LOL.

We pay for 4K, but we don’t get more than 720p unless we use some proprietary shit hardware and agree to their super-invasive “privacy policy” - and they expect people to NOT set sail in the high seas? GTFO…

  • @[email protected]
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    171 year ago

    I can easily say that the amount of my friends and family that have become interested in my Emby setup has expontentially consistently increased every round that these streaming providers have increased their rates.

    The experience of launching 7 different streaming apps to find something, content constantly vanishing or moving platforms, and just an overall poor user experience coupled with doubling/tripling of each platforms costs…

  • JokeDeity
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    51 year ago

    Literally every single time I want to watch any specific movie it’s not on any streaming service without buying or renting, and I don’t mean new or recent movies. So yeah, I’m pirating again.

  • Obinice
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    21 year ago

    What’s that about only getting 720p though? My TV shows the 4K HDR stuff great from places like Netflix or Prime, has done for years now, and my TV isn’t even new. Surely all modern stuff will show all that high definition stuff just fine.

    I think my browser does too, though I only have a 2K screen as of recently on my PC, but I’m certain it’s not playing video in 720p for sure. It’s at least 1080p if not more.

    But yeah, these services aren’t giving enough bang for their pound these days, it’s reaching insulting levels, it’s unsurprising people are forced into piracy.

    The consumer (or if you prefer, the market) decides what someone is worth, and if it’s being sold for above market value… people won’t buy. Simple as that.

    We’ve shown we’re happy to pay a reasonable amount of money for these services, and yet they insist on squeezing exorbitant amounts of money out of us for less and less value. Madness.

  • @[email protected]
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    81 year ago

    I bet we’ll reach a point again where normal services are just so shit that piracy is normal again. Then they’ll try and take down even more things. Hopefully then we’ll decide to move operations to I2P.

    CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

  • snrkl
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    1151 year ago

    https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/

    As Gabe Newell said: “Piracy isn’t a pricing issue, its a service issue”

    As my friend said: "every time a plastic video disc says " operation not permitted " a torrent is born…

    As I say: “People will pay when it’s easy, more reliable and more convenient.” As a software product manager, I forbid my product from ever wasting developer cycles with copy protection… It’s expensive to deliver, annoying to real customers and doesn’t make us any more money…

    • @[email protected]
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      161 year ago

      I don’t disagree with anything but I feel like GabeN said that before streaming and subscriptions took over.

      Photoshop is an incredibly easy to use and powerful tool for creators - I’d be happy to drop like $200 on, for example, the 2024 version. I’m not happy to spend $10 or $30+ a month for life to use it, especially when they lock you in to a year subscription and charge you a fee if you cancel early so you literally can’t just sub only the month when you need it, it’s the whole year, period. I’ll just pirate or use photopea or whatever.

      Similar for streaming. Netflix gave us the option to pay for more screens to watch on. Now suddenly it matters whose house it’s in?? All while you’re constantly removing value from the platform and you cancel anything decent if the production value is too high? Fuck you man I’m not paying like $30 monthly for that.

      • snrkl
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        141 year ago

        Please do keep voting with your wallet - its one of the few remaining ways to express our discontent!) That being said, I feel like both of those examples are where the service provided by adobe and then Netflix are terrible.

        Adobe is making you buy a whole year and Netflix is hassling you for “letting your pensioner mum watch your account”… To me, both of those are examples of bad service (coupled with cost).

        For me, a counter example for me is amazon.com: I hate what they’re doing to the retail landscape but find it hard to resist, as I find them SOOO convenient, and their customer service (for now) is absolutely stunning!!! Now if their prices were too high, I’d personally probably pay for that convenience a bit. (Where there model breaks for me completely is warranty major purchases: I’ve had warranty denied by manufacturers for items purchased through non approved amazon resellers. So now, for me, anything over $100 and I’m looking for direct purchase from the manufacturer as a preference. )

  • zeps
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    531 year ago

    Sometimes piracy is the only method of archival

    • @[email protected]
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      271 year ago

      Some things are literally not available anymore by legal means. Piracy is an important tool in preserving content for future generations. Future historian will be proud of pirates.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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        51 year ago

        I really want to show my friend the original Fullmetal Alchemist series, but Funimation has completely replaced it with the newer Brotherhood series everywhere. It’s such bullshit. I would be happy to pay them to watch it, but literally the only option is piracy.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        Absolutely true, I was actually looking for this flash game mike shadow and the vending machine and it’s partly lock cause reasons, pirates where you at

  • @[email protected]
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    181 year ago

    Bold of you to think that they even think of us at all.

