Since you can easily copy any DRM'd material merely by "playing" it, this seems foolish.
Audio can be intercepted at any point after decryption. You're not bypassing any DRM in doing so. Audio DRM is like having every door in your house having a lock, but only using 1 key and keeping that key on a hook outside your front door.
For video, the process is similar although a little more technically challenged thanks to the anti-consumer HDCP implementation. You can still film the screen directly if you really wanted to, and given the number of cinema copies done this way, this seems acceptable to some. However, with various levels of technical know how (or just a "bad" splitter) you get access to the direct bitstream and can do what you want. This is all without violating any DMCA, since all the DRM pieces are all working as they're supposed to.
Basically, all that happened with the DMCA is that they made it inconvenient for law-abiding people to legally copy video and audio works like they were able to do ever since the 1976 (decided in 1984) Sony Betamax case, and perhaps the last time Sony ever did anything (unintentionally) pro-consumer. But do not ever confuse the *AA statements with what you actually can and are allowed to do.
According to the Constitution, copyright law set terms for who can distribute copies. There is no other declaration. A private individual can make a million copies of any copyrighted work and stuff them in their parent's basement. This is not illegal. Taking one of those copies and giving it to someone else, however, is against the law. Now the *AAs have worked extremely hard to make you believe that copying itself is illegal, and even got circumvention of DRM enshrined into law with criminal punishments. This is why downloaders don't actually get prosecuted in the US. Wait you say, there's.... That's incorrect, every single one of those folks were sharing their content, and they were actually prosecuted for sharing, not merely downloading.
Ferraris can be stamped out; Most of the expense is setting up the factory, after that the real cost, once you ignore licensing fees, is so low it would boggle the mind.
When the Thunderbolt monitor was announced, I bought the miniDV one on sale for about what other 2K monitors were selling for at the time. I haven't regretted the purchase since. I wouldn't have bought one in the last 3 years at least, however, since 2K prices dropped far below the Apple Cinema Displays, and 4K monitors could actually be gotten for roughly the same price, or less today.
I'm sure there are bad apples at the IRS like anywhere else. But, like you, when I had an issue with them, it was a quick call, some relatively simple paperwork, and all was well with them. The entity that had actually caused the problem was a bigger issue to sort out by comparison. Even then, it wasn't overly difficult, just more involved. As long as you're legal and not pushing limits deep into the grey the IRS generally doesn't seem to bother you.
I once had a "free" account that idled for 8 months before I closed it. The bank in question at some point started charging fees on this account. When I pointed out that the account was "free", at first they said the terms had changed. Then they agreed they couldn't change those terms, but the fees were proper. Then they stated the fees were from too far back, and I had closed the account. By now, we're pretty far up the management ladder.
The current person stated "It's too late, you can't get your money". I said fine, I'll just go online, state you stole my money, and file with the AG (the bank's activity was in fact illegal).
His response "Are you threatening to blackmail us?".
I laughed, I said no, this is statement of what's going to happen. I'm done dealing with you. I either get my money, or you stole it. I'm giving you until the end of the week before I go to the AG.
I got a call the next day that they'd reconsidered the "situation" around my account and fees and were wrong and could I please come collect my money.
I went to pick up my money and deal with some paperwork, and there were at least 4 other customers closing accounts. Apparently I was not the only unsatisfied customer. Not long after, that bank was acquired by another. I won't do business with that one either.
My media management is minimal at this point. In the time it takes to spin up a BD disk in a player, I'm already migrating it to my HTPC, sans all the forced advertisements etc. And then I don't think about it while I continue doing whatever I was doing.
I do use their new gateway router, it seems fine performance wise. I routinely pass multiple large files with better than 5MB/s average speeds the holdup is the other end, most are on slower pipes than me or have slow spinning target disks. Essentially, for streaming to replace my video library, I require at least the same picture quality, full surround plus Dolby Atmos / DTS-X when those are available for a movie, and I'd like them available all the time when I wish to see them. Streaming just isn't there and won't be, as long as the current distribution deals continue. It's not financially feasible for anyone but the content rights holders to offer up that type of service. There's a reason Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc are creating their own content. The more of that you watch, the better financially off those services are because they're not paying fees for other shows.
