Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the first - Einstein
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Entertainment industry fails to grasp downloaders' needs
THE MEDIA MAFIAA has seemingly missed the boat with its latest attempt to curb distribution of TV shows across the Internet.
According to Torrentfreak, the finale of Lost broke previous Bittorrent download records despite being available in 59 countries within 48 hours of initial airplay. This lays to waste one of the points put forward by downloaders to justify hitting alternative sources to acquire television shows.
Assuming the site, which failed to disclose how it reached the figure of 900,000 downloads over a 20 hour period, is not embellishing its figures, it paints an impressive account of Bittorrent as a content distribution network. It also shows that the media firms should reconsider what it is that leads users to spend time and money to download content.
However the figures could merely serve to affirm the blinkered view of media executives who think of downloaders as punks and nothing more. They don't consider that those who download shows go to far greater trouble than those who prefer to slump in front of the telly and channel surf once the adverts are on. Downloaders are people who go out of their way to watch shows, that is, to get what the media cartels want to sell and who, in any other industry would be treated as the most loyal customers. Think about it.
So if it isn't the lag in global transmission of TV shows that motivates downloaders, what causes people to hit Bittorrent and Usenet servers to acquire the shows? Simply, downloading TV shows offers a better playback experience, and it isn't just due to the lack of advertising breaks.
Having adverts in a show isn't the problem. When tastefully done, such as on Hulu, the majority of viewers are perfectly willing to have a couple of minutes per half hour devoted to adverts, particularly if they are entertaining. No, the problem is something far more fundamental - sound and picture quality.
With high definition televisions almost reaching ubiquity, having to pay a considerable extra fee just to see a high quality version of a show is not on. At this stage of maturity, the term 'high definition' should be resigned to the dustbin, with the resolutions of 720p and 1080p deemed as standard. But of course that won't allow Sky and Virgin to milk consumers for every last penny.
Blaming show producers and channels isn't completely fair either. One doubts that a TV producer who actually cares about the viewers' experience can bear to stand for the levels of stream compression that television channels are forced to use. Compression occurs because existing delivery systems such as Sky charge channels on the amount of bandwidth a stream consumes, much like how Internet service providers charge for bandwidth to servers. For that reason channels have to compress video and audio in order to keep costs manageable.
To that end, the file sharing community is far more discerning when it comes to quality, whether it be in video or music sharing. The infamous British music site Oink wasn't, as the ill-informed media reported at the time, all about bringing down the music labels, but rather it was a collection of music lovers who used the site not only to share music from little known artists but also to share high quality recordings. The attention to detail when it came to faithfully producing encoded copies of CDs would have put many commercial sound engineers to shame.
Given the popularity of Itunes, its clear that there is more than enough money to be made by selling DRM-free tracks at reasonable prices over the Internet. But what will it take to get those discerning Oink users to come up with their cash? A wide choice of artists, not just from popular genres, and above all high quality, lossless recordings in open formats such as Flac will be necessary.
Instead, studios try to peddle substandard quality video and audio in closed formats and expect users to put up with it. Sure enough, the ignorant majority might do just that, but as the figures reported show, there are significant numbers of those who simply want a high quality experience and are being forced to turn to alternative means to get it.
Contrary to popular belief among media executives, downloaders are paying for content thanks to the imposition of bandwidth quotas on broadband connections. Lest we forget, downloaders also incur other expenses such as electricity usage and above all, time, which after all is money according to media types.
One could even argue that the adverts displayed on tracker sites can be a source of income generation not only for the site owners but also for media companies, if they embrace the millions who clearly are willing to pay money to acquire their content.
If the entertainment industry decides to ditch its established greedy principles and grasping tactics then maybe it will realise that its supposed enemies in its so called 'war' on downloaders can actually be its allies. µ
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The "quality" issue with me, is Pop Up Advertisements, and those pocking Channel Bugs!