    I actually mean that seriously: we continue seeing, over and over, that no, quite often they do NOT expect people to NOT do that, they quite simply DGAF. They pirate us, we pirate them, it becomes just another “cost of doing business”, until they are strong enough to eventually crack down further. See ad blocking & Chrome recently, after multiple decades of internet ads pushing the limits.

    It’s like a zombie nom noming your brains - after like 2 bites it’ll get bored and wander off, and it literally doesn’t even need to “eat”, it simply is so fucking DUMB that it doesn’t know what else to do with itself. It is truly horrifying b/c while your entrails may be strewn about on the floor, or in the throats of tens of zombies, they in turn… don’t even have the decency to be aware that you’ve died!?

    Lower-level managers sell ideas to higher-level managers, and “logic” has little to do with those conversations, compared to the amount of emo-stroking that goes on “oh, you will become so rich, and powerful, and handsome, and brave, and precious” (from here:-P) - and so long as enough people play along, that happens!

    Our world is just so fucking STUPID.

    That said, what they do is on them, while what we do is on us. Find a way to live - hopefully by finding a way to contribute, if/where you can.

  • @[email protected]
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    31 year ago

    Perfect time for any aspiring system admin to create another piracy website (something I’ve been working out the kinks on)

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        Why do we need a podcast focused server. Podcasts for the most part are free. Just need a client like AntennaPod and listen away

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          They’re not, though. The back catalog of many is locked away, and we lost many of those altogether when Stitcher shut down.

          Clearly, if I could just listen away, I would be doing that. Just as clearly, we need a way to archive and share all of this.

  • Flying Squid
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    691 year ago

    Maybe people would pirate less if you let them keep what they pay for.

          • Camelbeard
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            51 year ago

            No it’s just borrowing, it’s temporary anyway, I recently looked at some movies on a very old harddisk and it was like DVD quality or worse. Threw the entire disk out.

            • ɔiƚoxɘup
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              71 year ago

              I don’t know if it’s even borrowing, really. If you borrow my drill, I can’t use it. If you torrent a movie… Like… You’re seeding, and more people can use it!

              • @[email protected]
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                1 year ago

                It’s almost like our economics models with supply and demand barely work for physical products and are even worse at modelling easily reproducible digital goods

                • ɔiƚoxɘup
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                  31 year ago

                  Naaaah, probably just a coincidence, best not to think about such things. /S

  • @[email protected]
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    2161 year ago

    I’m willing to pay for one, maybe two subscriptions, and ain’t nobody got time to dig for which service has what show to find out season 2 is on some other service entirely.

    Piracy provides a better user experience 🤷‍♂️

      • BolexForSoup
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        1 year ago

        I generally agree with him, but there are a lot of people who pirate simply because they don’t want to pay. And I’m not casting moral judgment here, i just feel like it bears mentioning lol “almost always” is pretty generous

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
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          Lets compare three options as example:

          One streaming service with everything:

          • monetary costs: 25 €/month
          • opportunity cost: login, type name in search bar, enjoy in good quality, language and subtitles of choice

          Piracy:

          • monetary costs: 0-5 €/month (hardware/vpn)
          • opportunity costs: keep up to date with existing aggregator sites, take protective measures against identification, be wary of malware, limited scope of languages and subtitles, varying quality

          Current streaming services:

          • monetary costs: 100 €/month or more, if you cover most services
          • opportunity cost: login to each service, look if they have the particular series/movie, be limited by region to which languages and subtitles you can use, have only certain episodes or certain seasons of a series, get a movie as a result, but actually have to pay extra for lending it…

          People choose whether to pay monetary or opportunity costs. For a broke student priacy might still be the way to go, because they have time but not money. For most people a convenient streaming service will be the way to go though, because not having to worry about everything around and just finding your movie/series in 30 seconds, after you put dinner in the plates is the preferred option.