Negative? Not at all. If you're driving a solid late model Toyota, Lexus, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, whatever, and someone says "here is a brand new Yugo, you should drive it and love it because I think it's great" I would bet you wouldn't. I have numerous issues with Netflix's service, and yes I used to be a subscriber, as well as Hulu, Vudu and a couple of others. I've tried them, they didn't live up to the hype. The picture quality is lacking, the audio is unquestionably inferior, and there are other issues as well, ranging from lack of sufficient buffering to deal with latency when their servers get loaded to degraded streams to the selection of content to the viewing experience itself.
Now, if you want to argue that the picture/audio is as good as cable, and possibly some of the IPTV content, you would have a point. But in no way does it come anywhere near BD quality or even OTA. It's as crappy a stream as they can make it and have it be accepted as great by the 80%. OK, maybe 85%. There's a reason people still buy movies to own for their own library or rent, and at least for some it's because watching it in other ways just isn't a pleasure.
And 4K doesn't do a thing for me yet, I'm waiting to see a properly calibrated OLED 4K HDR system before deciding on whether I'll buy one to replace my plasma. Since the plasma's still fine, there's no reason to replace it unless I gain something out of it. Just more pixels on screen isn't going to win me over. Since we're having this discussion, you'd probably hate my TV, for not being bright enough and having colors "pop" like you see in the stores, and the people will look "soft" because they're not in a super bright overly contrasted cartoon of a picture. Visit the AVSForums and ask whether you should keep your ZT60 in Vivid mode. You'll get some interesting responses. No offense meant, just stating that we appear to have entirely different expectations for our movie watching experiences. Our definitions of quality as related to video and audio are also likely vastly different.
Not in practice, no. This might be why you're having problems believing that modern streaming is any good.
No, I base my views on actual comparisons that I've done personally, on multiple sets I own. HD Streaming isn't any good. It's better than SD streaming as there is inherently more detail on screen, but compared to 1080p BD quality with x-HD sound, streaming is just a pale shade of what you could be experiencing.
I'm not going to argue that it's Blu-ray quality: when streaming, there's obviously the risk that your available bandwidth will drop and force the video to pause (Vudu) or drop to a lower quality (Amazon), but I would argue that, when I've watched videos without temporary bandwidth problems on, for example, Vudu (which doesn't implement dynamic bandwidth/streaming quality), the quality is good enough that 99% of people will never be able to tell the difference. It's a shame the Roku doesn't contain a hard disk, as it would be nice to tell the system what movie you want to watch, go off and make something to eat, come back, and watch it, knowing there's no risk of temporary bandwidth issues causing problems.
And there's the rub, if I'm going to watch something, I'd prefer to watch it in its best form, not some pale shade of itself. And you're probably right, 99% of those happy with streaming will never be able to tell the difference. It likely has to do with their eyesight. (This is not a slam, just an observation of nature) There are, for instance, quite a few people that were perfectly happy with 60Hz CRT monitors back in the days that those were in use. For me, seeing the scan line going across the screen was torture. It's why I always paid more for the higher scan rate monitors. I found that 76Hz was the minimum for me. Others were happy with 70 or 72Hz. Essentially, what that means is some people are far more sensitive to screen timing effects, and why LED ghosting / motion blur bothers some of us so much we can't watch those sets at all. My "crappy" LED is a 240Hz set, and I can still see it ghosting on certain material when I have it on. I own it because I missed the Kuros when my old set died and good plasmas were temporarily unavailable.
Ie - The way DVB/IPTV works it will usually result in a 10Mbit stream to be much lower quality than a stream encoded for unicast-delivery.
Good general description of IPTV. FYI: AT&T's streams are no more than 7Mbps, at least as of last year. OTA streams for the same stations range between 9 and 15 Mbps. They have visibly better PQ, even on my crappy secondary LED set.
It was the first thing that popped up on google, and was more informative than Netflix.
