How and why I rely on streaming downloaders

NewMelle

There are several reasons I use streaming downloaders.

1. I live in a rural area now and did previously as well. We all know streaming providers pretty much expect broadband internet access such as bonded copper ADSL at the minimum, cable or fiber. Our last place the ISPs had no intention of running cable or fiber as there were too few homes in that area to make enough of a profit. The ADSL provider did offer bonded copper at up to 140Mb/s. However, it would have cost us $650 to have new telco wire run from the junction box to the service box next to the house as we were almost 500 feet from the junction box at the side of the road. They wanted $380 for the router and then $54 a month for the lowest bonded copper speed of 25Mb/s.

I am retired living on SS and my Wife works for the state of Missouri so there is not a lot of income there. We were stuck with single pair ADSL. We moved to another rural area and the same applies except there is only single pair copper. The best we get is 8.8Mb/s (10Mb link) here. And that's on a good day. Satellite is either far too expensive and with Hughesnet's 800-1000ms latency it was an absolute joke that cost us $400 in penalties to ditch. There is no 5G cellular i-net service anywhere nearby either. The choices are move into town and put up with elbow to elbow hairless apes or peace and quiet with crappy internet.

Now imagine trying to stream your favorite episodes or a movie you just rented or bought and on a "not so great bandwidth day" only to have it buffer numerous times or the audio go out of sync half way through (I'm a musician so I notice even a few milliseconds and it is maddening). Sometimes there are no issues, others are plagued by them. I have a caching proxy set up on one of my machines and that did little to help. The bottleneck was bandwidth and I'm stuck there. With a streaming downloader I can grab our movies and episodes during the day while I'm doing honey-dos and enjoy them with my Wife in the evenings over dinner (which we do every evening). No buffering. No stuttering. No hangs and no out of sync audio. When we've tired of them it is as simple as deleting a file or more making room for the next. Sure we could stream at 224p but this is 2024, not 1976 and I'm not paying 1976 pre-inflation prices for streaming services.

2. I strongly disagree with streaming providers' policy of deciding how long content is valid and profitable. Disk space is no longer at a premium. In particular for content I've bought. I've also seen entire seasons disappear without a trace (which may have been the reason I signed up in the first place). We no longer buy DVDs or Blu Rays as we've had a number de-laminate over time becoming useless. The vendors and studios flat out REFUSED to replace them and trust me that was long and heated battle and the crabby old foul-mouthed biker in me came out in spades towards the end.

Now we buy digital and that way the content we've purchased can be backed up in the event a drive goes belly up (and they do sooner or later). I am of the opinion when I buy a digital copy I bought it for good, not until they decide to take it down (or the digital provider goes defunct in one case). Sure downloading it falls in a rather gray area of the law but the way I see it paid for it for life, not until it is no longer profitable enough to use disk space. You could say the same applies to DVDs and Blu Rays. I have yet to see an expiration date printed on a DVD or Blu Ray but I can tell you for certain, they CAN expire.

3. Amazon and some others now inject ads into content they provide with your subscription. More are jumping on that bandwagon. We pay for premium subscriptions and have Amazon and Paramount+ among others. We ditched DirecTV years ago as we were essentially paying for the privilege of watching commercials and for what we were paying each month was entirely unfair. And then there were the issues with storms and snow.

I am one of those people not enticed by commercials. That's 3-1/2 minutes of my life I won't get back. If I want something I'll research it and get it. I don't want to have to endure 20 minutes or more each hour of commercials for garbage I've zero interest in. Exactly why am I paying for premium services? It's all about money for them, nothing more. Advertisers pay them to run their commercials and I can't pay to completely avoid them or afford it when they do offer the option (for yet another ADDITIONAL fee of course and you still can't avoid all of them). I can see Freevee, Pluto, YouTube and others like it, but those are FREE, we don't pay for them. However every month I am paying for the rest. Taken directly out of my account so we have NEVER been late.

So there you have it. You may not agree but you know where I stand. This would also illustrate where my frustration and aggravation comes from. I tend to get a little testy when I get poked in the wallet. With no light at the end of the tunnel as of yet I was left with no other option but to purchase another solution to fill the void.

I apologize to those members I've offended. Sometimes something is said that elicits a knee-jerk reaction and on occasion I don't' catch it in time.

peter777

Understandable reasons that I can understand and partly share. Thank you for that!
Greetings from Germany!

