I've been buying preowned DVDs off ebay every few weeks or so for the last year. I don't even bother looking to see if they are available to stream anymore.
This. My only media expense monthly is my VPN at $10. Everything is pirated.
Even that though - I just download only my favorites for the collection. Everything else is available on stand alone websites these days (multiple) so if you're paying for a streaming service or really even using bittorrent then you're living in the past as far as movies go.
Why isn't it fair? No reason you can't just torrent a 10GB Blu-Ray rip of the movie. It's free, easy and probably takes less time than going out and buying a DVD.
I would say that side-to-side the quality of Netflix-like streaming is A LOT better, at least when it comes to video. Audio is probably comparable since both DVD's and streaming services usually use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus.
Thanks! I've read that VLC can do it before, but I'll look into giving it another shot sometime. The guides I found weren't exactly the best, but with the mentioned packages I should be able to better narrow the searches to better guides, I think.
They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like... Napster, Limewire, Kazaa... Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times... What's the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it'll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Word on the street is that reddit's arr slash piracy has a pretty good guide to it in their wiki, including lists of generally trustworthy torrent sources. I of course don't torrent, because I'm terrified of legal consequences–I just browse shady but technically legal websites to stream my anime
New skool is to use automation tools to grab and manage your media. You can still use torrenting but IMO using usenet is more reliable and doesn't flag your ISP. I highly recommend anyone pirating to use 'arrs https://wiki.servarr.com/
Yeah I can't argue with the usenet fees but all three of my index sites I've had no issues with their free version so long as you do go wild and download ten terabytes in a night. I've actually had better luck with the selection compared to torrenting, pretty much is there in all of the popular resolutions. The only thing I have finding is some of the obscure adult swim shows but I can't find them on my private trackers either.
I've been pirating since Napster and you're right, it's changed a lot. These days, I usually just stream from third party sites. Takes less room on your PC and is faster than downloading a torrent. Dopebox is where it's at for most stuff. 9anime if you like anime, it's better than the paid alternatives like Crunchy roll or Funamation.
If you want to stick to torrents I've found 1337x to be the best since TPB died.
Content leaving isn't a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I've either watched it or don't want to. If it's one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it.
But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They've been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can't be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
This is incredibly annoying for series. Crunchyroll dropped Bleach, a series with over 350 episodes, when I was at episode ~100.
A few years ago I started to manually keep track of the episodes I watched, since you lose your progress when they drop it (true for crunchyroll, prime and netflix)