• AnyStream is having some DRM issues currently, Netflix is not available in HD for the time being.
    Situations like this will always happen with AnyStream: streaming providers are continuously improving their countermeasures while we try to catch up, it's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. Please be patient and don't flood our support or forum with requests, we are working on it 24/7 to get it resolved. Thank you.

A few thoughts about piracy

I have no desire to pirate anything. If I like it, I buy it. Period. These days I'm doing a lot more streaming video for things I don't care too much about quality. I buy them on VUDU. For things that quality matters, I obviously get the blu-ray but I want to repackage it into a useful format to stream around my house on my gigabit lan. I own over 600 blu-rays which I find to be too much to rip all at once. So I generally take the most watched movies and rip those. When I rent movies on Netflix, it's not about ripping as I don't own them. It's about using the player *I* want not the player I'm "required" to. In my case, that'd be MC21 with LAV filters and madvr tweaked for my Panny plasma. PowerDVD doesn't even come close. Besides the fact that MC scans the disc, and plays the movie without all the nonsense. THAT is what AnyDVD is designed for. If I'm not able to do that with my legally purchased discs, then screw em....I'll start renting more and buying less.
 
I swear Rathbone80 bought a ton of my copied blurays last week. Where can you rent movies for .50 cents? Sign me up, lol

Joking!

In Germany 50 cents (in Euro cent, not USD) is a regular price for a half a day disc rental.
 
I think your hanging around with ALL the wrong people.

I was working as a freelancer for several independent companies. One of my clients was a former bootlegger who has gone legit. So I know what I am talking about. Some people here need to come out of their bubble and face reality and the inconvenient truth. If Redfox is saying that 99% of the AnyDVD HD users are using the tool for private use of their purchased discs, I'll have to say that this is an illusion. I think that there are not so many people backing up their owned discs as people in this forum think or wish. Consider that in this forum you have a condensed version of the AnyDVD customer base and nobody's going to admit (unless he's plain stupid) his true intentions how he's using AnyDVD HD.
 
Until the content owners change their primitive greedy business model, piracy will continue to flourish.

Imagine if a movie disk cost $5 instead of the outrageous high price people are being asked to pay today....
$5 would make it no brainer to purchase a disk.

Look what happened to the music industry. It was about to die because of piracy and then Apple started with the $0.99 per song downloads...and voila! The music industry was saved by embracing this model....and music piracy is almost non-exist because consumers prefer to buy legally as long as it's reasonably priced and conviniently available...

The video content industry has to step into the 21st century and change their business models and pricing so it becomes not worth dealing with pirated movies....
 
The video content industry has to step into the 21st century and change their business models and pricing so it becomes not worth dealing with pirated movies....

Bad manufacturing quality and horribly mastered CDs cost an insanely high price (15-20 EUR)...and you're saying they have learned?

I don't pay that much for bad discs so the only way for me to get good quality physical music media is vinyl, SACD, DVD-Audio.
 
Until the content owners change their primitive greedy business model, piracy will continue to flourish.

Imagine if a movie disk cost $5 instead of the outrageous high price people are being asked to pay today....
$5 would make it no brainer to purchase a disk.

Look what happened to the music industry. It was about to die because of piracy and then Apple started with the $0.99 per song downloads...and voila! The music industry was saved by embracing this model....and music piracy is almost non-exist because consumers prefer to buy legally as long as it's reasonably priced and conviniently available...

The video content industry has to step into the 21st century and change their business models and pricing so it becomes not worth dealing with pirated movies....

Unfortunately, $5 per disc is unrealistic. No company, if they want to survive, would chose to lose money. Would you be so willing to take a loss so your customers can benefit off of you?
 
Unfortunately, $5 per disc is unrealistic. No company, if they want to survive, would chose to lose money. Would you be so willing to take a loss so your customers can benefit off of you?
14.99 would be a fair price.
 
They could lower the price by dropping all the drm completely...No more licensing fees to the aacs la.
 
