This is my small rant against the ‘features’ that big streaming services provided vis a vis the convenience of pirating the same thing.
I have a mobile data connection only where the carrier offers me free data for six hours post midnight. I can queue torrents on my phone(Yes, I torrent mainly on phone via Flud for Android) for downloading at night; then transfer the downloaded files to my laptop much later for viewing on a slightly larger screen. I couldn’t have done the same with say, Amazon Prime Video. Even if I could get these streaming services to queue at certain time, due to DRM restrictions, the content would only remain playable on phone.
I know, my use case, is very unique and niche since most folks probably already have access to fast broadband networks. But Atleast, piracy, hasn’t let go of my hand even for such use cases. I appreciate it.
Also, I am not sure Amazon Prime Video even goes above 720p on Firefox for Linux due to Widevine certification thing; the last time I tried I was running into issues, hence, I stopped bothering with it.
I too took my speeds for granted before I learnt many people I know have a cable connection worse than mobile. It’s 2023, in a big city. How does it make sense?
What I dislike about all these services is all of them have their own app\UI, many of them are awful and take time to figure out. There are plenty of refined software solutions for playing music and videos, they have plugins you can put your DRM overseer in, they exist for decades. Yet every one of them see their mission in reinventing the bycicle once again. I want my experience and my hotkeys to be consistent, to have the same quality whatever I consume. The only way to achieve that is to invest the same money into a big hard drive and then leech and seed.