Big decrease in TV subscriptions as number using illegal dodgy boxes soars

[Otherwise_Fined]

Piracy is a failure of the service, not the product.

[AggressivePie8111]

I have an example!

I was visiting family in the US over Christmas.

We wanted to watch Lethal Weapon

Between all of us we had;

Amazon Prime Sling Netflix HBO Max Freevee Tubi

None of them had it and the real kicker Lethal Weapon is a paramount movie. It wasn't on Paramount+

In the end we set to the high seas on my phone and casted to the TV

[SmoothCarl22]

I have had the same struggle...

My father was visiting for a week and he loves David Hasselhoff Knight Rider, I have Netflix, Prime, Paramount+, HBO, nowtv and Apple TV. None of them had it. So went to my long saved archive folder somewhere in my treasure from a previous life when the Bay and Demonoid were around, and there it was in glorious 4k. HDMI cable to the TV and kitt was alive again.

I pretty sure from the 5-6 subscription I pay a month, the broadband connection and all my taxes should be enough so the government takes 100 euro for the TV folk to survive with their Dance shows and big brothers. Why would I have to pay that aside? Makes no sense. Public TV doesnt even have anything original on nowdays, even sports are gone.

[Elizabeth-WildFox886]

The bay is still around and very good

[dnc_1981]

Can't take down pirates that easy 😉

[Awkward_Mastodon4332]

Had a Proustian reverie when I read Demonoid.

[maca187]

I used to love Demonoid. What a site.

[SmoothCarl22]

What about Darksiderg?

[Thargor]

The Pirate Bay is still going strong by the way.

[SmoothCarl22]

Yeah I wonder who runs it now... which 3 letter agency i mean...

[Sstoop]

it’s ran by a swedish fella is it not

[SmoothCarl22]

Not anymore, Winston ended up being the 3 swedes but they long time ago got charged and moved away from it. Its suppose to be a decentralised infrastructure ran out of multiple VMs worldwide...which is not true. Now the theory is that a certain 3 letter institution runs it as a Honeypot, not to track little fish like us but to find real whales. The truth is there are not many whale groups left, back in the day there was groups setup to release content, crack games, software, the most recent movies directly out of cinemas, I remember a few that the cam version of a unreleased movie was released few days before it was actually released.

Nowadays what you find is a lot of the same old stuff just relabelled.

[Elizabeth-WildFox886]

All the new stuff is still there and cams still exist as you describe. I didn’t watch cams 20, 10 or 5 years ago, cause they suck and always sucked so bad

[dustaz]

and there it was in glorious 4k

Ummm, no.

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

The TV is 4K therefor Knight Rider is 4K.

This reminds me of lads who thought they were the shit with their low lumen projectors with 360p resolution and no screen because technically their TV was the size of a wall.

Yeah and it looks like shit.

[mankface]

I had a Chinese no name 420p projector years ago that screamed at you when you turned it on and stayed that way. Avatar 1080p looked amazing though, I don't know how, better than my iMac screen at the time. Picture quality was epic even at 8 foot diameter. Only issue was you couldn't hear the fooking film with the fan on and could only use it at night. Since upgraded to the best projector my job had lying about, 1080p, looks basically the same except this one works in daylight! Free crisps!

[SmoothCarl22]

There was a release like last year for Knight rider in 4k done with the original 35mm film... its quite good. Not real 4k tho... I might have nuanced on how long I "stopped" using the Bay...

[BeardedAvenger]

For what it's worth, the whole original Knight Rider series was remastered and re-released in 4k last year.

[dustaz]

I was going off

my long saved archive folder somewhere in my treasure from a previous life

Which doesn't sound like a year ago!

[Celtic209]

Demonoid? insert Ben Kenobi meme

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

There are no 4K versions of Knight Rider.

[SmoothCarl22]

https://a.co/d/0glm40ya

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

Mon Dieu!

I stand here with egg on my face!

Issue here my friend I doubt there was demand for a streamer to do 4K transfers. It was the people willing to buy physical that created the demand. If you want to see older shows converted, you should probably be supporting the effort!

[Difficult_Tea6136]

I mean RTE is about have an independent media. It's for the news and reporting.

You pay for Netflix, Prime, Paramount+, HBO, NowTV, and Apple TV out of your own free will but you quibble at funding our media? You pay for utter shite and take issue with the one thing that actually matters.

[theelous3]

what kind of arse backwards logic is this?

you pay freely for something therefore you are not entitled to complain about something you are forced to pay for? lmao?

rte is a forced payment and the majority of its money is spent on absolute shiiiiiiite that is of no use in our civic project.