Now, here's some interesting things about video compression. MPEG4 is about 4 times better than MPEG2 for a similar quality picture. If you think what you watch is different based on whether it's streamed or comes from a file... well, as I say below in another response to you, there's nothing I can say that will convince you of what you're missing.
Finally - it's not a bandwidth thing. I exceed all Netflix's requirements by far with low latency to boot. My problem isn't with bandwidth, but the quality of the streams themselves. It's like listening to FM radio, many will be ok with the quality because they don't know any better.
Ok, so you are a snowflake, and actually listen to tinny stereo. I have 7.2.4. The audio stream alone requires the full streaming bandwidth of Netflix. I'm not sure anything I say can convince you of what you're missing.
I'm fully hardwired and running on Gb. There's no issues with my players, they stream my much higher bitrate digital library just fine. You cannot squeeze better quality video out of something that's highly compressed. You have the option of dropping detail, lines, or (partial) frames. The latter I suspect causes the stuttering I object to, it's almost like watching interlaced video with small rapid movements blurring on screen.
You do realize that's lower than AT&T and FIOS HD bitrates and about equal to TW, none of which are claimed to have even good picture quality? 5800kbps is half of a DVDs bitrate and below most of the audio bitrates I use for my digital library. Then again, you're probably watching this on a phone or tablet in mono. Their "new improved" compression tech not withstanding, the video and sound quality of these streams is noticeably lower than what I generally watch. There's a reason I have OTA DVRs working (better than double that bitrate)
The first run theater content is generally only available on disc though. It seems antiquated, but it works.
How cute. Until streaming comes anywhere near BD quality, I will continue with discs. I would rather not watch blocky blurred stuttering video with crappy audio.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China.
Seafile GmbH
That's a German company, run out of Germany, which is evident even from a light skimming of TFS. Paypal has no need of knowing anything about the hosting side of things.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you can easily copy any DRM'd material merely by "playing" it, this seems foolish.
Audio can be intercepted at any point after decryption. You're not bypassing any DRM in doing so. Audio DRM is like having every door in your house having a lock, but only using 1 key and keeping that key on a hook outside your front door.
For video, the process is similar although a little more technically challenged thanks to the anti-consumer HDCP implementation. You can still film the screen directly if you really wanted to, and given the number of cinema copies done this way, this seems acceptable to some. However, with various levels of technical know how (or just a "bad" splitter) you get access to the direct bitstream and can do what you want. This is all without violating any DMCA, since all the DRM pieces are all working as they're supposed to.
Basically, all that happened with the DMCA is that they made it inconvenient for law-abiding people to legally copy video and audio works like they were able to do ever since the 1976 (decided in 1984) Sony Betamax case, and perhaps the last time Sony ever did anything (unintentionally) pro-consumer. But do not ever confuse the *AA statements with what you actually can and are allowed to do.
According to the Constitution, copyright law set terms for who can distribute copies. There is no other declaration. A private individual can make a million copies of any copyrighted work and stuff them in their parent's basement. This is not illegal. Taking one of those copies and giving it to someone else, however, is against the law. Now the *AAs have worked extremely hard to make you believe that copying itself is illegal, and even got circumvention of DRM enshrined into law with criminal punishments. This is why downloaders don't actually get prosecuted in the US. Wait you say, there's.... That's incorrect, every single one of those folks were sharing their content, and they were actually prosecuted for sharing, not merely downloading.
If you can see it or hear it, it can be copied. Always.
Ferraris can be stamped out; Most of the expense is setting up the factory, after that the real cost, once you ignore licensing fees, is so low it would boggle the mind.
FTFY
When the Thunderbolt monitor was announced, I bought the miniDV one on sale for about what other 2K monitors were selling for at the time. I haven't regretted the purchase since. I wouldn't have bought one in the last 3 years at least, however, since 2K prices dropped far below the Apple Cinema Displays, and 4K monitors could actually be gotten for roughly the same price, or less today.
I'm sure there are bad apples at the IRS like anywhere else. But, like you, when I had an issue with them, it was a quick call, some relatively simple paperwork, and all was well with them. The entity that had actually caused the problem was a bigger issue to sort out by comparison. Even then, it wasn't overly difficult, just more involved. As long as you're legal and not pushing limits deep into the grey the IRS generally doesn't seem to bother you.
