the opportunity to customize my programming so-to-speak. TV therefore is now an archaic technology…or rather…medium to me. But I know I have to remember I have been fortunate enough to afford the bandwidth to customize my own programming.
I wonder when the majority of TV audiences will finally shift to watching the most of their shows online, and when that shift happens I wonder if TV Media will finally accept online viewing as the primary medium or will they try weird antics to keep people glued to a TV set. And I am sure Ubuntu TV and Apple TV are going to try to change the game in that area as well.
One thing I will say about TV, in my experience, is that I have found traditional TV to be more social than online viewing. Huddling around the TV with friends at a specific time to watch shows, calling friends up after a show with the whole “WTH, did you see that?!?” moments, etc. just dont happen the same way online imo. And then sometimes I miss random re-runs that appear on TV (hello random Star Trek TNG episode).
You’ve got to be kidding. Nobody who has a life wants to watch the compressed crap on services like Hulu and Netflix for any real amount of time.
Just watching it at friends’ house gives me a headache.
No way would I subscribe to any of these “services”
Yeah, streaming quality absolutely SUCKS. Only a small portion of Netflix’s movies are even available for streaming anyway.
I subscribe to Netflix, but get real DVDs in the mail.
I’m actually a bit surprised you had such bad experiences with it. I’m subscribed to both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video; I’ve never had a problem wit the quality of either. I use Netflix quite a bit, since I don’t use cable or broadcast TV, and it’s library is worth the 7.99 for me (I’m a sucker for Bones and Psych, and a few other TV shows on there with some movies sprinkled in). When I have people over, no one can tell the difference between Netflix and an upscaled DVD on the PS3 (most HD I usually just buy on Bluray).
Staying away from piracy (it is illegal where I live, and even if a business isn’t “competent” to some people’s standards, I won’t break the law to obtain something without payment if it is available legally) is largely what drove me to services like Netflix and Amazon MP3; easy access to digital goods.
Before that, I did what the person above you stated; I mostly bought used DVD’s (and often still do, I’m a movie lover).
I feel those in situations like Thom’s have very valid points: when there is no real business presence to offer the services and legal avenue for obtaining these items, you can’t be surprised when people take to torrents. But I do sometimes think people here in the US try to use similar arguments that don’t hold up as well here, as an excuse for piracy.
Streaming quality depends on available bandwidth, if you don’t have enough bandwidth available you will get a low quality version.
This is one of the reasons why i don’t like streaming services, i have a bandwidth cap during the day (unlimited late at night), and during peak times my available bandwidth goes down quite considerably due to network congestion.
I would much rather schedule a download at night, and then watch it the following day when i finish work (ie peak time when i wouldnt have enough bandwidth to stream)…
You’re an video-audiophile. Most people aren’t. I grew up watching tv on a 19 inch screen with all mannor of analog interference. Use the blender, no tv sound. Use the vacuum, no tv picture.
Digital tv in any format I’ve very seen blows the ever loving snot out of that. I care about good plots and good acting. If there are good visuals, well neato, but it doesn’t make a crappy movie good.
In all reality, most people are more like me than you.
Interesting that you say that. In my friends group, most people use Netflix/Hulu with some torrents; almost no one I know has cable (just a couple sports fans). As people don’t get around to watching shows at the same time each week (or even necessarily the same week) discussing shows at a specific time doesn’t work quite as well. On the other hand, I find streaming/torrents way more convenient for social viewing because we can start and pause whenever we want and we can watch multiple episodes in a row.
We work around the random TNG episode problem by using random.org to select which TNG episode to watch next off Netflix (with people vetoing ones they have seen recently).
I’ve been waiting for something like you’re talking about for years. I’ve been waiting for Hollywood to come into the 21st century, forget television, and start making and releasing shows designed to go straight to my computer for viewing. It is the future. They should have embraced it 5 years ago.
that there’s a hell of a lot of porn in that “Misc” folder.
🙂
Nah, thats gotta be the decoy, the real porn folder has to be The Big Bang Theory and/or That 70’s Show since nobody with 2 braincells to rub together watches that crap…
“Anybody who can pull that off will be a millionaire within months. Steam has shown the way. All the industry needs to do is follow.”
The kind of person to pull that off has better things to do than mess with content providers. It’s too much effort for too little gain….
To them, “a magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APE8M9MeOWA
(why isn’t url autoparse working?)
Thom, I doubt that you have gigabit internet.
Please, this is a tech blog, I expect you to know the difference between mbps and MBps…
Who knew there was millibit Ethernet?
I have the ultimate solution for all of your television woes:
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com
I’m just sayin’. I’ve been TV-free for about 13 years, and don’t miss it. Pretty much all of my relatives have TVs (usually more than one) on all the time, and I feel dumber every time I go visit them for a few days. Of course, people say that there is some good stuff on TV… just like you could find a crust of bread in a pail of garbage, but I’d never go through it.