          The current situation combines high monetary costs with high opportunity costs, so that piracy becomes attractive to many people, who would be happy to pay for a streaming service, that actually covers everything.

          So i think “almost always” is perfectly applicable. Also keep in mind, that the offer of pirated stuff is directly related to the demand. if the demand reduces, so will the offer, which in this case would make piracy even less convenient. Of course the pricing matters, and if the one streaming service would cost say 50 €/month, more people would pirate again. But the dominant factor first is the service quality.

          • BolexForSoup
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            He made that statement when streaming barely existed. People were still primarily buying DVDs. That was the late 2000’s when it was only Netflix, maybe Hulu was just starting, and game streaming was barely a concept.

        • @[email protected]
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          361 year ago

          No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.

          • BolexForSoup
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            You’re gonna have to put in some work to convince me he used “service“ to also say “too expensive” when he said that. Hell GAAS as a concept didn’t even exist when he said that.

        • neo (he/him)
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          11 year ago

          No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.

          People who pirate because they don’t want to pay will never, ever pay. Not worth considering them to be honest.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          If that’s true on its face, then you’re not losing any money either way since they are never going to pay regardless even if you try to force them to.

          Meanwhile, you can absolutely scare away what could have been a paying customer by offering dogshit service.

          • BolexForSoup
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            11 year ago

            That’s never been an assumption you can make.

            If you hand me a $10 version of a thing or a $5 option of the exact same thing, I’m taking the $5. Free is no different. Especially when they can do it from the comfort of their home and not drive to a mall to buy the CD or whatever. Remember what year it was when this all started man.

            • @[email protected]
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              Remember what year it was when this all started man.

              1903 when Edison v. Lubin was filed?

              • BolexForSoup
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                11 year ago

                If you’re going to be a smartass then I have no desire to continue this conversation. I am talking about when piracy became mainstream via napster because it became easy for people to get free music.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          Actually not very true in regards to gaming at least, a study found a decently wide majority of game pirates end up buying the game. Alot of em just either use it as a demo or to bypass the copy protection garbage that fucks up the game they want to pay for.

          • BolexForSoup
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            There is no way they could possibly know the percentage of Pirates to do that. Just because it occurs doesn’t mean there aren’t countless people who do it for free things. It’s also important to remember that those claims come from advocates, so you need to take it with a ton of caveats/pinches of salt. They have a pretty strong incentive to make that case.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            For gaming, you’ve got Steam, which is pretty close to the ideal legit content delivery service. You don’t even necessarily have to pirate in order to demo games if you’re comfortable paying up front and making a decision within 2 hours.

            Nothing similar exists or has existed for TV/Movies. Netflix was pretty good for a while, but you’ve never had the option to download the content to your own hard drive. Now you’re not even allowed to log in to your account on as many devices as you want.

            Give me a service that’s a free storefront where I can pay a one-time fee for content that I’m actually interested in and download it to my hard drive as many times in as many places as I care to. Bonus points if I can stream to other devices that I’m logged in to and lend my purchases to my friends & family like I can with Steam. I don’t care if there’s DRM in the form of me having to log in to actually use the content if I can use it the way I want.

    • Howdy
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      81 year ago

      Got two. Not doing anymore. Ive had up to 4 or 5 and still couldn’t find what I wanted.

    • @[email protected]
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      201 year ago

      For the record, you can use justwatch.com and it will tell you exactly where you can watch it, and which seasons. But I’m still not paying for multiple subscriptions.

      • trashcan
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        61 year ago

        Stremio also has a default addon with this info

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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        61 year ago

        I saw this on someone’s phone and was wondering what it was, seems neat tbh but I already own a ship 🏴‍☠️

    • anar
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      81 year ago

      I am actually paying for a piracy service : )

    • @[email protected]
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      531 year ago

      Im willing to pay for two. It used to be netflix and prime, then hulu, paramount plus, disney…

      Now its down to one- Proton VPN 🏴‍☠️

        • @[email protected]
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          The best public option is Proton imo. With paid subscriptions you even get access to Secure Core servers where Proton runs their own data centers instead of hiring 3rd-parties like NordVPN, etc.

