Travelling in time
There is a poll in today’s Journal.
Have you ever illegally streamed or downloaded entertainment?
The first thing to strike me was that they are asking people if they did something illegal and actually expect an honest answer. Naturally, being an upright citizen with high moral standards I selected “No. never”.
The very word “illegal” [or its derivatives] naturally raises my hackles and I take it as an open invitation. Who is that law protecting? Me? Hardly. Big business? You betcha. Anyway by my understanding, it isn’t illegal to download films and the like from the Interweb, only to upload them. So they can fuck off.
The whole ethics of the downloading lark intrigues me. When If I download a film I am not stealing it; I am making a copy. The original is still there in its virginal state. Having downloaded it, I watch my copy and then delete it. Who exactly has been harmed? No one could even be aware that a copy was made unless they happen to be monitoring my data stream.
The film industry is churning out utter crap these days. All I see are comic-book heroes, supernatural horrors or bilge about Merkan teenagers. Sky promise a “new premier every day” which is a right laugh. Some days they don’t bother at all [despite their claim] while others are foreign language, kids stuff or any of the garbage I just mentioned.
There are a few good films out there but they are very few and very far between. One I watched a couple of weeks ago was “Three Billboards” which is a rarity – funny in spots, absorbing and memorable. I would watch it again sometime in the future. Then there was “Lady Bird” which everyone was talking about here because of the Irish connection [I might add that “Billboards” has an Irish connection too!]. In my book, “Lady Bird” was exceptionally ordinary. Not one that I will remember.
One film I would recommend for anyone who has had dealings with bureaucracy is “I, Daniel Blake“. Brilliant, and I rarely say that about a film.
Now just suppose I did download any of those three, you could possibly argue that I am doing the local cinema out of business, but it’s decades since I have been to one of those places and most of them are out of business anyway. Maybe I should buy a DVD, but why buy something expensive that I am only going to use once? If I wait a year or two those same films will appear on normal channels anyway, and the distributors will get their cash from the television stations. So all I am doing is a bit of time shifting.
The one good thing about this injunction is that they give a few sites that I haven’t investigated before.
On second thoughts, they missed my list altogether.
I remember not so long ago that if a movie / documentary was more than 1GB, I’d look for a lower res version. 700MB seemed to be the average. These days it’s rare to see a movie at less than 3GB. The last thing I got was ‘The Vietnam War’ (recommended), which was 47GB. Not that I’d download anything illegally, of course. It just sort of seeped into my ‘Downloads’ file…
Those files do have a very peculiar property all right. You look at them on screen and somehow miraculously they appear on the hard drive. Very strange.
“If I download a film I am not stealing it; I am making a copy. The original is still there in its virginal state. Having downloaded it, I watch my copy and then delete it”
Ah, but you’ve “consumed media” (the term used by the PRS here in the UK) without paying for it…
Bollox! I consume food. I wouldn’t dare try to eat a computer file. All those bytes would get stuck between my teeth.
There is an irritating advertisement for some mobile phone network that offers “all you can eat data” which struck me as a particularly stupid line. There again, they’re probably targeting stupid people…….
” 700MB seemed to be the average.”
The ‘scene’ groups tend to still bring out 700mb movies because they switched over to mkv format a few years back. A 700mb (ie a ‘CD’ , which boys and girls was how we stored data before DVDs, before flash drives) mkv film will play fine on a normal laptop, although I doubt a widescreen tv would be watchable.
If I were the sort of person who downloaded every new film going-and of course I’m not- then personally I’d go for the ‘720p’ versions. Only a couple of gigs and plays lovely on the laptop. The 1080 rips may have better resolution but asking old hardware to play things that size tends to be asking for trouble.
*craptcha is back
I have a couple of ways of viewing files. Mainly I use a media box which seems to handle all file types, but it has a peculiarity of refusing files using anything other than a very bland DOS style filename. Original file – not even visible on screen, renamed file – no sweat.
I have found that the 720p version plays with excellent resolution on a 1080 HD screen. I have never watched a film on the laptop. Seeing as 99% of films are for Herself, there is no way I am giving her access to my machine!
Yes, I have no problem with watching 720 files – they’re just becoming increasingly difficult to find. The series of Vietnam war documentaries add up to 18 – 20 hours of viewing, so although 47GB sounds like a lot, it’s not so bad really.
I use two media players – VLC and Pot Player, both of which handle just about every file type. Gone are the days of having to download codec packs which were rendered obsolete as soon as some bright spark decided to add another variation into the mix.
I’ve never downloaded – or uploaded – a film. Just can’t be bothered. Went to the local cinema recently to see the latest Star Wars film. Wife thoroughly enjoyed it. so had brownie points. I thought it was rubbish, formulaic and wholly predictable excuses for “blow em up” scenes. And very much too loud. Thoroughly justified my disinterest in modern films.
I saw the original Star Wars and haven’t seen any of the others [sorry, Supershadow]. The vast majority of modern films are just plain rubbish and I certainly would never pay to see them. I occasionally take a peek at what’s on in Netflix, and reckon that a quid a month would be about worth it. I wouldn’t dream of paying for the service at whatever they charge, unless it’s less than a quid a month?
I thought the first Star Wars movie was absolutely brilliant! I was living in Melbourne when it hit the cinemas, and the place I went to see it had a really good sound system. During the unsurpassed opening sequence when the starship thingy appears to be passing overhead, the whole cinema was vibrating with the bass rumble. Incredible. (It was, I must say, further enhanced by the demon weed I’d smoked just beforehand.) Yes, excellent stuff. That movie heralded a new era in movie making.