I pay for a bunch of streaming services, for semi-moral reasons, but I still pirate 99% of content.
Pirating is the only way to get accurate high-quality subtitles. I’ll automatically download them from Opensubtitles and then strip out the very distracting non-dialogue parts like “[ominous music]”. Also streaming services often have out-of-sync subtitles, like DS9 on prime video. With pirated content I automatically get perfectly synced dialogue-only subs in the exact font, size, and styling of my choosing.
Other benefits of pirating include:
- knowing exactly what bitrate/resolution you’re getting. Streaming services love to stealthily downgrade Chrome users to 720p. Pirated content often uses more computationally complex encoding letting you get more quality in fewer bits.
- easy playback of 4K content on the desktop. Often streaming services restrict 4K to certain hardware devices only. (where they can do L1 DRM protection)
- general playback flexibility. Instead of relying on each streaming service's bespoke interface, I can use my preferred media player (IINA/mpv) with all my favourite keybindings. Also, I can try out things like vapoursynth motion interpolation to get pseudo-60fps, or real-time upscaling of cartoons with Anime4K.
Pirating is the only way to get accurate high-quality subtitles. I’ll automatically download them from Opensubtitles and then strip out the very distracting non-dialogue parts like “[ominous music]”. Also streaming services often have out-of-sync subtitles, like DS9 on prime video. With pirated content I automatically get perfectly synced dialogue-only subs in the exact font, size, and styling of my choosing.
Other benefits of pirating include:
- knowing exactly what bitrate/resolution you’re getting. Streaming services love to stealthily downgrade Chrome users to 720p. Pirated content often uses more computationally complex encoding letting you get more quality in fewer bits.
- easy playback of 4K content on the desktop. Often streaming services restrict 4K to certain hardware devices only. (where they can do L1 DRM protection)
- general playback flexibility. Instead of relying on each streaming service's bespoke interface, I can use my preferred media player (IINA/mpv) with all my favourite keybindings. Also, I can try out things like vapoursynth motion interpolation to get pseudo-60fps, or real-time upscaling of cartoons with Anime4K.