Unfortunately, $5 per disc is unrealistic. No company, if they want to survive, would chose to lose money. Would you be so willing to take a loss so your customers can benefit off of you?
Considering the movie generally gets it's money back in the first few weeks in the theatres, actors and the crew get paid millions, everybody is happy Champaign is flowing, add the remaining weeks of projection earnings, add rental, TV broadcast and streaming royalties later on, $5 a disc will be near pure profit, Off course they have to be creative to milk their creation, not produce for a week and go sleep for the whole year.
 
So, sorry MPAA, AACS and all you people with the fancy acronyms - we can't help you with the piracy, but since no one is helping us with the movies, we're picking up things ourselves.
Think twice.

God bless you, Peer!
 
Look what happened to the music industry. It was about to die because of piracy and then Apple started with the $0.99 per song downloads...and voila! The music industry was saved by embracing this model....and music piracy is almost non-exist because consumers prefer to buy legally as long as it's reasonably priced and conviniently available...
That is not totally correct the "Artists" get very little to none of those monies that come from non band or label hosted digi downloads or streaming services however it did curb illegal downloads of the radio single's
 
Unfortunately, $5 per disc is unrealistic. No company, if they want to survive, would chose to lose money. Would you be so willing to take a loss so your customers can benefit off of you?

I think it depends on how you look at it. From corporate perspective It would be unrealistic given the inflated staff these companies employs and the salaries their executives enjoy.
The production investment of a movie is usually returned from the box office screening with a nice profit so DVD/BD sales, Pay-Per-View and Streaming are pure profit. The cost of placing the disc on the shelf (including the box, cover, etc...) is less than $1 so $5 would be very realistic given the volume of discs they will sell.

Another issue is the cable companies who are holding the content owners (Studios) by their b@#$S because they have the largest client base which allow them to place huge pressure on the studios. This is for example why the streaming content on Netflix is kind of old - because the cable companies are pressuring the studios to not sell newer content to Netflix..... Same with the sports channels... that are usually available through CableTV and Satellite only.... and so on and on....
 
Pirating was never my intention either. For me AnyDVD was very helpful for:

- I also got my experience with norm conversions, thanks to AnyDVD. I really hate 3:2 judder, but many TV shows in the 80's and 90's were shot on film with 24 fps and then cut in NTSC ignoring frame patterns, which makes good norm conversions rather complex. In many cases, I managed to do much better conversions then officially available PAL DVDs, thus I can enjoy the show without the judder and still have a decent picture quality.
I'm a little confused. Can you only playback in PAL? I hate NTSC converted to PAL on a DVD, which has all kinds of issues, starting with the 3:2 judder. Usually there is generation loss as well to go with the 3:2 judder. In Australia NTSC and PAL playback are interchangeable on DVD players and televisions. Only broadcast television is tied to PAL specifications. So I enjoy seeing the more authentic NTSC DVD releases from the US for a lot of TV shows and movies, usually old ones. And bluray mostly uses NTSC type video specifications, 24 progressive or 60 interlaced fps. Occasionally extras or the rare movie on a bluray will be set to the PAL type specifications of frame speed.
But it's a bit new to me to worry about TV shows that were originally produced for PAL regions that have been made for NTSC type specifications, and the pitch changes. There are of course PAL region produced TV shows that are only available in NTSC. This has happened with a number of British TV shows. Colors are washed out when you convert PAL to NTSC. Or maybe before digital methods probably improved or something.
 
Very well said, Peer!

Good point. But AnyDVD has a similar problem, as we have witnessed with SlySoft vanishing. Without the server infrastructure it isn't so useful anymore.

To prevent this from happening again, we should find a way to make the OPD is available offline. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
First, all data - including Java based protections - must be cached locally.
The OPD is a "moving target". Publish monthly snapshots? Weekly? Daily?
Add time stamps to the database entries, so people with expired licenses can't use new discs?

We don't need to implement this right away - as there are some more urgent matters - but we should keep it on our todo list.

Why not make just the OPD peer to peer?
 
Can you only playback in PAL? I hate NTSC converted to PAL on a DVD, which has all kinds of issues, starting with the 3:2 judder.
Sure, most players and displays can play NTSC nowadays, but staying at NTSC also means keeping the 3:2 judder. A good PAL conversion can get rid of the 3:2 judder. That is the kind of PAL conversion I prefer for exactly that reason.
 