It’s also funny when people ask me what I watch on TV, and I tell them I don’t have one. Usually, I get a look like I just told them I sell hand-made testicle warmers on the corner.
Edited 2012-02-25 02:23 UTC
No, that ‘look’ you’re getting is them preparing for the “I don’t even OWN a television” speech that they hear from every other clown who thinks that not watching TV makes him an intellectual.
a.k.a. the greatest directory of all time
When will everyone just submit to watching tv online? Is that a joke or meant to be taken seriously? I hope the former.
Some people feel dumber after having watched tv? I doubt that but regardless maybe those people should pick more intellectually stimulating programming.
I don’t understand that sort of obsession about downloading TV series.
I can’t imagine filling up my hard disks with that crap (I have a few movies)
I don’t understand why it is important to have the latest US shows without delay. Really ? I watch on french TV 2 or 3 years old programs (translated), what does it really changes?
I’m actually a bit sad that a big part of the whole Internet infrastructure and a part of the legal pressure by majors against dowloading is due to people downloading TV series that will eventually be aired “for free”.
I don’t know about laws in Netherlands or US. What Thom is doing may or maybe not is legal.
The issue is, is it ethical ?
Do you think any smallest part of the money that you give for your ultrafast Internet connection goes in any people actually involved in the creation of those programs?
The fact that you don’t like current legal options don’t give you the right to download these torrents.
You’re just deluding yourself.
So you don’t think that access to commercial television shows and movies is a natural god-given Human Right?
LOL!
Television is not financed that way. If it were, you wouldn’t see so many great TV shows being cancelled or so much junk being produced. The money path between you and the producers is incredibly convoluted.
The thing is, that cable companies are a huge middleman that gets to decide what you get to watch and what box and which software you use to watch it with. They do that through putting together a business model centered around bundling different channels together from different providers. These providers then pay cable companies to bundle them in for greater exposure.
Then you buy the whole package of channels, of which, you may be able to use around 0.5 to 1% of. I’m not exaggerating. You’re paying for content that you never get to watch.
You have a whole ecosystem of junk that you MUST pay for, in order to watch a single TV show, basically a signed contract, where you pay them to dump toxic waste outside your house, so you can get an icecream cone.
Then you have the whole debacle of having to replace your boxes every 2-3 years, which produces hazardous electronic waste, but it certainly does keep a lot of TV service people busy.
Who’s unethical again?
I think the US economy would fare a lot better by cutting out the cable company middleman and let the film and television producers distribute their products directly via the internet and do it world wide simultaneously.
So, what ?
The situation is not the same in all countries, some countries use cable TV, others use satellites, or free to air UHF band, or through internet adapters.
In my country, for example, “cable TV” is almost nonexistant, people mostly use free to air or channels available through their internet connexion.
You know what ? What you consider as “great TV shows” is considered as junk by many people. But they are still paying for sponsoring the 1% you care, as you are sponsoring the 1% they want. For example, I need to accept that a lot of my money is spent for broadcasting sports, which I never, ever watch.
And, of course, few people speak fluently english, so simultaneous worldwide distribution is pointless.
TV is never free. Free to air channels are payed by commercials, marketing being a sort of hidden tax on every product sold, or, for government owned channels, by a public subvention, which is another tax.
The convoluted financing doesn’t matter. It’s just about paying for what you get.
The main part of my previous post relates my astonisment about people acting as drug addits for TV series, being able to do dirty things to get their shot, as fast as possible.
I’m a bit sad about them, actually.
Obviously Hollywood, Apple, Amazon and cable companies are evil. Nobody is arguing about that. But, just like Microsoft prefers Chinese to pirate Windows rather than trying anything else, the RIAA prefers torrents of world-wide-crap instead of local productions or people simply not caring.
Pirating conforts them in the illusion that with enough legal pressure, all these dowloads could be transformed into paying customers, whatever the price is.
And, as they are dealing with addicts, they may be right.
(Hope I don’t seem condescending !)
Simultaneous worldwide distribution is most definitely not pointless… People should have the choice between seeing the original language version now, or a translated version when its ready.
Even the UK, Australia, New Zealand and other english speaking countries often have to wait a long time to see american shows where no translation is required at all.
As for wanting the “fix” as quickly as possible, i would very much prefer not to wait to see a show… Why? Because i read various international websites (such as this one) and speak to friends in other countries, they will have seen the shows as soon as they became available and i would be exposed to spoilers which would diminish my enjoyment of the show when i subsequently came to see it.
When it comes to paying for what i get, i would be happy to pay if a paid service was available with the same level and quality of service as a torrent site.
