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Viewers prefer file-sharing
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 4th September 2008
Figures from TorrentFreak show that large groups of people download copies of TV shows, even when legitimate distribution channels exist.
That's the interesting revelation that Wired's Betsy Schiffman has come up with: people will pirate even if there's a legal, free alternative.
Citing figures from pro-filesharing site TorrentFreak, Schiffman states that almost a million people downloaded illegitimate copies of the first episode of the new Prison Break series in the twenty-four hours after it aired on the US Fox TV network. This, in itself, isn't surprising – although the sheer number, representing a figure of around one-sixth as many as actually tuned in to watch the broadcast. What you may find surprising is that they didn't have to: both Fox's own website and commercial video streaming site Hulu.com had the episode available for immediate, free viewing – albiet with a few adverts.
So, with legal options in place – and that won't have you waiting for that knock at the door from the filesharing police – why so many downloads? I'm sure for some it's a convenience thing – it's one thing to be able to watch a badly encoded Flash video streamed via your web-browser, and quite another to download a top-quality MKV file and watch it on your big-screen TV. Some will have just been looking to avoid the adverts – no matter how few or how subtle, some people object strongly to advertising as a valid method of funding a production. Perhaps the biggest reason, however, is that – to put it in Schiffman's words - “file sharing is [a] hard habit to break.”
In other words, once a person gets used to downloading rips of popular TV programs from sources such as BitTorrent and binary newsgroups, they stop looking for a legitimate source. They have a solution, it works, why go elsewhere?
This impetus towards piracy is, largely, something the content producers are largely responsible for: it's been clear for years now that consumers want high-quality, convenient, DRM-free downloads. As the industries involved – film, music, and television – have been traditionally reluctant to allow this to happen, the consumers have switched to alternative sources legal or otherwise. Convincing people to switch back is going to be a lot harder than providing them with what they wanted in the first place.
The figures might not lie – a sixth of the 'legitimate' audience is certainly not to be sniffed at – but it is worth mentioning that the one million downloads were worldwide. Another common reason for an individual to download a popular TV show is the tendency to air a given show in the US months ahead of other countries; downloading a ripped copy allows a Lithuanian Prison Break fan to get his fix far earlier than via legitimate sources.
But, where to for the industry? Having allowed the filesharing sites to flourish – and give the consumers a taste of what digital media could be like – it's going to be a hard slog to fix the legitimate distribution channels.
Do you download TV shows in preference to watching them live, and if so why? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (38)Stats: 0.048 seconds
BBC have lead the way in the UK for internet viewing but it still has a way to go imo
Do you really need any more answers? Prison Break is as popular here in continental Europe as any other place.
Besides, torrents are just fast and not necessarily for pirates alone. Ask Blizzard Entertainment, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation why they use torrents for legitimate transfers.
I have yet to see anything like Steam for movies and TV shows. iTunes is a pile of poo. Once someone fills this market gap I might look at it..
The only way services like hulu are going to beat piracy is if they offer the good quality download, the browser streaming, and are global.
That's never going to happen, though.
There's also the significantly better quality of torrent rips - I tried to watch the penultimate episode of the most recent season of Dr Who on iPlayer and was appauled at the quality - especially when viewed full screen! Gave up after 2 minutes and torrented it - much better quality!
Go round to my friends whom torrented the IT Crowd, and instantly can see the difference in quality being better, while not interupted with adds, admitedly I think they must have been editted out, but still, I can see why someone would choose to torrent instead of stream it via the legal services provided.
It was the same story for Dr Who when using bbc iPlayer.
Seen a film in the cinema? ok, you get a free copy of the basic, no frills DVD edition.
Watched something on BBC? ok, free no frills DVD for you, as long as you have a TV licence of course.
Okay, I'm only guessing its a low quality stream, as most streams are either low quality, or fairly prone to stuttering. Something that doesn't happen to an offline, downloaded file.
And as others have pointed out above, untill such site offer Full Resoulution worldwide downloads I will continue to utilise torrent to watch my shows.
As for Torrent downloading of TV shows, Torrents are just more convenient especially when you are a member of a good private TV sharing site and everything is available fast!
Of course I'm in the US so it's less of an issue for me than a majority of Bit's readers. Then again, I couldn't get BBC content, which is probably better (but I'm on a Mac so even if I was in the right region I'd still have DRM issues... epic fail - on both platforms just grabbing a screen recording is trivial). These companies for probably a couple more years will continue to make these mistakes; eventually, I expect they'll realize that platform/regional lock-in also functions as platform/regional lock-out. The fewer requirements you have, the wider your audience can be.
Give us SD for free and sell us the Disc later with the promise of HD and special features.
it's the fact that you can watch back-to-back without using the internet that's attractive.
people download stuff to be able to archive them, not watch once and waste all the bandwidth. i must say, i've download many shows: from s01 to s19 all Simpsons, archived them all to DVDs. about to finish watching Scrubs which i've also downloaded, i can watch whenever, how ever i want.
you can't convert the free web-videos into portable formats and watch on the train, you have to pay for it via iTunes. just download, say, IT Crowd, takes 30min to convert the video, drag onto iPhone and off i go.