Pirating was never my intention either. For me AnyDVD was very helpful for:
- DVDs and Blu-Ray, which are not available or only available in inferior quality for my region, thus circumventing regional locking was a solution.
- DVDs and Blu-Rays which have ridiculously annoying intros and don't allow to skip them, and also no support for resume. This is a pain especially on TV shows. Removing user prohibitions or ditching the menus altogether is true joy on those discs.
- Blu-Rays of TV shows with German dubbing pitched down. I need a way to watch them in PAL speed to correct this issue. Many TV shows' dubbings have this issue since they frequently (but not always) were done on sped up material for PAL TV. The French speaking audience in NTSC territory also have this issue on DVD. Most of the time, the studios just don't seem to bother and ignoring any complains regarding this. With ReClock and MPC-HC, I can easily fix this, thanks to AnyDVD that is.
- For movies which I like to watch in German, but no German track available on any DVD or Blu-Ray. In that case, I use the audio from a TV recording or VHS release and multiplex it with the high quality video to enjoy.
- I also got my experience with norm conversions, thanks to AnyDVD. I really hate 3:2 judder, but many TV shows in the 80's and 90's were shot on film with 24 fps and then cut in NTSC ignoring frame patterns, which makes good norm conversions rather complex. In many cases, I managed to do much better conversions then officially available PAL DVDs, thus I can enjoy the show without the judder and still have a decent picture quality.
- I also like to copy discs to a hard drive in order to reduce noise level.

And I did not upload nor did I sold anything of that. I respect their copyright. I bought hundreds of disks. Sometimes even more than one version, just to combine one video with the audio of another.

Also I don't think that piracy would be much different if AnyDVD didn't existed, as it only can defeat disc based protections. Pretty much all major movies are illegally available even before they are released on disc.

If steaming should be the only way to get a movie one day, I really hope that our fox gets a relative which makes it possible to back up your streams then. I wouldn't "buy" a stream, if I can't.


So true, I agree absolutely and wanted to know if you could give some hints or "howtos" to add other language tracks as I find myself in the same situation: Over here in Switzerland, as we have three official languages, you can buy a BluRay/DVD in Zürich with german, english and turkish language tracks, but not with french or italian. The same title in Geneva is available with french, english, arab and other language tracks but not with the german language. Then you go to the southern part, in Lugano, where you find the movies in their italian versions but not necessarily with the other languages you want: Imagine my problem as I have my origins in the italian part, but am of german mother tongue, living in the french part and my wife is of spanish mothertongue : I bought some BluRays / DVDs in two or even three versions !
 
The pirates sure aren't slow in taking advantage of AnyDVD's resurrection, I can find more than a few active torrent sites having the interim AnyDVD (with SERIAL KEYS!) available for download.
 
That's not an unknown problem. The thing is anydvd is to smart for that to work. OPD access is denied, decryption of discs often fails even though the logfile indicates it does. They then come crying for help to the forums, they get asked for a logfile, the logfile somehow tells the dev's it's a pirated version and they get called out on it, and we never see them again :)

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk
 
I have a story to tell on this issue and just how why spread it is :
For anyone who doesn't already know they now market and sell an mp3/wmp only player for your car stereo deck (there is no CD player to it) and I was looking at it one day and I said " that is so f'n stupid why would anybody buy something like this that won't even play a disk anyway period" and a guy beside me says "who even buy's a CD anymore" I replied I do because I want a hard copy of something I've purchased and not have to repay to redownload it if for some reason the hdd gave up the ghost and his reply was this who said anything about PAYING FOR IT and I'm sure they are not alone in that way of thinking and when I said that was pirating and was wrong he says oh yea like jay Z has a problem feeding his kids and that's why it's OK to him (which is my biggest beef because it's not just the mainstream that it hurts it hurts the independent & underground more than anything) and that I shouldn't have said anything about it. My point is players like that and people with opinions like that are why so many files are pirated which that type of player does seem to promote in the first place but since all I wanna do is watch a movie using anyDVDHD on a pc thru a connected HDTV using an older version of PDVD that does what I need it to I'm the bad guy yea right
 
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