Depends on the show and depends on the broadcaster. Sky 1 (cable and satellite TV channel owned by Murdoc’s NewsInternational)is notorious for grabbing popular shows and broadcasting them up to the metal. So, with Lost (as an example), we got Season 1 and 2 on Channel 4 and it was 6-8 months late (season 1 just about finished broadcast in the UK as Season 2 was getting under way in the US.) Season 2 was broadcast just about when season 2 had finished in the US. Sky picked up Season 3 and broadcasted it on the Tuesday after the US broadcast… so, what… 3 or 4 days later? The final episode was broadcast at the EXACT same time as the US (as in, middle of the night over here…) Same with Battlestar Galactica… we got it a few days after the US. Same with Stargate Universe. It happens with other shows too. It’s not the norm, but it just proves that anything is possible with enough money thrown at it, and that is the real issue with English speaking nations and the broadcast of US TV shows. No money, no show. You get what you pay for.
Cable TV are not the only sinners here: In my country, Denmark, everyone who are able to receive a TV signal or have an internet connection must pay a fee of 316 Euros per year to the national TV provider. This is completely regardless of whether you watch TV at all. This fee was instated in 1921, when radio broadcasting became widespread. This fee is exactly the same for young students with little money, but need their internet connection for school and for millionaires with 10 TV sets in their house.
Yet the quality of the programming is quite low and they are subject to the same issues as cable TV providers of not showing things I want to watch or buying only the first season of a good TV show. There is nothing interesting there for me and what they air, is stuff that I’ve already seen from other sources months or years ago.
I gave up TV in 2007 and since then my content consumption has become far more efficient. I can watch, listen or read more content in shorter time than I could before (no waiting or ads) and I can legally pay less for it, if it isn’t free, and I don’t have any decoder boxes standing on the shelf that collect dust and consume power.
That’s irrelevant to me as a consumer. I don’t care what you like and you shouldn’t care about what I like. I shouldn’t pay for your content and you shouldn’t pay for mine. We should both be directly supporting the producers we each like. Anything else is not fair to both consumers and producers.
You do realize that you would pay a lot less, if you only paid for the content you watched? And producers of the content would receive that same amount of money directly instead of through sponsorship?
You are voluntarily paying a lot of money for junk. Thereby, you as a consumer have no direct control over supporting the content you are watching. So you pay to watch the first two seasons of what you think is a great TV show. You will then not get a third one, because the sponsorship was pulled and is moved to a show that you don’t care about. The story is never completed and it’s exactly like buying half a movie. That makes no sense.
But there are cases where you are able to support the producer directly. The comedian Louis CK provided his latest show in December 2011 for 5$ as a plain MP4 file to be played anywhere. The result? He made more money than he ever did with his older DVD releases, that were 3 times more expensive to buy. He personally made a million dollars in 12 days, more than enough to do more shows.
Bull.
1. Practically all movies are pirated long before they leave the United States for show in foreign theatres. It is in fact such a big “problem” that they put people in jail now for recording off movie screens.
2. If you look at Japanese anime fabsub releases, well, there is an ecosystem of people working in an extremely disciplined and organized fashion to give everyone the latest anime. It’s a system that has been around for almost two decades and started on VHS.
This exists because anime is either released years after it aired in Japan or is simply never released legally outside Japan at all. But there are still tons of people watching it outside Japan, so it would be safe to assume that Japanese anime producers would make more money, if they simply allowed simultaneous world wide releases and compete directly with the fansubbers. And oh, some of them actually do:
http://www.japanator.com/crunchyroll-is-apparently-doing-quite-well…
3. Ronald D. Moore, creator of the new Battlestar Galactica TV show asked Americans not to download the first season of the show, as it was airing in the UK months before it did in the US. This meant, that if people in the US were not watching it through the proper channels, it would get a lower rating and risk cancellation.
That’s how much not having a global simultaneous release affects distribution.
It’s quite simple: Many people want to watch the newest content right now, not wait 6-12 months for it, and as more people become aware of the possibilities through pirating, more people will do it.
There is no practical or economic reason not to do this. All the reasons are currently about pure legality, so lawyers in each country get to shuffle papers around and get paid for that.
The same problem exists in the music business. You will not find one musician, who is glad that his music cannot legally be played in a certain country.
It’s not relevant to the technical aspects of distributing modern TV shows, which are not efficient, too expensive for consumers and do not give the original creators full value for their work and are usually not allowed to tell a full story.
I could not care less about your personal TV viewing patterns, as casual or enthusiastic as they may be, and you should not need to care about mine.
The only dirt that exists here is a lack of a “pay” button that links directly to the producers, when downloading a torrent.
It’s as ethical as them selling the same product in other countries for 3-4 times the price.
In a lot of countries there are no legal options at all except for occasionally buying DVDs. We need digital downloads not DVDs. My iPad can’t play DVD’s on the plane. Soon enough, my laptop won’t be able to play DVD’s anymore without a crappy external drive. DVD’s kill battery.
I don’t know about the Netherlands, but in Belgium, I can tell you, that on our bill for tv+internet, there is a separate section which is a tax that was invented because people copy/download stuff illegally. It is supposed to go to the people that create content. I doubt that money ever arrives in the hands of the people that do create the content. Most likely it happens to get stuck in those organisations (SABAM). (see http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/04101413022/belgian-colle…)
Secondly, it does not make sense. Either it is illegal to copy/download movies and music, or either you collect a tax for those things, but then you can not forbid people to download, since we already pay for it.