I once had a "free" account that idled for 8 months before I closed it. The bank in question at some point started charging fees on this account. When I pointed out that the account was "free", at first they said the terms had changed. Then they agreed they couldn't change those terms, but the fees were proper. Then they stated the fees were from too far back, and I had closed the account. By now, we're pretty far up the management ladder.
The current person stated "It's too late, you can't get your money". I said fine, I'll just go online, state you stole my money, and file with the AG (the bank's activity was in fact illegal).
His response "Are you threatening to blackmail us?".
I laughed, I said no, this is statement of what's going to happen. I'm done dealing with you. I either get my money, or you stole it. I'm giving you until the end of the week before I go to the AG.
I got a call the next day that they'd reconsidered the "situation" around my account and fees and were wrong and could I please come collect my money.
I went to pick up my money and deal with some paperwork, and there were at least 4 other customers closing accounts. Apparently I was not the only unsatisfied customer. Not long after, that bank was acquired by another. I won't do business with that one either.
Stupid AC. There is no god. And no Santa or Easter Bunny either. You were lied to.
There is no AC either...
My media management is minimal at this point. In the time it takes to spin up a BD disk in a player, I'm already migrating it to my HTPC, sans all the forced advertisements etc. And then I don't think about it while I continue doing whatever I was doing.
My connection is fine, the streams are shitty. When you smash the tomato to slide it under the door, you can't get a tomato out the other side.
No - internally I'm running Gb. I can only get 500/500. :(
And best of all, the authentication of the key can be done out of band.
I do use their new gateway router, it seems fine performance wise. I routinely pass multiple large files with better than 5MB/s average speeds the holdup is the other end, most are on slower pipes than me or have slow spinning target disks. Essentially, for streaming to replace my video library, I require at least the same picture quality, full surround plus Dolby Atmos / DTS-X when those are available for a movie, and I'd like them available all the time when I wish to see them. Streaming just isn't there and won't be, as long as the current distribution deals continue. It's not financially feasible for anyone but the content rights holders to offer up that type of service. There's a reason Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc are creating their own content. The more of that you watch, the better financially off those services are because they're not paying fees for other shows.
My provider is Verizon FiOS.
Negative? Not at all. If you're driving a solid late model Toyota, Lexus, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, whatever, and someone says "here is a brand new Yugo, you should drive it and love it because I think it's great" I would bet you wouldn't. I have numerous issues with Netflix's service, and yes I used to be a subscriber, as well as Hulu, Vudu and a couple of others. I've tried them, they didn't live up to the hype. The picture quality is lacking, the audio is unquestionably inferior, and there are other issues as well, ranging from lack of sufficient buffering to deal with latency when their servers get loaded to degraded streams to the selection of content to the viewing experience itself.
Now, if you want to argue that the picture/audio is as good as cable, and possibly some of the IPTV content, you would have a point. But in no way does it come anywhere near BD quality or even OTA. It's as crappy a stream as they can make it and have it be accepted as great by the 80%. OK, maybe 85%. There's a reason people still buy movies to own for their own library or rent, and at least for some it's because watching it in other ways just isn't a pleasure.
And 4K doesn't do a thing for me yet, I'm waiting to see a properly calibrated OLED 4K HDR system before deciding on whether I'll buy one to replace my plasma. Since the plasma's still fine, there's no reason to replace it unless I gain something out of it. Just more pixels on screen isn't going to win me over. Since we're having this discussion, you'd probably hate my TV, for not being bright enough and having colors "pop" like you see in the stores, and the people will look "soft" because they're not in a super bright overly contrasted cartoon of a picture. Visit the AVSForums and ask whether you should keep your ZT60 in Vivid mode. You'll get some interesting responses. No offense meant, just stating that we appear to have entirely different expectations for our movie watching experiences. Our definitions of quality as related to video and audio are also likely vastly different.
same ISP and service. :)
Not in practice, no. This might be why you're having problems believing that modern streaming is any good.