I have since degraded my satellite subscriptions to delete all the Premium channels like Starz and Showtime, that actually think that I should Pay For The Privilege of being Pistoff!!!!
You aren't always right but this time you are right on target with the propaganda remarks, I think what you say is unmistakeably true there, but not all shows are like that, but you are right that too many are.
"having adverts in a show isn't the problem. When tastefully done"
Yes it is the freaking problem, and it is never done tastefully, and even if it was that would last about a week.
People download a) to get the latest show and b) to escape the advertisements that made them stop watching TV, because of the method of choice being 'annoy the audience the most and that will imprint the brand better' and the networks saying 'Let's dedicate 70% of airtime to ads, make the blocks so long that people forget they were watching a show, and when channel surfing they hit ads 4 out of 5 times.'
The industry is killed by themselves and TV would be useless if it wasn't for P2P.
My tolerance for ads has sunk to 0, and I started out by not minding them that much, good job assholes in the industry.
nope, you must be deaf if you can't hear the difference :)
@ Mike...
I'd say offer HD content too via Torrent/whatever.
At home we very rarely watch stuff when it's originally broadcast, and we tend to download a lot of US TV shows in HD.
This way we can watch them at our leisure, and we'd be happy to watch some adverts too (for instance watching 24 works out at 45 minutes rather than an hour). We'd also be happy to maybe click through on a couple of ads on a web site if they're targeted (maybe ads for stuff related to the show, such as in the case of Chuck, have adverts for the NBC store where we can buy Buymore and Jeffster T-Shirts, Box Sets etc or maybe a link to Subway).
What we usually do when we've finished watching a show is go out and buy the box set as soon as it's available. I've done it with 24, and I went way out of my way to get Chuck on Bluray (getting a friend in Canada to buy it on my behalf and bring it over with him when he came to visit) so it's not as if we're freetards. Heck, I've already got all of 24 on DVD but I want it on Bluray now so I'm looking at spending another hundred quid or soon it when it comes out.
Maybe on day these media cartels will learn. Until then I'll continue as normal (oh and I'm watching Chuck Season 3 on Virgin 1 despite watching it all in HD and pre-ordering the Bluray, basically because I love the show and want to show my support).
Hype for flacs: Try listening to music on an actual stereo system costing more than fifty quid.
Video quality: 1.1GB 720p video looks rather good and the download figures of said quality are eclipsing those of 350MB 320p.
Lag: 48 Hour lag for watching the Lost finale meant I couldn't be on the internet for said 48 hours for fear of encountering spoilers. In this day and age, it might as well have been 48 months.
Most of these big media companies have long tedious contracts to follow & plenty of people to pay on the way...
However, why should we care?
IF they decide to offer what WE WANT then we can pay them for a good service. IF not, we get to keep the money.
Win/Win
@Robert Carnegie: "I assume beautifully done character acting and profound insight into the human condition?" Actually, yes, when Lost was at it's best.
@A. Peon: They already do that. Wver see the 'Target" logos on 'Survivor'? At least, they used to put Target logos (the big red bulls eye) in the scenes of the show. And don't forget Jello Pudding on the Cosby Show!
If torrents would keep ads, and studios realized that torrents were just a (free) distribution system, possibly some compromise could be reached. For example torrents could limit the quality to SD for (say) 6 months to let the studios sell a few DVDs. I think that would be fair, and it also works for Netflix.
Why all the hype for .flacs? Higher quality but it's not like anyone can tell the difference.
...is a content cartel realizing the value in selling ads *that live forever.*
Simply offer a show - or seed a torrent - for a limited period of time, but "license" it with the covenant that no one will get sued as long as they don't modify it and preserve the ads.
Problem solved! If your content is popular, the fans handle redistribution for you after the initial offering, and everyone is permitted fair use without DRM.
...