I always marvel at how people continue to miss this obvious fact. Television is “broken” because that is the way the MAFIAA want it to be. They think they have figured out a way to keep getting multiple payments for the same old shows over and over again…and to a certain sense they had until people decided they refused to go along with the scheme and the internet provided the disruptive technology to make distribution cheap.
Think about it–the TV people used to make a series, license it abroad, wait until they had enough episodes for syndication locally and resell those as reruns, then just as the shows began to fall off the radar of various affiliates the cable networks came in and propped those now decades old shows with networks like Nick at Nite and MeTV, etc. Then when that got old the VCR showed up and the studios were able to resell them again in VHS collections to fans. By the time the VHS tapes wore themselves out the Laser Disc and DVD formats arrived on the scene and people rebought those series yet again. Thanks to the magic of forever minus a day copyright extensions, why wouldn’t the studios think they could simply go on reselling the same product over and over again?
Except it really isn’t the same product, is it? WKRP in Cincinnati, The State, Daria, Quantum Leap, etc all had parts of the show replaced or otherwise edited, resulting in an inferior product. The Wonder Years can’t even get licensed due to the wackiness of copyright restrictions biting them in the rear due to the way they interleaved music into the fabric of the show. Still Big Media rested comfortably on their laurels as the gatekeepers–if you wanted the media you had to go through them…
Except that’s not the case anymore, is it? We don’t have to rely on them so much any more. Techdirt reported earlier this week about how a group of Daria fans were rebuilding the first two seasons by combining the high quality video with the original audio from the syndicated versions. I expect to see this sort of thing catch on and take over as people take back their culture and ignore the broken copyright perversion for what it is.
Meanwhile IMHO the biggest change is yet to come, as the underground scene continues to push the envelope and find the happy media between high quality video and compression, resulting in a “good enough” format equivalent to MP3.
Considering some of the releases put out by the BoB re-encoding group I’d say that we’re not far off from that point…
–bornagainpenguin
PS: To those who miss the randomness of seeing what is on, consider giving the PseudoTV plugin for XBMC a look. While I personally liked the way TV Time 2.0 for XBMC (based on and extending the PseudoTV plugin) handled things, it seems to have been abandoned these days. It provides an EPG created from the shows in your library and allows you to channel surf your collection. A great way to recapture that random episode of Star Trek: TNG again.
bornagainenguin, you seem completely ignorant of a few things — what ownership is. what function copyrights serve. the point of being in business (in this case, the entertainment business)… I won’t bother going on but the list certainly doesn’t end there.
You seem to be one of those people that thinks you’re entitled in some way — as if you’re owed, or have some kind of right that doesn’t actually exist. Whatever the case, you should consider other perspectives on this subject so you can get a real understanding of how it works. “The system” works more than not and that’s coming from someone who is speaking from first-hand experience.
I totally agree, TV is definitely broken in the Netherlands. The only time when I turn it on is to see Top Gear on BBC (which is without commercials). However I find myself trying to hit the pause button sometimes when watching that because I got so used to being able to pick my own break times.
I have not seen any television ads for a very long time and I would never want to get back to that, it feels rather medieval to think about those rude interruptions.
In this time of globalisation there are no more excuses for not offering a worldwide service for digital content. The private trackers manage to spread every new episode very efficiently (yes, I would consider this is more efficient than usenet).
For instance if I would miss a part of a Top Gear episode, I am able to start my download 10 minutes after the broadcast is finished, and after 5 minutes downloading I will have the whole episode. It is really strange some guys living in their parents basement can build such a service for free while no company has managed.
Anyway, I will move to China in several days which means will be even more dependent on the internet to supply me with television shows.
I can see the same thing in Poland. TV is crap, and people are slowly moving to the internet. Piracy ratio is quite big because of lack of any alternatives. I can buy some movies via iTunes, but they are to expensive.
I’ve got a basic cable service, but I only use it for watching stuff like National Geographic, Planete+ and some sport. I’ve tried to watch some tv series or movies, but is was a shit. Commercials, commercials, and more commercials. Show can be canceled in the mod of the season. Thank you for that, I’ll rather download it.
But I’m not a thief. We’ve got a nice service – iplex.pl with “not so commercial” movies. About 60% of their library is free with some ads you have to watch. Another 40% is for 3$ per month, and they’re profitable! I have no time for watching all that stuff, but I can still pay them, because 3$ it’s a bargain for good European or Asian cinema. I can use it as an app for smartTV, on my Mac, though still waiting for the app for iOS and Android.
Why I can’t have access to a similar service with american movies and tv shows? I can pay for it about 20$ a month. They don’t want my money, so I “steal” it.
I work at a digital satellite platform, and my company offers 1 year contract, with more than 90 channels, and HBO for free for 6 month for only 17$ and some people still don’t want it! They have no time for TV. PVR is only a hack. They want to watch the show when they can watch it.