          Case-point: Nord has been hacked before bc of third-party data centers. Proton has no breaches so far and does regular security audits, has plenty of servers outside the 14 Eyes Alliance, and actively fund privacy focused projects.

          Mullvad is a close second bc of their anonymous payments.

          It really depends on the quantity and sensitivity of the content I’d say.

          But Proton has replaced everything I used Google for (Drive/Email). Proton will work for a good 90% of everyone most likely.

    • @[email protected]
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      281 year ago

      I was fine with paying for Netflix. Then they started pulling shit off for their own services and I quit when there was nothing but the lame Netflix originals and some old shit I don’t watch anymore. One of the things that put me over the edge was when they would do things like put a sequel up but not the original.

      How the fuck do you expect me to just jump into The Two Towers and not expect me to want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring first?! Oh you think I’m going to go buy/rent the first movie 😂 that’s cute.

      No, I’ll just go back to pirating. Much more convenient to be able to say, watch an episode of The Office and then switch to a Marvel movie from Disney+ and then a Marvel show from Netflix without paying a dime to 3 different subscriptions and being inconvenienced to have to close and open a whole new fucking app.

      Now I just spend money for a VPN each month. Less than what it costs for a single of any of those other subscriptions too and I can choose my quality and version and not worry about it getting removed tomorrow!

      • deweydecibel
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        81 year ago

        How the fuck do you expect me to just jump into The Two Towers and not expect me to want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring first?! Oh you think I’m going to go buy/rent the first movie 😂 that’s cute.

        How do people still not grasp that Netflix can’t just buy whatever they want to stream? Licenses are often being held by other services at the time. They also have no control over if a show gets pulled or not. I still see people complaining that Netflix “got rid” of the Office.

        Like, I have no love for Netflix or any streaming service at this point, but at least shit on them for things that are actually in their control.

        And frankly, this is how HBO, Showtime, Stars, etc have operated like this for decades before Netflix came along. It’s so weird people think “shows/movies being pulled because the license deal expired” is something unique to Netflix.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          Music industry seemed to figure it out pretty well. Except for a few rare case outliers, it doesn’t matter if I’m using Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon music, etc. Sure they all have different features, but I can blast Taylor Swift to my heart’s content and never leave one app

        • @[email protected]
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          221 year ago

          That rhetorical question goes out to those who hold the rights. I know Netflix had no control. I just find it weird that studios/etc. felt that was a wise decision.

    • adONis
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      141 year ago

      Hell, I even pay for a service that has all the magnet links resolved and ready to stream, no downloading involved. For 30 bucks (a year!) it’s been the most convenient way of enjoying movies & shows.

  • @[email protected]
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    321 year ago

    Paying up to 23$ a month (not including other streaming services) to watch maybe 5% of the shows and movies I’m interested in just didn’t seem like a good deal after a while.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        And for those that are able to keep to just one subscription, switching to another when they’ve finished watching whatever show it is that said service had, they aren’t safe either.

        One of the next steps that these corporations are going to take is to add fees for dropping their services, with year long contracts.

        They don’t want competition, so they will try to force you to stay.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        LOL if it wasn’t on the official website I’d have assumed it was a joke.

        Would you:

        1. Subscribe to Netflix for watching the first season
        2. Then subscribe to prime video and then subscribe again to a specific channel to watch season 2
        3. Cancel that useless extra subscription to the prime video optional paid channel to watch seasons 3-9
        4. Subscribe again to that channel to watch seasons 10-16
        5. Subscribe to Hulu to watch seasons 17-19
        6. Subscribe to the Roku channel to watch seasons 20-22
        7. Hope that they don’t alter the licensing deals during your view or you gonna subscribe to something else

        Or… Just click on “get all missing episodes” on sonarr?

    • Pika
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      41 year ago

      I know a lot of people who are sailing the Seas until the streaming Market crashes. There’s way too many businesses trying to do the same exact thing which has limited the media selection available without paying multiple $12 a month subscriptions. Eventually they will either fold or merge together again

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        Ironically this is a double edged sword. If they merge, expect prices to rise. Won’t be long before $100/mo is expected and accepted.