What's stopping it? Conventional broadcast down pay-to-view (cable/sat) channels is expensive, and the broadcasters are loathe to steer anyone away from it, since losing conventional viewers makes the ever-increasing marginal cost per eyeball to serve the remaining that much greater. The same goes for free-to-view off-air content - it's not cheap to maintain a broadcast network, so why do something to subvert it? Plus, you no longer get to charge a premium for advertising by time slot.
The answer, of course, is that by offering more content on-demand, you can steal viewers' eyeballs from your competitors [and the sooner cable-bandwidth horse-trading is put to rest in favor of a 'neutral' network, the better for all involved]. What can you charge to get a brand to live forever in front of viewers with expensive taste?
There's an argument floating around that no marketer wants an 'outdated' message floating around, but given the modern business cycle of waiting for people to become nostalgic for last year's model so you can sell it to them all over again, the benefits surely outweigh the risks. And if the purchasing behavior of the boomers (Woodstock, umm.. anything sold in the 'Signals' catalog) through the hipsters (retro-gaming, boom boxes, steampunk) demonstrate anything, nostalgia-driven purchasing is never going to go away.
IF anyone sold what I wanted.
iTunes want to sell you lossy, compressed crap, there are a few FLAC stores but they don't have what I want.
Come on you stupid idiot media companies!!!
Put EVERYTHING in your catalogue up for sale in FLAC format.
No DRM bullshit, No lossy codecs (and don't just get one with a high bitrate and call it 'high quality') - use FLAC which is LOSSLESS.
All people want is a decent quality copy of their favourite music that they can put onto their portable music player (of ANY brand) if they want to.
Give them what they want without bullshit restrictions and they won't have to pirate it instead.
If it wasn't for the awesome OSS x264 video encoder and previously Divx/Xvid, there wouldn't even be close to this amount of copying.
x264 can put most commercial TV stations to shame at half the bitrate, assuming the one doing the encoding is just half-way competent.
Most of the 'Scene' encoders/cappers have a decade or more of experience with video encoding by now.
If it wasn't for their hard and dedicated work, almost all of the non-US fans of movies/TV shows would 'go hungry' since apparently the US/NA market is the only one that counts for anything.
The proliferation of the Matroska container format(.mkv) with integrated support for multiple audio, subtitle and video streams is just icing on the cake.
If we're comparing watching [Lost] on broadcast television to watching it on torrent download, I rather think that the platform with 0.9 million viewers is the loser by a long way.
I haven't ever seen [Lost], what did I miss? I assume beautifully done character acting and profound insight into the human condition? On the other hand I may still have fifty hours of irreplaceable lifespan to spend as I wish? Although given that I'm currently typing these words, maybe that isn't so good.
It's been this way for a long time, ever since torrents became the mainstream way of distributing such media.
Fans of the shows and tech junkies who have the hardware and the know-how have been cranking out better versions of movies, tv programs, and more than the studios themselves, both in 1080p and 720/480p for those who need it.
The big boys don't get, don't want to get it, and won't ever admit to their outdated business model. Studios that tried to strongarm their customers in various industries are already falling, and many have been out of business for awhile. When it comes around and finally hits the big boys, the world as a whole will finally take a giant step forward.
Keep torrenting.
For me it is ALL about quality and I will not pay one cent for lossy compressed audio, and especially where restrictions apply. I'm totally dismayed at the ubiquity of mp3 audio, alas I don't have much faith in the music companies that they will provide what I'm after at an attractive price. The market models have changed - it should now be all about quantity of sales rather than overpriced individual sales. There needs to be incentive - they need to make people feel stupid for illegally copying. Instead of our peers congratulating us for out treasure trove of illegal downloads, we should be in a position where people simply frown at us because *legal* downloading is very affordable and comes with great product quality. However the music companies have nurtured generations of pirates where doing the wrong thing is attractive, cool and overly advantageous.
This article seems a bit confused, but then it does try to mash all forms of content into one box.