Yesterday I did a little experiment with my friends Xbox in Germany. I am visiting from the US and have a US account. So, I logged on with my login on his Xbox. To my surprise I could access and use the US Zune store. Even my Zune subscription for unlimited music streaming worked. I also managed to install the video and music apps we are having in the US. But only ‘Today’ and ‘SyFy’ allowed me to access content. They are both useless btw. Last.fm was a real bummer. When I started it it was completely translated into German. It crapped out when I selected any of the playlists complaining about being in the wrong region. Too bad, my friend got really excited for a moment. You could of course work around it by routing through a tunnel to a server in the US.
This is not related directly to this discussion here. But I couldn’t resist to share my experience 🙂
TV is a mess, indeed. I stopped watching it years ago, at the same time I stopped owning a TV box.
I won’t sign up for cable either. It’s all mostly shit.
In the last year I’ve become more and more happy with the BBC iPlayer, many of their programmes are excellent, especially the Nature/Science ones, I’m so impressed with it that I want to start paying their BBC tax thing.
For anything else there’s p2p and/or youtube.com.
I watch what I want, when I want, how I want.
I think most would agree artists should be compensated for what they do. They do add to our society and so we should compensate them so they can continue to do so. ‘How much’, is a debate I really don’t want to have.
Distributors however, no longer provide a valuable service. These are the people who need to find a new job. Sorry! Life sucks sometimes. You’ll be fine though.
So, how do we ensure artists are compensated when I can download a full HD show in 45 minutes (or less) with three or max four mouse clicks? Simple. Let me click 4 times to get the show while also providing reasonable compensation. Make sure the content is available (it never is). Make sure the compensation is reasonable (it currently isn’t). And don’t treat me like a thief (DRM). I guarantee most of us will switch to that service. In fact, you could even leverage bit torrent for that service. Your investment in hosting a tracker is going to be very minimal.
I’m dreaming I know. But that’s ok. Status quo is fine for me. It’s cheaper for me if they drag their feet.
Edited 2012-02-25 15:09 UTC
I wish there was a way to compensate artists directly, without having to give our money to those corporate bastards that exploit people for money.
I don’t buy CD/DVDs anymore for that reason, I refuse to support those corporate bastards, we need to stop supporting middlemen companies because they use our money to attack our freedom, see RIAA, DRM, SOPA, etc.
We need to support artists and only the artists, the same way we need to support FOSS developers, and the same way we need to fight for our rights. e.g. demanding companies to refund Windows with computers when we don’t need them, etc.
f–k the greedy corporate idiots. f–k RIAA, DRM, SOPA/ACTA and all the other shit that tries to enslave us.
BTW, I’m a proud user of Linux and BitTorrent, I download all my movies from http://thepiratebay.org/
Edited 2012-02-25 15:19 UTC
The paying customer gets a voice in future productions.
Stories. Talent. Budgets. That is why Brad Bird moves to Pixar and Chris Sanders to Dreamworks.
Why your kids get Nemo and Scrat and Toothless.
Why the HBO gets the Game of Thrones.
The paying customer gets a voice in digital restoration and release in new media. The Blu-Ray HD video. The Amazon Instant stream.
500 Disney titles at last count.
The P2P geek gets only what others have proven they are wiling to pay for.
If you have a decent upscaler in your TV (like I do), you can barely see the difference between 1080 and DVD.
Predator and Apocalypse Now (the two true tests of image quality on a television, due to the Quality of filming and the sheer number of greens) both DVDs look damn brilliant on my Hannespree 32inch 1080 television.
However I will admit that this only upscales well on newer DVDs that are newer and true widescreen, I have no tried it with the Dollars Triology which is filmed in ratio which is more narrow than widescreen (I forget its name now).
Nonetheless because this is now academic, I own Predator on Blu-ray.
EDIT: I also use a PopCorn Hour A-200 Box, this has a built in Torrent Client and has pretty much every codec, and uses Samba to connect to Windows, I honestly couldn’t get along with media PC … too much work.
Edited 2012-02-25 16:40 UTC
You should know there’s a massive difference between upscaling something and comparing it against the source you upscaled from, and comparing DVD with native 1080p…
Upscaling (and for that matter, transcoding anything to higher bitrates) will _never_ improve quality. The absolute best you can hope for is the same as your source.
Sorry, but that is simply not true in all cases. Upscaling (as the OP was using the term) has nothing at all to do with bitrate or improving the quality of the source material – it is about preparing it as best as possible for the screen it will be presented on.
Most older HD TVs simply enlarge the lower resolution image of a DVD to fit the screen size by performing simple block scaling. This works but generally looks horrible, and the larger the screen the worse it looks.
TVs or DVD players that perform “upscaling” are using much more sophisticated interpolation algorithms to perform the scaling, as well as usually performing motion compensation to correct issues that arise during scene transitions, etc.