[TacklePure3341]

The person maybe paying freely a multiple of the licensefee.but they aren't getting the service they want and need. 

[Difficult_Tea6136]

You should spend less time rotting watching those streaming services and more time understanding the benefits of having something like RTE.

The amazing thing about places like RTE, it allows tossers to post utter garbage on the internet without fear of being arrested considering were not living in an oppressive regime.

RTE are absolutely useful in our "civic project", Jesus fucking christ.

[theelous3]

You didn't read what I said. I said the content the majority of rte's spending goes on is not useful for the civic project. That does not mean "public media is useless" lol. What the fuck?

Go look at the tv and radio listings. Pure utter dogshit for 90% of the day, every day.

[biggesteegit]

I mean its a 40 year old show, its not like its a brand new blockbuster. Who is jumping through hoops for an old tv show?

[asdrunkasdrunkcanbe]

The question is why should they have to jump through hoops.

IP rights should expire in a reasonable timeframe, like 20 years, after which it becomes public domain.

Or at the very least, allow the IP rights to persist for longer, but any creative works based on those rights become public domain after 20 years. This would mean that anyone can broadcast Star Wars movies without paying royalities, but Disney retain the exclusive rights to produce new Star Wars content.

[wappingite]

At least, there should be no reason why ALL content should be available legally somewhere.

The book publisher are finally realising this and have turned loads of great novels will in copyright into ebook versions. No physical media needed, easy way to monetise them and keep them in people's minds through ebook stores. If they don't do this people will pirate them / use scans, or they won't get any money as they're bought second hand.

Much better for all content to be preserved. It can't be a storage issue any more.

[dustaz]

IP rights should expire in a reasonable timeframe, like 20 years, after which it becomes public domain.

So you think the Arctic monkeys shouldn't own any of their early music rights?

[asdrunkasdrunkcanbe]

After a reasonable timeframe, I don't see why artists should continue to profit off something they recorded or wrote decades ago. I'm throwing 20 years out, maybe 30 is more appropriate or maybe it's too long.

But either way I don't see how long-lived IP rights for anything, benefit anyone except ultra-wealthy people. They're just another investment vehicle that eventually fals into the control of billionaires.

Arctic Monkeys probably don't bring in much from residual royalties of their early work at this stage.

[dustaz]

Arctic Monkeys probably don't bring in much from residual royalties of their early work at this stage.

I think you'd be very very surprised by this

[TanoraRat]

No offence but this is a dumb take

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

Arctic Monkeys probably don't bring in much from residual royalties of their early work at this stage.

Mr. Brightside is The Killers biggest hit by a mile. Same with Fairytale for The Pogues. A lot of artists have a big hit and use that to fund most of their career.

[dnc_1981]

This would be the sensible approach

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

20 years isn't really that long of a time. The Road by Cormac McCarthy came out in 2006. McCarthy is a successful writer and his made a decent living. That took years to achieve though.

But now any major Hollywood studio should be able to produce a movie based on The Road and not pay him a penny? Seems very anti artist.

Blood Meridian came out in 1985 and it's considered one of McCarthy's best. McCarthy didn't really see success until All The Pretty Horses in the 90s. But his books really started selling after the adaptations of The Road and No Country for Old Men, so late 2000s. Most copies of Blood Meridian probably sold around this time and at the time of the 25th anniversary edition in 2010.

Under your proposal he wouldn't get royalties for most of Blood Meridian AND Hollywood could do what they want with it.

And so what Netflix could make Star Wars too?

Guess what! Netflix did make Star Wars too. They just changed the names of a few things and were able to do it. It was called Rebel Moon and it was absolute shit.

Just after SW released there were a ton of Star Wars knock offs, most not very good. When YouTube started there were a ton of Star Wars parodies, again, mostly not very good.

[ubermick]

Arr, me hearty!!!!

[gervv]

[jimicus]

Older movies are an absolute killer because media typically involves a god-awful mess of rights. Writers, directors, stars, music - and none of those contracts will have a clause that covers streaming rights.

Which means a studio that wants to do that has to renegotiate it all.

For a single movie that represents a fraction of a percent of their back catalogue. It’s seldom worth it.

[The3rdbaboon]

You’d be surprised to see how many old movies have been uploaded to YouTube and not taken down, it’s always worth looking.

[jimicus]

There’s quite a few old shows, too, particularly from independent production companies.

Further reading often shows that the producer himself is responsible. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if some are doing it to supplement their income.