Battlestar Galactica: top-series, aired in Belgium on Sunday evenings at 23:00h. "Seems like the audience is not quite the same", with no more BSG. I WONDER.
Dexter will start airing in September. Season one. Oh jolly, Season 3 will start in the USA. While all the time we are stuck watching reruns for the 5th time of some top series a couple years back. Or when they bring in a new season, they start by airing the previous seasons first.
Tiresome ? Very much. The time delay is horrible, the pickup of good series is too low. The DVDs are good and all, but it's a time delay and the DVDs don't really offer that much more quality than a good rip.
I rip the shows, and won't stop until they offer a valid alternative. I don't want to wait 4 years before i maybe possibly can talk to someone about how great this episode of How I Met Your Mother was. RAGE.
Related:
P2P traffic drops as streaming video grows in popularity
ISPs have long complained about the fantastic amount of traffic consumed by P2P users. The network providers have never been keen on having their bandwidth hit so hard, especially when much of P2P's bandwidth—let's face it—consists of copyright-infringing material. But with the rise of Hulu, YouTube, Veoh, the BBC iPlayer, and many more, it's streaming traffic that now generates tremendous concern, even as P2P drops off in some cases. The shift, should it become a permanent trend, is good for everyone.
...
Now onto the proper "illegal" stuff. Prison break. I downloaded the first 2 episodes from my usual torrent site, nice and fast and in great HD rip quality. I dont live in america so I cant watch it on TV, and because of that same reason, hulu wont let me watch it online, neither would fox. So with the internet being so "close" now and having friend in IRC who live in america the only way to avoid the episode being spoilt for me while they talk about it is to actually download it and watch it.
I dont want to have to install some wierd octoshape custom p2p program and install it to be able to watch shows. as iPlayer proves, acceptable quality can be encoded into flash. so they should use it.
I will continue to download TV shows from torrent sites as long as we are forced to wait 6-12 months after america to watch it.
The iPlayer holds a whole series now, not just 7 days...
good news for australian though
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/BlogEntry/121784,bittorrent-users-are-being-watched.aspx
they only seem to be targetting distributors here in aus and not the users
Sam
There are ways around it apparently, proxy type stuff, but no ones going to jump through hoops to watch their crappy flash stream.
Will I buy the dvd when it comes out? Yes
To watch a show such as prison break legally you first have to think what network the stream will be on, you then have to trawl through the site to find their streams and finally to the show you want. On top of all that you also have to bear through adverts, slow downloads and poor quality.
release them here at the same god dam time lol
ditto
I much prefer to have either a legitimate DVD or some bit torrent downloaded rips which I can watch whilst in bed, or whenever really.
HD quality is also another reason to download rather than stream.
frankly, the last television series i ripped was "Get Smart Season 1" from the sixties. :D
...a German broadcaster is planning to air "Allo Allo"...for the first time in Germany...talk about lag ;-)
We are usually not one, but two or three seasons behind. many series start, and then are dropped after 2 seasons. So yeah, people continue to watch them.
Oh! Don't tell me the end of "Battle Star Galactica" it's not been aired yet!
I would use iPlayer more but I've never successfully got the subtitles working so it's useless. I missed 3 Top Gear episodes during the summer, which I couldn't watch on iPlayer due to lack of subtitles. Torrents aren't much better though as it still takes weeks/months if ever before subtitles are available.
As for the globalization that's not gonna happen because there is more money to be made selling shows to foreign networks/broadcasters. FOX, ABC, NBC can't distribute their shows to non-US viewers because that would upset the non-US broadcasters who see this as a threat and loss of profit. It's always gonna be about loss of profit. This is a business after all.
It's about time we suck it up and just continue our illegal thing and hope it wont ever be stopped. Legal tv shows in high quality and free for watching on the net is just not going to happen.
I would actually be more for paying for a service where I'm offered guaranteed bandwidth and access to all shows when I want in HD. We already have to pay a TV license here in Norway and most people pay for their cable/satellite subscription. I could easily afford a paid subscription to a TV internet service if I dropped the subscription on my regular TV.
the 2 options in the UK are bbc's iplayer and channel 4's 4od
4od is ****ing terrible, it really is
the quality is dire, the speeds are absurdly slow and it uses that stupid konitiki p2p **** that i dont really want on my computer
iplayer is far and away superior, i dont need to install a client, i can just stream off the site, the quality is better but still poor but at least theres no speed issues so you dont have to wait 3 days for a 200mb episode to download
the thing is i can go on usenet and download a 720p x264 of the same thing which has vastly superior quality and no restrictions
only reason i use iplayer/4od is when i just cant find stuff elsewhere
A private commercial TV-network will have to rely on ads to fund all of their internet services so you can do the math. You don't get that much money through ads these days. It has been pushed to it's limits.
I'm for paying for any service (like you guys are with iPlayer) if you really get what you pay for. And that way you don't get any ads as well.
Currently the ISPs are raking in the dough while everybody else is missing out on the action.
NEVAR FORGET: It's all about the money!
Yep, it's the one bill I don't mind paying.
As a slight tangent, I've got my HTPC playing the BBC iPlayer's new Higher quality streams.
It's pretty much spot-on broadcast quality, so IMO it's on-demand TV now, Hurrah!