Also, if you are preparing DVD material for display on a 1080p screen, transcoding it to 1080p resolution can improve the picture quality relative to the original DVD – it depends on the TV it will be displayed on. It isn’t a matter of bitrate, it is simply compensating for poor scaling circuitry in the TV. Granted, most current HDTVs have very good scaling performance – but if you have an older one the difference can be quite dramatic.
Just saying, it is not always pointless.
Any time you have movement, bitrate becomes a factor (as done a number of other things). The OP suggested there’s no difference between his source material, and his upscaled version. The only problem is that it’s not possible. Quality can be presented in two ways — as interpreted by the viewer, and mathematically. Maybe the OP really can’t see any difference due to poor eyesight. But, mathematically the statement is false.
This is correct.
Some do, most don’t. Regardless of the scaling method used, there are none which don’t degrade or malform the image in some way. The absolute best scalers available are not immune to this.
The above is both a common misconception, and complete rubbish. There is no magic algorithm by which otherwise absent quality appears out of thin air. Some people fool themselves into believing what you’ve suggested, but as I’ve stated earlier the math always proves false.
We’re not talking about a single still frame so yes, bitrate is most certainly one of many determining factors in quality here. It’s not as if any of this is a secret. No two people see the exact same image. No two people see exactly the same colors. As you can guess the differences can greatly vary. When someone says there’s no visible difference, they should acknowledge it’s from their perspective only.
If you play a 720×480 DVD back on a 1080p LCD/Plasma HDTV, it WILL be resized/upscaled to 1920×1080 whether you like it or not. Again, it is not about improving quality, it is about avoiding image degradation in the TV’s scaling circuitry.
Your TV can do the scaling, or maybe you have an upconverting DVD player, in which case it will do the scaling – but something will be scaling the video – LCDs and Plasmas are fixed resolution devices.
If you TV has shitty scaling circuitry the quality of the image on your TV will be degraded badly ( blocking artifacts, tearing during scene changes, ringing, etc.). Transcoding the video prior to sending it to your TV using a a high quality interpolation routine (Lanczos4 or something similar) will improve the quality of the image on your TV, often dramatically. Yes, it does degrade the image relative to the source in a mathematical sense (badly at that), but on YOUR TV with shitty scaling circuitry it will look better.
In other words it is stupid to compare the quality of an 1080p transcode of a DVD to the original source material in a purely mathematical sense, because you never in fact get to see the original on an HDTV – it is always resized.
What you are comparing is the quality of a realtime scaling routine in the TV/DVD players circuitry to the scaling routine used during transcoding (which can be much more complex/accurate because it doesn’t have to work in realtime). If you TV has bad scaling performance the transcode will almost certainly look better on your TV.
This is exactly what I said before, it is absolutely accurate, and I have no idea how you can claim otherwise.
It seems that you and my high-end Panasonic plasma tv are in disagreement about this. For that matter, no hdtv I have ever owned forces scaling. In all of them, scaling was optional. Do you even own an hdtv?
They are fixed-pixel displays. However, you are wrong by assuming that this means all non 1920×1080 images are scaled up to 1920×1080. Apparently you don’t understand that no scaling in required to display x 544×480 image on a 1080p display. There are two surfaces that are combined to create the final image — the video surface, and non-video surface. The non-video surface is always the native resolution while the video surface can be anything up to the native resolution. Scaling the video surface is optional in every 1080p tv I’ve seen or owned.
You’re confused as to what this conversation is about and what the OP said. We are NOT talking about comparing real-time upscaled material vs. a pre-processed version. Aside of that, you still have a few things wrong. Image degredation/malformation is UNAVOIDABLE regardless of your output device. As I’ve already said, there is no such thing as a magical algorithm. And, I don’t own crap tv’s.
You are wrong as already explained above. (see reference to surfaces)
No kidding most real-time internal tv scalers can be outperformed by more advanced software counterparts. But we aren’t even talking about that so, ….
No, they generally don’t force scaling, but almost all default to it. Most people don’t like watching a DVD using only 25% of their screen… In fact almost no one wants to watch a DVD this way, it reduces your usable screen size to the point that you have to reduce your viewing distance to compensate. I thought that was obvious and didn’t need to be said…
Hey, if you like watching movies that way good for you – but it is painfully obvious I was not talking about that and you bringing it up is a red herring…
First you claim the upscaling “WILL” happen “whether you like it or not”. Now you concede that it’s optional. Now you’re claiming to know what most people prefer — another mistake on your part. I know several people who PREFER watching content in it’s native format for a couple simple reasons — 1) they don’t want to sacrifice quality, and 2) they don’t want a skewed aspect ratio, or correct aspect ratio at the expense of losing a lot of the frame. This is exactly why scaling is OPTIONAL. And btw, of all the hdtv’s I’ve owned, none came with scaling as the default behavior.
The only red herrings here is all the nonsense you keep making up. What’s becoming painfully obvious is that you don’t care about being accurate or the truth, you just seem to want attention.
No I didn’t, I said I couldn’t see the difference, this is a massive difference from there actually being a difference.