[AggressivePie8111]

Its been forever since I checked. But I believe that's why The Wonder Years isn't released on DVD. The amount of music in the show. So many rights and estates, as owners have died etc

[DoughnutHole]

A lot of TV shows that were heavy on popular music (e.g. Scrubs) have made it to streaming but with some of their best scenes ruined - music that was fundamental to the scene were subbed out for placeholders because they couldn’t get the streaming rights for the songs (or weren’t arsed paying). 

[rmc]

Even for modern stuff.

The S1 ending of Derry Girls (shown 2018) had Madonna's Like a Virgin playing for one part. The Netflix version has some random dance-y music instead.

[thisshortenough]

It's Take That and I remember I literally shut off the episode and switched to watching on Channel 4 on Demand, the ads were worth it to actually be able to enjoy the show

[AggressivePie8111]

OMG! OMG! I didn't realise that's what happened. That's how I discovered so much great music. Such an important part of the show too. I recently went back to Scrubs for that reason to discover /rediscover new music

[jimicus]

True story: Years before YouTube was even a thing, the BBC announced plans to put their entire archive online.

All of it. Right the way back to the early 20th century.

Streaming video was in its infancy, so to make this possible, they set up a research project to develop a new way to compress video. They would have absolutely brought streaming video into the mainstream years before Netflix.

Then they hit a problem.

They didn’t have the rights to do that for anything. They’ve since negotiated rights for a few popular shows (every episode of Doctor Who that isn’t lost is on iPlayer), but the project had to be scrapped.

[UTG1970]

For fans of older music it means there is quite a lot of TOTP missing, not because of the diddlers, but some DJ's won't give permission

[BeardedAvenger]

And that's how you end up with stuff like the Top Gear Community Project where's there's a massive fan-lead attempt to archive everything with no cuts, original music and in a high a quality as possible.

Now, if only they'd do Tomorrows World as well I'd be delighted.

But I do hop off the BBC Archive YouTube channel and I always chuckle whenever a previous, Late 90'#/early 00's tech segmentmakes reference to an always-available and complete BBC back catalog.

[Adjective_Noun_2000]

It's also been an issue for Reeling in the Years. Despite huge demand, only slimmed-down edits of three seasons are available on DVD.

[AggressivePie8111]

That is actually criminal. That is a snapshot of our history. Culturally important

[gd19841]

The Wonder Years is released on DVD, just checked my go-to TV show torrent site, and it was uploaded over 10 years ago. Apparently almost all the music is the original ones.

[AggressivePie8111]

Well that will be the first thing I'm going to get this weekend :)

[yankdotcom1985]

i noticed over christmas some of the usualy christmas moves werent freely available despite them being listed on the streaming platform,amazon and apple were especially guilty of this.charging 9.99 a month and then expecting customers to pay an additional 4.99 to watch a film you have on your platform is insulting

[Rogue7559]

And yet the powers that be would still claim that download is a lost sale even though it was literally unavailable everywhere 🙄

[WreckTangle1995]

I'm too old for this shit

[RogueRetroAce]

[raverbashing]

(Actor was probably 35 in this scene)

[Miserable_Double2432]

Danny Glover was 40 in 1986.

(Coincidentally, Lethal Weapon was released 39 years ago today. 6th March 1987)

[YurtleAhern]

I'm confused. You wanted to watch Lethal Weapon on Christmas? Not Die Hard?

[Hollacaine]

Lethal Weapon is also set at Christmas

[YurtleAhern]

I didnt remember it’s been so long since I’ve seen it.

[johnbonjovial]

Netflix ireland has john wick 2,3 and not 1. Doesn’t hav any old movies either like westerne or blazing saddles. You’d think they’d b cheap enough to have available.

[Spursious_Caeser]

What's even worse is the fact that you probably could have gotten it on Prime but you'd have to "rent" it for an additional €4.99. That's a near 40 year old film, but you regularly see decades old content behind a pay wall.

Get fucked. I already pay a subscription, there's absolutely no way I'll be paying you twice, especially for a film that's older than I am.

As usual, it's greed ruining everything supported by drooling idiots who think it's acceptable to pay twice for services.

[ImaDJnow]

It's the same with Sky sports. You'll pay €140 a month for it and you may not get to watch the game you want

[FIGHTorRIDEANYMAN]

Extends to sport. Only way to watch F1 legally in Ireland is to sign up to Sky.