Kattanders

Now we buy digital and that way the content we've purchased can be backed up in the event a drive goes belly up (and they do sooner or later). I am of the opinion when I buy a digital copy I bought it for good, not until they decide to take it down (or the digital provider goes defunct in one case). Sure downloading it falls in a rather gray area of the law but the way I see it paid for it for life, not until it is no longer profitable enough to use disk space. You could say the same applies to DVDs and Blu Rays. I have yet to see an expiration date printed on a DVD or Blu Ray but I can tell you for certain, they CAN expire.
NewMelle

Couldn't agree more.And also backing up a blue ray or DVD is as illegal as stream recording - as botth is bypassing copy protection :-( I don't feel one bit bad of doing it anyways - after all I have bought the stuff. It is on me to decide when I want to dump it.

NewMelle

The big studios "tried" with Vudu and MoviesAnywhere affording you a digital copy but they didn't plan that out well. Both of those platforms were fine at first but the fancier they got the more issues there were. At some point I was unable to access ANY of my digital content on either and my Vudu account along with all the digital copies tied to it went poof and they wouldn't do a thing about it. In addition the digital copies I "owned" were stored in the cloud and encrypted so only that platform could play that content. Back to square one with bandwidth as well.

I would not have too much of an issue with DVDs and Blu Rays if they came with an UNCONDITIONAL LIFETIME warranty against manufacturing defects. They don't and won't regardless of how far in the right you are. Once they have your money they don't care. Why does that have a familiar ring to it? It's "Don't go away mad, just go away."

Years ago I had a bought VHS go bad. Indiana Jones and Raider of the Lost Ark. I'll post how that conversation went later and it will illustrate why I have lost a lot of respect for the major studios. You're not buying the movie, you're not buying the media either. You bought empty promises.

KidJoe

I appreciate your reasons and desire to use a stream downloader like StreamFab, and your frustration with the situation. And I have my own reasons to use/rely on apps like StreamFab, which I'm sure we all have our reason/needs for it. And frustration doesn't adequately begin to describe how I am feeling about the current situation with StreamFab.

In a perfect world, apps like StreamFab wouldn't be necessary. Physical media would be available easily for those who have no or limited broadband access, just want the better audio/video quality available on discs, or want a copy that is theirs to KEEP.

That being said, your Points 2 and 3 seem like you acknowledge the streaming services, digital content creators, and lack of availability of physical media, are the gate keepers here.

Unfortunately the gate keepers implement DRM to keep people from downloading and freely distributing to others. The DRM is a lock, and apps like StreamFab are the lock pickers. The content owners update DRM to further prevent any "existing lock pickers" from working. When the locks change, a new way or tool to pick the lock is needed. Its frustrating, and even infuriating, that sometimes it takes longer than others to pick that lock again.

My hope is/was, that Fab would Focus on Amazon DRM issues since that is the highest used/visible downloader, not only for Prime movies but for all of the Amazon Prime Channels like Max, Paramount+, etc. And any other bugs would be low priorities until at least Amazon DRM was fixed. Of course we know that doesn't appear to be what is happening.

I don't know what the future holds for StreamFab. I'd experienced the demise of DVDFab DRM Remover for Apple/iOS, which has been in the back of my mind since late February. I don't want to imply StreamFab is dead or soon will be, I'm just saying that sometimes DRM is not breakable by software like DVDFab/StreamFab or others. I expect Fab fixing Amazon so it doesn't need the work around (re-encoding) at some point, I mean others have figured it out already so they should be able to. I just wish we had a clear window into the progress, and timeline. As for Netflix, I'm not so confident it will get any better.

KidJoe

The big studios "tried" with Vudu and MoviesAnywhere affording you a digital copy but they didn't plan that out well.[/Qoute] Do you possibly mean Ultraviolet here, rather than Vudu? UltraViolet was a digital locker like MoviesAnywhere, that you could link to several services. When UltraViolet shut down, they emailed asking you to be sure to link any supported digital retailers so your purchases/digital code redemptions were safe.

[QUOTE=NewMelle;n441344]At some point I was unable to access ANY of my digital content on either and my Vudu account along with all the digital copies tied to it went poof and they wouldn't do a thing about it. In addition the digital copies I "owned" were stored in the cloud and encrypted so only that platform could play that content. Back to square one with bandwidth as well.
NewMelle

With digital copies you are purchasing only the right to watch the content while its still available on the particular platform. BUT THAT IS NOT CLEAR up front. That is why I lost respect for content owners.

Most people believe when they buy a digital copy its theirs to keep and watch unconditionally like physical media would be. This applies not just for movies/tv, but also books and other digital products.