Downloaded video content is rarely of the quality you'd expect from the major channels. It has to be highly compressed and at reduced resolution to be an acceptable file size. The standard for a 'one hour' TV show (42-48 minutes without adverts) has become 350MB at 624x352 using XviD, DivX or another MPEG-4 Part 2-compatible codec. This usually compresses better (for the same data rate) than MPEG-2 as used by standard-definition TV, but worse than MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) used by HD TV in the UK. However, even the worst Freeview channel gets an average 2.2Mbps - twice the data rate, though for 720x576 which is 1.8 times as many pixels - and the best (BBC One) can use up to 4.9Mbps. HD channels run at 8-9Mbps.
Indeed, the TV shows available - if you're watching 'in real time' - have been recorded off-air *from* a commercial channel, though usually from an HD source as US SD is quite low resolution.
However, the commercial on-demand services are terrible. I missed a couple of episodes at the beginning of this series of 'The Big Bang Theory' on E4, and tried to watch them on 4OD. Awful quality, and of course still interlaced with ads.
Other programmes I have an interest in aren't available on free-to-air channels. I object to paying for a subscription and *still seeing ads*. Choose one or the other. Not both.
Even when it is free-to-air, channels frequently mess with the content. US programmes designed for commercial broadcast are structured in acts with cliffhangers timed for the ad breaks. UK channels frequently recut to put the ads elsewhere, which wrecks the continuity between some scenes and neutralises the cliffhangers.
For movies, you generally have to wait for the first DVD release, but because of the movie timings often the US DVD comes out before the UK cinema release. A downloaded copy has the ability to play the movie on all hardware and has no button lockouts. Dear studios: I just want to watch the damn movie, not all your promotional junk and copyright warnings! Stop abusing the people who actually paid for it!
In sound recordings, I'd prefer higher bitrates, and the ability to re-download a couple of times so I don't have to send from work to home or vice versa, but with the removal of DRM, MP3 downloads are fine. The RIAA largely stopped abusing its customers, though there are still imbalances in what's available from which retailers.
I Also have media center pc on my computer, and I record most of my shows in HD. The thing is that i rarely use my cable to watch TV and instead use Over The Air channels. I'm Lucky enough that I live close to the States, and live close to a major city in Canada. So I get about 18 free HD channels from 2 countries. And pretty much all the shows that I'm into are shown over the air for FREE. Shows from House, 24, CSI, Lost... and a bunch more are broadcast-ed Over The Air for Free in HD and Legal. It's just a Win Win Win situation. All you need is a decent Antenna and your set. Connect directly to your new HD TV or to your computer.
I have a media center PC which I use to record shows on a schedule, but the poster is right, it is the Quality. It's not the commericals, I could skip them if I wanted. Basic cable at 60" is terrible and Canada hasn't adopted the Cable Card idea, nor at this point ever will. Hulu, NBC, etc are only available in the USA, so no luck there. So, I use a popular Torrent Site for my Television shows. I pick my Favourites and they are automagically downloaded each night via RSS.
I download for a number of reasons but mainly I dont like having to wait for shows to appear in poor quality a whole season behind. Take "Chuck" for instance, its just finished airing it's 3rd season yet in the UK the 3rd season hasn't started yet and you can't watch it in HD unless you have Virgin media and let's face who has that?
I'm not going to pay to watch "24" put over the notion that torture is good, or CSI with ridiculously powerful technology that always catches the crooks, let alone for the pro-war propanganda that masquerades as objective news. Nope. The old commercialism was bad enough, and now the Orwellian aspects are overt.
There's only two comedy shows that I'd watch, not worth the full cost of cable TV to have, especially when available free online -- BY their own distribution.
Quality is the only reason I download TV shows.
I can watch Stargate Universe on Sky or V on Syfy, plus tons of other shows with regular repeats during the week without a huge timelag from when they're broadcast in the States, I just want to watch them in decent quality.v