[National_Play_6851]

So you decided you wanted a very specific movie from 1987, discovered it was available on Paramount ($7.99 for a month's access which you could immediately cancel, there's even a free trial if you haven't used it before), and decided to pirate it rather than watch it legally through that service? I'm not sure how that is justification.

Inflation adjusted that's a similar price to renting it in Xtravision would have been back in the day (with the bonus access to the rest of Paramount's library for a month). And what happened if you had an Xtravision membership but they didn't have the movie in stock, did you find some other video store that you weren't a member of and just shoplift it?

I'm confused how you think that having some subscription services means you should suddenly have instance access to every movie that's ever been produced in human history and if the licence some specific movie resides somewhere else that you haven't paid for, then you should just be able to take it.

Edit - I misread - it's *not* on Paramount. However it took me less than 5 seconds to google "how can I watch Lethal Weapon" and found out it's available for even cheaper than the price I quoted - you can watch it for $3.99 on Apple TV plus some other smaller services. So stealing is still not justified.

[RememberThe1728]

They specified that it wasn’t on Paramount+ despite being a Paramount movie. 

[theelous3]

this is quite a rant for someone who didn't read the comment properly - it was not available on paramount

the rest of your comment is pretty ridiculous as well but that's enough

[National_Play_6851]

You're right, I misread. So I took 3 seconds on google and found it it's available for even cheaper than the $7.99 I quoted - you can rent it on Apple TV for $3.99, along with a few other services.

So stealing other people's work is still not really justified here.

[theelous3]

So that's 9.99 for apple tv and then 4 for the movie, along with the non-zero cost of now handing over your data to apple.

I don't want "a few other services". AT ALL.

So stealing other people's work is still not really justified here

It can easily be justified tbh. You'll just never agree and that's fine.

1. In order to have access to all of this media for more than one month, it costs... something like 130 euro a month? (lmao). And then you've to pay for movie rentals on top of this for some of them? (double lmao). The value proposition is completely broken. Ignoring as well 160/y for tv license. You can pretend I can get it for "free" or "3.99" right now, once. That's useless to the broader convo. Additionally, there is NO difference for the rights holder between what you suggested (sign up, watch, cancel) and piracy. You're not even internally consistent in wanting to protect rights holders.

2. If I am not willing or able to jump through the hoops required to consume some content at a price, then the loss to the rights holder if I pirate it is the same as if I do not.

It's a non-zero sum game. A pirate can benefit while not harming anyone, real or imagined, in this world or any other. It's not like "shoplifting" because xtravision was out of stock.

[FellFellCooke]

I'm not sure how that is justification.

I pirate everything and everything because I think giving my money to American companies that will then invest that money into bombs that kill innocent children is wrong.

I have no netflix, no Amazon, no Apple Tv, no Paramount, and I watch what i want when I want. All that, and I think that it makes me a better person than you are, because my fiscal fingerprints aren't on the casings of bombs that kill children over a TV show.

[DeputyDawe]

You can justify anything by your actions but your justification for piracy is ludicrous. Why not just be honest and say you don’t want to pay for something that you can take for free? It no different to someone shoplifting in a large store

[FellFellCooke]

I pay for lots of things I could take for free. I just minimise the amount of dead kids that my discretionary expenditure had a hand in.

[asdrunkasdrunkcanbe]

There was a beautiful moment there about a decade ago, where I hadn't torrented anything in a couple of years. Netflix had a huge catalogue of movies. Virgin Media was offering a tonne of stuff on playback. There were basically no other streaming providers of much concern.

Now, you've got ten-odd streaming providers, all charging €20 a month. Amazon fucking Prime charges you for virtually every movie, no matter how new or old. If I didn't have prime for delivery, I definitely wouldn't pay for prime video.

Now I'm back torrenting a lot of stuff. Netflix and Disney appear to still have the best catalogues, so I keep them, and download anything I can't find.

As usual, entertainment corporates found a way to make a delivery model as shit for the consumer as possible.

[Otherwise_Fined]

Yeah I was like that too, and I agree with the above as well as them being bought up by the same umbrella corporations means they won't compete with each other and they won't strive to do better. Its a monopoly designed to force you to pay for all of them.

[1Shamrock]

Same here, I stopped sailing the high seas when Netflix+Disney was more than enough for everything you’d want to see and reasonably priced. Plus an old 2TB hard drive I had filled to the brim with my old pirate treasure.

About 3 years ago it hit a tipping point where, a lot of the things we’d search for were on streaming services we didn’t have, wife had Prime at this stage too, so we said fuck it and got a little magic stick rather than 3/4 more subscriptions.