Its frustrating if a digital copy disappears and you have no recourse to try and get it back. And if its gone due to contracts between the digital retailer and the content's owner, you're even worse off.

walker189

@NewMelle While I agree with your points and they somewhat reflect my reasons as well - there are some flaws in your logic:
1) When you are a subscriber to a streaming service, you're not buying or owning any content - you are renting it, albeit on demand. Streaming is the modern equivalent of the video rental store.
2) Streamers pull content becasue they are likely paying a carriage fee on top of royalties, and the carriage fees may no longer make sense. Or the royalties paid are so low its not worth continuing to support it. Its not about space

@Kattanders - it is NOT illegal to archive your purchased content on Bluray / DVD - thats why MoviesAnywhere and similar services include free download when you purchase some discs. Copy protection is there to prevent piracy - making multiple copies and selling them. In an ideal world, copy protection would be bypassed for personal archiving but since that's not possible, programs that bypass the copy protection are necessary.

KidJoe

The big studios "tried" with Vudu and MoviesAnywhere affording you a digital copy but they didn't plan that out well.[/Quote] Do you possibly mean Ultraviolet here, rather than Vudu? UltraViolet was a digital locker like MoviesAnywhere, that you could link to several services. When UltraViolet shut down, they emailed asking you to be sure to link any supported digital retailers so your purchases/digital code redemptions were safe.

[QUOTE=NewMelle;n441344]At some point I was unable to access ANY of my digital content on either and my Vudu account along with all the digital copies tied to it went poof and they wouldn't do a thing about it. In addition the digital copies I "owned" were stored in the cloud and encrypted so only that platform could play that content. Back to square one with bandwidth as well.
NewMelle

Chameleon

Posted by KidJoe
As for Netflix, I'm not so confident it will get any better.

AS you say Netflix is a different animal. Although we all know it is possible to download everything from the Netflix catalog the DRM to decrypt it is not the issue. We all know that the other program can do it in SD. New and old releases. The problem is getting the call for the FHD download. Now if you have the SD version it can be easily upscaled with great success with programs like DaVinciResolve or a few others, but they are expensive, more expensive than StreamFab or the other program. Plus they are time-consuming. It all depends on your needs. Plus, there is a steep learning curve with these types of programs. It all depends on what you watch the download on, and how badly you need FHD.

NewMelle

@KidJoe Like I said, I'd have no problem buying DVDs and Blu Rays for content I intend to keep. IF, there was a lifetime warranty to go with them. We have 6 shelves full of Blu Rays of both feature films and series. A LOT of money there! We have had too many go bad over time and that's with them used only rarely. You can plainly see the de-lamination on some of them. They were in NO way abused or mistreated. Stored carefully on a shelf out of reach of the pets.

@walker189 I BOUGHT the digital copy along with the DVD or Blu Ray. Not just the right to watch it. On the box it clearly stated "Includes digital copy". What was NOT clear was how I utilized that digital copy. My account got POOFED on Vudu/Fandango and so did the copies I paid for and they would do NOTING. One more time a big corporate entity screwed me. So sad, too bad, right? Digital copies on services like Vudu or MoviesAnywhere are nothing but garbled data with local copies unless you use THEIR app and ONLY their app. Most are misbehaved at best. Vudu NEVER worked.

I can see that with rentals. I rent movies I have no intention of keeping for any length of time. I do have a good bit of disk space here but that is finite so if some come in some have to go. If we really like it we'll BUY it. Simple as that. That's where the streaming downloader comes in. I can watch the movie without the buffering and other issues related to low bandwidth. If it bores me no great loss. I think I know by now how to delete a file. ;) If we really like it I'll buy it.

I do BUY the ones I intend to KEEP. Just recently I bought Lorenzo's Oil, Land of Bad, and Spirit Rider. If I bought it I expect to keep it as long as I see fit, NOT as long as Amazon sees fit. I couldn't care less if they aren't making money on it any more, they SOLD it to me. That's their problem not mine. Sounds like lack of foresight on their part to me. Either it's mine or they can refund the money I paid for it if they want to take it down.

If it is perfectly legal to sell me something then take it away on a whim maybe the laws need to change. Until then I guess label me an outlaw. It started a very long time ago. I'll post that next.

NewMelle

I bought Indaina Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on VHS (yes, that long ago). At that time we probably had 250 store bought VHS tapes. The tape went bad in that it got grainier and granier unitl it was 1950s TV. I called Paramount and asked them if I could get the tape replaced. Here's pretty much how the conversation went:

Them: Hello, how can I help you?