    • @[email protected]
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      121 year ago

      I get pissed at my family for being traditional hoarders but I somewhat inherited that as a data hoarder. The amount of stuff I have pirated over the years and not actually used or watched is hilarious.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          Probably around 30tb but all in, but drives being from 400gb to 8 tb of varying age and make. Most are just shelved and in the off chance I want something from them they get hot swapped in the dock thing

        • @[email protected]
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          31 year ago

          I have about 10TB of stuff. Around 600 movies and not quite 200 TV series. I’m planning on leaving societies embrace and being away from it all in a couple of weeks and have been hoarding stuff to keep me entertained, if needed. I’m not the one you asked, but here you go. I don’t really feel like I have a ton of stuff, from a datahoarder perspective, but probably a little more than the average torrent monster.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              Kind of all over the place, but mostly 1080 or so. Here’s a little data:

              I have 48 movies that are 1.7G, 43 that are 1.5G, and so on.

              # of movies   SIZE
                   48 1.7G
                   43 1.5G
                   33 1.9G
                   31 2.2G
                   31 2.0G
                   30 1.6G
                   27 1.8G
                   25 1.4G
                   21 2.1G
                   19 2.5G
                   16 1.3G
                   14 2.6G
                   14 2.3G
                   12 2.4G
                   10 2.8G
                    9 3.0G
                    9 1.1G
                    8 4.1G
                   ...
              
      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        Same here. But on the bright side, at least data hoarding doesn’t take up a ton of physical space.

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Just upgraded my truenas and plex to 8tb drives. 1600+ movies, 60+ TV series, 40,000 songs. I seed as much as I can, have uploaded over 5TB this month alone. Come get some.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        I haven’t used Torrents in years, since subscribing to Netflix. But I’m fed up with needing to pay 5+ different subscriptions to get coverage across shows, so perhaps time to think about other options. What are some of the best torrent sites today,?

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          I use OnTheSpot downloader to grab albums from spotify at 320kbps - https://github.com/casualsnek/onthespot

          Use Soulseek (nicotine+) to grab more obscure stuff. Can get everything on there, just sometimes slower and not as reliable as a torrent.

          I use these sites for movies, in order of convenience:

          https://ytssss.jamsbase.com/ (basically just YTS)

          https://www.magnetdl.com/ (search sucks, but if you get used to it, it has huge libraries of TV series)

          https://en.torrentgalaxy-official.site/

          https://rargb.to/

          https://1337x.to/home/

          https://psa.wf/ (PSA RIPS)

          I don’t really download apps anymore, so malware really isn’t an issue, but make sure you’re using UBlockOrigin plugin and a VPN like TorGuard

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            Could try the *arr software. Sonarr is tv, radarr is movies and lidarr is music. You can use jackett to act as an indexer and it will automatically grab the shows.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 year ago

              yeah, i’ve thought about it. but it’s cathartic to find music/movies, download and organize them, choose artwork in Plex, things like that. I’ve got them all organized in media monkey.

            • @[email protected]
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              51 year ago

              Could try the *arr software.

              Haha, do you ever feel like the last one to get the joke? I do sometimes.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                My friends and I have been joking too much about this naming scheme without even mentioning what appears to be the intentional meaning… I feel rather dumb.

              • @[email protected]
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                31 year ago

                I’ve used them for a very long time, maybe a decade if they have been around that long, could be a bit less. I’ve seen them referred to as the *arr suite/software many times. I didn’t know there was a joke to get until you pointed it out, I’m still facepalming.

                So you are not the last one.

                In my defence, I’m not a native speaker, but still…

            • @[email protected]
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              oh god, the difference between some of my old rips at 128 and 320 is damn near night and day. i though the song just sucked, but the quality was just shit. also found a track that got corrupt, but still played, but at 1/10th the speed, it was about 30 minutes long, but normally only 3 lol. just stretched the fuck out of it.

          • chillsmeit
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            11 year ago

            Regarding music, there’s also the slavart discord and their bot which allows you to download music from different streaming services in lossless formats