Comment by hbn
5 hours ago
Every once in a while I'll try to watch something through the Intended Method™ and it always proves itself to be a worse experience.
Most recent example - I was watching Malcolm in the Middle on Disney+ with my girlfriend, and we found that there are entire audio tracks missing in multiple episodes. Usually some kind of ADR, like someone talking off camera. There's an episode where Reese rents an apartment and there's a recurring bit of him talking to his depressed neighbour through the wall. But you'd have no idea because they somehow completely deleted the neighbour's dialogue from the audio, so it's just Reese having a one-sided conversation with a wall. We saw multiple episodes where something like this happened, and when I looked online there were reports of it dating back years.
Never had an issue like that with torrenting because the people providing it care about the quality, metadata, etc. No one providing official routes to this media seems to care. You have AI-upscaled "4k" movies where the actors don't even look like themselves and there are hallucinated artifacts and things that aren't there. Images cropped to widescreen, like the infamous Duff Beer joke being out of frame in The Simpsons. TV series with edits or entire episodes removed because they were deemed too offensive. Movies and shows randomly appearing and disappearing so you have to endlessly manage subscriptions and switch between different apps with better or worse players just to watch a single series. Just a nightmare.
Ultimately history has proven that copyright owners can't be trusted to preserve their own IP and preservation should be entirely legal.
Not to go off on a complete tangent, but...
>... like the infamous Duff Beer joke being out of frame in The Simpsons.
My collection of The Simpsons, seasons 1-13, are all TV rips from waaaaayyyyy back in the 00's. Sure, it's not super high-quality, but at least they don't look like the ugly remasters (on some of the ones I've tried watching on Disney+, they look like someone's drawn over the old cells), the aspect ratio is the original so nothing's missing and, as a personal bonus, they've got the old Q13 logo in the bottom (I grew up in western WA). They still look great on my newer TV.
Edit: Oh, and the Michael Jackson episode never suddenly disappeared from my library.
To me it is the difference between art and product.
A show like The Simpsons is both. The viewers care about the art, and we tolerate the product to get it. The creators are creating art, compromising with the corporation and broadcaster to make it enough of a product. But the corp/broadcaster only care about the product. The art is the chocolate around the advertising pill.
So when the product-minded people control preservation and resharing of the product, the art always gets compromised. Jokes are clipped. Audio is broken. Episodes are pulled. For all the wrong reasons.
Same with Beavis and Butthead with all its music videos, it seems like it cant be properly released with alm that intact so its up to King Turd to do the dirty work and make it avaikable to all
The terminology is art vs content. Anybody talking about "content", by definition, do not actually care about what that content is, just that it is contained into something they charge for.
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This is the key, streaming content providers delete and edit things to match the feeling of society at the moment or perceived societal pressures. Really not how history should work imho
For a while I was really happy because it sounded like the owners of the Intended Method™ had finally realized how much damage to their bottom line their terrible UX was having, so I fondly remembered TPB but moved over to the official platforms... then we started getting some hulu exclusives (not available in Canada) and the H(o)BOGo, and then a few more platform fragmentations... I have enough going on that I can't currently be bothered switching over to TPB but I ended up culling my streaming down to just Dropout, Nebula, severely modified Youtube and some patreons I care about.
I am happy to speak with my wallet and tell the services to get lost and I'd be heading back to TPB if I were still in a phase of my life where discussing the latest Battlestar Galactica, Lost or Game of Thrones was a central focus of my socialization - as it is though, the cost to follow the Intended Method™ is simply too expensive in money, discovery time, and platform bugs for me to give a damn.
Maybe they'll learn their lesson again and sanity will reign - but the current media pricing is too expensive (in a myriad of ways) for the value it's providing.
A recent experience I had was :
1. buy movie on iTunes 2. have kids that can't do long distance drives 3. obtain dvd players for car 4. realized I can't play films that I "bought" on DVD players
It feels like the "Buy" button on iTunes/Apple TV is misleading, and should be renamed to "License to watch on Apple devices". Obvious in hindsight, but this type of DRM severely restricts use cases.
Netflix has the same problem. Downloaded some TV shows for my daughter to watch while we were travelling. Worked fine on the plane, arrived to the hotel, connected to WiFi "This content is not available in your location". Ok, disconnect, don't need wifi. Same message, "This content is not available in your location".
I've had movies I've "bought" disappear from the Apple account. I guess they lost the license and I'm supposed to download all purchases and manually copy between devices. I contacted Apple and they offered a free rental as compensation. "Buy" doesn't mean the same on these streaming platforms, its just a longer-term rental.
It says right in the TOS that it's licensed, not sold. Then the button says "Buy". It's intentionally misleading and contradictory.
