Pirating Movies - Do You Do It?

[mrbasehart]

So...Discworld Noir is valuable? 'cause I have that game....

[Tripe]

To a certain type of collector, probably.

[bratpop]

Everyone in this forum is a bloody pirate.

*coughstarwarsholidayspecialcough*

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Oh, and these aren't films but....

Anyone who downloads a copy of one of the "Rhino Handmade" CDs - you know, those 500 copy only releases of great, great stuff that they then don't bother to limit how many you can buy so that some independant record store owner or wannabe eBay millionaire buys them all the minute they become available and then you can't get one for under $300 or more - has special dispensation, IMHO.

And the people who seed them are angels.

[ManUnderMask]

No because even the "best" quality is still piss poor. I'd get better quality taking a camera and filming my television.

The only time I did it was when my now ex-wife and I were insanely strapped for cash (as in constant negative balance) and she really wanted to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. As soon as the DVD came out we deleted/destroyed our pirated copy.

[Chaos]

I'll say again that you simply are not getting the right "stuff."

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

No because even the "best" quality is still piss poor. I'd get better quality taking a camera and filming my television.

Actually, I had a friend who traded with a guy in Australia for episodes of "Doctor Who" that way back in the 1980's.  I was the only way around the format problems.

They looked damn good, actually.

And there's someone on YouTube who has all the episodes of a western called "Paradise" posted.  Some of those are recorded like that for some reason.  Only one you can tell because the focus keeps going bad.

I'll say again that you simply are not getting the right "stuff."

Give us a hint

[Chaos]

Just track down anything you can find that says it is H264 or x264. Most of the stuff that's .mkv is pretty damn good too (though these are conversions and not pure rips, so YMMV on .mkv files). And of course, an H264 of a TV show that's currently airing (as opposed to an H264 rip from the actual BD of the show) is not going QUITE as high in quality, because the quality of your DVR then becomes a factor (and they are mostly cheapo at this point, and certainly not set up to record HDTV in 100% pure format - yet). But I must say, the x264 versions of this season's episodes of Heroes look pretty damn sweet. Too bad the show itself isn't better...

All of the HD video formats play perfectly in VLC media player (along with just about any other video format you can think of) with no codecs or fiddling around required. God bless open source freeware.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Just track down anything you can find that says it is H264 or x264. Most of the stuff that's .mkv is pretty damn good too (though these are conversions and not pure rips, so YMMV on .mkv files). And of course, an H264 of a TV show that's currently airing (as opposed to an H264 rip from the actual BD of the show) is not going QUITE as high in quality, because the quality of your DVR then becomes a factor (and they are mostly cheapo at this point, and certainly not set up to record HDTV in 100% pure format - yet). But I must say, the x264 versions of this season's episodes of Heroes look pretty damn sweet. Too bad the show itself isn't better...

All of the HD video formats play perfectly in VLC media player (along with just about any other video format you can think of) with no codecs or fiddling around required. God bless open source freeware.

TV shows aren't a problem.

[jewishcarpenter]

Just track down anything you can find that says it is H264 or x264. Most of the stuff that's .mkv is pretty damn good too (though these are conversions and not pure rips, so YMMV on .mkv files). And of course, an H264 of a TV show that's currently airing (as opposed to an H264 rip from the actual BD of the show) is not going QUITE as high in quality, because the quality of your DVR then becomes a factor (and they are mostly cheapo at this point, and certainly not set up to record HDTV in 100% pure format - yet). But I must say, the x264 versions of this season's episodes of Heroes look pretty damn sweet. Too bad the show itself isn't better...

All of the HD video formats play perfectly in VLC media player (along with just about any other video format you can think of) with no codecs or fiddling around required. God bless open source freeware.

Get version 8.6i if anyone is going to get vlc media player. I've said it in other threads and I'll repeat it again the latest codec in version 9 sucks a huge amount of ass unless they made some recent changes the picture quality looks really horrible.

[bettertomorrowamy]

Just track down anything you can find that says it is H264 or x264. Most of the stuff that's .mkv is pretty damn good too (though these are conversions and not pure rips, so YMMV on .mkv files). And of course, an H264 of a TV show that's currently airing (as opposed to an H264 rip from the actual BD of the show) is not going QUITE as high in quality, because the quality of your DVR then becomes a factor (and they are mostly cheapo at this point, and certainly not set up to record HDTV in 100% pure format - yet). But I must say, the x264 versions of this season's episodes of Heroes look pretty damn sweet. Too bad the show itself isn't better...

All of the HD video formats play perfectly in VLC media player (along with just about any other video format you can think of) with no codecs or fiddling around required. God bless open source freeware.

Get version 8.6i if anyone is going to get vlc media player. I've said it in other threads and I'll repeat it again the latest codec in version 9 sucks a huge amount of ass unless they made some recent changes the picture quality looks really horrible.

I concur!  I went back to 8.6! errrr....   0.8.6 or whatever

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I concur!  I went back to 8.6! errrr....   0.8.6 or whatever

I can't tell what version I have...I've tried "Properties" on everything and it won't say.

But it looks okay so I'm not going to worry about it.

[MSTJedi]

I concur!  I went back to 8.6! errrr....   0.8.6 or whatever

I can't tell what version I have...I've tried "Properties" on everything and it won't say.

But it looks okay so I'm not going to worry about it.

Click "About" under the "Help" menu. I happen to have not updated mine yet . . . apparently a good thing.

[BathTub]

I have to say I am in the group of people who doesn't understand why in these days of HDTVs anyone would want to watch a blury version of a movie shot from the back of a theater with people talking over it just to save a few bucks.

I know, my flatmate drives me nuts sometimes. "Hey I got this shitty rip of Kung Fu Panda/Wall E we should watch!"

Life is too short to be watching shitty quality copies, I have stacks of High Quality stuff I can watch while I wait for those to hit on DVD or BR.

well as mrbasehart said,  you're not downloading the correct files.

No, availability wasn't my point, watching shit is stupid was my point.

[Chaos]

Yeah, I don't know what the hell they did with the interface in 0.9 of VLC, tried to modern it up or something, but it's got a nasty 1 second delay when you hit pause now, and the volume controls got wonky, and some files don't play with the same quality they used to. I also went back to 0.8.6. Apparently they're working on some revisions to it, but I'm going to hold off and see what it looks like first, because as far as I'm concerned, 0.8.6 is perfectly fine as is.

Of course, this is coming from the guy who still uses version 1.90 of winamp as his mp3 software (the version that is less than 1 meg and doesn't have to be installed to be used). The current version is like 6.something, over 15 megs, and bloated with crap. I like my software to be lean and clean.