First, I dispute that piracy is really better. Amazon and netflix generally work easier than piracy. My, um friend, has radarr + usenet + plex, and its work pretty well 80%. But subtitles are often a problem. Unpacking/par checking sometimes takes forever. Sometimes the decoder in plex doesn't really work. Sometimes the movie has been DMCA'd off the use net servers. Private trackers involve sucking up to to 15 year old polish kids who run their service like the Stazi.
You can usually find everything you want, but sometimes it requires some time.
I don't have a large 4k tv, so maybe I'm not appreciating how bad the streaming movies look.
But Netflix, Amazon, itunes, Vudo, etc. are all way easier services to use.
Second, they are targeting the masses, who probably like a 30 second preview for another show and don't care how 4k is encoded. In my experience, about 50% of people with high def TV's didn't even set up high def cable packages.
The reason piracy is perceived to be better is agency. With Netflix/whatever, you have zero agency if something you want isn't there, other than signing up for some other streaming service.
Even if it's hard to find something on public trackers with the right dubs/subtitles, it's rarely impossible for popular content. And if the subtitles are bad, you can, for example, download a different lower quality rip and pull the subtitles off that. The point is, in this system the user has control over the data they are consuming. This is infinitely preferable to some people than the chains of DRM.
Agreed. I use and love Plex (subtitles are less of an issue since they added the ability to automatically find subtitles for shows/movies), but people who say the experience is better are forgetting the amount of time and effort you need to find a reliable torrent site, manage the torrents, and set up the plex server.
It's not a huge amount of work by any means, but for many people it's probably insurmountable. Let alone when you compare it to the work involved to use a streaming service:
Ease of use depends on your computer literacy, I think. For me it involves pasting the IMDB ID into a fairly popular public torrent site (eg. tt0095560) and feed the magnet link to Transmission running on my storage server. When it's done, it gets picked up by LibreELEC and is ready to watch. Could my mother use this? No. But you don't need a computer science degree to do this either.
When Netflix launched in Denmark, I immedately jumped on it. It used to have endless amounts of great content, and was way more convenient than piracy. Now it's just filled with trash, and I can never find what I want to watch. Piracy has again become more convenient.
Exactly. 5 weeks ago I needed CBS All Access to watch an NFL game and I figured I'd watch ST Discovery and the Stand too. I had access in 3 clicks on Roku in the Amazon prime channel. I can cancel at anytime.
My wife wanted to watch the Borne Identity and my um friend had figure out why Radarr blacklisted a bunch of releases then wait for it to download and un-par (which took 5x longer than the download). I came back into the living room 15 minutes later and found my wife just watching it with commercials on Peacock.
During a break I convinced her to switch to plex since it didn't have commercials. But then we had to pause the movie and fumble with subtitles for the scenes in the swiss bank. First downloaded set didn't match the timestamps. Second did, but it was like 5 minutes. "Why couldn't you just let me watch in on NBC HONEY?"
When I said piracy was the better service, what I meant is it offered much higher quality, not that it was easier to use. Piracy actually takes a ton of work. Of course paying for a streaming subscription is the easiest solution: people just pay and enjoy what it offers. The problem is the fact they consistently offer the lowest quality product.
1. Horrible video compression to save bandwidth
When they offer users high definition content, they're actually talking about the resolution of the image. The quality and detail of the image will almost always be much worse if compared to another source such as Blu-Rays. Netflix somehow manages to add compression artifacts to nearly 100% black frames. Scenes with a lot of movement are actually painful to watch.
Compare that to the obssessive attention to detail you can often find in piracy communities and the winner is obvious.
2. Censorship
These services aren't afraid to cut content in order to broaden their audiences. They may even be required to do it by law. Pirates obviously don't have these problems.
3. Annoying copyright issues nobody cares about
Netflix once had Terminator 1 and 3 but not 2, as well as Spider Man 1 and 3 but not 2. Was the license for these movies too expensive for them? Who knows? Who cares?
Want to watch a classic film? An influential film? Chances are it's not on Netflix. Where is it then? Who knows... Maybe not actually available at all anywhere no matter where you look.
Piracy just ignores these issues. As a result it gives you access to almost everything humanity has ever created.
4. DRM
Netflix won't give you access to their precious 4k+ streams if it feels your device isn't locked down enough. Disney is even more aggressive with these measures. Even on my perfectly locked down PS4 system it won't let me download content ahead of time. Apparently they think network connections are reliable.
Pirates simply don't have these problems.
5. Superior technology
Netflix's video player is garbage compared to mpv. The video players of every other streaming service manage to be even worse. It's not just the basic-ness of it either: sometimes it stutters and falls out of sync with the audio, sometimes it screws up the rendering of subtitles...
The one area where streaming service technology wins is their ability to offer alternate audio streams.
You can usually find everything you want, but sometimes it requires some time.
I don't have a large 4k tv, so maybe I'm not appreciating how bad the streaming movies look.
But Netflix, Amazon, itunes, Vudo, etc. are all way easier services to use.
Second, they are targeting the masses, who probably like a 30 second preview for another show and don't care how 4k is encoded. In my experience, about 50% of people with high def TV's didn't even set up high def cable packages.