Me: I bought a tape, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and it has gone bad.

Them: What can we do about that?

Me: Replace it.

Them: We can't do that.

Me: Didn't I buy the movie?

Them: Yes.

Me: OK, can I send you the bad tape so you can put the movie I bought on a good one? I can't watch the movie as it is.

Them: We can't do that. The tape is bad.

Me: OK, then did I buy the tape?

Them: Yes.

Me: OK, can I send the bad tape I bought to you and you replace it with a good one?

Them: We can't do that.

Me: So, which did I buy, the movie or the tape?

Them: Both.

Me: OK, can you replace one or the other? I bought both.

Them: We can't do that.

Me: So I paid good money for the tape and good money for the movie but you won't make it right?

Them: We can't do that. You could have damaged the tape.

Me (getting pissed): Why in the Sam hell would I damage the tape when I spent good money for it?

Them: We have no control over that. You will have to buy it again if you want it.

Me: (now blowing a gasket): So you're telling me I'm ****** either way, right?

Them: We can't help with that.

Me: Fine. You stole my money and got away with it. Don't expect me to PAY for a single movie you release from here on out. There are ways to copy them.

Them: Sir, that would be illegal.

Me: No, taking my money for damaged goods and refusing to make it right is stealing. I'll just be getting even.

Them: Sir, you can't do that.

Me: Watch me.

CLICK.

Yes, I have Paramount+. And yes, I'm STILL getting even.

whitesnake

For me its a different reason. I'm a British person who has been living in Canada for 16 years.
I would happily pay for the real versions of UKTV channels and a DVR, but they arent available.
I rely on streaming downloads for BBC,ITV, CH4 and CH5 UK as and when I want the programmes.
The DRM situation has really pissed me off, especially with UK CH4 and CH5

Stan001

I just got sick of ALL the ads. I understand platforms that don't charge need to make money, but many free stream providers have more ads than regular TV shows and movies.
And then now so many 'pay' are now including ads there is more of a demand than ever for something that at least strips most or all ads.
I wish those that shouted to high heaven they would stop paying Amazon when they made the change but seems it was all talk not much action.

MrGrackle

NEVER had a blu-ray "delaminate". Had a few DVDs rot in the past. Current collection is >3,000 discs.
I realize on a fixed income that options are limited. In my area I had a bonded copper VDSL, the best they could do was 40 Mbps. I still remember when it was 15 ADSL. I would have paid $1000 if I had to to get where I am. I assume your 140 option is VDSL.
Regarding your VHS conversation --- the studios claim you don't buy the movie, just a license to view it. Normal wear and tear of the media is generally not covered by any type of warranty.

What got me started with SF and AS was the studios themselves pissed me off in a different sense. They were cramming 5 episodes of 50 minutes TV shows (CSI Miami, NCIS New Orleans) on a single-layer DVD. If they offered the shows in HD physical media (blu-ray ) I would buy them. Hell, when they finally released Cheers to blu, I deleted them from the hard drive.

When an episode looks like this, it is fucking unacceptable.

NewMelle

140Mb/s was for bonded copper and the monthly fees were too high. Here is 10Mb only. I count series as a single disk but most are multiple but two we HAD were is just as you describe. 5 or more episodes on a single disc and to boot previews I had no interest in as well. They looked just like the pic you posted and when it was a dark scene with a slight gradient you could REALLY see the compression and pixelation. I gave them away and bought the Blu Ray versions.

We've had 5 or more Blu Rays go bad. Hangs or skips way ahead or worse locks up the player and I have to shut it down and back on to get the disc out and one is a series we paid a LOT for which pissed me off royal.

That VHS was grainy to begin with the FIRST time we played it. I cleaned the head on the VCR and it was the same, then the farther you got into the movie the worse it got until it was more snow than picture. In no way normal wear and tear. Wear and tear is what happened to rental VHS but it was not an issue for them as they made their money back tens or hundreds of times over. I'm not a video store and I made zero profit on any VHS, ever. Ours were only taken out to watch and then back in their cover in an enclosed cabinet. I was as picky with my VHS as I am with my discs. All the rest were still in perfect condition when we gave them to the local fire department for the guys on duty to watch.

I've no interest in what the studios think. If they think it is perfectly acceptable to sell me something on the false premise I owned the physical media but only paid for the right to watch the movie until the media dies call me an outlaw and a rebel. How many discs do you think I've bought when that series on Blu Ray went bad and if you guess more than ZERO you'd be wrong. NEVER AGAIN. They can make their money on all the sheeple out there that will buy into that garbage.