Whaaat... oh wow that's bleak. I guess Apple do whatever they want.
While I agree with you in spirit... were you expecting that you could... burn the film to a DVD or something?
Of course buying a movie on itunes means you can only watch it on capable devices. You can't play a youtube video on a VHS player either.
While I agree it seems obvious you can’t do that, based on how these platforms have limited things for a long time… but that really should be something you can do.
Why can’t I get the file and put it on another device? Why can’t I burn it to a dvd? It makes sense that Apple aren’t required to make more software for random devices, but why can’t I have the file and do what I want with it?
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Not at all (hence saying "obvious in hindsight"). Simply pointing out that, at the time, my purchasing decision wasn't influenced by how many use cases it would restrict.
Also, IIRC, there was a period where you could burn Audio CDs from music that you purchased on iTunes.
edit: turns out music purchased on iTunes is DRM-free!
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Actually there were some DVD players back in the day that could play digital files burned to DVD or CD, and it was totally possible to burn DVDs that could play normally on most players from video files.
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buying a video game at Walmart means you're only able to play it there, it's so obvious:)
Of course b̵u̵y̵i̵n̵g̵ licensing a movie on itunes...
Are you trying to listen in Dolby surround on a stereo setup? Disney+ defaults to surround sound and you’ll lose some audio channels if your speakers are stereo
Channel issues are like 90% of issues like this, but it's not always user error. Often a cheap production will just ship the front left + right channels as the stereo mix, instead of down mixing all the left + center channels into the stereo left etc. This is endemic in back catalogs on streaming providers where the catalog is a bulk assets that nobody reviews and is passed around between companies that don't care about the quality they deliver to each other.
That seems like a terrible default, aren't most people listening in stereo at best?
RAM is too expensive to waste on "streaming"
I have always prefered downloading
On missing audio: usually I notice this when I watch with subtitles at night and then end up rewatching during the day with audio at much higher volume… And the thing that is said to be said is just… Not there?
The fact that they refuse to balance audio for standard stereo setups is a whole other nightmare.
Lately whenever I watch movies my remote stays in my hand so I can boost the volume during dialogue and turn it down during loud action scenes. I've had two different soundbars, one of them quite expensive, and it's an issue on both.
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The Mad Men AI upscale was such trash. You could see cameras, crew, equipment, etc. total mess that showed no care for the material.
I'm in China and often get blocked by Netflix or Prime Video for using a VPN... Torrents are often the only thing that works.
This is the first year I have cancelled all my subs. Used to be a TPB regular around the time it took off. Years later I tried to go legit and have had subs with all the major streamers (netflix, disney, amazon etc) But the way you get squeezed year on year for what was standard before e.g. 4K or no ads to be gradually offered worse terms and degraded output quality just bites after a while. I can't justify spending €20-30 per month on what isn't the best quality available for the content on offer.
Plus I've found "legit" to be a moving goal post. One day a show is on one platform, the next it's on another, or it becomes unavailable except for [insert random foreign country here]. Even HD is a ripoff sometimes when half the episode comes in all compressed looking. They'll blame my bandwidth except I have no problem streaming an episode without adaptive compression over Bittorrent.
People can say what they want about piracy, but it continues to be what I consider a necessity against culturally important media being further tainted by rent seekers looking to make another buck in any way they can.
i feel like this is an important piece. even if you want to do the "right thing", is it really supporting these platforms that horse-trade content in huge multi-billion dollar deals just so they can increase their userbase with the intent to jam more ads down their throat? have any of these platforms _improved_ the experience for the average creator? they're poison, it almost makes it feel more righteous to steal.
Yeah, I was a pirate as a kid. I said “give me a place where I can pay to have legal access to everything and I will.”
Then Netflix came along and introduced streaming. I was happy. It began to fragment a bit, I could live with that.
Now it’s 10 different platforms with rotating content, I need a 3rd party website to know where and when to watch a particular thing, it’s a mess.
Not only that, unlike with cable they make it difficult to record the content they’re serving me so I can watch later myself.
I am now a pirate again.
Yeah all the streaming services have gotten so bad and they are adding ads and they are lowering quality and they are getting too expensive. Arghgg I say
I will add to the list that for some weird reason in my country original language is not always available for all movies, and the subtitle experience in genenal is lacking.
I am in the french-speaking part of Canada.
In some Netflix shows, they say words in the english audio that are translated in French with different words with a similar meaning, and with english close-caption words that are also different from the original english audio.
Quite amazing.
French part of Switzerland. Quite a few shows and movies, ie anime but also others, have original audio track (so lets say japanese for anime) and only german subs. You can probably count number of folks on your fingers and toes who would even be able, let alone willing to watch this in such combination from this region of meagre 2.2 million folks but quite rich on average.