Just ignore him. I know exactly what you meant. He’s obviously just a troll.
Since when does proving people wrong with facts make someone a troll? You’re a silly kid.
I appreciate it doesn’t improve the actual quality. However it improved the perceivable quality.
i.e. if the DVD was merely stretched to fit, it would look terrible, However the upscaler makes it look almost as good as Hi-Def. I can barely see the difference between DVD of Predator and Predator Blu-ray … I was quite surprised.
While it isn’t better quality in a mathematical sense this fact is simply academic.
My existing DVD media looks more than good enough on my Hi-Definition TV … so I get the best of both worlds.
1) I don’t have to replace my existing DVDs (since they look more than good enough).
2) I can enjoy Hi-def content.
Edited 2012-02-27 11:55 UTC
You do realize that Predator isn’t exactly a great movie to use for reference or comparison right? The absolute best version of Predator available is the Hunter digital remaster and even that doesn’t provide any huge leaps in quality.
There are a number of far better sources to use (the Lost tv series for example). This is a heavily discussed topic, it would be interesting to see how great you think your upscaler does when you’re comparing material with significant difference in quality.
See my comments about perceived quality, and note “There is no magic algorithm by which otherwise absent quality appears out of thin air.”.
If you see no difference between an upscaled DVD and the bluray counterpart, you need to pick better quality material for comparison. As mentioned earlier, Predator is known to have less than stellar quality on bluray.
Sorry I don’t really care what other videophiles think. I chose Predator because the filming and colours on a standard definition television (Sony WEGA CRT that I had) looks fantastic. That is what I am comparing it to..
Anyway Predator has a huge amount of greens, the human eye can see more different greens than any other colour. Also the film looks pretty good almost 30 years later.
I also mentioned Apocalypse now, which on blu-ray is fantastically clear.
Anyway I said the quality is “good enough”. My DVDs don’t look stretched and blocky and I don’t have to buy Blu-rays or download a newer Hi-Def copy. That is the whole point of upscaling anyway.
TBH you can argue the toss all day about what looks best it is purely subjective topic.
I think Lost looks like any of TV series on a beach, newer films with all their CGI effects look weird on hi-def television because everything is a little too crisp. I rather watch something like Generation Kill in hi-def than crap like Lost even if the “quality” isn’t there.
You’re welcome to think Predator looks fantastic. But the general consensus disagrees. It’s common knownledge the quality of Predator both on DVD and bluray is less than stellar.
Very very little of Lost takes place on a beach, and it has very little CGI. So basically you’re just talking out of your ass.
You don’t need to feel so defensive — nobody really cares about your personal opinions on this stuff, it’s just the blatantly wrong info that needs to be corrected.
This is what I hate about the internet, “You are wrong and I am right” over something that is down to perception. I get defensive when someone blatantly (or deliberately) misses the point of the entire post and goes into talking about whether the video is mathematically correct … 😐 … The point was originally was
decent upscaler + existing DVD collection != you have to get everything again in hidef.
Predator on standard definition good CRT TV (like the one I mentioned) look fantastic and enjoy the movie (and I have seen it in the cinema), so if it looks good upscaled … well bonus!
Whether it is a videophile’s wet dream I do not care.
As for Lost, it started out on a beach. In many scenes they were on a beach (including some guy making a massive SOS outta stones and then is told to stop by the black lady that did have cancer) … so you know you have to forgive me for thinking quite a lot of it took place on a beach, because quite a lot of it … did.
😐
Edited 2012-02-28 22:16 UTC
ZZZzzzzz…
It’s commonly accepted that specifically Predator (among other movies) is NOT good reference material. And that isn’t exactly a secret.
The vast majority of the show wasn’t beach scenes therefore you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about. As I said, you’re just talking out of your ass in an effort to go against what I’ve stated… A non-tool would do their homework, as all non-tools do, and go ‘hey you’re right, I should’ve looked into it first’. But of course people are stupid and think what they assume is what the truth is.
Sorry I didn’t watch enough of LOST to actually give a shit … I knew I was getting strung along after the first series.
You can call me a tool all you like, but you decided to ignore the entire point and act like a prick … It is boring. So I decided to argue the toss.
Have fun acting like an arsehole, I heard it doesn’t work so well in real life.
Edited 2012-02-29 08:47 UTC
Okay – I read through this thread…. lucas_maximus, your argument is weak. ilovebeer, whilst your argument is sound, you are being a dick about it.
I was hoping to get this going for another 10 comments. It is well past whether I give a monkeys or not … don’t ruin it.
Something that happened just now.
I went on Amazon’s MP3 store and selected a track to purchase.
On checkout it says my country is not supported.
Edited 2012-02-25 18:07 UTC
OT: The Universe
Thom, if you’re fan of “The Universe,” then I’d highly recommend a youTube series called “Cosmic Journeys” (speaking as a hopeless junkie for space documentaries). It covers much of the same subject matter, but without all of the pointless fluff that annoys me whenever I watch “The Universe” – no “whoosh” transitions, no over-dramatic narrator, no attempts to cram the word “alien” into every description, etc etc etc.