No, I base my views on actual comparisons that I've done personally, on multiple sets I own. HD Streaming isn't any good. It's better than SD streaming as there is inherently more detail on screen, but compared to 1080p BD quality with x-HD sound, streaming is just a pale shade of what you could be experiencing.
I'm not going to argue that it's Blu-ray quality: when streaming, there's obviously the risk that your available bandwidth will drop and force the video to pause (Vudu) or drop to a lower quality (Amazon), but I would argue that, when I've watched videos without temporary bandwidth problems on, for example, Vudu (which doesn't implement dynamic bandwidth/streaming quality), the quality is good enough that 99% of people will never be able to tell the difference. It's a shame the Roku doesn't contain a hard disk, as it would be nice to tell the system what movie you want to watch, go off and make something to eat, come back, and watch it, knowing there's no risk of temporary bandwidth issues causing problems.
And there's the rub, if I'm going to watch something, I'd prefer to watch it in its best form, not some pale shade of itself. And you're probably right, 99% of those happy with streaming will never be able to tell the difference. It likely has to do with their eyesight. (This is not a slam, just an observation of nature) There are, for instance, quite a few people that were perfectly happy with 60Hz CRT monitors back in the days that those were in use. For me, seeing the scan line going across the screen was torture. It's why I always paid more for the higher scan rate monitors. I found that 76Hz was the minimum for me. Others were happy with 70 or 72Hz. Essentially, what that means is some people are far more sensitive to screen timing effects, and why LED ghosting / motion blur bothers some of us so much we can't watch those sets at all. My "crappy" LED is a 240Hz set, and I can still see it ghosting on certain material when I have it on. I own it because I missed the Kuros when my old set died and good plasmas were temporarily unavailable.
Ie - The way DVB/IPTV works it will usually result in a 10Mbit stream to be much lower quality than a stream encoded for unicast-delivery.
Good general description of IPTV. FYI: AT&T's streams are no more than 7Mbps, at least as of last year. OTA streams for the same stations range between 9 and 15 Mbps. They have visibly better PQ, even on my crappy secondary LED set.
blah blah blah.
Oh, good quote: Variety.com
It was the first thing that popped up on google, and was more informative than Netflix.
Now, here's some interesting things about video compression. MPEG4 is about 4 times better than MPEG2 for a similar quality picture. If you think what you watch is different based on whether it's streamed or comes from a file... well, as I say below in another response to you, there's nothing I can say that will convince you of what you're missing.
Finally - it's not a bandwidth thing. I exceed all Netflix's requirements by far with low latency to boot. My problem isn't with bandwidth, but the quality of the streams themselves. It's like listening to FM radio, many will be ok with the quality because they don't know any better.
Ok, so you are a snowflake, and actually listen to tinny stereo. I have 7.2.4. The audio stream alone requires the full streaming bandwidth of Netflix. I'm not sure anything I say can convince you of what you're missing.
I'm fully hardwired and running on Gb. There's no issues with my players, they stream my much higher bitrate digital library just fine. You cannot squeeze better quality video out of something that's highly compressed. You have the option of dropping detail, lines, or (partial) frames. The latter I suspect causes the stuttering I object to, it's almost like watching interlaced video with small rapid movements blurring on screen.
You'd think so with the quality of streaming video.
You do realize that's lower than AT&T and FIOS HD bitrates and about equal to TW, none of which are claimed to have even good picture quality? 5800kbps is half of a DVDs bitrate and below most of the audio bitrates I use for my digital library. Then again, you're probably watching this on a phone or tablet in mono. Their "new improved" compression tech not withstanding, the video and sound quality of these streams is noticeably lower than what I generally watch. There's a reason I have OTA DVRs working (better than double that bitrate)
The first run theater content is generally only available on disc though. It seems antiquated, but it works.
How cute. Until streaming comes anywhere near BD quality, I will continue with discs. I would rather not watch blocky blurred stuttering video with crappy audio.
I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China.
Seafile GmbH
That's a German company, run out of Germany, which is evident even from a light skimming of TFS. Paypal has no need of knowing anything about the hosting side of things.