So torrents it is, its legal here, lightning speed, always superb quality (one can choose any movie in range between 1GB and 50 GB for 1080p and all is very good looking), get it in a minute, and watch.
I don't blame Netflix generally (well for those german subs I definitely do, I know they have english ones just couldn't be bothered and I have hard time believing they have region issue with english subs) but license owners, they are the ultimate fuckers messing with content holders/resellers/renters, and consequently us users.
Also, torrents are so convenient, I won't be paying some service just to see a single show a year. I just won't even for a month and shuffle things like idiot, thats a bad proposition.
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> Most recent example - I was watching Malcolm in the Middle on Disney+ with my girlfriend, and we found that there are entire audio tracks missing in multiple episodes.
The licenses for the song tracks have also expired; so they removed these too. The main noticeable difference is being the intro sequence originally sung by There Might be Giants which has been replaced with a less-impressive cover that ruins the vibe.
Why can't these tracks just forever live with the series? I went and bought the DVD box-set just because of such. A £2 purchase that I than ripped to my NAS.
I've not watched the latest remake because I don't want to ruin the original vibe of such a great show.
Real acting, real filming; the last of it's kind.
> That's because the license for the tracks expired
They're talking about pieces of dialogue in the show, not licensed music.
If they're shouting at neighbours through a wall I'd be willing to bet that the dialogue is happening because of loud copyrighted music being played at the same time. They probably just did some automated music detection and cut the whole audio track in those sections.
I know. And I am commenting on that the licensed music within the series has been replaced due to expired licensing for which that itself is ridiculous.
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I have never seen an episode that had a cover of the theme song.
Maybe that was a thing with the new reboot? I don't know because I heard nothing that made me want to watch it.
This is a good point. Another problem with streaming services, specifically for music streaming services, is that they can change the track of a previously released album with no user choice to hear the original. Example: Track 4 of Elephunk by the Black Eyed Peas. It was universally replaced with the “clean” version of the song. I’m not a fan of rewriting history.
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Disney+ is truly unmitigated dogshit. It constantly chokes and stutters, seems to cause my NVIDIA Sheild to peg its CPU and/or page to disk, or something, to the point where it becomes unresponsive for multiple seconds at a time. I genuinely cannot understand how you could so utterly bungle software that's been a solved problem for over a decade.
> Never had an issue like that with torrenting because the people providing it care about the quality, metadata, etc.
The thing with free is you will tend to be less demanding & most certainly more forgiving even if not less resentful.
One reason why finding market fit for products built for free consumers is harder than for paid. The ones paying you will want their problems solved pronto, and if you're diligent enough, you'll end up building a product that solves those same "hair on the fire" problems for many others with hopefully deeper pockets.
It doesn't seem you understood we talk about movies and tv shows, not some customer app solving... problems?
Puzzling comment overall, will refrain from usual tropes and assume in good faith its 'lost in translation'.
> you have to endlessly manage subscriptions and switch between different apps with better or worse players just to watch a single series.
Obligatory classic joke:
Have you seen the new show? It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebee. It's on Poodee with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it's on Gumpy. It's a Pheebo original. It's on Poob. You can watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log onto Poob right now. Go to Poob. Dive into Poob. You can Poob it. It's on Poob. Poob has it for you. Poob has it for you.
> Never had an issue like that with torrenting because the people providing it care about the quality, metadata
A friend once pointed that out. He pays a lot and gets low quality. That was what changed his mind. That was also almost twenty years ago.
Most people changed. US corporations trying to raid people in foreign countries is, in my opinion, no longer acceptable at all. The swedish government should be ashamed for acting as US proxies here (nowadays with Trump this is more clear, but even 20 years ago or 25 years ago, it should have been a no-brainer).
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> But you'd have no idea because they somehow completely deleted the neighbour's dialogue from the audio
This sounds pretty unlikely. It's more likely that there's an issue with your surround system, and that audio "should" be coming from your rear speakers but for some reason it's not.
It wasn't a surround sound system, we were watching on the built-in app on a Fire TV from the TV's speakers.
Also just Google "malcolm in the middle missing audio" and you'll find a ton of people with the issue
https://www.reddit.com/r/malcolminthemiddle/comments/1kggg7d...
This also reminded me of another issue - the show was filmed to be broadcast in 4:3 but apparently someone along the line decided 16:9 is inherently better, so they put out the show in widescreen and now there's a ton of shots where you can see things you're not supposed to see. Someone else standing in for an actor that wasn't there when they filmed, or a toy doll in place of a real baby because they filmed on a day the baby actor wasn't there.
Yup. That’s your issue. Disney+ outputting Dolby 5.1 and your speakers are stereo.
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