If I were to try to draw some larger point from that (and drag this post somewhat back on topic), it seems that we’re finally reaching the point where freely-available online video content has caught up to (if not surpassed) the quality of what you can find on television – at least for some types of content. And the business model of the traditional TV content industry is starting to put it at a disadvantage to video content that’s freely-available online, partly because (IMO) the primary customers of most TV are commercial sponsors, not the viewers – which leads to various compromises in quality.
I suspect that the difference in style between The Universe and Cosmic Journeys is largely due to creators of the latter having much more control over their content. They probably don’t have a corporate beancounter/TV exec looking over their shoulders and offering helpful input like “The camera work needs to be more dynamic, you won’t hold the viewer’s attention if we’re not constantly zooming in and out. The narrator should sound like the voiceover on trailers for summer blockbusters, otherwise how’s the viewer supposed to know they’re watching something dramatic? Oh, and make sure to spend 5 minutes explaining even the most basic scientific concept, our sponsors are worried about alienating the junior-high-dropout demographic.”
Wow, I didn’t know that all these series you “pirate” are unavailable.
– “Babylon 5”, 1994 – 1998. Can be bought for 60 Euros. All 5 seasons of it. That makes — wait for it — about 0.55 Euro per episode. Frack me.
– “Deep Space 9”, 1993 – 1999. Can be bought for 135 Euros. That makes about 0.75 Euros per episode.
– “Firefly”, 2002. The whole 15 episodes sell for 20 Euros on Blu-ray.
It goes on and on. Perhaps you would be much more believable if so many of your shows weren’t so old that you can get them for cheap.
You don’t have a credit card? Then get one. This has to be the most ridiculous excuse I’ve ever heard.
What’s broken is people’s attitudes. Give it to me on my terms or I will acquire it without paying you. How about passing on watching these shows if you don’t want to pay what’s asked of you? Is there someone standing next to you with a gun, forcing you to download and watch these shows?
Edited 2012-02-27 19:37 UTC
Not entirely. There are very legitimate customer concerns which are:
– content DRM’d too a point where legitimate users receive worse utility than pirates
– I should be able to use what I buy on any device, whithout differences in how it is presented, not bound to a service provider
– I should be able to easily understand rights for what I rent/buy/stream
– I should not be warned everytime about being a thief
– content not available everywhere on release date (important!)
– content of different quality depending on region/device/language
– companies taking interest in whether customers make backups/copies, lend to family or friends
– content has unskippable ads
– content does not expire and is not invalidated when I move regions temporarily or permenantly
What are those concerns? They are reasonable quality requirements for a modern product/service in the zero cost of copying, digital market place.
Yes, someone could use them as excuses for not buying, but they are still good concerns of all the other people. They should be yours as well, I think.
There is a whole host of other legitimate concerns as well but we won’t bother getting into that. What I will say however is that advertising is the largest revenue stream the film/tv/video business has. All your beloved tv shows couldn’t even begin to exist without advertising dollars paying for it all. As much as I despise advertising (which I have to deal with on a daily basis for work), I acknowledge & accept that it’s necessary.
There is in fact two sides of the fence — the consumers imagination/perception of what business “should” be doing, and the real world business of being a business.
I’m not saying that the business should stop advertising and I am not dismissing their right to do it. Keep it, get money for it, sure, but please don’t shove it into my throat because it’s 2012 and customers are more aware than 60 years ago:
– we don’t need information that the product exists anymore, we get it from friends, reviews and social media.
– we know we should be respected and if the ad is good, we’ll watch it and talk about it with friends (just look how youtube went with ads that you can skip them after 3 seconds, good consensus!)
– we do not wish to be called thieves for no apparent reason/proof.
– ETC.
Advertising is still crucial for current business models and I acknowledge that, but good, respecting advertising models can benefit both the customer, the vendor and the advertising world.
People who steal or “pirate” data are like cat people. They are like crack heads. They are crazy people who are not really crooks. They just can’t help themselves. They lie to make it seem OK. They claim this and that minor issue. “We don’t have credit cards” Pffst. Paypal, and debit card and such are there. “They don’t offer exactly what I want” Pffst again. I can’t get everything that I want either. That is just a fact of life. Grow up and join the human race. Become a responsible citizen. And talk to your stupid government. They’d be doing goose steps if we hadn’t come in and saved them. Time for them to act right and ban online crooks.
I don’t own a television, but I do get to see them when I visit friends or relatives, and I’m amazed at how people put up with the insane amounts of advertising (unless you watch only the BBC, which doesn’t interrupt programmes with adverts). It seems to have become worse over the years too, and it feels like shows are being interrupted every 10 minutes.
Yes, I do have a computer, and we do watch DVDs from time to time, but I’m very happy not to have a TV polluting my life (we also get a lot of our entertainment from the radio).