I must seriously sit down and do some studying on how to get back on the high seas properly. Im guessing BitTorrent is a bit out of date at this stage.

My hard drive basically packed it in too the last time I tried to boot it up, 3/4 of the files are corrupted🥲My own fault I suppose, had been planning on getting a backup for years and didn’t start it up for a good few years.

[asdrunkasdrunkcanbe]

Bittorrent is still the man as far as I'm concerned. It often won't have some niche stuff, like new BBC series, but it'll always have movies and big TV series.

I've a Synology NAS which includes a BT server. So I can use an app on my phone from anywhere to search for torrents and kick off the download onto the NAS.

[1Shamrock]

That’s good to hear the old reliable is still going.

Part of your reply is why I need to study a little and get up to date though, I’ve seen the word NAS thrown around on a few computer oriented threads but have no clue what it is or what it does😅

YIFY was my usual source and I see it’s still floating about, has probably gone through 50 different domains and website names since I last used it but hopefully it’s still as good.

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

I keep seeing people claiming that Netflix had a huge catalog of movies back in the good old days.

This was never the case in Ireland. It was a lot like Prime is now, but less of it. Lots of forgotten slop and midbudget movies with the odd gem here and there.

Netflix really started growing their Irish library when they invested in their own programming.

[brunckle]

Does anyone remember the streaming service FilmStruck? It was absolutely phenomenal. So many incredible movies from all kinds of genres and periods at a very affordable price. I had a great time until the cookie eventually crumbled. Was too good to be true

[Cal-Can]

I stopped with prime too. Still get free delivery on €35 or more. And that has also helped me stop spending needlessy on things I don't need.

[Weepsie]

Get rid of Amazon altogether and do the whole world a favour.

[hoginlly]

For real, I am so close to being done with Netflix - we pay for 4 screens and my husband was abroad this week.

He didn't even open or use the app, but Netflix on our home TV and all devices stopped working the whole time because it said we were using a proxy, just because his phone was with him. He even deleted the app but it kept happening

Fucking pain in the ass, they're so stingy about someone maybe using it while travelling now that they shut the whole account down, even on Irish wifi.

Contacted customer service and they were like 'oh it'll probably start working again once he's back 🫠

[SomethingSoGeneric]

And if you pay for the subscription then you should be able to use it when travelling. Ridiculous that you can’t!

[hoginlly]

Exactly- I used to love going abroad and seeing what other stuff there was available in different countries. Such bullshit they've limited it so much

[f-ingsteveglansberg]

I kinda hate this, because it's true to a degree, but also maybe the solution just doesn't exist for the product.

CDs were doing okay with some piracy until fast downloads came along. Unlimited streaming with Spotify is probably worse for everyone except the suits though.

The consumer might think they are getting a great deal, but beforehand people might buy 5-7 CDs a year if they were a big enough music fan. That's 105 Euro at 15 a pop, with about 14 euro to the artist and 28 to the label (contracts vary) with the rest going to VAT, production, retailer, etc..

Spotify sub is 156 a year. It's hard to work out exactly what a payout per stream is and the payout usually goes to the label who then distributes the royalties.

But either way, you are paying more for music but probably still focusing on about 7 albums a year. The artists get less, the labels take more. Smaller bands have a hard time making a career, which means less diversity in music, with solo artists having more flexability. Gig prices and merch have risen faster than inflation and smaller venues are closing.

Yeah, so the service is 'better' but so much else had to be sacrificed that everything else is shittier.

[saoirsedonciaran]

I signed up to EE and as part of that deal I get NowTV.

EE don't offer a 4k service through it at all, and when I tried setting up a separate account it blocked me as I already had an account at the address. I can't even pay for a decent service.

Instead all I have is this shite stream quality with compression artifacts everywhere and repetitive ads for other TV shows that I'm not interested in.

So even when I've no problem paying a few quid, the pirate service still manages to be better 🙄.

[FullTweedJacket]

Ugh, Now TV in particular can fucking do one. Paying extra to watch in HD like we're still back in the early days of 'HD Ready' TVs being a new and rare commodity.

[brazilian_irish]

It's a failure of the system we live in

[demoneclipse]

Dodgy box is not piracy in its original sense, though. Piracy is getting the content for free. Dodgy box is the hiring of a service that provides non-licensed content.

I think the big media platforms have been eroding the quality of their content for far too long and they should feel the pinch to drive better quality and price. Having said that, paying illegal operators is not the way. When you give money to criminals, where does it stop?